THE' ROMAN POETS OF THE
AUGUSTAN AGE,
VIRGIL
SELLAR
MACMILLAN AND CO.
PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF
THE'ROMAN POETS
OF THE
AUGUSTAN AGE*
BY
W. Y. SELLAR, M.A.
\\
PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
AND
FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
VIRGIL
1 1 tt A If V
UNIYEIJS1TV O
CALIFORNIA,
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCC LXXVII
[All rights reserve d~\
IX J V KIISITV OF|
CALIFOUMA. )
TO
E. L. LUSHINGTON, ESQ., D.C.L., LL.D., ETC.,
LATE PROFESSOR ^F GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW.
MY DEAR LUSHINGTON,
Any old pupil of yours, in finishing a work
either of classical scholarship or illustrative of an-
cient literature, must feel that he owes to you,
probably more than to any one else, the impulse
which directed him to these studies. It is with this
feeling that I should wish to associate your name
with this volume. Many of your former pupils
can confirm my recollection that one of the hap-
piest influences of our youth was the admiration
excited by the union, in your teaching, of perfect
scholarship with a true and generous appreciation of
all that is excellent in literature. The intimate
friendship of many subsequent years has afforded
me, along with much else of still higher value,
ample opportunities for verifying these early im-
pressions.
Ever affectionately yours,
W. Y. SELLAR.
PREFACE.
THIS volume has been written in continuation of one
which appeared some years ago on the Roman Poets of
the Republic. I hope in a short time to bring out a new
edition of that work, enlarged and corrected, and after-
wards to add another volume which will treat of Horace
and the Elegiac Poets. I have reserved for this later
volume the examination of the minor poems which have
been attributed to Virgil, most of which belong to the
Augustan Age.
Besides the special acknowledgments of ideas or infor-
mation derived from various sources, which are made in
notes at the foot of the page where an occasion for them
arises, I have to make a general acknowledgment of the
assistance I have received in my studies of the Augustan
literature from the earlier volumes of Dr. Merivale's ' His-
tory of the Romans under the Empire,' from the ' History
of Roman Literature ' by W. S. Teuffel, from M. Sainte-
Beuve's f tude sur Virgile/ and from the Introductions
and Notes to Professor Conington's edition of Virgil, and
Mr. Munro's edition of Lucretius. In the account given
of the Alexandrian literature in Chapter I, I have availed
myself of the chapters treating of that subject in Helbig's
viii PREFACE.
' Campanische Wandmalerei ;' in treating of the estima-
tion in which Virgil was held under the Roman Empire,
I have taken several references from the work by S r . Com-
paretti, ^Virgilio nel Medio Evo;' and in examining the
order in which the Eclogues were composed, I have
adopted the opinions expressed in Ribbeck's Prolego-
mena. I have also derived some suggestions from the
notes in the edition of Virgil by M. E. Benoist and
from the work of M. G. Boissier, ' La Religion Romaine
d'Auguste aux Antonins.' As the greater part of this
volume was written before the appearance of Dr. Ken-
nedy's Virgil, I have not been able to make so much use
of his notes as I should have wished : I have, however,
profited by them to correct or to illustrate statements
made before I had seen his work, and, in revising the
Virgilian quotations for the press, I have followed his
text.
I did not read Mr. Nettleship's valuable and original
'Suggestions Introductory to the Study of the Aeneid'
until I had finished writing all I had to say about that
poem.. I have drawn attention in the text or in notes at
the foot of the page to some places in which I modified
what I had originally written after reading his 'Sugges-
tions,' to others in which my own opinions are confirmed
by his, and to one or two points of divergence in our
views.
Since the third chapter was printed off, I have received
what seems a confirmation of the opinion expressed there
as to the probable situation of Virgil's early home, from
a friend who recently visited the district, where I suppose
PREFACE. ix
it to have been. He writes of the country which he passed
through 'The result of my observations perfectly con-
firms what you had already supposed. The country south
of the Lago di Garda for a distance of at least twenty
miles is of a gently undulating character, and is intersected
by long ranges of hills which gradually sink down towards
the lake and the Mincio. The loftiest of these hills may
perhaps reach a height of 1000 feet above the lake-level,
but that is a point on which I cannot say anything
certain/
EDINBURGH, Nov. 1876.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
PAGE
I. Relation of the Augustan Age to other Literary Epochs . . 1-8
Relation of the Augustan poetry to that of the preceding Age . i
Parallel of the Augustan Age with other great literary Epochs . 4
especially with the Age of Louis XIV. 5
Chief conditions modifying the poetry of the Augustan Age . . 7
II. Influence of the enthusiasm in favour of the Empire . . 8-21
General longing for peace . . 8
Revival of national sentiment and pride of Empire 10
Moral and religious reaction 13
Augustus the centre of the national enthusiasm .. , - . .14
Deification of the Emperor in the poetry of the Age . . -15
illustrated by other extant works of art .... 19
Direction given to national sentiment by Augustus ... 20
III. Influence of Patronage on the Augustan Poetry . . 21-31
Poetry employed in the interest of the Government . . . 21
Patrons of literature Augustus .22
Personal influence of Maecenas '. 24
Pollio, Messala, Agrippa, Cornelius Callus 26
Causes of the connexion between literature and social eminence . 28
Effects of this connexion on the tone of literature * . . 30
IV. Influence of material conditions on Literature . . 32-37
Wealth and luxury of Rome in the Augustan Age . . .32
Liberality of Augustus and Maecenas to Virgil and florace . 33
Effects of this on the art of these poets 34
Reaction from the luxury of the Age apparent in literature . . 35
xil CONTENTS.
PAGE
V. General condition of literary culture as affecting the Augustan
Poetry 37-54
Intellectual character of the last years of the Republic and earlier
years of the Empire 37
Distinction between the earlier and later periods .... 38
Appreciation of Greek art and literature in both .... 39
Alexandrine influences on the Augustan poetry . . . .41
Characteristics of the Alexandrine poets . . . . i . 42
Their treatment of mythological subjects . . , . -43
Scientific and learned character of their poetry . . . 44
Their treatment of the passion of love . . . ' . . -45
' Their treatment of external Nature 46
Pictorial art of the later Greeks 48
Superiority of the Augustan to the Alexandrine literature . . 49
friendly relations among the poets of the Augustan Age . . 50
Influence of these relations on their art 52
Hostility of other literary coteries . . . . . ~ 53
VI. Causes of the special devotion to Poetry in the Augustan
A ge 54-58
Effect of the Monarchy on the great forms of prose literature . 55
Poetry later in feeling the effects of Despotism .... 56
The Augustan literature the maturest development of the national
mind . . 57
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
Virgil's pre-eminence acknowledged till recent times ... 59
.Disparagement of his genius in the present century ... 60
I. Estimate of Virgil in former times 61-68
His former reputation as a great Epic Poet 61
Estimate of the Aeneid among the Romans 61
during the ' Dark Ages ' . . . .64
at the revival of letters .... 65
during the i7th and i8th centuries . . 67
II. Change in the estimate of Virgil in the present century . 68-77
Virgil's alleged dissatisfaction with the Aeneid .... 69
Probable explanation of this 70
Adverse criticisms in the present century 7H/
Causes of these criticisms 74 /
Advance in Greek scholarship .74
Modern interest in remote antiquity 74
_ Literary reaction at the end of the 1 8th century .... 75
CONTENTS. xiii
PAGE
III. Virgil's supreme importance as a representative writer. 78-87
Virgil a great representative of his country and age ... 78
,^ of the idea of Rome .... 79
of the sentiment of Italy ... 80
,, of the political feeling of his age . 81
,, of its ethical and religious sensibility 83
of Roman culture and learning . . 84
,, of Roman art and style . . .85
The style of Virgil the maturity preceding decay .... 86
IV. Virgil's claim to rank among the great Poets of the "World 88-92
Distinction between Greek, Latin, and modern imagination . . 88
Vividness and realism of feeling characteristic of the Latin imagi-
nation . . . 89
Modes in which this vividness and realism are manifested by Virgil 90
CHAPTER III.
LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL.
I. Sources of our knowledge of Virgil's Life .... 93-101
Various sources of ancient literary biography .... 93
Direct personal statements of the authors 93
Indirect self-revelations in their works . . . . . -94
Evidence of contemporaries 94
Works of ancient Grammarians, etc 95
Remains of ancient art 97
Knowledge of Virgil derived from his works .... 98
Testimony of Horace 99
Biographies of Probus and Donatus . . . . . 100
Their value as evidence of facts and character .... 101
II. Life of Virgil 102-123
His name and the year of his birth 102
His birth-place as affecting his genius 103
his culture 107
his political feeling . . . 108
Characteristics of the class from which he sprang . . . 109
His early years in
His studies at Rome 112
His later life in his native district 115
Loss of his farm ' 117
Publication of the Eclogues and preparation of the Georgics . 119
Testimonies of Horace as to his life during this time . . 120
The Georgics composed at Naples . . . . . . 122
His death and wish to destroy the Aeneid . . . . 123
xiv CONTENTS.
PAGE
III. Personal Characteristics 123-131
His recluse and studious life 124
His personal appearance and habits 125
Impression of his character derived from Horace . . . 126
from his own works . . 127
His indifference to political freedom 129
His devotion to his art 130
CHAPTER IV.
THE ECLOGUES.
I. The Eclogues examined in the order of their composition 132-153
Character of the Eclogues indicated by expressions used in them 132
Order and time of their composition 133
Imitative character of the second and third . . . . 1 35
The fifth founded on the death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar 138
Purely Theocritean character of the seventh . . . . 140
The first and ninth Eclogues 141
Elements of interest in the sixth 144
The'Pollio' 145
Questions discussed in connexion with that poem . . . 147
The eighth and tenth Eclogues . . . . / . . . 150
II. Relation of the Eclogues to the Greek Pastoral . . 153-162
Theocrilean origin of Virgil's Eclogues 153
Primitive pastoral poem among the Greeks . . . . 154
The ' woes of Daphnis ' 156
The love of the Cyclops for Galatea 157
Origin of the pastoral dialogue 157
Artistic form given to these primitive elements by Theocritus . 158
Difference between the pastoral life of Sicily and rural life of
Italy 161
III. Truth of feeling in the Eclogues 162-173
Inferiority of the Eclogues in truth and vividness of repre-
sentation 162
Allusive personal references in the Eclogues . . . . 163
Mythological and geographical allusions 164
The sentiment of Nature in the Eclogues 165
The love of home and of the land 167
The passion of love 168
Style and rhythm of the Eclogues 169
Their Italian character i7 2
CONTENTS. xv
CHAPTER V.
MOTIVES, FORM, SUBSTANCE, AND SOURCES OF THE GEORGICS.
PAGE
I. Original motives of the Poem 174-179
Desire to treat of rural life in the spirit of Hesiod . . . 175
Influence of Maecenas on the choice of the subject . . . 176
Virgil's sympathy with the old class of husbandmen . . . 178
II. Form of poetry adopted by Virgil 179-185
What forms of poetry available for Virgil's purpose ? . . 1 79
Character of didactic poetry among the Greeks . . . 182
New type of didactic poetry introduced by Virgil . . . 184
III. National interest and substance of the Poem . . 185-190
Italian character of the subject 185
^ Connexion of the subject with national history . . . . 187
Exceptional character of the concluding episode . . . 189
IV. Sources of the Poem 190-198
Materials derived by Virgil from his own life .... 190
From Greek and Roman writers on agriculture . . . 192
Relation of the Georgics to the * Works and Days ' . . . 193
to the Alexandrine Metaphrastae . 195
CHAPTER VI.
RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS.
I. Personal affinities and contrast between Lucretius and
Virgil 199-205
Influence of Lucretius on the ideas, method, and style of the
Georgics 199
Virgil's recognition of his relation to Lucretius .... 200
Identity of feeling in the two poets . . . . '' . . 202
Difference in position and sympathies 202
Difference between the philosophic poet and poetic artist . . 204
II. The Lucretian idea of Nature in the Georgics . . 205-214
Nature more fully revealed in Lucretius than in earlier poetry . 205
Idea of the struggle of man with Nature in Lucretius . . 206
Lesson drawn by him from this idea ^^^ .... 207
Presence of the same idea in other Roman writers . . . 208
Virgil's sense of the life of Nature derived from Lucretius . 208
Idea of the struggle with Nature as ordained by Providence . 209
xvi CONTENTS.
PAGE
Prominence thus given to the duty of labour . . . . 211
Lesson inculcated in the Georgics 212
Scientific beliefs of Lucretius as adopted or rejected by Virgil . 213
III. Dedications and Invocations in the two Poems . . 214-229
Lucretius Virgil's chief model in technical execution . . . 214
Address to Maecenas compared with address to Memmius . 215
Eulogy of Caesar compared with eulogy of Epicurus . . 216
Meaning of their Invocation of Supernatural aid . . . 217
Varieties of religious feeling and belief in the Augustan Age . 218
Rustic Paganism of Italy 218
Religious conceptions embodied in Greek art . . . . 219
Religious elements in Greek speculative philosophy . . . 221
National religion of Rome 222
Meaning of the Invocation of Caesar 224
Union of various modes of religious belief in the Invocation . 225
Proems to the other Books of the Georgics . . . . 227
IV. Comparison of Virgil with Lucretius in didactic expo-
sition and illustration . . . . . . 229-243
Method of science in Lucretius, of art in Virgil . . . 229
Greater selection and elimination of materials in Virgil . . 230
Illustration of Virgil's subject from his s:nse of beauty . . 231
from his sense of the life of Nature 232
from his sympathy with the life of animals . . . 233
from his conception of human energy in conflict with
Nature 234
from literary and mythological associations . . . 235
from astronomy, antiquity, religious usages . . . 238
Inferiority of Virgil to Lucretius in the use of imaginative
analogies 239
More uniform excellence in diction and rhythm . . . 240
Virgil more of a conscious artist 242
V. The Episodes in the Georgics 2 43~ 2 57
Purpose of the episodes in Lucretius and in the Georgics . . 243
The minor episodes in the Georgics 244
Episodes at the end of Books iii. and iv 247
Episode of the omens accompanying the death of Julius Caesar 251
Episode of the Glory of Italy 253
Episode at the end of Book ii 254
CHAPTER VII.
THE GEORGICS A POEM REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY 258-276
The Georgics an original work of Latin genius . . . 258
Technical value of the poem as an exposition of Italian hus-
bandry 260
CONTENTS. xvn
PAGE
Relation of the illustrative matter to the cultivated Italian mind 263
Feeling of the dignity of labour an Italian sentiment . . 264
Italian feeling and representation of Nature .... 265
Italian character of the religious sentiment of the poem . . 269
of its ethical and political sentiment . . 270
of its artistic execution ... . . . 273
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ROMAN EPIC BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL . 277-291
Distinction between primitive and literary epic . . . 277
Absence of primitive epics from Roman literature . . . 278
The Roman epic originates in the imitation of the Greek epic . 279
New character given to the Roman epic from the national
sentiment and commemorative instinct 280
from admiration of great men 281
from capacity for works of massive execution . . . 4 282
National characteristics of the poem of Naevius . . . 283
Historical substance of the early Roman epic . . . . 284
Representative character of the Annals of Ennius . . . 285
Later annalistic and panegyrical poems 286
New type of Roman epic introduced by Varro Atacinus . . 289
Type of historical epic rejected in the maturity of Roman art . 290
CHAPTER IX.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
I. Purpose of the Aeneid and motives determining the form
of the Poem v 292-297
Literary motives of the poem 292
Motive originating in the state of public feeling ... 293
in the position of Augustus .... 294
New problem in literary art presented to Virgil . . . 295
The Aeneid the epic of the national fortunes . . . . 297
II. Adaptation of the legend of Aeneas to Virgil's purpose 298-307
Adaptation of the legend of Romulus to a poem founded on
national sentiment 298
Deficiency of the legend of Aeneas in national and human
interest 298
Greek origin of the legend 299
Its late reception among the Romans 301
Vague and composite character of the legend . . . . 302
Grounds on which Virgil's choice justified , . . . 302
Connexion of the legend with the Homeric cycle of events . 303
xviii CONTENTS.
PAGE
Its recognition by the State for more than two centuries . . 304
Connexion with the glory of the Julian family .... 305
Largeness of scope afforded by the vagueness of the legend . 306
Adaptation to a poem representative of Rome in the Augustan
Age 37
III. Composite character of the Aeneid illustrated by an
examination of the Poem 307-321
Twofold purpose of Virgil in composing the Aeneid . . 307
Native and Greek sources employed by him . . . . 308
Prominence given to his double purpose in the statement of the
subject of the poem 39
This double purpose traced in the details of the action . . 312
in the ' Inferno ' and in the ' Shield
of Aeneas' .... 319
The Aeneid a new type of epic poetry 321
CHAPTER X.
THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
I. Modes of National Sentiment expressed in the Aeneid . 322-331
Pride of Empire 322
Sense of national continuity 325
Patriotic Italian sentiment 326
Antagonism to other races 329
II. Influence of the Beligious Idea of Rome on the action of
the poem 33 J -34 2
Roman belief in the ' Fortuna Urbis ' 331
Idea of ' Fate ' in the Aeneid 333
Compared with the same idea in Tacitus . . . . . 334
Origin and meaning of the Roman idea of Fate . . . 336
Influence of this idea on the religious motives of the poem . 337 \J
Ethical aspect of religion in the Aeneid 340" \J
III. Place assigned to Augustus in the Aeneid . . . 342-349
Augustus the typical embodiment of Roman imperialism . . 342
Meaning given by Virgil to his relation to Aeneas . . . 344
Imaginative and ethical value" of the idea on which the Aeneid j
is founded 347 v
CONTENTS. xix
CHAPTER XL
THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE.
PAGE
I. General character of the action as affected by the Age in
which the poem was written, and by the author's
genius 35-3 6
Dignity of the circumstances treated in the poem . . 350
Distinction of the actors 351
Interest to Roman readers of the revival of Homeric life ^r . 352
of the new romance of Italy . . 353
Virgil's narrative power . , 354
Inferiority to Homer in exhibiting a vivid image of life . . 355
from causes personal to Virgil . . 355
from the character of his Age . . . 356
Virgil's representation an artistic compromise . . . . 358
Sources of creative power in Virgil's genius .... 359
II. Supernatural Agencies, Observances, and Beliefs in the
Aeneid 360-371
Part played by the Olympian Divinities in the Aeneid . . 360
* by the Powers of the Italian mythology . . - . 363
Survivals of primitive religious worship in the Aeneid . . 364
Belief in local deities 365
Worship of the dead . 366
Virgil's ' Inferno ' 367
His exact acquaintance with religious ceremonial . . . 369
III. Political and Social Life, etc. as represented in the Aeneid 371-384
. -Idea of a Paternal Government in the Aeneid . . . . 371
Sense of majesty attaching to Government . . . . 372
Relation of States to one another 373
Material civilisation 375
Social manners 376
Sea-adventure . 378
Battle-scenes 381
_,, Appeal to local associations 385
IV. Conception and Delineation of Character in the Aeneid 387-399
Weakness of dramatic imagination in Virgil . . . . 387
Conception and delineation of Aeneas 389
The minor characters of the poem 392
Turnus 394
Mezentius 396
397
xx CONTENTS.
PAGE
V. On the Style, etc. of the Aeneid 399-4'3
Virgil's imagination oratorical rather than dramatic . . . 399
Characteristics of the speeches in the Aeneid .... 400
Descriptive faculty 401
Illustrative imagery . 404
Rhythm and diction of the poem 408
Greatness of its style . 411
CORRIGENDA.
Page 17, line n from top, for divum read Divi.
44, line 13 from top,yor -naiSes read iraiSts.
61, line 9 from top, for in which read with which.
83, line 2 from bottom, for creators read exponents.
130, note, for reading read hearing.
152, line 15 from top, for Etruscan read Tuscan.
189, last line, for 27 B.C. read 26 B.C.
198, line 2 from the end, for its shock read the shock of that force, and
omit ' its ' twice in the following line.
314, line 22 from top, for Literaque r^ad Litoraque.
393' l me 4 f f om top, for Polydamus read Polydamas.
.
THE ROMAN POETS OF THE
AUGUSTAN AGE.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
.
Relation of the Augustan Age to other Literary Epochs.
THE Augustan Age, regarded as a critical epoch in
the history of the world, extends from the date of the
battle of Actium, when Octavianus became undisputed
master of the world, to his death in the year 14 A.D.
But the age known by that name as a great epoch in the
history of literature begins some years earlier, and ends
with the death of Livy and Ovid in the third year of the
following reign. Of the poets belonging to that age whose
writings have reached modern times Virgil, Horace, Ti-
bullus, Propertius, and Ovid all were born, and some had
reached manhood, before the final overthrow of the Re-
public at the battle of Philippi. The earlier poems of
Virgil and Horace belong to the period between that date
and the establishment of the Empire. The age of the
Augustan poets may accordingly be regarded as extending
from about the death of Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. to the
death of Ovid 17 A.D.
The whole of this period was one of great literary
activity, especially in the department of poetry. Besides
VOL. I. B
2 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
the writers just mentioned, several others were recog-
nised by their contemporaries as poets of high excel-
lence, though there is no reason to doubt that the
works which have reached our time were the most dis-
tinguished by original genius and finished execution.
These works, though differing much in spirit and character
as well as in value, have some common characteristics
which mark them off from the literature of the Republic.
It seems remarkable, if we consider the short interval
which divides the Ciceronian from the Augustan Age, and
the enthusiasm with which poetry was cultivated by the
younger generation in the years immediately preceding
the battle of Pharsalia, that so few of the poets eminent
in that generation lived on into the new era. The insig-
nificant name of Helvius Cinna is almost the only poetic
link between the age of Catullus and the age of Virgil 1 .
Perhaps also the Quintilius whose death Horace laments
in the twenty-fourth Ode of Book I. may be the Varus
of the tenth poem of Catullus. The more famous name of
Asinius Pollio also connects the two eras ; but in Catullus
he is spoken of, not as a poet, but simply as
leporum
Disertus puer et facetiarum 2 ,
and in his later career he was more distinguished as
a soldier, statesman, and orator than as a poet. It is
remarked by Mr. Munro that there are indications that the
new generation of poets would have come into painful
collision with those of the preceding generation had their
lives been prolonged 3 . This spirit of hostility appears in
the single contemptuous notice of Calvus and Catullus
in the Satires of Horace :
Quos neque pulcher
Hermogenes unquam legit, neque simius iste
Nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum*.
But it is rather in their political feelings and rela-
tions, and the views of life arising out of these, than in
1 Eclog. ix. 35. 2 Catullus, xii. 8.
3 Munro's Lucretius, Introduction to Notes, ii. page 305.
* Hor. Sat. i. 10. 17-19.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 3
the principles and practice of their art, that the new poets
are separated from, and antagonistic to, the old. Had
Calvus and Catullus survived the extinction of liberty, it
would have been impossible for them to have adopted the
tone of the poets of the following age. By birth, position,
and all their associations and sympathies, they belonged
to the Senatorian party. If they could have yielded an
outward submission to the ascendency of Julius Caesar
and Augustus, they never could have become sincerely
reconciled to the new order of things, nor could they have
employed their art to promote the ideas of the Empire.
On the other hand, L. Varius, the oldest among the
poets of the new era, seems first to have become famous
by a poem on the death of Julius Caesar. Virgil, in the
poem placed first in order among his acknowledged works,
speaks of Octavianus in language which no poet of the
preceding generation could have applied to a living con-
temporary :
O Meliboee deus nobis haec otia fecit.
In the Georgics, planned, and, for the most part, composed
before the establishment of the monarchy, the person of
Caesar is- introduced, not only as the centre of power
in the world, but as an object of religious veneration ;
and the national and ethical teaching of that poem is
entirely in harmony with the objects of his policy. AncJ,
although Horace in the Satires and Epodes, composed
between the years 40 and 30 B.C., is so far trul to the
cause of his youth as to abstain from any direct declara-
tion of adherence to the winning side, yet he attributes
to his adviser Trebatius the counsel ' Caesaris invicti res
dicere 1 ;' and his whole relation to Maecenas is one of the
most characteristic marks of the position in which the new
literature stood to the State and to its leading men.
Yet, while separated from the literature of the Republic
in many of its ideas, and in the personal and political
feelings on which it is founded, the poetry of the Augustan
Age is, in form and execution, the mature development of the
1 Hor. Sat. ii. i. u.
B 2,
4 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
efforts of the previous centuries. Much of its literary inspira-
tion is derived from the age immediately preceding it, and
from still older native sources. The thought of Lucretius
acted upon the mind of Virgil through the force both of
sympathy and antagonism, as a strong original nature acts
upon one which is at once receptive of influence and pos-
sessed of firm native convictions. The national sentiment
of Ennius and the censorious spirit of Lucilius reappeared
in new forms in the Augustan poetry; while the more
humane and social feelings, and the enjoyment of beauty
in Nature and art, fostered by Greek studies, as well as the
taste for less elevated pleasures, stimulated by the life of
a luxurious capital, are elements which the poetry of the
early Empire has in common with that of the last years of
the Republic.
But the poetry of the new era has also certain marked
characteristics, the result not so much of antecedent as of
concomitant circumstances, which proclaim its affinity with
great literary epochs of other nations rather than with
any period of the national literature. By Voltaire the
Augustan Age at Rome is ranked with the Age of Pericles
at Athens, that of Lorenzo de Medici at Florence, and
that of Louis XIV. in France, as one of four epochs in
which arts and letters attained their highest perfection.
The affinity between the Augustan Age and those of
Pericles and Lorenzo is more superficial than real. They
were all indeed periods in which the cultivation of the
arts to the highest degree of perfection was fostered
by the enlightened patronage of the eminent men who
have given their name to their eras. But the position of
I Augustus, as an absolute ruler, acted more directly and
potently, as a modifying and restraining power, on the
thoughts and feelings expressed in his age, than that of
y the leading men of a republic; and the unique position
of Rome as the mistress and lawgiver of the civilised
world gives to the literature of the Augustan Age an
imperial character and interest, which the national litera-
ture of no other cify or country, even though superior in
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 5
other respects, can possess. Those who regard all Latin
poetry as exotic and imitative have, with some plausibility,
attempted to establish a parallel between the Alexandrine
poetry of the third century B.C. and that of the Augustan
Age. Nor can it be denied that the relation of the
Augustan poets to the Emperor was somewhat parallel
to that of the scholars and "poets of Alexandria to the
Ptolemies. The Alexandrine science and literature were
also important factors in Roman culture ; and the most
eminent poets both of the Augustan Age and of that
immediately preceding it, with the exception of Horace
and Lucretius, acknowledged, in the form as well as
the materials of their art, the influence of this latest
development of Greek poetry. The nature and amount
of the debt incurred to the learned school of Alexandria
will be considered later, and it will be seen that it does
not seriously affect the originality of the best Roman
writers. The age of Queen Anne and of the first George,
again, has been called the Augustan Age of English
literature. The parallel between the two eras consists
in the relation which poets and, writers held to men emi-
nent in the State, and also in the finished execution and
moderation of tone common to both. The writers of Eng-
land in our Augustan Age had the advantage over those
of Rome in the freedom with which they could express
their thoughts; but, even with this advantage, and with
the still greater advantage that the English race, in the
long course of its literary annals, has given proof of a
richer poetical faculty than any other race except the
Hellenic, the blindest national partiality would scarcely
claim as general and as durable an interest for any poetical
work of that era as that claimed for the Georgics and
Aeneid of Virgil and for the Odes and Epistles of Horace.
On the whole the closest parallel, in respect not so
much of the substance and form of composition as of the
circumstances and conditions affecting the lives and tastes
of poets and men of letters, is to be sought in the age
of Louis XIV. of France. The position and the policy of
6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Augustus and of Louis XIV. were alike in some important
features. As absolute rulers, the one over a great empire,
the other over the most powerful and enlightened nation
then existing, they each played the most prominent part
in history during more than half a century. They were
each animated by a strong passion for national and per-
sonal glory, and encouraged art and literature, not merely
as a source of refined pleasure congenial to their own
tastes, but as the chief ornament of their reigns, and as
important instruments of their policy.
And not only the political but the purely literary con-
ditions of the two epochs were in some respects parallel.
They were both times, not of growth, but of maturity; not
so much of the spontaneous inspiration of genius, as of
systematic effort directed in accordance with the principles
of art and the careful study of ancient models. In each
time circumstances and mutual sympathies brought men
of letters into close and familiar contact both with one
another and with men of affairs and of social eminence.
And, while the relation of patronage to literature is not in
any circumstances favourable to original invention, and
though, except under most advantageous conditions, its
tendency is to produce a tameness of spirit, or even an
insincerity of tone, yet it has its compensating advantages.
It imparts to literature the tone of the world of the world
not only of social eminence, but of practical experience
and conversance with great affairs. The good taste, judg-
ment, and moderation of tone which have enabled the
Augustan literature to stand successfully the criticism of
nineteen centuries, as well as its deficiency in the highest
creative power, when compared with such eras as the
Homeric Age, the Age of Pericles, and the Elizabethan
Age in England, mark the limits of the good influence
which this relation between the great in worldly station
and the great in genius can exercise on literature.
A further parallel might be drawn between the material
conditions of the Augustan Age and those of the Age of
Louis XIV. The aspect which the world they lived in
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 7
presented to the writers of the two eras was that of a rich,
luxurious, pleasure-loving city, the capital of a great empire
or kingdom. And this aspect of the world acts upon the
susceptible nature of the poet with both an attractive and
a repellent force. He may feel the spell of outward pomp
and magnificence and the attractions of pleasure ; or he
may be driven back on his own thought, and into communion
with Nature, and to an ideal longing for simpler and purer
conditions.
But, instead of tracing these resemblances further, it is
more important to observe that, though the outward influ-
ences acting upon the poets of the two eras were in many
respects parallel, yet in form and substance the poetry of
the Augustan Age is quite different from that of the Age of
Louis XIV. However striking the parallel between any
two periods of history may appear at first sight, the points
of difference between them must be much more numerous
than those of agreement; and, though outward conditions
have a modifying influence upon national temperament and
individual genius, yet these last are much the most im-
portant factors in .the creative literature of any age. The
genius of ancient Italy was, in point of imaginative suscep-
tibility, very different from that of modern France ; and,
though his countrymen recognise in Racine a moral affinity
with Virgil, yet the works these poets have left to the world
are as different as they well can be, in form, purpose, and
character. The conditions indicated in the comparison be-
tween the two periods are to be studied as modifying, not
as productive, influences. The forms which the highest
spiritual life in an age or an individual assumes, the power
of free and happy development which it obtains, or the
limitations to which it has to submit, can, to a very con-
siderable extent, be explained by reference, in the case of
nations, to the political, social, and material circumstances
of the age, and, in the case of the individual, to his early
life and environment, his education and personal fortunes.
But the quality and intensity of that spiritual force which
manifests itself from time to time in the world, giving a
8 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
new impulse to thought, a new direction to feeling, and a
new delight to life, are not to be explained by any combina-
tion of circumstances. But, just as it is desirable to realise
all that can be known of the life and fortunes of an indi-
vidual poet before endeavouring to extract from his various
works the secret of his power and charm, so it is desirable,
before entering on a separate study of the various books
which constitute the literature of any age, to take a general
survey of the most important conditions affecting the lives,
thoughts, and art of all who lived and wrote in that age.
In the Augustan Age these conditions may be classified
under four heads : (i) the political circumstances of the
Empire and the state of moral and religious feeling resulting
from them ; (2) the social relation of men of letters to men
eminent in the State ; (3) the wealth, luxury, and outward
splendour which met the eye and gratified the senses, in the
great city itself, and in the villas scattered over the shores
and inland scenes of central Italy; (4) the intellectual cul-
ture inherited from the preceding age and modified by the
tastes and conditions of the new generation. These will
be reviewed as conditions acting on the imagination, and
forming the intellectual atmosphere in the midst of which
the productions of poetical genius expanded into various
shapes and dimensions of beauty and stateliness.
II.
Influence on Literature of the national enthusiasm in favour
of Augustus , and of the direction given to public senti-
ment by his policy.
The battle of Actium marked the end of a century of
revolution, civil disturbances and wars, of confiscations of
property, proscriptions and massacres, such as no civilised
state had ever witnessed before. The triumph of Augustus
secured internal peace and order for a century. The whole
world was, as Tacitus says 1 , exhausted, and gladly con-
1 Ann. i. i ; Hist. i. i.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 9
sented to the establishment of the Empire in the interests
of peace. The generation to which Virgil, Horace, Tibullus,
and Propertius belonged had passed through one of the
worst crises of this long period of suffering. The victors of
Philippi, so far from following the example of clemency set
to them by the great victor of Pharsalia, had emulated the
worst excesses of the times of Marius and Sttlla. The
poets whose works record the various phases of feeling
through which that age passed had in their own person
experienced the consequences of the general insecurity.
Virgil, in addition to the loss of his paternal farm, had in-
curred imminent danger from the violence of the soldier to
whom his land had been allotted. The language of Horace
indicates that his life had been more than once in jeopardy
at the rout of Philippi, and in his subsequent wanderings
by land and sea 1 till he found himself a needy adventurer,
1 humilem decisis pennis,' again at Rome. Tibullus lost
the greater part of the estates which his ancestors had
enjoyed for generations 2 . A similar calamity befell Proper-
tius 3 . Their own experience must thus have deepened the
horror of prolonged war and bloodshed natural to men of
humane and unwarlike temper, as they all were ; for Horace,
who alone among them took part in the civil war, describes
himself, a few years later, as
Imbellis et firmus parum ;
and Tibullus pleads his effeminacy and timidity as a justi-
fication of a life devoted to indolent enjoyment 4 . The
works of that age, composed between the dates of the
battles of Philippi and Actium, express the deep longing
of the world for rest ; those written later express the deep
thankfulness for its attainment. In Virgil the recoil from
.
1 Od. iii. 4. 28.
2 Cf. Eleg. i. 41-42 :- X I I
Non ego divitias patrum fructusque require *
Quos tulit antique condita messis avo.
3 Cf. v. i. 129-130:
Nam tua cum multi versarent rura iuvenci
Abstulit excultas pertica tristis opes.
Eleg. i. i ; i. 10.
IN i v i:i:sri
V
CAL1FOK
10 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
the cruel and violent passions of the time in which his early
manhood was cast draws forth his tender compassion for
all human suffering, and creates in his imagination
the ideal of a life of peace 'procul discordibus armis,'
the vision of a place of rest after toil and danger * sedes
ubi fata quietas ostendunt;' just as the recoil from the
political anarchy of his own age and from the cruel memo-
ries of the Marian times deepens the sense of human misery
in Lucretius, and forces on his mind the ideal refuge from
the storms of life in ' the high and serene temples well
bulwarked by the learning of the wise.' In Horace the
feeling of insecurity arising out of his early experience
confirms the lessons of Epicurean wisdom, and teaches him
not to expect too much from life, but to enjoy thankfully
whatever good the passing hour brought to him. In all of
them the sense of the real miseries from which the world
had escaped, and of the real blessings which it enjoyed
after the battle of Actium, induces an acquiescence in the
extinction of liberty and in the establishment of a form of
government which had been for centuries most repugnant
to Roman sentiment.
Another influence reconciling men to the great political
change which took place in that era was the restored sense
of national union. With whatever feelings Octavianus may
have been regarded in the early years of the Triumvirate,
after the final departure of Antony from Rome he was
^ looked upon both as the main pillar of order and as the
champion of the national cause, the true representative of
Italy and of the ' Senatus Populusque Romanus ' against
the motley hosts of the East, arrayed under the standards
of Antony and his Egyptian queen :
Hinc Augustus agens Italos in proelia Caesar
Cum Patribus Populoque, Penatibus et magnis Dis.
******
Hinc ope barbarica variisque Antonius armis,
Victor ab Aurorae populis et litore rubro,
Aegyptum viresque Orientis et ultima secum
Bactra vehit, sequiturque, nefas, Aegyptia coniunx 1 .
1 Aen. viii. 678 et seq.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 11
With the Romans in the later age of the Republic the
feeling of the glory and greatness, the ancient and un-
broken tradition, of their State was a more active sentiment
than the love of political liberty. The care for the ' Res-
publica Romana ' as a free commonwealth was in the last
century of its existence confined to the leaders of the
Senatorian aristocracy; the pride in the ' Imperium Roma-
num ' was a feeling in which all classes could share, and
which could especially unite to Rome the people of Italy,
who had been admitted too late into citizenship, and were
separated by too great a distance from the capital, to make
the exercise of the political franchise an object of value in
their eyes. They probably felt themselves more truly in
the position of equal citizenship after the establishment of the
monarchy than before it. This feeling of the pride of
empire asserts itself much more strongly in the poets of
the Augustan Age than in the writers of the preceding
generation. It is scarcely, if at all, apparent in Lucretius
and Catullus. It is only in the idealising oratory of
Cicero, who, with all his devoted attachment to the forms
of the constitution and the traditions of political freedom,
still had a strong sympathy with the imperial spirit of
Rome, that we find the expression of the same kind of
sentiment which suggested to Virgil such lines as
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento,
and inspired the national Odes of Horace.
The majesty of the State, moreover, impressed the
imagination more immediately and more deeply when it
was visibly and permanently embodied in a single person
than when the administration of affairs and the govern-
ment of the Provinces were distributed for a brief tenure of
office among many competitors. By enabling them to
realise the unity and vast extent of their dominion,
Augustus reconciled the prouder spirits of his countrymen
to his rule, as by restoring peace, order, and material
prosperity he enlisted their interests in his favour. At the
same time the success of his arms over the still unsubdued
12 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
tribes of the West, and of his diplomacy in wiping out the
stain left on the Roman standards by the disastrous
campaign of Crassus, continued to gratify the passion for
military glory, without endangering the security and pros-
perity of Italy.
The national sentiment of Rome was further gratified by
the maintenance of the old forms of the constitution, by
the revival of ancient usages and ceremonies, and by the
creation of a new interest in the early traditions of the city,
and in the 'manners and men of the olden time 1 .' In his
brief summary of the glories of the Augustan Age, Horace
specifies this return to the ancient ways
Et veteres revocavit artes
Per quas Latinum nomen et Italae
C revere vires
as one of the best results of Caesar's administration. The
revolution effected in the first century before our era, so
far from seeking, as other revolutions have done, abruptly
to sever the connexion between the old and the new,
strove to re-establish the continuity of national existence.
The Augustan Age impressed itself on the minds of
those living under it as an era not of destruction but of
restoration. Though in the early part of his career
Augustus availed himself of the revolutionary passions of
his time to overthrow the Senatorian oligarchy, yet he
sought to establish his own power on the conservative
instincts of society, and especially on the religious traditions
intimately connected with these instincts 2 . The powerful
hold which these instincts and the feeling of the vital
relation subsisting between the past and the present
had on the Roman nature was the secret of the great
stability of the Republic and Empire. We shall find how
largely this sentiment enters into the poetry of the age,
how it is especially the animating principle of the great
1 ' Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.' Ennius.
2 In the Ancyraean inscription we find the following passage (Bergk's
reading) : Legibus novis latis multa revocavi exempla maiorum exolescentia
iam ex nostra civitate,' etc.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 13
national Epic, as it was of the national commemorative
poem of Ennius.
But the age witnessed a restoration of the past, not only
in its action on the imagination, but in a more direct in-
fluence on opinion and conduct. Horace says of it, in the
same passage as that referred to above,
Ordinem
Rectum evaganti fraena licentiae
Iniecit, amovitque culpas.
The licence of the .previous age in speculation, as in life,
had provoked a moral and religious reaction. The idea of
a return to a simpler and better life, and of a revived faith
in the gods and in the forms and ceremonies of religion,
existed at least as an aspiration, if it did not bear much
fruit in action. This ideal aspiration finds its expression
not only in the two great poems of Virgil, whose whole
nature was in thorough harmony with it, who may be
regarded almost as the prophet of a new and purer re-
ligion, but in many of the Odes of the sceptical disciple of
Aristippus. It was part of the policy of Augustus, whether
from sincere conviction or as an instrument of social and
political regeneration, to revive religion and morality.
Among the great acts of his reign commemorated by
himself he especially mentions the building and re-
storation of the temples 1 . The ' Julian laws ' aimed also
at a social and moral restoration. There is no ground for
attributing to Augustus in his legislation, or to Horace in
celebrating that legislation, any motive of conscious hypo-
crisy, though neither the life of the Emperor nor that of
his panegyrist showed much conformity with the objects of
these laws. Yet, if it failed to re-establish the ancient
faith in the minds of the educated classes and to restore a
primitive austerity of life, this revival affected the best
1 Cf. Ancyraean inscription: 'Templum Apollinis in Palatio cum porticibus,
aedem Divi lulii, Lupercal,' etc. (where we notice the recognition of the
divinity of Julius Caesar, along with the old Olympian and national gods,
Apollo, Jupiter Tonans and Feretrius, Quirinus, the Lares and Penates, and
with the deified abstractions Libertas and Juventas).
14 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
literature of the time by the influence which it exercised
on the deeper and more serious feeling of Virgil and the
manlier sympathies of Horace, and by imposing at least
some restraint on Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid in the
record of their pleasures 1 .
The poets with whom our enquiry is concerned, and espe-
cially the two most illustrious of their number, thoroughly
represent, as they helped to call forth, the spirit in which
the Roman world passed through the great change from
the Republic to the Empire. They give expression to the
weariness and longing for rest, to the revival of Roman and
Italian feeling, to the pride of empire, the charm of ancient
memories and associations, the aspiration after a better life
and a firmer faith. But, further, the expression of these
feelings is made subordinate to the personal glory of
Augustus, who stands out as the central and commanding
figure in all their representations :
In medio mihi Caesar erit templumque tenebit.
He is celebrated as the restorer of the golden Saturnian
age 2 ; the closer of the gateway of Janus 3 ; the leader
of the men and the gods of Italy against the swarms
of the East and her monstrous divinities 4 ; the c father
of his country 5 ; ' the ruler destined to extend the
empire, on which 'the sun never set,' 'beyond the Gara-
mantians and Indians 6 ; ' the descendant and true repre-
sentative of the mythical author of the Roman State 7 ;
the man in whom the great destiny of Rome and the
great labours of all her sons were summed up and
1 A similar influence is attributed by M. Sainte-Beuve to Louis XIV. After
speaking of the freedom and licence of French literature under the patronage
of Fouquet, he adds, ' Le jeune roi vint, et il amena, il suscita avec lui sa jeune
literature ; il mit le correctif a 1'ancienne, et sauf des infractions brillantes, il
imprima a 1'ensemble des productions de son temps un caractere de solidite, et
) finalement de moralite, qui est aussi celui qui regne dans ses propres ecrits, et
dans 1'habitude de sa pensee.'
2 Aen. vi. 795. 3 jjor. Od. iv. 15. 9.
* Aen. viii. 678 et seq. Hor. Od. i. 2. 50.
6 Aen. i. 287 ; vi. 796 j Hor. Od. iv. 15. 15. 7 Aen. i. 288.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 15
fulfilled 1 ; the conqueror who raised three hundred shrines
to the gods of Italy 2 ; the legislator who by his life
and his laws had reformed the corrupt manners of the
State 3 . The sense of gratitude for the rest and prosperity
enjoyed under Augustus, the admiration for the real power
of intellect and character which made him the most suc-
cessful ruler that the world has ever seen, the confidence in
the unbroken good fortune which marked all his earlier
career, may account, without the necessity of attributing
any unworthy motive, for the eulogies bestowed upon him
as a ruler and organiser of empire. But the language of
admiration goes beyond these into a region in which modern
sympathies can with difficulty follow it. Modern criticism
may partially explain, but it cannot enable us to enter with
sympathy into that peculiar phase of the latter days of
Paganism which first appears in the literature and the
historical monuments of the Augustan Age as the Deifica-
tion of the Emperors. In the pages of Tacitus the worship
of the Emperor appears as an established 'cultus,' as the
symbol and the instrument of Roman domination over
foreign nations 4 . The cities of Spain vie with the cities of
the Asiatic Greeks in their desire to raise temples in honour
of the living Emperor. Tacitus seems to regard it as even
something discreditable in Tiberius that he disclaims divine
attributes 5 . The origin of this * cultus,' which first firmly
established itself in the Greek cities of Asia, may be re-
ferred to the combined action of three distinct modes of
feeling, a survival of the old Greek hero-worship, which
led even in the Republican times to the offering of divine
honours to Roman Proconsuls ; the excess of the monar-
chical sentiment among Asiatics, which had led to the
worship of the successors of Alexander, and had prompted
Alexander himself to claim a divine origin ; the strong
1 Qeorg. ii. 170. 2 Aen. viii. 716.
3 Hor. Od. iv. 5. 20 ; Ep. ii. I. 2.
* ' Ad hoc templum divo Claudio constitutum quasi arx aeternae dominationis
aspiciebatur.' Tac. Ann. xiv. 31.
6 Tac. Ann. iv. 38.
1 6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Roman faith in a secret invisible power watching over the
destiny of the State, and revered as 'Fortuna Urbis.'
This secret invisible divinity became as it were incarnate
in the person of the supreme ruler of the world, wield-
ing the whole power, representing the whole majesty of
Rome.
The feeling with which the contemporary poets attribute
to Augustus a divine function in the world, and anticipate
for him a place and high office among the gods after death,
is something different from this literal adoration of a living
man as invested with the full power and attributes of
Deity. But it is difficult to find any rational explanation
of the tone adopted by them in such passages as Georg. i.
24-42, or Horace, Ode iii. 3. 11-12. There is, however,
a striking coincidence in the manner in which Virgil and
Horace suggest the blending of the mortal with the im-
mortal, which seems to imply a common source of inspira-
tion. Horace asserts the divinity of Augustus by claiming
for him qualities and services equal to, or greater than, those
which raised Castor, Pollux, Hercules, Bacchus, and Ro-
mulus to the dwelling-place of the gods *. Virgil, in one of
the cardinal passages of the Aeneid, in which the action is
projected into his own age, claims, for the restorer of order
then, a vaster range of beneficent influence than that over
which the civilising labours and conquests of Bacchus and
Hercules had extended 2 . In another passage Horace
speaks of the Roman as worshipping the ' numen ' of
Caesar along with the Lares :
uti Graecia Castoris,
Et magni memor Herculis 3 .
In all these passages the idea implied is that, as great
services to the human race have in other times raised
mortals from earth to heaven, so it shall be with Augustus
after the beneficent labours of his life are over. Probably
the earliest suggestion of the idea in its manifestation at
1 Od. iii. 3. 9, etc.; Ep. ii. i. 5.
2 Aen. vi. 801. s Od. iv. 5.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 17
Rome came from the consecration of Julius Caesar after his
death. The ' lulium Sidus ' ' astrum quo segetes gaude-
rent frugibus ' is appealed to both by Virgil and Horace
as a witness of the mortal become immortal. As the office
of the deified Julius is to answer the prayers of the hus-
bandman, such too will be the office of Augustus ; and it
is in this relation that he is invoked in the first Georgic
among the deities whose function it is to watch over the
fields. Both poets recall also the divine origin of the
Emperor,
Augustus Caesar, divum genus,
as the descendant of Venus. Both too dwell on the
especial protection of Heaven of which he was the object.
The divine care which had watched over Rome from its
origin was now centred on him as the supreme head of
the State, the heir and adopted son of the great Julius.
But, although we cannot ascribe to Virgil and Horace
the ignorant superstition which raised temples to the living
Emperor in the cities of Asia and in the various provinces
of the Empire, it is difficult to extract from their language
any germ of sincere conviction. And yet to condemn them
of a base servility and hypocrisy would be to judge them
altogether from a modern point of view. At such a time
as the Augustan Age the minds of men were very variously
affected by the different modes of religious 'belief, national
and foreign, philosophical and artistic, which had been
inherited from the* past l . It must have been difficult for
any one to be altogether unmoved by the innumerable
symbols of religion visible around him, suggestive of a con-
stant and immediate action of a supernatural power on all
human, and especially all national, concerns ; and it must
have been equally difficult for any one trained in Greek
philosophy to accept literally the incongruous fables of
mythology, or to attach a definite personality to the
imaginary beings of which it was composed. Horace and
Virgil appear to stand at opposite extremes of incredulity
1 Cp. infra, chap. vi.
VOL. I. C
1 8 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
and faith. Horace, in his Odes, accepts the beings of the
Greek mythology as materials for his art, while, by his
silence on the subject in his Satires and Epistles, he clearly
implies that this acceptance formed no part of his real
convictions. To Virgil, on the other hand, the gods of
mythology appear to have a real existence, as manifesta-
tions of the divine energy, revealed in the religious tradi-
tions which connect the actual world of experience with
a supernatural origin. So too Horace, in his Odes, treats
the blending of the divine with the human elements in
Augustus artistically or symbolically represents him as
drinking nectar between Pollux and Hercules, or as in-
spired with wisdom by the Muses in a Pierian cave in
much the same spirit as the great painters of the Renais-
sance introduced in their pictures living popes or patrons
of art into the company of the most sacred personages.
Virgil, to whose mind, in all things affecting either the
State or the individual, the invisible world of faith appears
very near the actual world of experience, seems sincerely to
believe in the delegation of supernatural power and autho-
rity on the Emperor, and in the favour of Heaven watching
over him. The divine energy diffused through all living
things might appear to be united with the human elements
in Augustus as it was in no other man, so that while still
on earth he might be thought of, if not as a 'praesens
divus,' yet as acting ' praesenti numine,' as the representa-
tive and vicegerent of omnipotence l .
Some further light is thrown on this subject by con-
sidering the manifestation of this same spirit in other forms
of the art of that age. The famous statue of the Emperor,
found recently in the ruins of a villa of the Empress Livia,
and at present seen among the statues of the Braccio Nuovo
1 The belief in the divinity of the genius attending on each individual, and
also the custom of raising altars to some abstract quality in an individual, such
as the ' Clemency of Caesar,' help also to explain this supposed union of the
god and man in the person of the Emperor. The language of Virgil in Eclogue
IV. also throws light on the ideas possible as to the union 1 of the divine with
human nature.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 19
in the Vatican, has been critically examined by an eminent
German scholar, as furnishing the best commentary on
the language of the Augustan poets. In this statue the
Emperor appears as blending the attributes of a Roman
imperator with those of a Greek hero or demigod 1 . Beside
him a Cupid, symbolical of the Julian descent from Venus,
appears riding on a dolphin. The breast-plate represents,
among other protecting deities, those whom Horace ad-
dresses in the Carmen Saeculare, Phoebus and Diana, and
the Sun and Earth-goddess. In the centre there is a figure
of Mars attended by the wolf, receiving back the standards
from the Parthian ; on either side are seen two figures,
representative of races recently conquered, probably the
Celtiberians and the tribes of the Alps. From the coin-
cidence of its symbolism it may be inferred that the statue
was produced at the same time as the Carmen Saeculare
was composed. Its object is to impress on the minds of
men the image of Augustus as at once a great earthly
conqueror and a being of divine descent and possessed
of more than mortal attributes : the especial object of care
to the supreme God of Heaven ; to Apollo, whom, since
the victory of Actium, he claimed as his tutelary divinity;
to the Earth-goddess, the giver of fruitfulness and pros-
perity ; to Mars, the second divine ancestor of the Roman
race, in whose honour the famous temple, of which the ruins
are yet visible, had been raised after the battle of Philippi.
The statue is of Greek workmanship ; the Greek divinities
are presented in the forms familiar to Greek art ; but the
idea is purely Roman, and born of the immediate cir-
cumstances of the age.
Other extant works of art illustrate the divine functions
and attributes claimed for Augustus. In one cameo he is
seen throned beside the goddess Roma, with the sceptre
and lituus, symbolical of his secular and spiritual function,
and the eagle of Jupiter at his side. In others both the
Emperor himself and various members of his family are
1 This is indicated by the bare feet.
C 2
20 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
represented under the form of gods, goddesses, and demi-
gods. Thus, in one in which the figure of Aeneas is
introduced, the young C. Caesar (Caligula) appears as
Cupid, and in another Germanicus and Agrippina are
represented as Triptolemus and Ceres 1 . But still more
important, as attesting not the idealising fancies of con-
temporary Greeks, but the native feeling with which the
house of Caesar came to be regarded even in the early
years of the Empire, is the one great extant monument
of that age, a monument of Roman inspiration and Roman
workmanship, the Pantheon, raised by Agrippa in honour
of the deities connected with the Julian race.
The prominence given to this representation of Augustus
in the poetry and in the art of his age is probably to be
explained by his own character and policy. He was
animated in no ordinary degree by that love of fame
and distinction which very powerfully influenced the
greatest Roman conquerors and statesmen, orators and
poets. The disdain of such distinctions and the dislike
of public spectacles are mentioned, in contrast to the
tastes of his predecessor, among the causes of the unpo-
pularity of Tiberius. The enumeration in the Ancyraean
inscription of the honours and titles bestowed on him,
recorded with ' imperatoria brevitas ' and dictated by a
proud self-esteem, attests the strength of this ruling passion
in the latter years of the life of Augustus. The direct
pressure which he brought to bear on the most eminent
poets 'of the time to celebrate his wars is sufficiently
indicated in many passages in the Odes and familiar
writings of Horace. Belonging by descent to the com-
paratively obscure families of the Octavii and Atii,
Augustus attached peculiar importance to the glories of
the Julian line, which he inherited through his great-uncle
1 The substance of these remarks is taken from the late O. Jahn's
' Hofische Kunst und Poesie unter Augustus,' published in his ' Populare
Aufsatze.' The account of the cameos is given solely on his authority.
Several ideas on the whole subject of the deification of the Emperors are
derived from the same source.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 21
and adoptive father. Even Julius Caesar, notwithstanding
his Epicurean indifference to the religious ideas of his age,
had encouraged the belief in his divine descent, as marking
him out for the special favours of fortune. There was
moreover in Augustus, in contradistinction to Julius Caesar,
a strong vein of religious or superstitious sentiment His
personal courage has been questioned, probably with in-
justice, but he appears to have been in a marked degree
liable to supernatural terrors 1 . As happens not unfre-
quently with men who have been invariably successful in
great and hazardous enterprises, along with a strong reliance
in the resources of his own mind, he seems to have had
faith in a supernatural guidance and assistance attending
him. His politic understanding appreciated the use of
such a belief to secure a divine sanction for his rule,
which rested substantially on military force. He availed
himself of the enthusiasm and willing services of the poets
of the age, who regarded him as at once the saviour of
the State and their own benefactor, to impress this idea
of himself on the imagination of the refined and cultivated
classes, and at the same time to glorify the actual successes
of his reign, to further his policy of national regeneration,
and to make men feel the security of a divinely-appointed
government, along with the pride of belonging to a power-
ful imperial State.
III.
Influence of Patronage on the Poetry of the Age.
The political revolution which transformed the Republic
into the Empire, and the state of public feeling, which,
arising spontaneously, yet received direction from the will
and policy of Augustus, thus appear to be the most
important conditions determining the character of the
Augustan literature, and distinguishing it from that of
the previous age. Poetic art was employed as it had
never been in any former time as an instrument of
1 Sueton. De Vita Caesarum, ii. 90 et seq.
22 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
government. If anything could have made the new order
of things acceptable to the best representatives of the old
Republican traditions, the purity and elevation imparted
to the idea of the Empire in the vers'e of Virgil must
have had this effect. The poetical imagination, susceptible
as it is in the highest degree of emotions produced by
the spectacle of ancient or powerful government or of
a people nobly asserting its freedom, has little prophetic
insight into the working of political causes. Nor need it
be regarded as a sign of weakness or time-serving in the
poets of the Augustan Age that they did not foresee the
gloom and oppression which were destined to follow so
soon after the prosperous dawn of the Roman Empire.
The establishment of the Empire affected the new
poetry also by the personal relations which it established
between the leaders of society and the leaders of literature.
The early Republican poets were for the most part
strangers to Rome, men of comparatively humble position,
who by their merit gained the friendship of some of the
great families, but who at the same time depended for their
success on popular favour. The poets of the last days
of the Republic were themselves members of the great
families, or men intimately associated with them ; and they
wrote to please themselves and their equals. What remains
of their poetry has thus all the independence of the older
Republican literature, with the refinement of a literature
addressed to a polished society. The poets of the Augustan
Age were men born in the country districts or provincial
towns of Italy, and the two most illustrious of their number
were of humble origin : yet they lived after their early
youth in familiar intercourse with the foremost men of
their time ; they owed their fortunes and position in life
to the favour of these men, and thus could not help
sharing, and to some extent reproducing, their tastes
and tone in their writings.
Among the names of the patrons of literature that of
Maecenas has become proverbial, but perhaps even more
important than his patronage was that exercised by the
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 23
Emperor himself. Not only was he a man of great natural
gifts, but he had received a most elaborate education. He
was a powerful and accomplished orator, and a practised
writer 1 . As was not unusual with men who had received
a thorough rhetorical training, he attempted the compo-
sition of a tragedy, and had the sense to treat his failure
with good-natured humour 2 . He made other attempts
in verse, and composed several works in prose, chiefly
turning on the history of his own times. He showed in
his composition an especial regard for purity and correct-
ness of style. Suetonius tells us that he allowed no
composition to be written on himself ' nisi serio et a
praestantissimo.' Horace testifies to this fastidiousness
in the line,
Cui male si palpere, recalcitret undique tutus 3 .
Suetonius testifies further to his liberal patronage of genius;
'ingenia saeculi sui omnibus modis fovit;' a statement
confirmed by Horace's account of his liberality to Virgil
and Varius,
Dilecti tibi Vergilius Variusque poetae*.
We are told also that in literary works he especially
regarded ' praecepta et exempla publice et privatim salu-
bria,' which may partly account for the didactic and
practical aim which the higher poetry of the age set
before itself. He corresponded in terms of intimacy
with Virgil, and made repeated advances, which were at
first somewhat coldly received, to Horace, with the wish to
number him among his familiar friends. But there was
another side to the temper of Augustus, which those
admitted to his favour did well not to forget. If he could
be a liberal patron and genial companion, he could also be
1 ' Eloquentiam studiaque liberalia ab aetate prima et cupide et laboriosissime
exercuit.' Sueton. ii. 84.
' Augusto prompta ac profluens, quaeque deceret principem, eloquentia fuit.'
Tac. Ann. xiii. 3.
2 ' Aiacem tragoediam scripserat, eandemque, quod sibi displicuisset, deleverat.
Postea L. Varius tragoediarum scriptor interrogabat eum, quid ageret Aiax
suus. Et ille, " in spongium," inquit, " incubuit." ' Macrob. ii. 4. 2.
3 Sat. ii. i. 20. * Ep. ii. i. 248.
34 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
a hard and pitiless roaster. Literature, like everything else,
had to be at his command, obedient to his will, and in
harmony with his policy. The fate of Gallus, that of lulus
Antonius, and that of Ovid, prove that neither brilliant
genius nor past favours and familiarity could procure in-
dulgence for whatever thwarted his purpose or offended
his dignity.
The relation between Maecenas and the members of his
literary circle was one of more intimacy and unreserve.
'This circle included among its members Virgil and Varius,
Horace and Propertius. The great works with which the
name of Maecenas is inseparably associated, the Georgics
of Virgil, the first three books of the Odes of Horace, and
the first book of his Epistles, entitle him to be honoured
as among the most enlightened and fortunate of all the
patrons of literature. Virgil addresses him in language not
only of loyal admiration, but of acknowledgment for the
encouragement and guidance which he owed to him ; and
that such an influence may have been really exercised by
the inferior over the superior mind is shown by the testi-
mony given by Goethe of the stimulus which his genius
derived from the encouragement of the Duke of Weimar 1 .
Horace writes of Maecenas in the language not only of
admiration and gratitude, but of warm and disinterested
affection ; and the favour shown to Propertius, a poet
of a very opposite type, shows that his appreciation of
genius was not limited by a narrow partisanship. His
character seems to have left very different impressions on
the minds of his contemporaries, according as they knew
him intimately or merely from the outside. It is a proof of
his capacity and his honesty that he was the one man
thoroughly trusted by Augustus in all affairs of state, as
Agrippa was in war : and that his qualities of heart were
no less admirable appears not only from the poetical
eulogies in the Georgics, the Elegies of Propertius, and the
Odes of Horace, but also from the more natural tribute to
1 Essays Literary and Theological, by R. H. Hutton.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 25
his worth as a man and his sincerity as a friend contained
in Horace's Satires and Epistles. On the world outside
his own immediate circle he produced the impression of
an effeminate devotion to pleasure. His love of pleasure
and his effeminate shrinking from death seem to be con-
firmed by the testimony of Horace :
Cur me querelis, etc.
The sketch of him by Velleius Paterculus presents the
view of his character suggested by the contrast between
his ability as a statesman and the apparent indolence of
his private life : ' Vir ubi res vigiliam exigeret sane exsomnis,
providens, atque agendi sciens, simul vero aliquid ex
negotio remitti posset, otio ac mollitiis paene ultra feminam
flu ens 1 .' It is remarkable that Tacitus ascribes a similar
character to the man in whom, after the death of Maecenas,
Augustus most confided Sallustius Crispus 2 . Perhaps the
position of Maecenas, as the trusted confidant of a jealous
and imperious master, required him to begin his career by
playing a part which afterwards became habitual to him.
Among the traits of his character indicated by Horace
are knowledge of men, reticence, and indifference to the
outward distinctions of birth and rank. Whatever ambi-
tion he had was to exercise real power as the minister of
Augustus, not to enjoy official titles. He certainly used
his position to direct the genius both of Virgil and Horace
to public objects. There is no reason to doubt the fact
noticed in the Life of Virgil, that he influenced him in the
choice of the subject of the Georgics with the view to revive
the chief among the ancient arts, 'by which the Latin
name and the strength of Italy had grown great.' But it
was with Horace that he shared all his public interests and
private feelings, and it is not a very hazardous conjecture
1 Velleius, ii. 88.
2 Tac. Ann. iii. 30. ' Ille quamquam prompto ad capessendos honores aditu,
. Maecenatem aemulatus sine dignitate senatoria multos triumphalium consula-
riumque potentia anteiit, diversus a veterum institute per cultum et munditias,
copiaque et affluentia luxu propior: suberat tamen vigor animi ingentibus
negotiis par, eo acrior quo somnum et inertiam magis ostentabat.'
26 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
to presume that many of the Odes and familiar writings of
the latter poet reflect the tastes and sentiments of Mae-
cenas, perhaps give back the very style and manner of
his conversation. The alternation observable in the Odes
of Horace between an apparent devotion to the lighter
themes of lyrical poetry and the serious interest in great
affairs, the irony disclaiming all lofty and austere preten-
sion, the Epicurean taste for simplicity combined with the
Epicurean love of pleasure, the indifference to outward
state, and the urbanity and knowledge of the world, more
conspicuous in Horace than in any other ancient poet, are
suggestive of habitual contact with the wordly wisdom, the
real power disguised under an appearance of carelessness,
the refined enjoyment of life, the genial social nature,
which were not only a great power in the State, a great
charm in the life of a by-gone age, but have through their
action on the literature of the time become a permanent
and beneficent influence on human culture. *
Other names of men eminent among the ' lights and
leaders ' of the time are also intimately connected with its
literature. The earliest patron by whom Virgil's genius was
recognised was not Maecenas but Asinius Pollio, who in
his early youth had lived in the gay circle of Catullus ;
who, as the lieutenant of Antony, had governed the
province of Cisalpine Gaul ; who' had filled the office of
Consul, commanded an army, and obtained a triumph ;
who is mentioned by Horace in one of his early Satires as
among the few critics whose appreciation he valued ; who
in later life obtained great distinction as an orator; to
whose talent as a writer of tragedy both Virgil and Horace
bear witness ; who undertook the composition of a work
the loss of which is one of the most irreparable gaps in
historical records a contemporary History of the Civil
Wars 'ex Metello consule;' and who performed the im-
portant service to literature of being the first to establish
a public library at Rome, and the more questionable ser-
vice of instituting the practice of public recitations.
M. Valerius Messala, the next in importance among the
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 1 7
patrons of letters, unlike Maecenas and Pollio, who, though
of old provincial families, were ' novi homines ' at Rome,
was a representative of one of the oldest and most illus-
trious patrician houses. He had held high command
in the Republican army at Philippi, and was distinguished
as an orator, an author, and patron of literature. He
became the centre of a literary circle the most brilliant
member of which was Tibullus, and which, though living
in friendly relations with the circle of Maecenas, did not
share with it the enthusiasm for the new regime. Men
like Pollio and Messala are important as elements con-
tributing to the general taste and culture of the age, but
not as determining the political or ethical character stamped
upon the literature.
No direct literary influence was exercised by Agrippa,
who is described by the elder Pliny as ' homo rusticitati
quam deliciis propior,' but his military and naval successes,
and still more the great works of utility and beauty erected
under his superintendence, contributed to the same end as
the poetry of Virgil and Horace, that of perpetuating the
spell of the name of Caesar upon the imagination of the
world.
Cornelius Gallus, like Pollio, was eminent both in action
and in poetry, but his brilliant and erratic career was cut
short too soon to enable him to obtain a foremost place
either among poets or among literary patrons. Yet an
undying interest attaches to his name from the evidence
afforded in the Eclogues of his being the first and appa-
rently the only one who inspired in Virgil that affection,
partly of the heart, partly of the imagination, which
fascinates and attaches the finer nature of the poet to the
stronger or bolder nature of one in whom it recognises
some ideal of heroism, combined with the qualities which
unite men in friendship with one another. It is of Gallus
alone that Virgil writes in such a strain as this :
Gallo cuius amor tantum mihi crescit in horas
Quantum vere novo viridis se subicit alnus ;
and it is to Gallus that he assigns the pre-eminence in
%8 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
his own especial province of poetry, as he represents
the shepherd-poet Linus presenting him with the reeds
which the Muses had of old given to ' the sage of AscraV
The Odes of Horace, addressed to men of high official
station and ancient family, such as Sestius, Munatius Plan-
cus, Sallustius Crispus, ^Elius Lamia, Manlius Torquatus,
still further illustrate the close connexion between the great
world and the world of letters. His later Epistles, many
of which are addressed to young men of rank devoting
themselves to literary studies and pursuits, attest the
continuance of the same tendency as time went on. And
in the following generation Ovid and his contemporaries
enjoyed the favour and friendship of the sons of these
men and of other illustrious patrons. Juvenal, in the
Satire in which he complains of the absence of a liberal
patronage in his own age, unites the names of Fabius
and Cotta Messalinus (son of Messala), whose protection
and encouragement Ovid had enjoyed, with that of
Maecenas:
Quis tibi Maecenas ? quis nunc erit aut Proculeius,
Aut Fabius? quis Cotta iterum? quis Lentulus alter 2 ?
The chief cause of this close bond of union between social
rank and literary genius was the fact that the men who in
a 'former age would, from their birth and education, have
had a great political career before them, were now debarred
from the highest sphere of active life ; while they were not
yet, what they became under the systematic corruption
of the later Caesars, too enervated and demoralised to
continue susceptible of the nobler kinds of intellectual
pleasure.
Probably in no other aristocratic or courtly society has
there been so large a number of men possessing the ability
and knowledge, the accomplishments and leisure, required
for the appreciative enjoyment of a literature based on so
fine and elaborate a culture. There are some circumstances
which made the patronage of the earlier half of the Au-
gustan Age more favourable to letters than that of other
1 Eclog. vi. 70, etc. 2 Sat. vii. 93, 94.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 29
periods in which the same influence has been exercised.
The chief literary patrons then were men who had played
a prominent part in a revolutionary era, men indeed of
ancient birth or hereditary distinction, yet owing their pre-
eminence to their talent, energy, and aptitude for the time,
and thus open to new influences, and free from the pre-
judices of an old-established nobility. They had the
culture and careful education of an aristocratic class, com-
bined with the liberal tendencies of revolutionary leaders.
The distance which in the preceding age would have kept
apart men born into a high social and political position
from men of genius of humble origin was easily passed
in a time immediately succeeding that in which the great
C. Julius had practically proclaimed the doctrine of 'an
open career to every kind of merit.' Among the liberal
traits in the character of Maecenas, as painted by Horace,
the indifference to distinctions of birth is specially marked :
Cum referre negas quali sit quisque parente
Natus, dum ingenuus *.
The new men at the court of Augustus were naturally
attracted to the new men in literature, sprung from quite
a different class from that to which Lucretius, Catullus, or
Calvus belonged, and yet, in respect of education, refine-
ment, and even early associations, in no respect their
inferiors.
Another bond of union between them was that they were
nearly all of the same age, born with one or two exceptions
between the years 70 B.C. and 60 B.C., and that several of
them had studied under the same masters. The distin-
guished men of the Ciceronian Age had passed away, with
the exception of one or two, such as Varro and Atticus,
living in retirement, and consoling themselves with their
farms and libraries for the changes they had witnessed.
The leaders in action, as in literature, were all young men,
beginning their career together in an altered world, the
characters and destinies of which they were called upon to
1 Sat. i. 6. 7-8.
30 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
mould. One by one they dropped away, most of them
before passing the period of middle life, leaving the
Emperor almost the sole survivor among a younger genera-
tion who had grown up under the new order of things, and,
while acquiescing in it as complacently, sharing neither in
the energy nor in the enthusiasm of the early years (from
about 27 B.C. to about 10 B.C.) during which the Empire
left its greatest and happiest impression.
This relation of men of letters to the leaders of society
under the Empire could not but exercise a strong influence
both for good and evil on the literature of the age. Such
a society , able, versed in affairs, accomplished, fond of
pleasures-whatever else it may be, is sure to be character-
ised by good sense, a strong feeling of order and dignity,
an acute perception of propriety in conduct and manners,
an urbanity of tone restraining all arrogant self-assertion
and violent animosity of feeling. Such a society is the
determined enemy of all pedantry, eccentricity, and exag-
geration, of all austerity or indecorum, of one-sided enthu-
siasm or devotion to a single idea. The 'aurea medio-
critas' in feeling, conduct, thought, and enjoyment is the
ideal which it sets before itself. Horace, except in his
highest and most thoughtful moods, is the true representa-
tive of such a society; but its indirect influence may be
noted also in the moderation, the invariable propriety and
dignity, both of thought and language in Virgil, and in the
tones of refinement with which Propertius and Ovid record
the experience and preach the philosophy of pleasure.
Yet literature probably lost as much from the limitation of
sympathy imposed upon it as it gained from this acquired
dignity and urbanity of tone. The Roman poets of this
era, even while expressing national sentiments and ideas,
were not like Homer, Pindar, or Sophocles, who, while
putting a sufficiently high value on distinctions of birth and
fortune, and on the personal qualities accompanying these
distinctions, are yet, in a sense in which the poets of the
Augustan Age are not, the poets of a whole people.
Horace introduces that series of his Odes which most
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 31
breathes a national spirit by disclaiming all sympathy
with the ' profanum vulgus/ He looks upon it as one of
the privileges of genius, ' malignum spernere vulgus.' He
did not wish his Satires to be thumbed by the mob
or men of the class 'to which Hermogenes Tigellius
belonged.' He cared only for the appreciation of the
class in which all culture and all regard for the traditions
and greatness of Rome were now centred. The urban
populace, as represented in literature, appears only as a
rabble, and this is still more the case in the days of
Juvenal, which had to be kept in order, fed, amused, and
tended, like some dangerous wild beast. The middle class,
absorbed in money-making and commercial adventure, sup-
plies to Horace the representatives of the misers and
parvenus whom he painted in his Satires for the amuse-
ment of his aristocratic readers. The tone of Virgil is
equally anti-popular. The view of society which he delights
to present is that of a paternal ruler giving laws to his
people and caring for their welfare. His repugnance to the
influence of the c popularis aura ' on government is indicated
in such passages as the famous simile near the beginning of
the Aeneid,
Ac veluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta est
Seditio, saevitque animis ignobile vulgus,
and in his representation of 'the good King Ancus ' of
Ennius and Lucretius, among the unborn descendants of
Aeneas, as
iactantior Ancus
Nunc quoque iam nimium gaudens popularibus auris.
The encouragement and appreciation of the leaders of
society involved on the part of the poets a position of
deference or dependence ; the relation between them had
thus its limiting as well as its corrective effects ; it tended
to make literature tamer in spirit and thought, perhaps also
less original in invention, more bounded in its range of
human interest.
32 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
IV.
Influence of the material circumstances of the Age on the
lives and tastes of the Augustan Poets.
The great wealth and luxury of Rome, during the latter
years of the Republic and the early years of the Empire,
exercised also an influence on the life, the imagination,
and the thoughts of the poets living in those times.
Through commerce and conquest Rome had entered into
the possession of the long accumulated wealth of the world,
and, as generally happens in eras of advanced civilisation,
the enjoyment of these was very unequally distributed.
Nothing appears more remarkable in the social life of the
latter days of the Republic than the great riches possessed
and expended by a few individuals, such as Crassus, Hor-
tensius, and the Luculli. One proof of the immense accu-
mulation of money at that time is the large price which,
as we learn from Cicero's letters, was paid for the houses
of the leading men among the nobility. The number of
villas possessed by Cicero himself, the son of a provincial
Eques, and debarred by stringent' laws (though probably
they were evaded) from turning his pre-eminence as an
advocate to profit, and the sums spent by him in their
adornment, suggest to us to what an extent the soil of
Italy, the works of Greek art, and the natural and artificial
products of the East, were at the disposal of the ruling
aristocracy of Rome. Still more is this thought forced on
us when we think of Proconsuls and Propraetors who came
home glutted with the spoils of their provinces, which they
squandered in the coarsest luxury. The change to the
Empire, though it put a considerable check on this kind of
plunder, did little to distribute wealth more generally, or to
limit luxurious living. The appropriation during the Civil
Wars of the sacred treasures long accumulated in the temples
of the gods, and the great stimulus given to commerce by
the establishment of peace, added largely to the wealth
available at Rome for purposes of munificence, of ostenta-
tion, or indulgence. But the largest share in the disposal
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 33
of the wealth of the world had passed from the representa-
tives of the old governing class to the ruling powers of the
new Empire, and this change was decidedly for the public
advantage. Augustus and his ministers possessed the old
Greek virtue of /ueyaAoTrpeTreia, and understood that immense
wealth could be better expended on great public objects
than on beautifying their villas and fish-ponds, or giving
a more dangerous variety to their entertainments. The
policy of Augustus in restoring and building the temples of
the gods had an artistic as well as a religious purpose. He
wished to make his countrymen proud of the outward
beauty of Rome, as Pericles had made the Athenians proud
of the beauty of Athens.
The most enduring result of this munificence, more
enduring even than the noble ruins of temples and theatres
the visible monuments preserved from that age is the
finished art of the verse of Virgil and Horace. By the
liberality of the Emperor, Virgil was able to devote to
the composition of his two great works nearly twenty years
of unhasting and unresting labour in the beautiful scenery
of Campania. The wealth and lands at the disposal of
Maecenas enabled Horace to change the wearisome routine
and enervating pleasures of Rome for hours of happy
inspiration among the Sabine Hills or in the cool mountain
air of Praeneste, amid the gardens and streams of Tibur
or by the bright shores of Baiae 1 . To the liberality of
their patrons these poets owed not only the leisure and
freedom from the ordinary cares of life 2 , which allowed
them to give all their thought and the unimpaired freshness
of their genius to their art, but the opportunity of enjoying
under the most favourable circumstances that source of
1 Vester, Camenae, vester in arduos
Toiler Sabinos ; seu mihi frigidum
Praeneste, seu Tibur supinum,
Seu liquidae placuere Baiae. Od. iii. 4. 21-24.
2 Cf. the lines of Juvenal, vii. 66-68, in especial reference to Virgil :
Magnae mentis opus nee de lodice paranda
Attonitae, currus et equos, faciesque Deorum
Aspicere, et qualis Rutulum confundat Erinnys. etc.
VOL. I. D
34 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
happiness and inspiration which has given its most distinc-
tive charm to their poetry the beauty of Italian Nature.
It is only in their appreciation of the living beauty of the
world for its own sake (and apart from divine or human
associations) that the great Roman poets possess an interest
beyond that of the poets of any other age or country, with
the exception of the English poets of the present century.
Nowhere is the familiar charm of a well-loved spot sug-
gested in truer and more graceful words than these :
Te flagrantis atrox hora Caniculae
Nescit tangere ; tu frigus amabile
Fessis vomere tauris
Praebes, et pecori vago ; etc.
Nor can any lines express better a real love for the actual
beauty of familiar scenes combined with an imaginative
longing for the ideal beauty consecrated by old poetic
associations, like to that which in modern times has often
driven our Northern poets and artists across the Alps,
than the
Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes ;
Flumina amem silvasque inglorius. O ubi campi
Spercheosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaeni s
Taygeta, etc.
of the Georgics.
The literature of the Augustan Age has often been
compared with that of England in the first half of the
eighteenth century. In so far as each literature is the
literature of town life, in so far as it has a moral and
didactic purpose, the comparison holds good. The Satires
and Epistles of Horace present a parallel both to the
poetical Satires of Pope, which in outward form are imi-
tated from them, and still more to the prose Essays of the
Spectator. They resemble those Essays in their union of
humour and seriousness, in the use they make of character-
painting, anecdote, and moral reflection, in the justice and
at the same time the limitation of their criticism both on
life and literature, in the colloquial ease combined with
the studied propriety of their style. But while Horace, in
addition to his powers as a moralist and painter of cha-
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 35
racter, ranks high among those poets who enable us to feel
the secret and the charm of Nature, latent in particular
places, the only period of English literature from which
this power is absent is that of which Addison and Pope are
among the chief representatives. A similar superiority in
this respect may be claimed for the Augustan poetry over
that of the Age of Louis XIV. As was said before, French
criticism points to Racine as a genius with a certain moral
affinity to Virgil; but it equally acknowledges his in-
feriority as the interpreter of Nature. ' C'est cet amour/
says M. Sainte-Beuve, ' cette pratique de la nature cham-
petre qui a un peu manque" a notre Racine, dont le gout et
le talent de peindre ont etc" presque uniquement tournes
du cote de la nature morale.'
The ease of their circumstances and the fact that they
owed this ease to others ('Deus nobis haec otia fecit') have
impressed themselves in other ways on the character of the
Augustan poetry. The spirit of that poetry is certainly
tamer than that of other great literary epochs. Even the
enjoyment of Nature is a passive rather than an active
enjoyment derived from adventurous or contemplative
energy. There is no suggestion, as there is in Homer and
in many modern poets, of vivid contact with the sterner
forces of Nature. The sense of discomfort as well as of
danger was then, as it has been till the present century,
sufficient to repress the imaginative love of the sea or of
mountain scenery 1 . Horace expresses a shrinking from
the dangers of the sea, nor is there in Virgil any trace of
that enjoyment of dangerous adventure which is one of the
great sources of delight in the Odyssey.
The profuse expenditure and luxury of the age called
forth in its poets a spirit of reaction to a simpler and more
primitive ideal, as they did in the French literature of the
latter part of the eighteenth century. By contrast with
1 Cf. Virg. Georg. ii. 470 : ' Mollesque sub arbore somni.'
Hor. Ep. i. 14. 35 : ' Prope rivum somnus in herba.'
Virg. Eclog. ii. 40 : ' Nee tuta mihi valle reperti.'
Hor. Ep. i. ii. 10 : ' Neptunum procul e terra spectare furentem.'
D 2
36 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
the unreal enjoyment of luxury and the ennui occa-
sioned by it, which Lucretius had satirised in the previous
generation, a stronger sense of the purer sources of human
enjoyment, of friendly and intellectual society, of family
affection, of the beauty of Nature, of the simpler tastes
of the country, was awakened even in those who in their
actual lives did not realise all these sources of happiness.
But in Horace this feeling of contrast does not express
itself in the tones of vehement antagonism which appear a
century later in Juvenal. Luxury and profuse expenditure
are indeed repugnant to his taste, and they suggest to him,
as they do to Virgil, the purer enjoyment of simple living.
There is no doctrine which Horace preaches more constantly
in all his works, or with more apparent sincerity, than that
of being independent of fortune, and of the greater hap-
piness of the mean station in life between great wealth and
poverty. Yet, while preaching the same doctrine, he does
not express it in terms of such deep and earnest conviction
as the
Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce
Aequo animo
of Lucretius. In at least the earlier part of his poetic career
he had had his share of the luxurious living and the other
pleasures of Roman life. Experience had satisfied him that
the ' cena brevis . . et prope rivum somnus in herba * ' con-
tributed more to his happiness in later life than drinking
Falernian from midday; and as years went on, it gave him
more pleasure to recall the memory of his old loves in song
than to involve himself in new engagements. The Horatian
maxims in favour of simplicity have this recommendation,
that they are the result of experience in both ways of living.
The luxurious life of the capital seems at no time to have
possessed charms for Virgil or Tibullus. Though the latter
was a man of refinement, and not averse to pleasure, yet he
has a feeling similar to that of Rousseau in favour of an ideal
of rudeness and simplicity as compared with the pomp and
profusion of life in Rome. The more active and energetic
1 E P . i. 14. 34-35.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 37
temperament of Propertius and of Ovid induced them to
participate with less restraint in the pleasures of the city,
and they no doubt appealed to congenial tastes among
their contemporaries in the choice of the topics treated in
their poems.
V.
Culture and Education as affecting the Augustan Literature.
The conditions hitherto considered -enable us to appre-
ciate the prominence given to national and imperial ideas
in the literature of the Augustan Age, and also to under-
stand the chief differences in tone and spirit between that
literature and the literature of the Ciceronian Age. Along
with these marked differences, obvious points of agreement
are also observable. The cultivated men of each time had
the same refined enjoyment in Nature, art, literature, and
social life. And in turning to the intellectual conditions
affecting literary form and style, the later period will be
seen to be still more closely connected with the earlier.
The golden age of Latin poetry, commencing in the
years preceding the overthrow of the Republic, reaches its
maturity in the earlier part of the reign of Augustus, and
then begins to decline, till under Tiberius the last poetic
voice is silenced. Though Latin prose-literature had yet to
be enriched by some of its greatest and most original
works, yet neither the glory of the Empire, the charm of
the Italian life, nor the vivifying ideas and creations of
Greek genius were ever again able to revive the genuine
poetical inspiration which ancient Italy once, and once only,
enjoyed in abundant measure.
The half-century from about 60 B. C. till about 10 B. C.
was, at once, one of those rare and germinative epochs in
the history of the world, in which a powerful intellectual
movement coincides with, influences, and is influenced by
a great movement and change in human affairs ; and it was
at the same time a period of a rich and elaborate culture, in
which the inheritance of Greek genius, art, and knowledge
38 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
came for the first time into the full possession of the Romans.
The earlier half of this period was more distinguished by
original force of mind, the latter half by more complete and
perfect culture. The age of Cicero was one of great energy
in the chief provinces of human activity in war and politics,
in oratory, poetry, and philosophy. There is no intellectual
quality so characteristic of his own oratory, of the poetry
of Lucretius, of the military and political genius of Julius
Caesar, as the ' vivida vis,' the energy, at once rapid and
enduring in its action, as of a great elemental force. Among
their contemporaries, though there was no man of high
political capacity, yet there was a many-sided intellectual
activity manifesting itself in the forum and senate-house,
in social intercourse and correspondence, and in varied
literary and philosophical discourse. As a result of this
novel activity of mind, the Latin language developed then
for the first time all its resources as a powerful organ of
literature, inferior indeed to the language of Greece in the
days of its purity, but much superior as the instrument of
poetry and oratory, history and philosophy, to that language
in its decay \ The writers of the Augustan Age received
this language from their predecessors, in its most sensitive
period of growth, while able to present to the mind in
unimpaired freshness the immediate impressions from out-
ward things and from the inner world of consciousness, but
still capable of more delicate and varied combinations to
fit it to become "the perfectly harmonious organ of sustained
poetical emotion. This further development was given to
it by the Augustan poets, but not without some loss of
native force and purity of idiom. They too felt the influ-
ence of the strong intellectual movement of the preceding
age. But it came upon their minds with a less novel and
vehement impulse. They are greater in execution than in
creative design. They are more concerned with the results
than with the processes of thought. Virgil may have been
as assiduous a student of philosophy as Lucretius, but he
1 Compare Munro's Lucretius, p. 306 (third edition).
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 39
does not feel the same need of consistency of view and
firmness of speculative conviction ; he shares with Lucretius
the strong passion for poetry ('dulces ante omnia Musae'),
but neither he nor Horace, though each recognise the
supreme claims of philosophy, show the passion for inquiry
which induced Lucretius
Noctes vigilare serenas,
Quarentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum
Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti,
Res qwibus occultas penitus convisere possis;
so that even in his dreams he describes himself as ever
busy with the search after and exposition of truth,
Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerurn
Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis.
The master-pieces of the Augustan literature were not
the products of that vivid and rapidly-working creative
energy which marked the Ciceronian Age. There never
was an age in which great writers trained themselves so
carefully for their office, strove so much to conform to
recognised principles of art, reflected so much on the
plan and purpose of their compositions, or used more
patient industry in bringing their conceptions to maturity.
The maxim 'nonum prematur in annum 5 illustrates the
spirit in which the great artists of that age worked. The
cultivated appreciation of Greek art and poetry the
essential condition of the creative impulse of Italy then
reached its highest point, produced its supreme effect in
a national Roman literature of similar perfection of work-
manship, and, after that, rapidly declined and passed
away from the Roman world as a source of literary inspi-
ration, leaving however the educating influence of this
new literature in its place. The Greek language had
indeed been studied at Rome for nearly two centuries
before the Ciceronian Age. The earliest Roman writers
Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius, &c. had used the epic and
dramatic poetry of Greece as a kind of quarry for their
own rude workmanship. The age of Laelius had imbibed
much of the humanity and wisdom of Greek speculation.
40 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
But it was not till the age of Cicero and Catullus that
the long process of education and the largely increased
intercourse between the two nations had raised the Roman
mind to a full sense and enjoyment of artistic excellence,
as revealed both to the eye and to the mind. The men
of that age, in the midst of all their active pursuits, were
moved by this foreign influence as the men of the Re-
naissance were moved by the recovery of classical literature.
In the case of some among them the passion for accumu-
lating books and works of art became the absorbing interest
in their lives. Though in some of the orators and men
of letters, e.g. Memmius, as we learn from Cicero, their
Greek tastes fostered an affected indifference to their own
nationality, yet on the best minds, such as those of Cicero
himself, Lucretius, and Catullus, this intimate contact with
Greek genius acted with a vivifying power by calling forth
the native genius of Italy. It was the peculiarity of the
Roman mind to be capable of receiving deep and lasting
impressions from other nations with whom it came in
contact, without sacrifice of the strong individuality of
its own character. What Columella says of the Italian
soil, ' curae mortalium obsequentissimam esse Italiam, quae
paene totius orbis fruges, adhibito studio tolonorum, ferre
didicerit 1 ,' might be said with equal truth of the Italian
mind. This adaptability to foreign influences, without loss
of native genius and character, enabled Rome to exercise
spiritual supremacy over the world for more than a thousand
years after the loss of her temporal supremacy. In the
age of Cicero and the following age this adaptability to
another form of spiritual influence gave to Rome a great
national literature.
Virgil, Horace, and their immediate contemporaries
devoted themselves to Greek studies with even more ardour
than their immediate predecessors. Education and pre-
paration for a career in literature was a more elaborate
process than it had ever been before, perhaps we might
1 iii.8.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 41
add, than it has ever been since. Virgil was still an
unknown student, carefully preparing himself for the labour
of his life almost till he reached the age at which Catullus
died. Horace at the age of twenty-three was, to use his
own words, still 'seeking for the truth among the groves
of Academus.' The taste for literary leisure was greatly
developed among the educated classes by the suppression
of all active political life ; while at the same time the
establishment of public libraries made the access to books
more easy and general. Women equally with men made
themselves familiar with at least the lighter fancies of the
learned Greeks. There are none of his Odes into which
* Horace is so fond of introducing his mythological allusions
as those in which some real or fictitious heroine, Galatea
or Asterie, Lyde or Phyllis, is addressed. The poems of
Propertius which celebrate his love for Cynthia demanded
much recondite learning on the part of those who read
them, whatever value may be attached to that peculiar
kind of learning.
Though the greatest poets of the Augustan Age drew
much of their inspiration from the older and nobler sources
of Greek genius, especially from Homer and the* early
lyric poets, yet the period of Greek literature which was
most familiar to the Romans of the Augustan Age was
the Alexandrian. It was nearest to them in point of time ;
it was most congenial to the taste of the learned Greeks
who now gathered from the widely-scattered centres of
Greek culture to Rome, as they had formerly done to
Alexandria; it was of all the forms of Greek literature
the most cosmopolitan, or rather the least national, in
spirit, and thus most easily adopted by another race ; it
was moreover, like that of the Augustan Age, the literature
of a courtly circle enjoying the favour and contributing
to the glory of a royal patron. The earliest imitators of
this poetry were Catullus and the other poets contem-
porary with him, such as Calvus, Caecilius,. Cinna, and
Varro Atacinus, the author of the epic poem of Jason.
In the Augustan Age Gallus had not only obtained
4$ GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
distinction as the author of original elegies in the style
of the amatory poetry of Alexandria, but had translated
a poem of Euphorion of Chalcis 1 , whom Cicero holds up
as the type of effeminacy in literature in contrast with
the manliness of Ennius 2 . Tibullus to a certain extent,
but still more Propertius and Ovid, followed in the same
line. From the Alexandrine poets they derived the form
and many of the materials of their art. Virgil, while
familiar with the whole range of Greek poetry and pressing
it all into his service, has used the Alexandrians more
freely than any other Greek writers, with the exception
of Homer. Horace is most independent of them ; there
are no direct traces of their works in any of his writings.
The Greek authors to whom he acknowledges his debt
are the early Lyrists and Iambic writers, the poets of
the New Comedy, the philosophic writers of the later
schools which arose out of the teaching of Socrates, and
especially Aristippus. Yet even in him the influence of
the Alexandrine tone is apparent, especially in his treat-
ment of the subjects taken from the Greek mythology.,
This poetry of Alexandria, or rather this poetry of the
Greek race in its latter days, was, to a much greater
extent, the artificial product of culture and knowledge
than the manifestation of original feeling or intellectual
power. The very language in which it was written was
artificial, far removed, not only in phraseology but in dia-
lectical forms, from the language of common life. Poetry
was pursued as the recreation of scholars and men of
science ; its chief aim was to satisfy a dilettante curiosity :
Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes.
The writers of this school whose names are most familiarly
known are Callimachus, one of the Battiadae of Cyrene,
Euphorion of Chalcis, Philetas of Cos, Aratus of Soli,
Hermesianax and Nicander of Colophon, Apollonius of
Rhodes 3 , Lycophron of Chalcis, Eratosthenes of Cyrene,
1 Virg. Eclog. vi. 72 ; x. 50. 2 Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.
3 Bbrn at Alexandria, but afterwards settled at Rhodes. He ultimately
returned to Alexandria.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 43
from whom Virgil takes a passage about geographical
science, Zenodotus of Ephesus, a grammarian, names
suggestive of the widely-diffused culture of the Hellenic race,
and at the same time indicative of the absence of any great
centre of national life such as Athens had been in former
times. To these are sometimes added the more interesting
names of Theocritus of Syracuse, and of the idyllic poets
Moschus of Syracuse and Bion of Smyrna, although they
are more associated with the fresh woods and pastures of
Sicily and Southern Italy. The chief materials used by
the Alexandrine writers in their poetry were the tales and
fancies of the old mythology and the results of natural
science ; the modes of human feeling to which they mainly
gave expression were the passion of love and the sensi-
bility to the beauty of Nature.
Nothing attests more forcibly the original power and
richness of faculty which shaped the primitive fancies of
the Greek mythology into legend, poetry, and art, than
the perennial vitality with which this mythology has re-
appeared under many forms, satisfying many different
wants of the human mind, at various epochs, from the
time of its first birth even down to the present day. In
the contrasts often drawn between the classical and the
romantic imagination, it is sometimes forgotten that this
Greek mythology was richer in romantic personages, situa-
tions, and incidents, than the mythology or early legends
of any other race. In the nobler eras of Greek literature,
after the creative impulse ceased out of which the mytho-
logy and its natural accompaniment epic poetry had arisen,
the legends and personages of gods and heroes supplied to
the lyrical poets an ideal background by connexion with
which they glorified the passions and interests of their own
time ; to the tragic poets of Athens they supplied beings
of heroic stature, situations of transcendent import, by
means of which they were enabled to give body and shape
to the deepest thoughts on human destiny. The Alex-
andrians, and those Greek writers who came long after
them, such as Quintus Calaber and Nonnus, did not
44 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
seek to impart any recondite meaning to the legends
which they revived, but rather to divest them of any sacred
or ethical associations, and to present them to their readers
simply as bright and marvellous tales of passion and ad-
venture. They endeavoured, either in the form of con-
tinuous epics or in the more appropriate form of 'epyllia'
or epic idyls, to enable their readers to escape in fancy
from the dull uniformity of their own time into a world
of action in the bright morning of the national life. They
sought especially to satisfy two impulses of the Greek
nature which still survived out of the more powerful
energies which had given birth to art and poetry, the child-
like curiosity ("EXXrjves act watfies) which delights in hearing
a story told, and the artistic passion to make present to
the eye or the fancy distinct pictures and images of beauty
and symmetry.
The later development of the Greek intellect was how-
ever more critical and scientific than creative. Science,
learning, and criticism were especially encouraged and cul-
tivated at Alexandria. The impulse given by Aristotle
to natural observation and enquiry, and the large inter-
course with the East which followed on the conquests of
Alexander and the establishment of the kingdoms of his
successors, led to a great increase of knowledge, or, in the
absence of definite knowledge, of curiosity and speculation.
The spirit of enquiry no longer, as in the days of the older
philosophers, endeavoured to solve the whole problem of
the universe, but to observe and systematise the pheno-
mena of the special sciences. Natural history, botany, and
medicine were studied zealously and successfully ; the sub-
jects of astronomy and meteorology excited equal interest,
though the want of the appliances necessary for these
studies made them more barren in results. A great ad-
vance was made in the knowledge of remote places of the
earth and of their various products. The novelty of these
enquiries, and of the knowledge resulting from them, stimu-
lated curiosity and the imaginative emotion which accom-
panies it ; and the enthusiasm of science combining with
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 45
the enthusiasm of literary criticism gave birth to a new
kind of didactic poetry, which aimed at expounding the
phenomena of Nature in the epic diction of Homer. Among
the best-known authors of this didactic poetry are Aratus,
Callimachus, and Nicander, the last described as being
a poet, a grammarian, and a physician, a combination
characteristic of the spirit in which both science and litera-
ture were cultivated. These writers supplied materials
which Virgil used in the Georgics, and in the special ex-
amination of that poem it will be seen that he adopted
other characteristics of the Alexandrine learning. The
description by Ovid of the poem of ^Emilius Macer in the
lines
Saepe suas volucres legit mihi grandior aevo ,
Quaeque necet serpens, quae iuvet herba, Macer \
indicates the character not only of that poem, but also of
the Alexandrine models on which it was founded.
The poetry of Alexandria touched most on the realities
of human life in its treatment of the passion of love and
the enjoyment of the beauty of Nature. These are, in
unadventurous and unwarlike times and in eras of advanced
civilisation, the main motives of the imaginative literature
which seeks its interest in the actual life of the present.
Callimachus and Euphorion are mentioned as the models
followed by Gallus, Propertius, and Tibullus 2 . They, as
well as their Roman followers, seem largely to have illus-
trated their own feelings and experience by recondite allu-
sions to the innumerable heroines of ancient mythology.
The passion of Medea for Jason is the motive which gives
its chief human interest to the Argonautics of Apollonius,
as the passion of Dido for Aeneas, suggested by it, gives
the chief purely human interest to the Aeneid. But the
most powerful delineation of this kind in any writer of that
period, recalling in its intensity the
commissi calores
Aeoliae fidibus puellae,
is the passionate monologue of Simaetha in the second
1 Trist. iv. 10. 43-44. a Sueton. De Viris Illustribus.
46 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
Idyl of Theocritus, of which Virgil has produced but
a faint echo in his
Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnim.
The love of Nature, though not then for the first time
awakened, for there are clear indications of the powerful
influence of this sentiment, though in subordination to
human interests, in the earlier epic, lyric, and dramatic
poetry, came then prominently forward as an element
of refined pleasure in life, and as an inspiring influence
both to poets and painters. The cause of the growth of/
this sentiment has been sought l partly in the rise of great
cities, such as Antioch, Seleucia, Alexandria, which by
debarring men from that free familiar contact with the
forms and motions and life of Nature enjoyed by the older
Greeks, created an imaginative longing for a return to this
communion as to a lost paradise. The longing to escape
from the heat and confinement of a great southern city
to the fresh sights and free air of woods and mountains
must certainly have been often felt by poets and artists
who had exchanged their homes on the shores and the
islands of the Aegean for the dusty streets of Alexandria.
Probably the Metamorphoses of Ovid convey as good an
idea as anything in Latin literature of the various in-
fluences active in the Alexandrine poetry, and the kind
of scene which he takes most delight in painting in that
poem is that of a cool and clear stream hidden in the
thick shade of woods and haunted by the Nymphs. The
taste for gardens within great cities, first developed at this
time and afterwards carried to an extreme pitch of luxury
in the early Roman Empire 2 , further illustrates the need
felt for this kind of refreshment from objects of natural
beauty.
1 Woermann, Ueber den landschaftlichen Natursinn der Griechen und
Romer; Helbig, Campanische Wandmalerei.
2 Cf. 'Senecae praedivitis hortos.' Juv. 'Pariterque hortis inhians, quos
ille a Lucullo coeptos insigni magnificentia extollebat.' Tac. Ann. xi. i .
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 47
Other causes have been suggested for the growth of this
sentiment, as, for instance, the decay of the polytheistic
fancies, which by regarding each natural object as identified
with some spiritual being, made it less an object of affec-
tion and curiosity for its own sake. The sudden growth of
this sentiment in ancient times in an age of great luxury
and culture is analogous to the great development and
expansion of the feeling under similar circumstances in the
latter part of the eighteenth century. In both cases the
sentiment arose from the desire to escape from the tedium
of an artificial life. The love of Nature is not, as we might
naturally expect it to be, a feeling much experienced by
those who live in constant contact and conflict with its
sterner forces, as by husbandmen, herdsmen, and hunters ;
nor is it developed consciously in primitive times or un-
sophisticated races ; but it is the accompaniment of leisure,
culture, and refinement of life. Some races are more sus-
ceptible of this feeling than others ; and probably the Greek
with his lively social temper, and the tendency of his
imagination to reduce all beautiful objects to a human
shape, was less capable of the disinterested delight in the
sights and sounds of the outward world than the Italian. It
was apparently among Siculians, the kindred of the people
of Italy, and not among men living in the mountains of
Arcadia or Thessaly, that Theocritus found the personages
of his rustic idyl. Whether it was from the greater sus-
ceptibility of their national temperament, or more probably
from the fact that they lived in the later times of the
world, to which the sentiment was more congenial, the
Roman poets of the Augustan Age and of that imme-
diately preceding it are the truest exponents of the love
of Nature in ancient times ; though it may be that, without
the originating impulse given by the Greek mind in the
Alexandrian period, and perpetuated by educated Greeks
living in Southern Italy, this love of natural beauty might
never have been consciously realised by them as a source
of poetic inspiration.
The pursuit of literature in the Alexandrian Age was
48 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
accompanied with great activity in the other arts, espe-
cially sculpture and painting. These last continued to
be carried on by Greeks in Italy after Rome had succeeded
to Alexandria as the centre of human culture. Sculpture
and carving on wood, works of art in bronze and the
graving on gems, continued to perpetuate an aesthetic half-
belief in the Olympian divinities and the other creations of
the Greek theology. Painting seems to have treated the
same kind of subjects and aimed at satisfying the same class
of feelings as the poetry of the Alexandrian time. Many
of its subjects it seems to have drawn directly from the
works of poets 1 . The paintings recovered from Pompeii,
which may be presumed to have continued the traditions
of a somewhat earlier art, illustrate the same tastes which
were gratified by the poetical treatment of mythological
subjects, of landscape, and of the passion of love. The
knowledge acquired by science seems also to have been
pressed into this service by the artist. The frequent repre-
sentations of wild animals originated in the same kind
of interest which animated Nicander to the composition
of the 0qpiaKa 2 . Realistic reproductions from common life
seem also to have been frequently executed by ancient,
as by modern, painters. If, as is not improbable, the
'Moretum 5 and the 'Copa' are translations or imitations
of Greek originals, they exemplify still further the close
connexion between the art of the poet and the painter
among the Alexandrian dilettanti.
The various kinds of art which bring human forms and
scenes from outward nature before the eye, and espe-
cially the art of the painter, must accordingly be taken
into account as means of making the creations of Greek
fancy and the objects of Greek sentiment vividly present
to the Roman imagination. They not only acted imme-
diately on the mind of the poet by suggesting to him
directly subjects for his art and supplying frequent illustra-
1 The substance of these remarks is derived from Helbig's Campanische
Wandmalerei.
2 Cf. Plautus, Pseudolus, i. 2. 14:
Neque Alexandria beluata conchuliata tapetia.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 49
tions for the treatment of native subjects, but they helped
to interpret to cultivated minds his allusions to or repro-
ductions from the poets of former times. The whole
learning, fancy, and sentiment of the Alexandrians seem
to have been absorbed and made their own by the Au-
gustan poets. Virgil and Horace, indeed, formed their
ideal of art from the works of a greater time. Their
studies of Greek familiarised their minds with what was
most perfect in form, noblest in thought, feeling, and
expression in the older poets. Yet in so far as Roman
poetry is a reproduction of Greek poetry, it is the mind of
the Alexandrian rather than of the old Ionian, Aeolian,
or Athenian Greek that lives again in the Augustan
literature. Probably this has been in favour of the Roman
writers. With their highly susceptible and cultivated
appreciation of excellence, their originality might have
been altogether overpowered by an exclusive study of the
nobler and severer models. In receiving the instruction
of contemporary Greeks, based to a great extent on the
Alexandrine learning, and in reproducing the materials,
manner, and diction of Alexandrine poets, they must have
become conscious of the greater freshness and vigour of
their own genius, of the more vital force of their own
language, of their grander national life, of the privilege
of being Romans, and the blessing of breathing Italian air.
Whatever was most worthy to survive in the spirit which
animated the refined industry of the Alexandrian Age has
been preserved in greater beauty and vitality in Virgil,
Propertius, and Ovid, combined with the ideas, feelings,
passions, and experience of a new and more vigorous
race.
One other circumstance has yet to be taken into ac-
count as affecting the culture and taste of the age, viz.
the number of poets who lived at the time and the relations
which subsisted between them. Those whose works have
been preserved are only a few out of a larger circle who
worked each in his own province of art, and listened to
and criticised the works of their friends. Of the poets
VOL. I. E
50 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
belonging to this circle whose works have not reached us,
Varius, the older contemporary and life-long friend of Virgil,
first acquired distinction as a writer of that kind of epic
peculiar to Rome which treated of contemporary subjects
and was dedicated to the personal glory of some great man.
This kind of poem had probably originated with the
* Scipio ' of Ennius, but it had been especially cultivated
in the age of Cicero. Varius performed the office from
which Virgil and Horace shrank, that, namely, of telling in
verse the contemporary history of his own time, glorifying
in one poem the memory of Julius Caesar, in another
celebrating the wars of Augustus. Afterwards he resigned
to Virgil the honours of epic poetry, and entered into
rivalry with Pollio as the author of tragedy. His drama
of Thyestes was represented at the Games celebrated after
the battle of Actium, and for this drama he is said to have
received a million sesterces 1 . This play is praised both
by Quintilian and Tacitus in the dialogue De Oratoribus.
Quintilian says of it ' cuilibet Graecorum comparari potest;'
but the drama is the branch of literature in which the judg-
ment of a Latin critic is of least value. The Thyestes, like
the Medea of Ovid, was probably a play of that rhetorical
kind which was cultivated under the Empire, and which
never got possession of the stage like the older tragedies
of Attius and Pacuvius. Cornelius Gallus has been already
mentioned among the men of public eminence who cul-
tivated poetry. He was a follower of the Alexandrians,
and is mentioned by Propertius and Ovid as their own
precursor in elegiac poetry. Aemilius Macer, a native of
Verona and about the same age as Virgil, and supposed to
be shadowed forth as the Mopsus of the fifth Eclogue, was
the author of a didactic poem called Ornithogonia, written
in imitation of the Alexandrine Nicander. Valgius Rufus
and Aristius Fuscus, mentioned by Horace as among the
friendly critics by whom he wished his Satires to be
approved, and to whom he addresses some of his Odes and
*
1 Scholium quoted by W. S. Teuffel in his account of L. Varius.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 51
Epistles, are also known as authors. In his later life
Horace maintained friendly relations and correspondence
with the younger men, such as lulus Antonius, Florus, etc.,
who united a taste for poetry with the pursuits of young
men of rank. And among the pleasures which Ovid recalls
in the dreary days of his exile, none seem to have been
more prized by him than the familiar relations in which he
had lived with the older poets and with those of his own
standing 1 . The Alexandrine influence is visible in the
kinds of poetry chiefly cultivated by these writers, espe-
cially in the didactic poem, the artificial epic, and the
erotic elegy. We hear also of epic or narrative poems
on contemporary subjects, of one or two dramatic writers,
and also of writers in verse on grammatical and rhetorical
subjects 2 .
There is no feature in the social life of the Augustan
Age so pleasant to contemplate as the brotherly friendship,
free apparently from the jealousies of individuals and the
petty passions of literary coteries, in which the most
eminent poets and men of letters lived with one another.
The only exception to the general state of good feeling
of which there is any indication is an apparent coolness
between Horace and Propertius. The latter poet neither
mentions nor alludes to his illustrious contemporary, though
both were friends of Maecenas and of Virgil ; and Horace,
though he does not mention Propertius by name, as he
does Tibullus and most of the other distinguished poets of
the time, probably alludes to him in a passage which was
not intended to be complimentary 3 . But in general what
Plato says of the souls engaged in the pursuit and contem-
plation of intellectual beauty (f)06vos yap eo> Gttov
1 Tristia, iv. 10. 41, etc.
2 W. S. Teuffel.
3 Discedo Alcaeus puncto illius : ille meo quis ?
Quis nisi Callimachus ? Si plus adposcere visus,
Fit Mimnermus, et optivo cognomine gaudet. Ep. ii. 2. 99.
Propertius may have been dead at the time when these lines were published ;
but we may remember that the famous lines on ' Atticus ' did not see the light
till after the death of Addison.
E 2
53 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
i _ was true of the ' divine company ' of poets in the
Age of Augustus. And the sincere and appreciative in-
terest which they took in one another was not only a source
of great happiness in their lives, but was able to fulfil
the function of an enlightened and generous criticism.
Poets were in the habit of reading their works to their
friends before submitting them to the public. It is cha-
racteristic of the modesty of Virgil and of his unceasing
aim at perfection that he was in the habit of reading to his
friends chiefly those passages in his works of which he was
himself distrustful. The fastidious taste of Horace some-
times rebelled against the importunity of those who desired
to hear him read his own compositions. Yet he describes
himself as 'nobilium scriptorum auditor et ultor 1 ;' and the
well-known testimony of Ovid proves that he was not averse
to gratify an appreciative listener :
Et tenuit nostras numerosus Horatius aures,
Dum ferit Ausonia carmina culta lyra.
The appreciation and criticism of cultivated friends,
themselves authors as well as critics, must have stimulated
and corrected the taste of the poets of the age. That kind
of genius which is most purely original in its activity, and
which communicates an altogether novel impulse to the
world, seems to rely absolutely on itself, and may indeed
be little stimulated by sympathy or affected by criticism.
Of such a type Lucretius in ancient and Wordsworth in
modern times are probably the best examples, though
Dante and Milton seem to approach nearer to it than to
the type of those whose genius is equally great in receiving
from, as in giving to, the world the type of genius of
Homer, Sophocles, Shakspeare, and Goethe. The great
qualities of writers of the first type are force, independence,
boldness of invention and speculation, absolute sincerity.
They are at the same time liable to the defects of incom-
pleteness, one-sidedness, disregard of the true proportion
of things. Their works do not produce the impression
1 Ep. i. 19. 39.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 53
of that all-pervading, perfectly-balanced sanity of genius,
which the Greeks meant when they applied the word o-o^ot
to their poets, and which makes the great men of the
second type not only powerful movers but also the wisest
teachers of the world. The best poetry of the Augustan
Age, if wanting in the highest mode of creative energy,
is eminently free from the defects which sometimes result
from the intenser form of imagination ; it is in a remarkable
degree pervaded and controlled by this sanity of genius.
This excellence of the Augustan literature may be partly,
as was said before, attributed to the familiar intercourse
which men of letters enjoyed with men of action and large
social influence ; partly, and probably to a greater degree,
to the cultivated and generous criticism which men of
genius and fine accomplishment imparted to and received
from one another.
Outside of this friendly circle of men eminent in letters
and social position, there were other literary and critical
coteries hostile to them, who seem to have chosen the
merits of the old writers as the battle-ground on which
they engaged the new school of poetry and criticism.
These critical coteries Horace treats, as Catullus treats
the ' Saecli incommoda pessimi poetae,' and as Pope
treated Dennis and the other poetasters of his time :
Demetri, teque, Tigelli,
Discipularum inter iubeo plorare cathedras 1 ;
and again :
Non ego nobilium scriptorum auditor et ultor
Grammaticas ambire tribus et pulpita dignor 2 .
Horace was evidently sensitive to the envy excited by his
genius and by the favour of Maecenas, and in his later
years it afforded him pleasure to be less exposed than he
had been to carping criticism :
Romae principis urbium
Dignatur soboles inter amabiles
Vatum ponere me choros,
Et iam dente minus mordeor invido 3 .
1 Sat. i. 10. 91-92. 3 Ep. xix. 31-32. 3 Od. iv. 3. 12-15.
54 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
But with the final establishment of his reputation his
fastidiousness suffered more from the pedantry and impor-
tunities of admirers and imitators :
O imitatores, servum pecus, ut mihi saepe
Bilem, saepe iocum vestri movere tumultus 1 .
Even the * mitis sapientia ' of Virgil has condescended to
immortalise the names of Bavius and Maevius, as Pope has
immortalised the heroes of the Dunciad. The often quoted
line of Horace,
Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim 8 ,
marks the beginning of that ' cacoethes scribendi ' which
continued to prevail till the days of Juvenal as a symptom
of the ' strenua inertia ' of life under the Empire.
VI.
Causes of the special devotion to Poetry in tJie
Augustan Age.
The almost exclusive devotion to poetry on the part of
the meanest as well as the greatest writers of the Augustan
Age seems to demand some explanation. The natural
genius of Rome was more adapted to oratory, history, and
didactic exposition than to any of the great forms of poetry.
In the previous generation prose literature had reached the
highest degree of perfection. The style of Cicero is one of
the most admirable and effective vehicles for the varied
purposes of passionate invective or persuasive oratory, of
familiar correspondence, and of popularising the results of
ethical, political, and religious reflection. In Caesar and
Sallust the record of great events in the national life had
at last found a power of clear, terse, and chastened diction,
superior as a vehicle of simple narrative to the style of the
two great historians of later times, if not so rich and varied
in colouring and in poetical and reflective suggestion. Of
the prose literature of the Augustan Age we possess only
one great monument, the extant parts of 'the colossal
1 Ep. i. 19. 19-20. 2 Ep. ii. i. 117.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 55
master-work of Livy ; ' and that was the product of the
later and least brilliant period of this epoch.
The cause of the sudden and permanent decline of
Roman oratory was the extinction of political life. Public
speech could no longer be, as it had been for nearly two
centuries, a great power in the commonwealth. Under the
vigilant and judicious administration of Augustus there
was not scope even for that kind of oratory which flourished
under his successors, and became a very formidable weapon
in the hands of the ' delatores,' that, namely, which is
employed in the prosecution and defence of men charged
with grave offences against the State. Neither was there
scope or inclination for philosophical or historical composi-
tion. Such freedom of enquiry as Cicero -allowed himself
in his treatises De Legibus and De Republica would
scarcely have been tolerated under the monarchy; and the
world was in no mood for any severe strain of thought
or any questioning of the first principles of things. The
new era desired ease, an escape from care and the perplexities
of thought, as well as peace and material well-being. The
spirit of the age was announced in the pastoral strain,
which celebrated its commencement in the apotheosis of
Julius CaesaV, ' amat bonus otia Daphnis.' Again, it would
have been impossible for any one to have composed or at
least to have published a candid history of the times, and
it may have been the discovery of this impossibility that
induced Asinius Pollio to leave his work unfinished. It
would indeed have been a gain for all time had a Roman
Thucydides recorded the ' movement in the State ' from
the Consulship of Metellus till the battle of Actium with
the accuracy and impartiality, the graphic condensation,
the sober dignity, the sensitive perception of the varying
phases of passion and character in states and individuals,
the philosophical discernment of great political principles
destined to act in the same way ' so long as the nature
of man remains the same,' and the deep tragic pathos which
make, even at the present day, the record of ' the twenty-
seven years' war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians ' the
56 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
most vividly interesting and permanently instructive his-
torical work which the world possesses. But even had the
genius of Rome been capable of producing a Thucydides,
the circumstances of the time would have reduced him to
silence. Tacitus regards the establishment of the Empire as
equally fatal to the genius of the historian, as it was to the
genius of the orator: 'Postquam bellatum apud Actium
atque omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit,
magna ilia ingenia cessere. Simul veritas pluribus modis
infracta, primum inscitia rei publicae ut alienae, mox libidine
assentandi V
On the other hand, many circumstances contributed to
give a great stimulus to poetical literature in its most
trivial and transitory as well as its noblest and most
enduring manifestations. It is remarked by a recent
French writer 2 , that poetry is the last form of literature to
wither under a despotism. But it suffers from it most
irretrievably in the end. The poetic imagination is able
to deceive itself by turning away from what is painful and
repulsive in the world, and appearing to extract the ele-
ment of good, of vivid life, or impressive grandeur out of
things evil and fatal in their ultimate effects. Thus it is
able to glorify the pomp and state of imperialism, just
as it is able to glorify the charm to the senses or the
attraction to the social nature afforded by the life of
pleasure. But, in the long run, the decay in the higher
energies arising either from the loss of liberty or the loss of
self-control is more fatal to the nobler forms of art and
poetry than to any other products of intelligence.
Again, the mechanical difficulties of the art had been to.
a great extent overcome in the previous age. The discovery
of the new and rich ore of the Latin language, revealed and
wrought into shapes of massive beauty and delicate grace,
by Lucretius and Catullus, awakened and kept alive in the
great writers of this age the desire to perfect the work
commenced by their predecessors, and to develope all
1 Hist. i. i. a E. Quinet.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 57
the majesty, beauty, and harmony of which their native
speech was capable. The education in grammar and
rhetoric and Greek literature, which in the later years of
the Republic had trained men for the contests of public life,
prepared them to recognise and appreciate the perfection of
style and of rhythm which was now for the first time
attained. But the attainment of this perfection was a
stumbling-block to writers of an inferior order, and to all
the poets who came afterwards. The Augustan poets left
to their successors, what they had not themselves received,
the fatal legacy of an established poetical diction. The
resources of the language for the highest purposes of poetry
seem to have been .exhausted by the supreme effort of this
epoch. The golden perfection of the Augustan style gave
place to the forced rhetoric and the sensational extrava-
gance of the Neronian age and to the soberer but tamer
imitations of the Flavian era.
In its inner inspiration, as well as its outward expres-
sion, the Augustan poetry was the maturest development of
the national mind. The inspiring influences of Latin poetry
were the idea of Rome, the Greek culture, the genial
Italian life. We have seen how the first establishment of
the Empire gave to the national idea a temporary import-
ance and prominence which it had not had since Ennius
first awoke his countrymen to the consciousness of their
destiny. It was only In the Augustan Age, or the few
years preceding it, that the taste of the Romans was
sufficiently educated to appreciate the perfect art of the
Greeks. The whole of Italy was now for the first time
united in one nation. A new generation had been born
and grown to manhood since the Social War. The pride
in Rome and the love of the whole land might now be felt
by all men born between the Alps and the Straits of
Sicily. The districts far removed from the capital, ' by the
sounding Aufidus ' or ' the slow-winding Hindus,' still kept
alive the traditions of a severer morality and the habits of
a simpler and happier life 1 . They were still able to
1 Traditum ab antiquis morem. Hor. Sat. i. 4. 117.
58 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
nourish the susceptible mind of childhood with poetic
fancies 1 . In the following generation the idea of the
empire was no longer one of inspiring novelty, but rather
of a dull oppression. The taste for Greek literature had
lost its freshness and quickening power. The natural
enjoyment of life, the susceptibility to beauty in art and
nature, the love of simplicity, were no longer possible to
minds enervated and hearts deadened by the unrelieved
monotony of luxurious living.
1 Me fabulosae Vulture in Apulo, etc.
HOT. Od. iii. 4. 9.
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
VIRGIL is both the earliest in time and much the most
important in rank among the extant poets of the Augustan
Age. It is only in comparatively recent times that any
question has arisen as to the high position due to him
among the great poets of all ages. His pre-eminence not
only above all those of his own country, but above all other
poets with the exception of Homer, was unquestioned in
the ancient Roman world. His countrymen claimed for
him a rank on a level with, sometimes even above, that
of the great father of European literature. And this esti-
mate of his genius became traditional, and was confirmed
by the general voice of modern criticism. L For eighteen
centuries, wherever any germ of literary taste survived in
Europe, his poems were the principal medium through
which the heroic age of Greece as well as the ancient life
of Rome and Italy was apprehendedy' No writer has, on
the whole, entered so largely and profoundly into the
education of three out of the four chief representatives of
European culture the Italians, the French, and the Eng-
lish at various stages of their intellectual development.
The history of the progress of taste might be largely illus-
trated by reference to the place which the works of Virgil
have held, in the teaching of youth and among the refined
pleasures of manhood, between the age of Dante and the
early part of the present century.
60 VIRGINS PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
Since that time, however, an undoubted reaction has
set in against the prestige once enjoyed by Latin poetry.
And from this reaction Virgil has been the chief sufferer.
The peculiar gifts, social and intellectual, of Horace have
continued to secure for him many friends in every country
and in every generation. The spirit of Lucretius is perhaps
more in unison with the spirit of the present than with that
of any previous age, owing to changes both in imaginative
feeling and in speculative curiosity and belief through
which the world is now passing. The sincerity and un-
studied grace of Catullus are immediately recognised by
all who read his works. But in regard to Virgil, if former
centuries assigned him too high a place, the criticism of
the present century, in Germany at least, and for a certain
time in England, has been much less favourable. French
criticism has indeed remained undeviatingly loyal, and
regards him as the poet, not of Rome only, but of all
those nations which are the direct inheritors of the Latin
civilisation 1 . And in England, at the present time, the
estimate of his genius, expressed both by writers of ac-
knowledged reputation and in the current criticism of the
day, is much more favourable than it was some thirty
years ago.
It would be neither desirable nor possible to enter on
a critical examination of the value of a writer, who has
been so much admired through so long a time, without
taking some account of the prestige attaching to his name.
It may be of use therefore to bring together some of the
more familiar evidences of his reputation and influence in
former times, to show the existence of a temporary re-
action of opinion and to assign causes for it, and to in-
dicate the grounds on which his pre-eminence as the cul-
minating point in Latin literature and his high position
among the poets of the world appear to rest.
1 * Virgile depuis 1'heure ou il parut a te le poete de la Latinite tout entiere.'
Sainte-Beuve.
VIRGIL 'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 61
I.
Estimates of Virgil in former times.
It was as a great epic poet, the poet of national glory
and heroic action, that he was most esteemed in former
times. The Aeneid may not have been regarded as more
perfect in execution than the Eclogues and Georgics, but
it was regarded as a work of higher inspiration. The
criticism which Virgil by implication applies to his earlier
works, in the use of such expressions as 'ludere quae
vellem/ ' carmina qui lusi pastorum,' ' in tenui labor,' etc.,
as compared with the high ambition ^n which he first
indicates his purpose of composing an epic poem in cele-
bration of the glory of Augustus
Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora
coincides with the view which the ancients took of the
relative value of the poetry of external nature and of
heroic action. The contemporaries and successors of Virgil
did not share in the sense of some failure in the treatment
of his subject which is attributed to Virgil himself; and
hence they ranked him as the equal of Homer in the
largest and most important province of poetry. And as
this comparison was the source of excessive honour in the
past, it has been the cause also of the depreciation to
which he has been exposed in the present century.
The great reputation enjoyed by the Aeneid dates from
the first appearance of the poem. The earliest indication
of the admiration which it was destined to excite appears
in the tones of expectation and enthusiasm with which
Propertius predicts the appearance of a work greater than
the Iliad :
Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii :
Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade *.
The immediate effect produced by the poem may be traced
in the frequent allusions to the story of Aeneas in the
fourth book of the Odes of Horace. The continuance of
this influence is unmistakeable in Ovid, and there are also
1 Eleg. iii. 32. 64-65.
62 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
many traces of Virgilian expression in the prose style of
Livy l . The author of the dialogue ' De Oratoribus ' tes-
tifies to the favour which the poet enjoyed, even before
the publication of his epic, both with the Emperor and
with the whole people, who * on hearing some of his verses
recited in the theatre rose in a body and greeted him, as
he happened to be present at the spectacle, with the same
marks of respect which they showed to the Emperor him-
self 2 .' He would thus appear, even in his lifetime, to have
thoroughly ' touched the national fibre 3 ,' and to have gained
that place in the admiration of his countrymen which he
never afterwards lost. By the poets who came after him
his memory was cherished with the veneration men feel
to a great master, united to the affection which they feel
to a departed friend. Lucan indeed rather enters into
rivalry with him than follows in his footsteps ; nor can
there be any surer way of learning to appreciate the
peculiar greatness of Virgil's manner than by reading
passages of the Aeneid alongside of passages of the Phar-
salia. The new poets under the Flavian dynasty, Statius,
Silius Italicus, and Valerius Flaccus, though they failed to
apprehend the secret of its success, made the Aeneid their
model, in the arrangement of their materials, in their dic-
tion, and in the structure of their verse. Statius, in bidding
farewell to his Thebaid, uses these words of acknowledg-
ment :
Vive, precor, nee tu divinam Aeneida tempta,
Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora * ;
and Silius, having occasion to mention Mantua, celebrates
it as
Mantua, Musarum domus, atque ad sidera cantu
Evecta Aonio, et Smyrnaeis aemula plectris 5 .
Martial, among many other tributes of admiration 6 scat-
1 Cf. Wolflin in the Philologus, xxvi, quoted by Comparetti.
Tac. De Oratoribus, ch. xiii.
'Si Virgile faisait aux Remains cette illusion d'avoir egale ou surpasse
Homere, c'est qu'il avait touch6 fortement la fibre Romaine.' Sainte-Beuve.
Thebaid, xii. 816.
Silius, Punic, viii. 595.
e.g. iv. 14. 14; xii. 4. i; xiv. 186; v. 10. 7; viii. 56, etc.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 63
tered over his poems, says of Virgil that he could have
surpassed Horace in lyric, Varius in tragic poetry, had he
chosen to enter into rivalry with them 1 . The younger
Pliny 2 , speaking of the number of books, statues, and
busts possessed by Silius, adds these words : * Vergilii ante
omnes cuius natalem religiosius quam suum celebravit,
Neapoli maxime, ubi monumentum eius adire ut templum
solebat.' But the greatest proof of Virgil's influence on
the later literature of Rome is seen in many traces of
imitation of his style in the language of the historian
Tacitus,' the one great literary genius born under the
Empire. So great a master of expression would not have
incurred this debt except to one whom he regarded as
entitled above all others to stamp the speech of Rome
with an imperial impress. In Juvenal there are many
references and allusions to familiar passages in the Aeneid 3 :
and it appears from him that the works of Virgil and
Horace had in his time become what they have since con-
tinued to be, the common school-books of all who obtained
a liberal education. It is one of the hardships of the
schoolmaster's life, described in his seventh Satire, to have
to listen by lamplight to the 'crambe repetita' of the daily
lesson,
Quum totus decolor esset
Flaccus et haereret nigro fuligo Maroni 4 .
After the end of the first century A.D., even the imita-
tive poets of Rome become rare; but the pre-eminence ^
still enjoyed by Virgil is attested by the number of com- f\
mentaries written on his works, the most famous of them
being the still extant commentary of Servius, belonging
to the latter part of the fourth century. The fortune of
Virgil has in this respect been similar to that of his great
countryman Dante. From the time of his death till the
extinction of ancient classical culture, there was a regular
1 viii. 1 8. 5-9.
2 Ep. iii. 7.
3 e.g. i. 162 ; iii. 199; v. 45, 138 ; vi. 434, etc.; vii. 66, 226, 236, etc.
* vii. 226.
64 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
.succession of rhetoricians and grammarians who lectured
and wrote treatises on his various poems. Among those
who preceded Servius, the most famous names are those of
Asconius Pedianus, Annaeus Cornutus, the friend of Per-
sius, and Valerius Probus, in the first century A.D. These
commentators supplied materials to Suetonius for the life
on which that of Aelius Donatus, which is still extant, is
founded. The frequent quotations from Virgil in the de-
sultory criticism of Aulus Gellius and the systematic dis-
cussions in the Saturnalia of Macrobius attest the minute
study of his poems in the interval between the second and
the fifth centuries. Similar testimony to his continued
influence is afforded by the early Christian writers, espe-
cially by Augustine. And though there may be traced
in them a struggle between the pleasure which they de-
rived from his poetry and the alienation of their sym-
pathies arising from his being a pagan, yet it is probable
that the favour shown to him and to Cicero during the
first strong reaction from everything associated with the
beauty of the older religion, was due as much to the pure
and humane spirit of their teaching as to the fascination of
their style : nor perhaps was this teaching inoperative in
moulding the thought and giving form to the religious
imagination of the Latin Church. The number and ex-
cellence of the MSS. of Virgil, the most famous of which
date from the fourth and fifth centuries, confirm the im-
pression of the continued favour which his works enjoyed
before and subsequent to the overthrow of the Roman rule
in the West. Wherever learning flourished during the
darkest period of this later time, the poems of Virgil were
held in special esteem./ Thus we read in connexion with
the literary studies of'Bede: 'Virgil cast over him the
same spell which he cast over Dante : verses from the
Aeneid break his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple
ventures on the track of the great master in a little eclogue
descriptive of the approach of spring 1 .' His works were
1 Green's History of the English People, p. 37.
VIRGWS PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 65
taught in the Church schools: and the feeling 'with which ^
he was regarded by the more tolerant minds of the
mediaeval Church appears in a mass sung in honour of
St. Paul at the end of the fifteenth century:
Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus fudit super eum
Piae rorem lacrimae ;
Quern te inquit reddidissem
Si te vivum inuenissem
Poetarum maxima * J
The traditional veneration attaching to his name, among
the classes too ignorant to know anything of his works,
survived during the middle ages in the fancies which
ascribed to him the powers of a magician or beneficent
genius, appearing in many forms and at various times and
places widely separated from one another.
With the first revival of learning and letters in different
countries, the old pre-eminence of Virgil again asserts itself.
In England ' the earliest classical revival ' (to quote again
the words of Mr. Green) ' restored Caesar and Virgil to the
list of monastic studies, and left its stamp on the pedantic
style, the profuse classical quotations of writers like William
of Malmesbury or John of Salisbury.' One of the earliest
works in Scottish literature is the translation of the Aeneid
by Gawain Douglas. It is characteristic of the rudimentary
state of learning at the time when this translation appeared
that the Sibyl is represented as a nun, who directs Aeneas
to tell his beads 2 . But the greatest testimony to the per-
sistence of Virgil's fame and influence in the western world
is the homage which the genius of Dante pays to the shade V
of his great countryman. ' May the long zeal avail me and '
the great love that made me search thy volume. Thou art"''
my master and my author. Thou art he from whom I took
the good style that did me honour 3 . 5 The feeling with
which Dante gives himself up to the guidance of Virgil
1 Quoted by Comparetti ; and also in Bahr's Romische Literatur.
2 Works of Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, by John Small, M.A., vol. i.
p. cxlv.
3 Carlyle's Translation of the Inferno.
VOL. I. F
66 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
through all the mystery of the lower realms is like that
under which Ennius evokes the shade of Homer from the
1 halls of Acheron ' to interpret to him the secrets of creation.
Dante combines the reverence for a great master, which
seems to be more natural to the genius of Italy than to that
of other nations, with a high self-confidence and a bold and
original invention. Lucretius expresses a similar enthusiasm
for Homer, Ennius, Empedocles, and Epicurus ; and by
Virgil the same feeling is, though not directly expressed,
yet profoundly felt towards Homer and Lucretius. And in
all these cases the admiration of their predecessors is an
incentive, not to imitative reproduction, but to new creation.
It was as the poet of 'that Italy for which Camilla the
virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus and Nisus died of wounds '
that the poet of mediaeval Florence paid homage to the
ancient poet of Mantua. The admiration of Dante, like
that of Tacitus, is the more corroborative of the spell exer-
cised over the Italian mind by the art and style of Virgil
from the difference in the type of genius and character which
these poets severally represent. The influence of Virgil was
exercised, with a power more over-mastering and injurious
to their originality, upon the later poets and scholars of
Italy with whom the Renaissance begins. The progress of
modern poetry was for a long time accompanied and it
would be difficult to say whether it was thereby more
obstructed or advanced by a new undergrowth of Latin
poetry, for the higher forms of which Virgil served as the
principal model. Petrarch attached more importance to his
epic .poem of 'Africa,' written in imitation of the rhythm
and style of the Aeneid, than to his Sonnets. The influence"
>/ of Virgil on the later Renaissance in Italy is abundantly
f\ proved in the works of poets, scholars, and men of letters in
that age. Ninety editions of his works are said to have
been published before the year I5OO 1 . From Italy this
influence passed to France and England, and was felt, not
1 Mr. Small, in his account of the writings of Bishop Gavin Douglas,
says, The works of Virgil passed through ninety editions before the year
1500.'
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 67
by scholars and critics only, but by the great poets and
essayists, the orators and statesmen of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. It was discussed as an open question
whether the Iliad or the Aeneid was the greater epic poem :
and it was then necessary for the admirers of the Greek
rather than of the Latin poet to assume an apologetic tone 1 .
Scaliger ranked Virgil above Homer and Theocritus.
His prestige was greatest during the century of French
ascendency in modern literature, that, namely, between
the age of Milton and that of Lessing. The chief criti-
cal law-giver in that century was Voltaire, and no great
critic has ever expressed a livelier admiration of any poem
than he has of the Aeneid. It is to him we owe the saying,
( Homere a fait Virgile, dit on ; si cela est, c'est sans doute
son plus bel ouvrage 2 .' He claims elsewhere for the second,
fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid a great superiority
over the works of all Greek poets 3 . He says also that the
Aeneid is the finest monument remaining from antiquity.
As Spenser was called the ' poet's poet,' so Virgil might be
called the orator's poet. Even by a rhetorician of the
second century the question was discussed whether Virgil
' was more a poet or an orator V Bossuet is said to have
known his works by heart 5 . In the great era of English
oratory, no author seems to have been so familiarly known or
was so often quoted. We read in a recent sketch of the life
of Burke 6 , ' Most writers have constantly beside them some
favourite classical author, from whom they endeavour to take
their prevailing tone. . . . Burke, according to Butler, always
had a ragged Delphin Virgil not far from his .elbow.' A
vestige of the attraction which his words had for an older
school of English politicians may be traced in the survival
of Virgilian quotation in some of the parliamentary warfare
of recent times. The important place which Virgil has
1 See Conington's Introduction to the Aeneid.
2 Appendix to the Henriade.
3 Diet. Philos., art. Epopee.
* Quoted by Comparetti.
6 Sainte-Beuve, * Causeries du Lundi.'
By Mr. Payne, in the Clarendon Press Series.
F 2
68 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
/
filled in the teaching of our public schools the great nurses
of our classic statesmen has perhaps not been without
some influence in shaping our national history 1 . It would
be no exaggeration to say that the poems of Virgil, and
especially the Aeneid, have contributed more than any
other works of art in modern times, not only to stamp
the impression of ancient Rome on the imagination, but
to educate the sensibility to generous emotion as well as
to literary beauty. There is probably no author, even at
the present day, of whom some knowledge may be with
more certainty assumed among cultivated people of every
nation.
II.
Change in the estimate of Virgil in the present century ',
and its causes.
This unbroken ascendency of eighteen centuries, which
might almost be described in the words applied by Lucre-
tius to the ascendency of Homer
Adde Heliconiadum comites ; quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus
is as great a fortune as that which has fallen to the lot of
any writer. If any one ever succeeded in securing that
which Tacitus says 'should be to. a man the one object of
an insatiable ambition,' to leave after him ' a happy memory
of himself 2 ,' that may be truly said of Virgil. Though his
name may henceforth be less famous, it cannot be deprived
of its lustre in the past. Nor does it seem possible that this
1 ' Who shall say what share the turning over and over in their mind, and
masticating, so to speak, in early life as models of their Latin verse, such things
as Virgil's
Disce, puer, virtutem ex me, verumque laborem,
or Horace's
Fortuna saevo laeta negotio,
has not had in forming the high spirit of the upper class in France and
England, the two countries where Latin verse has most ruled the schools, and
the two countries which most have had, or have, a high upper class and a high
upper class spirit?' High Schools and Universities in Germany, by M. Arnold.
2 Tac. Ann. iv. 38.
VIRGINS PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 69
reputation could have been maintained so long, in different
ages and nations, without some catholic excellence, depend-
ing on original gifts as well as trained accomplishment,
which could unite so many diversely-constituted minds of
the highest capacity in a common sentiment of veneration.
The secret of his long ascendency is, in the words of Sainte-
Beuve, that ' he gave a new direction to taste, to the pas-
sions, to sensibility : he divined at a critical period of the
world 's history what the future would love.'
It is only in the present century that the question
has been asked whether this great reputation was deserved.
But the earliest witness who might be called against his
claims to this high distinction is Virgil himself. In the
Eclogues and Georgics the delight which he finds in the
exercise of his art is qualified by a sense of humility,
arising from a feeling of some want of elevation in his sub-
ject. In his last hours he desired that the Aeneid should
be burned, and that this was hot a mere impulse arising
from the depression of illness may be inferred from the
request which he made to Varius, before leaving Italy,
'that if anything happened to him he should destroy the
Aeneid.' A letter written to Augustus is quoted by Ma-
crobius, in which Virgil speaks of himself as having under-
taken a work of such vast compass ' paene vitio mentis V
No poet could well be animated by a loftier ambition than
Virgil; yet few great poets seem to have been so little
satisfied with their own success. It was not in his nature
to feel or express the confident sense of superiority which
sustained Ennius and Lucretius in their self-appointed
tasks, nor even that satisfaction with the work he had done
and that assurance of an abiding place in the memory
of men which relieve the ironical self-disparagement of
Horace.
The most obvious explanation of this passionate and
pathetic desire that the work to which he had given eleven
years of his maturest power should not survive him, is the
1 i. 24. ii.
70 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
unfinished state, in respect of style, in which the poem was
left. He had set aside three years for the final revision of
the work and the removal of those temporary ( make-shifts,'
which had been originally inserted with full knowledge
of their inadequacy, in order not to check the ardour of
composition. After having devoted three years of his
youth to the execution of a work so slight in purpose
and so small in compass as the Eclogues, he might well
feel depressed by the thought that a work of such high
purpose and , so vast a scope as the Aeneid and a work of
which such expectations as those expressed by Propertius
were entertained should be given to the world before
receiving the final touch of the master's hand.
Yet the words in the letter to Augustus, ' paene vitio
mentis tantum opus ingressus mihi videar,' if they are to be
taken as a true expression of his feeling, imply a deeper
ground of dissatisfaction with his undertaking. Horace,
in the estimate which he forms of his own work, seems
to waver between the self-assertion and the modesty of
genius. But his modesty arises from his thorough self-
knowledge, and from his understanding the limits within
which a complete success was attainable by him. But
that of Virgil seems to be a weakness incidental to his
greatest gifts, his sense of perfection, his appreciation of
every kind of excellence. His large appreciation of the
genius of others, from the oldest Greek to the latest Latin
poet, . his regard for the authority of the past, his
attitude of a scholar in many schools, his willing accept-
ance of Homer as his guide through all the unfamiliar
region of heroic adventure, were scarcely compatible with
the buoyant spirit, as of some discoverer of unknown
lands, which was needed to support him in an enterprise so
arduous and so long-sustained as the composition of a
great literary epic. The task which he set himself required
of him to combine into one harmonious work of art, which
at the same time should bear the stamp of originality,
of being a new thing in the world, the characteristics
and excellences of various minds belonging to various
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 71
times. With such aims it was scarcely possible that the
actual execution of his work should not fall below his ideal
of perfection. Especially must he have recognised his
own deficiency in the pure epic impulse, which apparently
sustained Homer without conscious effort. He could not
feel or make others feel the culminating interest in the
combat between Turnus and Aeneas, which Homer feels
and makes others feel in the combat between Hector and
Achilles. In his earlier national poem he had vindicated
the glory of the ploughshare in opposition to the glory
of the sword ; and, in his later battle-pieces, he must have
felt his immeasurable inferiority to the poet of the Iliad.
And yet neither the precedents of epic poetry nor his
purpose of celebrating the national glory of Rome per-
mitted him to leave this part of his task unattempted. To
describe a battle or a single combat in the spirit and with
the fellow-feeling of Homer has been granted to no poet
since his' time. Among modern poets perhaps Scott has
approached nearer to him than any other. Among Roman
authors, Ennius, who gained distinction as a soldier
before he became known as a writer, was more fitted to
succeed in such an attempt than the poet whose earliest
love was for 'the fields and woods and running streams
among the valleys.'
As the comparison of his own epic poem with the
greatest of the Greek epics is the probable explanation
of Virgil's own dissatisfaction with the Aeneid, so it is the
cause of the adverse criticism to which the poem has been
exposed in recent times. Of these adverse criticisms,
that expressed by Niebuhr, both in his History of Rome
and in his Historical Lectures, was among the earliest.
In the former he expresses his belief that Virgil, at the
approach of death, wished ' to destroy what in those
solemn moments he could not but view with sadness, as
the groundwork of a false reputation 1 '. In the latter he
says, ' The whole of the Aeneid, from the beginning to the
1 v.ol. i. p. 197, Hare and .Thirlwall's 'translation. ..
73 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
end, is a misconceived idea.' f Virgil is one of the re-
markable instances of the way in which a man can miss
his true calling. His was lyric poetry.' ' It is a pity that
posterity so much overrated the very work which was
but a failure 1 .'
Although the service rendered to the study of antiquity
by the historical insight of Niebuhr is probably as great
as that rendered by the genius of any scholar of this
century, yet the opinions expressed by him on literature
are often more arbitrary than authoritative. Still this ver-
dict on the merits of the Aeneid was in accordance with
the most advanced criticism of the time when it was written,
both in Germany and England. The writer by whom the
critical taste of England was most stimulated and enlarged
about the same time was Coleridge; and in his 'Table
Talk' such disparaging dicta as this occur more than once ;
' If you take from Virgil his diction and metre, what do you
leave him?' The whole tone of the criticism which arose
out of the admiration of German thought and poetry was
thoroughly opposed to the spirit in which Latin literature
had been admired. Mr. Carlyle also expressed in one of
his earliest works the Life of Schiller an estimate of
the value of Virgil, which was not uncommon among
younger scholars at the Universities some thirty years ago.
* Virgil and Horace,' he writes, 'he (Schiller) learned to
construe accurately, but is said to have taken no deep
interest in their poetry. The tenderness and meek beauty
of the first, the humour and sagacity and capricious pathos
of the last, the matchless elegance of both would of course
escape his inexperienced perception; while the matter of
their writings must have appeared frigid and shallow to a
mind so susceptible.' Even the warmest admirers of Virgil
about that time, such as Keble, are content to claim for
him high excellence as the poet of outward nature. The
late Professor Conington, while showing the finest apprecia-
tion of 'the marvellous grace and delicacy, the evidences
1 Lectures on Roman History, vol. iii. p. 131 it seq, (London, 1855.)
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 73
of a culture most elaborate and most refined,' in the poet
to the interpretation of whose works he devoted the
best years of a scholar's life, has questioned 'the appro-
priateness of the special praise given to Virgil's agricultural
poetry, and conceded though with more hesitation to his
pastoral compositions.' He speaks also of it as an ad-
mitted fact that ' in undertaking the Aeneid at the com-
mand of a superior, Virgil was venturing beyond the
province of his genius.' And he describes this disparaging
estimate as the opinion 'which is now generally entertained
on Virgil's claims as an epic poet V Mr. Keightley is also
quoted by him as speaking of Virgil as ' perhaps the least
original poet of antiquity V It is certainly not in the spirit
of an ardent admirer that the author of Virgil's life in the
'Dictionary of Classical Biography and Mythology' ap-
proaches the criticism of his poetry. But it is by German
critics and scholars that Virgil's claim to a high rank among
the poets of the world is in the present day most seriously
impugned. Thus to take two or three conspicuous in-
stances of their disparaging criticism : Mommsen in his
History of Rome 3 speaks contemptuously of the ' successes
of the Aeneid, the Henriade, and the Messiad ; ' Bernhardy
in his Grundriss der Romiscken Litteratur (1871) brings
together a formidable list of German critics and commen-
tators unfavourable to the merits of the Aeneid, in which
the illustrious name of Hegel appears ; Gossrau in his
edition of the Aeneid quotes from Richter (as a specimen
of the unfavourable opinions pronounced by many critics)
the expression of a wish that, with the exception of the
descriptions and episodes, the rest of the poem had been
burned 4 ; and W. S. Teuffel, among other criticisms which
* damn with faint praise,' has the following : ' Aber er ist
zu weich und zu wenig genial als dass er auf dem seiner
1 Conington's Virgil, Introduction to vol. ii.
2 Introduction to Eclogue v.
3 Book iii. chap. xiv.
* He adds the comment, ' Equidem dubito num legerit. Nam et philologos
ita iudicare audivi de Virgilio ut non legisse eos appareret.'
74 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
Natur zusagendsten Gebiete hatte beharren und darauf
Ruhm ernten konnen.'
The chief, as well as the most obvious, cause of the
revolt against Virgil's poetical pre-eminence, which, though
yielding apparently to a revived sentiment of admiration,
has not yet spent its force, is the great advance made in
Greek scholarship in England and Germany during the
present century. Familiarity with Latin literature is pro-
bably not less common than it was a century ago, but it is
much less common relatively to familiarity with the older
literature. The attraction of the latter has been greater from
its novelty, its originality, its higher intrinsic excellence, its
profounder relation to the heart and mind of man. The
art of Homer and Theocritus are felt to be an immediate
reproduction from human life and outward nature ; the art
of Virgil seems, at first sight, to be only a reproduction
from this older and truer copy. The Roman and Italian
character of his workmanship, the new result produced by
the recasting of old materials, the individual and inalien-
able quality of his own genius, were for a time obscured, as
the evidences of the large debt which he owed to his Greek
masters became more and more apparent.
Again, the greater nearness of the Augustan Age, not
in time only but in spirit and manners, to our own age,
which in the last century told in Virgil's favour in the
comparison with Homer, tells the other way now. The
critics of last century were interested in other ages, in so
far as they appeared to be like their own. The rude
vigour and stirring incident of the Homeric Age or the
Middle Ages had no attraction for men living under the
regime of Louis XIV. and XV. or of Queen Anne and the
first Georges. What an illustrious living Frenchman says
of the great representative of French ideas in the last
century might be said generally of its criticism. * Voltaire,'
says M. Renan, ' understood neither the Bible, nor Homer,
nor Greek art, nor the ancient religions, nor Christianity,
nor the Middle Ages 1 .' And yet he was prepared to
1 Questions Contemporaines. L'lnstmction 'Superieure' en France. *
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 75
pronounce his judgment on them by the light of that
admirable common sense which he applied to the questions
of his own day. One of the great gains of the nineteenth
century oyer former centuries consists in its more vital
knowledge of the past. The imaginative interest now felt
in times of nascent and immature civilisation all tells in
favour of Homer and against Virgil. The scientific study
of human development also tends more and more to awaken
interest in a remote antiquity. Even the ages antecedent
to all civilisation have a stronger attraction for the ad-
venturous spirit of modern enquiry than the familiar aspect
of those epochs in which human culture and intelligence
have reached their highest level. This new direction
given to imaginative and speculative curiosity, while greatly
enhancing the interest felt, not in the Iliad and Odyssey
only, but in the primitive epics of various races, has
proportionately lowered that felt in the literary epics
belonging to times of advanced civilisation. Recognising
the radical difference between the two kinds of repre-
sentation, some recent criticism refuses to the latter
altogether the title of epic poetry, and relegates it to
some province of imitative and composite art. There is
a similar tendency in the present day to be interested
in varieties of popular speech, in language before it has
become artistic. Both tendencies are good in so far as
they serve to draw attention to neglected fields of know-
ledge. They are false and mischievous in so far as they
lead to the disparagement of the great works of cultivated
eras, or to any forgetfulness of the superior grace, richness,
and power which are imparted to ordinary speech by the
labours of intellect and imagination employed in creating
a national literature.
Other causes connected with a great expansion of human
interests acting on the imagination, and with the revolt
against the prevailing poetical style, which arose about
the beginning of the present century, have tended to lower
the authority of writers who formed the standard of taste
to previous ages. The desire of the new era was to escape.
76 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
from the exhausted atmosphere of literary tradition, and
to return again to the simplicity of Nature and human
feeling. The genius of Roman literature is more in
harmony with eras of established order, of adherence to
custom, of distinct but limited insight into the outward
world and into human life, than to eras of expansive
energy, of speculative change, of vague striving to attain
some new ideal of duty or happiness. The genius of
Greece exercised a powerful influence on several of the
great English and German poets who lived in the new era.
But neither Goethe nor Schiller, Byron nor Scott, Shelley
nor Keats were at all indebted, in thought, sentiment, or
expression, to the poets of the Augustan Age. Among
the great poets of this new era the only one known
to have greatly admired Virgil, and who in his poems
founded on classical subjects seems to have been influenced
by him, is the one who most decidedly proclaimed his
revolt against the artificial diction and representation of
the school of classical imitators, the poet Wordsworth.
The very perfection of Virgil's art, combined with the
calmness and moderation of his spirit, were out of harmony
with the genius of such a time. He seemed to have
nothing new to teach the eager -generation which regarded
the world and speculated on its own destiny with feelings
very different from those of the generations that went
before it. The truth of his sentiment, its adaptation to
the spiritual movement of his own age, in which it gained
ascendency like a new revelation^ had caused it to pass
into the modes of thought and feeling habitual to the
world. This too may be said of the ethical feeling and
common sense of Cicero's philosophical treatises. Moral
speculation has been so long and so deeply permeated by
the thought expressed in these treatises that it now appears
trite and common-place. So too /the moderation and
unfailing propriety of Virgil's language had no attraction
of freshness or novelty to stimulate the imagination. The
direct force of language in Homer or Lucretius never can
become trite or common-place. It affects the mind now
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 77
as powerfully and immediately as in the day of its creation.
There is also a kind of rhetorical style which produces
its effect either of pleasure or distaste immediately. It
does not conceal its true character, but tries to force the
reader's admiration by startling imagery, or strained em-
phasis, or tricks of allusive periphrasis. Whether this style
is admired or detested, it does not lose its character with
the advance of years. Juvenal and Persius probably affect
their readers in much the same way as they did three
centuries or seventeen centuries ago. But this is not the
style of Virgil and of Horace. They produce their effect
neither through that direct force which causes a thought
to penetrate or an image to rise up immediately before
the mind, nor by strained efforts at rhetorical effect. As
their language became assimilated with the thought and
feeling of successive generations, it may have lost some-
thing of the colouring of sentiment and association, of the
delicate shades of meaning, of the vital force which it
originally possessed. It has entered into the culture of
the world chiefly through impressions produced in early
youth, when the mind, though susceptible of graceful
variations of words and harmonious effects of rhythm, is
too immature to realise fulness of meaning half-concealed
by the well-tempered beauty and musical charm of language.
The style of Virgil is the fruit of long reflection, and it
requires long reflection and familiarity to draw out all
its meaning. The word 'meditari,' applied by him to his
earlier art, expresses the process through which his mind
passed in acquiring its mastery over words. In appre-
hending the charm of his style it is not of the spontaneous
fertility of Nature that we think, but of the harvest yielded
to assiduous labour by a soil at once naturally rich and
obedient to cultivation ' iustissima tellus.' These charac-
teristics of his art were not unlikely to be overlooked in
an age which demanded from the literature of imagination
a rapid succession of varied and powerful impressions.
7 8 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
III.
Virgil's supreme importance in Latin Literature dependent
on his representative character.
Though some of the causes which tended to lower the
estimation in which Virgil was held were only temporary
in their operation, yet it can hardly be doubted that his
claim to pre-eminence in Latin literature and to a high
rank among the greatest poets of all times must, if put
forward at all, be maintained on somewhat different grounds
from those on which his position formerly rested. He
never again can enter into rivalry with Homer as the in-
spired poet of heroic action. He cannot again enjoy the
advantage of being widely known, while access to his pre-
decessor is confined to a few scholars not much in sym-
pathy with the poet of an age so far separated from their
own. The art of Virgil in so far as it is a copy of the art
of Homer has already produced all the effect on the culture
of the world which it is destined to produce. The life of
the heroic age will continue to be known to all future
times as it was originally fashioned by the creative mind
of Homer, not as it was modified by the after- thought of
Virgil.
What charm Virgil had for his countrymen as the reviver
of the early poetry of Greece and as the first creator of
the early romance of Italy, what permanent value he
has as one of the great interpreters of the secret of
Nature and of the meaning of human life, will appear in
the course of the detailed examination of his various
poems. But there are some considerations, from an his-
torical point of view, which may be stated provisionally as
grounds for assigning to him the place of most importance
in Latin literature. He is, more than any other Latin
writer, a representative writer, representative both of the
general national idea and of the sentiment and culture of
his own age. One clear note of this representative cha-
racter is that he absorbs and supersedes so much of what
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 79
went before him, and that he anticipates and also super-
sedes much that came after him. The interest which
Rome and Italy have for all times, the interest which the
Augustan Age has as the epoch of the maturest civilisa-
tion of ancient times and as a great turning-point in
the history of mankind, will secure the attention of the
world to an author who sets before it, in forms of pure
art and with elaborate workmanship, the idealised spec-
tacle of the marvellous career of Rome, and enables it best
to feel the charm of natural beauty and ancient memories
associated with Italy; and who has interpreted, as no one
else has done, the meaning and tendency of his age, and
of the change which was then preparing for the human
spirit and for the nations of the future.
6j^The Aeneid enables us to feel, in a way in which no
other work of Latin literature can do, all those elements
in the idea of the destiny, the genius, and character of
Rome which most powerfully move the imagination, and
at the same time to forget all those elements of hard-
ness, unscrupulous injustice, and oppressive domination on
which the historian is forced to dwell, and which alienate
the sympathies as much as her nobler aspect compels the
admiration of mankind. The grandeur and dignity in-
alienably attaching to the Imperial State appear softened
and mellowed by Virgil's marvellous art and humane feeling.
'The Aeneid,' says Hallam, 'reflects the glory of Rome
as from a mirror V/ ' It remains,' says Mr. Merivale, 'the
most complete picture of the national mind at its highest
elevation, the most precious document of national history,
if the history of an age is revealed in its ideas, no less than
in its events and incidents 2 .' 'Virgile,' writes M. Sainte-
Beuve, 'a ete le poete du Capitole 3 .' 'Dans ce poe'me,'
writes M. Coulanges of the Aeneid, ' ils (les Remains) se
voyaient, eux, leur fondateur, leur ville, leurs institutions,
leurs croyances, leur Empire V M. Patin again describes
1 Introduction to the Literature of Europe, Part II. chap. v.
2 Roman Empire, chap. xli. 3 Etude sur Virgile.
4 La cit< antique.
80 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
the same poem as 'expression de Rome, de Rome entlere,
de la Rome de tous les temps, de celle des Empereurs, des
Consuls, des RoisV He might have added that it had
anticipated the idea of the Rome of the Popes, in some at
least of its aspects. .^The type of character which Virgil
has conceived in Aeneas is more like that of the milder
among the spiritual rulers of mediaeval Rome than that
either of the Homeric heroes or of the actual Consuls and
Imperators who commanded the Roman armies and ad-
ministered the affairs of the Roman State, It has been
said of him by another Frenchman that he was more fitted
to be the founder of an order of monks than of an Empire.
Virgil's object is to make his readers believe in the mission
of Rome, as appointed by Divine decree, for the ultimate
peace and good government of the world. The work of
Rome in the past, the present, and the future is conceived
by him as a manifestation of the Deity in his justice,
authority, and beneficence^/
(2.) The spell which Rome exercises over the imagination
is quite distinct from the charm which the thought of Italy
has for the hearts of men. /The love of Italy was a senti-
ment as deeply rooted in Virgil's nature as his pride in
Rome. This sentiment pervades all his works and inspire^
some of his noblest poetry. In his pastoral poems, under
all the borrowed imagery of the Greek idyll, it reveals
itself in his sensibility to the beauty of the Italian climate
('caeli indulgentia '), to the charm of the various seasons,
to the distinctive graces of the plants and wild flowers
native to the soil, and in the expression of the deep attach-
ment with which the peasant-proprietor clung to his little
plot of ground as the sphere alike of his cares and of his
happiness* In the Aeneid this patriotic feeling shows itself,
as it does in the poetry of Scott, in the enthusiasm with
which the martial memories of famous towns and tribes
are recalled in association with the picturesque features of
the land. But by no work of art, ancient or modern, is
1 Etudes sur la poesie Latine.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 81
the complete impression, moral and physical, of the old
Italian land and people,
Terra antiqua potens armis atque ubere glaebae,
produced with such vivid truthfulness and such enduring
charm as by the Georgics. To express the whole meaning
of Italy, it was necessary that the poet should feel a pride
in her stubborn industry l as well as in her warlike energy ;
that he should cherish for the whole land, now united as
one nation, an impartial love, and that he should be deeply
susceptible of that beauty of season and landscape which
was a more self-sufficing source of pleasure 2 to the cul-
tivated Italian than even to the ancient Greek. Some
sympathy with the ' Itala virtus ' the courage and dis-
cipline of the Marsian and other Sabellian races Ennius
had already expressed in his national epic ; but he was
interested solely in military and political life, in the ac-
tivity of the camp and battle-field, the forum and senate-
house. Virgil was the first and the only Roman poet to
realise the full inspiration of that thought, to which he
gives utterance in the close of one of his noblest pas-
sages,
Salve, magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,
Magna virum.
(3. )T Virgil has expressed also more clearly than any other
the political feeling and tendency of his time^ He could
not indeed teach the whole lesson of the early Empire,
or foresee, in the prosperity and glory that followed the
battle of Actium, the oppression experienced under the
rule of Tiberius, the degradation experienced under Nero.
But his imagination was moved by all those influences
which, in the Augustan Age, were giving a new impulse
and direction to human affairs. . His poems, better than
any other witnesses, enable us to understand how weary
1 ' Perseverantissimo agrorum colendorum studio veteres illi Sabini Quirites
atavique Romani,' etc. Columella.
2 Cf. Lucretius, iii. 105-106:
Quod faciunt nobis annorum tempora, circum
Cum redeunt fetusque ferunt variosque lepores.
VOL. I. G
82 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
the Roman world was of the wars, disturbances, and anar-
chy of the preceding century, how ardently it longed for
the restoration of order and national unity, how thankfully
it accepted the rule of the man who could alone effect this
restoration, and how hopefully it looked forward to a new
era of peace and prosperity, of glory and empire, under
his administration. /'The poetry of Virgil co-operated with
the policy of the Emperor in the work effected in that
age. As Augustus professed to give a new organisation
to the political life of the Republic, Virgil gave a new
direction to its spiritual life, a new significance to its ancient
traditions. Augustus, in depriving Rome of her liberty,
confirmed for centuries her empire over the world : Virgil,
in abnegating the independent position of Lucretius and
Catullus, established the ascendency of Roman culture
and ideas for a still longer time. As Augustus shaped
the policy, Virgil moulded the political feeling of the
future. It is in his poems that loyalty to one man, which
soon became, and, till a comparatively recent period, con-
tinued to be the master-force in European politics,
apparently a necessary stage in the ultimate evolution
of free national life on a large scale, finds its earliest
expression. And the loyalty of Virgil is not merely a
natural emotion towards one who is regarded as the
embodiment of law as well as of power, but is a reli-
gious acknowledgment of a government, sanctioned and
directed by the Divine will. Perhaps one reason why
he is read with less sympathy in the present than in pre-
vious centuries, is that his political ideal appears to us
a lower ideal than that of a free Commonwealth. But in
Virgil's time faith in the Republic had become imprac-
ticable, and, though the sentiment continued to ennoble
the life of individuals, it was powerless to change the
current of events. Loyalty to a person appealed to the
imagination with the charm of novelty, and might be
justified to the conscience of the world, as being, for that
time and the times that came after, the necessary bond
of civil order and union.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 83
(4.) As Virgil first expressed the political tendency of his
age, so he is the purest exponent of its ethical and religious
sensibility. He recalls the simpler virtues of the olden
time, he represents the humanity of his own age, he antici-
pates something of the piety and purity of the future faith
of the world. [ As, in the development of Roman law, the
spirit of equity fostered by Greek studies gradually gained
ascendency over the native hardness of the Roman temper,
so, from the time of Laelius and the younger Scipio, the
expansion through intellectual culture of the humane and
sympathetic emotions, expressed by the word ' humanitas,'
continued to prevail, in opposition to the spirit of national
exclusiveness habitual to the Roman aristocracy, and not-
withstanding the cruel experience of the Civil Wars. In no
writers is this quality more conspicuous than in Cicero and
in Lucretius. In Lucretius this feeling inspires his pas-
sionate revolt against the ancient religions. The humane
feeling of Virgil, on the other .hand, is in complete harmony
with his religious belief. His word pietas, as is observed
by M. Sainte-Beuve, is the equivalent both of our 'piety'
and of our ' pity.' The Power above man is regarded by
him not as an unreal phantom of our fears,
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
but as the source and sanction of justice and mercy, of
good will and good faith among men.
This view of the relation between the supernatural world
and human life is not indeed the only one which Virgil
shows us. He endeavours, by the Imion of imagination,
philosophy, and tradition, to establish religious opinion as
well as to kindle religious emotions ; nor is he quite suc-
cessful in reconciling these various factors of belief. The "
* Fates,' which are the medium through which man's hap-
piness or misery is allotted, are sometimes stern and in-
flexible, as well as beneficent in their action. They accom-
plish their purposes with no regard to individual rights or
feelings. But though Virgil failed, as much as other creators
of religious systems, in reconciling the necessities of his
G 2
84 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE,
creed with the instincts of human sensibility, it remains
true that in regard to much both of his feeling and intui-
tion, in his firm faith in Divine Providence, in his con-
viction of the spiritual essence in man and of its
independence of and superiority to the body, in his belief
that the future state of the soul depends on the deeds done
in the body, in his sense of sin and purification for sin,
in the value which he attaches to purity and sanctity of
life, his spirit is much more in unison with the faith and
hopes which were destined to prevail over the world, than
with the common beliefs or half-beliefs of his own time.
In his religious and ethical, no less than his political senti-
ment, ' il a devind a une heure decisive du monde ce
qu'aimerait Favenir/ If it was as a great national poet,
the rival of Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus, that he exer-
cised the most powerful spell over his contemporaries, it
was rather as the ' pius vates,' the prophetic teacher,
that, in spite of themselves, he gained ascendency over
the cultivated minds of the early Latin and the medi-
aeval Churches 1 .
(5.) Though other periods of ancient history, and notably
the fifth century B.C. in Greece, were richer in genius and
enjoyed a happier and nobler life than the Augustan Age,
yet this latter age, as the latest of the great literary
epochs of antiquity, inherited the science, wisdom, power,
and beauty stored up in all the art and writings of the past.
The Augustan Age was pre-eminently an age of culture,
and Virgil was pre-eminently the most cultivated man
belonging to the age. In early youth he had learned from
Greek masters all they could teach him in poetry and
rhetoric, in science and philosophy; and through all his life
he combined the productive labours of an artist with the
patient diligence of a student. He was familiar with the
successive schools of Greek poetry, from Homer and Hesiod
1 'Virgile fut en effet une des ames les plus chretiennes du Paganisme.
Quoique attache de tout son coeur a 1'ancienne religion, il a semble quelquefois
pressentir la nouvelle, et un Chretien pieux pourait croire qu'il ne lui manqua,
pour 1'embrasser que de la connaitre.' Gaston Boissier.
VIRGINS PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 85
down to the epic and didactic poets of Alexandria. He
was acquainted with all the physical sciences known in
his time, especially, it is said, with astronomy and medi-
cine. His earlier writings show the influence of the phi-
losophical system of Epicurus, while his later convictions
are more in agreement with the Platonic philosophy. The
oratory of the later books of the Aeneid breathes the spirit
of Stoicism. We are told that he proposed to devote the
years that might remain to him after the completion of the
Aeneid to the further study of philosophy, perhaps with
the view of writing a great poem, which might rival and
answer Lucretius. The extant fragments of Naevius,
Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, and Lucilius, and of later and
obscurer writers such as Hostius and Varro Atacinus, show
that he had read their works, and could skilfully adapt
what he found in them to his own national epic. The
Georgics, again, show a careful study and assimilation of the
thought and language of Lucretius. And to the pursuits
of a scholar he united the research of an antiquary. He
collected from many sources the myths ^and traditions con-
nected with the origin of ancient customs and ceremonies,
or attaching to the towns and tribes of Italy famous in
early times. He was especially well versed in the ceremo-
nial lore of the Priestly Colleges. Thus, in addition to his
higher claims on the admiration of his countrymen, his X
poems were prized by them as a great repertory of their
secular and sacred learning. Many fancies and dim tradi-
tions of a remote antiquity, many vestiges of customs and
ceremonies which have disappeared from the world, many
thoughts and expressions of men who have left scarcely
any other memorial of themselves, still survive, because the
mind of Virgil discerned some element of interest in them
which fitted them to contribute to the representative cha-
racter of the work to which his life was dedicated.
(6.) Virgil's pre-eminence as a literary artist and master of \/
poetical expression is so generally acknowledged that it is
not necessary to illustrate it in this preliminary statement
of the position which he holds in Roman literature. The
\
86 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
Augustan Age was characterised by a careful study and
application of the principles of art, as well as by an elaborate
culture. By the labours and reflection of three or four
generations the Latin language had been gradually changed
from a rude Italian dialect into a great organ of law,
government, and literature. The efforts of the generation
preceding the Augustan Age to attain to perfection in form
and style received their fulfilment in the work accomplished
by Virgil and Horace. Each of them, in his own way,
obtained a complete success ; but the sustained perfection
of a long poem, epic or didactic, is a much greater result
than the perfection shown in the composition of an ode.
I Virgil, alone among his countrymen, discerned the true
conditions in accordance with which a long continuous
poem, epic or didactic, could as a whole gain, and per-
manently retain, the ear of the world ; and, in accordance
with these conditions, he worked the various materials,
descriptive, meditative, narrative, and commemorative, of
the Georgics and Aeneid into poems of large compass,
sustained interest, and finished execution. His style marks
the maturity of development after which the vital force
animating the growth of the Latin language begins to
decay. One of the most sensible causes of this decay in
the idiomatic structure of the language both of verse and
prose is the predominance of Virgil's influence over the
later writers. He and Horace introduced into Latin all
that it could well bear of the subtlety and flexibility which
characterise the Greek tongue. When first introduced, this
infusion of a new force into the Latin language, modifying
the use of words and altering the structure of sentences,
probably appeared to the literary class at Romd a new
source of wealth, colouring words and phrases with the
gleam of old poetic association. But this new infusion,
though an immediate source of wealth, tended to corrupt
the pure current of native speech. The later poetical
style of Rome never regains the lucidity and volume
which it has in Lucretius, or the ease and sparkling
flow of Catullus. The maturity of accomplishment imme-
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 87
diately preceded and partly occasioned the decay in vital
force.
In other arts the maturest excellence often foreruns a
rapid and inevitable decline. One cause of this seems to be,
that the great masters, having once for all expressed in the
happiest manner whatever is best worth expressing within
the range and vision of their own era, leave to their suc-
cessors the choice of tamely imitating them or of striving,
by a strained originality, to gain attention for what is not
worth expressing in any way. Into the first of these
pitfalls the imitative poets of the Flavian era sank, the
more ambitious litterateurs of the Neronian Age fell into
the second. Another cause of the close connexion be-
tween the maturity and the decay of art is that the
representation of man and Nature produced by a great
master is coloured by his own thought and feeling. The
representation thus established gains ascendency over the
future. Each new reproduction of this departs further
from reality. Art becomes thoroughly conventional. It
revives only after a new range of interests, some vital
change in belief and ideas, has arisen in the evolution of
national life, accompanied by a new birth of original
genius, and powerful enough to divert the minds of men
from the contemplation of the old to the novel spectacle of
the world in which they live. The emotions thus excited
force out for themselves a fresh channel : the sound of
poetry is again heard in the land, and the hearts of men
are refreshed :
Ilia cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva.
The imaginative literature of Greece, of England, and of
France has thus renewed itself at various epochs in the
history of these nations. Either the life of the ancient
world was too much exhausted, or the ascendency of Virgil
in the literature of his country was too powerful, to
permit the appearance of any new spring of Latin poetry.
88 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
IV.
Is Virgil to be ranked among the great creative Poets
of the World?
Whether the gifts of intellect and feeling by which
Virgil represented his country and his age entitle him
to a place among the greatest poets of the world, will
be answered variously according to the degree in which
men recognise in him the presence of that diviner faculty
of imagination which no analysis can explain. If we
look to him for the original force of creative imagination
which we find in Homer and Sophocles, on the one hand,
and in the greatest poets of modern times on the other,
we shall fail to establish his equality with them. But
as there have been various types of philosophical intellect
in the world, so there have been various types of imagi-
native power. And among these types we may distinguish
those characteristic of the Hellenic, the Germanic, and
the Italian races. The imaginative art of the Greeks
seems to occupy the middle place between that of the
two other races. The genius of the ancient Latin race
is further removed from that of the modern Germanic
race, than either is from the genius of ancient Greece.
The peculiar richness of our own poetic literature arises
from its combining some of the great characteristics of
each type. While Shakspeare, Scott, and Byron are among
the greatest representatives of the Germanic imagination, the
works of Pope and Gray are purely of the Latin type ;
and those of Dryden, Milton, and Spenser blend Roman
strength or the culture of Latin ideas with English energy
and modern exuberance of fancy: while, again, Shelley,
Keats, and all the greatest among our living poets have
received a powerful impulse from Greek art and Greek
ideas. It must be admitted by students of Latin litera-
ture that the intellectual movement and sensibility of the
present time has a closer affinity with the ancient Greek
and modern Germanic than with the ancient Latin culture.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 89
Students of Homer and Aeschylus, or those who have
once felt the spell of
' Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force,'
of Wordsworth's contemplative elevation and the impas-
sioned ideality of Shelley, find, in turning to Virgil, that
their range of feeling and of contemplation has become
narrower. They no longer enjoy the same illimitable
prospect, they no longer breathe the same keen air, which
buoyed them up on the higher altitudes of poetry. Greek
and modern works of imagination manifest a profounder
feeling, a more varied contemplation of the mystery of life,
than is compatible with the more realistic tendencies of
Latin poetry. And though the representation of the out-
ward world in Virgil is, in its serene beauty, suggestive of
a secret unceasing life, satisfying our tranquil moods, yet it
does not move the mind to that deeper sense of a spiritual
affinity between the soul of man and the soul of Nature
which the great modern poets awaken. The charm and
power of Latin poetry consists, for the most part, in the
vital strength of feeling with which it invests a limited
and definite range of interests. What the Roman poets
cared for, they cared for with all their heart, and strength,
and mind. They seem to have written from more en-
during, if less abundant, sources of affection than other
poets. Their hearts thoroughly realised what they idealised
in imagination. This strong realism and constancy of
feeling explains the labour with which they perfected their
art, as the strong love of his small portion of land explains
the labour which the ideal husbandman of the Georgics
bestows on it. Through that vividness of feeling with
which they cherished the thought of what gave actual
joy to their lives, Catullus and Horace were able to
invest the names of Sirmio, and of Lucretilis and Digentia,
with an interest which attaches to the favourite residences
of no other poets : though perhaps future generations will
find a similar classic charm attaching to the homes of
Wordsworth and of Scott, and to the hills, dales, and streams
90 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
which they have endowed with the wealth of their strong
affection. The human objects of their passionate love
excited in several of Ae Roman poets this same vital
warmth of feeling. The 'spirat adhuc amor' is still true
of all the poetry which the love of Lesbia and of Cynthia
inspired. Even Ovid, whose want of seriousness and pro-
found feeling is the chief flaw in his poetic temperament,
had the most vivid sense of the pleasure and of the pain
of his own existence. It is this capacity in the imagination
of being vitally interested in and possessed by its object,
which enabled Lucretius to breathe the breath of enduring
life into the dry bones of the atomic philosophy. And
that this strong realism of feeling is a characteristic of
the race to which these poets belonged is proved by the
pathetic force of the numerous sepulchral epitaphs of
persons altogether undistinguished, preserved from the
times of the early Empire. It is owing to the power of
producing a strong and abiding impression that Latin
has retained the function of being the language of great
epitaphs and great inscriptions in modern times.
Virgil too possessed this gift of vividly realising the
objects which interested him ; and his singularly receptive
nature enabled him to feel a much larger number of in-
terests than the other poets of his country. What his
speculative system was to Lucretius in its power of con-
centrating on itself all his capacity of feeling ; what ' Lesbia'
and 'Sirmio' and the few objects associated with the
happiness and pain of his simple life were to Catullus ;
what the valley in the Sabine hills was to Horace * ; what
Cynthia in life and death was to Propertius ; what the
remembrance of past joy in the midst of sorrow was to
Ovid ; that the thought of Rome and the memories asso-
ciated with it, the charm of the land and air of Italy, the
strength and sanctity of human affection, the mystery of
the unseen world, were to Virgil. The necessities of his
1 It is in the poems connected with this theme that Horace writes most
from the heart ; yet even where he writes chiefly from the head he imparts
the same vital realism to the results of his reflection.
VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE. 91
art require him to introduce into his poem materials which
touch his own nature less deeply, and which come to him
through the reflex action of literary association ; and these,
though he always treats them gracefully, he does not
invest with the same sense of reality. But when his
imagination is moved by the thought of Rome, of Italy,
of a remote antiquity, of human affection, of the unseen
world, then his art becomes truly and vividly creative.
The depth of feeling with which these things affect him
reveals itself in the blended majesty and sweetness, the
tenderness and pathos of his tones, occasionally in some
more solemn cadence and a kind of mystic yearning.
If a return to the high admiration once felt for Virgil
involved any detraction from the high admiration with
which the great poets of Greece and of the modern world
are regarded, anything like his claims to his old rank
would generally be set aside. If for no other reason, yet
because they have more in common with the general ideas
and movement of the modern world, these last-named
poets have a stronger hold on students of literature in
the present day. But, happily, the ' sacrum litterarum stu-
dium' to use a phrase of Macrobius the religion of the
world of letters, is not a jealous or intolerant faith. The
object of that religion is to keep alive the sentiment of
reverence for every kind of excellence which has appeared
in the literature of the world. That Virgil was once the
object of the greatest reverence is a reason for not lightly
putting his claims aside now. In our study of the great
writers of old, it is well to realise the true lesson taught
in the sad beauty of the lines,
rot Ka\cL irpdrois a\a (patverai (Tfjicv
dt Ovarol irf\6fjiea0a rb 8' avpiov OVK iffopwfji.es.
The course of time brings with it losses as well as gains
in sensibility. Though the thoughts of the Latin poet
may not help us to understand the spirit of our own era,
they are a bond of union with the genius and culture of
Europe in other times. If poetry ever exercises a healing
and reconciling influence on life, the deep and tranquil
92 VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.
charm of Virgil may prove some antidote to the excite-
ment, the restlessness, the unsettlement of opinion in the
present day. And as it is by the young especially that
the imaginative art of Virgil, in comparison with the
imaginative art of other great poets, is most questioned,
they may be reminded that the words of such a writer
are best understood after long study and experience of life
have enabled us to feel 'their sad earnestness and vivid
exactness 1 .' The wise and generous counsel of Burke
should induce at least an honest suspense of judgment
on the part of those to whom the power and charm of
this poet have been slow in revealing themselves :
' Different from them are all the great critics. They
have taught us one essential rule. I think the excellent
and philosophic artist, a true judge as well as perfect fol-
lower of Nature, Sir Joshua Reynolds, has somewhere
applied it or something like it in his own profession. It
is this, that if ever we should find ourselves disposed not
to admire those writers and artists, Livy and Virgil for
instance, Raphael or Michael Angelo, whom all the learned
had admired, not to follow our own 'fancies, but to study
them until we know how and what wrought to admire ;
and if we cannot arrive at this union of admiration with
knowledge, rather to believe that we are dull than that
the rest of the world has been imposed on V
1 Grammar of Assent, by J. H. Newman, D.D.
2 Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs.
CHAPTER III. -V
LIFE AND PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL.
I.
Sources of our knowledge of VirgiVs Life.
THE sources of our knowledge of the lives, social rela-
tions, and characters of the eminent writers of antiquity
are of various kinds. Our most valuable evidence consists
of direct personal statements in their own works. There
is, however, a considerable difference in the amount and
kind of information which the Roman poets afford about
themselves. Thus while the works of Horace contain
almost a complete autobiography, no single circumstance
of the life of Lucretius, except his intimacy with Memmius,
can be learned from his poem. But in those instances in
which Latin authors have written much about themselves,
their vivid power of realising things in which they were
interested has enabled them to paint their own portraits
in distinct and lasting colours. Though the Romans cared
little for speculative truth, yet they appear remarkable for
a straightforward veracity and frank communicativeness
of disposition. There are no men of equal distinction
whom we seem to know so intimately as Cicero and
Horace ; and, though they are less interesting men, we
have similar facilities for reading the characters of Catullus,
Propertius, and Ovid. They are unreserved and trust-
worthy witnesses of their own weaknesses as well as of
their better qualities.
94 LIFE AND PERSONAL
Their frankness of nature and their vivid sense of life
enable us also to interpret the indirect and unconscious
self-revelations of Latin authors with more confidence than
in the case of Greek, or even of many modern men of letters.
Their comparative want of dramatic imagination compelled
them to draw much of their poetical material from their
personal experience and convictions. It is indeed a diffi-
cult question to determine how far the idea of the inner
personal life of a great writer which we form from his works
corresponds with the actual aspect which- he presented
to his contemporaries. The biographies of men of genius
in modern times sometimes bring to light the evidence
of a fatal and life-long struggle between the aspirations
of the higher and the seductions of the lower nature.
Some writers, again, of vigorous imagination and strong
poetical sensibility have been at the same time men of
so robust a fibre that their genius for 'literature may have
seemed less conspicuous to those among whom they lived
than their capacity for action, for social intercourse, and
the varied business and enjoyment of life. Others, again,
seem to have produced their great results by a rigid
economy in using and husbanding their original gifts.
Yet even these varieties of the poetic temperament betray
themselves in the work accomplished, through some pro-
digal waste of power and passion, as in Byron ; some
careless freedom and large geniality of treatment, as in
Scott ; or a grave temperance and equable serenity of
feeling, as in Wordsworth. Differing infinitely, as they
may do, from one another in powers of self-control and
obedience to their higher instincts, the greatest poets and
artists have one quality in common absolute sincerity of
nature. They give the world of their strongest and best,
not because they wish to be thought other than they are,
but because it is their strongest and best self which alone
deeply interests them and demands expression.
But whether this expression of their highest self agreed
with the ordinary manifestation of their qualities in action
and social intercourse can best be learned from the evidence
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 95
of contemporaries, who by position and congenial tastes
were able to know and likely to speak the truth. The
affection which a poet or artist inspires among those of
his own craft and the memory which he leaves behind
him help to confirm the impression of his higher or gentler
nature stamped on his works. The assurance that this
higher or gentler nature manifested itself also in his life
adds authority and conviction to his teaching. In those
cases where genius has co-existed with weakness or law-
lessness of character, if these defects fail to reveal them-
selves in the work done, they are not likely to have been
passed unnoticed by contemporaries ; and the impression
of them, formed in a time of active social criticism, is likely
to have been transmitted to future times probably in an
exaggerated shape. The Augustan Age was, as we learn
from Horace, a time of active contemporary criticism ;
a time too which connected itself with the times that came
after by a continuous literary tradition. It was a time
also in which men of letters lived in intimate familiarity
with one another. It was not free from the jealousies and
mutual animosities of literary coteries. Not only the
actual evidence of contemporary authors, but the prevailing
impression transmitted by them to the following genera-
tions, may be accepted as trustworthy evidence of character.
The survival of faint traces of disparagement or of serious
imputation implies nothing more than that the highest
natures did "not altogether escape calumny in their life-
time, although this detraction could not prevail against
the general sentiment of affection and veneration which
they inspired.
In addition to the accidental notices in the works of
contemporaries and writers of a succeeding generation,
some short biographies of eminent Latin writers, written
long after their deaths, have reached modern times. In
cases where their actual biographies have been lost, frag-
ments or summaries of them have been preserved in
Jerome's continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, and occa-
sionally in commentaries or scholia appended to their own
96 LIFE AND PERSONAL
works. Roman literature from a comparatively early
period produced a large number of grammarians, com-
mentators, and rhetoricians. In the Ciceronian Age, Varro
wrote several books on literary history and the earlier
poets ; and Cornelius Nepos included in his Biographies
the lives of men of letters, among others of his own con-
temporary, Atticus. Jerome, in the prefatory letter to his
own work ' De Viris Illustribus 1 ,' mentions the names of
Varro, Santra, Nepos, Hyginus, and Suetonius as authors
of literary biography, and proposes to follow in his own
work the precedent set by the last of these authors. Of
the work of Suetonius ' De Viris Illustribus,' written in the
second century, and containing the lives of eminent poets,
orators, historians, philosophers, grammarians, and rhetori-
cians, considerable portions have been preserved ; among
others the complete biographies of Terence and Horace.
This work became the chief authority to later commen-
tators for the facts recorded about the earlier Roman
poets, and was the source from which Jerome himself drew
the materials for the continuation of the Eusebian Chro-
nicle. The question remains as to how far Suetonius
himself, writing under the rule of Hadrian, is a trust-
worthy authority for the lives of poets who lived nearly
two centuries before his own era. The answer to this ques-
tion will depend on the access which he may have had to
contemporary sources, transmitted to his time through an
uninterrupted channel, and on the evidence of credulity
or trustworthiness in accepting or rejecting gossip and
scandalous anecdotes which his other writings afford.
He appears to have been diligent in his examination of
original authorities. On the other hand, his ' Lives of the
Caesars' indicate a vein of prurient credulity in regard
to the details of charges at which Tacitus only hints
by general innuendo. But the main question in regard
to the life of each particular poet is, whether there was
in existence written evidence dating from contemporary
1 Quoted by Reifferscheid in his Suetonii Reliquiae.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 97
sources on which Suetonius could base his narrative. In
the case of some poets, notably of Virgil, it is quite certain
that there was such evidence. In the case of others, notably
of Lucretius, there is no hint whatever of the existence of
any such evidence. The poets who immediately succeeded
him and who were diligent students of his poem concur in
absolute silence as to the story of that poet's unhappy fate,
told in the continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, and
now received by the most competent critics as resting on
the authority of Suetonius. But even when we substitute
Suetonius for Jerome as the original voucher for the facts
stated, the uncertainty as to any contemporary evidence
available to the former and the sensational character of
the story itself justify at least a suspense of judgment
in accepting or rejecting this meagre fragment of personal
history ; while on the other hand there is no ground for
distrusting the main features, whatever may be said of
some details, of the ancient life of Virgil, equally acknow-
ledged to rest ultimately on the authority of Suetonius.
In addition to these materials for the biography of Latin
writers, in some few cases the imagination is assisted in
realising their character and genius by the preservation
from ancient times of their statues, busts, images impressed
on gems, or other kinds of portraiture. But in the case of
men of letters, it is not often that reliance can be placed on
the authenticity of such memorials, except in such in-
stances as that of Cicero, where a great name in literature
was combined with prominence in public life.
To apply these general considerations to the question
as to what our data are for a knowledge of the life, cir-
cumstances, and personal characteristics of Virgil we find
that such data are supplied partly by direct statements
contained in his poems or inferences founded on them ;
partly by the indirect impression of himself stamped on
these poems ; partly by casual notices in the works of
other poets, and especially of Horace ; and mainly by state-
ments in the Life of the poet originally prefixed to the
Commentary of Aelius Donatus, a grammarian who
VOL. I. H
98 LIFE AND PERSONAL
flourished in the fourth century A.D., and founded on, if
not an actual reproduction of, the Life originally contained
in the work of Suetonius.
The directest record of his tastes and feelings is con-
tained in one or two of the minor poems published among
the Catalecta, and which may without hesitation be treated
as genuine. A fragment of a prose letter to Augustus has
been preserved by Macrobius, which confirms the tradi-
tional account of the poet's estimate of the Aeneid and of
his devotion in later life to philosophical studies 1 . The
Eclogues and Georgics add something to our information,
but as the representation in the first of these works is for
the most part dramatic, and as the purpose of the second
is purely didactic, the evidence they supply is much less
vivid and direct than that supplied by Horace, Catullus,
and the elegiac poets in regard to their lives and pur-
suits; and even where the allusions to matters personal
to himself are unmistakeable, they require to be interpreted
by knowledge derived from other sources.
The Georgics and those parts of the Aeneid which are
specially ethical and didactic, as that part of Book VI.
from line 264 to 75 1 ? throw most light on Virgil's inner
nature and convictions on the questions of most vital
interest to man. But in these parts of his works Virgil has
not revealed himself with such distinctness and consistency
as Lucretius has done in- his great philosophical poem.
The personality of Lucretius was simpler and more forcible ;
the passion to utter his strong convictions prevailed in
him over all considerations of art. The colouring of his
own heart and spirit, of his enthusiasm or melancholy,
appears in Virgil rather as a pervading and subtly inter-
penetrating influence, than as the direct indication of his
true self. His artistic taste enforced on him reserve in
1 ' Sed tanta inchoata res est, ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus ingressus
mihi videar, cum praesertim alia quoque studia ad id opus multoque potiora
impertiar.' Macrob. Sat. i. 24. u. The ' potiora studia ' seem clearly to mean
the philosophical studies, to which his biographer says he meant to devote the
remainder of his life after publishing the Aeneid.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 99
expressing what was personal to himself; his nature was
apparently more open to varied influences of books and
men than that of Lucretius ; he was endowed with the
many-sided susceptibility of a poet, rather than with the
simpler, more energetic, but narrower consistency of a
philosophical partisan. Equally with Lucretius he throws
his whole heart and being into the treatment of his sub-
ject ; but in Lucretius the two streams of what is personal
to himself and what is inherent in his subject are still
distinguishable. In Virgil the imaginative sentiment of
the poet and the strong tender heart of the man seem
to be inseparably united. It would be impossible to dis-
tinguish them by analysis, to abstract from the bloom of
his poetry the delicate sweetness which may have per-
vaded his performance of the common duties and his share
in the common intercourse of life.
Of the contemporary poets and critics whose works are
extant, much the most important witness of the impression
produced by Virgil on those with whom he lived is the
poet Horace. And he is an admirable witness from the
clearness of his judgment, the calmness of his tempera-
ment, and the intimate terms of friendship on which
he lived with the older poet. Unlike Virgil, who from
reasons of health, or natural inclination, or devotion to
his art had chosen the
Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae,
and cherished few, but close, intimacies, Horace lived in
the world, enjoyed all that was brilliant, genial, and illus-
trious in the society of his time, and while still constant
to the attachments of his earlier years, continued through
all his life to form new friendships with younger men who
gave promise of distinction. His Odes and Epistles are
addressed to a great variety of men, to those of highest
social or political position, such as Agrippa, Pollio, Muna-
tius Plancus, Sallustius Crispus, Lollius, etc. ; to old
comrades of his youth or brother poets, such as Pompeius
Grosphus, Septimius, Aristius Fuscus, Tibullus ; to the
H 2
100 LIFE AND PERSONAL
men of a younger generation, such as lulus Antonius, Julius
Florus, and the younger Lollius ; and to all of them he
applies language of discriminating, but not of excessive
appreciation. To the men of eminence in the State he
uses expressions of courteous and delicate compliment,
never of flattery or exaggeration. His old comrades and
intimate associates he greets with hearty friendliness or
genial irony ; to younger men, without assuming the
airs of a Mentor, he addresses words of sympathetic en-
couragement or paternal advice. But among all those
whom he addresses there are only two unless from one
or two words implying strong attachment, we add one
more to the number, Aelius Lamia in connexion with
whom he uses the language of warm and admiring affec-
tion. These are Maecenas and Virgil. Whatever may
have been the date or circumstances connected with the
composition of the third Ode of Book I., the simple words
* animae dimidium meae ' establish the futility of the notion,
that the subject of this Ode is not the poet but only the
same merchant or physician whom Horace in the twelfth
Ode of Book IV. invites, in the style which he uses when he
is most of an Epicurean, to sacrifice for a time his pur-
suit of wealth for the more seasonable claims of the wine
of Cales.
Two short Lives of Virgil written in prose have reached
our time, one originally prefixed to the Commentary by
Valerius Probus, a grammarian of the first century A.D.,
the other, much longer and more important, prefixed to
that of Donatus. There is also a Life in hexameter
verse, written by a grammarian named Phocas, about one
half of which is devoted to an account of the marvellous
portents that were alleged to have accompanied the birth of
the poet. The Life of Donatus was in the later MSS.
of Virgil so much corrupted by the intermixture of medi-
aeval fictions, that it is only in recent times that modern
criticism has successfully removed the interpolations, and
restored the original Life based on that of Suetonius 1 .
1 Cf. Reifferscheid, Quaestiones Suetonianae, p. 400. Hagen, De Dona-
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. IOI
What then were the materials available to Suetonius?
The earliest source of his information was a work referred
to by Quintilian (x. 3. 8), written by the older contem-
porary and life-long friend of Virgil, the poet Varius,
entitled ' De ingenio moribusque Vergilii.' Aulus Gellius
(xvii. 10) speaks of the 'amici familiaresque P. Vergilii in
eis quae de ingenio moribusque eius memoriae tradiderunt.'
Among those who contributed to the knowledge of his
habits, etc., the name of C. Melissus, a freedman of Mae-
cenas, is quoted as an authority for a statement that ' in
ordinary speech he was very slow and almost like an un-
educated man ' a trait which calls to mind what is recorded
of Addison. Melissus could not fail to be an authority as
to the relations of Virgil to Maecenas, and it is probably on
his evidence that the statement rests of the direction given
to the poet's genius in the choice of the subject of the
Georgics. A still more important work was that of the
grammarian Asconius Pedianus, born at the commence-
ment of our era, who wrote ' Contra obtrectatores Vergilii.'
These 'obtrectatores,' beginning with those whose names
have been condemned to everlasting fame, as Bavius and
Maevius, had assailed the art of Virgil by flippant parodies,
such as,
Nudus ara, sere nudus; habebis frigore febrim,
or had traduced his character by imputations, which, though
they might have called for no remark if made against any
other poet of the time, were believed by those who had the
best means of knowing the truth to be incompatible with
the finer nature and purer life of Virgil. In regard to one
of these charges Asconius was able to procure the evidence
of an emphatic denial from the only surviving person who
could have known anything about the matter 1 .
The certainty that the biographical notices of Virgil and
tianae Vergilii vitae Codicibus, prefixed to his edition of the Scholia
Bernensia. De vita et scriptis P. Vergili Maronis narratio, prefixed to Rib-
beck's text in the Teubner edition of Virgil.
1 Ribbeck, Prolegomena, cap. viii.
102 LIFE AND PERSONAL
the accounts transmitted of his personal characteristics can
be traced to contemporary sources and to information
derived from contemporaries, gives to the main statements
of Donatus a value which does not attach to the meagre
notice of Lucretius preserved in the writings of Jerome.
On the other hand, while it is believed by his English
Editor that the actual features of Lucretius have been
transmitted, engraved on a gem, no reliance can be placed
on the authenticity either of the busts, such as that shown
in the Capitoline Museum, or the portraits prefixed to
various MSS., and all different from one another, which
profess to transmit the likeness of Virgil.
II.
Life of Virgil, and conditions affecting the development '
of his Genius.
The testimony of inscriptions, of the earliest MSS., and
of the Greek rendering of the word, has led to the general
adoption in recent times of the name P. Vergilius Maro,
as that by which the poet should be known 1 . Yet it seems
an unnecessary disturbance of old associations to change
the abbreviation so long established in all European litera-
ture into the unfamiliar Vergil. He was born on the i5th
of October in the year 70 B.C., the first consulate of
Pompey and Crassus. The Romans attached a peculiar
sacredness to their own birth-days and those of their friends,
and the birth-day of Virgil continued long after his death
to be regarded with the sanctity of a day of festival 2 .
The year of his birth is the first year of that decade in
which many of the men most eminent in the Augustan
era were born. Virgil was a little younger than Pollio
and Varius ; a little older than Callus, Agrippa, Horace,
and Augustus, and perhaps Maecenas. All of these men
obtained high distinction, and took their place as leaders
1 Gossrau, in his edition of the Aeneid (1876), argues and quotes authorities
in favour of retaining the older form Virgilius.
2 Cf. Pliny, Ep. iii. 7. Martial, xii. 67 :
Octobres Maro consecravit Idus.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL, 103
of their age in action or literature in early youth. The
distinction of Virgil was acquired at a somewhat later
period of life than that of any of his illustrious con-
temporaries.
This year is also important as marking the close of
the wars and disturbances which arose out of the first
great Civil War, and the commencement of a short interval
of repose, though hardly of order or security. Lucretius
in his childhood and early youth had witnessed the Social
War, the bloody strife of Marius and Sulla, and the pro-
longation of these troubles in the wars of Sertorius and
Spartacus ; and the memory of the first Civil War seems
to have impressed itself indelibly on his imagination and
powerfully to have affected his whole view of human life,
as the horrors of the first French Revolution imprinted
themselves indelibly on the imagination of those whose
childhood had been agitated or made desolate by them.
Virgil's childhood and early youth were passed in the
shelter of a quieter time. He had reached manhood before
the second of the great storms which overwhelmed the
State passed over the Roman world. The alarm and
insecurity felt at Rome during the interval may have
caused some agitation of the calmer atmosphere which
surrounded his childhood ; but the peace of his earliest
and most impressible years was marred by no scenes of
horror, such as the massacre at the Colline Gate, the
memory of which perhaps survives in those lines of Lucretius
in which the miseries of a savage life are contrasted with
those of times of refinement :
At non multa virum sub signis milia ducta
Una dies dabat exitio 1 .
His birth-place was in the 'pagus,' or * township,' of
Andes in the neighbourhood of Mantua. The exact situa-
tion of Andes is unknown, though a tradition, as old as
the time of Dante, identifies it with the village of Pietola,
about three miles lower down the Mincio than Mantua.
1 Lucret. v. 999.
104 LIFE AND PERSONAL
But it is only in the Life by Probus that Andes is described
as a 'vicus,' and there it is said to be distant from Mantua
{ xxx milia passuum.' The word pagus which is generally
used in reference to Andes, never seems to be used as
equivalent to vicus, but as a ' country-district,' which might
include several villages. The tradition which identifies
Andes with any particular village in the neighbourhood
of Mantua does not therefore carry with it any conviction
of its truth. In the Eclogues the conventional scenery of
pastoral poetry is blended apparently so inseparably with
the reproduction from actual scenes, that it is impossible
to determine with certainty the characteristic features of
Virgil's early home. The immediate neighbourhood of
Mantua presents no features to which the lines of the
first Eclogue,
Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae,
or
Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras,
can apply.
The most characteristic objects familiar to Virgil's early
years appear to have been the green banks and slow
windings of the Mincio, which he recalls with affectionate
memory in passages of the Eclogues and Georgics. From
the fact that the farm on which he lived formed part of the
Mantuan land added to the confiscated territory of Cremona,
the inference seems obvious that it was on the right bank
of the Mincio, i. e. on the side nearest Cremona. The use
of the word 'depellere' (Eel. i. 21) might perhaps justify
the inference that it was either on higher ground, or was
situated higher up the river than Mantua, though the other
interpretation of 'driving our weaned lambs' forbids our
attaching much force to this problematical inference. But
the lines which produce more than any other the impression
of describing the actual features of some familiar place
are those of the ninth Eclogue, 7-10 :
Certe equidem audieram qua se subducere colles
Incipiunt mollique iugum demittere clivo,
Usque ad aquam et veteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos,
Omnia carminibus vestrum servasse Menalcan.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 105
There seems no motive, certainly none suggested by the
Sicilian idyl, for introducing the hills gradually sinking
into the plain, unless to mark the actual position of the
place referred to. The only hills in the neighbourhood
of the Mincio to which these lines can apply are those
which for a time accompany the flow of the river from
the foot of the Lago di Guarda, and gradually sink into
the plain a little beyond 'the picturesque hill and castle
of Vallegio,' about fifteen miles higher up the river than
Mantua. Eustace, in his Classical Tour, finds many of the
features introduced into the first and ninth Eclogues in this
neighbourhood, though the wish to find them may have
contributed to the success of his search. A walk of fifteen
miles seems not too long for young and active shepherds,
like Moeris and Lycidas, while such expressions as
Tamen veniemus in urbem;
Aut si nox pluviam ne colligat ante veremur,
seem inapplicable to the shorter distance between Pietola
and Mantua.
The 'sacri fontes' which are spoken of in Eclogue I.,
the existence of which is further confirmed by the
Non liquidi gregibus fontes, non gramina deerunt
in the description from the Georgics (ii. 200), of the pas-
toral land which Mantua lost, are more naturally to be
sought in the more picturesque environment of the upper
reaches of the river than in the level plain in the midst
of which Mantua stands 1 . The accurate description of the
lake out of which the Mincio flows
Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens Benace marine,
the truth of which is attested by many modern travellers,
1 Cf. Eustace, vol. i. chap. v. Compare also the following characteristic
passage quoted from Dickens by Mr. Hare in his Cities of Northern and
Central Italy : ' Was the way to Mantua as beautiful when Romeo was
banished thither, I wonder ? Did it wind through pasture land as green, bright
with the same glancing streams, and dotted with fresh clumps of graceful trees ?
Those purple mountains lay on the horizon, then, for certain.' Dickens certainly
was not looking for Virgilian reminiscences in writing this description.
io6 LIFE AND PERSONAL
Goethe among others may well be the reproduction of
some actual impression made in some of Virgil's early wan-
derings not far distant from the home of his youth. The
passage in the Georgics just referred to, in which, speaking
of the land most suitable for rearing herds and flocks, he
introduces the lines
Et qualem infelix amisit Mantua campum,
Pascentem niveos herboso flumine cycnos,
proves the tender affection with which he recalled in later
life the memory of his early home.
Some analogy has been suggested between the rich and
quiet beauty of the scenery which first sank into his soul,
and the tranquil meditative cast of his genius and the
calm and rich harmony of his art. And though it is easy
to push such considerations too far, and to expect a closer
correspondence than ever exists between the development
of genius and the earliest impression of outward nature
on the soul, in a poet like Virgil, unusually receptive and
retentive of such impressions, whose days from childhood
to death were closely bound 'each to each by natural
piety,' in whom all elements of feeling were finely and
delicately blended with one another, such influences may
have been more powerful than in the case of men of a
less impressionable and more self-determining type.
The district north of the Po, of which Virgil was a
native, had enjoyed the 'ius Latii' since the end of the
Social War, but did not obtain the full rights of Roman
citizenship till the year 49 B.C., when Virgil was in his
twenty-first year. The national poet of the early Empire, like
the national poet of the Republic, had thus in all pro-
bability no claim by birth to be a member of the State
of whose character and destiny he has been the truest
and greatest exponent. It may be doubted whether Virgil
belonged by birth to the purely Italian stock. He claims
for Mantua a Tuscan origin 1 , but the Etruscan race in
the region north of the Po had for a long time previously
given way before the settlements of the Gauls, and although
1 Aeneid, x. 204.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 107
Roman conquest had established several important colonies
north of the Po, the main stock between that river and
the Alps must have been of Celtic blood, although for
a long time assimilated in manner of life and culture to
the purely Italian inhabitants of the Peninsula. Zeuss,
in his Celtic Grammar, recognises the presence of a Celtic
root, which appears in other Gallic names, and which he
supposes to be the root also of virgo, and virga, and
Vergiliae, in the name Vergilius 1 . Some elements in
Virgil's nature and genius which seem to anticipate the
developments of modern feeling, as, for instance, his vague
sense of melancholy, his imaginative sense of the mystery
of the unseen world, the presence in him of the sentiment
as distinct from the passion of love, the deeper sense of
a union with outward nature, the vein of romance which
runs through his treatment of early times, may perhaps
be attributed to some subtle intermixture of Celtic blood
with the firmer temperament of the old Italian race.
Appreciated as his genius has been by all the cultivated
nations of Europe, it is by the nation in whom the im-
pressible Celtic nature has been refined and strengthened
by the discipline of Latin studies that his pre-eminence has
been most generally acknowledged.
It is to be noticed that, while in the Ciceronian Age
the names of the men eminent in literature belong with
one or two exceptions either to the pure Roman stock
or to the races of central Italy which had been longest
incorporated with Rome, in the last years of the Republic
and in the Augustan Age Northern Italy contributed
among other names those of Catullus, Cornelius Gallus,
Quintilius Varus, Aemilius Macer, Virgil, and the historian
Livy to the roll of Latin literature. Since the concessions
which followed the Social War, the whole people inhabiting
the Peninsula had become thoroughly united in spirit with
1 'Vergilius nomen vix dubiae originis Gallicae. Cf. Vergiliae (stellae),
Propert. i. 8. 10, Plin. fq. Oue/yyiAta (Oppid. Hispan.), Ptol. 2. 5. Radix
vetust. Camb. guerg (efficax) gl. Ox. extat etiam in vetusto nomine apud Caes.'
Zeuss, Grammatica Celtica, p. n, edit, altera Berol. 1871.
io8 LIFE AND PERSONAL
the Imperial city, and Latin literature as well as the service
of the State thus received a great impulse from the liberality
with which Rome, at different stages in her history,
extended the privileges of her citizenship. The culture
of which Rome had been for two generations the centre
became now much more widely diffused, and as the privilege
of citizenship, or of that modified citizenship conferred by
the { ius Latii,' was more prized from its novelty, so the
attractions of literary studies and the impulses of literary
ambition were felt more strongly from coming fresh and
unhackneyed to a vigorous race. It was a happier position
for Virgil and for Horace, it fitted them not only to be
truer poets of the natural beauty of Italy, but also to feel
in imagination all the wonder associated with the idea of
the great city, to have spent their earliest and most im-
pressible years among scenes of peace and beauty, remote
from contact with the excitement, the vices, the routine of
city life, than if, with the friend of Juvenal, they could have
applied to themselves the words
Nostra infantia caelum
Hausit Aventinum.
There is still one point to be noticed in connexion with
the district in which Virgil was born and passed his early
youth. It was from Julius Caesar that Gallia Transpadana
received the full Roman citizenship. But before he estab-
lished this claim on their gratitude, the ' Transpadani,'
as we learn from Cicero's letters, were thoroughly devoted
to his cause 1 , and it was among them that his legions were
mainly recruited. One of the spiteful acts by which the
aristocratic party showed its animosity to Caesar was the
scourging of one of the inhabitants of the colony of Novum
Comum (Como) by order of the Consul Marcellus, an act
condemned by Cicero on the ground that the victim of
this outrage was a ' Transpadanus 2 .' Caesar was in the
habit of passing the winters of his proconsulate in this part
1 Cic. Ep. ad Att. vii. 7; ad Fam. xvi. 12.
2 Cic. Ep. ad Att. v. 2.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 109
of his province, especially at Verona, where he was the
guest of the father of Catullus. The name of Caesar must
thus have become a household word among this people ;
they must have soon recognised his greatness as a soldier,
and felt the fascination of his genial presence. They must
also have been grateful for his championship of the pro-
vinces against the oppressive rule of the Senate, and for
the protection afforded by his army from dangers similar
to those from which their fathers had been saved, after
many disasters, by his great kinsman, Marius. They did
not share the sentiments of distrust excited among the
aristocracy at Rome by Caesar's early career, and had
no reason to regard the permanent ascendency of one man
as a heavier burden than the caprices of their temporary
governors. From the favour which Virgil received from
leaders of the Caesarean cause before his fame was estab-
lished, and from his intimacy with Varius the panegyrist
of Julius Caesar, it may be inferred that in adhering to
the cause of the Empire he was true to the early impres-
sions of his boyhood. He was one of the first to feel and
make others feel the spell which the name of Caesar was
destined henceforth to exercise over the world.
Latin literature in the Augustan Age drew its repre-
sentatives not only from a wider district than the preceding
age, but also from a different social class. The men emi-
nent as poets, orators, and historians in the last years of
the Republic were for the most part members of the great
Roman or Italian families. They were either themselves
actively engaged in political life, or living in intimacy with
those who were so engaged. Whatever tincture of letters
was found in any other class was confined to freedmen or
learned Greeks, such as Archias and Theophanes, attached
to the houses of the nobility. The fortunes of the two
great poets of the Augustan Age prove that no barrier of
class-prejudice and no necessary inferiority of early edu-
cation prevented free-born men of very humble origin from
attaining the highest distinction, and living as the trusted
friends of the foremost men in the State. Virgil and
1 10 LIFE AND PERSONAL
Horace were the sons of men who by the thrift and
industry of a humble occupation had been able to buy
small farms in their native district. Virgil's father had not
indeed, like the father of Horace, risen from a servile
position. He is said to have begun life as a hired as-
sistant to one Magius, who according to one account
was a potter, according to another a 'viator' (or
officer whose duty it was to summon prisoners before
magistrates). He married the daughter of his master,
being recommended to him, as is said by his biographer,
by his industry (ob industriam). The name of Virgil's
mother was Magia Polla. His father is said to have
increased his substance among other things by keeping
bees (silvis coemendis et apibus curandis), a fact which
perhaps explains the importance given to this branch of
rural industry in the Georgics. Virgil thus springs from
that class whose condition he represents as the happiest
allotted to man, and as affording the best field for the
exercise of virtue and piety. He and Horace, after living
in the most refined society of Rome, are entirely at one in
their appreciation of the qualities of the old Italian husband-
men or small landowners, a class long before their time
reduced in numbers and influence, but still producing men
of modest worth and strong common sense like the ' abnor-
mis sapiens ' of the Satires, and like those country neigh-
bours whose lively talk and homely wisdom Horace
contrasts with the fashionable folly of Rome ; and true and
virtuous women, such as may have suggested to the one
poet the lines
Quod si pudica mulier in partem iuvet
Domum atque dulces liberos,
Sabina qualis aut perusta solibus
Pernicis uxor Appuli,
and to the other
Interea longum cantu solata laborem
Arguto coniunx percurrit pectine lelas.
These poets themselves probably owe that stronger grain
of character, their large share of the old Italian seriousness
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. Ill
of spirit (gravitas), which distinguishes them from the
other poets of their time, to the traditions of virtue which
the men of this class had not yet unlearned. It is remarked
by M. Sainte-Beuve how strong the attachment of such
men usually is to their homes and lands, inherited from
their fathers or acquired and enriched by their own industry.
He characterises happily 'cette me'diocrite de fortune et
de condition morale dans laquelle e*tait ne Virgile, medio-
crite', ai-je dit, qui rend tout mieux senti et plus cher,
parcequ'on y touche a chaque instant la limite, parcequ'on
y a toujours present le moment ou Ton a acquis et celui ou
Ton peut tout perdre.' The truest human feeling expressed
in the Eclogues is the love which the old settlers had for
their lands, and the sorrow which they felt when forced to
quit them. The Georgics bear witness to the strong
Italian passion for the soil, and the pride in the varied re-
sults of his skill which made a life of unceasing labour one
of contentment and happiness to the husbandman.
As has happened in the case of other poets and men of
poetic genius, tradition recorded some marvellous circum-
stances attending his birth, which were believed to have
portended his future distinction. These stories may have
originated early in his career from the promise of genius
afforded by his childhood ; or, like the mediaeval belief in
his magical powers, they may be a kind of mythological
reflection of the veneration and affection with which his
memory was cherished. The character of these reported
presages implies the impression produced by the gentle-
ness and sweetness of his disposition 1 , as well as by the
rapid growth and development of his poetic faculty 2 .
A more trustworthy indication of his early promise is
1 Ferunt infantem, cum sit editus, neque vagisse, et adeo miti vultu fuisse, ut
haud dubiam spem prosperioris geniturae jam tune indicaret.
2 Siquidem virga populea more regionis in puerperiis eodem statim loco
depacta ita brevi evaluit tempore ut multo ante satas populos adaequasset,
quae arbor Virgilii ex eo dicta atque etiam consecrata est summa gravidarum
ac fetarum religione.
The resemblance of the name to the word virga is probably at the root
of this story.
LIFE AND PERSONAL
afforded by the care with which he was educated. Like
Horace, he was fortunate in having parents who, themselves
of humble origin, considered him worthy of receiving the
best instruction which the world could give, and, like
Horace, he repaid their tender solicitude with affectionate
gratitude. By his father's care he was from boyhood
dedicated to the high calling which he faithfully followed
through all his life. At the age of twelve he was taken to
Cremona, an old Latin colony; and, from the lines in one
of his earliest authentic poems (the address to the villa
of Siron)
Tu nunc eris illi
Mantua quod fuerat, quodque Cremona prius
implying a residence at Cremona, it seems probable that
his father may have accompanied him thither, as Horace's
father accompanied him to Rome for the same purpose.
On his sixteenth birth-day the day on which, accord-
ing to Donatus, Lucretius died Virgil assumed the 'toga
virilis,' and about the same time went to Milan, and con-
tinued there, engaged in study, till he removed to Rome
in the year 53 B. C., when he was between sixteen and
seventeen years of age. It was in this year of his life that
he is said to have written the ' Culex.' There are many
difficulties which prevent the belief that Virgil is the author
of the poem which has come down to us under that name.
But the consideration of these must be reserved for a
later examination of the poem.
At Rome he studied rhetoric under Epidius, who was
also the teacher of the young Octavianus. As the future
Emperor made his first public appearance at the age of
twelve, by delivering the funeral oration over his grand-
mother Julia, it may have happened that he and Virgil
were pupils of Epidius at the same time, and were not
unknown to each other even before the meeting of ten
years later which decisively affected Virgil's fortunes and
determined his career. The time of his arrival at Rome
was of critical importance in literature. The recent
publication of the poem of Lucretius, the most important
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 113
event in Latin literature since the appearance of the
Annals of Ennius, must have stimulated the enthusiasm of
the younger generation, among whom poetry and oratory
were at that time conjointly cultivated. Mr. Munro has
shown the influence exercised by this poem on the later
style of Catullus, who collected and edited his own poems
about the time when Virgil came to Rome, and died
shortly afterwards. One or two of the minor poems in the
Catalecta, attributed to Virgil with more probability than
the Culex, are parodies or close imitations of the style of
Catullus, and are written in a freer and more satiric spirit
than anything published by him in later years. But it is
a little remarkable that, while reproducing the language
and cadences of both these poets in his first acknowledged
work, Virgil never mentions the names either of Lucretius
or Catullus. The poets mentioned by him with admiration
in the Eclogues are his living contemporaries, Varius and
Cinna, Pollio and Gallus. Is it on account of the Sena-
torian and anti-Caesarean sympathies of the older poets that
the poets of the new era thus separate themselves abruptly
from those of the previous epoch ? If it was owing to the
jealousy of the new regime that the two great Augustan
poets, while paying a passing tribute to the impracticable
virtue of Cato, never mention the greater name or allude
to the fate of Cicero, there seems to have been nothing in
the political action or expressed opinions of Lucretius to
call for a similar reticence. If, on the other hand, the
boldness of his attack on the strongholds of air religious
belief had the effect of cutting him off for a: time from
personal sympathy, as similar opposition to received
opinions had in modern times in the case of Spinosa
and Shelley, it did not interfere with the immediate
influence exercised by his genius on the thought and art
of Virgil.
The most interesting of the minor poems among the
' Catalecta ' is one written at the time when the young
poet entered on the study of philosophy under Siron the
Epicurean. This poem expresses the joy felt by him
VOL. I. I
1 14 LIFE AND PERSONAL
in exchanging the empty pretension and dull pedantry
of rhetorical and grammatical studies for the real enquiries
of philosophy :
Ite hinc, inanes rhetorum ampullae,
Inflata rore non Achaico verba,
Et vos, Stiloque, Tarquitique, Varroque,
Scholasticorum natio madens pingui,
Ite hinc, inanis cymbalon iuventutis.
*-***-*
Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus,
Magni petentes docta dicta Sironis,
Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura.
These lines are the earliest expression of that philosophical
longing which seems to have haunted Virgil through all
his life as a hope and aspiration, but never to have
found its realisation in speculative result. The motive
which he professes for entering on the study,
Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura,
is the same as that which acted on Lucretius the wish
to secure an ideal serenity of life. The same trust in the
calming influence of the Epicurean philosophy appears in
the
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.
of the second Georgic. But in different ways, by the deep
feeling of melancholy in the one, by the revolt and spiritual
reaction in the other, Lucretius and Virgil both show that
these tenets could not secure to c the passionate heart of
the poet' that calmness and serenity of spirit which they
gave to men of the stamp of Atticus, Velleius, or Torquatus.
The final lines of the poem express the lingering regret
with which he bids farewell to the Muses, although only
for a time. These few lines, more than any other poem
attributed to Virgil, seem to bring him in his personal
feelings nearer to us. There is a touch of the graciousness
of his nature, recalling the loyal feeling of Catullus to all
his young comrades, in the passing notice of those who
had shared his studies :
lam valete, formosi.
At a time when the poetry of the younger generation was
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 115
universally free and licentious in tone, the purity of Virgil's
nature reveals itself in the prayer .to the Muses to revisit
his writings ' pudenter et raro,' chastely and seldom. The
whole poem is the sincere expression of the scholar and
poet, even in youth idealising the austere charm of philo-
sophy, while feeling in his heart the more powerful
attraction of poetry. In the
Nam, fatebimur verum,
Dulces fuistis,
is the literal expression of that deep joy which afterwards
moved him in uttering the lines
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.
and
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor;
and which sustained him stedfastly in the noble con-
sistency and harmony of all his later life.
Of the next ten years of his career nothing is known
with certainty, but the outbreak of the Civil War is likely
to have interrupted his residence at Rome, and he is next
heard of living in his native district and engaged in the
composition of the Eclogues. He took no part in the war,
nor ever served as a soldier ; and he is said to have ap-
peared only once in the other field of practical distinction
open to a young Roman who had received so elaborate
an education that of forensic pleading. He is said to
have wanted the readiness of speech and self-possession
necessary for success in such a career ; and he was thus
fortunate in escaping all temptation to sacrifice his genius
to the ambition of practical life, or to divide his allegiance,
as Licinius Calvus did, between the claims of poetry and
oratory. His first literary impulse was to write an his-
torical epic on the early Roman or Alban history, and to
this impulse he himself alludes in the lines of the sixth
Eclogue,
Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit et admonuit.
He gave up the idea, feeling the unsuitable nature of the
I 2
Il6 LIFE AND PERSONAL
material for poetic treatment, 'offensus materia,' as the
Life of Donatus expresses it ; and he resolutely resisted
the projects often urged upon him of giving a poetical
account of contemporary events, in celebration of the glory
of Pollio, Varus, or Caesar. But it is noticeable as a proof
of the persistence with which his mind continued to dwell
on ideas once projected, till they finally assumed appro-
priate shape, that in the Aeneid he really combines these
two purposes of vivifying the ancient traditions of Rome
and Alba, and of glorifying the great results of his own
era. It is by this capacity of forecasting some great work,
and dwelling on the idea till it clears itself of all alien
matter and assimilates to itself the impressions and in-
terests of a life-time, that the vastest and most enduring
monuments of genius are produced.
In the year of the battle of Philippi, Virgil was living
in his native district, engaged in the composition of his
pastoral poems. Of his mode of life, taste, and feelings
about this time we perceive only that he continued to be
a student of the Alexandrine literature, that he had, by
natural gift and assiduous culture, brought the technical
part of his art the diction and rhythm of poetry to the
highest perfection hitherto attained, that he enjoyed the
favour and patronage of the Governor of the province,
Asinius Pollio, and that he was united by strong ties of
affection and warm admiration to Cornelius Gallus, who while
still in early youth had obtained high distinction in poetry
and a prominent position in public life. There are in the
Eclogues notices of other poets of the district, whose friend-
ship he enjoyed or whose jealousy he excited. The Mopsus
of the fifth is said to be the didactic poet, Aemilius Macer.
The mention of Bavius and Maevius, the 'iurgia Codri,'
and the allusion in a later poem to Anser the panegyrist of
Antony, are the nearest approaches to anything like re-
sentment or personal satire that Virgil has shown. It may
be that in the lines where Amaryllis and Galatea and
other personages of the poems are introduced he refers
to some personal experiences; but as compared with all
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 117
the poets of this era, Virgil either observed a great reti-
cence, or enjoyed an exceptional immunity from the pas-
sions of youth. The whole tone of the earlier poems, and
numerous expressions in all of them, such as ' tu, Tityre,
lentus in umbra,' are suggestive of a somewhat indolent
enjoyment of the charm of books, poetry, and the softer
beauties of Nature.
The following year was the turning-point in his career,
and gave a more definite aim to his genius and sympa-
thies. In that year his own fortunes became involved in
the affairs which were determining the fate of the world.
The Triumvirs, in assigning grants of land to their soldiers,
had confiscated the territory of Cremona, which had shown
sympathy with the Senatorian cause, and when this proved
insufficient, an addition was made from the adjoining Man-
tuan territory, in which the farm of Virgil's father was
situated. The Commissioners appointed to distribute the
land were Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, all friendly to Virgil,
and by their advice he went to Rome, and obtained the
restitution of his land by personal application to Octa-
vianus. On his return to his native district he found that
Varus had succeeded Pollio as Governor of the province.
He appears to have been unfriendly to the Mantuans, and
was either unable or unwilling to protect Virgil, who was
forced at the imminent peril of his life to escape, by
swimming the river, from the violence of the soldier who
had entered on the possession of the land. Two of the
Eclogues, the first and the ninth, are written in connexion
with these events. Though he still adheres to an indirect
and allusive treatment of his subject, these poems possess
the interest of being based on real experience. They
give expression to the sense of disorder, insecurity, and
distress, which we learn from other sources accompanied
these forced divisions and alienations of land. The first
expresses also the gratitude of the poet to ' the god-like
youth' to whom he owed the exceptional indulgence of
being, though only for a short time, reinstated in the pos-
session of his land. It is characteristic either of some
ll8 LIFE AND PERSONAL
weakness in Virgil's nature, or of a great depression among
the peaceful inhabitants of Italy, that he had no thought of
resisting violence by violence, that he does not even express
resentment against the intruder, but only a feeling of
wonder that any man could be capable of such wickedness.
Heu ! cadit in quemquam tantum scelus ?
To most readers the vehemence with which the author of
the 'Dirae,' under similar circumstances, curses the land
and its new owners, appears, if less sweet and musical, more
natural than this mild submission to superior force ex-
pressed by Virgil. But in these personal experiences that
strong sympathy with the national fortunes, which hence-
forward animates his poetry, originates. Virgil may thus
in a sense be numbered among the poets who c are cradled
into poetry by wrong.'
After this second forcible expulsion from his old home,
he. took refuge, along with his family, in a small country-
house which had belonged to his old teacher Siron. The
poem numbered X. in the Catalecta,
Villula quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle,
Verum illi domino tu quoque divitiae,
was written at this time. It expresses anxiety and distress
about the state of his native district, to which, as in Eclogue I.,
he applies the word patria^ and affectionate solicitude for
those along with him,
Hos una mecum, quos semper amavi,
and especially for his father. His own experience at this
time may have suggested to him the feelings which he
afterwards reproduced in describing the flight of Aeneas
from the ruins of Troy.
He seems never after this time to have returned to his
native district. The liberality of Octavianus 1 compensated
him for his loss, nor was the even tenor of his life
henceforward broken by any new dangers or hardships.
Through the gift of friends and patrons he acquired a
1 Hor. Ep. ii. i. 246.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 119
fortune, which at his death amounted to 10,000,000 sesterces
(more than 80,000 of our money) ; he possessed a house
on the Esquiline near the gardens of Maecenas, a villa
at Naples, and a country-house near Nola in Campania,
and seems to have lived from time to time in Sicily and
the South of Italy.
The Eclogues, commenced in his native district in the
year 42 B. C., were completed and published at Rome pro-
bably in the year 37 B.C. They were at once received with
great favour, and recited amid much applause upon the
stage. They established the author's fame as the poet
Nature and of rural life, as Varius was accepted as the
poet of epic, Pollio of tragic poetry :
Molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuemnt gaudentes rure Camenae.
For a short time afterwards Virgil lived chiefly at Rome,
as one of the circle of which Maecenas was the centre, con-
sisting of those poets and men eminent in the State whom
Horace (Sat. i. 10) mentions as the critics and friends
whose approval he valued. Our knowledge of Virgil at
this time is derived from the first Book of the Satires of
Horace. It was by Virgil and Varius that Horace himself
was introduced to Maecenas. They were all three of the
party who made the famous journey to Brundisium in 37
B.C. While Horace starts alone from Rome, Virgil and
Varius join him at Sinuessa. Virgil may already have
begun to withdraw from habitual residence in Rome to his
retirement in Campania, where he principally lived from
this time till his death. One line in this Satire confirms
the account of the weakness of his health which is given by
his biographer, the line, namely, in which Horace de-
scribes himself and Virgil as going to sleep, while Maecenas
went to enjoy the exercise of the 'pila :'
Lusum it Maecenas, dormitum ego Vergiliusque,
Namque pila lippis inimicum et ludere crudis.
There is no notice of Virgil in the second Book of the
Satires, written between the years 35 and 30 B. c. ; at which
120 LIFE AND PERSONAL
time he had withdrawn altogether from Rome, and was
living at Naples, engaged in the composition of the
Georgics. Two of the Odes of Book I., however, the third
and the twenty-fourth, throw some light on his circum-
stances and character, and on the relations of friendship
subsisting between him and Horace. There is some diffi-
culty in determining the occasion that gave rise to the
first of these Odes. It is addressed to the ship which
was to bear Virgil to Attica. As we only know of one
voyage of Virgil to Attica, that immediately preceding
his death, and as the first three Books of the Odes ap-
pear to have been published some years before that date,
we must suppose either that this Ode refers to an earlier
voyage contemplated or actually accomplished by Virgil ;
or that the Virgil here spoken of is a different person ; or
that the publication of the edition of the Odes which we
possess was of a later date than that generally accepted.
The reason for rejecting the second of these alternatives
has been already given. Two reasons may be given for
rejecting the third, first, the improbability that one of the
latest, if not the latest, in point of time among all the Odes
in the three Books should be placed third in order in the
first Book, among Odes that all refer to a much earlier
period ; and secondly, that this Ode, in respect of the some-
what conventional nature of the thought and the character
of the mythological allusions, is clearly written in Horace's
earlier manner. There is no improbability in accepting
the first alternative, that as Virgil travelled to and resided
in Sicily, so he may have made, or at least contemplated,
an earlier voyage to Greece. One object for such a voyage
may have been the desire of seeing the localities which he
represents Aeneas as passing or visiting in the course of
his adventures between the time of leaving Troy and
settling in Latium. The Aeneid indicates in many places
the tastes of a cultivated traveller and connoisseur ; and
parts of the sea-voyage of Aeneas seem to be founded on
personal reminiscences.
It may be noticed in several of the Odes of Horace
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 121
how he adapts the vein of thought running through them
to the character or position of the person to whom they
refer. The revival of the old Hesiodic and theological idea
of the sin and impiety of that spirit of enterprise which led
men first to brave the dangers of the sea, and to baffle the
purpose of the Deity in separating nations from one another
by the ocean, an idea to which Virgil himself gives ex-
pression in the fourth Eclogue,
Pauca tamen suberunt priscae vestigia fraudis,
Quae temptare Thetim ratibus, etc.,
is not unsuited to the unadventurous disposition of the
older poet.
The twenty-fourth Ode is addressed to him on the
occasion of the death of their common friend Quintilius
Varus, - probably the Varus of the tenth poem of Catullus,
and thus one of the last survivors of the friendly circle of
poets and wits of a former generation. While a high tribute
to the pure character of their lost friend,
Cui Pudor, et lustitiae soror
Incorrupta Fides, nudaque Veritas
Quando ullum inveniet parem?
it is at the same time a tribute to the pious and affectionate
character of Virgil :
Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit,
Nulli flebilior quam tibi, Vergili:
Tu frustra pius, heu ! non ita creditum
Poscis Quintilium Decs.
It is a delicate touch of appreciation that Horace dwells
more on the thought of the depth of Virgil's sorrow for
their common friend than on his own. Both of these Odes
give evidence of the strong affection which Virgil inspired ;
the second affords further evidence of the qualities in virtue
of which he inspired that feeling. Similar proof of affec-
tion and appreciation is afforded by the words in which
Horace in the fifth Satire of Book I. characterises Virgil
(* Vergilius optimus,' as he elsewhere calls him), and his two
friends Plotius and Varius,
Animae quales neque candidiores
Terra tulit, neque queis me sit devinctior alter.
LIFE AND PERSONAL
The word ' candidiores ' suggests the same qualities of a
beautiful nature, the unworldly simplicity and sincerity,
which are ascribed to Quintilius in the words 'pudor, in-
corrupta fides, nudaque veritas.'
The seven years from 37 B. C. to 30 B. C. were devoted
by Virgil to the composition of the Georgics, a poem
scarcely exceeding 2000 lines in length. His chief residence
at this time was Naples :
Me dulcis alebat
Parthenope, studiis florentem ignobilis oti.
He possessed also at this time a country-house or estate in
the neighbourhood of Nola ; and the fourth Book affords
evidence of some time spent at or in the neighbourhood of
Tarentum, which is confirmed by the lines in Propertius,
Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi
Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin arundinibus,
the region prized by Horace as second only to his beloved
Tibur. In the year 29 B.C. he read the whole poem to
Augustus, on his return from Asia, at the town of Atella.
The reading occupied four days. Maecenas was of the
party, and relieved the poet in the task of reading.
The remaining years of his life were spent in the compo-
sition of the Aeneid. One of the poems of the Catalecta
(vi.) gives expression to a vow binding the poet to sacrifice
a bull to Venus if he succeeded in accomplishing the task
which he had imposed on himself. So early as the year
26 B. C., Augustus, while engaged in the Cantabrian war,
had desired to see some part of the poem. It was in answer
to that request that Virgil wrote the letter of which the
fragment, quoted in the previous chapter, has been pre-
served by Macrobius. At a later time, after the death of
the young Marcellus (23 B. C.), he read three Books to
Augustus and the other members of his family.
After spending eleven years on the composition of his
great epic, he set aside three more for its final correction.
In the year 19 B. c. he set out with the view of travelling in
Greece and Asia. Meeting Augustus at Athens, he was
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 123
persuaded to abandon his purpose and return with him to
Italy. While visiting Megara under a burning sun he was
seized with illness. Continuing his voyage without inter-
ruption, he became worse, and on the 2ist of September, a
few days after landing at Brundisium, he died in the fifty-
first year of his age. In his last illness he showed the
ruling passion of his life ke-eravmg for perfection, by
calling for the cases which held his MSS., with the intention
of burning the Aeneid. It is characteristic of his unsanguine
self-depreciating nature, that his final hours were clouded
by this sad sense of failure, rather than brightened by such
confident assurances of immortality as other Roman poets
have expressed. In the same spirit of dissatisfaction with
all imperfect accomplishment, he left directions in his will
that his executors, Varius and Tucca, should publish nothing
but what had been already edited by him. This direction,
which would have deprived the world of the Aeneid, was
disregarded by them in compliance with the commands of
Augustus.
He was buried at Naples, where his tomb was long re-
garded with religious veneration and visited as a temple ;
and tradition long associated his name, as that of a magician,
with the construction of the great tunnel of Posilippo, in its
immediate neighbourhood.
III.
Personal Characteristics.
The interest of the life of Virgil lies in the bearing of his
circumstances on the development of his genius, in the
view which it affords of his whole nature as a man, and
in the relation of that nature to the work accomplished
by him as a poet. The biography of Horace has an in-
dependent value as affording insight into social life and
character, irrespective of the light which it reflects on
the art of the poet. But no separate line of action, ad-
venture, or enjoyment runs through and intermingles with
the even course of Virgil's poetic career. And this may
124 LIFE AND PERSONAL
have been a drawback to him as the poet of political
action, of heroic adventure, and of human character. His
career in this respect is unlike that of other great poets
who have been endowed with the epic or dramatic faculty,
such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Dante, Shakspeare, Milton,
Scott, and Goethe, who either took part in the serious
action of their age, or gave proof in their lives of some share
of the adventurous spirit or of the rich social nature which
they have delineated in their works. In the same way the
life of Livy was that merely of a man of letters, and thus
different from that of the other great historians of antiquity,
who had either passed through a career of adventure, like
Herodotus and Xenophon, or had been actively engaged
in public affairs, like Thucydides and Polybius, Sallust and
Tacitus. The ' inscitia Reipublicae ut alienae ' thus betrays
itself in Livy more than in any of those historians who have
been named. Virgil's life was as much one of pure con-\
templation or absorption in his art, as that of Lucretius or )
Wordsworth. The first half of his career, from childhood
to maturity, was an education, passive and active, for the
position he was destined to fill as the greatest literary
artist and greatest national poet of Rome. His later career,
from the age of twenty-eight till his too early death,
was the fulfilment of the office to which he had dedicated
himself. With the exception of one troubled year of his
early manhood, which proved the turning-point of his for-
tunes, he lived, undistracted by business or pleasure, the
life of a scholar and poet, combining the concentrated
industry of the first with the sense of joyful activity and
ever-ripening faculty which sustains and cheers the second.
In youth his means of living must have been moderate,
yet sufficient to enable him to forsake everything else for
his art ; in later life, through the munificence of Augustus,
he was rich enough to enjoy exemption from the cares
of life, and to gratify freely the one taste by which his
poetical gifts were fostered that of living and varying
his residence among the fairest scenes of Southern Italy.
The one drawback to his happiness, viz. that he suffered
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 125
during all his life from delicate or variable health \ was not
unfavourable to the concentration of his whole nature on his
self-appointed task. It saved him from ever sacrificing the
high aim of his existence to the pleasures in which his con-
temporaries freely indulged, and to which the imaginative
temperament of the poets and artists of a southern land are
powerfully attracted. The abstemious regimen which from
necessity or inclination he observed, the fact recorded of
him that he was ' cibi vinique minimi,' must have quickened
the finer sources of emotion by which his genius was
nourished. Had he received from nature a robuster fibre
and more hardihood of spirit, or had his character been
more tempered by collision with the active forces of life,
his epic poem might have shown a more original energy,
and greater power in delineating varied types of character ;
but in combination with a robuster or more energetic
temper, much of the peculiar charm of Virgil would have
been lost.
He is said to have been of a tall and awkward figure,
of dark complexion, and to have preserved through all
his life a look of rusticity. He wanted readiness in ordi-
nary conversation, and never overcame the shyness of his
rustic origin or studious habits. It is reported that in his
rare visits to Rome , he avoided observation, and took
refuge in the nearest house from the crowds of people
who recognised or followed him. The 'monstrari digito
praetereuntium' was to him a source of embarrassment
rather than of that gratification which Horace derived
from it.
Both his parents lived till after the loss of his farm,
when the poet was in his twenty-ninth year. Two brothers
died before him, one while still a boy, the other after
reaching manhood. To his half-brother Valerius Proculus
he left one half of his estate. Augustus, Maecenas, and
his two friends Varius and Tucca also received legacies.
1 'Nam plerumque a stomacho et a faucibus ac dolore capitis laborabat,
sanguinem etiam saepe rejecit.' Cf. what Sainte-Beuve says of Bayle: 'II lui
etait utile meme d'avoir cette sante frele, ennemi de la bonne chere, ne sollici-
tant jamais aux distractions.'
126 LIFE AND PERSONAL
He was never married, nor is there any record in connexion
with him of any of those temporary liaisons which the
other poets of the Augustan Age formed and celebrated
in their verse. Some modern critics arguing from a single
expression in the Life by Donatus, and giving to a tradition
connected with the subject of the second Eclogue a mean-
ing which, even if the tradition were trustworthy, need
not apply to it, have written of Virgil as if throughout
his whole life he yielded to a laxity of morals from which
perhaps some of his eminent contemporaries were not
free, but which was condemned by the manlier instincts of
Romans, as of all modern nations. The expression of
Donatus is probably a mere survival of the calumnies
against which Asconius vindicated Virgil's character. The
statement of the same biographer, that on account of his
purity of speech and life he was known in Naples by the
name ' Parthenias,' is at least as trustworthy evidence
as that on which the imputations on his character have
been revived. The levity and mendacity with which such
calumnies were invented 1 , and the attractions which they
have for the baser nature of men in all times, sufficiently
explain both the original existence and the later revival
of these imputations. We are called upon not merely to
disregard them as unproved, or irrelevant to our estimate
of the poet's art, but to reject them as incompatible with
the singular purity and transparent sincerity of nature
revealed in all the maturer works of his genius 2 .
The cordial and discriminating language both of the
Satires and the Odes of Horace confirms the impression of
delicacy and simplicity of character suggested by the
general tone of Virgil's writings. The appreciation of
1 Cp. Journal of Philology, Part III. Article on the twenty-ninth poem of
Catullus.
2 The German historians of Roman literature are more just in their judgment
of Virgil's character than of his genius. Thus W. S. Teuffel puts aside these
scandals with the brusque and contemptuous remark ' Der Klatsch bei
Donatus iiber sein Verhaltniss zu seinen Lieblingssklaven Alexander und Kebes,
so wie zu Plotia Hieria, einer arnica des L. Varius, beurtheilte nach sich selbst
das was ihm an Vergil unbegreiflich war.'
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL.
Horace for Virgil reminds us of the touching tribute which
the great comic poet of Athens pays to her greatest tragic
poet, where he speaks of him as showing the same disposi-
tion among the Shades as he had shown in the world
above
'O 8' fvKoXos jj.lv evOa.8', evKoXos 8' l/cef 1
and of that similar tribute paid by his friend and fellow-
dramatist to our own great poet, in the words ' my gentle
Shakspeare.' The affection and admiration of the greatest
of his contemporaries, surviving in the tradition handed
on to future times, testifies to Virgil's exemption from the
personal frailties and asperities to which the impressible
and mobile temperament of genius is peculiarly liable.
His works do not present any single distinct impression
of the poet himself, in his own character and convictions,
separable from his artistic representation. Yet from the
study of these works we are able to form a general conception
of the disposition, affections, and moral sympathies which
distinguish him from the other great writers of his country.
We might perhaps without undue fancifulness express the
dominant ethical or social characteristic the ideal virtue
or grace of some of the great Roman writers by some
word peculiarly expressive of Roman character or culture,
and of frequent use in these writers themselves. Thus,
in regard to Cicero, the man of quick susceptibility to
praise and blame, to sympathy and coldness, who, except
where his personal or political antagonism was roused, had
the liveliest sense of the claims of kind offices and kind
feeling which men have on one another, the word humanitas
seems to sum up those qualities of heart and intellect
which, in spite of the transparent weaknesses of his character,
gained for him so much affection, and which, through the
sympathy they enabled him to feel and arouse in others,
were the secret of his unparalleled success as an advocate.
To Lucretius we might apply the word sanctitas, in the
sense in which he applies the word sanctus to the old
1 Aristoph. Frogs, $2.
128 LIFE AND PERSONAL
philosophers, as 'expressive of that glow of reverential
emotion which animates him in his search after truth
and in his contemplation of Nature. His own words ' leper"*
and ' lepidus* express the graceful vivacity, artistic and
social rather than ethical, which we associate with the
thought of Catullus. The quality, mainly intellectual and
social, but still not devoid of ethical content, of which
Horace is the most perfect type, is ' urbanitas! The full
meaning of the great Roman word ' gravitas'' the vital
force of ethical feeling as well as the strength of character
connoted by it, and by its sister-qualities 'dignity and
authority' is only completely realised in the pages of
Tacitus. And so it is only in Virgil, and especially in that
poem in which he deals with types of human character and
motives originating in human affection, that we understand
all the feelings of love to family and country, and of
fidelity to the dead, and that sense of the dependence on a
higher Power, sanctioning and sanctifying these feelings
and the duties demanded by them, which the Romans
comprehended in their use of the word 'pie fas'
With this recognition of man's dependence on a wise
and beneficent Power above him, is perhaps connected
another moral characteristic strongly indicated in many
passages of the Aeneid, and mentioned among the personal
attributes of Virgil in some of the editions of Donatus's Life,
though it does not appear in that accepted by the latest
critics as resting on the best MS. authority 1 . This quality
is the stoical power of endurance which he attributes to
his hero, but which in him is combined with nothing either
of the austerity or pedantry of Stoicism. The passage in
the biography, which, if an interpolation in the original
Life, is one that is at least * well invented,' is as follows :
* Solitus erat dicere. nullam virtutem commodiorem homini
esse patientia, ac nullam asperam adeo fortunam esse quam
prudenter patiendo vir fortis non vincat.' Mr. Wickham,
in his edition of Horace, refers to this passage as illustrating
1 Cf. Reifferscheid, p. 67.
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 129
the maxims of consolation addressed by Horace to Virgil
on the death of their friend Quintilius :
Durum: sed levius fit patientia
Quiclquid corrigere est nefas.
Many lines in the Aeneid, such as the
Quidquid erit, superanda omnis.fortuna ferendo est
Disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis
indicate that the gentleness of Virgil, if combined with
a peace-loving disposition, was not incompatible with
Roman fortitude and resolute endurance.
The reproach from which it is impossible entirely to
clear his memory is that of undue subservience to power.
It was in the qualities of independence and self-assertion
that his character was deficient. It is to the excess of his
feeling of ^deference to power, and not to any insincerity
of nature, that we attribute the language occasionally as
in the Invocation to the Georgics transcending the limits
of truth and sobriety, in which the position of Augustus is
magnified. It is for ever to be regretted that he was'
induced to sacrifice not only the tribute of admiration
originally offered to the friend of his youth, but even the
symmetrical conception of his greatest poem, to the jealousy
which Augustus entertained of the memory of Gallus.
Virgil, again, has no sympathy with political life, as it
realised itself in the ancient republics, or with the energetic
types of character which the conflicts of political life de-
velope. His own somewhat submissive disposition, his
personal attachments and admirations, his hatred of strife,
his yearning after peace and reconcilement, made him
a sincere supporter of the idea of the Empire in opposition
to that of the Republic. To a character of a more com-
bative energy and power of resistance it would have been
scarcely possible to have been unmoved by the spectacle of
the final overthrow of ancient freedom, though that freedom
had for a long time previously contributed little to human
happiness. But the nobleness of Virgil's nature is not the
nobleness of those qualities which make men great in
VOL. I. K
130 LIFE AND PERSONAL
resistance to wrong, but the nobleness of a gentle and
gracious spirit.
By no poet in any time has he been surpassed in devo-
tion to his art. Into this channel all the currents of his
being, all fresh sources of feeling, all the streams of his
meditation and research were poured. The delight in
poetry and the kindred delight in the beauty of Nature
were the main springs of his happiness. With the high
ambition of genius and the unceasing aim at perfection he
combined a remarkable modesty and a generous apprecia-
tion of all poets who had gone before him. But distrust
in himself never led to any flagging of energy. The stories
told of his habits of composition confirm the impression of
his assiduous industry. In writing the Georgics he is said
to have dictated many lines early in the morning, under
the first impulse of his inspiration, and to have employed
the remainder of the day in concentrating their force
within the smallest compass. Of no poem of equal length
can it be said that there is so little that is superfluous. He
himself described this mode of composition by the phrase
' parere se versus modo atque ritu ursino ' ' that he pro-
duced verses by licking them into shape as a bear did with
her cubs.' The Aeneid was first arranged and written out
in prose ; when the structure of the story was distinct to
his mind, he proceeded to work on different parts of it, as
his fancy moved him. Another statement in regard to
his manner of reading is worth mentioning, as indicating
the powerful inspiration of the true doido'j, which he added
to the patient industry of the conscientious artist. It is
recorded on the authority of a contemporary poet, that he
read his own poems with such a wonderful sweetness and
charm (* suavitate turn lenociniis miris '), that verses which
would have sounded commonplace when read by another,
produced a marvellous effect when 'chanted to their own
music 1 ' by the poet himself. Similar testimony is given
1 Compare the lines of Coleridge on reading ' The Prelude ' read aloud by
Wordsworth: 'An Orphic song indeed,
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
To their own music chanted.'
CHARACTERISTICS OF VIRGIL. 131
of the effect produced by the reading or recitation of their
own works by some among our own poets, Wordsworth,
Scott, and Byron among others. This large, musical,
and impassioned utterance the ' os magna sonaturum ' is
a sure note of that access of emotion which forces the poet
to find a rhythmical expression for his thought.
It was through the union of a strong and delicate vein of
original genius with a great receptive capacity and an
unwearied love of his art that Virgil established and for
a long time retained his ascendency as one of the two
whom the world honoured as its greatest poets. Though
his supremacy has been shaken, and is not likely ever again
to be fully re-established, the examination of his various
works will show that it was not through accident or caprice
that one of the highest places in the dynasty of genius
was allotted to him, and that his still remains one of the
few great names which belong, not to any particular age or
nation, but to all time and to every people.
K 2
CHAPTER IV.
THE ECLOGUES.
I.
The Eclogues, examined in the order of their composition.
THE name by which the earliest of Virgil's recognised
works is known tells us nothing of the subject of which it
treats. The word ' Eclogae ' simply means selections. As
applied to the poems of Virgil, it designates a collection of
short unconnected poems. The other name by which these
poems were known in antiquity, 'bucolica,' indicates the
form of Greek art in which they were cast and the pastoral
nature of their subjects. Neither word is used by Virgil
himself ; but the expressions by which he characterises his
art, such as ' Sicelides Musae,' ' versus Syracosius,' ' Musa
agrestis ' and ' silvestris,' show that he writes in a pastoral
strain, and that he considered the pastoral poetry of Greece
as his model. He invokes not only the ' Sicilian Muses/
but the * fountain of Arethusa.' He speaks too of Pan, and
Arcadia, and the ( Song of Maenalus.' His shepherd-poets
are described as ' Arcadians.' The poets whom he intro-
duces as his prototypes are the 'sage of Ascra/ and the
mythical Linus, Orpheus, and Amphion. He alludes also
to Theocritus under the name of the ' Syracusan shepherd.'
The names of the shepherds who are introduced as con-
tending in song or uttering their feelings in monologue
Corydon, Thyrsis, Menalcas, Meliboeus, Tityrus, &c.
are Greek, and for the most part taken from the pastoral
idyls of Theocritus. There is also frequent mention of
THE ECLOGUES. 133
the shepherd's pipe, and of the musical accompaniment
to which some of the songs chanted by the shepherds
are set.
The general character of the poems is further indicated
by the frequent use of the word * ludere,' a word applied by
Catullus, Horace, Propertius, Ovid, and others to the poems
of youth, of a light and playful character, and, for the most
part, expressive of various moods of the passion of love.
Thus at the end of the Georgics Virgil speaks of himself
thus :
Carmina qui lusi pastorum, audaxque iuventa
Tityre te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi.
This reference shows further that the poem which stands
first in order was placed there when the edition of the
Eclogues was given to the world. But other references
(at v. 86-87 and vi. 12) seem to imply that the separate
poems were known either by distinct titles, such as Varus,
the title of the sixth, or from their opening lines, as the
'Formosum Cory don ardebat Alexim,' and the ' Cuium
pecus? an Meliboei?' It has been also suggested, from
lines quoted in the ninth, which profess to be the opening
lines of other pastoral poems, that the ten finally collected
together were actual ' selections ' from a larger, number,
commenced if not completed (* necdum perfecta canebat ')
by Virgil. But these passages seem more like the lines
attributed to the contending poets in the third and seventh
Eclogues, i.e. short unconnected specimens of pastoral
song.
Nearly all the poems afford indications of the time of
their composition and of the order in which they followed
one another ; and that order is different from the order in
which they now appear. It is said, on the authority of
Asconius, that three years, from 42 B.C. to 39 B.C., were
given to the composition of the Eclogues. But an allusion
in the tenth (line 47) to the expedition of Agrippa
across the Alps in the early part of 37 B.C. requires that
a later date must be assigned to that poem. The probable
explanation is that Virgil had intended to end the series
134 THE ECLOGUES.
with the eighth, which celebrated the triumph of Pollio
over the Parthini in 39 B.C.,
A te principium, tibi desinet,
but that his friendship for Callus induced him to add the
tenth, two years later, either before the poems were finally
collected for publication, or in preparing a new edition
of them. They were written at various places and at
various stages of the poet's fortunes. They appear to have
obtained great success when first published, and some of
them were recited with applause upon the stage. The
earliest in point of time were the second and third, and
these, along with the fifth, may be ascribed to the year
42 B.C. The seventh, which has no allusion to contem-
porary events and is a mere imitative reproduction of the
Greek idyl, may also belong to this earlier period, although
some editors rank it as one of the latest. The first, which
is founded on the loss of the poet's farm, belongs to the
next year, and the ninth and sixth probably may be
assigned to the same year, or to the early part of the
following year. The date of the fourth is fixed by the
Consulship of Pollio to the year 40 B.C. ; that of the eighth
to the year 39 B.C. by the triumph of Pollio over the Par-
thini. The opening words of the tenth show that it was
the last of the series ; and the reference to the expedition
of Agrippa implies that it could not have been written
earlier than the end of 38 B.C. or the beginning of 37 B.C.
The first, second, third, fifth, and perhaps the seventh 1 ,
1 The lines of Propertius
Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi
Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin amndinibus,
might suggest the inference that the seventh was composed at the time when
Virgil was residing in the neighbourhood of Tarentum. But, at the time when
Propertius wrote, Virgil was engaged in the composition of the Aeneid, not of
the Eclogues. The present ' canis ' seems rather to mean that Virgil, while
engaged with his Aeneid, was still conning over his old Eclogues. Yet he
must have strayed ' subter pineta Galaesi ' some time before the composition
of the last Georgic. The ' memini ' in the line
Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis
looks like the memory of a somewhat distant past. Could the villa of Siron
have been in the neighbourhood of Tarentum ? (a question originally suggested
by Mr. Munro) ; may it have passed by gift or inheritance into the possession
THE ECLOGUES. 135
were in all probability written by the poet in his native
district, the sixth and ninth at the villa which had formerly
belonged to Siron (' villula quae Sironis eras\ the rest
at Rome. The principle on which the poems are arranged
seems to be that of alternating dialogue with monologue.
The eighth, though not in dialogue, yet resembles the latter
part of the fifth, in presenting two continuous so^s,
chanted by different shepherds. The poem first in order
may have occupied its place from its greater interest in
connexion with the poet's fortunes, or from the honouV
which it assigns to Octavianus, whose pre-eminence over the
other competitors for supreme power had sufficiently de-
clared itself before the first collected edition of the poems
was published.
In the earliest poems of the series the art of Virgil, like
the lyrical art of Horace in his earlier Odes, is more imita-
tive and conventional than in those written later. He
seems satisfied with reproducing the form, rhythm, and
diction of Theocritus, and mingling some vague expression
of personal or national feeling with the sentiment of the
Greek idyl. That the fifth was written after the second
and third appears from the lines v. 86-87, m which Me-
nalcas, under which name Virgil introduces himself in the
Eclogues, presents his pipe to Mopsus :
Haec nos ' Formosum Corydon ardebat Alexin,'
Haec eadem docuit 'Cuium pecus? an Meliboei?'
From these lines also it may be inferred as probable that
the second poem, ' Formosum pastor Corydon,' was written
before the third, ' Die mihi, Damoeta, cuium pecus ? an
Meliboei?'
A tradition, quoted by Servius and referred to (though
inaccurately) by Martial *, attributes the composition of
the second Eclogue to the admiration excited in Virgil
by the beauty of a young slave, Alexander, who was
of Virgil, and was he in later life in the habit of going to it from time to
time ? or was the distance too great from Mantua for him to have transferred
his family thither ?
1 viii. 56. 12.
136 THE ECLOGUES.
presented to him by Pollio and carefully educated by
him. A similar story is told of his having received from
Maecenas another slave, named Cebes, who also obtained
from him a liberal education and acquired some distinc-
tion as a poet. It is not improbable that Virgil may have
been warmly attached to these youths, and that there
was nothing blameable in his attachment. Even Cicero,
a man as far removed as possible from any sentimental
weakness, writes to Atticus of the death of a favourite
slave, a young Greek, and evidently, from the position
he filled in Cicero's household, a boy of liberal accomplish-
ments, in these words : ' Et mehercule eram conturbatior.
Nam puer festivus, anagnostes noster, Sositheus decesserat,
meque plus, quam servi mors debere videbatur, commo-
verat 1 .' It remains true however that in one or two of
those Eclogues in which he most closely imitates Theo-
critus, Virgil uses the language of serious sentiment, and
once of bantering raillery, in a way which justly offends
modern feeling. And this is all that can be said against
him. ^i
There are more imitations of the Greek in this and
in the next poem than in any of the other Eclogues 2 .
The scenery of the piece, in so far as it is at all definite,
combines the mountains and the sea-landscape of Sicily
with Italian woods and vineyards. Corydon seems to com-
bine the features of an Italian vinedresser with the con-
ventional character of a Sicilian shepherd. The line
Aspice aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci
applies rather to an Italian scene than to the pastoral dis-
trict of Sicily; and this reference to ploughing seems incon-
sistent with the description of the fierce midsummer heat,
and with the introduction of the ' fessi messores ' in the
opening lines of the poem. These inconsistencies show
how little thought Virgil had for the objective consistency
1 Ep. ad Att. i. 12.
2 Dr. Kennedy refers to no less than seventeen parallel passages from
Theocritus, many of them being almost literal translations from the Greek
poet.
THE ECLOGUES. 137
of his representation. The poem however, in many places,
gives powerful expression to the feelings of a despairing
lover. There are here, as in the Gallus, besides that vein
of feeling which the Latin poet shares with Theocritus,
some traces of that ' wayward modern mood ' of longing
to escape from the world and to return to some vague
ideal of Nature, and to sacrifice all the gains of civilisation
in exchange for the homeliest dwelling shared with the i
object of affection :
O tantum libeat mecum tibi sordida rura
Atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos;
and again :
Habitarunt di quoque silvas
Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces
Ipsa colat, nobis placeant ante omnia silvae.
The third Eclogue, which is in dialogue, and reproduces
two features of the Greek idyl, the natural banter of the
shepherds and the more artificial contest in song, is still
more imitative and composite in character. It shows
several close imitations, especially of the fourth, fifth, and
eighth Idyls of Theocritus 1 . In this poem only Virgil,
whose muse even in the Eclogues is almost always serious
or plaintive, endeavours to reproduce the playfulness and
vivacity of his original. Both in the bantering dialogue
and in the more formal contest of the shepherds, the sub-
jects introduced are for the most part of a conventional
pastoral character, but with these topics are combined
occasional references to the tastes and circumstances of
the poet himself. Thus in lines 40-42,
In medio duo signa . . . curvus arator haberet,
allusion is made to the astronomical studies of which Virgil
made fuller use in the Georgics. In the line
Pollio amat nostram quamvis est rustica Musa,
and again,
Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina,
he makes acknowledgment of the favour and pays honour
1 Dr. Kennedy refers to twenty-seven parallels from Theocritus.
138 THE ECLOGUES.
to the poetical tastes of his earliest patron, whom he cele-
brates also in the fourth and eighth Eclogues. The line
Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina Maevi
has condemned to everlasting notoriety the unfortunate
pair, who have served modern satirists as types of spiteful
critics and ineffectual authors. At lines 10-11 there is, as
in Eclogue ii., an apparent blending of the occupations
of the Italian vinedresser with those of the Sicilian shep-
herd. In the contest of song there is no sustained con-
nexion of thought, as indeed there is not in similar contests
in Theocritus. These contests are supposed to reproduce
the utterances of improvisator!, of whom the second speaker
is called to say something, either in continuation of or in
contrast to the thought of the first. The shepherds in
these strains seek to glorify their own prowess, boast of
their successes in love, or call attention to some picturesque
aspect of their rustic life.
The Jiftli Eclogue is also in dialogue. It brings before
us a friendly interchange of song between two pastoral
poets, Mopsus and Menalcas. Servius mentions that Me-
nalcas (here, as in the ninth Eclogue) stands for Virgil
himself, while Mopsus stands for his friend Aemilius Macer
of Verona. Mopsus laments the cruel death of Daphnis,
the legendary shepherd of Sicilian song, and Menalcas
celebrates his apotheosis. Various accounts were given
in antiquity of the meaning which was to be attached
to this poem. One account was that Virgil here expressed
his sorrow for the death of his brother Flaccus \ Though
the time of his death may have coincided with that of the
composition of this poem, the language of the lament and
of the song celebrating the ascent of Daphnis to heaven
is quite unlike the expression of a private or personal
sorrow. There seems no reason to doubt another explana-
tion which has come down from ancient times, that under
1 'Menalcas Vergilius hie intelligitur, qui obitum fratris sui Flacci deflet,
vel, ut alii volunt, interfectionem Caesaris.' Comment, in Verg. Serviani
(H. A. Lion, 1826).
THE ECLOGUES. 139
this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and pro-
claims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable 1
that the poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of
July, which for the first time was celebrated with religious
rites in the year 42 B.C., when the name of the month
Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained ever
since. The lines 25-26,
Nulla neque amnem
Libavit quadrupes nee graminis attigit herbam,
are supposed 2 to refer to a belief which had become tradi-
tional in the time of Suetonius, that the horses which had
been consecrated after crossing the Rubicon had refused
to feed immediately before the death of their master 3 . In
the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in those
which mark out the divine office which he was destined
to fulfil after death,
Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis
Agricolae facient, damnabis tu quoque votis,
as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,
Astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo
Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem,
allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the
husbandman and vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the
honour due to him as their tutelary god in heaven. And
these allusions help us to understand the ' votis iam nunc
adsuesce vocari ' of the invocation in the first Georgic.
Nothing illustrates more clearly the unreal conceptions
of the pastoral allegory than a comparison of the language
in the 'Lament for Daphnis,' with the strong Roman
realism of the lines at the end of the first Georgic, in
which the omens portending the death of Caesar are
described. Nor can anything show more clearly the want
of individuality with which Virgil uses the names of the
1 See Conington's Introduction to this Eclogue.
2 Compare M. Benoist's note on the passage.
3 ' Proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubicone flumine
consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit pertinacissime pabulo
abstinere ubertimque flere.' Sueton. lib. i. c. 81.
140 THE ECLOGUES.
Theocritean shepherds than the fact that while the Daph-
nis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified
soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living
husbandman, whose fortunes were secured by the protect-
ing star of Caesar,
Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes.
The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this
protecting influence are foreshadowed in the lines 58-61
Ergo alacris .... amat bonus otia Daphnis ;
and the earliest reference to the divine honours assigned
in life and death to the later representatives of the name
of Caesar, is heard in the jubilant shout of wild mountains,
rocks, and groves to the poet
Deus, deus ille, Menalca.
/"Although the treatment of the subject may be vague
|and conventional, yet this poem possesses the interest of
being Virgil's earliest effort, directed to a subject of living
and national interest ; and many of the lines in the poem
are unsurpassed for grace and sweetness of musical cadence
by anything in Latin poetry.
There is no allusion to contemporary events by which
the date of the seventh can be determined ; but the absence
of such allusion and the 'purely Theocritean 1 ' character
of the poem suggest the inference that it is a specimen of
Virgil's earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and
Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated
under a whispering ilex ; they engage in a friendly contest
of song, which is listened to also by the poet himself, who
here calls himself Meliboeus. They assert in alternate
strains their claims to poetic honours, offer prayers and
vows to Diana as the goddess of the chase and to Priapus
as the god of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat
from the heat of summer and of cheerfulness by the winter
fire, and connect the story of their loves with the varying
aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of trees sacred
1 Kennedy.
THE ECLOGUES. 141
to different deities or native to different localities. Though
the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan :
Hie virides tenera praetexit harundine ripas
Mincius, eque sacra resonant examina quercu.
Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon :
Haec memini, et victum frustra contenders Thyrsin.
Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore nobis
These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of
pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds,
of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones
caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning
to the old Sicilian dirge over ' the woes of Daphnis,' may
be assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the
Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of
the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these
peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the
drama which was at the same time enacted on the real
stage of human affairs. No sound of the 'storms that
raged outside his happy ground ' disturbs the security with
which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year
brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to
the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among ^
the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and
allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavianus, the first
Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based
as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil
seems to care only for the subjective truth with which
Tityrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard
for consistency in the conception of the situation, the
scenery, or the personages of the poem. Tityrus is at once -
the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and
the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging
to it 1 . He is advanced in years 2 , and at the same time a
1 Cf. Ergo tua rura manebunt
Ille meas errare boves
Multa meis exiret victima saeptis.
2 Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat
Fortunate senex.
THE ECLOGUES.
i
poet lying indolently in the shade, and making the woods
ring with the sounds of 'beautiful Amaryllis 1 / like the
young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery apparently
combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan
district
Quamvis lapis onmia nudus
Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco,
with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song
Maioresque cadunt aids de montibus umbrae.
A further inconsistency has been suggested between the
time of year indicated by the ' patulae sub tegmine fagi,'
and that indicated by the ripe" chestnuts at line 8i 2 .
The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the
feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for
their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this
barbarous irruption on their ancient domains :
Impius haec tarn culta novalia miles habebit?
Barbaras has segetes?. En quo discordia civis
Produxit miseros!
Virgil's feeling for the movement of his age, which hence-
forth becomes one of the main sources of his inspiration,
has its origin in the effect which these events had on his
personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened within
him by the sorrows of his native district.
The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same
year, and in form imitated from the seventh Idyl the
famous Thalysia of Theocritus, repeats the tale of dejec-
tion and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Man-
tuan district,
Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat,
and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger
which Virgil encountered from the violence of the centurion
who claimed possession of his land. The speakers in the
dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of Menalcas, the pastoral
poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers spread
over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees, and
1 See Kennedy's note on the passage. 2 M. Benoist.
THE ECLOGUES. 143
V
Lycidas, who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a
poet :
Me quoque dicunt
Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis.
Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nee dicere Cinna
Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores 1 .
After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the.
comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines
referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs
of being a real description of the situation of Virgil's
farms
qua se subducere colles incipiunt
Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral
poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two
of these ' Tityre dum redeo ' and ' Hue ades O Galatea '
are purely Theocritean. Two others
Vare tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis,
and
Daphni quid antiques signorum suspicis ortus
indicate the new path which Virgil's art was striking out
for itself. There is certainly more reality and substance in
this poem than in most of the earlier Eclogues. Lycidas*
and Moeris speak about what really interests them. The
scene of the poem is apparently the road between Virgil's
farm and Mantua. There seem to be no conventional and
inconsistent features introduced from the scenery of Sicily
or Arcadia, unless it be the ' aequor ' of line 57
Et nunc omne tibi stratum silet aequor.
But may not that be either the lake, formed by the over-
flow of the river, some distance above Mantua, or even the
great level plain, with its long grass and corn-fields and
trees, hushed in the stillness of the late afternoon ?
1 Compare the lines which Theocritus applies to Lycidas :
Kcu yap eyuv Motaai/ fcatrvpbv arofta, Kfjftf Xkyovn
iravTcs doiSov apiffrov eyu 8e rts ov Ta^VTTfiOrjs,
ov Adv ov yap irca KO.T' ffjiov voov OVT TOV tffOXuv
2itee\i5av viKrjfjii TOV (K 2afj.ca, ovSe 3?i\ijTav
aciSoov, /Sarpaxos 8 TTOT' dttpidas us TIS IptaScu.
Theoc. vii. 37-41.
144 THE ECLOGUES.
The sixth Eclogue was written probably about the same
time and at the same place, the villa of Siron, in which
Virgil had taken refuge with his family. It is inscribed
with the name of Varus, who is said to have been a fellow-
student of Virgil under the tuition of Siron. But, with
the exception of the dedicatory lines, there is no reference
'to the circumstances of the time. Though abounding with
rich pastoral illustrations, the poem is rather a mythological
and semi-philosophical idyl than a pure pastoral poem.
It consists mainly of a song of Silenus, in which an account
is given of the creation of the world in accordance with the
Lucretian philosophy ; and, in connexion with this theme,
(as is done also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), some of
the oldest mythological traditions, such as the tale of
Pyrrha and Deucalion, the reign of Saturn on earth, the
theft and punishment of Prometheus, &c., are introduced.
The opening lines Namque canebat uti are imitated
from the song of Orpheus in the first book of the Argo-
nautics 1 , but they bear unmistakable traces also of the
study of Lucretius. There seems no trace of the language
>f Theocritus in the poem.
Three points of interest may be noted in this song :
(i) Virgil here, as in Georgic ii. 475, &c., regards the
revelation of physical knowledge as a fitting theme for
poetic treatment. So in the first Aeneid, the ' Song of
lopas ' is said to be about ' the wandering moon and the
toils of the sun ; the origin of man and beast, water
and fire,' etc. The revelation of the secrets of Nature
seems to float before the imagination of Virgil as the
highest consummation of his poetic faculty. (2) We note
here how, as afterwards in the Georgics, he accepts the
philosophical ideas of creation, side by side with the super-
natural tales of mythology. He seems to regard such
tales as those here introduced as part of the religious
traditions of the human race, and as a link which connects
man with the gods. In the Georgics we find also the same
effort to reconcile, or at least to combine, the conceptions
1 i. 496.
THE ECLOGUES. 145
of science with mythological fancies. In this effort we
recognise the influence of other Alexandrine poets rather
than of Theocritus. (3) The introduction of Gallus in the
midst of the mythological figures of the poem, and the
account of the honour paid to him by the Muses and of
the office assigned to him by Linus, are , characteristic of
the art of the Eclogues, which is not so much allegorical as
composite. It brings together in the same representation Nj
facts, personages, and places from actual life and the /\
figures and scenes of a kind of fairy-land. In the tenth
Eclogue Gallus is thus identified with the Daphnis of
Sicilian song, and is represented as the object of care to
the Naiads and Pan and Apollo. While Pollio is the
patron whose protection and encouragement Virgil most
cordially acknowledges in his earlier poems, Gallus is the
man among his contemporaries who has most powerfully
touched his imagination and gained his affections.
The Eclogue composed next in order of time is the 'Pollio.'
It was written in the consulship of Pollio, B.C. 40, imme-
diately after the reconciliation between Antony and Octa-
vianus effected by the treaty of Brundisium, and gives
expression to that vague hope of a new era of peace and
prosperity which recurs so often in the poetry of this age.
In consequence of the interpretation given to it in a later
age, this poem has acquired an importance connected with
Virgil's religious belief second only to the importance of
the sixth Aeneid. Early Christian writers, perceiving a
parallel between expressions and ideas in this poem and
those in the Messianic prophecies, believed that Virgil was
here the unconscious vehicle of Divine inspiration, and that
he prophesies of the new era which was to begin with the
birth of Christ. And though, as Conington and others
have pointed out, the picture of the Golden Age given in
the poem is drawn immediately from Classical and not
from Hebrew sources, yet there is no parallel in Classical
poetry to that which is the leading idea of the poem, the
coincidence of the commencement of this new era with the
birth of a child whom a marvellous career awaited.
VOL. I. L
146 THE ECLOGUES.
The poem begins with an invocation to the Sicilian
Muses and with the declaration that, though the strain is
still pastoral, yet it is to be in a higher mood, and worthy
of the Consul to whom it is addressed. Then follows the
announcement of the birth of a new era. The world after
passing through a cycle of ages, each presided over by a
special deity, had reached the last of the cycle, presided
over by Apollo, and was about to return back to the Golden
or Saturnian Age of peace and innocence, into which the
human race was originally born. A new race of men
was to spring from heaven. The first-born of this new
stock was destined hereafter to be a partaker of the life
of the gods and to ' rule over a world in peace with
the virtues of his father.' Then follow the rural and
pastoral images of the Golden Age, like those given in the
first Georgic in the description of the early world before the
reign of Jove. The full glory of the age should not be
reached till this child should attain the maturity of man-
hood. In the meantime some traces of 'man's original sin'
('priscae vestigia fraudis') should still urge him to brave
the dangers of the sea, to surround his cities with walls,
and to plough the earth into furrows. There should be a
second expedition of the Argonauts, and a new Achilles
should be sent against another Troy. The romantic
adventures of the heroic age were to precede the rest,
innocence, and spontaneous abundance of the age of Saturn.
Next the child is called upon to prepare himself for the
* magni honores ' the great offices of state which awaited
him ; and the poet prays that his own life and inspiration
may be prolonged so far as to enable him to celebrate
his career.
There seem to be no traces of imitation of Theocritus
in this poem. The rhythm which in the other Eclogues
reproduces the Theocritean cadences is in this more stately
and uniform, recalling those of Catullus in his longest
poem. The substance of the poem is quite unlike anything
in the Sicilian idyl. Though this substance does not stand
out in the clear light of reality, but is partially revealed
THE ECLOGUES. 147
through a haze of pastoral images and legendary associa-
tions, yet it is not altogether unmeaning. The anticipation
of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the
world ; and this anticipation the state of men's minds at
and subsequent to the* time when this poem was written
probably contributed to the acceptance of, the great political
and spiritual changes which awaited the world 1 .
Two questions which have been much discussed in con-
nexion with this poem remain to be noticed : (i) who is the
child born in the consulship of Pollio of whom this marvel-
lous career is predicted ? (2) is it at all probable that Virgil,
directly or indirectly, had any knowledge of the Messianic
prophecies or ideas ?
In answer to the first we may put aside at once the sup-
position that the prediction is made of the child who was
born in that year to Octavianus and Scribonia. The words
'nascenti puero' are altogether inapplicable to the noto-
rious and unfortunate Julia, who was the child of that
marriage. Even if we supposed that Virgil was sanguine
enough to predict the sex of the child, we cannot imagine
him allowing the words to stand after his prediction had
been falsified. We may equally dismiss the supposition
that the child spoken of was the offspring of the mar-
riage of Antony and Octavia. Not to mention other
considerations adverse to this supposition 2 , it would have
been impossible for Virgil, the devoted partisan of Caesar,
to pay this special compliment to Antony, even after
he became so closely connected with his rival. There
1 Compare Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins :
* II y a pourtant un cote par lequel la quatrieme ^glogue peut etre rattache a
1'histoire du Christiarrisme ; elle nous revele un certain etat des ames qui n'a
pas ete inutile a ses rapides progres. C'etait une opinion accreditee alors
que le monde epuis6 touchait a une grande crise, et qu'une revolution se pre"-
parait qui lui rendrait la jeunesse. ... II regnait alors partout un sorte de
fermentation, d'attente inquiete et d'esperance sans limite. " Toutes les cra-
tures soupirent," dit Saint Paul, "et sont dans le travail de renfantement."
Le principal interet des vers de Virgile est de nous garder quelque souvenir de
cette disposition des ames.'
2 Any child born of this marriage in the year 40 B.C. must have owed its
birth, not to Antony, but to Marcellus, the former husband of Octavia.
L 2
148 THE ECLOGUES.
remains a third supposition, that the child spoken of is
the son of Pollio, Asinius Callus, who plays an important
part in the reign of Tiberius. This last interpretation is
supported by the authority of Asconius, who professed to
have heard it from Asinius Gallus himself. The objection
to this interpretation is that Virgil was not likely to assign
to the child of one who, as compared with Octavianus and
Antony, was only a secondary personage in public affairs,
the position of ' future ruler of the world ' and the function
of being 'the regenerator of his age.' Still less could a
poem bearing this meaning have been allowed to retain its
place among Virgil 's works after the ascendency of Augus-
tus became undisputed. Further, the line
Cara deum suboles, magnum lovis incrementum
(whatever may be its exact meaning 1 ) appears an extreme
exaggeration when specially applied to the actual son of a
mortal father and mother. These difficulties have led some
interpreters to suppose that the child spoken of is an ideal
or imaginary representative of the future race. But if we
look more closely at the poem, we find that the child is not
really spoken of as the future regenerator of the age ; he is
merely the first-born of the new race, which was ,to be
nearer to the gods both in origin and in actual communion
with them. Again, the words
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem
would not convey the same idea in the year 40 B. c. as they
would ten or twenty years later. At the time when the
poem was written the consulship was still the highest re-
cognised position in the State. The Consuls for the year,
nominally at least, wielded the whole power of the Empire.
The words 'reget orbem' remain as a token that the
1 The application of the words ' magnum lovis incrementum ' by the author
of the Ciris (398) to Castor and Pollux suggests a doubt as to Mr. Munro's
interpretation of the words, accepted by Dr. Kennedy; though at the same time
there is nothing improbable in the supposition that Virgil gave a meaning to
the words which was misunderstood by his imitator.
THE ECLOGUES. 149
Republic was no*t yet entirely extinct. The child is called
upon to prepare himself for the great offices of State in the
hope that he should in time hold the high place which was
now held by his father. The words 'patriis virtutibus'
imply that he is no ideal being, but the actual son of
a well-known father. Virgil takes occasion in this poem
to commemorate the attainment of the highest office by
his patron, to celebrate the birth of the son born in the
year of his consulship, and at the same time to express, by
mystical and obscure allusions, the trust that the peace of
Brundisium was the inauguration of that new era for which
the hearts of men all over the world were longing.
In turning to the second question, discussed in connexion
with this Eclogue, the great amount and recondite character
of Virgil's learning, especially of that derived from Alex-
andrine sources, must be kept in view. Macrobius testifies
to this in several places. Thus he writes, 'fuit enim hie
poeta, ut scrupulose et anxie, ita dissimulanter et clanculo
doctus, ut multa transtulerit quae, unde translata sint, dif-
ficile sit cognitu V In another place he speaks of those
things, 'quae a penitissima Graecorum doctrina transtulisset 2 .'
And again he says, ' de Graecorum penitissimis literis hanc
historiam eruit Maro 3 .' It is indeed most improbable that
Virgil had a direct knowledge of the Septuagint. If he had
this knowledge it would have shown itself by other allusions
in other parts of his works. But it is quite possible that,
through other channels of Alexandrine learning, the ideas
and the language of Hebrew prophecy may have become
indirectly known to him. One channel by which this may
have reached him would be the new Sibylline prophecies,
manufactured in the East and probably reflecting Jewish
as well as other Oriental ideas, which poured into Rome
after the old Sibylline books had perished in the burning of
the Capitol during the first Civil War.
Still, admitting these possibilities, we are not called upon
to go beyond classical sources for the general substance and
1 Sat. v. 18. 2 Ib. 22. 3 Ib. 19.
150 THE ECLOGUES.
idea of this poem. It has more in common with the myth
in the Politicus of Plato than with the Prophecies of Isaiah.
The state of the world at the time when the poem was
written produced the longing for an era of restoration and
a return to a lost ideal of innocence and happiness, and the
wish became father to the thought.
There still remain the eighth and tenth Eclogues to be
examined. The first, like the fourth, is associated with the
name of Pollio, the second with that of Gallus. The date
of the eighth is fixed to 39 B. C. by the victory of Pollio in
Illyria and his subsequent triumph over the Parthini. The
words
Accipe iussis
Carmina coepta tuis
testify to the personal influence under which Virgil wrote
these poems. The title of ' Pharmaceutria,' by which the
poem is known, indicates that Virgil professes to reproduce,
in an Italian form, that passionate tale of city life which
forms the subject of the second Idyl of Theocritus. But
while the subject and burden of the second of the two songs
contained in this Eclogue are suggested by that Idyl, the
poem is very far from being a mere imitative reproduction
of it.
Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesiboeus, meet in the
early dawn
Cum ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba,
(one of those touches of truthful description which reappear
in the account of the pastoral occupations in Georgic iii).
They each sing of incidents which may have been taken
from actual life, or may have formed the subject of popular
songs traditional among the peasantry of the district. In
the first of these songs Damon gives vent to his despair in
consequence of the marriage of his old love Nysa with his
rival Mopsus. Though the shepherds who sing together
bear the Greek names of Damon and Alphesiboeus, though
they speak of Rhodope and Tmaros and Maenalus, of
Orpheus and Arion, though expressions and lines are close
THE ECLOGUES.
translations, and one a mistranslation, from the Greek
8' cva\\a yevowro being rendered ' omnia vel medium fiant
mare '), and though the mode by which the lover determines
to end his sorrows,
Praeceps aerii specula de mentis in undas
Deferar,
is more appropriate to a shepherd inhabiting the rocks
overhanging the Sicilian seas than to one dwelling in the
plain of Mantua, yet both this song and the accompanying
one sung by Alphesiboeus approach more nearly to the
impersonal and dramatic representation of the Greek idyl
than any of those already examined. The lines of most
exquisite grace and tenderness in the poem, lines which
have been pronounced the finest in Virgil and the finest in
Latin literature by Voltaire and Macaulay V
Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala,
Dux ego vester eram, vidi cum matre legentem :
Alter ab undecimo turn me iam acceperat annus,
lam fragiles poteram ab terra contingere ramos:
Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error
are indeed close imitations of lines of similar beauty from
the song of the Cyclops to Galatea :
p\v eycaya reovs Kopa, av'iKa. irparov
^vOfS Ifia ffvv inarpl 64\ota' vatcivOiva (pv\\a
( opeos SptyaffOai, eyoj 5' oSov ayefj-ovevov
iravaaaOai 8' fffi8&v TV KOI varcpov ovS' tn TT<J vvv
IK TT^vca Svvafiar TLV' 8' ou /xe\, ov /xd At'
But they are so varied as to suggest a picture of ease and
abundance among the orchards and rich cultivated land of
Italy, instead of the free life and natural beauties of Sici-
lian mountains. The descriptive touches suggesting the
picture of the innocent romance of boyhood are also all
Virgil's own.
1 'But I think that the finest lines in the Latin language are those five
which begin
Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala.
I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that Voltaire
pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.' Life and Letters of Lord
Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 371, 372.
152 THE ECLOGUES.
The song of Alphesiboeus represents a wife endeavouring
to recall her truant, but not absolutely faithless, Daphnis
from the city to his home. Though some of the illustra-
tions in this song also are Greek, yet it contains several
natural references to rustic superstitions which were pro-
bably common to Greek and Italian peasants, and the fine
simile at line 85 (of which the first hint is to be found
in Lucretius 1 ) suggests purely Italian associations. The
final incident in the poem, ' Hylax in limine latrat ' (though
the name given to the dog is Greek), is a touch of natural
life, such as does not often occur in the Eclogues. On the
whole, Virgil seems here to have struck on a vein which it
may be regretted that he did not work more thoroughly.
If, as has been suggested by Mr. Symonds, in his account
and translations of popular Etruscan poems, any of the
Eclogues of Virgil are founded on primitive love-songs
current among the peasantry of Italy, the songs of Damon
and Alphesiboeus are those which we should fix on as
being the artistic development of these native germs.
The tenth Eclogue was the last in order of composition,
probably an after-thought written immediately before the
final publication, or perhaps before the second edition, of
the nine other poems. In this poem Virgil abandons the
more realistic path on which he had entered in the eighth,
and returns again to the vague fancies of the old pastoral
lament for Daphnis, as it is sung in the first Idyl of
Theocritus. Nothing can be more remote from actual fact
than the representation of Gallus the active and ambitious
soldier and man of affairs, at that time engaged in the
defence of the coasts of Italy as dying among the moun-
tains of Arcadia, in consequence of his desertion by Lycoris
(a dancing-girl, and former mistress of Antony, whose real
name was Cytheris), and wept for by the rocks and pine-
woods of Maenalus and Lycaeus. Yet none of the poems
is more rich in beauty, and grace, and happy turns of
expression. As the idealised expression of unfortunate
1 Compare 85-86 with Lucret. ii. 355, etc. :
At mater viridis saltus orbata peragrans.
THE ECLOGUES. 163
ments of the human heart. It is not in virtue of the
originality and consistency of their conception, but of their
general truth of feeling and the perfection of the medium
through which that feeling is conveyed, that those who
admire the Eclogues must vindicate their claim to poetic
honour.
The reserve with which all his personal relations are
indicated, and the allusive way in which the story of his
fortunes is told, are in keeping with the delicacy and
modesty of Virgil's nature. He tells us nothing directly
of his home-life or occupations, though his attachment to
the scenes familiar to him from childhood is felt in the
language with which Meliboeus felicitates Tityrus on the
restitution of his land, and in that in which Moeris and
Lycidas discourse together. We know of no actual Galatea
or Amaryllis associated with the joy or the pain of his
youth ; though his subtle perception of the various moods
of the passion of love can hardly be a mere poetic intuition,
unenlightened by personal experience. The eminent men
with whom he was brought into contact, Octavianus, Pollio,
Varus, and Callus, are not individualised ; though the dif-
ferent feelings of reverential or loyal respect, of colder
deference, or admiring enthusiasm, which they severally
excited in him, can be clearly distinguished. In the un-
designed revelation of himself, which every author makes
in his writings, there are few indications of the religious and
moral feeling and the national sentiment which are among
the principal elements in Virgil's maturer poems : but we
find abundantly the evidence of a mind open to all tender
and refined influences, free from every taint of envy or
malice, serious and pensive, and finding its chief happiness
in making the charm, which fascinated him in books, in
Nature, and in life, heard in the deep and rich music of
the language, of which he first drew out the full capa-
bilities :
Saepe ego longos
Cantando puerum memini me condere soles.
The Eclogues also present Virgil to us as not only a
M 2
164 THE ECLOGUES.
poet, but, as what he continued to be through all his life, a
student of the writings of the past. Like Milton he was
eminently a learned poet, and, like Milton, he knew the
subtle alchemy by which the duller ore of learned allusion
is transmuted into gold. The tales of the Greek mythology
and the names of places famous in song or story act on
his imagination, not so much through their own intrinsic
interest, as through the associations of literature. It is under
this reflex action that he recalls to memory the tales of
Pasiphae, of Scylla and Nisus, of Tereus and Philomela ;
introduces Orpheus, Amphion, and Linus as the ideal poets
of pastoral song ; and alludes to Hesiod, Euphorion, and
Theocritus in the phrases ' the sage of Ascra,' ' the verse
of Chalcis,' ' the Sicilian Shepherd.' It is in this spirit that
he associates the musical accompaniment of his song with
the names of Maenalus and Eurotas, of Rhodope and
Ismarus ; and that he speaks of bees and thyme as ' the
bees and thyme of Hybla,' of doves as 'the Chaonian
doves,' of vultures as 'the birds of Caucasus.' He also
characterises objects by local epithets, suggestive rather of
the associations of geographical science than of poetry.
Thus he speaks of ' Ariusian wine,' of ' Cydonian arrows/
( Cyrnean yews,' ' Assyrian spikenard,' and the like. The
interest in physical enquiries appears in the allusion in
Eel. iii. 40,
In medio duo signa Conon, etc.,
and in the rapid summary of the Epicurean theory of
creation at vi. 30, &c.,
Namque canebat uti magnum per inane coacta, etc.
In these last passages it is not so much by the scientific or
philosophical speculations themselves, as by their literary
treatment by former writers, that Virgil appears to be
attracted. Perhaps the frequent recurrence of these local-
ising epithets, where there is nothing in the context to call
up any thought of the locality indicated, may appear to
a modern reader an unfortunate result of his Alexandrine
studies ; yet the grace with which old poetic associations
. THE ECLOGUES. 165
are evoked and new associations created by such lines as
these,
Turn canit, errantem Permessi ad flumina Gallum
Aonas in mentis ut duxerit una sororum,
or these,
Omnia quae Phoebo quondam meditante beatus
Audiit Eurotas, iussitque ediscere laurus,
Ille canit,
attests the cumulative force which ancient names, identified
with the poetic life of the world, gather in their transmission
through the literatures of different ages and nations.
In the Georgics and Aeneid, as well as in the Eclogues,
Virgil shows a great susceptibility to the beauty and power
of Nature. But Nature presents different aspects and
awakens a different class of feelings in these various poems.
In the Eclogues he shows a great openness and receptivity
of mind, through which all the softer and more delicate
influences of the outward world enter into and become part
of his being. The 'molle atque facetum' of Horace de-
notes the yielding susceptibility 1 to outward influences,
and the vivacity which gives them back in graceful forms.
In the Georgics, the sense of the relation of Nature to
human energy imparts greater nobleness to the conception.
She appears there, not only in her majesty and beauty,
but as endowed with a soul and will. She stands to man
at first in the relation of an antagonist : but, by compliance
with her conditions, he subdues her to his will, and finds
in her at last a just and beneficent helpmate 2 . In the
Eclogues she takes rather the form of an enchantress,
who, by the charm of her outward mien and her freely-
offered gifts, fascinates him into a life of indolent repose.
If the one poem may in a sense be described as the
'glorification of labour,' the other might be described as
the ' glorification of the dolce far niente ' of Italian life.
1 Compare for this use of mollis in the sense of 'impressible' Cicero's
description of his brother Quintus (Ep. ad Att. i. 1 7) : ' Nam, quanta sit in
Quinto fratre meo comitas, quanta iucunditas, quam mollis animus et ad
accipiendam et ad deponendam iniuriam, nihil attinet me ad te, qui ea nosti,
scribere.'
2 ' Fundit humo facilem victum iustissima tellus.'
1 66 THE ECLOGUES.
The natural objects described by Virgil are often indeed
the same as those out of which the representation of Theo-
critus is composed ; but in Theocritus the human figures
are, after all, the prominent objects in the picture : the
speakers in his dialogue, though not unconscious of the
charm proceeding from the scenes in which they are placed,
yet are not possessed by it ; they do not lose their own being
in the larger life of Nature environing them. Theocritus
shows everywhere the social temperament of the Greeks.
It is an Italian, not perhaps without something of the
Celtic fibre in his composition, who utters his natural feel-
ings in the lines,
ibi haec incondita solus
Montibus et silvis studio iactabat inani.
In Virgil's representation neither the scenes nor the
human figures are so distinctly present to the eye ; but
there is diffused through it a subtle influence from the
outward world, bringing man's nature into conformity with
itself. The genius in modern times, which shows most of
this yielding susceptibility to the softer aspects and motions
of Nature, is that of Rousseau ; but in the manner in which
he gives way to this sentiment there is a want of restraint,
a strain of excited feeling, suggestive of the contrast be-
tween this transient intoxication of happiness and the
abiding unrest and misery of all his human relations. In
reading Virgil there is no sense of any such jarring discord ;
yet it is rather as a pensive emotion, not unallied to melan-
choly, than as the joy of a sanguine temperament, that his
susceptibility to outward impressions is made manifest.
The objects through which Nature exercises this spell
are, as was said, much the same as those out of which the
landscape of Theocritus is composed. Virgil, like Theo-
critus, enables us to feel the charm of 'the sparkling
stream of fresh water,' of ' mossy fountains and grass softer
than sleep,' of 'the cool shade of trees,' and of caves 'with
the gadding vine o'ergrown.' The grace and tender hues
of wild flowers violets, poppies, narcissus, and hyacinth
and of fruits, such as the ' cerea pruna ' and the ' tenera
THE ECLOGUES. 167
lanugine mala,"* the luxuriant vegetation clothing the rocks
and the ideal mountain glades,
Ille latus niveum molli fultus hyacintho,
the plants and trees, osiers and hazels, ilex and beech,
the woods, and meadow-pastures, and rich orchards
of his native district, have communicated the soul and
secret of their being to the mellow tones of his language
and the musical cadences of his verse. He makes us hear
again, with a strange delight, the murmur of bees feeding
on the willow hedge, the moan of turtle-doves from the
high elm tree, the sound of the whispering south wind, of
waves breaking on the shore, of rivers flowing down through
rocky valleys, the song of the woodman plying his work,
the voice of the divine poet chanting his strain. By a
few simple words he calls up before our minds the genial
luxuriance of spring, the freshness of early morning, the
rest of all living things in the burning heat of noon, the
stillness of evening, the gentle imperceptible motions of
Nature, in the shooting up of the young alder-tree and in the
gradual colouring of the grapes on the sunny hill-sides. If
the labour of man is mentioned at all, it is in the form of
some elegant accomplishment or picturesque task pruning
the vine or grafting the pear-tree, closing the streams that
irrigate the pastures, watching the flocks and herds feeding
at their own will. The new era on which the world was
about to enter is seen by his imagination, like the vision of
some pastoral valley, half hidden, half glorified through
a golden haze. The peculiar blessings anticipated in that
era are the rest from labour, the spontaneous bounty of
Nature, the peace that is to reign among the old enemies
of the animal kingdom.
The human affections which mingle with these represen-
tations of Nature are the love of home, and the romantic
sentiment, rather than the passion, of love. The common
human feeling of the love of home Virgil realises more
intensely from his love of the beauty associated with his
own home. Many of the sayings of Tityrus and Meliboeus,
i68 THE ECLOGUES.
bear witness to the strong hold which their lands and flocks
had on men of their class :
nos dulcia linquimus arva
ergo tua rura manebunt, Et tibi magna satis
Ille meas errare boves ut cernis
Spem gregis a, silice in nuda conixa reliquit
Ite meae, quondam felix pecus, ite capellae.
In the passage of the same Eclogue, from 69-78,
En unquam patrios .... salices carpetis amaras,
Virgil tells, in language of natural pathos and exquisite
grace, of the poor man's sorrow in yielding his thatched
hut, his well-trimmed fallow-fields, his corn crops, his
pear-trees and his vines, the familiar sight of his goats
feeding high up among the thickets of the rocks, to some
rude soldier, incapable either of enjoying the charm or
profiting by the richness of the land.
The three poems the second, eighth, and tenth of
which love is the theme are all of a serious and plaintive
cast. There are few touches in Virgil's art descriptive
either of the happier or the lighter and more playful
experiences of the passion, which are the common theme
of Horace's Odes. Still less does he treat the subject in
the style in which Propertius and Ovid celebrate their
triumphs. The sentiment of Virgil is more like that of
Tibullus ; only Virgil gives utterance, though always in
a dramatic form, to the real despair of unrequited affection
(indigni amoris), while the tone of Tibullus is rather that
of one yielding to the luxury of melancholy when in pos-
session of all that his heart desires. They each give
expression to that modern mood of passion, in which the
heart longs to exchange the familiar life of civilisation for
the rougher life of the fields, and to share some humble
cottage and the daily occupations of peasant life with the
beloved object 1 . In Virgil also there appears some antici-
1 This is the tone of the whole of the first Elegy of Tibullus, e. g.
Ipse seram teneras mature tempore vites
Rusticus et facili grandia poma manu.
Nee tamen interdum pudeat tenuisse bidentes, etc.
THE ECLOGUES. 169
pation of that longing for lonely communing with Nature
in her wilder and more desolate aspects which we associate
with romantic rather than with classical poetry.
Though, unlike all other Latin poets, Virgil avoids all
reference to the realistic side of this passion, there is no
ancient poet who has analysed and expressed, with equal
truth and beauty and with such a chivalrous devotion,
the fluctuations between hope and despair, the sense of
personal unworthiness, the sweet memories, the heart-felt
longings, the self-forgetful consideration and anxieties of
an idealising affection. In such lines as these, expressing
at once the sense of unworthiness and the rapid sinking of
the heart from hope to despair
Rusticus es Corydon, nee munera curat Alexis,
and again
Tanquam haec sint nostri medicina furoris;
in the lines in which Damon traces back his love to its
ideal source in early boyhood
Saepibus in nostris, etc. ;
in the fine simile at viii. 85
Talis amor Daphnim, qualis cum fessa iuvencum, etc.;
in the tender thought of the dying Callus for the mistress
who had forsaken him
A, tibi ne teneras glacies secet aspera plantas,
there is a delicate and subtle power of touch not unworthy
of the master-hand which, with maturer art, delineated
the queenly passion and despair of Dido.
The supreme excellence of Virgil's art consists in the
perfect harmony between his feeling and the medium
through which it is conveyed. The style of his longer
poems has many varied excellences, in accordance with
the varied character of the thought and sentiment which
it is called on to express. But the strong and full volume
of diction and rhythm and the complex harmonies of the
Georgics would have been an inappropriate vehicle for
the luxurious sentiment of the Eclogues. The attitude
170 THE ECLOGUES.
of the poet's mind in the composition of these earlier
poems was that of a genial passiveness rather than that
of creative activity. There are few poems of equal ex-
cellence in which so little use is made of that force of
words which imparts new life to things. A few such
expressions might be quoted, like that given by Wordsworth
as 'an instance of a slight exertion of the faculty of
imagination in the use of a single word '
Dumosa pendere procul de rupe videbo ;
and we notice a similar exertion of the faculty in the
line
Hie viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam Mincius.
But this actively imaginative use of language seldom occurs
in these poems. The general effect of the style is produced
by the fulness of feeling, the sweetness or sonorousness
of cadence, with which words, used in their familiar sense,
are selected and combined. Such epithets as 'mollis,'
'lentus,' 'tener' are of frequent recurrence, yet the im-
pression left by their use is not one of weakness, or of
a satiating luxury of sentiment. The soft outlines and
delicate bloom of Virgil's youthful style are as true emblems
of health as the firmer fibre and richer colouring of his
later diction. What an affluence of feeling, what a deep
sense of the happiness of life, of the beauty of the world,
of the glory of genius, is conveyed by the simple use of
the words fortunatus^ formosus, divinus in the lines
Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt
Nunc frondent silvae, nunc formosissimus annus
Formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse
Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta
Ut Linus haec illi divino carmine pastor.
The effect he produces by the sound and associations of
proper names is like that produced by Milton through
the same instrument. Thus, to take one instance out of
many, how suggestive of some golden age of pastoral
song are the following lines, vague and conventional though
THE ECLOGUES. ijl
their actual application appears to be in the passage where
they occur :
Non me carminibus vincet nee Thracius Orpheus,
Nee Linus, huic mater quamvis atque huic pater ad sit,
Orphei Calliopea, Lino formosus Apollo.
Pan etiam Arcadia mecum si iudice certet,
Pan etiam Arcadia dicat se iudice victum.
More even in his rhythm than in his diction does Virgil's
superiority appear, not only over all the poets of his country,
but perhaps over all other poets of past times, except
Homer, Milton, and Shakspeare, in those passages in which
his dramatic art admits of a richly musical cadence. Our
ignorance of the exact pronunciation of Greek in the
Alexandrian Age makes a comparison between the effect
that would have been produced by the rhythm of Theo-
critus and the rhythm of the Eclogues in ancient times
difficult or impossible. Yet it may be allowed to say
this much, that if the rhythm of the Eclogues does' not
seem to us to attain to the natural and liquid flow of
the Greek idyl, yet its tones are deeper, they seem to
come from a stronger and richer source, than any which
we can elicit from the Doric reed. Rarely has the
soothing and reviving charm of the musical sounds of
Nature and of the softer and grander harmonies of poetry
been described and reproduced more effectively than in
these lines :
Hinc tibi, quae semper, vicino ab limite saepes
Hyblaeis af ibus florem depasta salicti
Saepe levi somnum suadebit inire susurro ;
Hinc alta sub rupe canet frondator ad auras;
Nee tamen interea raucae, tua cura, palumbes,
Nee gemere aeria cessabit turtur ab ulmo:
and in these which suggest the thought of that resto-
rative power of genius which a poet of the present day
has happily ascribed to Wordsworth 1 :
Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta,
Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per aestum
Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo :
1 Poems by Matthew Arnold. Memorial Verses :
' He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round,' etc.
1 73 THE ECLOGUES.
and in these again, which give both true symbols and a
true example of the 'deep-chested music' in which the
poet first gives utterance to the thought which takes shape
within his mind :
Quae tibi, quae tali reddam pro carmine dona?
Nam neque me tantum venientis sibilus austri,
Nee percussa iuvant fluctu tarn litora, nee quae
Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles.
The objections which have been urged against the
poetical value of the Eclogues may be admitted. They
are imitative in form. They do not reproduce scenes and
characters from actual life, nor are they consistent creations
of the imagination. They do not possess the interest
arising from a contemplative insight into the hidden work-
ings of Nature, nor from reflection on the problems of life.
Their 'originality, their claim to be a representative work
of genius, consists in their truth and unity of sentiment
and tone. If it be said that the sentiment which they
embody is but a languid and effeminate sentiment, the
admiration of two great poets, of the most masculine type
of genius that modern times have produced, is a sufficient
answer to this reproach. The admiration of Milton is
proved by the conception and workmanship of his ' Lycidas/
the most richly and continuously musical even among
his creations. Of Wordsworth's admiration there is more
than one testimony, this, from the recently published
Memoir of the daughter of his early friend and associate
in poetry, perhaps the most direct : ' I am much pleased to
see (writes S. Coleridge) how highly Mr. Wordsworth
speaks of Virgil's style, and of his Bucolics which I have
ever thought most graceful and tender. They are quite
another thing from Theocritus, however they may be
based on Theocritus 1 .' The criticism which the same
writer applies to 'Lycidas' suggests the true answer also
to the objections urged against VirgiFs originality. 'The
best defence of Lycidas is not to defend the design of
it at all, but to allege that the execution of it is perfect,
1 S. Coleridge's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 411.
THE ECLOGUES. 173
the diction the ne plus ultra of grace and loveliness,
and that the spirit of the whole is as original as if the
poem contained no traces of the author's acquaintance
with ancient pastoral poetry from Theocritus downwards.'
To the names of these two poets we can now add the
name of one of the most illustrious, and certainly one
of the least effeminate, among the critics and men of
letters whom this century has produced Macaulay ; who,
after speaking of the Aeneid in one of his letters, adds
this sentence, ' The Georgics pleased me better ; the
Eclogues best, the second and tenth above all 1 .'
The appreciation of Wordsworth is a certain touch-
stone of the genuineness of Virgil's feeling for Nature.
It is true that the sentiment to which he gives expression
in the Eclogues is only one out of many modes, and
not the most elevated among them, in which the spirit
of man responds to the forms and movement of the outward
world. But the mood of the Eclogues is one most natural
to man's spirit in the beautiful lands of Southern Europe.
The freshness and softness of Italian scenes are present
in the Eclogues, in the rich music of the Italian language,
while it still retained the strength, fulness, and majesty
of its tones. These poems are truly representative of
Italy, not as a land of old civilisation, of historic renown,
of great cities, of rich corn-crops, and vineyards, 'the
mighty mother of fruits and men ; ' but as a land of a
soft and genial air, beautiful with the tender foliage, and
fresh flowers and blossoms of spring, and with the rich
colouring of autumn ; a land which has most attuned
man's nature to the influences of music and of pictorial art.
As a true and exquisite symbol of this vein of sentiment
associated with Italy, the Eclogues hold a not unworthy
place beside the greater work the 'temple of solid marble'
which the maturer art of Virgil dedicated to the genius
of his country, and beside the more composite but stately
and massive monument which perpetuates the national
glory of Rome.
1 Life and Letters, vol. i. p. 371.
CHAPTER V.
MOTIVES, FORM, SUBSTANCE, AND SOURCES OF THE
GEORGICS.
I.
Original motives of the Poem.
THE appearance of the Eclogues marked Virgil out
among his contemporaries as the poet of Nature and rural
life. That province was assigned to him, as epic poetry
was to Varius and tragedy to Pollio. It is to the Eclogues
only that the lines in which Horace characterises his art
can with propriety be applied. These lines were written
before the appearance of the Georgics, and probably
before any considerable part of the poem had been com-
posed 1 . The epithets which admirably characterise the
receptive attitude of Virgil's mind in the composition
of his pastoral poems are quite inapplicable to the solid
and severe workmanship and the earnest feeling of his
1 From the similarity between the lines in Hor. Sat. i. 114,
Ut cum carceribus missos,
and those at the end of Georg. i. 512,
Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
it has been argued that Georgic i, at all events, must have appeared before the
first Book of the Satires. Ribbeck supposes that the lines of the Georgics may
have been seen or heard by Horace before the appearance of the poem, and
imitated by him. But is it likely that Horace would have appropriated an
image from an unpublished poem ? Is it not as probable that Virgil was the
imitator here, as in other passages where he uses the language of contempo-
raries, e. g. of Varius, Eel. viii. 88.
MOTIVES, FORM, ETC., OF THE GEORGICS. 175
didactic poem. The Eclogues are the poems of youth,
and of a youth passed in study and in contact with
Nature rather than with the serious interests of life.
Though Virgil indicates in them the ambition which was
moving him to vaster undertakings, yet he shows at the
same time his consciousness of the comparative triviality of
his art. The class of poem to which the word ludere is ap-
plied was, even when not of a licentious character, regarded
by the more serious minds of Rome, such as Cicero 1 for
instance, with a certain degree of contempt, as being among
the ' leviora studia,' partaking more of the ' Graeca levitas '
than the c Romana gravitas V The genuine Roman spirit
demanded of its highest literature, as of its native architec-
ture, that it should have either some direct practical use, or
contribute in some way to enhance the sense of national
greatness.
The original motive directing Virgil to the composition
of the ScfcrgrreB was probably the wish to be the Hesiod.,
as he had already been the Theocritus, of Rome. The
poets of the Augustan Age selected some Greek prototype
whose manner they professed to reproduce and make the
vehicle for the expression of their own thought and ex-
perience. Thus Horace chose Alcaeus, Propertius chose
Callimachus as his model. Virgil assigns to Pollio the
praise of alone composing poems ' worthy of the buskin of
Sophocles.' In the Georgics he professes to find his own
prototype in Hesiod :
Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen.
Propertius also recognises him as the disciple of the sage of
Ascra :
Tu canis Ascraei veteris praecepta poetae,
Quo seges in campo, quo viret uva iugo 3 .
Though Hesiod can scarcely have taken the highest rank
as a poet, yet a peculiar reverence attached to his name
1 Compare the contrast drawn by him between Ennius and the contem-
porary 'Cantores Euphorionis,' Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.
2 Cf. also W. F. Teuffel's History of Roman Literature, chap. i. note i.
3 iii. 32. 77-78.
176 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
from his great antiquity, and from the ethical and theolo-
gical spirit of his writings. As Virgil chose the mould of
Theocritus into which to cast the lighter feelings and
fancies of his youth, he naturally turned to ' The Works
and Days of Hesiod ' as a more suitable model for a poem
on rural life, undertaken with a more serious purpose, and
demanding a severer treatment.
The change in Virgil's life between the composition of
the Eclogues and the Georgics had however much more
influence in determining the difference in the character
of the two poems, than the mere artistic desire, to enter
on a new path of poetry. During the composition of the
earlier poems Virgil was living in a remote district of Italy,
associating with the country-people or with a few young
poets like himself, and coming m contact with the great
world of action and national interests only through the
medium of his intercourse with the temporary governors
of the province. Rome and its ruler and the powerful
stream of events in which his own fortunes were finally
absorbed affect his imagination as they might do that of
one who heard of them from a distance, but who in his
ordinary thoughts and sympathies was living quite apart
from them ;
Urbem quam Romam dicunt^Meliboee^putavi
Stultus ego huic nostrae similem.
But before undertaking the task of writing the Georgics
he had become an honoured member of the circle of
Maecenas, the intimate friend of Varius and of Horace
(who himself owed his introduction to that circle to the
kindly offices of the two older poets) and of others dis-
tinguished in literature and public affairs. He had lived
for a time near the centre of the world's activity, in
close relations to the minds by which that activity was
directed. As the most genuine of his Eclogues had been
inspired by his personal share in the calamities of his
country, it was natural that he should, now when his own
fortunes were restored through the favour of those at the
head of affairs, feel a stronger and more disinterested sym-
OF THE GEORGICS. 1 77
pathy with the public condition, at a crisis to which no one
capable of understanding its gravity could feel indifferent.
It was natural that his new relations and the impulse of
the new ideas which came to him through them should
move him to undertake some work of art more suited to
his maturer faculty, his graver temperament^ and the firmer
fibre of his genius. Nor is there any difficulty in believing
that Maecenas may have had some influence in deter-
mining him to the choice of a subject which enabled him
to range over the whole of that field of which he had
already appropriated a part, which would afford scope to
the literary ambition urging him to write a poem on a
greater scale and of more enduring substance, and which,
at the same time, might serve indirectly to advance the
policy of reconciliation and national and social reorganisa-
tion which Caesar and his minister were anxious to pro-
mote. Among ' the ancient arts by which the Latin name
and the strength of Italy had waxed great/ none had
fallen more into abeyance, through the insecurity of the
times, than the cultivation of the land. The restoration
of the old ' Coloni ' of Italy and the revival of the great
forms of national industry, associated with the older and
happier memories of Rome, had been a leading feature
in the policy of the great popular leaders from the Gracchi
down to Julius Caesar. Among the completed glories of
the Augustan Age, Horace, some twenty years later, spe-
cially notes the restoration of security and abundance to
the land :
Tutus bos etenim rura perambulat,
Nutrit rura Ceres almaque faustitas,
and in the same Ode :
Condit quisque diem collibus in suis,
Et vitem viduas ducit ad arbores.
And in the brief summing up of the whole glories of the
Augustan reign contained in his latest Ode he begins with
the words,
Tua, Caesar, aetas
Fruges et agris reddidit uberes.
VOL. I. N
1 78 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
All Virgil's early associations and sympathies would lead
him to identify himself with this object and with the
interests and happiness of such representatives of the
old rural life of Italy as might still be found, or might
arise again under a secure administration. In proposing
to himself some serious aim for the exercise of his
poetic gift, it was natural that he should have fixed on
that of representing this life in such a way as to create
an aspiration for it, and to secure for it the sympathy
of the world. The language in which he speaks of the
poem as a task imposed on him by Maecenas need not
be taken literally : but it is no detraction from Virgil's
originality to Suppose that he, like Horace, was encou-
raged by the minister to devote his genius to a purpose
which would appeal equally to the sympathies of the
statesman and of the poet. The testimony of Virgil's bio-
grapher on this subject, which may probably be traced to
the original testimony of Melissus, the freedman of Mae-
cenas, is neither to be disregarded nor unduly pressed,
any more than the language in which Virgil himself makes
acknowledgment of his indebtedness. It is impossible to
say what chance seed of casual conversation may have been
the original germ of what ultimately became so large and
goodly a creation. If, in the composition of the Georgics,
Virgil employed his art as an instrument of government,
we cannot doubt that he did so not only because he recog-
nised in the subject of the poem one suited to his own
genius, but because his past life and early associations
brought home to him the desolation caused in the rural
districts by the Civil Wars, the moral worth of that old class
of husbandmen who had suffered from them, and the public
loss arising from the diminution in their number and in-
fluence. To idealise the life of that class by describing,
with realistic fidelity and in the language of purest
poetry, the annual round of labour in which it was passed ;
to suggest the ever-present charm arising from the intimate
contact with the manifold processes and aspects of Nature
into which man is brought in this life of labour; to con-
OF THE GEORGICS. 179
trast the simplicity and sanctity of such a life with the
luxury and lawless passions of the great world,*/ and to
associate this ideal with the varied beauty of Italy and
the historic memories of Rome, were objects worthy of
one who aspired to fulfil the office of a national poet.
It is no detraction from the originality of his idea to
suppose some such suggestion as that attributed to Mae-
cenas to have given the original impulse to the poem.
Not only the art, genius, and learning, but the religious
faith and feeling, the moral and national sympathies, which
give to it its peculiar meaning and value, are all the poet's
own. His strong feeling for his subject was as little
capable of being communicated from without, as the genius
with which he adorns it 1 .
II.
Type of Didactic Poetry adopted and modified by Virgil.
With such feelings as those which were moving the
imagination of Virgil, a modern poet might have shaped
his subject into the form of a poetic idyl, in which the
joys and sorrows of men and women living during this
national crisis might have been represented in union with
the varied aspects of the scenery and the chief modes of
rural industry in Italy. Such a form of art would have
1 Compare Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire, chap. xli.
'The tradition that Maecenas himself suggested the composition of the
Georgics may be accepted, not in the literal sense which has generally been
attached to it, as a means of reviving the art of husbandry and the cultivation
of the devastated soil of Italy; but rather to recommend the principles of
the ancient Romans, their love of home, of labour, of piety, and order; to
magnify their domestic happiness and greatness, to make men proud of their
country on better grounds than the mere glory of its arms and the extent of
its conquests. It would be absurd to suppose that Virgil's verses induced any
Roman to put his hand to the plough, or to take from his bailiff the manage-
ment of his own estates ; but they served undoubtedly to revive some of the
simple tastes and sentiments of the olden time, and perpetuated, amidst the
vices and corruptions of the Empire, a pure stream of sober and innocent
enjoyments, of which, as we journey onward, we shall rejoice to catch at least
occasional glimpses.'
N 1
l8o MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
enabled the poet to add the interest of individual character
and action to his abstract delineation of the 'acer rusticus'
or the ' duri agrestes ' engaged in a hard struggle with the
forces of Nature. And one or two passages, containing
some sketch drawn directly from peasant life, as for in-
stance i. 291-296,
Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignes, etc.,
and iv. 125-146,
Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis, etc.,
make us regret that the conditions of his art, as conceived
by him, did not encourage him to blend something more
of idyllic representation with the didactic and descriptive
treatment of his subject. But the idyl which treats the
incidents of human life in the form either of a continuous
poem or tale in prose was unknown to the early art of
Greece, and Roman imagination was incapable of inventing
a perfectly new mould into which to cast its poetic fancies
and feelings. Nor is it probable that a poem so truly
representative of Italy in all its aspects could have been
produced in the form of an idyl, of which the interest
would have been concentrated on some family or group
of personages.
There was only one form of literary art known to the
Greeks or Romans of the Augustan Age which was at
all suitable for the treatment on a large scale of such a
subject as that which now filled the mind of Virgil. Next
after the epic poem of heroic action, the didactic epos was
\ regarded at Rome a the most serious and elaborate form
of poetic art. It was more suited than any other form
to the Roman mind. It is the only form in which the
genius of Rome has produced master-pieces superior not
\ only to anything of the kind produced by Greece but to
all similar attempts in modern times. As Roman inven-
tion, stimulated by the practical sense of utility, by the
passion for vast and massive undertakings, and by the strong
perception of order and unity of design, devised a new
OF THE GEORGICS. 181
kind of architecture for the ordinary wants of life, so in
accordance with the national bent to reduce all things
to rule, to impose the will of a master on obedient sub-
jects, to use the constructive and artistic faculties for some
practical end, if it did not create, it gave ampler compass,
more solid and massive workmanship, and the associations
of great ideas to that form of poetic art which had been
the most meagre and unsubstantial of all those invented
by the genius of Greece.
Moreover, a new form, or rather a form of more ample
capacity, was required to embody the new poetical feelings
and experience which now moved the Roman and Italian
mind. If less interest was felt at Rome in following the
course of individual destiny, the interest felt in contem-
plating the outward aspect and secret movement of Nature
was now stronger than it had been in the great ages of
Greek literature. Though the vivid enjoyment of the out-
ward world had unconsciously shaped the tales of the early
Greek mythology, and though this enjoyment had entered
directly, as a subordinate element, into the epic, lyric, and
dramatic poetry of Greece, and, more prominently, into the
later poetry of Alexandria, and although the phenomena and
laws of Nature had aroused the speculative curiosity of the
early Greek philosophers, no poet before Lucretius had
treated of Nature, in the immensity of her range, in the
primal elements and living forces of her constitution, and,
at the same time, in her manifold aspects of beneficence
and beauty or of destructive energy, as the subject of a
great poem. The forms adopted by the great masters of
Greek poetry, the epic, lyric, and dramatic writers,
whose essential business it was to represent the actions and
passions of men, were inapplicable to the treatment of this
new subject of man's environment. Lucretius accordingly
had to take the outline of his form from the early phy-
siological writers, whom the Greeks scarcely ranked among
their poets at all, and who, though animated by the specu-
lative passion to penetrate to the secret of Nature, were not
specially interested in her aspects of beauty or power, or
1 82 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
in her relation to the life of man. If he cannot claim the
title of an inventor in art, yet by adding volume and
majesty to the rudimentary type of these early writers,
he gave to the ancient world the unique specimen of a
great philosophical poem.
So too Virgil, penetrated with the feeling of Nature in
her relation to human wants and enjoyment, and desirous
to give an adequate expression to this feeling, could derive
no guidance from the nobler genius of Greece. To find
a suitable vehicle, he had to turn to the earliest and latest
periods of her literature. The didactic, as distinct from the
philosophic or contemplative poem, was the invention of a
time prior to the existence of prose composition. It seems
to have arisen out of the impulse to convey instruction and
advice on the management of life generally, and especially
on the best means of securing a livelihood from the culti-
vation of the soil. The use of the language of poetry for
a purpose essentially practical and prosaic was justified, in
that primitive time, not only by the absence of any other
organ of literary expression, but also by the fact that, in
such a time, all literary effort was the result of animated feel-
ing, and that the most common aspects of Nature, such as
the changes of the seasons or of night and day, and what
seem now the most familiar occupations of life, were appre-
hended by the lively mind of the Greek with a fresh sense
of wonder, which use deadens in eras of more advanced
civilisation. But while this sense of wonder imparts a
poetical colouring to the language of early didactic poetry,
and while sufficient harmony was secured for it by the
training of the ear during centuries of epic song, the form
and structure of this kind of art was, as compared with the
other forms of Greek poetry, essentially rudimentary. The
sole specimen which has reached our times appears in
the form of a personal address, treating of a number of
subjects not closely connected with one another, inter-
spersed with various episodes, and producing the impres-
sion of a connected whole solely through the vivid per-
sonality of the writer. Didactic poetry was absolutely"
OF THE GEORGICS. 183
rejected in the maturity of Greek genius, after the rise
of a prose literature had marked off clearly the separate
provinces of prose and poetry, and after Greek taste had
become more exacting in its demand of unity of impres-
sion and symmetry of form in every work of art. It was
revived again in the Alexandrian epoch, when the creative
impulse was lost, and life and its interests had become
tamer, while at the same time knowledge had greatly
increased, and a kind of literary dilettanteism was one of
the chief elements in refined enjoyment. By the Alexan-
drine writers the irregular and desultory treatment of
Hesiod was abandoned. The didactic poem was treated
by them as one of the recognised branches of poetical art.
It still retained the general character of a personal address,
which accident may have first suggested to Hesiod, and
which either his example or their own taste had imposed
on the early philosophic poets. The Alexandrine type of
poem differed from that of Hesiod by professing to convey
systematic instruction on some definite branch of know-
ledge, instead of offering practical directions on the best
method of carrying on some occupation, combined with
a medley of precepts, moral, religious, and ceremonial.
The change may be compared to that which Roman satire
underwent, from the inartistic medley of Ennius and Lu-
cilius to the systematic treatment of some special subject
in the satire of Persius and Juvenal. The primary aim
of such writers as Aratus and Nicander was not to com-
municate ideas capable of affecting the imagination, but
to satisfy intellectual curiosity by communicating interest-
ing information. So soon as this information ceased to
be interesting, the value of their work was gone. Thus
although accident has handed down several specimens of
the Alexandrine type of didactic poetry, their chief lite-
rary use is to enable us, by contrast, better to appreciate
the genius which, by interfusing with the materials used
by them other elements deeply affecting the heart, the
imagination, and the moral sympathies, has given the
world, instead of the temporary gift of a little useful
MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
information, the Krrj^a ey aet which it possesses in the
Georgics.
In that poem Virgil combines something of the spirit of
the older or primitive type of didactic poetry with the
systematic treatment of their subject employed by the
Alexandrine Metaphrastae. He retains the old form of
a personal address, not only in the dedication of the poem
to Maecenas, but in the personal tone in which he in-
culcates his precepts on the husbandman, or indicates
what he himself would do in particular circumstances^.
Yet he bears more resemblance to* the poets of Alexandria
in his systematic treatment and arrangement of his ma-
terials. ,He aims, like them, at communicating a large
body of unfamiliar knowledge, as well as conveying prac-
tical precepts founded on experience. By combining these
two aims, but much more by making the aims of con-
veying precept and instruction altogether subsidiary to
that of moving the imagination and the affections, Virgil,
if he has not created a new type of didactic poetry, has
.at least produced almost the only specimen of it which the
world cares to read. He is apparently conscious of the
difficulty of imparting to a poem of this type a continuous
poetical charm; as Lucretius, with more reason, is conscious
of the difficulty of securing a sustained poetical interest for
his argumentative processes and his investigations into the
first principles of things. Virgil's difficulty is to main-
tain his subject on the level of poetical feeling, while at
the same time adhering to the necessities of practical in-
struction. And this difficulty attaches to every kind of
didactic poetry. He had to associate with a poetic charm,
not only the fair results of the husbandman's labour, the
grayidae fruges etJBacchi Massicus umpr,
but the processes and mechanical appliances through which
these fair results were obtained. Although his idea of his
e. g. Ausz'm vel tenui vitatn committere sulco ;
and again,
Neve tibi ad solem vergant vineta cadentem, etc.
OF THE GEORGICS. 185
art did not demand an exhaustive treatment of all the
operations of rural industry, such as was demanded of
the prose writers on the subject, yet it did demand that,
in making his selection, he should regard the importance
of each topic in connexion with the work of the farm as
well as its adaptation to poetic treatment. It cannot be
denied that this necessary infusion of prosaic matter de-
prives even the most perfect specimen of didactic poetry
of that purity of imaginative interest which pervades the
masterpieces of epic, lyrical, and dramatic genius ; but it
is, on the other hand, a great triumph of art to have re-
deemed so much as Virgil has done from the homely
realities of life into the more sacred ground of poetry,
and that without sacrifice either of the truth of fact or of
the dignity and sobriety of expression.
in.
National Interest of the Subject and /
of the Poem.
While the title * Georgica ' reminds us that the form of
the poem, like the form of the ' Bucolica ' and the * Aeneis/
was derived from the Greeks, the subject of which it treats
was one of peculiarly national interest. As the Aeneid
may be said to be inspired by the idea of Rome and her
destiny, and as the practical purpose of that poem was to
confirm the faith of the Romans in their Empire and in
the ruler in whom that Empire was vested, so the Georgics
may be said to be inspired by the idea of Italy, and the j
practical purpose of the poem was to revive and extend the I
love of the land, and to restore the fading ideal of a life of
virtue and happiness, passed in the labours of a country life.
But while much of the materials and of the workmanship
of the Aeneid are originally due to Greek invention, the
general substance of the Georgics and the most essentially
poetical passages are of native origin.
The chief modes of rural industry treated in the various
1 86 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
books are those which flourished in Italy, the tillage of
the land for various crops, the cultivation of the vine and
the olive, the breeding and rearing of cattle, sheep, and
horses, and the tending of bees. It is noticed by Servius
that the agricultural precepts of the poem apply only to
Italy and not to other lands : ' Sane agriculturae huius
praecepta non ad omnes pertinent terras, sed ad solum
situm 9 Italiae.' The frequent references to the products
of other lands serve to suggest by contrast the superiority
of Italy in those which are the special subject of the
poem and which are most essential to human well-being.
Cato also is represented by Cicero 1 as resting the charm
of a country life in the contemplation of the same opera-
tions of Nature as those indicated in the opening lines of
the Georgics :
Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram
Vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vites
Conveniat.
The number of Roman writers who treated in prose
of this subject, both before and after Virgil, testifies further
to the strong national interest attaching to it. Among
these writers, Varro, the immediate predecessor of Virgil,
associates the subject directly with the pride which the
Romans felt in their country. He introduces the speakers
in his Dialogue as holding their conversation in the
Temple of Tellus, and examining a map or painting of
Italy on the wall. One of the speakers addresses the
others in these words, ' Vos qui multas perambulastis terras
ecquam cultiorem Italia vidistis ? ego vero nullam -quae
tarn culta sit.' He especially characterises the excellence
of its corn-crops, its vines, olives, and fruit-trees: 'Quod
far conferam Campano? quod triticum Apulo? quod
vinum Falerno? quod oleum Venafro? nonne arboribus
consita Italia est, ut tota pomarium videatur 2 ?' Other
authors, Virgil himself among them 3 , and Columella in the
1 De Senectute, xv, xvi.
2 De Re Rustica, i. 2.
3 Georg. ii. 145, etc. ; Aen. iii. 537.
. OF THE GEORGICS. 187
Introduction to his treatise 1 , testify to the pride which
the Italians took in their breed of horses and herds of
cattle. And though the Italian bees and their product
were not so famous in poetry as the bees of Hymettus and
' the honey of Hybla,' yet Horace speaks of the country
near Tarentum as one
ubi non Hymetto
Mella decedunt;
and in another Ode, in which he contrasts his own moderate
estate with the resources of richer men, he mentions Cala-
brian honey along with the wine of Formiae and the fleeces
of Gallic pastures among the chief sources of wealth :
Quanquam nee Calabrae mella ferunt apes
Nee Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora
Languescit mihi, nee pinguia Gallicis
Crescunt velkra pascuis 2 .
This branch of his subject moreover enables Virgil to
celebrate the floral beauties of Italy, and to exhibit on a
small scale a picture of a community at once warlike,
politic, and industrious, such as had been realised on the
soil of Italy, , and especially in the old Roman Common-
wealth, more completely than among any other people.
The subject was moreover intimately associated with
the national history. Several of the early legends, such as
those of Cincinnatus, and, in more historical times, of
Atilius Regulus and Curius Dentatus, attest the prominence
which agriculture enjoyed among the pursuits of the fore-
most men in the'Republic. The surnames of many noble
families, patrician and plebeian, such as the Lentuli, Sto-
lones, Bubulci, Pisones, Dolabellae, and the name of the
1 ' Nee dubium quin, ut ait Varro, caeteras pecudes bos honore superare
debeat, praesertim autem in Italia, quae ab hoc nuncupationem traxisse creditur,
quod olim Graeci tauros 'lra\ovs vocabant.'
2 Compare too
Ego apis Matinae
More mdoque, etc.
The importance of *honey as a source of wealth is referred to by Mommsen
in his History of Rome, book v. chap. xi. ' A small bee-breeder of this period
sold from his thyme-garden not larger than an acre, in the neighbourhood of
Falerii, honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces (loo/.)'
188 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
great Fabian Gens, are connected etymologically with agri-
cultural occupations, products, or implements, and afford
evidence of a time when the men who filled the great offices
of the State lived on their own lands \ and were known fon
the success with which they improved their farms. The
passion to possess and subdue the land was, in the early
history of the Republic, the main motive power both of the
political and military history of Rome. Even down to the
establishment of the Empire there was no question which
more divided the two great parties in the State than that of
the Agrarian laws. And though, after the conquest of Italy,
Roman wars were fought for dominion rather than for new
territory, yet the hope of owning land, if not on Italian yet
on some foreign soil, which he should hold by his sword as
well as cultivate by his plough, supported the Roman
soldier, even under the Empire, through the long years of
his service. The Roman ' colonies,' the origin of so many
famous European cities, were settlements of ' Coloni ' or
cultivators of the soil.
Thus in the selection of his subject Virgil appealed toj
old national associations and living tastes in a way in which
no Greek poet could have done in choosing any mode of
practical industry for poetic treatment. Even the details of
direct instruction would attract a Roman reader by remind-
ing him of labours which he may often have watched and
perhaps have shared. Though Virgil found new sources of at-
traction by references to Greek mythology and science, and
though he availed himself of the diction of Greek poets much
inferior to himself in their perception of beauty and their j
power over language, yet his materials are mainly drawn
either from personal observation, or from Italian writers
who had put on record the results of what they had seen
and done. There is a thoroughly Roman character in the
technical execution of the poem, in the command over
details, in the power of orderly arrangement with a view to
convenience rather than logical symmetry, and in the com-
1 ' Illis enim temporibus proceres civitatis in agris morabantur.' Columella.
OF THE GEORGICS. 189
bined sobriety and dignity of the workmanship. But it is
in the longer episodes, in which the deeper meaning of the
poem is most brought out, that the intimate connexion
between the various topics treated in it and the national
character and fortunes becomes most apparent. There is
indeed one marked exception to the maintenance of this
unity of impression. The long episode in Book iv, from
line 315 to 557, has no national significance. And this is
an undoubted blot on the artistic perfection of the work.
This episode not only adds nothing to its representative
character, but it .suggests fancies and associations utterly
alien from the Italy of the Augustan Age. The space
given to such a theme is opposed to the truer taste of the
poet, expressed in such lines as these
Non hie te carmine ficto
Atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo,
and
Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes,
Omnia iam volgata.
But it is not the judgment of the poet, but the despotic will
of the Emperor, that is responsible for this imperfection.
The fourth Book originally ended with an episode which
afforded scope for the expression of personal feeling, for
awakening an interest in that land which was now of vast
importance to the State, and which affected the imagination
of cultivated Romans as it does that of cultivated men in
modern times 1 , and for illustrating the national greatness
and the recent history of Rome. In the first edition the
mention of Egypt at line 287 had led Virgil to celebrate
the administration of that province under his early friend
Cornelius Callus. When Callus fell into disgrace and was
forced to commit suicide in 27 B.C., Virgil was required to
1 Cf. Tac. Ann. ii. 59-61: 'M. Silano, L. Norbano consulibus Germanicus
Aegyptum proficiscitur cognoscendae antiquitatis? The whole account of the
tour of Germanicus illustrates the cultivated taste for foreign travel among the
Romans of the later Republic, the Augustan Age, and early Empire, and also
the mysterious interest which has attached to Egypt from the earliest times
known to history.
190 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
re-edit the poem with a new concluding episode l . The
subject treated in the earlier edition of the poem would
have enabled Virgil to give renewed expression to his
admiration and affection for the Gallus of the Eclogues,
to tell the tale of the downfall of Cleopatra, and to
magnify the greatness of Rome in the conquest and
government of her provinces. The episode as it now
stands is a finished piece of metrical execution ; it illus-
trates the attraction which the Greek mythological stories
had for educated Romans ; it is expressed in those tones
of tender pathos of which Virgil was a master ; but it is at
the same time a standing proof of the malign influence
which the Imperial despotism already exercised on the
spontaneous inspirations of genius, as well as on all sincere
expression of feeling.
IV.
Foreign and native sources of the Poem.
If the idea of the poem and of the national interests
associated with it arose in Virgil's mind during his life in
Rome, it was in his retirement in Campania that he
prepared himself for and executed his task. Like the
Aeneid it was a work of slow growth, the result of careful
study and meditation. Besides the great change of the
concluding episode, there are some slight indications that
the poem was retouched in later editions ; and perhaps a
very few lines added to the original work may have been
either left finally unadjusted to their proper place, or may
have been transposed in the copying of the manuscript 2 .
1 This is distinctly stated by Servius in two places, his introductory com-
ments on Eclogue x, and on Georgic iv, and seems sufficiently attested. Be-
sides, the introduction into the Georgics of such an episode as the 'Pastor
Aristaeus ' requires some explanation.
2 Both the nexus of the sense and the rhythm condemn the latitude of trans-
position which Ribbeck allows himself. Perhaps the only alteration which is
absolutely demanded is at iv. 203-205. The lines there, as they stand, clearly
OF THE GEORGICS. 191
Although regard for his art was a more prominent con-
sideration in the mind of Virgil than of Lucretius, yet he
did not, any more than his predecessor, wish to separate
the office of a teacher from that of a poet. How far the I
experience of his early years in the farm at Andes or of \
his later residence on his land near Nola may have contri- \
buted to his knowledge of his subject, we have no means
of knowing ; but probably the delicacy of his health as
well as his devotion to study must have in a great measure
limited his experience to the observation of the labours of
others. But the power of vividly realising and enjoying
the familiar sights and work of the farm, the life which he
gives to the notices of seed-time and harvest, of the growth
of trees and ripening of fruits, of the habits of flocks, herds,
and bees, etc., the deep love for his subject In all its
details
Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore
were gifts which could not come from any study of books.
The poetry of manhood is, more often perhaps than we
know, the conscious reproduction of the unconscious impres-
sions of early years, received in a susceptible and retentive
interrupt the sense, and are more in place either after 196 or after 218. The
strong line,
Tantus amor riorum et generandi gloria mellis,
is a fitting conclusion for the fine paragraph beginning
Nunc age, naturas apibus quas luppiter ipse.
Either of these places seems more suitable for the lines than that after 183. It
is possible that the conjecture which Ribbeck adopts from Wagner, ' absolute
iam opere in marginem illos versus a poeta conjectos esse,' may give the true
explanation of the misplacement of the lines, though this does not seem to
apply to any other passage in the poem. Such bold changes as those intro-
duced by Ribbeck at ii. 35-46, and again at iii. 120-122, are not required by
the sense, and are condemned by rhythmical considerations. The line 119,
Exquirunt calidumque animis et cursibus acrem,
is weak for the concluding line of the paragraph, which ends much more
naturally with that transposed from 122 to 99,
Neptunique ipsa deducat origine gentem,
as it is Virgil's way to introduce his mythological illustrations ' after his
real observations are finished. The paragraph of four lines, Quare agite o pro-
prios .... Taburnum, stands bald and bare in the position Ribbeck assigns it,
between 108 and 109. The minor changes for the most part disturb old asso-
ciations and throw no new light on the poet's thought.
192 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
mind. Virgil, in common with all great poets, retained
through life the 'child's heart within the man's.' Through
this geniality of nature he was able
angustis hunc addere rebus honorem
to glorify trite and familiar things by the light reflected
from the healthy memories and the idealising fancies of
boyhood and early youth. I
But while his feeling is all his own, the happy survival
probably of the childhood and youth passed in his home
in the district of Andes, he largely avails himself of the
observation, the thought, and the language of earlier writers,
both Greek and Roman. \His poem is eminently a work of
learning as well as of native feeling.^ He combines in itsr*
varied and firm texture the homely wisdom embodied in v o
the precepts and proverbs of Italian peasants ('veterum
praecepta '), the quaint and oracular dicta of Hesiod,Athe
scientific knowledge and mythological lore of Alexandrine
writers, the philosophic and imaginative conceptions of
Lucretius, with the systematic practical directions of the
old prose writers on rural economy, such as the Cartha-
ginian Mago \ whose work had been translated into Latin,
Democritus, Xenophon, Theophrastus, among Greek prose
writers, Cato, the two Sasernae, Licinius Stolo, Tremellius,
and Varro among Latin authors. The purely practical
precepts of the Georgics were apparently selected and con-
densed from these writers 2 . But no literary inspiration or
ideas were likely to have come from any of these last-
named authors, unless the Invocation in the first Book may
have been suggested by the example of Varro, who begins
1 Cf. Col iii. 15 : 'Ut Mago prodit, quern secutus Vergilius tutari semina et
muniri sic praecepit/ etc.
2 Cf. Col. iv. 9 : ' Nam illam veterem opinionem non esse ferro tangendos
anniculos malleolos quod aciem reformidant, quod frustra Vergilius et Saserna,
Stolonesque, et Catones timuerunt,' etc. Also ix. 14 : ' Ceterum hoc eodem tempore
progenerari posse apes iuvenco perempto Democritus et Mago nee minus Ver-
gilius prodiderunt.' As a trace of Virgil's imitation of Varro, compare the
passage where, after speaking of the injury done by goats to the vine, Varro
says, 'Sic factum ut Libero Patri repertori vitis hirci immolarentur,' with
Georgic ii. 380, Non aliam ob culpam,' etc.
OF THE GEORGICS. 193
his treatise with an invocation to the XII Di consentes.
The proverbial sayings or rustic songs embodying the
traditional peasant lore, such as the 'Quid vesper serus
vehitr' and the 'hiberno pulvere, verno luto grandia farra
Camille metes/ which add an antique and homely charm to
the poem, may have become known to yirgil from the
book of the Sasernae, who are quoted by Varro as autho-
rities for many of the old charms used by the primitive
husbandmen, such as 'Terra pestem teneto, salus hie
maneto,' which is to be repeated ' ter novies/ Servius notes
that the words ' sulco attritus splendescere vomer ' recall an
old saying of Cato, 'Vir bonus est, mi fili, colendi peritus,
cuius ferramenta splendent.' The notices of ceremoriial
observances, such as the account of the Ambarvalia, and the
enumeration of things that might lawfully be done on holy
days 1 , were probably derived from the pontifical books\
and the sacred books of the other priestly colleges, of which/
Virgil made large use also in the Aeneid. In all the writers i
on practical farming, from Cato to Varro, he found that
strong appreciation of the supreme worth of rural industry
and that strong interest in its processes and results which
justified him in identifying his subject with the thought
of the national life.
Among the sources of literary inspiration from which
Virgil drew in the Georgics, the oldest, and not the least
abundant, was the ' Works and Days ' of Hesiod. Yet a
comparison of the two poems shows immediately that
the Georgics do not, either in form or substance, stand in
that close relation to their prototype, in which the Eclogues
on the one hand, and the Aeneid on the other, stand to the
Idyls of Theocritus and to the epic poems of Homer. The]
immediate influence of Hesiod is most apparent in the first
Book of the Georgics, in which the subject is treated in
connexion with theological ideas ; while in the second Book
and in the later Books, in which the philosophical conception
of Nature, though in subordination to the conception of
a supreme Spiritual power, becomes more prominent, the
1 i. 269.
VOL. i. o
194 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
spirit of Hesiod gives place to the spirit of Lucretius.)
There is, however, a real affinity between the primitiv^
piety of the old Boeotian bard and the attitude in which
Virgil contemplated the world, though the faith of Virgil
has become more rational under the speculative teaching
and enquiry which had taken the place of earlier modes of
thought among the Greeks. -Virgil is ever seeking to pro-j
duce a poetical reconcilement between primitive traditionj
and more enlightened views both of moral and physical 1
truth. . Thus he introduces the old fable of the creation of
the present race of men in immediate juxtaposition with
the assertion of the ' laws and ' eternal conditions imposed
by Nature on certain places.'. He accepts the belief in a
Golden Age and in the blight which fell on the world under
the dispensation of Jove ; but he regards this blight as
sent, not in anger, but as a discipline and incentive to
exertion. He describes the natural progress of the various
arts of life under this stimulus, but still leaves room for
divine intervention in the more important discoveries :
Prima Ceres ferro mortalis vertere terram
Instituit.
Again, the teleological view of Nature, which appears in
the Georgics in antagonism to the teaching of Lucretius, in
such passages as i. 231
Idcirco certis dimensum partibus orbenvetc.,
and i. 351
Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis,
is in the spirit of Hesiod, though in advance of his con-
ception of Zeus, who appears in him not as a beneficent
Providence, but rather as a jealous task-master. So too
the constant inculcation of prayer and ceremonial ob-
servances
Umida solstitia atque hiemes orate serenas,
Agricolae
Votisque vocaveris imbrem
In primis venerare decs, atque annua magnae
Sacra refer Cereri 1
1 Cf. 'Epy. KOI 'Hft. 425 :
Se A xOov'up ATy/z^Tfpt 0' ayvf).
OF THE GEORGICS.
*
the specification of lucky and unlucky days, the reference
to the old Greek fables of Coeus, lapetus, and Typhoeus,
are, though not directly imitated from Hesiod, yet conceived
in his spirit.
But, besides appealing to primitive religious and mytho- i
logical associations, the poet of Andes aims, at reproducing ;
some flavour of the sentiment of a remote antiquity and of \
the quaint nai'vetd characteristic of the sage of Ascra. The '
very use of such an expression as 'quosidere terrain Vertere/
the thought of the husbandman's labours as being regu-
lated not by the Roman Calendar \ with its prosaic divisions
of the month by kalends, nones and ides, but by the rise
and setting of the constellations, the picturesque signs of
the change of the seasons, as in the line
Candida venit avis longis invisa colubris 2 ,
the use of such quaint expressions as 'nudus ara, sere
nudus,' seem all intended to remind the reader that the \
subject is one ' antiquae laudis et artis/ the most ancient
and unchanging of the great arts of life, that too in which
man's dependence on Nature and the Spiritual power above
Nature is most vividly realised 3 . This power of infusing
into the practical realities and prosaic details of his subject
something of the wonder and ' freshness of the early world '
Virgil derives from the relation which he establishes be-
tween himself and his Boeotian prototype.
Though in spirit and poetical inspiration Virgil's debt,to\
Hesiod is greater, yet the Georgics present more direct \
traces of imitation of the Alexandrine poets. It is in
accordance with the learning and science of Alexandria that
1 The great confusion into which it had fallen before its reformation by
Julius Caesar may have made this return to the primitive ' Shepherd's Calendar '
familiar to Virgil's youth.
2 Cf. 'Epy. Kal 'H/i. 448 :
3>pa*aQai 8' CVT' av yepdvov (pcav^v eiratcovffris.
3 The same suggestion of the ancient and unchanging nature of this art
is vividly conveyed in the Chorus of the Antigone :
ecDi/ re rdv vweprdrav Tdv
a<f>OiTov aKajJidTav dnorpvfTai,
i\\op,evow dporpcav ZTOS ets eros, iwrrfty yevd
O 2
196 MOTIVES, FORM, ETC.,
the subject is illustrated by local epithets, such as ' Stry-
moniae grues,' by reference to the products of distant
lands
nonne vides croceos ut Tmolus odores, etc.,
by recondite mythological and astronomical allusions, and
by the substitution of the names of various deities, such as
Liber and Ceres, for the natural products which were sup-
posed to be their gifts. But to several special authors his
debt is more direct. Thus the passage, i. 233
Quinque tenent caelum zonae, etc.,
is copied from Eratosthenes. The account of the signs
the weather, from i. 355 to 465, is taken from the Aioo^j
of AratuSj a work so popular at Rome, that it was not only
imitated and almost incorporated in his poem by Virgil, but
had been translated by Cicero in his youth, and was subse-
quently translated by Germanicus. Again, the description
at iii. 425, of the dangerous Serpent that haunts the Cala- :
brian pastures, is closely imitated from the extant QrjpiaKa \
of Nicander ; nor can we doubt that there were in the
fourth Book imitations of the lost MeAto-o-ov/oyuci of the
same author.
A comparison of the passages in the Georgics with those
of which they are imitations produces the impression not
only of Virgil's immense superiority as a poet over the
Alexandrine Metaphrastae, but of the immense superiority
of the Latin hexameter, as an organ for expressing the
beauty and power of Nature, over the exotic jargon and
unmusical jingle which those writers compounded out of
their epic studies and their scientific nomenclature. To
take one or two instances of Virgil's imitations from these
writers : in the passage Georg. i. 233-246, Virgil reproduces
very closely scientific statements of Eratosthenes and
Aratus. But of the five lines which follow
Illic, ut perhibent, aut intempesta silet nox
Semper et obtenta densentur nocte tenebrae,
Aut redit a nobis Aurora diemque reducit;
Nosque ubi primus equis Oriens adflavit anhelis,
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper,
where through the evanescent mists of early science we
OF THE GEORGICS. 197
discern the enduring substance of poetic creation, there
is no trace in either of the Greek writers. Again, in the
passage at i. 410, imitated from Aratus
Turn liquidas corvi presso ter gutture voces, etc.
the mere natural phenomenon is given in greater detail in
the original passage ; but the lines which communicate to it
the touch of tender sympathy
iuvat imbribus act is
Progeniem parvam dulcesque revisere nidos,
and the following lines
Haud equidem credo quia sit divinitus illis, etc.,
which elevate the whole description into the higher air of '
imaginative contemplation, are entirely Virgil's own. So
too in nearly all the indications of stormy or bright weather,
whether taken from natural phenomena or the habits of
animals, we find in the Latin poet some suggestion of
poetical analogy giving new life to the thing described,
or some touch of tender feeling, of which his original sup-
plied him with no hint whatever.
For the true poetry of the Georgics the colour of human
and sympathetic feeling, the atmosphere of contemplative
ideas, the ethical and national associations with which the
subject is surrounded Virgil owes very little to Greek in-
spiration. Much of this poetry is the mode in which hisl
own spirit interprets Nature and human life. But much '
also is due to the genius of his great predecessor in Latin
poetry, who, though ' unnamed,' is ' not unowned,' but felt
to be a pervading presence in the thought and feeling, the
creative diction and the grander cadences, of the Georgics.
Yet this influence is perhaps as potent in the antagonism
as in the sympathy which it evokes. ' Virgil is no mere dis-
ciple of Lucretius, either as regards his philosophy or his art, )
Though his imagination pays homage to that of the older
poet ; though he acknowledges his contemplative elevation ;
though he has a strong affinity with the deep humanity of
his nature ; yet in his profoundest convictions and aspirations
198 MOTIVES, ETC., OF THE GEORGICS.
he proclaims his revolt from him. The key to the secret
of the composition of the Georgics, of the condition of
mind out of which this work of genius assumed the shape |
it has as a great literary possession, is to be sought in the j
collision between the force of thought, imagination, and
feeling which the active spirit of Lucretius stored up and
left behind him as his legacy to the world, and the nature, \
strongly susceptible indeed, but, at the same time, firm in j
its own convictions, which first felt its shock, in its attrac-/J
tive, its stimulating, and its repellent power.
(
CHAPTER VI.
>C RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO THE POEM OF
LUCRETIUS.
I.
Personal affinities and contrast between Lucretius and
Virgil
THE influence, direct and indirect, exercised by Lucretius
on the thought, the composition, and the style of the
Georgics was perhaps stronger than that ever exercised,
before or since, by one great poet on the work of another.
This influence is of the kind which is oftener seen in the
history of philosophy than of literature. It was partly
one of sympathy, partly of antagonism. I Virgil's feeling
and conception of Nature have their immediate origin
in the feeling and thought of Lucretius;' while at the
same time his religious^convictions and national senti-
ment derive new strength by reaction from the attitude
assumed by his predecessor. This powerful attraction and
repulsion were alike due to the fact that Lucretius was
the first not only to reveal a new power, beauty, and
mystery in the world, but also to communicate to poetry
a speculative impulse, opening up, with a more impassioned,
appeal than philosophy can do, the great questions
underlying human life, such as the truth of all religious
tradition, the position of man in the Universe, and the
attitude of mind and course of conduct demanded by that
position.
200 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
It was not however merely a poetical and speculative
impulse that Virgil received from his predecessor. Lu-
cretius was the only Latin poet since Ennius who had
dealt with a great mass of materials and given to them
the unity and continuity of a work of art of large dimen-
sions and proportions. Neither the method of Ennius
nor his vivid narrative power could serve as a model to
Virgil in reducing his materials to order and imparting
life and varied interest to them. A new didactic poem,
dealing largely with the same subject-matter as that treated
by Lucretius, such as the earth, the heavens, the great
elemental forces, the growth of plants, the habits of animals,
and the like, contemplating, among other objects, that of
determining the relation of man to the sphere in which
he is placed, and seeking to invest the real phenomena
and ordinary processes of Nature with an ideal charm,
could not help assuming a somewhat similar mould to
that which had been originally cast for the philosophic
thought and realistic observation of the older poet.
Again, the influence which Ennius exercised on Lucretius
was due in a great measure to his creative power in the
use of language and in metrical invention. But in Lucretius
himself there was a vaster range and more vivid power
of imagination than in Ennius ; and this greater force of
mind, acting on the new capacities of language, developed
by the literature and still more the oratory of an inter-
vening century, produced in him not only greater elegance,
but a more exuberant creativeness and a truer application
of poetical expression. He could give to the Latin
hexameter a stronger and more unimpeded flow, a more
sonorous and musical modulation. He stamped the force
of his mind and feeling on new modes of vivid expression
and of rhythmical cadence, which, though they might be
modified, could not be set aside in any future repre-
sentation of the 'species ratioque,' the outward spectacle
and the secret moving-principle of Nature.
Many circumstances conduced to bring Virgil, more
powerfully than any earlier or later poet, under the spell of
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 2OI
Lucretius. As is remarked by Mr. Munro 1 , when the poem
of his predecessor first appeared Virgil was at, or near, the
age which is most immediately impressed and moulded by
a contemporary work of genius. The enthusiasm for philo-
sophy, expressed in the short poem written immediately
before he began to study under Siron, implies that he had
been already attracted by the subject of which Lucretius
was the only worthy 2 Latin exponent ; and his studies under
that teacher must have prepared his mind to receive the
higher instruction of the ' De Rerum Natura.' The song
of Silenus in the sixth Eclogue and many expressions and
cadences in other poems of the series attest the poetical,
if not the speculative, impression thus produced. But the
clearest testimony of Virgil's recognition of the genius of
his predecessor is found in that passage of the Georgics
in which he speaks of himself most from his heart,
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.,
and in which he declares his first wish to be that the Muses
should reveal to him the secrets of Nature ; but, if this were
denied him, he next prays that ' the love of the woods and
running streams in the valleys ' might be his portion. He
may not have meant the lines
\ Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.
to be taken as a description of the individual Lucretius, or
those containing the other picture, placed by its side,
\ Fortunatus et ille, decs qui novit agrestis,
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores,
as a description of himself. Such direct personal references
are not in keeping with the allusive style in which he
writes of himself and others. He seems rather in these
passages to set forth two ideal states of mind, that of
) philosophic contemplation, -on the one hand, that of the
1 Introduction to Notes, ii. p. 315.
2 Compare the contemptuous expressions used by Cicero, Tusc. Disp. ii. 3,
of those who had written on the Epicurean philosophy in Latin. It seems
strange, if he had any hand in editing his poems, that he makes no exception
there in favour of Lucretius.
\
2,02 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
pure love of Nature and conformity with the simple beliefs
of country-people, on the other, as equally capable of
raising men above the vulgar passions and pleasures of the
world. But it is evident that he thought of Lucretius as
the poet who had held up the one ideal to the imagination
and the sterner mood of his countrymen, and of himself as
holding up the other to their poetical feeling and their
human affections.
He would thus seem to have looked on Lucretius with
something of that veneration with which Lucretius regards
Epicurus, Empedocles, and Ennius, and with which Dante
long after regarded Virgil himself. The two greatest
among the Roman poets had many feelings in common,
the love of Nature, the love of study, especially the study
of ancient poetry and of science, a natural shrinking from
the pomp and luxury of city- life and from the schemes
of worldly ambition, an abhorrence of the crimes and
violence of civil war. They felt the charm of the same
kind of outward scenes, of rivers flowing through green
pastures, of meadow and woodland, of rich corn-fields and
vineyards. They had the same strong sympathy with the
life of animals associated with man's labour, the same
fellow-feeling with the pain and the happiness of which
human affection is the source. The numerous passages
in which phrases or cadences, thought or imagery in the
Georgics recall phrases or representation in the eariier
poem 1 , leave no doubt that Virgil found in Lucretius
a heart and spirit in many ways congenial to his own,
as well as that he recognised in him a guide whom
he could follow in imagination 'among the lonely heights
of Parnassus 2 .'
Yet, notwithstanding many powerful attractions to such
a nature as Virgil's, there was much in the thought and
attitude of Lucretius to separate him from all the leading
minds of the new generation. So far as he represents
the mind and temper of Rome, Lucretius represents the
1 Compare Muhro's notes passim, and specially the note on Lucret. iii. 449.
2 Compare Georg. iii. 291 with Lucret. i. 926.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 303
old order which had passed away. Though scarcely any-
thing is known of the circumstances of his life, yet his
gentile name (as is shown by Mr. Munro), his relation of
equality to Memmius, the stamp of his powerful person-
ality impressed on his poem, point to the conclusion that
he was one of the old Roman aristocracy, born into a
time when many of its members had begun to retire in
disgust from active interest in the Republic, which they
were no longer able to govern. It was, as has been already
remarked 1 , to this class among the Romans, almost exclu-
sively, that the taste for literature Was confined in the
last age of the Republic ; and it was among men of this
class, such as the Luculli and Hortensius, and the Velleius
and Torquatus of Cicero's Dialogues, that the Epicurean
philosophy found its chief adherents. The poem of Lu-
cretius shows all the courage and energy, the power of
command, the sense of superiority and the direct simplicity
of manner emanating from it, which are the inheritance
of a great governing class. He is the one man of true
genius for poetry whom that class gave to Rome. His
lofty pathos and tenderness of feeling are the graces of
his own nature, refined and purified by the most humanising
studies. His profound melancholy is a mood natural to
one who looks on the passing away of a great order of
things/political, social, and religious," in the midst of scenes
of turbulence and violence, and takes refuge from an alien
world in the contemplation of another order of things,
infinitely vaster than either the old social state which
was shaken and tottering to its fall, or the new which was
yet ' powerless to be born.'
There could scarcely be any greater contrast, in social
relations and the dispositions arising out of them, between
any two men, than between the representative of the old
governing families of the Republic, and the humbly-born
native of the Cisalpine province, delicate in health, modest
and self-distrustful, yet endowed with a deep conscious-
ness of genius and a resolution to follow that guidance
1 Chap. iii. p. 109.
204 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
only, entering on manhood and beginning his career as
poet contemporaneously with the events which determined
the ascendency of the new order of things, and identified
with it through his personal relations to the leading men
of the new Empire, a poet who derived from his birth
and early nurture 'the spirit of the ages of Faith 1 ,'
one too who had been happy in his early home-affections
and in the friendships of his manhood, and who was able
to dedicate his mature years to his art under conditions
of the greatest personal and national security. In con-
sidering the influence of the speculative ideas of Lucretius
on the mind of Virgil, we must accordingly make large
allowance for the medium of alien sympathies, personal,
social, and political, through which they were refracted.
We must take into consideration also the wide difference
between the philosophic poet and the pure poetic artist.
The feeling of Virgil towards philosophy was apparently
one of aspiration rather than of possession. He shows no
interest in the processes of enquiry, in tracing the opera-
tion of great laws in manifold phenomena, in investigating
one obscure subject after another, with the confident as-
surance that every discovery is a step towards the light
and the ultimate revelation of the whole mystery;
Namque alid ex alio clarescet, nee tibi caeca
Nox iter eripiet, quin ultima natural
Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus 2 .
Virgil recognises the source of his own strength in the
words
Flumina amem silvasque.
It is the power of love which quickens his intuition and
enables him to perceive the tenderness and beauty revealed
in the living movement of Nature. He receives and ap-
plies the complete ideas of Lucretius, but he does not
follow them with the eagerness of their author through
the various phases of their development. Certain results
of a philosophic system affect his imagination, but he does
1 Merivale's Roman Empire.
2 Lucret. i. 1115-1117.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 205
not seem to feel how these results necessarily exclude
other conclusions which he will not abandon. Hence arises
his prevailing eclecticism, the existence of popular beliefs
side by side in his mind with the tenets of Epicureans,
Stoics, and Platonists, of some conclusions of the Lucre-
tian science along with the opposing doctrines expressed
in the poetry of Alexandria. Even in the arrangement
of his materials and the grouping of his landscapes, some
chance association or rhythmical cadence seems to guide
his hand, more often than the perception of the orderly
connexion of phenomena with one another.
II.
The Lucretian idea of N attire as it appears in the Georgics.
The idea which Lucretius revealed to the world in fuller
majesty and more abounding life than any previous poet or
philosopher, was the idea of Nature, not as an abstract
conception, but as a power omnipresent, creative, and
regulative throughout the great spheres of earth, sky, and
sea, and the innumerable varieties of individual existence.
The meaning conveyed by* the Greek word c/>w69, as em-
ployed by Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, etc., was
powerless to move the imagination or enlarge the sense
of beauty, when compared with the illimitable content of
'Natura daedala rerum' as conceived by the Latin poet.
Nature is to him the one power absolutely supreme and
independent in the Universe, too vast and too manifold,
to be subject to any will but her own,
Libera continue dominis privata superbis.
Her independent existence is incompatible with that of
the multitude of beings, of limited power and intelligence,
which the old mythologies established as lords over the
world and man. The gods, abiding in a state of blessed
ease and indifference, are themselves dependent on a power
infinitely transcending their own. But in what relation
does man stand to this power? He too is within her
sphere, altogether subject to her, but no special object
206 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
of her regard. He exists only through compliance with
and resignation to her conditions. And these conditions
are on the whole unfavourable to him. He can gain only
a scanty subsistence by a continual struggle with reluctant
and rebellious forces in the earth ; and even after all his
'toil and care, causes over which he has no control, such
as the inclemency of the skies and incalculable vicissitudes
of heat and cold, frustrate his endeavours.
Quod superest arvi tarnen id natura sua vi
Sentibus obducat, ni vis humana resistat
Vital causa valido consueta bidenti
Ingemere et terrain pressis proscindere aratris.
Si non fecundas vertentes votnere glebas
Terraique solum subigentes cimus ad ortus,
Sponte sua nequeant liquidas existere in auras.
Et tamen interdum magno quaesita labors
Cum iam per terras frondent atque omnia florent,
Aut nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol
Aut subiti perimunt imbris gelidaeque pruinae,
Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant 1 .
How deeply the thought expressed in these lines the
thought of the hard struggle which man is fbrced to carry
on with an unsympathetic Power sank into the mind of
Virgil, is evident from the various passages in the Georgics
in which the phraseology as well as the idea expressed by
Lucretius is reproduced. These lines seem to have sug-
gested the whole philosophy of the Georgics. If the idea
of the poem is the ' glorification of labour,' the glory which
is illustrated is that of the ' vis humana/ impersonated in
the ' acer rusticus,' or the ' robustus arator,' triumphing over
the resistance offered by Nature.
Lucretius further regards this state of things, so far from
being remediable by man, as necessarily becoming worse.
Each new generation of husbandmen and vinedressers finds
its burden heavier :
lamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator
Crebrius, incassum manuum cecidisse labores 2 , etc.
1 Lucret. v. 206-216. Cf. Georg. ii. 411; i. 198; i. 208; ii. 237; ii.
47; i. 197 (Munro's note on the passage). Compare also Virgil's use of
subigere and vertere as applied to the soil.
2 Lucret. ii. 1164, etc.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 207
The earth which produced .fair crops and vineyards under
the genial influence of sun^nd rain, and without the labour
of the ploughman and vinedresser 1 , can now scarcely pro-
duce its fruits in sufficient quantity, though the strength
of men and oxen is worn out by labouring on it 2 . The
cause of this decay in productiveness he attributes to the
waste or dissipation of the elemental matter of our world,
which has become much greater and more rapid than the
supply of new materials. In the long warfare
Ex infinite contractual tempore bellum
the destructive forces are gaining the superiority over the
restorative forces of Nature ; and this process is hastening
on the advent of that 'single day' which will overwhelm
in ruin the whole framework of earth, sea, and sky 3 .
What then under these irremediable conditions is it best
for man to do? Lucretius has no other answer to give
him than to study the laws of Nature, so as to understand
his position, and thus to limit his wants and reconcile him-
self to what he cannot alter. Yet in other passages of
the poem, which Virgil also remembered 4 , he did recog-
nise the fact that human skill and the knowledge ac-
quired by observation had done much to enrich and
beautify the earth : -\
Inde aliam atque aliam culturam dulcis agelli
Temptabant, fructusque feros mansuescere terram
Cernebant indulgendo blandeque colendo.
But he seems to have no idea of further progress. Though
he has an imaginative sympathy with the trials of the
' grandis arator ' and the ' vetulae vitis sator/ he has no
guidance to offer them. The lessons taught by Lucretius
are not those of active energy, applicable to every con-
dition of life, but the lessons of a resigned quietism and
a contemplative energy, adapted only to men of leisure
and enjoying ample resources for the gratification of their
intellectual wants.
1 v. 932, etc. 2 ii. 1 1 60, etc. 3 ii. 1146; v. 95.
4 Compare Lucret. v. 1367-1369 with Georg. ii. 36. Compare also Virgil's
use of indulgere and indnlgentia.
208 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
That this opinion of the decay in the natural - produc-
tiveness of the earth made a .strong impression on the
Roman mind may be inferred from the fact that Colu-
mella opens his treatise by arguing against it. And that
the idea of the struggle with Nature was one familiar
to the prose writers on such subjects appears from an
expression in the first book of the same writer : ' Imbe-
cilliorem agrum quam agricolam esse debere, cum sit col-
luctandum cum eo.' Cicero too puts into Cato's mouth 1
the sentiment that the earth, if rightly dealt with, never
refuses the 'imperium' of man. And this too is Virgil's
doctrine: and it was to give that guidance which Lucre-
tius, though he discerned the evil, did not supply, that the
didactic directions of the Georgics were given.
The Lucretian idea of Nature, both in its poetical and
philosophical significance, runs through the Georgics ; but
it is modified by other considerations, and it is rather latent
than prominent both in the poetry and in the practical
teaching of the poem. The mind of Virgil is not possessed,
as the mind of Lucretius was possessed, by the thought of
the immensity of her sphere and the universality of her
presence. He sees her presence in the familiar scenes
and objects around him. The idea adds variety, grace,
and liveliness to his description of every detail of rural
industry. A sense of the ministering agency of Nature
is a more pervading element in his peetry than that of her
power and majesty. Objects are still regarded by him as
separate and individual. The conceptions of Nature which
created mythology contend in his mind with the half-ap-
prehended conceptions of universal law and of the interde-
pendence of phenomena on one another. Thus the poetical
element in his descriptions of the life of plants and trees,
or of the forces of flood and storm, does not spring from
such deep sources in the imagination as the same element
in the descriptions of the older poet. But neither is it
limited to the perception of the ' outward shows ' of things
1 De Senectute, xv.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 209
which gratify the eye, or the sounds which delight the ear.
Even in the Eclogues the intuition of Nature is deeper than
this. The study of Lucretius has enriched the Georgics
with the most pervading charm of the poem the sense of
a secret, unceasing, quiet power (like that ascribed by
Wordsworth to May
Thy help is with the weed that creeps
Along the barest ground, etc.),
communicating to outward things the grace and tenderness
of human sentiment, the variety and vivacity of human
energy.
But the Lucretian conception of Nature in its relation to
human wants has been greatly modified by the religious
tendency of Virgil's thought, his respect for traditional
opinion, his sense of man's dependence on a higher Spiri-
tual Power. Nature he regards as no more independent in
her sphere than man is in his. The laws and conditions
imposed on her have been appointed with reference to the
relation in which she stands to man. Where these condi-
tions are unfavourable, they have been appointed to quicken
man's faculties and force him into the ways of industry.
Lucretius dwells on the fact that two-thirds of our globe
are unsuited for human habitation, as disproving the opinion
of a Divine creation of the world for the benefit of man 1 :
Virgil dwells on the fact that two temperate regions have
been assigned to weak mortals as a proof of Divine bene-
ficence 2 . Virgil also accepts the idea that the earth once
was more productive than it is 3 , but he accepts it rather in
the spirit of Hesiod than of Lucretius. In the Golden Age,
under Saturn, the earth bore all things spontaneously. It
was Jove or Providence who imposed on man, and con-
tinues to impose on him, the necessity of labouring for his
subsistence ; but this he did, not, as Hesiod believed, in
anger at the deceit of Prometheus, but as a discipline and
incentive to exertion. The poetical references to the Satur-
nian Age and the subsequent reign of Jove need not imply
1 v. 204, etc. 2 Georg. i. 237-8. 3 76. 128.
VOL. I. P
210 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
a literal belief in the fables of mythology, any more than the
allusion at Georg. i. 63 to the fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion
implies the literal acceptance of the explanation there given
of the existence of the present race of men. But as that
allusion seems meant to convey the belief in a Divine crea-
tive act, so the former allusion seems to convey a belief in a
Divine moral dispensation. The idea of Providential guid-
ance, of a Supreme Father, wielding the forces of Nature,
shaping the destinies of man, acting for the most part by
regular processes in order that man may learn to understand
his ways 1 , but making his personal agency more manifest
from time to time, as after the death of Caesar, by signs
and wonders interrupting the order of Nature, supersedes or
largely modifies the conception of natural law. The other
powers of the Greek Olympus and of the Roman Pantheon
are no longer, as the former are in the Iliad, at war with
one another, but all work in harmony with the Supreme Will.
Like the fables just referred to, the names of these deities
seem to be introduced symbolically, to signify the different
modes of activity of the one Supreme Spiritual Power, and
the different forms under which he is to be reverenced.
The speculative idea of the Georgics is thus rather a
theological than a philosophical idea. The ultimate fact
which Virgil endeavours to set forth and justify is the rela-
tion of man to Nature, under a Divine dispensation. He
too, as well as Lucretius, recognises the tendency of all
things to degenerate, but this tendency he attributes, not
to natural loss of force, but to the fiat of Omnipotence
sic omnia fatis
In peius ruere.
He too recognises the liability to failure and loss from
causes over which man has no direct control, the violence
of storms, the inclemency of seasons, etc., as well as from
others which he is able to provide against by constant
1 Cf. Georg. i. 35 1 -353:
Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis,
Aestusque pluviasque et agentis frigora ventos,
Ipse Pater statuit, quid menstrua Luna moneret.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 211
vigilance. What resource has he -against these untoward
conditions ? First he is bound to watch the signs of im-
pending change which Providence has appointed, so as to
leave as little as possible at the mercy of the elements.
Next he has the resource of prayer, and the power of pro-
pitiating Heaven by customary rites and sacrifices, and by
a life of piety and innocence. The ethical precepts of the
poem, as is said by a distinguished French writer, may be
summed up in the medieval maxim, ' Laborare et orare V
To inculcate the necessity of a constant struggle with
the reluctant forces of Nature, and to show how this struggle
may be successfully conducted by incessant labour, vigil-
ance, propitiation of the Supreme Will by prayer and piety,
thus appears to be the true didactic aim of the Georgics,
as the didactic aim of the poem of Lucretius is the purifica-
tion of the human heart from superstition and passion.
And this statement of Virgil's aim is perhaps merely an
expansion of the interpretation of his meaning, first sug-
gested by Mr. Merivale, and accepted and admirably illus-
trated by Conington. But the words ' glorification of labour '
suggest modern rather than ancient associations. Labour
is not glorified as an end in itself; it is inculcated as a
duty, as the condition appointed by Providence for attain-
ing the peace, abundance, happiness, and worth of the life
of the fields. As of old
Ifjs dperrjs ifywra Otol irpoirapoiQw ZOrjKav,
so now they make the sweat of man's brow the means
through which the ' divini gloria ruris ' can be realised. By
the labour spent in drawing into actual existence the glory
and beauty of the land man best fulfils his duty and secures
his happiness. There is no truer source for him of material
and moral good, of simple pleasures, of contemplative delight.
Yet if we wish rightly to appreciate the purely didactic
parts of the poem, it is impossible, as has been fully shown
1 ' Travailler et prier, voila la conclusion des Georgiques.' From an article in
the Revue des deux Mondes (vol. 104), called Un Poete Theologien, by Gaston
Boissier.
P 2
RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
by Conington in his General Introduction to the Georgics,
to overrate the stress which Virgil puts on the ceaseless
industry, foresight, vigilance, and actual force l which must
be put forth by the husbandman, as the condition of
success in the struggle in which he is engaged. The very
style of the Georgics bears the impress of this predominant
idea. It is this idea which seems to give Roman strength
to the workmanship of the poem ; as it is the sense of the
rich and tender life of Nature which gives to it the soft-
ness of Italian sentiment, so marvellously blended with that
Roman strength. The imperial tone of conquest and com-
mand and civilising influence makes itself heard in such
lines as these :
Exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat arvis.
Turn denique dura
Exerce imperia et ramos compesce fluentes.
In'quascumque voces artes baud tarda sequentur.
The speculative idea of the Georgics is thus seen to arise
out of the philosophical thought of Lucretius. But the
lesson inculcated by Virgil is directly opposite to that state
of quietism and pure contemplation in which Lucretius
finds the ideal of human life. Virgil's teaching is that best
adapted to the strenuous temperament of his countrymen
and to the general condition of men in all times. It will
be found that this idea of a hard struggle, ordained by
Supreme Power, against adverse circumstances, in which
man receives Divine guidance by prayer and by interpret-
ing the will of Heaven, and through which he attains to a
state of final rest, runs through the Aeneid as well as the
Georgics. Virgil reaches a practical result opposed to that
which Lucretius reaches, by subordinating the Lucretian
conception of man's relation to Nature to the Platonic
belief in the supremacy of a Spiritual Will and in the moral
1 Compare, among many other similar instances, such expressions as these :
Labor actus in orbem
Agricolis redit.
Omnia quae multo ante memor provisa repones.
Quae vigilanda viris.
Continuo in silvis magna vi flexa domatur, etc.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 213
dispensation under which man is placed. It is this belief
which appears to underlie Virgil's acceptance of the reli-
gious traditions of antiquity, which might have been
expected to have received, for all educated minds, their
death-blow at the hands of Lucretius.
The science of Lucretius, as distinct from his philosophy
of Nature and human life, is also partly accepted by
Virgil, and partly rejected in favour of the tenets of an
opposite school. In such passages as i. 89-90,
Seu pluris calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua sucus in herbas,
i. 415-423,
Haud equidem credo, etc.,
iii. 242,
Omne adeo genus in terris hominumque ferarumque, etc.,
we recognise the Lucretian explanation of the constitution
of the earth, of the material elements of the mind, of the
physical influence of love. Other passages again, such as
i. 247, etc.,
Illic ut perhibent aut intempesta silet nox,
and iv. 219-227,
His quidam signis, etc.,
are in harmony with the Stoical doctrines and in direct
opposition to the Epicurean science. Some of these appa-
rent inconsistencies of opinion may be explained on the
supposition that Virgil changed his allegiance from one
school to another during the composition of the Georgics.
But probably the truer explanation is that he was
Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri,
and that he accepted certain results of science which im-
pressed his imagination, without caring for their consistency
with others which he equally accepts. There is a constant
tendency in him to allow his belief in the miraculous to
interfere with his belief in natural law; as for instance in
the account he gives of the birth of bees (iv. 200), and
again of their spontaneous generation from the blood of
slain bullocks (iv. 285). He has not the firm faith in
natural agency which Lucretius had. Phenomena are still
214 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
regarded by him as isolated, not interdependent. The
ordinary course of Nature he supposes to be interrupted
by marvels and portents. The signs of coming things are
represented, not as Lucretius would have represented them,
as natural antecedents or concomitants of the things por-
tended, but as arbitrary indications appointed for the
guidance of man.
III.
Dedication and Invocation of the Georgics contrasted with
the Dedication and Invocation of the l De Rerum Natural
For the technical execution of his poem Virgil could gain
little help from his Greek models. The mass of materials
which he had to reduce to order was much larger and more
miscellaneous than the special topics selected for their art
by the Alexandrians. The subject treated in the Georgics
would have afforded scope for several poems treated on
the principle on which Aratus and Nicander treated their
subjects ; and not only was the mass of materials larger
and more varied, but the whole purpose of the Georgics was
more complex. Virgil's artistic aim was not only to com-
bine into one work the topics which he treats successively
in the four books of the Georgics, but to interweave with
them the poetry of personal and national feeling, of specu-
lative ideas, of ethical and religious teaching, of science,
of the living world of Nature. In Lucretius, on the other
hand, he found an example of the systematic treatment of
a vaster range of topics, a range so vast, indeed, that the
principal topics of Virgil's art enter as subsidiary elements
into one part of his representation. Lucretius too had
shown how to combine with the systematic exposition of
his abstract theme a strong personal interest and a strong
ethical purpose. He had shown how, out of the treatment
of this abstract theme, opportunities naturally arose for
uttering the poetry and pathos of human life, and for
delineating in all its beauty and majesty the outward face
and revealing the inner secret of Nature. He thus supplied
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 215
the general plan which Virgil might follow, with modi-
fications suited to his narrower range of subject and his
more purely didactic office. We see how Virgil adopts
this plan, modified to suit his own ideas, in the personal
dedication ; in the Invocation and short introduction to his
various books ; in his manner of arranging, connecting, and
illustrating the successive stages of his exposition ; and,
lastly, in the use which he makes of episodes, chiefly at the
end of the various books, with the view of enabling his
readers to feel the intimate connexion of his subject with
the most valued interests of life, with religion and mo-
rality, with family affection, with peace, prosperity, and
national greatness.
The first parallel to be noticed, in the comparison be-
tween the two poems, is in the personal address. Maecenas
stands in the same relation to the Georgics as Memmius
does to the ' De Rerum Natura.' But as Memmius in the
body of the poem is often merged in the ideal philosophical
student, so Virgil, after the lines of compliment at the
opening of his various books, for the most part directs his
instructions to some imaginary husbandman. In the tones
in which Memmius and Maecenas are respectively ad-
dressed we recognise an equal sincerity of feeling. But
a difference in the relation in which the poets stand to
those whom they address makes itself felt in the contrast
between such lines as these,
Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiae,
and
O decus, O famae fnerito pars maxima nostrae.
In the one case we recognise the man, born into the equal
relations of an aristocratic Republic, who knows of no social
superior in the world, and is attracted to him whom he
honours by his dedication solely by the charm of friend-
ship. In the other case, though the affection may not be
less sincere, there is the unmistakeable note of deference to
a social superior.
The difference between the position which the two poets
2l6 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS 'TO
occupied and of the times in which they lived is still more
manifest in the selection of the person whom they each
fix on as the object of their reverential homage. Though
the poem of Lucretius is inscribed to Memmius, it is really
dedicated to the glory of Epicurus. His image presides
over the massive temple raised to the power of Nature.
He is the great benefactor of the world, exalted by his
service to mankind, not only above all living men, but
above those whom the popular religion had in early times
elevated to the rank of gods
deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi.
In every book of the poem his praises are repeated in lan-
guage of enthusiastic devotion. In the poem of Virgil the
living Caesar occupies the place of a tutelary deity
In medio mihi Caesar erit, templumque tenebit.
He is ranked above all living men, and above the great
men of the past by whom Rome had been saved from her
enemies : he is addressed as the immediate object of care
to the native gods of Italy, and as destined after death to
rank among the ruling powers of Heaven. Something is
said in his honour in every book of the poem. The lines
near the end,
Caesar dum magnus ad altum
Fulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentis
Per populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olympo,
seem intended to leave the thought of his actual greatness
as the abiding impression on the mind of the reader ; as
the concluding lines of the Invocation seem intended to
make his presence felt as that of its inspiring deity. While
we cannot doubt that the admiration expressed by Lucre-
tius is the sincere and generous tribute of genius acknow-
ledging a great debt and unconsciously exaggerating the
nobleness of its benefactor, it is a question impossible to
determine how far Virgil's language is the expression of
sincere conviction, and how far it is dictated by the necessi-
ties of his position.
But it is in their invocations of a Superior Power to aid
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 2l/
them in their task that we recognise the strongest contrast
between the philosophic poet, who, while denying all super-
natural agency, is yet carried away by his imagination to
attribute consciousness, will, and passion to the great creative
power of Nature, the source of all life, joy, beauty, and
art, and the 'pius vates,' influenced by the religious sense
of man's dependence on a Spiritual Power, deeply feeling
the poetical charm of the old mythology, and striving to
effect some reconcilement between the fading traditions
of Polytheism and the more philosophical conceptions
prevalent in his time. Lucretius for the moment adopts
the symbolism of ancient mythology, and probably the
actual figures of pictorial art (which elsewhere he speaks
of as a great source of human delusion), to impart visible
presence, colour, and passion to his thought ; but he leaves
no doubt on the reader's mind that his representation is
merely symbolical. Virgil, on the other hand, appears in
the opening lines of the Georgics to attribute a distinct
personality to the beings of that composite Polytheism
which had gradually grown up out of the union of Greek
art and Roman religion, but which it is difficult to compre-
hend as having any real hold over the minds of men who
had received any tincture of Greek philosophy. In the
divine office which he assigns to Caesar he adopts the
latest addition to this eclectic Pantheon; and this new
divinity he introduces in the midst of the old gods, just
as he fancifully introduces Gallus in the Eclogues amid the
choir of Apollo and the Muses.
But in the Eclogues there is no feeling of doubt in our
minds that the representation is purely fanciful. The
strain in the Georgics is altogether too serious ; the
juxtaposition of Caesar with the gods of Olympus and the
protecting deities of the husbandman is too carefully
meditated to admit of our supposing the lines from ' Tuque
adeo ' to ' adsuesce vocari ' to be intended to be taken as
a mere play of fancy. We cannot think of Lucretius,
perhaps not even of Cicero, reading Virgil's Invocation,
and especially the concluding lines of it, without a certain
21 8 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
feeling of scorn. We cannot help asking how far could the
pupil of Siron, the student of Epicurus and Lucretius, the en-
lightened associate of Maecenas, Augustus, Pollio, Horace,
etc., attach any serious meaning to the words of this
invocation. How far was he simply complying with an
established convention of literature? how far using these
mythological representations as symbolism? how far was
he identifying himself in imagination with the beliefs of
his ideal husbandman?
To answer these questions we must endeavour to realise
the very composite character which the Pagan religion, the
accumulation of many beliefs from the earliest and rudest
fancies of primitive times to the studied representations
of Greek art and the later symbolical explanations of phi-
losophical schools, presented to men living in the Augustan
Age. In this Invocation and in the bojdy of the poem we
can trace three or four distinct veins of belief, existing
together, without producing any sense of inconsistency, and
combining into a certain unity for the purpose of artistic
representation.
Religion in the Augustan Age presented a different
aspect to the dwellers in the town and in the country;
to the refined classes whose tastes were formed by Greek
art and poetry, and to men of the old school, senators like
Cotta or antiquarians like Varro, who sought to conform
to the ancient Roman traditions ; to students of philo-
sophy, who either, like the Epicureans, denied all Divine
agency, or like the Stoics, resolved the many divinities
of the popular belief into one Divine agency under many
forms. The peculiarity of Virgil's mind is that his belief,
at least as expressed in his poetry, was a kind of syncretism
composed out of all these modes of thought and belief.
Like Horace and Tibullus, he sympathises in imagination
with that rustic piety which expressed the natural thank-
fulness of the human heart for protection afforded to the
flocks and the fruits of the field, by festivals and ceremonial
observances lil^e the Palilia and Ambarvalia, by sacrifice of
a kid to Faunus, or offerings of flowers and fruit to the
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 219
Penates. The feelings connected with this vein of belief as
they are represented in the poetry of the Augustan Age,
Faune nympharum fugientum amator,
and again in Tibullus,
Di patrii purgamus agros, purgamus agrestes,
are of a happy and generally of a genial and festive cha-
racter, and not altogether devoid of such elements of
simple piety as find expression in the
Caelo supinas si tuleris manus
of Horace. Poetical sympathy with the beliefs x and pic-
turesque ceremonies of the peasants among whom they lived
enhanced the real enjoyment derived from their country life
by men of refined feeling like Horace and Tibullus. But
Virgil's feeling in regard to the religious trust and ob-
servances of the country people appears to be stronger than
mere poetical sympathy. He sees in them a class of men
more immediately dependent than others on the protection
of some unseen Power, and thus forced, as it were, into
more immediate relation with that Power. The modes in
which they endeavoured to gain the favour of that Power or
to express their thankfulness for its protection were pro-
bably among the influences which had moulded his own
early belief and character in his Mantuan farm. In the
prayer
Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri,
as in the later exclamation,
Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes,
he is identifying himself in imagination with a living mode of
popular belief, and one to which he may have been attracted
by his early associations as well as by poetical sympathy.
But the Invocation recognises the creations of Greek art
along with the ruder and simpler objects of Italian worship.
The * Fauni Dryadesque puellae ' assume to Virgil's fancy
the forms of Greek art and poetry. The legend of Neptune
producing the horse by the stroke of his trident suggests the
attributes of Uoo-efovv ITITUO?, not of the Italian Neptunus.
220 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
It is not the Roman Minerva, but a yXavK&tns 'Afldva, who
is associated in poetry and legend with the
3?VTtvjj.' dxfipoJTOv avToiroiov
yXavftds iraiSorpofpov <pv\\ov e\aias.
He calls upon Pan to leave his native groves and the wood-
land pastures of Lycaeus, just as Horace describes him pass-
ing nimbly from his Arcadian haunt to the Sabine Lucretilis.
These gods, nymphs, and satyrs of an alien belief were
now to Romans as to Greeks the recognised materials
which art and song had to shape into new forms. In the
vigorous prime of Greek poetry, so late even as the age of
Sophocles and Herodotus, there was a real belief in the
personal existence and active agency of these supernatural
beings. This real belief first gave birth to, and was after-
wards merged in, the representations of art. Art, which
owed its birth to religious sentiment, superseded it. But
after a time and under new conditions the strong admira-
tion for the beauty or significance of the objects repre-
sented in art produces a strong wish to revive the belief
in their reality; and in minds peculiarly susceptible of such
influences the wish tends to fulfil itself.
Probably Virgil himself would not have cared to probe
too deeply the state of half -belief in which his heart and
mind realised the bright existence and kindly influence of
beings consecrated to him by the most cherished associa-
tions of living art and the poetry of the past. Even
Lucretius, while sternly rejecting all belief in their exist-
ence as absolutely incompatible with truth, feels from time
to time attracted by their poetical charm. Horace, we
can see, from the absence of anything in his Satires or
Epistles implying a real belief in the gods of mytho-
logy, keeps his literary belief apart from his true con-
victions. In the case of Virgil, it is not possible, at all
events for a modern reader, distinctly to separate them.
The power of the old mythology over the fancy and the
weakness of scientific thought in ancient times to over-
throw that power is nowhere more visible than in his
poetry.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 221
But there was another mode of Greek influence acting on
the educated minds of Rome, stronger than that of the
ancient mythology. That influence was the religious
speculations of the various philosophical schools 1 . There
was, on the one hand, the Epicurean acceptance of an
infinite number of gods dwelling in the * Intermundia,'
enjoying a state of supreme calm, apart from all concern
with this world or the labours and pursuits of men. They
might be objects of pure contemplation, and pious reverence
to the human spirit ; but they were capable neither of being
propitiated nor made angry by anything that men could
do. The Stoic doctrine, on the other hand, recognised the
incessant agency and forethought of a Supreme Spiritual
Power over human life. It accepted the stories and beings
of the traditional religion, but explained them away. The
various deities worshipped by the people are the various
manifestations and functions of this one Supreme Spiritual
Power, whether called by the name of Zeus, or by the
abstract name of Providence (-npovoia). This is the Power
addressed in the famous hymn of Cleanthes, and that
appealed to in the familiar rov yap KOL yevos eo-juez; of Aratus.
It is part of Virgil's eclecticism to combine the science of
Epicurus with the theology of the more spiritual schools.
The Supreme Spiritual Power in the Georgics is generally
spoken of under the title of ' Pater.' It is noticeable that
the word luppiter is used either with a purely physical
signification, as in
luppiter umidus austris
Et iam maturis metuendus luppiter uvis
4
or as in the phrases 'sub love/ 'ante lovem,' in reference to
the stories of the ancient mythology. Even in this Invo-
cation, the object of which seems to be to assign function
and personality to the gods of Olympus and of Italy, the
influence of the Stoic theology was recognised in ancient
times in the identification of the sun and moon 'clarissima
mundi lumina' with Liber and Ceres 2 . The rhythm of the
1 Compare the first book of Cicero's De Natura Deorutn.
2 Servius has the following note on the passage : ' Stoici dicunt non esse
222 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
lines 5-7 can leave no doubt whatever as to this identifica-
tion, notwithstanding the appeal to Varro's example, who
distinguishes the various deities whom he invokes. It
is characteristic of Virgil's art to introduce such a variation
in any passage which he imitates, and also to suggest a
thought which he does not distinctly develope. In the
lines 95-96,
neque ilium
Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo,
he reproduces a thought which Callimachus had expressed
in his hymn to Artemis 1
Ovs 8f KCV evfifibrjs T oi tAaos avyaffffijcu
Ktivois eft fiei/ dpovpa <j>4pi
The ' flava Ceres-' of Virgil's description seems to call
up before our mind a picture of the harvest-moon looking
down on the corn-fields of the prosperous husbandman.
The national religion of Rome was something distinct
both from the rustic Paganism of Italy, and from that
aesthetic amalgamation of Greek and Roman beliefs and
that semi-philosophical rationalism which art and literature
made familiar to the Romans of the Augustan Age. The
great symbol of that national religion was the Temple of
Jove on the Capitol 2 . That religion was based on the
idea that the wide empire and eternal duration of Rome
nisi unum deum, et unam eandemque (esse) potestatem, quae pro ratione
omciorum nostrorum variis nominibus appellatur. Unde eundem Solem,
eundem Liberum, eundem Apollinem vocant. Item Lunam, eandem Dianam,
eandem Cererem, eandem lunonem, eandem Proserpinam dicunt; secundum
quos, pro Sole et Luna, Liberum et Cererem invocavit.'
1 Quoted by M. Benoist.
2 Cf. 'Incolumi love et urbe Roma.' Hor. iii. 5. 12. Cf. also iii. 3. 42 ;
iii. 30. 8.
Cf. also ' Sedem lovis Optimi Maximi auspicate a maioribus pignus imperii
conditam,' etc. Tac. Hist. iii. 72 ; and ' Sed nihil aeque quam incendium Capi-
tolii, ut finem imperio adesse crederent, impulerat.' iv. 54.
The Capitol is the symbol of the eternal duration of the Empire to Virgil
also :
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque pater Romanus habebit.
Aen. ix. 448-9.
THE POEM OF JLUCRETIUS. 223
had been appointed by Divine decree. As distinguished
from the national religion of Greece, which expressed itself
in new and varied forms of art, Roman religion was one
which adhered to ancient rites and expressed itself in the
pomp of outward ceremonial and other impressive symbols.
It acted on the imagination through the sense of vast-
ness, pomp, stateliness and solemnity; that of Greece
through the sense of life, joy, beauty, and harmony ani-
mating its ceremonial and embodying itself in its sym-
bols. The objects of Roman worship were almost innu-
merable. In addition to the greater divinities which it
shared with the Greek worship, and besides the various
native divinities common to it with the religion of other
Italian races, Roman religion had erected temples to
various abstract qualities, such as Peace, Faith, Concord,
and the like. This new phase of religious development
testifies to a great progress in civic institutions among the
Romans from the time when they were content to wor-
ship some embodiment of the powers of Nature or of the
martial passions ; but the tendency to multiply their deities,
to deify mere abstractions, and to recognise a distinct
deity as presiding over every common act and process
of life, weakened or destroyed the sense of the personality
of the gods, and thus indirectly promoted that advance
to Monotheism which philosophy had made in a different
direction. While the Greeks conceived of each local god
or hero as a distinct person, with his own human qualities
and his own visible shape, and thus naturally adapted for
the representations of dramatic poetry or plastic art, the
Romans worshipped rather one Divine impersonal power
with many attributes and functions. The need which the
popular imagination feels of some personal embodiment of
the idea of Godhead probably explains the readiness with
which, in the dissolution of older faiths, the worship of
the Emperor became the chief symbol of the national
faith.
So far as the conceptions of the national religion of Rome,
which have a powerful influence on the action of the Aeneid,
324 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
enter into this Invocation, it is in the recognition of the
divinity of Caesar. But here he is associated with the
rural gods, who listen to the prayers of the husbandman,
rather than, as elsewhere both in Horace and Virgil, with
the majesty of the Roman State. The passage probably,
as is suggested by Ribbeck, owes its origin to the decree of
the Senate in 36 B.C., after the naval victory gained by
Agrippa over Sextus Pompeius, by which the worship of
Caesar, ' inter municipales decs,' was established. There is
probably no passage in Virgil, scarcely any in Latin poetry,
which must strike the modern reader as so unreal as this,
or so untrue to the actual convictions of educated men.
There is none in which the language of adulation appears
so palpably, or in which the love of mythological allusion,
as one of the conventional ornaments of poetry, appears to
exercise so unfortunate an influence on the truthful feeling
of the poet. It seems strange that a man of the command-
ing understanding of Augustus should have derived any
pleasure from the supposition that he might become the
son-in-law of Tethys, from the statement that the glow-
ing Scorpion was already beginning to make room for him
in the sky, or from the appeal made to him to resist the
ambition of supplanting Pluto as the future ruler of Tartarus.
In contrast with this state of feeling we learn to respect the
masculine sense and dignity with which Tiberius disclaims
the attribution of divine honours : ' Ego me, Patres Con-
scripti, mortalem esse et hominum officia fungi satisque
habere si locum principem impleam, et vos testor et
meminisse posteros volo 1 .' But though it is not possible
that the lines from ' Tuque adeo ' to ' adsuesce vocari '
should ever appear natural to us, or that we should ever
read them without some feeling that they are unworthy of
the manliness of a great poet, we may yet recognise some
symbolical meaning iix them beyond the mere expression
of overstrained eulogy. In such expressions as
Auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem
1 Tac. Ann. iv. 38.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 225
Virgil associates the idea of the power of Caesar with the
main subject of his poem ; and probably, as is pointed out
by Ribbeck, he suggests the thought of the dependence of
Rome and Italy for subsistence on the vigilance of their
ruler 1 . In the mention of Tethys there is a reference to
recent naval successes ; and in the ' tibi serviat ultima
Thule ' there may be an allusion to the contemplated ex-
pedition to Britain, and certainly, as in so many other
passages of the poetry of the age, there is a recognition
of the wide empire of Rome. In the lines
Anne novum tardis, etc.
we recognise the idea which connected the apotheosis of
Julius Caesar with the appearance of the 'lulium Sidus '
(see Eel. ix) ; while the lines
Nam te nee sperant Tartara regem, etc.,
read in connexion with those at the end of Book I,
Hunc saltern everso iuvenem succurrere saeclo
Ne prohibete,
are evidently prompted by the conviction that the well-
being and security of the world are dependent on a single
life.
The examination of this Invocation, as contrasted with
the
Aeneadum genetrix hominum divomque voluptas,
forces on our minds the great gulf which separates the
consistent philosophical thinker from the poet who was
using mixed materials, old and new, of religious belief and
of philosophic thought for the purposes of his art. The
state of mind of Lucretius in regard to the ancient mytho-
logy is quite intelligible to us ; so is that of Aeschylus,
of Sophocles, and of Pindar; but that of Euripides, in
whom active intellectual scepticism goes along with artistic
acceptance of the national religion, as the object, not of
1 Cf. Tac. Ann. iii. 54. 'At Hercule nemo refert quod Italia externae opis
indiget, quod vita populi Roman! per incerta mans et tempestatum cotidie
volvitur. . . . Hanc, Patres Conscripti, curam sustinet princeps, haec omissa
funditus rem publicam trahet.'
VOL. I. Q
2,2,6 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
reverence, but of strong hostility, is not so easy to under-
stand. The mind of Virgil is much less active in sceptical
analysis than that of Euripides ; his nature is in an unusual
degree reverential. Yet in this apparent acceptance of
new and old modes of belief, in this neopaganism of
art, it is difficult to say how far we are to recognise
the representations of fiction, conscious that it is fiction,
as in the mythological art of the Renaissance, or how
far we are in the presence of a temporary revival of a
faith which satisfied a simpler time, in inconsistent con-
junction with incompatible modes of modern thought
Probably not even the poets themselves, and least of
all Virgil, could have given an explanation of their real
state of mind. The dreams of an older faith were still
haunting them, though its substance was gone. The
traditions of the Greek mythology survived, endowed
with what, in the absence of any new creed, might seem
immortal life, in the pages of poets, and in the paint-
ings and other works of art which afforded a refined
pleasure to educated men. The national faith of Italy
and Rome still kept the outward show of life in many
visible symbols, and still retained a hold over the mass
of the people. The herds and flocks were still believed
to flourish under the kindly protection of Pales and Fau-
nus. The festive pleasures of country life at the harvest-
home or the vintage season were enjoyed on old religious
holidays, and formed part of ceremonies handed down
from immemorial antiquity. The pomp and ceremonial
of what was peculiarly the Roman worship still met
the eye on all great occasions within the walls of the
city :
Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxima taums
Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
Romanes ad templa deum duxere triumphos.
The magnificent temples of deities blending the attributes
of native Italian gods with those of the gods of Olympus
seemed to preside over the tumult and active business of
the Forum ; and the majesty of the Capitoline Jove was
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS.
still recognised as the manifestation of the stability and
power of the State. But the Roman imagination was
at the same time beginning to be impressed by a new
symbol of Divine agency, which was felt in all national
concerns. The ideal majesty of Jove was merging, as
an object of veneration, in the actual majesty of Caesar,
regarded as the vicegerent of the Supreme Power. All
these phases of religious belief, Greek and Italian, old and
new, some appealing to the popular, some to the educated
mind, meet in the poetry of the Augustan Age, and no-
where in more close conjunction than in this Invocation.
They appear in still stranger connexion with the later
results of science and philosophic thought. It is impossible
to find any principle of reconcilement in accordance with
which their proper place in the reasonable intelligence of
the age may be assigned to each. They came together
in Virgil as a composite result of the union of his literary
and philosophic tastes with his religious feeling and na-
tional sympathies. So far as we can attach any truth of
meaning to this Invocation, we must look upon it as a
symbolical expression of Divine agency and superintend-
ence in all the various fields of natural production.
Virgil is much more sparing than Lucretius in the
proems to his other books. In the second book there is
a brief invocation to Liber, who is introduced, with rich
pictorial colouring, as the special god of the vintage ; and
at lines 39-46 there is an appeal to Maecenas, which dis-
claims, perhaps not without some reference to the contrary
practice of Lucretius, all intention to detain his hearer ' per
ambages et longa exorsa.' In the fourth there is again a
brief appeal to Maecenas, a statement of the subject, an
admission of its homely character, ' In tenui labor,' an
expression of the hope that, even out of these materials,
great glory may ensue if Apollo hears the poet's prayer
and no unpropitious powers impede the course of his song.
The introduction to the third book is more extended, and
more interesting from the light which it throws on the
motives which determined Virgil to the choice of the subject
228 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
of his epic poem. Here, too, as in the first and second
books, there is an appeal to the tutelary deities of the herds
and flocks, the Italian Pales, and the ' Pastor ab Amphryso,'
the Apollo PO'/UUOS of Greek legend and rural worship.
The associations of Greek poetry are also evoked in the
reference to the woods and streams of Lycaeus, to the
lowing herds of Cithaeron, to the dogs that range over
Taygetus, and to the famous horses of the Argive plain.
The choice of the subject is justified by the contrast sug-
gested between its novelty 'silvas saltusque sequamur
Intactos' and the hackneyed poems founded on mytho-
logical subjects which his immediate predecessors in poetry
had written in imitation of their Alexandrine prototypes.
But he indicates here, with a new application of the words
qf Ennius, the aspiration to compose a great national epic
in celebration of the exploits of Caesar :
temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora.
Under the allegory of the games which he proposed to
celebrate, and the marble temple which he proposed to
raise on the banks of the Mincio, he associates the thought
of his early home with his ambition to rival the great
works of Greek genius (for this seems to be the meaning
of the lines
Cuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi,
Cursibus et crude decernet Graecia cestu),
and to spread the fame of Caesar through distant ages.
This invocation must have been written later than the
crowning victory of Actium, but. before the plan of the
Aeneid had definitely assumed shape in the poet's mind.
From the allegorical representations of the designs in gold,
ivory, and marble for the ornaments of the temple, and
still more clearly from the direct statement,
Mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas
Caesaris,
it is evident that his first idea was to make the contem-
porary events the main subject of his epic, and to introduce
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 229
the glories of the Trojan line as accessories. Under what
influence he changed this purpose, making contemporary
events subsidiary and the ancient legend the main argu-
ment of his poem, will be considered in the chapters devoted
to the examination of the Aeneid.
IV.
Didactic exposition and illustration of Virgil compared
with those of Lucretius.
As affecting the arrangement and illustration of their
materials, there is this essential difference between the
poems of Lucretius and Virgil, that the one is a great
continuous argument, the development of speculative
truths depending on one another ; and its professed aim is
purely contemplative, the production of a certain state of
mind and feeling. The other is the orderly exposition
of a number of precepts, depending on experience and
special knowledge ; its professed aim is the mastery over
a great practical occupation. Lucretius uses poetry as the
vehicle of science, Virgil as the instrument of a useful art.
In the first we expect, and we find, in so far as the poem
was left completed, rigorous concentration of thought, and
an exhaustive treatment of the subject. In the second we
expect, and we find, an orderly and convenient arrange-
ment, and such a selection of topics as, while producing
the impression of a thorough mastery of the subject, leaves
also much to be filled up by the imagination or experience
of the reader. Still, that Virgil regarded Lucretius as his
technical model may be inferred from the use which he
makes of several of his formulae, such as ' Principio,' ' Quod
superest,' 'His animadversis,' 'Nunc age,' 'Praeterea,' by
which the framework of his argument is held together.
Virgil uses these more sparingly, and with a more careful
selection, so as, while producing the impression of con-
tinuity of thought, not to impede the pure flow of his
230 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
poetry with the mechanism of logical connexion. He
follows Lucretius also, who here observed the practice of
the Greek didactic poets, in maintaining the liveliness
of a personal address by the frequent use of such appeals
as these, ' Nonne vides/ ' Contemplator,' * Forsitan et . . .
quaeras,' 'Vidi,' 'Ausim,' etc.
In illustrating and giving novelty to his various topics
Virgil has the example of Lucretius to justify him in catching
up and dwelling on every aspect of beauty or imaginative
interest which they are capable of presenting. And it is
here that the more careful art of Virgil, and the fact that
he attached more value to the perfection of his art than to the
knowledge he imparts, give him that technical superiority
over the older writer which, notwithstanding the tamer
interest of his subject, and perhaps the tamer character of
hfs own genius, has made the Georgics a poem much more
familiar to the world than the ' De Rerum Natura.' Virgil,
for one thing, enjoys greater freedom of omitting any set of
topics, any of those details on which Cato or Varro
would have felt themselves bound to be specially explicit,
which would detract unduly from the beauty and
general amenity of his exposition ; or by a simple touch
(such as the 'Ne saturare fimo pingui/ etc.) he can
suggest the necessity of attending to such topics, while
leaving their full realisation to the reader. He thus, by
greater selection and elimination of his materials, avoids
the monotony and the long prosaic interspaces between the
grander bursts of poetry which his vast argument imposes
on Lucretius. But, further, he avails himself of many more
resources to give variety of interest and literary charm to
the topics which he successively deals with. Each and all
of these topics, the processes of ploughing and sowing, the
signs of the weather, the grafting of trees and the pruning
of the vine, the qualities of horses and cattle, the tending
of sheep and goats, the observation of the habits of bees,
bring him into immediate contact with the genial influences
of the outward world. The vastness as well as the abstract
character of his subject forces Lucretius to pass through
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS, 231
many regions which seem equally removed from this genial
presence and from all human associations. It is only the
enthusiasm of discovery the delight in purely intellectual
processes that bears him buoyantly through these dreary
spaces ; and it is only the knowledge that from time to
time glimpses of illimitable power and wonder are opened
up to him, and admiration for the energy arid clear vision
of his guide, that compel the flagging reader to accompany
him. But Virgil leads his readers through scenes, tamer
indeed and more familiar, yet always bright and smiling
with some homely charm, or rich and glowing with the
' pomp of cultivated nature,' or fresh and picturesque with
the charm of meadow, river-bank, or woodland pasture.
The secret of the power of Lucretius as an interpreter
of Nature lies in his recognition of the sublimity of natural
law in ordinary phenomena. The secret of Virgil's power
lies in the insight and long-practised meditation through
which he abstracts the single element of beauty from
common sights and the ordinary operations of industry.
Thus, to take one or two instances of the way in which
the charm of Nature is communicated to the drudgery of
rural labour: what a sense of refreshment to eye and
ear is conveyed by the lines which describe the practical
remedies by which the farmer mitigates the burning
drought of summer :
Et cum exustus ager morientibus aestuat herbis,
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam
Elicit; ilia cadens raucum per levia murmur
Saxa ciet, scatebrisque arentia temperat arva 1 .
Again, what a picture of rich woodland beauty is created
out of the occurrence, in the midst of practical direc-
tions, of some homely traditional maxims, in accordance
with which farmers judged of the probable abundance of
their crop :
Contemplator item, cum se nux plurima silvis
Induct in florem et ramos curvabit olentis : ,
Si superant fetus, pariter frumenta sequentur,
Magnaque cum magno veniet tritura calore*.
1 i. 107-110. a i. 187-190.
RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
So too, in a technical account of the different varieties of
soil, he brings before the mind, by a single descriptive
touch, a picture of abundant harvest-fields,
non ullo ex aequore cernes
Plura domum tardis decedere plaustra iuvencis 1 ;
and enables us to feel the charm of a rich pastoral country,
with its lonely woodland glades, its brimming river
flowing past mossy and grassy banks, and the shelter and
shade of its caves and rocks, in the midst of homely
directions for the care of mares before they foal :
Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum
Flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa,
Speluncaeque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra 2 .
In the inculcation of his practical precepts his aim is
even more to exalt the dignity and to exhibit the delight
of rural labour, than to explain its methods or inculcate
its utility.
He imparts a peculiar vivacity, grace, and tenderness
to his treatment of many topics by the analogy which
he draws between the life of Nature and of man. This
analogy is originally suggested by the philosophical and
imaginative thought of Lucretius ; and it is in the second
Book, in the composition of which, as Mr. Munro has
shown, Virgil's mind was saturated with the ideas, feel-
ings, and language of his predecessor, that this element of
poetical interest is most conspicuous. The following, ex-
amples, occurring in the technical exposition of the growth
and tending of trees, are all taken from the second Book ;
and two of them, those marked g and k, are immediately
suggested by Lucretius :
a. Parva sub ingenti matris se subicit umbra.
b. tenero abscindens de corpore matrum.
c. Exuerint silvestrem animum.
d. Miraturque novas frondes et non sua poma.
e. Mutatam ignorent subito ne semina matrem.
/. atque animos tollent sata.
g. Viribus eniti quarum et contemnere ventos
Adsuescant.
1 ii. 205-206. 2 iii. 145-148.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 233
h. Ac dum prima novis adolescit frondibus aetas,
Parcendum teneris.
i. Ante reformidant ferrum.
k. Praecipue dum frons tenera imprudensque laborum.
Many more examples might be added from the other
Books. The force of many of the epithets applied to
material objects, such as ' ignava,' ' laeta et fortia/ ' maligni,'
'infelix,' etc., consists in the suggestion of a ceaseless life
underlying and animating the silent processes of Nature.
Virgil, too, like Lucretius, shows the close observation of
a naturalist, and a genuine sympathy with the pains and
pleasures of all living things, especially of the animals
associated with the toil or amusement of men. The
interest of the third Book arises, to a great degree, from
the truth and vivacity of feeling with which he observes
and identifies himself with the ways and dispositions of
these fellow-labourers of man, with the pride and emula-
tion of the horse, the fidelity and companionship of the dog,
the combative courage of the bull and his sense of pain
and dishonour in defeat, the patience of the steer and
his brotherly feeling for his yoke-fellow in toil, and with
the attachment of sheep and goats to their offspring and to
their familiar haunts 1 . The interest of the fourth Book,
again, turns on the analogy implied between the pursuits,
fortunes, wars, and state-policy of bee-communities and of
men. It is the sense of this analogy that imparts a
meaning deeper than that demanded by the obvious force
of the words a more pathetic feeling of the vanity of
all earthly strife to that final touch in the description
of the combat in mid-air between two hosts, led by rival
chiefs :
Hi motus animorum atque haec certamina tanta
Pulveris exigui iactu compressa quiescunt 2 .
1 As an instance of the last, cf. iii. 316, 317 :
Atque ipsae memores redeunt in tecta
Ducunt.
2 Compare Horace's line, Od. i. 28. 3 :
Pulveris exigui prope litus parva Ma
Munera.
234 ' RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
In thus relieving the dryness of technical detail, by
availing himself of every aspect of beauty associated
with it, and by imparting the vivacity of human relations
and sensibility to natural objects, Virgil makes use of the
same resources as elicit springs of poetic feeling from many
of the dry and stony wastes through which the argument
of Lucretius leads him. There are others however em-
ployed by Virgil, which Lucretius uses more sparingly or
not at all. There are, in the first place, all those which
arise out of the conception of the 'vis humana,' imper-
sonated in the 'robustus fossor/ the 'iratus agricola,' the
'rusticus acer,' contrasting with and conflicting with that
other conception of the life of Nature. And as in Lucretius
the speculative ideas, penetrating through every region of
the wide domain traversed by him, elicit some poetic life
out of its barrenest places, so the two speculative ideas, of
Nature as a living force, and of man's labour, vigilance,
forethought in their relation to that force, impart a feeling
of imaginative delight to Virgil's account of the most com-
mon details of the husbandman's toil. The strength and
vivacity thus imparted to the style has been well illustrated
by Professor Conington in his Introduction to the Georgics.
It may be noted however that, even in this imaginative
recognition of the strength and force of man in conflict with
the force of Nature, Virgil is still following in the tracks of
Lucretius. Such expressions as
Ingemere et terrain pressis proscindere aratris
ferro molirier arva
magnos manibus divellere montes
in the older poet first opened up this vein which was
wrought with such effectual results by his successor. But
Conington has, in his notes, drawn attention to another
vein of feeling, which is all Virgil's own, and which enables
him to give further variety and charm to these homely
details. The husbandman has not only his hard and
incessant struggle ' labor improbus ' but he has the
delight of success, the joy of contemplating the new beauty
and richness, created by the strength of his arm. This
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 235
feeling breaks out in the ' Ecce ' of the line already
quoted,
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis undam;
in the ' iuvat ' of
K iuvat Ismara Baccho
Conserere, atque olea magnum vestire Taburnum;
and in the * canit ' of the line
lam canit effectos extremus vinitor antes.
Another set of associations, interwoven with the rich
and firm texture of the poem, are those derived from
earlier science and poetry. Of the resources of learned
allusion Lucretius makes a singularly sparing use. The
localising epithets and mythological names in which
Virgil's poem abounds possessed no attraction for his
austerer genius, nourished by the severe models of an
older time, and rejecting the ornaments and distractions
from the main interest familiar to Alexandrine literature.
Virgil had already shown in the Eclogues this tendency
to overlay his native thought with the spoils of Greek
learning. Such phrases as ' Strymoniae grues/ ' Pelusiacae
lends,' ' Amyclaeum canem,' ' Idumaeas palmas,' the
references to the ' harvests of Mysia and Gargarus,' to
the ' vines of Ismarus,' ' Cytorus waving with boxwood/
etc. etc., must have been charged, for Virgil's contem-
poraries, in a way which they cannot be for a modern reader,
with the memories of foreign travel or of residence in
remote provinces, or with the interest attaching to lands
recently made known. To us their chief interest is that
by their strangeness they enhance the effect with which
the more familiar names of Italian places are used. Thus
the contrasted pictures of the illimitable pastures of Libya
and of the wintry wastes of Scythia enable us to realise more
exquisitely the charm of that fresh 1 Italian pastoral scene
immediately preceding, the description of which combines
the tender feeling of the Eclogues with the deeper realism of
the Georgics. Thus too the great episode on the beauty
1 iii. 321-338.
236 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
and riches of Italy (ii. 136-176) is introduced in imme-
diate contrast to the account of the prodigal luxuriance of
Nature in the forests and jungles of the East. But even to
a modern reader such expressions as these
Vos silvae amnesque Lycaei
vocat alta voce Cithaeron
O, ubi campi
Spercheusque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis
Taygeta, etc.,
seem to bear with them faint echoes from a far-off time, of
some ideal life of poetry and adventure in the free range
and ' otia dia ' of pastoral scenes, of some more intimate
union of the human soul with the soul of mountains and
woodland than is granted to the common generations of
men. On Virgil himself, to whom the whole of Greek
poetry and legend was an open page, the spell which
they exercised was of the same kind as that exercised by
the magic of classical allusion on the poets and painters of
the Renaissance.
The contrast between Lucretius and Virgil, as regards
their relation to the ancient mythology, has already
appeared in the examination of the Invocations to their
respective poems. This contrast is still more brought out
by the large use which Virgil makes of mythological
allusions in the body of his poem, as compared with the
rare, and generally polemical, references to the subject in
Lucretius. Virgil recalls the tales and poetical representa-
tions of mythology sometimes by some suggestive epithet,
or other qualifying expression, as in the phrases and
lines
Lethaeo perfusa papavera somno dilectae Thetidi alcyones Cyllenius
ignis
Tardaque Eleusinae matris volventia plaustra
Gnosiaque ardentis decedat stella coronae,'
and the like. More frequently however he does this by
direct mention of some of the more familiar, and occasionally
of some of the more recondite, tales which had supplied
materials to earlier poets and painters. Thus, in con-
nexion with the topic of lucky and unlucky days, he hints
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS.
at the tale of the war of the Giants with the Olympian
gods, at that of Scylla and Nisus in connexion with the
signs of the weather, at that of the Centaurs and Lapithae
the * rixa super mero debellata ' in the account of the vine,
at that of the daughter of Inachus tormented in her wan-
derings by the vengeance of Juno in connexion with the
plague of flies with which cattle were afflicted, etc. etc. Less
familiar stories, of picturesque adventure or of a kind
of weird mystery, are revived in the passages
Tails et ipse iubam cervice effudit equina
Coniugis adventu pernix Saturnus, et altum
Pelion hinnitu fugiens implevit acuto,
and
Munere sic niveo lanae, si credere dignum est,
Pan deus Arcadiae captam te, Luna, fefellit,
In nemora alta vocans; nee tu aspernata vocantem.
Such allusions came much more home to an ancient than
to a modern reader. They were familiar to him from the
pages of poets, or from pictures adorning the walls of his
own town and country-houses, or seen in the temples and
other sacred places of famous Greek and Asiatic cities, and
forming great part of the attraction of those cities to
travellers then, as the pictures seen in the galleries, palaces,
and churches of Rome, Florence, and Venice do to travellers
now. But though the colours of these poetic fancies have
faded for us, they are felt to be a legitimate source of
variety in the poem, and to be an element of interest
connecting the humbler cares of the country-people with
the refined tastes of the educated class. They are not
introduced as a substitute for truthful representation
of fact, but rather as adding a new grace to this re-
presentation. Neither do they, as in Propertius, overlay
the main subject of the poem by their redundant use.
They probably produced the same kind of impression
on an ancient reader, as allusions from the works of Latin
or Italian poets in Spenser or Milton produce on a
modern reader. Occasionally they may seem weak and
faulty from their incongruity with the thought with which
they are associated. Thus in the passage at i. 60, etc.,
338 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
Continue has leges aeternaque foedera certis
Imposuit natura locis, quo tempore primum
Deucalion vacuum lapides iactavit in orbem,
Unde homines nati, durum genus,
the mind is offended by the juxtaposition of the great
thought, which Lucretius had striven so earnestly to
impress on the world, with one of the most unmeaning
fables that ever violated all possibilities of natural law.
So too the contrast between the artistic and recondite
elegance of the lines (iii. 549-550),
Quaesitaeque nocent artes; cessere magistri
Phillyrides Chiron, Amythaoniusque Melampus,
and the grand, solemn realism of the parallel passage in
the account of the Plague of Athens,
Mussabat tacito medicina timore,
makes us feel how unapproachable by all the resources of
art and learning is that direct force .of insight united to
fulness of feeling with which Lucretius was endowed
above nearly every poet, ancient or modern.
Equally remote from the practice of Lucretius is the use
made by Virgil of that amalgamation of mythological
fancy with the rudiments of science which assigned names,
personality, and a poetical history to the various con-
stellations :
Pleiadas, Hyadas, claramque Lycaonis Arcton.
But Virgil's practice is in accordance with that of all the
Greek poets from Homer and Hesiod down to the latest
Alexandrine writers. He. thus enriches the treatment of
his subject with the interest of early science, and with the
associations of the open-air life of hunters, herdsmen, and
mariners in primitive times. Lucretius is impressed by the
splendour, wonder, and severe majesty of the stars as they
actually appear to us, ' aeterni sidera mundi,' ' caeli labentia
signa,' 'noctis signa severa,' without any superadded as-
sociation of mythology or antiquity. Neither does he use
that other resource, by which Virgil adds an antique
lustre to his subject the introduction of quaint phrases
and turns of speech, derived from Hesiod, such as ( nudus
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 239
ara, sere nudus,' 'laudato ingentia rura Exiguum colito,'
or those derived from the traditional peasant-lore of Italy,
' hiberno laetissima pulvere farra,' which Virgil inter-
mingles with the classic elegance of his style. Still less
could Lucretius appeal to the associations of the popular
religion. Such expressions as ' fas et iura sinunt,' ' hiemes
orate serenas,' 'nulla religio vetuit,' and the mention
of old religious ceremonies and practices prevalent in the
country districts, such as that at i. 345,
Terque novas circum felix eat hostia fruges,
and at ii. 387,
Et te, Bacche, vocant per carmina laeta, tibique
Oscilla ex alta suspendunt mollia pinu,
not only afford a legitimate relief to the inculcation of
practical precepts in the Georgics, but impress on the mind
the dignity imparted to the most ordinary drudgery by the
sense of its association with the religious life of man.
On the other hand, it is to be noticed how sparingly
Virgil uses one of the grandest resources in the repertory
of Lucretius, that of imaginative analogies, through which
familiar or unseen phenomena are made great or palpable
by association with other phenomena which immediately
affect the imagination with a sense of wonder and sublimity.
The apprehension of these analogies between great things
in different spheres proceeds from the inventive and intel-
lectual faculty in the imagination, that by which intui-
tions of vast discoveries are obtained before observation
and reason can verify them ; and in this faculty of imagina-
tive reason Lucretius is as superior to Virgil, as Virgil is
to him in artistic accomplishment. One of the few ' similes'
in the Georgics is that often-quoted one, in which the diffi-
culty which man has in holding his own against the natural
deterioration of things is compared to the difficulty which
a rower has in holding his own against a strong adverse
current (i. 201203) :
Non aliter, quam qui adverse vix flumine lembum
Remigiis subigit, si bracchia forte remisit
Atque ilium in praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.
240 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
There is suggestiveness and verisimilitude in this image.
But it does not make us feel the enlargement of mind
and the poetic thrill of the thought which are produced by
many of the great illustrative images in Lucretius. Virgil
too is much inferior to the older poet, and much less
original, in the general reflexions on life which he occa-
sionally introduces, such as that at iii. 66,
Optima quaeque dies miseris jnortalibus aevi
Prima fugit; subeunt morbi tristisque senectus.
In so far as the thought here expressed is true, the truth
cannot be said to be either new or profound.
The inferiority of Virgil to Lucretius in that faculty of
imagination which perceives an inner identity between
great forces in the material and in the spiritual world, is
apparent also from a comparison of their respective diction.
There is often a creativeness, a boldness of invention and
insight into the deepest nature of things, in the language
of Lucretius, such as did not reappear again in Italian
poetry till more than thirteen centuries had passed, and
which makes us feel how near he was in many ways to
our modern modes of thought and feeling. There is, on
the other hand, scarcely any great poem from which so
few striking and original images can be quoted than
from the Georgics. The figurative language arising out
of the perception of the analogy between the vital pro-
cesses of Nature and various modes of human sensibility
is rather like that unconscious identification of Nature with
humanity out of which mythology arose, than the con-
scious recognition of some common force or law operating
in totally distinct spheres. And even this identity or
analogy between the life of Nature and of man is not
conceived with such power and passion in Virgil as in
Lucretius. But if Virgil's language is inferior to that
of his predecessor not only in vivid creative power, but
in clearness and idiomatic purity, it is much superior in
the uniform level of poetical excellence which it maintains.
In this respect Virgil compares favourably with some of the
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 241
greatest masters of style among English poets, for example
with Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron. There is nothing
redundant or monotonous in the style of the Georgics,
nothing trivial or mean ; while always rich and pregnant
with suggestion, it is never overstrained or overloaded ;
while always elevated to the pitch of poetry, it. never seems
to soar too far above the familiar aspects of the world.
Nothing shows the perfect sanity of Virgil's genius more
clearly than his entire exemption from the besetting sin
of our own didactic poetasters of last century a sin from
which even Wordsworth himself is not altogether free
that of calling common things by pompous names, and
dignifying trifles by applying heroic phrases to them. If
he seems sometimes to deviate from this habitual tem-
perance of manner in the account of his bee communities,
he does so purposely, to convey through this gentle vein
of irony something of that pensive meditativeness of spirit
which is produced in him by reflexion on the transitory
passions, joys, and vicissitudes of our mortal life.
The general superiority of Virgil's art to that of Lucre-
tius is equally apparent in his rhythm. The powerful
movement of spirit which Lucretius feels in the presence
of the sublimer spectacle of Nature and of the more solemn
things of human life does indeed produce isolated effects
of majestic speech and sonorously rhythmical cadence,
swelling above the deep, strong, monotonous flow of his
ordinary verse, which neither -Virgil nor any other poet
has surpassed. But in variety, equable smoothness and
grandeur, in that tempered harmony of sound which never
disappoints and never burdens the ear, it may be doubted
whether the musical art of any poet has maintained such
a uniform level of excellence as that maintained in the
Georgics. Even the more finished passages of Lucretius
are, in these respects, inferior to the ordinary style of
Virgil. To take for instance a passage, in the composition
of which the feeling of Lucretius must have moved him
to embody his thoughts in adequate words and metre, the
opening lines of Book II.,
VOL. I. R
RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
Suave niari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis,
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem,
Non quia vexari quenquam 'st iucunda voluptas,
Sed quibus ipse malis careas, quia cernere suave est ;
Suave etiam belli certamina magna tueri
Per campos instructa, tua sine parte pericli;
if one compares these lines with the first six lines in any
paragraph of the Georgics, it is impossible not to be struck
by the monotony of cadence and the monotonous repeti-
tion of words in that quoted. Virgil produces more varied
effects while binding himself by stricter laws in the com-
position of his verse. This he does by the greater variety
and greater frequency of his pauses, by uniformly placing
the words of strength and emphasis in the strong positions
of the line, and by a skilful regulation of the succession of
long and short, of accentuated and unaccentuated syllables,
and of lines of a more rapid or slower movement. The
result is that the feeling of his rhythm becomes a main
element in the realisation of h^s meaning.
The principal resources by which Virgil, in the didactic
exposition of his subject, avoids that monotony of effect
which was likely to arise from the -strong Roman concen-
tration of purpose with which his work was executed, and,
without deviating from the true perception of facts, is able
to invest a somewhat narrow range of interests with charm
and dignity,
angustis hunc addere rebus honorem,
are thus seen to be, first his feeling of Nature, of man's rela-
tion to it, of his joy in the results of his toil, and, secondly,
the associations of strange lands, of mythology, of antiquity,,
and of religious custom. The instruments by which these
resources are made available are the careful choice and
combinations of words and the well-practised melody of his
verse. These resources and instruments have been considered
in relation to and contrast with those employed by Lucretius.
There is, moreover, this difference between the method of
the two poets, that Virgil is much more of a conscious artist,
that he seems to go more in search of illustrations and the
means of artistic embellishment, that he endeavours to make
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 243
for himself a wreath, ' undique decerptam ;' while the occa-
sional accessions of a more powerful poetic interest to the
ordinary exposition of Lucretius arise naturally in the pro-
cess of his argument, from the habit of his mind to ob-
serve the outward world, the ways of all living things s and
the condition of man in their intimate connexion with the
great speculative ideas of his philosophy. His modes of
varying the interest of his subject and adorning it are
thus more simple and homogeneous ; they work more in
harmony with the purpose of his poem, so as to produce
a pervading unity of sentiment and impression. The variety
of resources used by Virgil gives, at first sight, a com-
posite character to his art. But there is, deeper than
this apparent composite character, an inner unity of tone
and sentiment pervading the whole work. The source of
this unity is the deep love and pride which he feels in
every detail of his subject, from the great human interests
with which these details are associated in his mind. What
these human interests are is brought out prominently in
the episodes of the poem, which still remain to be
considered.
V.
. The Episodes in the Georgics.
The finest poetry in Lucretius and in Virgil and the
thoughts which give the highest interest to their respective
poems are contained in passages of considerable length,
rising out of the general level or undulations of the poem
into elevations which at first sight seem isolated and un-
connected with one another. It may be doubted whether
even the power of thought and style in Lucretius could
have secured immortality to a mere systematic exposition
of the Atomic philosophy; nor could the mere didactic
exposition of the precepts of agriculture, though varied by
all the art and resources of Virgil, have gained for the
Georgics the unique place that poem holds in literature.
It is in their episodes that each poet brings out the moral
R 3
244 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
grandeur, and thereby justifies the choice of his subject.
In Lucretius, these passages are introduced sometimes
in the ordinary march of his argument, more often at
the beginning or completion of some important division
of it, and are intended both to add poetical charm to
the subject and to show man's true relation to the Universe,
and the attitude of mind which that relation demands
of him. The object of Virgil in some of his minor
and in one or two of his larger episodes may be merely
to relieve the dryness of exposition by some descriptive
or reflective charm. But even these passages will in
general be found to draw attention to the religious,
ethical, or national bearing of his subject.
Some of these passages have been suggested by parallel
passages either in Hesiod or Lucretius. The largest of all
the episodes, that with which the poem concludes, has, for
reasons already considered, only a slight and external re-
lation to the great ideas and interests with which the poem
deals. But the three most important passages, those of
most original invention and profound feeling, viz. those
at Book I. 466 to the end of the Book, Book II. 136 to
177, and also from line 458 to the end, serve like those
great cardinal passages in the Aeneid, in which the action
is projected from a remote legendary past into the actual
present, to bring into light the true central interest of the
poem,-M:he bearing of the whole subject on the greatness
and well-being of the Italian race.
Any of the passages which are not needed for the special
practical purpose of the poem may be regarded as episodi-
cal, such, for instance, as that thoroughly Lucretian passage
in Book I. in which the feelings of the rooks are explained
on purely physical principles, or that passage of Book IV.
inspired by the teaching of an opposite school, in which
the theory of a divine principle pervading the world the
same theory as that accepted as his own by Virgil in
Aeneid VI. is enunciated as a probable explanation of
the higher instinct of the bees. And it is characteristic of
the eclecticism of Virgil's mode of thought, and also of the
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 245
lingering regret with which he regards the evanescent
fancies of the old mythology, that he not only combines
these tenets of the most materialistic and most spiritualistic
philosophies in the same poem, but that the philosophic or
theosophic solution of Book IV. 219, etc. comes shortly
after a passage in which the same phenomenon is accounted
for on the ground of the service rendered by bees in feeding
the infant Jove in the cavern of Mount Dicte. Another
passage of a scientific rather than a philosophic character
is that at Book I. 234, etc., in which the five zones girding
the heaven and the earth are described in language closely
translated from Eratosthenes. Besides the scientific in-
terest which this passage must have had to the poet's
contemporaries, it serves to draw forth Virgil's antagonism
to the religious unbelief of Lucretius, in the expression
Munere concessae divom,
and also to imply his dissent from the emphatic denial
which Lucretius gives, at Book I. 1065, to the Stoical belief
in the existence of the Antipodes :
Illi cum videant solera, nos sidera noctis
Cernere, et alternis nobiscum tempora caeli
Dividere, et noctes parilis agitare diebus.
Another passage of a semi-philosophical character is that
at Book III. 242-283, in which the Lucretian idea of the
all-pervading influence of the physical emotion of love over
all living things in sea, earth, and air, an idea in which
Lucretius was anticipated by Euripides 1 and by other earlier
Greek poets, appears in combination with the purely myth-
ological conception of the direct personal agency of Venus,
and with the legend of ' the mares of Glaucus of Potniae.'
More important than these, as illustrative of the main
ideas and feelings of the poem, but still subsidiary to the
greater episodes, are the following: Book I. 121-159, Book
II. 323-345 ; and in the same class may be included III.
339-383, and IV. 125-148. The first of these, 'Pater ipse
1 The passage in the Georgics may be compared with those passages which
Mr. Munro quotes in his note to Lucret. i. i.
246" RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
colendi,' etc., is immediately suggested by Hesiod's account
of the Golden Age ; but the greater part of it, the account
of the progress of the various arts of life, is simply a sum-
mary of the long account of human progress at the end
of the fifth Book of Lucretius. The idea of the purpose
with which Providence has imposed labour on man is
Virgil's own ; and this thought contributes much of its
ethical meaning to the poem. The passage 'Ver adeo
nemorum frondi/ etc., in which all the glory of Nature
as she unfolds herself in the exuberant life of an Italian
spring is described in lines of surpassing beauty and
tenderness, is thoroughly Lucretian in feeling, idea, and
expression. The charm of climate, of vegetation, and of
life is in complete harmony with the specially Italian
character of the second Book. The digression at Book III.
339> ' Quid tibi pastores Libyae,' containing the elaborate
picture of a Scythian winter, suggested by the winter scene
in Hesiod, also serves through the effect of contrast to
heighten the charm of the fresh pastoral life of Italy
described in the lines immediately preceding.
The actual description of winter has been criticised un-
favourably, and not altogether without justice, by one of the
most vigorous and classical of English critics J , who compares
it with a corresponding passage in Thomson. It is inferior in
simplicity and direct force of representation to the corre-
sponding picture in Hesiod. Virgil's imagination seems to
require that even where the objects or scenes he describes
are taken from books, they should be such that he could
verify them in his own experience. It is this apparent
verification, where the subject is not originally suggested
by his own observation, that imparts the marvellous truth-
fulness to his art. Such lines as those
Aeraque dissiliunt volgo
to
Stiriaque impexis induruit horrida barbis
convey a less real impression of winter than the single line
an idealised generalisation from many actual winters which
1 W. Savage Landor.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 247
ends the description of the various occupations and field-
sports which an Italian winter offers to the husbandman :
Cum nix alta iacet, glaciem cum flumina trudunt.
Perhaps none of the minor episodes recurs to the mind so
often with so keen a feeling of delight as the passage at
IV. 125 to 148, beginning 'Namque sub Oebaliae,' etc.
Virgil here introduces himself in his own person, and
draws a picture of one whom he had known, and who had
interested him as actually realising that life of labour and
of happiness in the results of his labour, which in the body
of the poem is held up as an abstract ideal. The scene
of this vivid reminiscence, the district
Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galaesus,
seems to have had peculiar attraction both to Virgil and
Horace. It is there
umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi
that Propertius pictures to himself Virgil meditating his
Aeneid and still conning over his earlier Eclogues
Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin arundinibus.
It is to 'that nook of earth' that Horace looks, if the
unkind Fates forbid his residence at his favourite Tibur,
for a resting-place for his 'age to wear away in.' But it is
not only to the local charm that attention is drawn, and to
the beauty of plant, flower, and fruit, created by the labour
of love which the old Cilician gardener some survivor
probably from the Eastern wars of Pompey bestowed on
his neglected spot of ground. Here also the true moral of
the poem is pointed, that in the life of rural industry there
is a deep source of happiness altogether independent of
wealth, and which wealth cannot buy :
Regum aequabat opes animis, seraque revertens
Nocte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis.
A more prominent place is assumed by the two episodes
with which the third and fourth Books close. In the- first
of these, which extends from line 478 to 566, and which
describes a great outbreak of cattle-plague among the Noric
248 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
Alps and the district round the Timavus, a locality which
seems to have had a special attraction to Virgil's imagina-
tion \ he aims at painting a rival picture to that of the
plague at Athens with which the poem of Lucretius ends.
It would be unfair to compare the unfinished piece of the
older poet, overcrowded as it is with detail and technical
phraseology, with an elaborate specimen of Virgil's descrip-
tive power, exercised on a kind of subject in which the
speculative genius of the one poet gave him no advantage
over the careful and truthful art of the other. Yet, as has
been already pointed out 2 , there are here and there strokes
of imaginative power in the larger sketch, and marks of
insight into human nobleness, roughly indeed expressed, as
at 1243-6
Qui fuerant autem praesto, contagibus ibant
Atque labore, pudor quern turn cogebat obire
Blandaque lassorum vox mixta voce querellae.
Optimus hoc leti genus ergo quisque subibat
in which the supreme quality of the great master still
asserts itself. There is great beauty however of pastoral
scene, of pathos and human sympathy, of ethical contrast
between the simple wants of the lower animals and the
artificial luxury of human life, in Virgil's description. In
the lines 520-522 one of those scenes in which he most
delighted is brought before the imagination :
Non umbrae altorum nemorum, non mollia possunt
Prata movere animum, non qui per saxa volutus
Purior electro campurn petit amnis.
The last element in the picture suggests at once the
'Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles' of the Eclogues,
and the lines earlier in the book
Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum
Flumina.
And the whole feeling of the passage is in harmony with
that in Lucretius, ii. 361 :
Nee tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes
Fluminaque ilia queunt summis labentia ripis
Oblectare animum, subitamque avertere curam.
1 Cf. Eel. viii. 6 ; Aen. i. 244. 2 Cf. supra, p. 238.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 249
And in thorough harmony both with the pathos and the
ethical feeling in Lucretius are the following :
it tristis arator,
Maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum * :
and
Quid labor aut benefacta iuvarit? quid vomere terras
Invertisse gravis? atqui non Massica Bacchi
Munera, non illis epulae nocuere repostae:
Frondibus et victu pascuntur simplicis herbae,
Pocula sunt fontes liquidi atque exercita cursu
Flumina, nee somnos abrumpit cura salubris.
If the space assigned to the different episodes is to be
regarded as the measure of their importance, the long
episode at the end of the fourth Book, from line 315 to 558,
would have to be regarded as of nearly equal value to all
the others put together. And yet, notwithstanding the
metrical beauty of the passage, it must be difficult for any
one who is penetrated by the pervading sentiment of the
Georgics to reach this point in the poem without a strong
feeling of regret that the jealousy of Augustus had inter-
fered with its original conclusion. As a Greek fable, com-
posed after some Alexandrine model, mainly concerned
1 The truth of this picture is confirmed by a modern writer, who, in her
idyllic stories from the rural life of France, seems from time to time, better
than any modern poet, to reproduce the Virgilian feeling of Nature. ' Dans le
haut du champ un vieillard, dont le dos large et la figure severe rappelaient
celui d'Holbein, mais donf les vetements n'annon9aient pas la misere, poussait
gravement son areau de forme antique, traine par deux boaufs tranquilles, a la
robe d'un jaune pale, veritables patriarches de la prairie, hauts de taille, un peu
maigres, les cornes longues et rabattues, de ces vieux travailleurs qu'une longue
habitude a rendus freres, comme on les appelle dans nos campagnes, et qui,
prives 1'un de 1'autre, se refusent au travail avec un nouveau compagnon et se
laissent mourir de chagrin. Les gens qui ne connaissent pas la campagne
taxent de fable Pamitie du bceuf pour son camarade d'attelage. Qu'ils viennent
voir au fond de 1'etable un pauvre animal maigre, extenue, battant de sa queue
inquiete ses flancs decharnes, soufflant avec effroi et dcdain sur la nourriture
qu'on lui pr^sente, les yeux toujours tourne"s vers la porte, en grattant du pied
la place vide a ses cote's, flairant les jougs et les chaines que son compagnon a
portes, et 1'appelant sans cesse avec de deplorables mugissements. Le bouvier
dira : " C'est une paire de bceufs perdue : son frere est mort, et celui-la ne
travaillera plus. II faudrait pouvoir 1'engraisser pour 1'abattre ; mais il ne veut
pas manger, et bientot il sera mort de faim." ' La Mare au Diable. G. Sand.
The famous picture in Lucret. ii. 355-366,
At mater viridis .... notumque requirit,
shows a similar observation of the strength of bovine affection.
250 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
with the fortunes of Orpheus and Eurydice, for the shep-
herd Aristaeus, the
cultor nemorum cui pinguia Ceae
Ter centum rivei tondent dumeta iuvenci,
really plays altogether a secondary part in the episode,
it has little to do with rural life, and nothing at all to
do with Italy. Its professed object is to give a fabulous
explanation of an impossible phenomenon, though one
apparently accepted both by Mago and Democritus. To
enrich this episode with a beauty not its own, Virgil has
robbed his Aeneid, on the composition of which he must
have been well advanced when he was called on, after the
death of Gallus in 26 B.C., to provide a substitute for the
passage written in his honour, of some beautiful lines which
are much more in keeping with the larger representation
and profounder feeling of the epic poem, than with the
transient interest attaching to this recast of a well-known
story. Even regarded simply as an epyllion or epic idyl,
it may be questioned whether the Pastor Aristaeus is of
the highest order of art. It naturally enters into com-
petition with the epic idyl of Catullus, ' Peliaco quondam
prognatae vertice pinus,' etc. There is this coincidence
between the poems, that they each contain one story or
idyllic representation within another, and in each case it is
to the secondary representation that the most pathetic and
passionate interest belongs.
Opinions may differ as to whether the passion of Ariadne
or the sorrow of Orpheus is represented with most skill.
There seems this difference between the two, that in the
one we feel we are reading a fable, that the situation is
altogether remote from experience, that it is one suited for
a picture or a poem of fancy. We are inclined to apply
to the somewhat wrought-up pathos of the poem the criti-
cism, 'What is Eurydice to him, or he to Eurydice, that
he should weep for her?' The beautiful picture of Ariadne,
on the other hand, appears like one drawn from the life,
and her passionate complaint is like that of a living
woman. But still more undoubted is the superiority of
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 251
Catullus in pictorial or statuesque reproduction seen in that
part of his poem in which the original subject, the marriage
of Peleus and Thetis, is described. Catullus, above all other
Latin poets, except perhaps Ovid, can bring a picture from
human life or from outward nature before the inward eye ;
and this power is, much more than Virgil's power of sug-
gesting deep and delicate shades of inward feeling, appro-
priate to the more limited compass of the idyl. It is no
disparagement to Virgil to say that in this kind of art he
is inferior to Catullus. Catullus, though a true Italian in
temperament, largely endowed with and freely using the
biting raillery ' Italum acetum' which ancient writers
ascribe to the race, had in his genius, more than any
Roman writer, the disinterested delight in art, irrespective
of any personal associations, characteristic of the Greek
imagination. Virgil's art, on the other hand, produces its
deepest impressions only after 1 his heart has been moved.
Even in the Eclogues this is for the most part true. Some-
thing must touch his personal sympathies, his moral or
religious nature, or his national feeling, before he is roused
to high creative effort.
In the three cardinal passages which remain to be con-
sidered, in the composition of which the deeper elements
of Virgil's nature were powerfully moved, the impression
which the changing state of the national fortunes pro-
duced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these
(i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty
and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great
Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from
its eastern boundary to its furthest limits in Europe, the
agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging
into the abyss, is described and symbolised in the con-
cluding lines of the Book :
Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum ;
Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes
Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe:
Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,
Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens
Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas.
253 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the
great national crime which Rome was still atoning, the
murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately
out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which,
from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of
at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the
sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he
said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which
occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as
a sign of compassion for his fate and of abhorrence of the
crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which
accompanied or preceded that event, some of them viola-
tions of natural law, such as those which occur in the
narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending
over the Roman arms,
pecudesque locutae,
Infandum
Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant;
others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among
the spirits of the dead,
Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis
Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris
Visa sub obscurum noctis;
others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the
sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways
of bird and beast,
Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres
Signa dabant
Et altae
Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes;
others manifesting themselves through great commotion in
the kingdom of Nature, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions,
great floods,
'The noise of battle hurtling in the air,'
lightnings in a clear sky, and the blaze of comets portend-
ing doom. These all succeed one another in Virgil's verse
according to no principle of logical connexion, but as they
might be successively announced to the awe-struck citizens
of Rome. The whole passage is pervaded by that strong
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 253
sense of awe before an invisible Power the * religio dira'
by which the Roman imagination was possessed in times
of great national calamity. The issue of all these portents
appeared in the second great battle in which Roman blood
fattened the Macedonian plains. Then by a fine touch
of imagination, and looking far forward into the future, the
poet reminds us of the contrast, indicated in other passages
of the poem, between the peaceful and beneficent industry
of the husbandman and the cruel devastation of war :
-^
Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis
Agricola, incurve terram molitus aratro,
Exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila,
Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanis,
Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris.
Next follows the prayer to the national gods of Italy to
preserve the life of him who could alone raise the world
out of the sin and ruin into which it had fallen, and alone
restore their ancient glory to % the fields, which now lay
waste from the want of men to till them :
Non ullus aratro
Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,
Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem.
In the second of the great episodes this sorrow for the
past and foreboding for the future has entirely cleared
away. The feeling now expressed is one of pride and
exultation in Italy, as a land of rich crops and fruits, of
vines and olives, a land famous for its herds and flocks
and breed of horses, for its genial climate, for the beauty
of the seas washing its coasts } for its great lakes and rivers,
its ancient cities and other mighty works of men ; famous
too for its hardy, energetic, and warlike races,
Haec genus acre virum Marsos pubemque Sabellam,
Adsuetumque malo Ligurem Volscosque verutos
Extulit,
for its great men and families who had fought for it in
old times, and for one greater still, who was then in the
furthest East defending Rome against her enemies,
Haec Decios magnosque Camillos,
Scipiadas duros belle, et te, maxime Caesar,
254 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
Qui nunc extremis Asiae iam victor in oris
Imbellem avertis Romanis arcibus Indum.
This passage, introduced as a counter-picture to the de-
scription of the rank luxuriance of Nature in the vast forests
and jungles of the East, concentrates in itself the deepest
meaning and inspiration of the poem. The glory of Italy
is declared to be the motive for the revival of this ancient
theme
Tibi res antiquae laudis et artis
Ingredior.
As Varro represents his speakers as looking on the great
picture of Italy in the Temple of Tellus while they discuss
the various ways of tilling and improving the soil, so Virgil
in the midst of his didactic precepts holds up this ideal
picture of the land to the love and admiration of his
countrymen. By a few powerful strokes he combines the
characteristic features and the great memories of Italian
towns in lines which recur to every traveller as he passes
through Italy,
Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem,
Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis,
Fluminaque antiques subterlabentia muros.
No expression of patriotic sentiment in any language is
more pure and noble than this. It is a tribute of just
pride and affection to the land which, from its beauty,
its history, its great services to man, is felt to be worthy of
the deep devotion with which Virgil commends it to the
heart and imagination of the world.
In the last of the great episodes which remains to be
considered, all the higher thoughts and feelings by which
beauty, dignity, and moral grandeur are given to the sub-
ject are found concurring ; and the presence of Lucretius
is again felt as a pervading influence, though modified by
Virgil's own deepest convictions and sympathies. The
charm of peaceful contemplation, of Nature in her serenest
aspect and harmony with the human soul, of an ethical
ideal based on religious belief and national traditions, of a
life of pure and tranquil happiness, remote from the clash of
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 255
arms and the pride and passions of the world, is made
present to us in a strain of continuous and modulated
music, which neither Virgil himself nor any other poet
has surpassed. Virgil creates a new ideal of happiness
for the contemplation of his countrymen by combining
the old realistic delight in the husbandman's life with
the imaginative longing for the peace and innocence of a
Saturnian Age, and with that new delight in the living
beauty of the world and in the charm of ancient memories
which it was his especial office to communicate. This
ideal is contrasted, as is the older poet's ideal of 'plain
living and high thinking,' with the pomp and magnificence
of city life,
Si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis
Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam
Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes
Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris,
and, as in the older poet also, with the distractions,
the restless passions, and the crimes of ambition. Virgil,
as in other passages, compresses into a few lines the
thought which Lucretius with simpler art follows through
all its detail of concrete reality. Thus the
Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum
of Virgil is intended to recall and be explained by the
more fully developed representation of the old cruelties
of the times of Marius and Sulla, contained in the lines
Sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque
Conduplicant avidi, caedem caede ac cumul antes ;
Crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris ;
Et consanguineum mensas odere timentque 1 .
In their protest against the world both poets are entirely
at one. But the ideal of Virgil's imagination, on its posi-
tive side, is more on the ordinary human level than that
of lonely contemplation in accordance with which Lucre-
tius lived and wrote. ^The Virgilian ideal, like that of
Lucretius, recognised a heart at peace and independent of
Fortune as a greater source of happiness than any external
1 Lucret. iii. 70-73.
256 RELATION OF THE GEORGICS TO
good. But this peace the one poet sought for in a supe-
riority to the common beliefs of men ; the other rather
in a more trusting acceptance of them. Some other ele-
ments in Virgil's ideal Lucretius too would have ranked
among the supreme sources of human happiness. The
lines
Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati,
Casta pudicitiam servat domus,
beautiful as the thought and picture is, are not more true
to human feeling, scarcely touch the heart and imagination
so vividly, as the lines which suggested them
lam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
Optima, nee dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere l .
Other elements in Virgil's ideal Lucretius would have
sympathised with, as he did with all natural human
pleasure ; but the element of social kindliness expressed in
the lines
Ipse dies agitat festos, etc.
could mix only as an occasional source of refreshment
with his lonely contemplative activity. The great difference
between the two men is that Virgil's ordinary feelings and
beliefs are in unison with the common ways of life ; he has
a more active sympathy with the toils and pleasures of
simple men ; and, above all, he regards it as the highest
good for man, not to secure peace of mind for himself, but
to be useful in supporting others, in contributing to the
well-being of his country, of his family, even of the animals
associated with his toil :
hinc patriam parvosque Penates
Sustinet, hinc armenta bourn meritosque iuvencos.
This ideal Virgil seems to regard as one that may be
1 The most classical of our own poets seems to combine both representations
with the thought and representation of an earlier passage of the Georgics
(Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignes, etc.)
in the familiar stanza
For them no more the blazing hearth will burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care;
No children run to meet their sire's return,
And climb his knees the envied kiss to share.
THE POEM OF LUCRETIUS. 257
attained by man, if he only could be taught how to appreciate
it 1 ; nay, that has been attained by him in the happier
times when the land was cultivated by free men, each
holding his own plot of ground. This was the life of the
old Italian yeomen, the life by which Etruria waxed
strong and brave, the life to which Rome herself owed
the beginning of her greatness 2 . It is the life which the
national imagination, in its peaceful mood, and yearning to
return into the ways of innocence and piety, discerned in
that distant Golden Age, when all men lived in contentment
and abundance under the rule of the old god, from whom
the land received the well-loved name * Saturnia tellus 3 .'
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,
Hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit
Scilicet, et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,
Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces.
Ante etiam sceptrum Dictaei regis et ante
Impia quam caesis gens est epulata iuvencis,
Aureus hanc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat ;
Necdum etiam audierant inflari classica, necdum
Impositos duris crepitare incudibus enses.
1 Cp. ' Le mot triste et doux de Virgile : " O heureux ITiomme des
champs, s'il connaissait son bonheur" est un regret, mais, comme tous les
regrets, c'est aussi une prediction. Un jour viendra ou le laboureur pourra
etre aussi un artiste, si non pour exprimer (ce qui importera assez peu alors) du
moins pour sentir le beau.' G. Sand.
2 Virgil rightly connects this greatness with the site of Rome in the line,
Septemque una sibi rnuro circumdedit arces.
It was from the necessities imposed by that site that Rome at an early period
became the largest urban community in Italy, and was forced, in consequence
of the contiguous settlements of other races, to begin that incorporating and
assimilating policy which ultimately enabled her to establish universal empire.
Cp. ' Rome herself, like other cities of Italy, Gaul, and elsewhere, grew out of
the primitive hill-fortresses ; the distinction between Rome and other cities, the
distinction which made Rome all that she became, was that Rome did not
grow out of a single fortress of the kind, but out of several.' Historical
and Architectural Sketches, by E, A. Freeman, D.C.L., etc. Walls of Rome,
p. 1 60.
3 Cf. 'Itaque in hoc Latio et Saturnia terra, ubi Dii cultus agrorum
progeniem suam docuerunt.' Columella.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GEORGICS AS A POEM REPRESENTATIVE OF
ITALY.
THE consideration of the motives which influenced Virgil
to undertake the composition of the Georgics, of the form of
art adopted by him, of the national interest attaching to his
subject, of the materials used by him and the sources from
which he derived them, of the author who most influenced
him in speculative idea and in the general manner of
treating his subject, leads to the conclusion that, in its
essential characteristics, the poem ,is a genuine work of
Italian art and inspiration. \ If the original motive influencing
him was the ambition to treat of rural life in the serious
spirit of Hesiod, as he had done in the lighter vein of
Theocritus, that motive was soon lost in the strong impulse
to invest with charm and dignity that kind of life in which
the Italian mind placed its ideal of worth and happiness.
By thus identifying himself with a great national object
Virgil raised himself to a higher level of art than that attained
by poets whose interests are purely personal and literary.
Next to satire, there was no form of poetry which had
more of a Roman character than didactic poetry. By
becoming a province of Roman art, this form acquired all
its dignity and capacity of greatness. And though the
Georgics, being a work of Italian culture as well as
of Italian inspiration, could not escape some relation, not
in form only but in materials and mode of expression, to
Greek originals, there is no great work of Latin genius,
except the Satires and Epistles of Horace, in which the
THE GEORGICS, ETC. 259
debt thus incurred is so small. And not only is the debt
small in quantity, but it is incurred to authors much
inferior to Virgil in creative power and poetical feeling.
In using borrowed materials he makes the mind of Greece
tributary to his own national design. But his most valuable
materials are derived either from personal observation, or
from Latin authors who had put on record the results of
their observation : and his largest debt, in imaginative
feeling and conception, is incurred not to any Greek
author, but to the most powerful and original of Roman
poets and thinkers. The speculative idea, which gives
something of philosophical consistency to the poem, was,
if not one of pure Italian conception, yet made more truly
real and vital through the experience of the force and
endurance exercised by the strong men of Italy in sub-
duing the earth to their will, and in constructing their great
material works ('operum laborem'), such as their roads,
baths, aqueducts, harbours, encampments, and great drain-
ing works, by which they provided the comforts of life
('commoda vitae') and defended themselves against their
enemies or the maligner influence of the elements.
The language of Virgil himself and the testimony of
ancient commentators confirm the impression, that the
object of which he was most distinctly conscious in the
/composition of the poem was the * glorification of Italy/ \
I 'of the land itself in its fertility and beauty, and of the
life most congenial to Italian sentiment. Even to a
greater extent than he may have intended, Virgil, through
the national mould in which his thought was cast and the
national colour of his sympathies, fulfils this representative
office. Where the poem seems to a modern reader to fail
in human interest, the interest which it had for the poet's
countrymen is revived by dwelling in thought on this
representative character. When the associations appealed
to are of Greek rather than of Italian origin, we have to
remember that the poem was addressed to a highly
educated class of readers, at the time when the Roman
mind had been most enlarged and enriched, but had not
260 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
yet been satiated by Greek studies. Yet this kind of
appeal is quite subsidiary to that made to the native
sensibilities of the Romans. It is to commend to their
love and admiration a purely Italian ideal that Virgil
employs the resources of Greek learning, as well as all
the strength and delicacy of his own genius.
A rapid review of the tastes, sympathies, and affections
on the part of his readers to which Virgil appeals, both in
the body of his poem and in its finer episodes, will show
that they all contribute to produce this representative
character. Where some of the details of the poem seem
to fail in poetic interest, they still have the interest of
being characteristic of the Italian mind.
i. The poem professes to impart practical instruction
on the best method of cultivating the land, of propagating
trees, of breeding cattle, horses, etc., of profiting by the
industry of bees :
Quare agite, O, proprios generatim discite cultus,
Agricolae.
This is the obvious and ostensible purpose of the poem ;
and the truth and accuracy of the instruction were impor-
tant elements in the estimate which the countrymen of the
poet formed of its value. Columella and Pliny, while
controverting him on a few minor points 1 , attest his prac-
tical knowledge as an agriculturist and a naturalist.
Similar testimony is given by modern writers competent
to speak with authority on these subjects 2 . Neither
1 e. g. Col. iv. 9 : ' Nam illam veterem opinionem damnavit usus non esse
ferro tangendos anniculos malleolos, quod aciem reformidant, quod frustra
Vergilius, et Saserna, Stolonesque et Catones timuerunt.' Virgil is there. quoted
along with the recognised authorities on agriculture. This is often done in
matters on which Columella agrees with him, e. g. i. chap. 4 : 'Si verissimo
vati velut oraculo crediderimus dicenti.'
2 Cp. Gisborne's ' Essays on Ancient Agriculture,' and ' Forest Trees and Wood-
land Scenery,' by W. Menzies, Deputy Surveyor of Windsor Forest and Parks.
The following extracts from the last-named work a work which combines
thorough practical knowledge with true poetical feeling support the statement
in the text: 'All the methods, both natural and artificial, of propagating trees are
described in graphic language. Virgil also fully describes the self-sowing of
trees, artificial sowing, propagating by transplanting of suckers, propagating
by P e ggi n g down the branches till they strike root at the point of contact
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 261
ancient nor modern critics regard him as free from liability
to mistake, and the tendency of his mind to believe in mar-
vellous deviations from natural law exposed him to errors
into which less imaginative writers were not likely to fall ;
but the substantial accuracy of his observations and
acquired knowledge seems to be attested both by positive
and negative evidence. It is not a question as to whether
the operations described in Virgil satisfy the requirements
of skilled or even of unskilled farming in the present day,
or whether he does not fall into mistakes in natural history
which a modern reader, with no scientific knowledge of
the subject, may easily detect ; but whether he has ade-
quately represented the methods of ancient Italian agricul-
ture, and whether he is a trustworthy exponent of the
scientific beliefs of his age, and an accurate observer of those
phenomena which were as accessible to an ancient as to a
modern enquirer. On these points he satisfied the best
critics among his countrymen. The general truth of his
observation is further attested by the survival in Southern
Europe, into comparatively recent times, of some of the
processes described by him, which seem most remote from
our ordinary experience 1 . It is attested also by the
accuracy of his description of the unchanging phenomena
of Nature, and of the habits of animals.
A modern reader may think the value of his poetry
little, if at all enhanced, by the rank which he may claim
among the 'scriptores rei rusticae.' It may seem matter
with the earth, and propagating by simply cutting off a small branch from the
top and placing it in the moist warm earth. All these are correct. Indeed,
the art is little advanced since the time of Virgil.' p. 46. Mr. Menzies suggests
an ingenious explanation of Virgil's mistake as to what trees could be grafted
on one another. In speaking of the Aeneid he bears further testimony
to the accuracy of Virgil's observation : ' The poet was equally great and
observant of the details of woodcraft, and must have watched keenly the
details of the foresters around him.' p. 50. This remark reminds us of the
fact that one of his father's means of livelihood was silvis coemendis.' At
p. 53 Mr. Menzies draws special attention to the description of the mistletoe
in Book vi, and of the aged elm under which the Shades are described as
resting.
1 Cp. Holdsworth's Remarks and Dissertations on the Georgics.
2,62 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
for regret that so much of the faculty, which should have
given permanent delight to the world, should have been
employed in conveying temporary instruction. His very
fidelity to the office of a teacher detracts somewhat from
his poetic office. Though it satisfies our curiosity to
know how the ancient Italians tilled their lands and
cultivated the vine, yet this satisfaction is quite distinct
from the joy which the poetical treatment of a poetical
subject gives to the imagination. It is not as repertories
of useful information that the great writers of Greece and
Rome are to be studied. Their importance in this way
has long since been superseded. Each generation adds to
the stock of knowledge in the world, modifies the results
arrived at by the preceding generation, and dispenses with
the works in which these results have been embodied.
But a work of power, stimulating moral and intellectual
feeling, whether in the form of poem, history, speech, or
philosophic dialogue, may acquire from long antiquity
even a stronger hold over the imagination than it originally
possessed 1 . In the didactic poems of Lucretius and
Virgil the information conveyed by them possesses per-
manent value, in so far as it is coloured by human feeling,
in so far as we recognise the passion or affection by which
the poet was stirred in acquiring his knowledge and in
conveying it to sympathetic readers. And as the scientific
enthusiasm of Lucretius animates the driest details of his
a'rgument, so the love entertained for his subject by Virgil,
s an Italian, the son of a small Italian land-holder,
/ 'Veneto rusticis parentibus nato inter silvas et frutices educto 2 ,'
writing for Italians, for whom every detail of farm labour
had a fascination unintelligible to us, brightens with the
gleam of human and poetical feeling the technical teaching
of the traditional precepts of Italian husbandry. The
1 Compare the distinction drawn out by De Quincy, and originally sug-
gested by Wordsworth, between the literature of knowledge and the literature
of power.
8 Macrobius, v. 2.
\.
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 263
position of a teacher assumed by him, a position which
no great Greek or English poet could gracefully maintain,
impresses us with the thorough adaptation of the form
of the poem to the sober practical understanding of the
Italian race. Horace mentions this love of teaching and
learning as one of the notes distinguishing the Roman from
the Greek genius :
Maiores audire, minori dicere per quae
Crescere res posset, minui damnosa libido 1 .
It adds to our sense of Virgil's thoroughness as an artist
to know that he faithfully performed the office which he
undertook ; and the fact of his undertaking this office
helps to bring home to us the practical, unspeculative
genius of those to whom his poem was in the first place
addressed.
2. Not only the instruction directly conveyed in the
poem, but the frequent illustrations from geography,
mythology, and astronomy, have much less meaning to
us than they had to the contemporaries of the poet. Yet
they help to make us realise the relation in which the
Rome and Italy of the Augustan Age stood to the rest
of the world and to the culture of the past. By the
references to the varied products of other lands we are
reminded of the active commercial intercourse between
Rome and the East, a feature of the age of which we
are also often reminded in the Odes, Satires, and Epistles
of Horace. We see how the success of the Roman arms
had made the products of the whole world the 'saffron
dye of Tmolus,' the ' ivory of India/ the ' spices of Arabia/
the 'iron of the Chalybians,' the 'medicinal drugs of
Pontus,' the 'brood-mares of Epirus 2 ' part of the pos-
sessions of Rome. We are reminded too of the fact that
many Romans and Italians were settled as colonists in
the provinces of the Empire, and that Virgil had them
also in view in the instruction which he imparts 3 . The
1 Ep. ii. i. 106-107. z Georg. i. 56-59.
3 e. g. iii. 408 :
Aut impacatos a tergo horrebis Hiberos.
264 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
frequent allusions to Greek mythology and to the con-
stellations, on the other hand, help to remind us that
the art and science of the past, as well as the material
products of the world, had now been diverted to the enjoy-
ment and use of the new inheritors of intellectual culture.
3. It was seen how assiduously Virgil, in the body of
his poem, inculcates the necessity and duty of labour.
And though the { glorification of labour ' was found to
be rather a derivative and tributary stream than the main
current of interest in the poem, yet it is impossible to
doubt that to the mind of Virgil this assiduous toil of the
husbandman, on a work so congenial and surrounded with
such accessories of peaceful happiness, had a special attrac-
tion, even independent of its results. This recognition of
the dignity of labour owes nothing to a Greek original. A
life of intellectual leisure was the ideal of the Greeks.
Hesiod indeed does dwell on the necessity of labour, as the
ground both of worldly well-being and divine approval, and
this is another point of affinity between him and Virgil,
but the line in which he claims consideration for work,
"Epyov 8' ouSei/ oveiSos, dfpytrj 8e T' oveiSos l ,
is apologetic in tone ; and, moreover, Hesiod can hardly be
regarded as a typical Greek. There seems to be no word
in the Greek language equivalent to the grave Roman
word ' industrial Perhaps it is owing to the disesteem
in which labour was held by Greek writers that industry
is scarcely ranked among virtues, nor idleness among vices,
even by modern moralists. When long after the time
of Homer a new poet arose in Greece, appealing to a
great popular sentiment, it was in their passion for the
great public games that he found the point of contact
with the hearts of his countrymen. The Romans, on the
other hand, show a great capacity for labour in every field
of exertion, in war and politics, in law and literature, in
business transactions, in the construction of vast works of
utility, and in cultivating the land. And of these, next
1 'Epy. K, 'H)w. 310* *.
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 2,6$
to war and politics, the last was most congenial to the
national mind. The land was to the Romans the chief
field of their industry and the original source of their
wealth, as the sea was the scene of occupation and ad-
venture to the Greeks, and, through the outlet which it
gave to the results of their artistic ingenuity, the great
source of their wealth. The Odyssey is a poem inspired,
in a great degree, by the impulse which first sent the Greek
nation forth on its career of maritime and colonising enter-
prise. The Georgics are inspired by that impulse which
first started the Latin race on its career of conquest, and
which continued to animate the struggle with the reluctant
forces of Nature, as it had animated the struggle with the
other races of Italy for the possession of the soil.
4. Again, we find that the poem is pervaded, by the
poetical feeling of Nature. And Virgil, more than any
other poet, presents that aspect of Nature in which the
outward world appeared to the educated Italian mind.
The personality and individual life attributed to natural
objects, such as trees, rivers, winds, etc., belongs to a stage
of conception between the Greek anthropomorphism and
the recognition by the imagination of universal law and
interdependence of phenomena. Modern poets consciously
personify natural objects with more boldness and varied
sympathy than Virgil. His conception of the life and
personal attributes of natural objects appears to be less
a conscious creative effort of the imagination, than an
unconscious impression from outward things ; an impres-
sion produced in a state of passive contemplation, rather
than of active adventure ; and an impression produced by
qualities of a serene and tender beauty, rather than by
those of a bolder or sublimer aspect. In all these respects
Virgil represents a stage in the culture of the imagination
between that of the early Greek poets and artists, and that
of the most imaginative poets and painters of modern
times. The familiar beauty of the outward world, as it
was felt by a Roman or Italian, was expressed in the
Latin word ' amoenum.' Thus Horace describes his retreat
266 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
among the Sabine hills, as not only dear to him personally,
but as beautiful in itself :
Hae latebrae dulces, etiam, si credis, amoenae.
And it is to the attributes summed up in that word that
Virgil imparts the ideal life of the imagination.
But not only is the feeling of Nature in the Georgics
characteristic of the highest culture of the Italian mind,
but the spectacle of Nature,
' The outward shows of sky and earth '
brought before us, is that which still delights the eye and
moves the imagination in the various districts of Italy. The
description of Spring at Georg. ii. 323-345,
Ver adeo frondi nemorum, . . .
. . . exciperet caeli indulgentia terras,
is one of which (though we can always feel its beauty) we
cannot often verify the accuracy in our more northern
latitudes. It is to an Italian spring, more than to any
season in any other European country, that the words of
the third Eclogue, 'nunc formosissimus annus,' are appli-
cable. The varied pastoral beauty of the long summer
day described at Georg. iii. 323-338, from the early dawn
when the fields are fresh beneath the morning-star ; through
the gathering warmth of the later hours, when the groves
are loud with the chirping of the grasshoppers and the
herds collect around the deep water-pools ; through the
burning heat of mid-day, from which the shade of some
huge oak or some grove of dark ilexes affords a shelter ;
till the coolness of evening tempers the air, and the
moon renews with dew the dry forest-glades, is a beauty
quite distinct from the charm of freedom and solitude,
yet not too remote from human neighbourhood, of the
changing aspects of the sky, and of the picturesque en-
vironment of hill or mountain, which abides in the
pastoral regions of our own and other northern lands.
The 'sweet interchange of hill and valley 1 ,' mountain range
'Sweet interchange
Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and plains.'
Paradise Lost, Book vii.
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 267
and rich cultivated land, which northern and central Italy
exhibit, must have made such scenes as that described at
ii. 186-188,
Qualem saepe cava mentis convalle solemus
Despicere, etc.,
and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43,
Vere novo gelidus canis cum montibus umor
Liquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit,
familiar to Roman readers. And while the ' caeli in-
dulgentia* characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as
a pervading genial presence through the various books
of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to
which that climate is especially liable form part of
the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The
passage i. 3i5~3 2I >
Saepe ego cum flavis .... stipulasque volantis,
records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian
husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description
of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words
' collectae ex alto nubes ' remind us, like the description
of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256261), that Virgil,
as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched
such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the
Campanian shores. The inundation of the Po is described
among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in
lines which may have been suggested by some scene
actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid
exactness represent for all times the destructive forces
put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-
ranges of Northern Italy :
Proluit insane contorquens vertice silvas
Fluviorum rex Eridanus, camposque per omnes
Cum stabulis armenta tulit.
And while the general representation of Nature, in
the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her
268 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents
in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products
of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are
recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of
Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local associations.
In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear
to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal
experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both
general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to
or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil
is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him
through personal association, but for all which appeal to his
sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last
chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other
brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to
a celebration of the varied beauties of the land ; and the
names of Clitumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still
dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled
with ' the rich Virgilian rustic measure 1 .' In the body of
the poe.m also we find many local references to the
northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The
light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the
1 The lines,
'And now we past
From Como, when the light was gray,
And in my head for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure
Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burthen music, kept,' etc.,
are so familiarly known that they hardly need to be quoted in support of this
statement. But among other testimonies to the power of Virgilian associations,
one may be quoted from another great poet, whose mind was less attuned to
Latin than to Greek and English- poetry. Goethe, in his ' Letters from Italy,'
mentions, on coming to the Lago di Garda, that he was reminded of the line,
Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens, Benace, marino.
He adds this remark : ' This is the first Latin verse, the subject of which ever
stood visibly before me, and now, in the present moment, when the wind is
blowing stronger and stronger, and the lake casts loftier billows against the
little harbour, it is just as true as it was hundreds of years ago. Much, indeed,
has changed, but the wind still roars about the lake, the aspect of which gains
even greater glory from a line of Virgil'
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 269
rapid flood of the Po ; the starwort, out of which wreaths
are made to adorn the altars of the gods, is gathered by
shepherds by the winding banks of the Mella (a river in
Northern Italy mentioned also by Catullus) ; the meadow-
land which unfortunate Mantua lost is adduced as a type
of the best kind of pasture, and the land in the neighbour-
hood of Capua and the region skirting Mount Vesuvius
as that most suitable for corn-crops. We read also of the
rose-beds of Paestum, of the olives clothing the sides of the
Samnian Taburnus, of the woodland pastures of Sila, of
those by the banks of the Silarus, on Alburnus green with
ilexes, and by the dry torrent-bed of the Tanager, and of the
yellow corn-fields through which the dark Galaesus flows.
The Aeneid affords further testimony of the interest which
Virgil awakens in the region which forms the distant en-
vironment of Rome. But the sentiment of the Georgics
is a sentiment of peace inspired by the land, quite
different from that inspired by the Imperial City, and
from the memories of war and conquest with which the
neighbourhood of Rome is associated. And though the
aspect which Nature generally presents in the poem is that
of her nobler mood, yet that air of indolent repose which
characterises her presence in the Eclogues is not altogether
absent from the severer poem. The sense of rest after
toil the ' molles sub arbore somni,' the quiet contempla-
tion of wide and peaceful landscapes, * latis otia fundis/
relieve the strain of strenuous labour which is enforced
as the indispensable condition of realising the glory of
theland / yurt^'
5. The religious (ana ethical; thought of the poem is also / /
in accordance with what was happiest and best in the old
Italian faith and life. The poetical belief in many pro-
tecting agencies
Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri
watching over the labours of the husbandman, and present
at his simple festivals and ceremonies, is in accordance with
the genial character of the rustic Paganism of Italy and with
270 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
the attributes of the great gods of the land, Faunus and
Saturnus. Human life appeared to Hesiod as well as to
Virgil to be in immediate dependence on the gods. But
the graver aspect of Virgil's faith is purer and happier than
that of Hesiod ; as the trust in a just and beneficent father
is purer and happier than the fear of a jealous task-master.
But on the other hand, the faith of Virgil is less noble than
that of Aeschylus and of Sophocles. It is more of a pas-
sive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to the
impulses of an aesthetic emotion, than that union of natural
piety with insight into the mystery of life which no great
poets, Pagan or Christian (unless it may be Dante), exhibit
in equal measure with the two great Athenian dramatists.
In the religious spirit of Virgil, which accepts and does not
question, which finds its resource in prayer rather than
in reverent contemplation and searching out of the ways of
God, we may recognise a true note of his nationality,
a submissive attitude in presence of the Invisible Power,
derived from the race whose custom it was to veil the
head in sacrifice and in approaching the images of their
gods \
6. Equally true to the national character is the ethical
ideal upheld in the Georgics. The negative elements in
that ideal were seen to be exemption from the violent
passions and pleasures of the world. And in these nega-
tive elements the ideal of the Georgics coincides with that
of Lucretius. But, on the positive side, Virgil's ideal
implies the active performance of duties to the family and
to the State. One has only to remember the low esteem
1 Cp. Mommsen, book i. chap. 2: 'As the Greek when he sacrificed
raised his eyes to Heaven, so the Roman veiled his head ; for the prayer of the
former was vision, that of the latter reflection.' Cf. also Lucret. v. 1198 :
Nee pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras;
and Virg. Aen. iii. 405-409 :
Purpureo velare comas adopertus amictu.
Hunc socii morem sacrorum, hunc ipse teneto;
Hac casti maneant in religione nepotes.
REPRESENTA TIVE OF ITAL Y. 271
in which women were held and the indifference to family
ties in the palmiest days of Athenian civilisation, or to
recall the ideal State of Plato's imagination, to perceive
how true to Italian, and how remote from Greek sentiment,
are the pictures presented in such passages as these
and this
Interea dulces pendent circum oscula
Casta pudicitiam servat domus
Interea longum cantu solata laborem
Arguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas.
Friendship among men, and . even the social friendliness
which makes life more pleasant, were ranked among the
virtues by Greek philosophy; and the first is treated by
Aristotle, not only as a single virtue, but as the condition
under which all virtue can best be realised : but natural
affection is regarded as a mere instinct, and the duties of
family life do not fall under any of those conditions with
which ethical philosophy concerns itself. On the other
hand, the legendary history of the early Republic, and
many great examples, in the midst of the corruption of the
later Republic and of the Empire, prove that the ideal of
domestic virtue and affection among the Romans was no
mere passing fancy or dream of an age of primitive inno-
cence, but was in harmony with the national conscience
throughout the whole course of their history.
In devotion to the good of the State no superiority can
be claimed for the Romans over the Athenians of the times
of Cleisthenes, Themistocles, and Pericles. And while
each people, in its best days, was equally ready to serve the
Republic in war and by the performance of public duties,
and while the Roman perhaps more than the Athenian
regarded the labour of his hands as a service due from
him 1 , the Athenian freely gave the higher energy of his
genius to make the life of his fellow-citizens brighter and
nobler. And it is the peculiar glory of the Athenians of the
1 Compare the double meaning of ' moenia' and ' munia,' as illustrated by
Mommsen.
272 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM /
fifth century B.C., the glory claimed for them in one of the
speeches attributed to their great Statesman by their great
Historian, that they combined this devotion to the common
good with a high development of all personal excellence.
But in Athens this union of national and individual energy
and virtue was of very brief duration. On the other hand,
the lasting greatness of the Roman Commonwealth was
purchased by the sacrifice of the energies and accomplish-
ments which add to the grace and enjoyment of individual
existence. The greatness and permanence of the race, not
the varied development of the individual, was the object
aimed at and attained in the vigorous prime of the Roman
Republic \
If this aspect of national life is not directly brought
before us by Virgil in the Georgics, it is brought into
strong light in the representation of his mimic common-
wealth the
Mores et studia et populos et proelia
of the community of bees. It scarcely needs the reminder
of
ipsae regem parvosque Quirites
Sufficiunt
to convince us that, in this representation of an industrious
and warlike community, earnest in labour from the love of
the objects on which it was bestowed and from pride in
its results
Tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis,
resolute and unconquerable in battle, sacrificing life rather
than abandoning the post of duty, inspired with more than
Oriental devotion to their head, Virgil was teaching a lesson
applicable to the Roman Commonwealth under its new
government. While labour is shown to be a condition of
individual happiness, or at least contentment, it is not in
individual happiness, but in the permanent greatness of the
community that its ultimate recompense is to be sought.
Though the individual life may be short and meagre in its
1 Cp. Mommsen, book i. chap. 2.
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY. 273
attractions, and generation after generation may spend
itself in an unceasing round of toil,
At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum.
The training and discipline for the attainment of these
virtues are to be sought in plain and frugal living^ in hardy
pastime as well as hardy industry \ in obedience to parents
and reverent worship of the gods
Illic saltus et lustra ferarum,
Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus,
Sacra deum sanctique patres,
and in abstinence from the luxurious indulgence, the
anxious business, and the enervating pleasures of a corrupt
civilisation 2 . While the grace and beauty of the poem
arise out of the feeling of the life of Nature, the dignity
and sanctity with which the subject is invested are due
to the sense of the intimate connexion between the culti-
vation of the land and the moral and religious life of the
Italian race.
7. The poem may be called a representative work of genius
in respect also of its artistic execution. It is the finest
work of Italian art, made perfect by the long education of
Greek studies. More than any work in Latin literature
the Georgics approach to the symmetry of form, the
harmony of proportion, the unity of design and tone,
characteristic of the purest art of Greece. But it is not
in any sense a copy formed after any Greek pattern. It
was seen that out of the more rudimentary attempts of
Greek literature in this particular form of poetry Virgil
created a new and nobler type, which never has been, and
probably never will be, improved on. The execution of
the poem is characterised by the genial susceptibility and
enthusiasm of the Italian temperament, by the firm
1 Compare with this the character of the Italian race given in the speech of
Remulus, Aen. ix. 600, etc. :
Venatu invigilant pueri, etc.
2 This abstinence is indirectly inculcated and illustrated in such passages as
iii. 209, 524, iv. 197, etc.
VOL. I. T
274 THE GEORGICS AS A POEM
structure of all Roman work and the practical modera-
tion and dignity of the Roman mind, and by a kind of
meditative and pensive grace peculiar to the poet himself.
The thought of the poem is not separable from the senti-
ment pervading it. And in this respect there is a marked
difference between the genius of Virgil and of Lucretius.
However much the speculative activity of Lucretius is
charged with feeling, yet the thought stands out, clearly
defined, through the atmosphere surrounding it. The
melancholy of Lucretius, though it was the result partly
of temperament, of the reaction perhaps from the pas-
sionate enthusiasm of his nature, and partly of his relation
to his age, was yet a state of mind for which he could
assign definite grounds. That of Virgil was probably also
in a great measure the result of temperament ; but it seems
to be a mood habitual to one who meditated much in-
wardly on the misery of the world, who was moved by
compassion for all sights of sorrow or suffering 1 , and was
yet unable to shape this sense of 'the burthen of the
mystery' into articulate thought. The atmosphere of the.
poem has become one with its substance. This fusion of
meditation and feeling derived from the individual genius
of the poet imparts a distinctively original charm to the
style of the Georgics.
The style is thus, in a great degree, Virgil's own, and
owes little to the borrowed beauties of Greek expression.
Though the language of the Alexandrine poets is some-
times reproduced, yet the beauty of those transferred
passages arises from the grace given to them, not from
that borrowed from them. The same may be said of the
use sometimes made of the quaint diction of Hesiod. In
one or two striking passages, such as that
Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis, etc.,
1 It is among the blessings of the countryman's lot enumerated in the pas-
sage ' O fortunatos,' etc., that he is removed from the painful sight of the
contrasts between poverty and riches which the life of a great city presents
neque ille
Aut doluit miserans inopem aut invidit habenti.
REPRESENTATIVE OF ITALY,
Virgil has adopted the language of the Iliad l ; and though
it is impossible to improve on that, yet there is no slavish
imitation of it : only a new picture is painted, recalling, by
some vivid touches, a former piece by the great master. If
detraction is to be made from the originality of expression
in the Georgics, the debt due by Virgil was incurred to
his own countryman. In adopting modes of expression
from Lucretius, Virgil brings down the bold creativeness
of his original to a tone more suited to the habitual sobriety
of the Italian imagination. He often fixes into the form
of some general thought what appears in Lucretius as a
living movement or individualised action. And this ten-
dency to abstract rather than concrete representation is in
accordance with the Roman mould of mind. We notice
also how much more sparingly he uses such compound
words as ' navigerum/ ' silvifragis,' etc., by which the earlier
poets endeavoured to force the harder metal of the Latin
language into the flexibility of Greek speech. Virgil felt
that these innovations were unsuited to the genius of the
Latin tongue, and endeavoured to enlarge its capacities by
novel constructions and by using old words with a new
application rather than by novel formations of words.
But this gain was perhaps more than compensated by
the loss which the language suffered in idiomatic purity
and clearness.
In rhythmical movement the poem exhibits the highest
perfection of which Latin verse is capable. Of Homer's
verse it has been happily said that it has ' a tranquil deep
strength, reminding us of his own line,
'E ajcaXappeirao PaOvfifioov wfcfavoio 2 .'
The movement of Virgil's verse reminds us rather of his
own river
qui per saxa volutus
Purior electro campum petit.
1 II. xxi. 257-262.
2 Professor Lushington's Inaugural Lecture delivered to the Students of the
Greek Classes in the University of Glasgow, November, 1838.
T 2
THE GEORGICS AS A POEM, ETC.
Occasionally we catch the sound of some more rapid rush
and impetuous fall, as in the hurry and agitation and cul-
minating grandeur of these lines
Continue, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti
Incipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridus altis
Montibus audiri fragor, et resonantia longe
Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur;
but generally the stream flows on, neither in rapid torrent
nor with abrupt transitions, but 'with a tranquil deep
strength,' fed by pure and abounding sources of affection,
of contemplation, of moral and religious feeling, of delight
from eye and ear, from memory and old poetic association.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ROMAN EPIC BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL.
THE distinction between what is called the primitive
and the literary epic has become one of the common-
places of criticism ; and no distinction can well be more
fundamental. The two kinds of epic poem belong to
totally different epochs in civilisation ; they are also the
products of very different national temperaments and facul-
ties. It is somewhat remarkable that those literatures
which are richest in literary epics the ancient Latin, the
modern Italian, and the English are those which pos-
sess few or no native poems of the type realised in the
Iliad, the Niebelungen-Lied, and the Song of Roland ;
nor is there, in connexion with the earlier traditions of
the Italian or the English race, that cycle of heroic adven-
ture and personages in which such poems have their origin.
The composition of the Aeneid and of the Paradise Lost
implies powers of combination, of arranging great masses of
materials, of concentration of the mind on a single object,
more analogous to those which produced the vast historical
work of Livy and ' The Decline and Fall ' of Gibbon, than
to the spontaneity, the naivete, the rapidity of conception
and utterance, and that immediate sympathy between poet
and people, to which we owe the continuous poems de-
veloped out of some germ of popular ballad or national
legend. It was the peculiar glory of Greece, that in the
earlier stage of her literary development she manifested not
278 THE ROMAN EPIC
only a perfection of expression and of art, but a maturity
of intelligence, a true insight into the meaning of life,
a nobility of imagination in union with a clearness and
sanity of judgment, which the most advanced eras of
other literatures scarcely equal. Thus the early Greek
epics, while exhibiting, better than any other writings, man
and the outward world in ' the first intention/ man in the
energy and buoyancy of the national youth, and Nature in
the vividness of impression which she makes on the mind
and sense in their most healthy activity, are at the same
time masterpieces of art and great monuments of the
national mind. The Greek imagination with no appear-
ance of effort produced works of such compass and har-
monious proportion as only long years of labour and
reflection in collecting and combining materials in accord-
ance with a predetermined purpose produced in other
literatures.
We are not called upon to consider here the conditions
out of which the primitive epic is developed, or to enquire
why the Latin race failed to create at least some inartistic
legendary poem of sufficient length to be ranked in that
form of literature. Perhaps no answer could be given to
the question excepting that the early Latin race had not
sufficient creative force to produce such a work, which
is simply 'another way of stating the fact that it did
not produce epic poems. The Romans were from a very
early period interested in their past history and traditions.
They seem to have shaped, either out of real incidents in
their national and family history, or out of their chief
national characteristics, stories of strong human interest 1 ,
which only want the 'vates sacer' to be converted into
poems. Evefy great family seems to have had its own
traditions, glorifying the exploits and preserving the
memory of illustrious ancestors ; and whatever may have
been the case in regard to the legendary stories connected
with the fortunes of the State, some of these traditions
1 e. g. those of Lucretia, Virginia, Coriolanus, Brutus, T. Manlius, etc.
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 379
were undoubtedly expressed in rude Saturnian verse, and
chanted at family gatherings and at funeral banquets.
The memory of these ancestral lays if we may apply
that word to them survived till the time of .Cicero,
Horace, and apparently even of Tacitus 1 , though no
actual trace of them appears to have existed even in the
age of the elder Cato. But the influence of these rude
germs of poetry if they exercised any influence on
Latin literature at all was confined to the structure
of Roman history. An enquiry into the origin and
growth of Roman epic poetry need not concern itself with
them.
Neither is it necessary here to go back into the vexed
and probably insoluble question of the genesis of the
Homeric poems. That these stand in most intimate rela-
tion with the Virgilian epic is a patent fact ; and the nature
of this intimate relation will be examined in some of the
subsequent chapters. But they first began to act on the
Roman imagination and art many centuries after they
assumed their present form. The Romans accepted them
as they did the lyrical and dramatic poetry of Greece, and
were absolutely unconcerned with the questions as to their
origin which interest modern curiosity. For the adequate
understanding of the form and substance of the Roman
epic as it was shaped by its greatest master, a competent
knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey must be presupposed ;
but it is unnecessary in a work on Latin literature to
discuss the origin and character of the epic poetry of the
Greeks to such an extent as their idyllic and didactic
poetry have been discussed in previous chapters.
But just as historical composition, regarded as a branch
of art, though originating in the imitation of Greek models,
has assumed in the works of Livy and Tacitus a dis-
tinctively Roman type, in conformity with certain charac-
teristics of the race and with the weight of new matter
which it has to embody, so, too, the type of epic poetry
1 Cf. Annals, iii. 5, 'Veterum instituta . . uaeditata ad virtutis memoriairi
carmina,^ quoted by Teuffel.
28o THE ROMAN EPIC
realised by Virgil has acquired a distinctive character
as a vehicle of Roman sentiment and material. To ap-
preciate the native, as distinct from the foreign element
in the mould in which Virgil's representation is cast, it
is necessary to attend to certain instincts and tendencies
which were calculated strongly to affect any form of narra-
tive poetry amongst the Romans, and also to take a rapid
survey of the history of their narrative poetry from the
beginning of their literature to the Augustan Age.
In the first place, the strong national sentiment of Rome
was a feeling which could not fail to be appealed to in any
works which aimed at securing both general and per-
manent interest. The heroic story of Greece was indeed
able for a time to attract general attention at Rome from
the novelty of the dramatic representations in which it
was introduced. But even Roman tragedy, to judge from
the testimony of Cicero and others, seems to have owed
more of its popularity to the grave spirit by which it was
animated and the Roman strength of will exhibited in
its personages, than to the legitimate sources of interest
in a drama, viz. the play of human motives and the vicis-
situdes of human fortunes. But to sustain the interest
of a long narrative, as distinct from a dramatic poem, it
was necessary to act on some deep and general feeling.
Not only did the hearers require to be thus moved to
attention, but the poet himself could only thus be inspired
and sustained in the unfamiliar task of literary composi-
tion. Now, looking to other manifestations of Roman
energy, we see that whatever force was not employed on
present necessities, was given, not as among the Greeks
to ideal creation, but to the commemoration of events of
public importance, and to the transmission of the lessons as
well as of the history of the passing time. The connexion
between the past and the future was maintained by monu-
ments of different kinds, by public inscriptions, written
annals, fasts, or festivals recording some momentous ex-
perience in the history of the State. All that we know and
can still see of Roman work suggests the thought of a
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 281
people who had an instinctive consciousness of a long
destiny ; who built, acted, and wrote with a view to a
distant future. A national history was the legitimate
expression of this impulse, but before the language was
developed into a form suited for a continuous work in
prose, it was natural that the tendency to realise the past
and hand down the memory of the present should find an
outlet for itself in various forms of narrative poetry.
Again, the Romans had a strong personal feeling of
admiration for their great men. They were animated by
that generous passion to which, in modern times, the term
hero-worship has been applied. And corresponding with
this feeling on the part of his countrymen, there was in
the object of it a strong love of glory, a strong passion
to perpetuate his name. Through the whole course of
Roman history we recognise this motive acting powerfully
on the men most eminent in war, politics, and literature,
and on no one more powerfully than on the Emperor
Augustus. The memory of the great men of Rome and
of their actions was kept alive by monuments, statues,
coins, waxen images preserved in the atrium of the family
house, by the poems sung and speeches delivered among
funeral ceremonies, by inscriptions on tombs (such as that
still read on the tomb of Scipio Barbatus), by family names
(such as that of Africanus) derived from great exploits,
and, under the Empire, by the great triumphal arches and
columns which still excite the admiration of travellers. The
Roman passion for glory received its highest gratification in
the triumph which celebrated great military exploits. The
culmination of the tendency to glorify actual living men,
or men recently dead, is witnessed in the deification of the
Emperors. With the development of literature we find, as
we should expect, this tendency of the imagination allying
itself with poetry, from the time when Ennius devoted one
work to the celebration of Scipio down to the panegyrists
of Augustus, Messala, or Agrippa 1 under the early Empire.
1 Cf. Horace's Ode, ' Scriberis Vario,' etc., which shows at least that Agrippa
desired to have a poem "written in honour of his exploits.
282 THE ROMAN EPIC
A new direction and a new motive were thus given to
narrative poetry a direction and motive which had no
inconsiderable influence in determining Virgil to the choice
of the subject of the Aeneid.
Another characteristic of the race was likely to impress
itself on the form and execution of their narrative poetry,
viz. their love of works of large compass and massive
structure. Vastness of design and solid workmanship are
as distinctive properties of Roman art, as harmony of
proportion and beauty of form are of the works of Greek
imagination. To compose a literary work which should be
representative of the genius of Rome, it was necessary that
the author should be not only imbued with Roman sen-
timent and ideas, but also endowed with the Roman
capacity for patient and persevering industry. Concen-
tration of purpose on works conceived and executed on
a great scale, with a view both to immediate and per-
manent results, was an essentially Roman quality. The
Romans built their aqueducts and baths for the commonest
needs of life, and constructed their roads and encampments,
in such a way as to astonish the world after the lapse of
nearly two thousand years. With similar energy and per-
sistence of purpose they built up their greatest literary
works. This characteristic favoured the growth among
them of a type of epic poetry as distinct from that of Greece
as the Colosseum was from the Parthenon.
If Roman epic poetry was not to be a mere imitation of
the Greek epic, we should accordingly expect that it should
exhibit some or all of these characteristics, that it should
seek that source of interest which secures permanent atten-
tion to a long narrative poem in national sentiment ; that it
should strive to restore the memory of the past history and
traditions of the State and at the same time to give expres-
sion to the ideas of the present time; that it should magnify
the greatness of eminent living men or of those who had
served their country before them ; and that it should be
conceived on a large scale, and be executed perhaps with
rude, but certainly with strong and massive workmanship.
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 283
The first original narrative poem in Latin literature the
Punic War of Naevius treated of a subject of living
interest, and at the same time glorified the mythical past
of Rome ; and, while rude in design and execution, it was
conceived and executed on a scale of large dimensions.
The example was thus given of a Roman epic based on a
legendary foundation, but mainly built out of the materials
of contemporary history. We can imagine that, at the
time when this poem was composed, a more vivid interest
would be [felt in the fictitious connexion between Rome
and Troy from the fact that it was in the First Punic War
that this connexion appears first to have been generally
recognised. The legend had not as in Virgil's time the
prestige of two centuries, but it had the force of novelty to
recommend it for poetic purposes. At the same time the
great struggle between Rome and Carthage, on which the
attention of the world was fixed at the time when Naevius
wrote, must have given a peculiar meaning to the early
relations between the two imperial States, as they were first
represented in his poem.
The poem of Naevius gave the germinative idea and
some of the materials to the first and fourth Books of the
Aeneid ; it established also the principle of combining in
one work a remote mythical past with a subject of
strong contemporary interest. At the same time it gave
the example, followed by the Roman national epic, before
the time of Virgil, of taking the main subject of the poem
from the sphere of actual history. This confusion between
the provinces of poetry and prose had been avoided by the
instinct of Greek taste. Among the large number of Greek
epic writers from the age of Homer to that of Nonnus, we
hear of only one or two who treated of actual historical
events. The general neglect of those poems which in
ancient and modern times have treated of historical events
and characters in the forms of epic poetry shows that the
Greek instinct in this, as in all other questions of art, was
unerringly right. The choice and treatment of such a
subject are equally fatal to the truth and completeness
284 THE ROMAN EPlC
of historical representation and to the ideality and unity
of a work of art. Though the objection does not equally
apply to dramatic art, yet the modern instinct, which selects
for that mode of representation subjects remote from our
own times, confirms the judgment in accordance with which
the Athenians fined their tragic poet for reminding them of
too recent a sorrow.
The Roman writers recognised the analogy between
epic and historic narrative, and the way in which they
apprehended the alliance between them was as injurious
to the truthfulness of their history as to the sym-
metry of their early poetry, but they did not before the
time of Virgil recognise the artistic distinction between
them. The Roman epic and Roman history originated
in the same feeling and impulse the sentiment of national
glory, the desire to perpetuate the great actions and the
career of conquest, which were the constituent elements
of that glory. The impulse both of poets and historians
was to build up a great commemorative monument; not,
as among the Greeks, to present the spectacle of human life
in its most animated, varied, and noble movements. To
a Roman historian and to a Roman poet the character and
the fate of individuals derived their chief interest from their
bearing on the glory and fortune of the State. In the
Greek epic, on the other hand, the interest in Achilles and
Hector is much more vivid than that felt in the success of
the Greek or Trojan cause. In Herodotus the interest felt
in the most important historical crisis through which the
world has ever passed is inseparably blended with that felt
in a great number of individual men, among the enemies
of Greece, no less than among Greeks themselves. In the
History of Livy we do not expect to find truthful deli-
neation or sagacious analysis of the characters of the
leading men of Rome; still less do we expect to find
impartial and sympathetic delineation of the enemies of
Rome; but we seek in his pages the image of the nation's
life in its onward career of conquest and internal change,
as pride and affection shaped it on the tables of the
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 285
national memory. The idea of Rome, as the one object
of supreme interest to gods and men, in the past, present,
and future, imparts the unity of sentiment, tone, and pur-
pose which is characteristic of the type of Roman epic
poetry and of Roman history.
Naevius in selecting for his epic poem the subject of the
First Punic War, and in connecting that war with the events
which were supposed to connect the Roman State imme-
diately with a divine origin and destiny, was the first
Roman who was moved to write by this powerful impulse.
But the man who first gave full expression to the national
idea and feeling, who first made Rome fully conscious of
herself, and who was the true founder of her literature, was
Ennius. The title which he gave to his epic Annales
perhaps the most prosaic title ever given to a work of
genius, indicates the character of his work and his mode
of treatment. The inspiration under which it was written
is more truly indicated by the other name Romais by
which, according to the testimony of an ancient gram-
marian 1 , it was sometimes known. . He took for his subject
the whole career of Rome, from its mythical beginning in
the events which followed the Trojan war onward to the
latest events in his own day. The work was recognised
as a great epic poem, and at the same time it fulfilled the
part of a contemporary chronicle. It was a true instinct
of genius to feel that the only material suitable for a
Roman epic was to be sought in the idea of the whole
national life. That alone could supply the essential source
of epic inspiration, the sympathy between the poet and
those to whom his poem is addressed, by which the epic
poet receives from, as well as gives back to, his audience.
But on the other hand, while he has the true poetic
impulse, the ' vivida vis ' and the strong concepti6ns of
a poet, he came too soon to acquire the tact and delicacy
of conception and execution equally essential to the creation
of works destined for immortality. The subject was too
vast to be treated within the compass of a poem, which
* Diomedes, quoted by Teuffel.
286 THE ROMAN EPIC
demands to be read as a whole, and to be contemplated as
one continuous mental creation. The treatment of a long
series of actions in chronological order is incompatible
with artistic effect ; the treatment of contemporary history
' is incompatible with the ideality of imaginative representa-
tion. The workmanship of the poem, as exhibited in many
fragments, is powerful, but at the same time rude and
unequal. Yet Ennius was a true representative writer. He
appealed powerfully to the national sentiment ; he revived
the mythical and historic fame of the past ; he perpetuated
the memory and interpreted the meaning of his own time ;
he enhanced the glory of the great men and the great
families of Rome ; and he produced a work of colossal
proportions and massive execution. Till his place was
taken by a successor who united the fervour of a national
poet to the perfect workmanship of an artist, he was
justly regarded as the truest representative in literature of
Roman character, sentiment, and ideas.
Other narrative and historical poems were known by
the name of 'Annales;' one in three Books, written by
Attius, the tragic poet ; another written by A. Furius of
Antium, which extended to a greater length, as Macrobius
(ii. i. 34 1 ) quotes from the tenth and the eleventh Books
lines appropriated by Virgil, one of many proofs of the
manner in which the genius of Virgil, acting upon great
reading, absorbed the thoughts and diction of his prede-
cessors. The most important of the historical poems which
continued the mistake of treating recent history in the form
of atfnetrical chronicle appears to have been the Istrian
1 %jmoresque serit varies ac talia fatur. Aen. xii. 228.
Furius in decimo :
Rumoresque serunt varies et multa requirunt.
Nomine quemque vocans reficitque ad r proelia pulses. Aen. xi. 731.
Furius in undecimo :
Nomine quemque ciet; dictorum tempus adesse
Commemorat. v
Deinde infra : \
Confirmat dictis simul atque exuscitat acres ,
Ad bellandum anjmos reficitque ad proelia mentes.
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 287
War of Hostius, the grandfather of the Cynthia of Proper-
tius, and alluded to by him in the line,
Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo.
This poem was written early in the first century B.C., in
three Books, and took up the treatment of Roman history
where the Annals of Ennius ended.
In the earlier part of the Ciceronian Age, the decay
of public spirit, and the strong tendency which had set
in of advancing individual claims above the interest of the
State, and of looking to individual leaders rather than to
established institutions, gave a new direction to narrative
verse. The passion for personal glory became the principal
motive of those poems which treated of recent or con-
temporary history. Eminent families and individuals
secured for themselves the services of poets, native or
Greek. Even before this time, Attius, as we learn from
Cicero 1 , was closely associated with D. Brutus, and it
seems not unlikely that the choice of the subject of one
of his tragedies, Brutus, was made as a compliment to his
friend and patron. The Luculli and Metelli retained the
services of Arcrn'as, as their panegyrist, a fact referred to
by Cicero in one of his letters to Atticus, not without a slight
touch of jealousy 2 . Tompey was served in the same way by
Theophanes of Mitylene. The patronage of the great to men
of letters was thus by no means so disinterested as our first
impressions might lead us to suppose. Cicero himself with
his extraordinary literary activity wrote in his youth a
poem on his townsman Marius, and failing to find any
other Greek or Roman to undertake the task, composed
a poem in three Books on his own Consulship 3 , with a
result not fortunate to his reputation either for modesty
or taste. In a letter to his brother Quintus, we find him
encouraging him to the composition of a poem on the
1 Pro Arch. n.
2 Ep. ad Att. i. 16: ' Epigrammatis tuis, quae in Amaltheo posuisti, content!
erimus, praesertim quum et Chilius, jios reliquerit, et Archias nihil de me
scripserit ; ac vereor, ne, Lucullis quoniam Graecum poema condidit, mine ad
Caecilianam fabulam spectet.'
3 Also one on his exile.
288 THE ROMAN EPIC
Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. The passage is
worth attending to as indicating the materials out of
which those poems which aimed at celebrating contem-
porary events were framed : ' Quos tu situs, quas naturas
rerum et locorum, quos mores, quas gentes, quas pugnas,
quern vero ipsum imperatorem habes. Ego te libenter
adiuvabo, et tibi versus quos rogas mittam 1 .' This passage
may be compared with two passages in Horace, showing
that the same kind of thing was expected from a poetical
panegyrist under Augustus. The first of these is from
Sat. ii. i, lines n etc., where Trebatius advises Horace,
Gaesaris invicti res dicere
to which advice the poet answers,
Cupidum, pater optime, vires
Deficiunt : neque enim quivis horrentia pilis
Agmina, nee fracta pereuntes cuspide Gallos,
Aut labentis equo describat vulnera Parthi.
The other passage from Horace (Epistles, ii. i. 250) has
a closer resemblance to the passage in Cicero :
Nee sermones ego mallem
Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas,
Terrarumque situs et flumina dicere, et arces
Montibus impositas, et barbara regna, tuisque
Auspiciis totum confecta duella per orbem, etc.
Horace expresses his contempt for this style of poem in
other passages of his Satires, as (ii. 5. 41),
seu pingui tentus omaso,
Furius hibernas cana nive conspuet Alpes 2 ;
and also (Sat. i. 10. 36-37),
Turgidus Alpinus jugulat dum Memnona, dumque
Defingit Rheni luteum caput.
The most -prolific writer of epics in the latter half of the
Ciceronian Age was Varro Atacinus, the first Transalpine
1 Epist. ad Q. Fratrem, lib. ii. 16.
2 The ' Furius ' mentioned here is supposed to be M. Furius Bibaculus, the
reputed author of a poem on the Gallic War, as well as of the Epigrams,
' referta contumeliis Caesaris,' of which Tacitus speaks (An. iv. 34).
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 289
Gaul who appears in Roman literature ; the same who
is mentioned by Horace as having made an unsuccessful
attempt to revive the satire of Lucilius :
Hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino, etc. 1
He had served under Julius Caesar in Gaul, and wrote
a poem on the war against the Sequani in the traditional
form. He also opened up to his countrymen that vein
of epic poetry which had been wrought by the Alex-
andrians. The most famous poem of this kind in the
literature of the Republic was the Jason of Varro, imitated
probably from the Argonautics of Apollonius. Propertius
speaks of this poem in a passage where he classes Varro
also among the writers of amatory poetry before his own
time, such as Catullus, Cinna, Gallus, and Virgil in his
Eclogues :
Haec quoque perfecto ludebat lasone Varro,
Varro Leucadiae maxima flarnn a suae.
He is thus as a writer of epic poems, on the one side,
of the native school of Ennius and the Annalists; on
the other, he is the originator of that other type of Roman
epic which appears under the Empire in the Thebaid and
Achilleid of Statius and the Argonautics of Valerius
Flaccus.
The two great poets of the later Ciceronian era intro-
duced a great change into Roman poetry, the practice
of Qareful^ composition. They are the first artistic ' poets
of Rome. The rapidity of composition which characterised
all the earlier writers was, in the rude state of the language
at that time, incompatible with high accomplishment.
We read of Cicero writing five hundred hexameters in
a night, and of his brother Quintus writing four tragedies
in sixteen days, The true sense of artistic finish first
appeared in Lucretius, and to a greater degree in Catullus,
and the younger men of the Ciceronian Age, Licinius
Calvus, Helvius Cinna, etc. The contempt with which
1 Sat. i. io: 46.
VOL. I. U
290 THE ROMAN EPIC
the younger school regarded the old fashion of composition
appears in Catullus' references neither delicate nor com-
plimentary to the * AnnalesVolusi,'the ponderous annalistic
epic of his countryman (conterraneus) Tanusius Geminus 1 .
But in this younger school, poetry separated itself entirely
from the national life, or dealt with it only in the form
of personal epigrams on the popular leaders and their
partisans. The dignity of the hexameter was reserved
by them for didactic or philosophic poetry and short epic
idyls treating of the heroic legends of Greece. Didactic
poetry, directing the attention to contemplation instead
of action, established itself as a successful rival to the
old historical epic, in the province of serious literature.
The latter, however, still found representatives in the
following generation. Thus Anser, the panegyrist of
Antony, is familiarly known, owing to one of the few
satiric allusions which have been attributed to Virgil :
Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nee dicere Cinna
Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores.
Varius^with whom he is by implication contrasted in those
lines, is characterised by Horace as 'Maeonii carminis ales/
at a time when Virgil was only famous as the poet of
rural life. He was the author of a poem on the death
of Julius Caesar. We hear also of other specimens of
the contemporary epic produced in the Augustan Age.
one by Cornelius Severus treating of the Sicilian Wars,
one by Rabirius treating of the Battle of Actium, and
one by Pedo Albinovanus treating of the voyage of Ger-
manicus ' per oceanum septentrionalem 2 .'
We find Horace repeatedly excusing himself with self-
disparaging irony, while exhorting younger poets to the
task of directly celebrating the wars of Augustus, e. g.
Epist. i. 3. 7 :
Quis sibi res gestas Aiflgusti scribere sumit?
Bella quis et paces longum diffundit in aevum?
1 Schwabe, Quaestiones Catullianae, p. 279.
2 Mentioned by W. S. Teuffel. Perhaps the best known poem in our own
literature of this type is ' The Campaign ' of Addison.
BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL. 291
Horace does indeed celebrate some of the military as
well as the peaceful successes of the Augustan Age, in
the only form in which contemporary or recent events admit
of being poetically treated, viz. lyrical poetry. But con-
sidering how eager Augustus was to have his wars celebrated
in verse and how strong in him was the national passion
for glory, and considering that Virgil and Horace were
pre-eminently the favourite poets of the time and the
special friends both of the Emperor himself and his minister,
it is remarkable how they both avoid or defer the task
which he wished to impose on them. This reluctance
arose from no inadequate appreciation of his services to
the world, but from their high appreciation of what was
due to their art. Virgil had been similarly importuned
in earlier times by Pollio and Varus, and had gracefully
waived the claim made on him by pleading the fitness
of his own muse only for the lighter themes of pastoral
poetry. He seems to have hesitated long as to the form
which the celebration of the glories of the Augustan Age
should take. How he solved the problem, how he sought
to combine in a work of Greek art the inspiration of the
national epic with the personal celebration of Augustus,
will be treated of in the following chapter.
U 2
CHAPTER IX.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
I.
Purpose of the Aeneid, and Motives determining the Form
of the Poem.
THE motives and purpose influencing Virgil to undertake
the composition of the Aeneid are to be sought partly in
his own literary position, partly in . the state of public
feeling at the time when he commenced his task, and
partly in the direction given to his genius by the personal
influence of Augustus.^ As the author of the Georgics
he had established his position as the foremost poetic
artist of his time. He had achieved a great success in
a great and serious undertaking. He had entered into
competition with Greek poets of acknowledged reputation,
and had surpassed them in their own province. He had
accomplished all that could be accomplished by him
as the poet of the peaceful charm of country life. But
while in his two earlier works he limits himself to that
field assigned to him by Horace, that over which the
' gaudentes rure Camenae' presided, the stirring of k a
larger ambition is observable in both poems :
Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae :
and again :
Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora.
He had yet to find a fuller expression for his sympathy
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 293
with his age, which had deepened with the deepening
significance of the times, and for that interest in the con-
templation of human life which becomes the dominant
influence in all great poets whose faculty ripens with
advancing years. He might still aspire to be the Homer,
as he had proved himself to be the Theocritus and the
Hesiod of his country. The rudeness of the work of
Ennius, the limited and temporary scope of the works
of Varius, his only competitor in epic song, left that place
still unappropriated. Virgil's whole previous career pre-
pared him to be the author of a poem of sustained elevation
and elaborate workmanship. The composition of the
Georgics had trained his faculty of continuous exposition
and of massing together a great variety of details towards
a common end. It had given him a perfect mastery over
the only vehicle suitable to the dignity of epic poetry.
He had indeed still to put forth untried capacities, the
faculties of dealing with the passions and movement of
human life as he had dealt with the sentiment and
movement of Nature, of expressing thought and feeling
dramatically and oratorically, and of imparting living
interest to the actions and fortunes of imaginary personages.
But he was now in the maturity of his powers. He had
long lived with the single purpose of perfecting himself
in art and knowledge. He had no other ambition but
to produce some great work, which should perpetuate
his own fame, and be a monument of his country's
greatness.
The completion of the Georgics and the first concep-
tion of the Aeneid coincided in point of time with the
event which not only established a sense of security in
the room of the long strain of alarm and anxiety and a
sense of national unity in the room of internecine strife
in the Roman world, but which, to those looking back
upon it after nineteen centuries, appears to be one of
the most critical turning-points in all history. The enthu-
siasm of the moment found expression by the voice of
Horace :
294 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus.
But Virgil represents more truly the deeper tendencies
of his age than the poet who has most faithfully painted
its social aspects. He looks beyond the temporary
triumph and sense of relief, and sees in the victory of
Actium the culminating point of all the past history of
Rome and the starting point of a greater future. There
had been no time since the final defeat of Hannibal so
calculated to re-awaken the sense of national life, of the
mission to subdue and govern the world assigned to Rome,
and of the divine guardianship of which she was the object.
As the joy of a great success had found a representative
voice in Ennius in the age when the State, relieved from
an overwhelming danger, started on its career of foreign
conquest, so it found as deep and true a voice in Virgil
at the time when the relief, if not from as imminent a
danger, yet certainly from a much longer strain of anxiety,
left Rome free to consolidate her many conquests into a
vast and orderly Empire.
In both the Eclogues and Georgics it was seen that
Virgil allows his genius to be in some measure directed
by others in the choice of his subjects, while he follows
his own judgment in his mode of treating them. In the
earlier poems he acknowledges the direction given to him
both by Varus and by Pollio,
Non iniussa cano
Accipe iussis
Carmina coepta tuis,
while at the same time he excuses himself from directly
celebrating their actions. In the Georgics he describes
his task as being ' tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa.' The
r desire of Augustus, whether openly expressed or not, to
commemorate his success and to add lustre to his rule
by associating them with the noblest art of his age, must
have acted with more imperious urgency on the will of
Virgil than the wishes of any of his earlier patrons. His
patriotic and personal feeling to, the saviour of the State
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEW. 295
and his own benefactor must have made the task imposed
on him a service of love as well as of obligation. But
in undertaking this task he desired to make it sub-
servient to the purpose of producing a work which should
emulate the greatest poetical works of the Greeks, and
which should, at the same time, be a true symbol of Rome
at the zenith of her fortunes.
Virgil had now found in his own age a motive for the
composition of that epic poem which it had been his
boyish ambition to attempt,
Cum canerem reges et proelia.
He could appeal as Ennius, or even as Homer had done,
to hearers animated by the same feeling which moved
himself. The two great conditions of a work of art which
should gain the ear of the world immediately, and which
should interest it permanently, were prepared for him in
the enthusiasm of the moment, and in the enduring
interest attaching to the career of Rome. His highly-
trained faculty, already proved and exercised in other
works, was a guarantee for the artistic execution of
any design which he should undertake. But two ques-
tions remained for him to solve,-f-what form should his
epic poem assumer should he follow absolutely the pre-
cedent of Homer, or of Ennius, or endeavour to surpass
the contemporary panegyrists like Varius by a direct
celebration of the events of his age? And if he adopted
the Homeric type, ,what subject should he adopt so as
to impart the interest of personal fortunes and human
character to a poem the inspiring motive of which was
the national idea ?J
The problem which Virgil set before himself was really
one altogether new in literature. The Alexandrian Age
had endeavoured to revive an interest in the heroic ad-
venture of early or mythical times. It had recognised
the principle that this distant background was essential to
a poem of heroic action, and that events of contemporary
or recent history were not capable of epic treatment.
296 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
But it had not discerned the necessary supplement t
that principle, that if such a poem, on a large scale, is
to gain a permanent place in literature, it must bear some
immediate relation to the age in which it is written, and
be associated with some ethical and religious truths or
some political cause of vital importance to the world. The
epic poet of a cultivated age can maintain his place as
a great artist only by being something more than an artist.
He must feel more strongly than others, and give expres-
sion to the deepest tendencies of his own time. His sub-
ject must be charged with the force of the present, and not
be mere material for the exercise of his imitative faculty.
Virgil might, merely as an artist, have easily surpassed the
Jason of Varro, or the later Thebaid of Statius ; but no
technical skill in form, diction, and rhythm could have
given to his treatment of such subjects the immediate
attraction or the enduring spell which belongs to the
Aeneid.
Both Ennius and Naevius had set the example of con-
necting a continuous narrative of the events of their own
time with the mythical glories and the traditional history
of Rome. And the Introduction to the third Georgic
indicates that some idea of this kind at one time hovered
before the imagination of Virgil. But while moved by
the same patriotic impulses as these older poets, Virgil
must have felt as strongly as Horace did that they were
examples to be avoided in the choice of form and mode
of treatment. He and Horace acknowledged the Greeks
alone as their masters in art. He aspires not only to
surpass Ennius and Naevius in the office they fulfilled,
but to enter into rivalry with Homer, to perform for the
Romans of the Augustan Age a work analogous to that
which Homer performed for the Greeks of his age. To
do this, it was necessary to select some single heroic action
from the cycle of mythical events, and to connect that
with the whole story of Rome and Italy and with the
events of the Augustan Age. The action had in some
way to illustrate or symbolise the thoughts, memories, and
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 297
hopes with which public feeling was identified at the
time when the poem was written. Thus the original
motive of the Virgilian epic was essentially different from
that of the Homeric poems. The Iliad and the Odyssey
have their origin in the pure epic impulse. The germ of
the poems is the story; their purpose is to satisfy the
curiosity felt in human action and character. The ' wrath
of Achilles/ the ' return of Odysseus/ are, as they profess
to be, the primary sources of interest in the poems founded
on them ; the representative character of the poems, like
the representative character of Shakspeare's historical
dramas, is accidental and undesigned. The germ of the\
Aeneid, on the other hand, is to be sought in the national
idea and sentiment, in the imperial position of Rome, in
her marvellous destiny, and in its culmination in the
Augustan Age. The actions and sufferings of the cha-
racters that play their part in the poem were to be only
secondary objects of interest ; the primary object was to
be found in the race to whose future career these actions
and sufferings were the appointed means. The real key-
note to the poem is not the ' Arma virumque ' with which
it opens, but the ' Tantae molis erat Romanam condere
gentem ' with which the proem closes. \ The choice and
conduct of the action were the mecKamcal difficulties to
be overcome by the poet, not the inspiring motives of his
genius. (This is the main cause of the comparative tame-
ness of the Aeneid in point of human interest.^) Actors
and action did not spring out of the spontaneous move-
ment of the imagination, but were chosen by a refined
calculation to fulfil the end which Virgil had in view.
What Aeneas and his followers want in personal interest,
is supposed to accrue to them as instruments in the hands
of destiny. A new type of epic poetry is thus realised.
The Iliad and the Odyssey are essentially poems of per-
sonal, the Aeneid is the epic of national fortunes.
298 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE ..
II.
Adaptation of the legend of Aeneas to VirgiFs purpose.
Had Virgil's sole object been to write a national epic,
which should satisfy popular sentiment, we can imagine
several reasons why the tale of Romulus should have been
chosen as its subject in preference to that of Aeneas.
Though the traditional account of the founder of the city
owes some of its features to Greek invention, yet it has
a much more na'rve and indigenous character than that
of the Trojan settlement in Latium. It was more firmly
rooted in the popular mind. It was still celebrated, as
we learn from Dionysius, in national hymns. It had been
commemorated in a famous work of art, the bronze she-
wolf still extant, at a time antecedent to the origin of
Roman literature. It formed the chief subject of the first
book of the Annals of Ennius, which, as dealing with the
mythical portion of his theme, seems to have had more
of an epic character than the later books. It was also
a subject which by its relation to famous localities and
memorials of the past, such as the oldest city-wall, the
Ruminal fig-tree, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the Pala-
tine and Aventine hills, and with the religious and social
organisation of the State, admitted easily of being con-
nected with the present time. It might have been so
treated as to magnify the glory of the Emperor, who
desired to be regarded as the second founder of the city,
and is said to have debated whether he should not assume
the title of Romulus, before deciding on taking that of
Augustus. A poet of bolder and more original invention,
and one more capable of sympathising with the purely
martial characteristics of his hero, might have been at-
tracted by this story of indigenous growth rather than
by the exotic legend on which Virgil has bestowed such
enduring life.
That legend seems, at first sight, to fail in the elements
both of national and human interest. It was purely of
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 299
Greek invention. It seems to have been received by the
Romans at a later stage in their development than that
in which religious or legendary beliefs strike deep root in
the popular imagination. It existed in vague and indistinct
shape, and was associated with no marked individuality of
personages or incidents. It was of composite growth,
made up of many incongruous elements, the product rather
of antiquarian learning and reflexion than of creative
imagination.
The Greek germ out of which the legend arose, and
the acceptance of this explanation of their origin by the
Romans from the beginning of their literary history, are
clearly ascertained. But there is great uncertainty as to
the connecting link between these two stages in the
development of the legend. The continuance of the line
of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy is announced by
the mouth of Poseidon in the twentieth Book of the Iliad
(307-308) :
NOi' 8e 8?) Alveiao fiiij fpwfffffiv dvati
teal iraidwv iraidfs, TOL KCV peTomaOc yevcavrat.
If an historical character may be assigned to any passages
in the Iliad, it may be presumed that the author of these
verses knew of a line of princes ruling over some remnant
of the Trojans, and claiming Aeneas as their ancestor.
But these verses do not imply any removal to a distant
settlement. The Cyclic poet, Arctinus, next spoke of
Aeneas as retiring to Mount Ida and founding a city
there. The earliest traditions accordingly point to the
Troad as the scene of the rule of his descendants : other
traditions however, which must have been known to Virgil,
brought him to Thrace, to various places on the Aegean,
and to Buthrotum in Epirus. The origin of these tradi-
tions is believed to be the connexion of Aeneas with the
worship of Aphrodite,, which was widely spread over the
Mediterranean, probably as a survival of early Phoenician
settlements. This connexion in worship is supposecKtp
have, arisen from a confusion between the Trojan hero
and the title Afreet?, denoting one of the attributes of the
300 FORM AND SUBJECT OF Ti.E AENEID.
goddess. But the writer who first gave the idea of a
Trojan settlement in Italy is said to have been Stesi-
chorus, the lyrical poet of Himera in Sicily, who flourished
about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. One of the
representations in the Ilian table in the Capitoline Museum
exhibits the figures of Aeneas, of his son Ascanius, of the
trumpeter Misenus, and of Anchises carrying the sacred
images, just as they are on the point of embarking on
board their ship. The following inscription is written
under these figures,
Ati/jjas ffvv rots iSiois diraipow cis ri)v 'Eairfplav,
and the 'Du'ov Trepo-ts of Stesichorus is quoted as the
authority for the representation 1 . The motive actuating
Stesichorus was probably the desire to connect the newly-
discovered localities in Italy and Sicily with the cycle of
Homeric narrative. But Stesichorus apparently knew
nothing of a Trojan settlement in Latium ; Siris in Oeno-
tria seems to have been fixed on by him as the place of
refuge for the Palladium and the Penates of Troy. It was
after the destruction of Siris that the fancy of the Greeks
fixed on Lavinium, where there was a worship similar to
that established at Siris, as the ultimate resting-place
of Aeneas. The first definite statement connecting Rome
with Troy was made by Cephalon of Gergis in the Troad
(about 350 B.C.), who ascribed the foundation of the city
to Romus a son of Aeneas. In the course of the next
half century this appears to have become the prevailing
belief among the Greeks, whose attention was now attracted
by the growing ascendency of Rome in Italy. About the
beginning of the third century Timaeus, the Sicilian his-
torian, is said to have shaped the legend into the form
adopted by Naevjus 2 .
It is obvious that there is a great gap in our knowledge
of the stages in the development of the legend between
1 Schwegler, Romische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 298.
2 The account here given of the development of the legend is taken from
Schwegler, Romische Geschichte.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 301
Stesichorus, a poet of the sixth century, and Cephalon, an
historian of the fourth. And the question suggests itself
whether, in the interval between them, the Romans them-
selves had accepted any similar explanation of their origin.
The early connexion between Rome and Cumae renders
it not impossible that the Romans had formed some idea
of their Trojan descent, before the wars of Pyrrhus brought
them into more intimate connexion with the Greeks. It
was by the Greek colonists of Cumae that the Isles of the
Sirens, the Kingdom of the Laestrygones, and the abode
of Circe were localised near Sorrento, the ancient town
of Formiae, and the promontory of Circeii. It seems
probable that to them also may be ascribed the mythical
connexion established between the promontories of Caieta,
Misenum, and Palinurum, in their own immediate neigh-
bourhood, with the names of the household or followers
of Aeneas. The mythical traditions which assign a Greek
origin to various important Latin towns, such as Tibur,
Tusculum, Praeneste, and to the earliest settlement on the
Palatine Hill, probably owe their invention to the same
source. Alba Longa, as the chief city of the old Latin
confederacy, must have been an object of greater interest
to the Cumaeans than Tibur or Tusculum, and if we
could be sure of the existence of the belief in the Trojan
settlement in Latium before the destruction of Alba, we
might infer with probability the great antiquity of the
legend which ascribed the foundation of that town to
the son of Aeneas. This belief might easily have passed
to Rome ; and Cephalon may have received it, in a some-
what distorted form, from native sources. But it is im-
possible to take any step in these conjectures without
feeling the extreme uncertainty of our ground. We really
know nothing of the acceptance of this account of their
origin by the Romans before the time of the First Punic
War; it is not easily reconcileable with the indigenous belief
which certainly struck much deeper roots in the national
history : the story as told by Cephalon appears to exclude
the connexion between Rome and Alba as an intermediate
302 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
link in that between Rome and Troy. It seems, on the
whole, most probable that the story on which the Aeneid
is founded is not only a Greek invention, but is an in-
vention of a late and prosaic time, and was not known to
the Romans before the date of their wars with Pyrrhus.
But besides the foreign and prosaic origin of the story,
there is great vagueness and indistinctness in the incidents
and personages connected with it. Homer indeed has
supplied a definite, though not a marked, outline to the
character of Aeneas ; and Stesichorus, in shaping the family
group of Anchises, Aeneas, and Ascanius flying from Troy
with their household-gods, may have suggested to Virgil
the leading characteristic of his hero. But these were
nearly all the elements in the legend derived from
. primitive poetical sources. There was no individuality
of character attaching to any of the followers of Aeneas,
nor any incident due to early imaginative invention asso-
ciated with the dim tradition of his wanderings. The
story, as finally cast into shape by Virgil, is one of com-
posite growth, made up of many heterogeneous elements,
some supplied by poetical invention and the impressions
of a primitive time, some the products of prosaic rationalism
and the antiquarian fancies of a literary age, some sug-
gested by Greek mythology and others by the ritual
observances of Rome, some directly borrowed from the
Homeric poems, others derived from the traditions of ancient
Italy. It need hardly surprise us if out of such indistinct
and heterogeneous materials Virgil failed to shape a
thoroughly consistent and lifelike representation of human
action and character.
But, on other grounds, the judgment of Virgil may
be justified in the choice of this legend, vague, com-
posite, and unpoetical as it was, as most adapted to his
own genius and to the purpose of his epic poem. It was
: ,the only subject, of national significance, connected with
the Homeric cycle of events. Not only the epic and dra-
matic poets of Greece, but the Roman tragic poets had
recognised the heroic legends of Greece as the legitimate
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 303
material for those forms of poetry which aimed at repre-
senting human action and character with seriousness and
dignity. The personages and events connected with the
Trojan War had especially been made familiar to the
Romans by the works of their early dramatic poets. The
Romans themselves had no mythical back-ground, rich
in poetic associations, to their own history. It was im-
possible for a poet of a literary age to create this back-
ground. But it was possible for him to give substance
and reality to the shadowy connexion, existing in legend
and in the works of older national writers, between the
beginnings of Roman history and this distant region of
poetry and romance. Virgil's imagination, as was seen in
the examination of the Georgics, was peculiarly susceptible
of the impressions produced by a remote antiquity and by
old poetic associations. If he was deficient in spontaneous
invention, he possessed a remarkable power of giving new
life to the creations of earlier times. Next to the inven-
tion of a new world of wonder and adventure, a work
most difficult of accomplishment in a late stage of human
development,-|-the most attractive aim which an epic poet
could set before himself was that of reviving, under new
conditions and with an immediate reference to the feelings
of his contemporaries, an image of the old Homeric life.
The subject of the wanderings and subsequent adventures
of Aeneas enabled Virgil to tell again, and from a new
point of view, the old story of the fall of Troy, to present
a modern version of the sea-adventures of the Odyssey,
and to awaken the interest of a nation of soldiers in the
martial passions of an earlier and ruder age.
Although there is no evidence that the connexion of
Rome with Troy had sunk deeply into the popular mind
before the time of Virgil, yet it had been recognised in
official acts of the State for more than two centuries. So
early as the First Punic War the Acarnanians had applied
to the Romans for assistance against the Aetolians, on
the ground' that their ancestors alone among the Greeks
had taken no part in the Trojan War. The Senate had
304 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
offered alliance and friendship to King Seleucus on condi-
tion of his exempting the people of Ilium, as kinsmen of
the Romans, from tribute 1 . T. Flamininus, in declaring
all the Greeks free after the conclusion of the Second Mace-
donian War, described himself as one of the Aeneadae 2 .
In the Second Punic War, the prophet Marcius uses the
word Troiugena as an epithet of the Romans :
Amnem Troiugena Cannam Romane fuge 3 .
So early as the time of Timaeus, i. e. before the First Punic
War, the connexion of Aeneas with the worship of the
Penates at Lavinium had been recognised. His own
worship also established itself in the religion of the State
by his identification with Jupiter Indiges, who seems to
have had a temple on the banks of the river Numicius.
Many families among the Roman aristocracy, as for
instance the Cluentii, Sergii, Memmii 4 , claimed to be
descended from the followers of Aeneas. From the time
of Naevius this account of the origin of the Romans
had been the accepted belief in all Latin literature. Ennius
begins his annals from the date
Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo.
The poet Attius had written a tragedy called Aeneadae.
The Roman annalists started with the tradition as an
accepted fact. Thus Livy in reference to this belief uses
the expression ' satis constat/ The great antiquarian
Varro wrote a treatise on the Trojan origin of Roman
families. Cicero in his Verrine orations (act ii. 4. 33)
speaks of the relationship of the people of Segesta in
1 Suetonius says of the Emperor Claudius, ' Iliensibus, quasi Romanae
gentis auctoribus, tributa in perpetuum remisit, recitata vetere epistula Graeca
Senatus populique Roniani Seleuco regi amicitiam et societatem ita demum
pollicentis, si consanguineos suos Ilienses ab omni onere immunes praestitisset.'
For these and other official recognitions of the connexion between Rome and
Ilium, see Schwegler, Romische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 305 et seq.
2 Mommsen (book iii. ch. 14) quotes these two lines from an Epigram com-
posed in the name of Flamininus :
AivfuSas Tiros v^iv virepTarov wnafff Swpov
v Tfvas iraialv
3 Livy, xxv. 12. 4 Aen. v. 117-123,
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEW. 305
Sicily, which claimed to be a colony founded by Aeneas,
with the Roman people. Even Lucretius, who stands
apart from the general traditional beliefs of his country-
men, begins his poem with the words ' Aeneadum gene-
trix.' Virgil's poem appealed not to the popular taste,
but to the national, religious, aristocratic, and literary
sympathies of the cultivated classes. The legend of
Aeneas, if less ancient and less popular, assigned a more
august origin to the Roman race than the tale of the birth
of Romulus :
Ab love principium generis, love Dardana pubes
Gaudet avo; rex ipse lovis de gente suprema
Troius Aeneas, etc. 1 .
These considerations may have recommended this sub-
ject to Virgil, as the most suitable symbol of the idea
of Rome, from both a national and religious point of
view. But the circumstance which must have absolutely
determined his choice was the claim which the Julian
gens made to be directly .descended from lulus, Aeneas,
and the goddess Venus. This claim Virgil had already
acknowledged in the line (Eel. ix. 47),
Ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum,
and again (Georg. i. 38),
cingens materna tempora myrto 2 .
Even Julius Caesar had shown the importance which he
attached to it by taking . the words * Venus Victrix ' for
his watchword at the battle of Pharsalia. A greater
tribute was paid to the qualities of Augustus, a more
august consecration was conferred on his rule by repre-
senting that rule as a prominent object in the counsels of
Heaven a thousand years before its actual establishment,
than could have been bestowed on him by the most de-
tailed and ornate account of his actual successes. The
1 Aen. vii 219-220.
2 Cf. Sic fatus vekit materna tempora myrto. Aen. v. 72.
VOL. I. X
306 FORM' AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
personal, as distinct from the national motive of the poem,
is revealed in the prophetic lines attributed to Jupiter,
Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
lulius, a. magno demissum nomeri lulo 1 .
While the vagueness of the tradition and the absence of
definite incident and individual character associated with
it were conditions unfavourable to novelty and vividness
of representation, yet they allowed to Virgil great latitude
in carrying out his purpose of giving body and substance
to all that unknown and shadowy past, which survived
only in names, customs, and ceremonies. He was not
limited to any particular district or period. His plan
enabled him to embrace in the compass of his epic the
dim traditions connected with the ' origins ' of the famous
towns and tribes of Central Italy and of several of the
great Roman families ; it enabled him to imagine the
primitive state of places which had a world-wide celebrity
in his own time ; to invoke, as an element of poetic inter-
est, the veneration paid to the ancient rites of religion ;
and to cast an idealising light on events, personages,
families, or customs familiar to his own age, by associating
them with the sentiment of art immemorial past. One
great excellence of the Aeneid, as a representative poem,
is the large prospect of Roman and Italian life which it
opens up before us. The vague outlines of the story which
he followed enabled Virgil to enlarge his conception with
an ampler content of local and national material, than
if he had been called upon to recast a more definite
and more vital tradition. The want of individuality in
the personages of his story justified him in exhibiting
their character in accordance with his own ideal ; in con-
ceiving of Aeneas as the type of antique piety combined
with modern humanity, and of Turnus as the type of
the haughty and martial spirit animating the old Italian
race.
1 Aen. i. 286-288.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 307
Even the composite character of the legend and the
heterogeneous elements out of which it was composed,
if unfavourable to unity of impression and simplicity of
execution, conduced to the poet's purpose of concentrating
intone representation, of a Roman vastness of compass,
whatever might enhance and illustrate the greatness of
Rome and of its ruler. The Rome of the Augustan Age
no longer exhibited the political and religious unity of
an old Italian republic ; it was expanding its limits so
as to embrace in a much wider unity the various nations
that had played their part in the past history of the
world. As the glory and wealth of Asia, Greece, Car-
thage, etc. had all gone to swell the glory and wealth
of Rome, so all the traditions, historic memories, and
literary art of the past were to be made tributary to
her national representative poem. The first great epic
poem of the ancient world is buoyant with the mighty
promise of the life which was to be ; the last great epic
is weighty with the accumulated experience of all that
had been. The stream of epic poetry shows no longer
the jubilant force and purity of waters 'exercita cursu
Flumina' which rise in the high mountain-land separating
barbarism from civilisation ; it moves more slowly and less
clearly through more level and cultivated districts ; its
volume is swollen and its weight increased by tributaries
which have never known the ' bright speed l ' of its nobler
sources.
III.
Composite character of the Aeneid illustrated by an
examination of the poem.
These considerations lead to the conclusion that the
legend of Aeneas was better suited than any other which
he could have selected for the two objects which Virgil
1 ' Oxus forgetting the bright speed he had
In his high mountain cradle in Pamere.' Sohrab and Rustum.
X 2
308 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
had before his mind in the composition of the Aeneid ;
first, that of writing a poem representative and comme-
morative of Rome and of his own epoch, in the spirit in
which some of the great architectural works of the Empire,
such as the Column of Trajan, the Arches of Titus and
of Constantine, were erected ; and, secondly, that of writing
an imitative epic of action, manners, and character which
should afford to his countrymen an interest analogous
to that which the Greeks derived from the Homeric
poems. The knowledge necessary to enable him to fulfil
the first purpose was contained in such works as the
ceremonial books of the various Priestly Colleges, the
' Origines ' of Cato, the antiquarian treatises of Varro, and
perhaps the ' Annales ' and ' Fasti l ' which preserved the
record of national and family traditions. In giving life
to these dry materials his mind was animated by the
spectacle of Rome, and the thought of her wide empire,
her genius, character, and history; by the visible sur-
vivals of ancient ceremonies and memorials of the past ;
by the sight of the great natural features of the land, of
old Italian towns of historic renown, or, where they had
disappeared, of the localities still marked by their name :
locus Ardea quondam
Dictus avis; et nunc magnum tenet Ardea nomen.
As poetic sources of inspiration for this part of his task
Virgil had the national epic poems of Naevius and Ennius ;
and of both of these he made use : of the first, in his ac-
count of the storm which drives Aeneas to Carthage and
of his entertainment there by the Carthaginian Queen ; of
the second, by his use of many half-lines and expressions
which give an antique and stately character to the descrip-
tion of incidents or the expression of sentiment. For
VirgiJ^qther purpose, his chief materials were derived
from liis intimate familiarity with the two great Homeric
1 CtHor.Od. iii. 17. 2-4:
Quando et priores hinc Lamias ferunt
Denominates, et nepotum
Per memores genus omne fastos, etc.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 309
poems : but he availed himself also of incidents contained
in the Homeric Hymns, in the Cyclic poems, in the Greek
Tragedies, as for instance the lost Laocoon of Sophocles,
and in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius. His own
experience of life, and still more the insight which his
own nature afforded him into various moods of passion,
affection, and chivalrous emotion, enabled him to impart
novelty and individuality to the materials which he derived
from these foreign and ancient sources.
A minute examination of the various books of the poem
would bring out clearly that these two objects, that of
raising a monument to the glory of Rome and of Augustus,
and that of writing an imitative epic reproducing some
image of the manners and life of the heroic age, were
present to the mind of Virgil through his whole under-
taking. It will be sufficient in order to show this two-fold
purpose to look at the first book, and at some of the more
prominent incidents in the later books.
In the opening lines of the poem
Arma virumque . . . multa quoque et bello passus
we find, as in the Odyssey
dvSpa pot Wf!T . . . ira8fv a\yea bv Kara Ovfji6v
an announcement of a poem of heroic adventure, of vicis-
situdes and suffering by sea and land, determined by the
personal agency of some of the old Olympian gods (' vi
superum'). The scope of the Aeneid as explained in
these lines is however wider than that of the Odyssey,
as embracing the warlike action of the Iliad as well as
a tale of sea-adventure. But in the statement of the
motive of the poems a more essential difference between
the two epics is apparent. The wanderings of Odysseus
have no other aim than a safe return for himself and
his companions. He acts from the simplest and most
elemental of human instincts and affections, the love of
life and of home,
apvvfj,evos ijv re if/vxfy Kal votfrov
310 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENE1D.
Aeneas, like Odysseus, starts on his adventures after the
capture of Troy,
Troiae qui primus ab oris
fiTfl r Tpotr}$ lepbv irro\i(0pov
but he starts, c fato profugus,' on no accidental adventure,
but on an enterprise with far-reaching consequences,
determined by a Divine purpose. While actively engaged
in the personal object of finding a safe settlement for
himself and his followers in Italy, he is at the same time
a passive instrument in the hands of Providence, laying
the foundation, both secular and religious, of the future
government of the world :
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae.
The difference in character of the two epics is perceptible
in the very sound of their opening lines. While the Latin
moves with stateliness and dignity and is weighty with
the burden of the whole world's history, the Greek is
fluent and buoyant with the spirit and life of the ' novitas
florida mundi.' The greatness of Aeneas is a kind of
' imputed ' greatness ; he is important to the world as
bearing the weight of the glory and destiny of the future
Romans
Attollens humero famamque et fata nepotum.
Odysseus is great in the personal qualities of courage,
steadfastness of purpose and affection, loyalty to his com-
rades, versatility, ready resource ; but he bears with him
only his own fortunes and those of the companions of
his adventure ; he ends his career as he begins it, the
chief of a small island, which derives all its importance
solely from its early association with his fortunes.
The double purpose of the Aeneid, and its contrast in
this respect with the Homeric poems, are further seen
in the statement of the motives influencing the Divine
beings by whose agency the action is advanced or im-
peded. As in the opening paragraph Virgil had the
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 311-
opening lines of the Odyssey in view, in the second,
which announces the supernatural motive of the poem
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso
he had in view the passage in the Iliad beginning with the
line
Tis T' ap ffcpue OtSiv epiSi iJVfr)Kf
In the Iliad the supernatural cause of the action is the
wrath of Apollo, acting from the personal desire to avenge
the wrong done to his priest Chryses : in the Odyssey, it
is the wrath of Poseidon acting from the personal desire to
avenge the suffering of his son whom Odysseus blinded :
dAAct TlofffiSdcav yairjoxos dfffcc\fs aid
KVK\OJTTO$ KC)(6\<arai, bv 6<pOa\fj,ov
The gods in both cases act from personal passion without
moral purpose or political object. So too the powers which
befriend Odysseus act from personal regard to him and
acknowledgment of his wisdom and piety :
OS TTfpl fJLtV V60V fffTt 0pOTWV, TTfpl 8' Ipcl OtOlfflV
dOavdroiffiv 4'Sowe, rol ovpavov cvpvv
In the Aeneid, Juno, by whose agency in hindering the
settlement of Aeneas in Italy the events of the poem are
brought about, acts from two sets of motives ; the first
bringing the action into connexion with one of the great
crises in the history of Rome, the second bringing it into
connexion with the Trojan traditions. Prominence is given
to the first motive, in the announcement of which the
deadly struggle between Rome and Carthage, 'when all
men were in doubt under whose empire they should fall by
land and sea 1 ,' is anticipated :
Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni,
Karthago . . .
hoc regnum dea gentibus esse,
Si qua fata sinant, iam turn tenditque fovetque.
Progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci
Audierat, Tyrias olim quae verteret arces;
Hinc populum late regent be'loque superbum
Venturum excidio Libyae ; sic volvere Parcas.
1 Lucret. iii. 836.
312 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
In two other passages of the Aeneid this great internecine
contest for the empire of the world, which left so deep an
impression on the Roman memory, is seen foreshadowing
itself, viz. in the dying denunciation and prayer of Dido,
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,
and in the speech of Jupiter in the great council of the
gods in. the tenth book a passage imitated from Ennius :
Adveniet iustum pugnae, ne arcessite, tempus,
Cum fera Karthago Romanis arcibus olim
Exitium magnum atque Alpes inmittet apertas.
But to this motive are added other motives, both political*
and personal, the memory of her former enmity to Troy
arising out of her love to Argos, of the slight offered to her
beauty by the judgment of Paris, and of the occasion given
to her jealousy by the honour awarded to Ganymede :
manet alta mente repostum
ludicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae,
Et genus invisum et rapti Ganymedis honores.
These two sets of motives bring out distinctly the two-
fold character of the action of the poem, its inner relation
to the future fulfilment of the Roman destiny, its more
immediate dependence on the past events forming the
subject of the Homeric poems. The prominence in Virgil's
mind of the Roman over the Greek influences, in which his
epic had its origin, is indicated by the position and weight
of the line of cardinal significance
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem;
just as the dominant influence under which Lucretius wrote
his poem is indicated by the position and weight of the
line
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
In entering on the detailed narrative, which forms the
main body of the poem, Virgil at once attaches himself to
Homer. The action, like the action of the Odyssey, is
taken up at that stage immediately preceding the events
of most critical interest, after which it advances steadily to
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 313
the final catastrophe. The slower movement of the story
in the years between the fall of Troy and the departure
from Sicily is presupposed, and, like the adventures of
Odysseus before his departure from the Isle of Calypso,
the adventures of Aeneas are subsequently narrated by the
principal actor in them. The storm which drives the
Trojan fleet to the Carthaginian coast was an incident in
the epic of Naevius ; but the original suggestion and the
actual description of it are due to the account of the storm
raised by Poseidon in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Juno,
in availing herself of the instrumentality of Aeolus, bribes
him by a promise similar to that made to Sleep in the
fourteenth book of the Iliad. The description of the harbour
in which the Trojan ships find refuge is imitated from that
of the harbour to which the Phaeacian ship brings Odysseus ;
and the success of Aeneas in the chase is suggested by two
passages in the Odyssey, ix. 154 et seq. and x. 104 et seq.
The speech of Aeneas (198-207) again reminds us of the
ultimate object of all the vicissitudes and dangers which he
encounters :
Per varies casus, per tot discrimina rerum
Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt.
Immediately afterwards we come upon one of the three v
great passages of the poem in which the action is propheti-
cally advanced into the Augustan Age. These three
passages (i. 223-296, vi. 756-860, viii. 626-731), like the
greater episodes of the Georgics, draw attention directly
to what is the most vital and most permanent source of
interest in the Aeneid. They serve, along with the
opening lines of the poem, better than any other passages
to bring out the relation both of dependence on the
Homeric epic and of contrast with it which characterise
the Virgilian epic.
The passage before us, the interview between Jupiter
and Venus, owes its original suggestion to the scene in the
first book of the Iliad in which Thetis intercedes with Zeus,
to avenge the wrong done to her son. The object of this
314 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
intercession is a purely personal one ; the result of it is
the whole series of events which culminate in the death of
Hector. The object which Venus claims of Jupiter is the
fulfilment of his promise that a people should arise from
the blood of Teucer
Qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent ;
the result of her prayer is that Jupiter reveals to her not
only the immediate future of Aeneas and the founding of
Lavinium and of Alba, but the birth of Romulus, the
building of Rome, the ultimate triumph of the house of
Assaracus over Pthia, Mycenae, and Argos, the peaceful
reign on earth and the final acceptance into heaven of the
greatest among the descendants of Aeneas, who is there
called, not by his later title of Augustus, but by the earlier
name which he inherited from his adoptive father
lulius a magno demissum nomen lulo.
In this passage we note (i) Virgil's relation to the earlier
poem of Naevius, who had sketched the outline of the
scene which is here filled up ; and also the reproduction of
the diction of Ennius in the passage
Despiciens mare velivolum terrasque iacentis
Literaque et latos populos;
and in this
Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat;
and (2) we note a reference to the closing of the gate of
Janus in the line
Claudentur Belli portae ;
and apparently to some symbolical representation in the
art of the Augustan Age in the words which follow
Furor impius intus,
Saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus aenis
Post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento 1 .
1 Cf. the note on the passage in Servius : ' In foro Augtisti introeuntibus ad
sinistram fuit bellum pictum et furor sedens super arma aenis vinctus, eo
habitu quo poeta dixit.'
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 315
After this digression the action proceeds according to
Homeric precedents. Mercury is sent to Dido, as Hermes
is sent to Calypso in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Then
follows the meeting of Venus with Aeneas and Anchises,
the picturesque and poetical features of which scene are
suggested by a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Aphro-
dite, describing the meeting of the goddess with Anchises.
The Trojan heroes pass on to Carthage concealed in a
mist, as Odysseus makes his way to the city of the
Phaeacians. The pictorial representation of the events of
the Trojan war on the walls of the temple of Juno is
suggested partly by the pictorial art of the Augustan Age,
and partly by the song of the bard in the eighth book of
the Odyssey, celebrating the
vtiKos 'QSvffffrjos real Tlr)\ei8u 'Axt^A^os.
So too the later banquet in the palace of Dido is suggested
partly by the feast in the hall of Alcinous, partly by the
magnificence of Roman entertainments in the Augustan
Age, such as those referred to in the lines of Lucretius
Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.
Finally, the device by which Venus substitutes Cupid for
Ascanius is borrowed from the Argonautics of Apollonius ;
the introduction of the various suitors of Dido is suggested
by the part which the suitors of Penelope play in the
Odyssey; and the request of Dido to Aeneas to recount
his past adventures owes its origin to the similar request
made by Alcinous to Odysseus.
It is in the first book that Virgil adheres most closely to
his Greek guides ; yet even in it we observe many traces of
modern invention, which give a new character to the repre-
sentation. The thought of Italy in the immediate future
Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt,
Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae ;
Oenotri coluere viri ; nunc fama, minores
Italiam dixisse ducis de nomine gen tern
and the remoter vision of the 'altae moenia Romae' remind
us that we are contemplating no mere recast of a Greek
316 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
legend, but a great national monument of the race which
during the longest period of history has played the greatest
part in human affairs. The old gods of Olympus appear
on earth once more, and now with all the attributes of
Roman state, as ' principalities and powers ' contending
for the empire of the world, and as instruments in the
hands of destiny for the furthering of the great work which
was only fully accomplished by Augustus.
In the recital of the fall of Troy, which occupies the
second book, Virgil is said by Macrobius to have adhered
almost verbally 1 to the work of a Greek poet, Pisander, the
author of a poetical history of the world from the marriage
of Jupiter and Juno down to the events contemporary with
the poet himself. There seem to have been three Greek
poets of that name, and the only one of them who was
likely to have treated at any length of the events of that
single night recorded in the second Aeneid is said to have
lived after the time of Virgil. It seems impossible that
any earlier poet could have assigned so much space as that
demanded by the statement of Macrobius to the personal
adventures of Aeneas. We are on surer ground in recog-
nising the debt which Virgil owed to the account of the
wooden horse in the Odyssey, to some of the lost plays
of Sophocles, which told the tale of the treachery of
Sinon and of the tragic fate of Laocoon, and to some of
the lost Cyclic poems and the 'IXiou Wpo-ts of Stesichorus.
The vision of Hector to Aeneas reminds us of that of
Patroclus to Achilles ; but in this resemblance we recognise
also the difference between the poem founded on personal
and that founded on national fortunes. The care which
summons the shade of Patroclus to the couch of his friend
is the care for his own burial ; the care which brings
Hector back to earth is the care for the salvation of the
sacred relics of Troy in view of the great destiny which
awaited them. There is more of human pathos in the
vision of Patroclus; more of a stately majesty in that of
1 Sat. v. 2. 4.
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 317
Hector. And as in other passages where Virgil wishes
to produce this effect, we note that he avails himself here of
the language of Ennius,
Hei mihi, qualis erat.
So too, near the end of the book, where the shade of
Creusa gives to Aeneas the first intimation of his set-
tlement in a western land,
Et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva
Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Thybris,
the same antique associations are appealed to 1 . So also
in describing the destruction of the palace of Priam, Virgil
is said to have imitated the description by Ennius of the
destruction of Alba 2 . And that feeling of ancient state
and majesty with which the memory of Troy is invested
in such lines as
Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominata per annos,
had been first expressed in the ' Andromache ' of the older
poet.
Among the sources which Virgil used in the third book
were probably the prose accounts of the late Greek his-
torians, who rationalised the traditions of the various
settlements of Aeneas which grew out of his association
with the worship of Aphrodite. But the whole suggestion
of sea-adventure, and still more of the incidents arising out
of the visit to the land of the Cyclops, is due to the
Odyssey, while the events connected with the landing in
Thrace and in Epirus owe their origin to the Hecuba and
Andromache of Euripides. But, on the other hand, the
exact geographical knowledge displayed in it imparts
a thoroughly modern character to the book ; and one
passage at least (as has been shown by a writer in the
Journal of Philology) the description of the voyage round
the eastern and southern shores of Sicily is so minutely
1 The line
Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen
occurs among the fragments of Ennius, and has been imitated also by Lucretius
(v. 271).
2 Serv. Comment, on line 486.
318 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
accurate in detail as to give clear indication of being drawn
from the personal experience of the author. Again, the
frequent mention of Italy in the book, the speech of
Helenus which announces the old traditional omen of the
white sow, the direction as to the mode of performing
religious ceremonies which the Romans should observe in
all future times,
Hac casti maneant in religione nepotes,
and the trophy raised by Aeneas on the shores of Actium,
help to remind us of the modern meaning which Virgil
desired to impart to his representation of antique manners.
The fourth book, in which Virgil deserts the guidance of
Homer for that of the Alexandrine epic, is intended to
give the most passionate human, as distinct from the
pervading national, interest to the poem. But the tragic
nature of the situation arises from the clashing between
natural feeling and the great considerations of State by
which the divine actors in the drama were influenced.
The death of Dido gives moreover a poetical justifica-
tion for the deadly enmity which animated the struggle
between Rome and her most dangerous antagonist. The
fifth book follows the old tradition as old at least as
the time of Thucydides which represented Trojan settle-
ments as established in Sicily. The account of the founda-
tion of Segesta by the followers of Aeneas, and the story
of the burning of the ships by the Trojan women, may
have been told by Timaeus ; and it was natural to ascribe
to her son the building of the famous temple of Venus
Erycina. But the greater part of the book is occupied
with an account of the funeral games in honour of Anchises,
which, with modifications to suit the changed locality, re-
produce the games which Achilles celebrated in honour
of Patroclus. But the account of these games serves the
purpose of giving some individuality to three of the most
shadowy personages in the poem by establishing their
connexion with three illustrious Roman families, and to
flatter Augustus by assigning an ancient origin to the
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 319
Ludus Troiae, a kind of bloodless tournament of noble
youths exhibited in the early years of his reign, and also,
by the invention of a fabulous ancestor, to add distinction
to the provincial family of the Atii, which was more truly
ennobled by the great personal qualities of the Emperor's
mother, Atia.
With the landing in Italy the narrative assumes greater
independence. The various localities introduced and the
traditions connected with them, the usages or ceremonies
peculiar to Italy which admit of being referred to an
immemorial past, the mere Italian names of Latinus and
Turnus, Mezentius and Camilla, are able to evoke national
and sometimes modern associations. Thus the introduc-
tion of the Cumaean Sibyl into the narrative affords the
opportunity of reminding the Romans of the importance
assigned to the Sibylline prophecies in their national coun-
sels ; and the impressive ceremony of the opening of the
gates of war enables the poet to appeal to the patriotic
impulses of his own age, in the lines
Sive Getis inferre manu lacrimabile bellum
Hyrcanisve Arabisve parant, seu tendere ad Indos
Auroramque sequi Parthosque reposcere signa.
But many of the warlike incidents in the later books as
for instance the night foray of Nisus and Euryalus, the
treacherous wounding of Aeneas, the withdrawal by super-
natural agency of Turnus from the battle, the death of
Pallas and the effect which that event has on Aeneas, and
the final conflict between Turnus and Aeneas show that
Virgil was still following in the footsteps of his original
guide. But the passages which bring out most clearly both
this relation of Virgil to Homer and his point of departure
from him are those which give an account of the descent
into hell and describe the shield of Aeneas. The sixth
book of the Aeneid owes its existence to the eleventh
book of the Odyssey : but the shadowy conceptions of the
Homeric ' Inferno,' suggested by the impulses of natural
curiosity and the yearnings of human affection, are enlarged
and made more definite, on the one hand, by thoughts
320 FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
derived from Plato, and, on the other, by the proudest
memories of Roman history, from the legends of the Alban
kings to the warlike and peaceful triumphs of the Augustan
Age. The shield of Achilles presents to the imagination
the varied spectacle of human life sowing and reaping, a
city besieged, a marriage festival, etc. ; the shield of Aeneas
presents the spectacle of the most momentous crises in
the annals of Rome, culminating in the great triumph of
Augustus. We note too in the latter passage the enhance-
ment of patriotic sentiment by the use of the language and
representation of Ennius, as at lines 630-634, and the
lesson taught of the dependence of national welfare on the
observance of religious traditions and of the duties of life
sanctioned by religion, in the lines which describe the
processions of the Salii and Luperci, and which indicate the
punishment awarded to the sin of rebellion and disloyalty
in the person of Catiline, and the recognition of civic virtue,
even when exercised in defence of a losing cause, in the
position assigned to Cato in the nether world
Secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem.
The Iliad and the Odyssey are thus seen to be essen-
tially epics of human life ; the Aeneid is essentially the
epic of national glory. The Iliad indeed is the noblest
monument of the greatness, as it is of the genius, of the
Greeks. And the Aeneid is much more than a monument
of national glory. It is full of pathetic situations and
stirring incidents which move our human compassion or
kindle our sympathies with heroic action. But if we ask
what are the most powerful sources of interest in the Greek
and in the Roman epic respectively, we answer that in the
first these spring immediately out of human life ; in the
second they spring out of the national fortunes. And this
distinction is generally recognisable in the art, literature,
and history of the two nations. This predominance of
national interest and the presence of a large element of
living modern interest in the treatment of an ancient legend
separate the Aeneid still further from the Alexandrine epic
FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID. 321
and its later Roman imitations. The compliance with the
conditions of epic poetry, as established by Homer and
confirmed by the great law-giver of Greek criticism, equally
separates it from the rude attempts of Ennius and Naevius,
and from the poems which treat of historical subjects of
a limited and temporary significance, such as the Pharsalia
of Lucan and the Henriade of Voltaire. Though Virgil
may be the most imitative, he is at the same time one of
the most original poets of antiquity. We saw that he had
produced a new type of didactic poetry. By the meaning
and unity which he has imparted to his Greek, Roman, and
Italian materials through the vivifying and harmonising
agency of permanent national sentiment and of the imme-
diate feeling of the hour, he may be said to have created
a new type of epic poetry to have produced a work of
genius representative of his country as well as a master-
piece of art.
VOL. I.
CHAPTER X.
THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
I.
Various Modes of National Sentiment expressed in
the Aeneid.
THE Aeneid, like the Annals of Ennius, is a poem in-
spired by national sentiment, and expressive of the idea
of Rome. But the ' Res Romana 1 ,' the growth of which
Ennius witnessed and celebrated, had become greatly ex-
tended and had assumed a new form since the epic of
the Republic was written. Yet the sentiment of national
glory was essentially the same in the age of the elder
Scipio and in the age of Augustus, though in the first it
may be described as still militant, in the second as
triumphant. In each time the Romans had a firm con-
viction of their superiority over all other nations, and a
firm trust in the great destiny which had attended them
since their origin, and still, as they believed, awaited
them in the future. The ground on which their national
self-esteem rested was their capacity for conquest and
government ; the result of that capacity was only fully
visible after the empire over the world was established.
The pride of empire is thus the most prominent modern
which the national sentiment asserts itself in the poetry of
the Augustan Age. In that series of Odes in which the
1 Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis.
THE AENEID, ETC.
art of Horace becomes the organ of the new government
this sentiment finds expression by the mouth of the old
enemy of the Roman race, the goddess Juno :
Horrenda late .nomen in ultimas
Extendat oras, qua medius liquor
Secernit Europen ab Afro,
Qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus.
* * * *
Quicunque mundi terminus obstitit,
Hunc tanget armis, visere gestiens,
Qua parte debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebulae pluviique rores.
And while it animates even the effeminate tones of the
elegiac poets to a more manly sound, this pride of empire
is the dominant mode of patriotic enthusiasm in the
Aeneid. Thus, in the very beginning of the poem, Virgil
describes the people destined to spring from the remnant
of the Trojans as
populum late regem belloque superbum.
To them Jupiter himself promises empire without limit
either in time or place :
His ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono, '
Imperium sine fine dedi J .
In the same passage he sums up their greatness in the arts
of war and peace in the line
Romanes rerum dominos gentemque togatam 2 .
The earliest oracle given to Aeneas in the course of his
wanderings contains the promise of universal dominion :
Hie domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris,
Et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis 3 .
The sacred images of the gods who are partners of his
enterprise make a similar announcement to him :
Nos tumidum sub te permensi classibus aequor,
Idem ventures tollemus in astra nepotes,
Imperiumque urbi dabimus 4 .
In the fourth book Jupiter, who appears rather as contem-
1 i. 278-9. 2 1/282. 8 iii. 97-8.
324 THE AENEID AS THE
plating the future course of affairs than as actively influ-
encing it, speaks of Aeneas in these words :
Sed fore, qui gravidam imperils belloque frementem
Italiam regeret, genus alto a sanguine Troiae
Proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem 1 .
In the famous passage in the sixth book the mission of
Rome is summed up, in contrast to the artistic glories of
Greece, in the lines
^ Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(Hae tibi erunt artes) pacique inponere morem,
Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos 2 .
The oracle of Faunus thus announces to Latinus the great
future which awaited the race destined to arise from the
union of the Trojans and Italians :
Extern! venient generi, qui sanguine nostrum
Nomen in astra ferant, quorumque ab stirpe nepotes
Omnia sub pedibus, qua Sol utrumque recurrens
Aspicit Oceanum, vertique regique videbunt 3 .
In the ninth book Virgil for once breaks through the im-
personal reserve of the epic singer to claim for Nisus and
Euryalus an eternity of fame,
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit*.
In several of these passages it is not merely the pride of
conquest and dominion which is expressed, but the higher
and humaner belief that the ultimate mission of Rome is
to give law and peace to the world. Thus the initiation of
lulus into war is accompanied by the declaration put into
the mouth of Apollo
iure omnia bella
Gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident 5 .
In this way Virgil softens and humanises the idea
of the Imperial State, representing her as not only the
conqueror but the civiliser of the ancient world, and the
1 iv. 229-31. " vi. 852-4. 3 vii, 98-101.
4 ix. 448-9. 5 ix. 642-3.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 325
transmitter of that civilisation to the world of the future.
And while he invests the thought of ancient and powerful
sovereignty with imaginative associations, and describes
acts of heroism with the glow of martial enthusiasm, yet
the crowning glory which he ascribes to the Romans is
the piety inherited from their Trojan ancestors. The
final appeasement of the rancour of Juno is secured by the
declaration of Jupiter
Hinc genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget,
Supra homines, supra ire deos pietate videbis,
Nee gens ulla tuos aeque celebrabit honores l .
The national idea of Rome was associated also with the
thought of the divine origin, the great antiquity, the un-
broken tradition, and the eternal duration of the State.
Universal empire, uninterrupted continuity of existence,
were the claims of the ancient Imperial as of the modern
Ecclesiastical Rome. And this idea, by the strong hold
which it had on the minds first of the Romans themselves
and afterwards of other nations, went far to realise itself.
The confidence of the Romans in themselves was intimately
connected with their belief in their origin. Ennius had
impressed on their minds the belief in the miraculous birth
of their founder and in his miraculous elevation after death,
and in the protection afforded by the ' augustum augurium '
by which the building of their city had been consecrated.
Among no people did ancient customs and ceremonies, of
which in many cases the origin was altogether forgotten, sur-
vive with such vitality. In no other people did the memory
of their past history, whether of triumph or disaster, exercise
so potent an influence on the present time. In no Republic
has the pride of birth and the reverence felt to ancestors
been so powerful and prevailing a sentiment : no State
has ever been more loyal to the memory of the men who at
successive crises in its history had served it or saved it from
its enemies : and no great secular power ever felt so strong
an assurance of an unbroken ascendency in the future,
1 xii. 838-40.
326 THE AENEID AS THE
and of the dependence of the fate of the world on that
ascendency.
The Aeneid appealed to all these sentiments even with
more power than the epic of the Republic and than the
various national histories in which Roman literature was
peculiarly rich. Virgil, while still leaving to his country-
men the pride of their descent from Mars, made them feel
the charm of their relation to a more gracious divinity,
and even the hereditary claim which they had to regard
themselves as special objects of care to the Supreme Ruler
of Heaven 1 . The association of their destiny with the
fortunes of Aeneas enabled them to look back to a remoter
and more famous epoch of antiquity than the legends of
their origin which had satisfied the fancy of the older
Romans. Various passages in the poem enable Virgil
to invest impressive ceremonies, existing in his own time,
with the associations of an immemorial past. The three
great prophetic passages in the first, sixth, and eighth
books enable him to revive, as Ennius had done, the
thought of the great men and families of Rome, and of
the great events both of earlier and more recent history.
The march of Roman conquest during one hundred and
fifty momentous years enabled the younger poet to evoke
greater, though in some respects less happy, memories than
those evoked by his predecessor. And the security of the
Empire established in his day justified him in looking
forward to the future with even a more assured confiden.ce,
though perhaps in a less sanguine spirit.
The national sentiment manifesting itself in the pride of
empire and deeply rooted in the past, was combined with
strong local attachments and the attribution of a kind
of sanctity to the great natural features of the land or
to spots associated with historic memories which had im-
pressed themselves on the hearts of successive generations.
Virgil was, as we saw in examining the Georgics, peculiarly
susceptible of such impressions. There is no passage in
any ancient writer which makes us feel so vividly the
1 vii. 219, etc.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 327
' religio loci ' which has for more than two thousand years
invested the very site of Rome than that in the eighth
book of the Aeneid, in which Evander conducts Aeneas
over the ground destined to be occupied by the temples
and dwellings of Rome. The feeling which the sight of
the Capitoline hill and of the Tarpeian rock calls forth is one
rather of religious awe than of any more familiar sentiment.
The feeling, on the other hand, with which the Tiber is
introduced
Caeruleus Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis
is one rather of proud affection than of religious veneration.
The aspect of the great city itself awed the imagination
rather than called forth the affections of her citizens.
But these affections were given to the rivers and streams,
the lakes, and mountain-homes of Italy. Patriotism in
the Augustan Age was as much an Italian as a Roman
sentiment. The military greatness of Rome was even more
identified with the discipline and courage of the Marsian
and Apulian 1 soldier than with that of the Latin race 2 .
Her moral greatness is more often identified by the poets
with the virtues of the old Sabellian stock than with those
of the ' populus Romanus Quiritium.' While the Georgics
celebrate the peaceful glory and beauty of Italy, the
Aeneid evokes the memory of its old warlike renown
quibus Itala iam turn
Floruerit terra alma viris, quibus arserit armis 3 .
The first omen 4 which meets the Trojans on approaching
Italy marks it out as a land ' potens armis ' as well as
' ubere glaebae.' The speech of Remulus in the ninth book
identifies the ancient rural life of Italy with the hardihood
1 Hor. Od. iii. 5. 9.
2 The Latin name seems rather associated with the thought of the other
great distinguishing characteristic of the Romans, their capacity for law. Cf.
Hor. Od. iv. 14. 7, ' Quern legis expertes Latinae,' etc. Virgil may intend to
indicate this peaceful attribute of the Latins, in contradistinction to the warlike
energy of the other Italian races, in the line (vii. 204),
Sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem.
3 Aen. vii. 643-4. 4 Aen. iii. 539: Bellum, O terra hospita, portas.
THE AENEID AS THE
and warlike aptitude of the people, as the Georgics identify
it with their virtue and happiness :
Durum ab stirpe genus natos ad flumina primum
Deferimus saevoque gelu duramus et undis;
Venatu invigilant pueri, silvasque fatigant;
Flectere ludus equos et spicula tendere cornu.
At patiens operum parvoque ad^ueta iuventus
Aut rastris terram domat, aut quatit oppida bello.
Omne aevum ferro teritur, versaque iuvencum
Terga fatigamus hasta; nee tarda senectus
Debilitat vires animi mutatque vigorem :
Canitiem galea premimus, semperque recentis
Comportare iuvat praedas et vivere rapto '.
In the account of the gathering of the Italian clans in the
seventh book, and of the Etruscans and the Northern races
in the tenth, the warlike sentiment of the land is appealed
to in association with the nances of ancient towns, mountain
districts, lakes, and rivers :
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
lunonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit,
Quos, Amasene pater 2 ;
and again :
Qui Tetricae horrentis rupes montemque Severum
Casperiamque colunt Forulosque et flumen Himellae ;
Qui Tiberim Fabarimque bibunt, quos frigida misit
Nursia, et Hortinae classes populique Latini;
Quosque secans infaustum interluit Allia nomen 3 ;
and also :
Qui saltus, Tiberine, tuos, sacrumque Numici
Litus arant, Rutulosque exercent vomere collis,
Circaeumque iugum, quis luppiter Anxurus arvis
Praesidet et viridi gaudens Feronia luco ;
Qua Saturae iacet atra palus, gelidusque per imas
Quaerit iter vallis atque in mare conditur Ufens 4 .
This union of patriotic sentiment with the love of Nature
and with the romantic associations of the past Virgil has
in common with the most distinctively national of the
poets of the present century, from whom in the other
characteristics of his art and genius he is widely removed.
1 ix. 603-613. 2 vii. 682-5. 3 vii. 713-7. * vii. 797-802.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 329
The national sentiment to which Virgil and the other
contemporary poets give expression is thus seen to be
the sentiment of the Italian race 1 . For two centuries the
principal members of that race had looked to Rome as
their chief glory, rather than as their old rival and anta-
gonist. The thought of Rome as their head had become
to the other Italian tribes their basis of union with one
another and the main ground of their self-esteem in rela-
tion to other nations. To that self-esteem and sense of
^superiority Virgil was fully alive. * He is not altogether
free from the narrowness of national prejudice. He has
not the largeness of soul which enables Homer, while
never losing his sense of the superiority of the Greeks
over the Trojans, yet to awaken feelings of admiration
and of pity unmixed with contempt for Hector and
Sarpedon, for Priam and Andromache. Yet if Virgil
has not this largeness of soul he has the tenderness of
human compassion :
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.
He might have maintained a stronger sympathy for his
hero, and have gratified a sentiment still fresh in the minds
of his countrymen, by attributing to Dido the shameless
licence as well as the dangerous fascination of Cleo-
patra ; or he might have painted the Carthaginians in
traditional colours of cruelty and treachery, in which
Roman writers represented the most formidable among
the enemies of Rome. But Virgil's artistic sense or his
humaner feeling saved him from this ungenerous gratifica-
tion of national prejudice. Yet while more just or tolerant
than other Roman writers to the Carthaginians, and
1 This view of Virgil's pride in the qualities of the Italians is not incom-
patible with the fact to which Mr. Nettleship has drawn attention (Suggestions
Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid, pp. 13 et seq.), that Virgil represents
their earlier condition as one of turbulent barbarism. Virgil seems to have
regarded ' the savage virtue of his race,' although requiring to be tamed by
contact with a higher civilization, as the ' incrementum ' out of which the
martial virtue and discipline of the later Italians was formed :
Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago.
330 THE AENEID AS THE
especially to the memory of their greatest man, he indi-
cates something like antipathy to the Greeks. The triumph
of Rome over her Greek enemies is made prominent in
the announcement of her future glories :
Veniet lustris labentibus aetas,
Cum domus Assaraci Phthiam clarasque Mycenas
Servitio premet ac victis dominabitur Argis ' ;
and again :
Eruet ille Argos Agamemnoniasque Mycenas,
Ipsumque Aeaciden, genus armipotentis Achilli 2 .
The bitterness of national animosity is especially apparent
in his exhibition of the characters of Ulysses and Helen.
The superiority of the Greeks in the arts and sciences is
admitted not without some feeling of scorn (' credo
equidem ') in contrast with the superiority of Rome in
the imperial arts of conquering and governing nations.
It may appear strange that the only race to which Virgil
is unjust or ungenerous is the one to which he himself,
in common with all educated Romans, was most deeply
indebted. But it is to be remembered that there was a
dramatic propriety in the expression of this hostility in
the mouth of Aeneas and of Anchises. The championship
of the cause of Troy demanded an attitude of antagonism
to her destroyer. The Greek tragedians had themselves
set the example of a degraded representation of two of
the most admirable of Homer's creations ; and Virgil's
mode of conceiving and delineating character is much
nearer to that of Euripides than to that of Homer. The
original error of Helen and the craft in dealing with his
enemies which is one of many qualities in the versatile
humanity of Odysseus gave to these later artists the germ,
in accordance with which the whole character was con-
ceived. They did not adequately apprehend that the
most interesting types of nobleness and beauty of cha-
racter as imagined by the greatest artists are also the
most complex, and the least capable of being squared
with abstract conceptions of vices or virtues. The full truth
1 Aen. i. 283-5. 2 vi - 8 39-4-
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 331
of Homer's delineations of character was apparently not
recognised by the most cultivated of his Roman readers.
It is enough for Virgil that Ulysses is 'fandi fktor,' as
it is for Horace that Achilles is * iracundus, inexorabilis,
acer : ' although the worldly wisdom of the last-named poet
makes him comprehend better Homer's ideal of intelligent
than his ideal of emotional heroism :
Rursus quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit,
Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixem 1 , etc.
Juvenal exhibits the virulence of national animosity towards
the Greeks of his time, as well as a well-founded scorn of
the moral baseness of character exhibited by many of them.
The contempt of Tacitus is shown for their intellectual
frivolity, combined with their assumption of intellec-
tual superiority ('qui sua tantum admirantur 2 ') based on
the renown of their ancestors. The deference which Virgil
and Horace might pay to the genius of early Greece was
not due to the shadow of that genius as it existed in their
own time. But the contemporary Greek litterateurs were
not likely to resign their claim of precedence in favour
of their new rivals. Neither Greek art 3 nor Greek criti-
cism seems ever to have made any cordial recognition
of the literary genius of Italy. The light in which Virgil
represents the Greek character may thus perhaps owe
something to the wish to repay scorn with scorn.
II.
Influence of the Religious Idea of Rome on the action of
the poem.
The confidence which the Romans felt in the continued
existence of their Empire and in their superiority over all
1 Ep. i. 2. 1 8, etc. 2 Annals, ii. 88.
3 It is remarked by Helbig, in his ' Campanische Wandmalerei,' that among
the many paintings found at Pompeii dealing with mythological and similar
subjects, only one is founded on the incidents of the Aeneid.
332 THE AENEID AS THE
other nations was closely connected with their religious
feeling and belief 1 . Horace has expressed the national
faith in this connexion with Roman force and conciseness
in the single line,
Dis te minorem quod geris imperas.
And it was Virgil's aim in the Aeneid to show that this
edifice of Roman Empire, of which the enterprise of
Aeneas was the foundation, on which the old Kings of
Alba and of Rome and the successive generations of great
men under. the Republic had successively laboured, and
on which Augustus placed the coping-stone, was no mere
work of human hands, but had been designed and built
up by divine purpose and guidance. The Aeneid ex-
presses the religious as it does the national sentiment of
Rome. The two modes of sentiment were inseparable.
The belief of the Romans in themselves was another form of
their absolute faith in the invisible Power which protected
them. This invisible Power was sometimes recognised by
them under the name of ' Fortuna Urbis,' the spiritual
counterpart of the city visible to their eyes. The recogni-
tion of this divinity was not only compatible with, but
involved the recognition of, many other divinities associated
with it in this protecting office. But to these numerous
divinities no very distinct personality was attached. It
was the awe of an ever-present invisible Power, manifesting
itself by arbitrary signs, exacting jealously certain definite
observances, capable of being alienated for a time by
any deviation from these observance^, and. of being again
appeased by a right reading of and humble compliance with
its will, and working out its own purposes through the
agency of the Roman arms and the wisdom of Roman coun-
sels, that was the moving power of Roman religion. The
Jove of the Capitol in early times, the living Emperor under
the Empire, were the visible representatives of this mysterious
Power. But its influence was acknowledged throughout
1 Cp. Mr. Nettleship's Suggestions, etc., p. 10, and the passages from Cicero
there quoted.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 333
all Roman history in the importance attached to the great
priestly offices, and especially to that of Pontifex Maximus,
which became inseparably united to the office of Emperor ;
in the scrupulous regard paid to the auspices through which
this Power was believed to communicate its will; in the
ominous interpretation put on all appearances of departure
from the ordinary course of Nature ; and in the reference
to the Sibylline books in all questions of difficulty. This
impersonal Power is to 'the Romans both the object of
awe and the source of their confidence. They seem never
to distrust the steadfastness of its favour. They rather
feel themselves its willing instruments, co-operating with
it, blindly sometimes and sometimes remissly, and for every
failure of intelligence or vigilance, punished by temporal
calamities,
The word by which Virgil recognises the agency of
this impersonal, or perhaps we should rather say undefined, \/
Power, is ' Fatum,' or more often in the plural, ' Fata.' It
is by the ' Fates ' that the action is set in motion and
directed to its issue. The human and even the divine
actors in the story are instruments in their hands ; some
more some less conscious of the part they are performing.
Even Jupiter is represented rather as cognisant of the
Fates than as their author. Sometimes indeed they are
spoken of as ' Fata lovis ; ' and to the assurance given by
him to Venus f manent immota tuorum Fata tibi,' he adds
the words ' neque me sententia vertit.' But again, while
his will is suspended in a great crisis of the action, their
operation is persistent and inevitable :
Rex luppiter omnibus idem :
Fata viam invenient 1 .
The original relation between this impersonal agency and
the deliberate purpose of Jupiter is left undefined. But
there is no collision between them. While the prayers
of men are addressed to a conscious personal being, xj[
* luppiter omnipotens,' the sovereignty of an impersonal
1 x. 112-3.
334 THE AENEID AS THE
Power over the fortunes of nations is acknowledged, as in
the line
Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum.
Every reader of the Aeneid must feel the predominance
of this idea in the poem, and the constantly recurring and
even monotonous expression of it. In the first three books,
Y for instance, the word ' Fatum ' or * Fata ' occurs more than
forty times. Aeneas starts on his wanderings ' fato pro-
fugus.' Juno desires to secure the empire of the world
to Carthage ' Si qua fata sinant.' She struggles against the
conviction of her powerlessness to prevent the Trojan
settlement in Italy, ' Quippe vetor fatis.' Aeneas comforts
his companions by the announcement of the peaceful settle-
ments awaiting them,
sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt.
Venus consoles herself for the destruction of Troy by the
thought of the destiny awaiting Aeneas, 'fatis contraria
fata rependens.' Jupiter reassures her after the storm with
the words ' manent immota tuorum Fata tibi ; ' and he
reveals to her one page in their secret volume, c fatorum
arcana movebo.' Mercury is sent to prepare the reception
of Aeneas in Carthage,
ne fati nescia Dido
Finibus arceret.
Aeneas describes himself as starting from Troy 'data
fata secutus.' A hundred more instances might be given
of the dominating influence of this idea in the poem.
It is the 'common-place' of the Virgilian epic. While
it adds impressiveness to the historical significance of the
poem, it detracts largely from the personal interest by the
limits which it imposes on the free agency of the divine
and human actors playing their part in it.
The same idea is often expressed by Tacitus, but it
does not in him dominate so absolutely over human will,
nor is it asserted with the same firmness of conviction.
His conception of the regulating power over all human,
or at least over all national existence, seems to waver
between this idea of some unknown power steadily working
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 335
out its purpose, of an element in human affairs baffling
all calculation the vapdhoyos of Thucydides and the
'Fortuna saevo laeta negotio' of Horace and of the gods
generally as personal avengers of crime, and sometimes
as the kind protectors of the State. Thus in the
Germania 1 the earliest foreboding of the danger which
threatened and ultimately overthrew the fabric of the
Empire is indicated in the words ' urgentibus imperii fatis :'
in the Agricola the result of the invasion of Britain under
Claudius is summed up in the words ' domitae gentes, capti
reges, et monstratus fatis Vespasianus 2 : ' in the ' Histories'
the grounds of confidence on the part of the Vespasians
in taking arms against the Vitellians are summed up in
the words 'dux Mucianus et Vespasiani nomen ac nihil
arduum fatis 3 .' But elsewhere he speaks of 'ludibria rerum
humanarum 4 ,' in language reminding us of Lucretius, and,
in almost the very words of Horace, of * instabilis fortunae
summaque et ima miscentis 5 .' Like Horace, he seems
to acknowledge the supremacy* of chance or an ironical
spirit over individual fortunes, and, like Virgil, that of Fate
over the national destiny. But in the Annals, his latest
work, he seems to incline more to the belief in the personal
agency of the gods, and especially in their agency as the
avengers of guilt. Thus he opens the passage of the
deepest tragic gloom in all his sombre record with the
words, ' Noctem sideribus illustrem quasi convincendum ad
scelus dii praebuere 6 .' So too he speaks of appealing to
the ' ultores deos 7 ;' and of the 'formido caelestjsjraef.'
Occasionally indeed he speaks of 'deum benignitas 9 ,' but
more often of their wrath or their indifference. Thus he
attributes the ascendency of Sejanus not to any superior
ability on his own part, but to 'deum ira in rem Romanam 10 ;'
1 i. 33. 2 Agric. 13. 3 Hist. ii. 82.
* An. iii. 18; cf. the lines of Lucretius, v. 1233-5 :
Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
Opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures
Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur.
6 Hist. iv. 47 ; Hor. Od. i. 34. 12. 6 An. xiv. 5. 7 An. iv. 28.
8 An. i. 30. 9 An. xii. 43. 10 An. iv. i.
33 6 T HE AENEID AS THE
and, in recounting a number of omens which followed on
the murder of Agrippina, he makes the sarcastic comment,
'quae adeo sine cura deum eveniebant, ut multos post
annos Nero imperium et scelera continuaverit 1 .' In
a writer like Tacitus it is impossible to distinguish
with certainty between the pure expression of his con-
victions and the rhetorical and poetical colouring of his
style. Yet both the frequency with which such passages
recur, and the earnestness of their tone even when they
seem most ironical, leaves no doubt that, like Thucydides,
he was not indifferent to these questions, although 'per-
plexed in the extreme' by the apparent absence, or at
least uncertainty, of any steadfast moral order in the award
of happiness and calamity to men.
The 'Fatum' or 'Fata' of Virgil can scarcely be said to
act with the aim of establishing right in the world, or
of punishing wrong. Their action is purely political,
neither ethical, though its ultimate tendency is benefi-
cent, nor personal. Yet in the prominence which is
given to this determining element in national affairs Virgil
is expressing the strongest and most abiding belief of the
Roman people, just as the Greek poets and historians
of the fifth century B.C., in the prominence they give to
the element of uncertainty in the world, the irony in human
affairs, or the Nemesis of the gods excited against great
prosperity even when not misused or gained by crime,
expressed the dominant idea in the minds of their con-
temporaries. Mr. Grote traces the origin of this last idea
to the experience of the rapid vicissitudes from one extreme
of fortune to the other, brought about by the great pros-
perity of the Greek states on the one hand and their
incessant wars and political feuds on the other. The
origin of the other idea is to be found in the almost
unbroken success of Rome in all her enterprises, from the
burning of the city by the Gauls till the full establishment
of empire. There is no history in which chance plays
1 An. xiv. 12.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 337
so small a part, and in which so little is episodical. The
'good fortune of the Roman people' will be found to be
explained either by the traditional policy of never making
a new enemy until they had well disposed of the old, or by
the magnanimity (as compared at least with the policy of
other States l ) by which they converted the nations succes-
sively conquered by them into fellow-citizens or obedient
allies, or by the indomitable resolution which never knew
to yield to defeat. No important event in their history is
isolated ; each serves as a link in the chain which connects
their past with their future. The unvarying result of their
national discipline and policy, and of the force accumulated
through centuries before they became corrupted by the
gains of conquest, might well appear to a race, gifted with
little speculative capacity, to be determined and accom-
plished by an Omnipotent Power behind them.
This idea determines the general conduct of the action in
the Aeneid. The actors in the story either oppose the
irresistible tendency of things and suffer defeat or perish in
their resistance ; or, with gradually increasing knowledge,
they co-operate with &nd become the instruments of this
tendency. And as it is by faith in the divine assistance
and guidance that the latter are able to act their part
successfully, the religious motives of the representation as-
sume a prominence at least equal to that of its national and
political motives. Thus the object of all the hero's wander-
ings is not only to found a city, but to introduce a new
worship into Italy ' inferretque deos Latio.' When Hector
appears to Aeneas in a vision he commits into his care the
sacred symbols and images of Troy with the words
Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates,
Hos cape fatorum comites.
Aeneas is represented as starting on his enterprise
Cum sociis gnatoque Penatibus et magnis Dis;
as his descendant is represented in the enterprise which
1 Cf. Tac. Ann. xi. 24 : ' Quid aliud exitio Lacedaemoniis et Atheniensibus
fuit, quamquam armis pollerent, nisi quod victos pro alienigenis arcebant?' etc.
VOL. I. Z
338 THE AENEID AS THE
is crowned with the victory of Actium l . Finally, in the
treaty with Latinus, while the secular and imperial power
is left with the Italians, the religious predominance is
claimed for Aeneas,
Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinus habeto,
Imperium sollemne socer 2 .
The influence of the religious idea of the poem is seen
also in the leading characteristic of the hero 'insignem
pietate virum.' His piety appears in the faith which
he has in his mission, and in the trust which he has in
divine guidance. Prayer is his first resource in all emer-
gencies ; sacrifice and thanksgiving are the accompaniments
of all his escapes from danger and difficulty. This charac-
teristic deprives the representation of Aeneas of the interest
springing from energetic resource or spontaneous feeling.
But as much as the character loses in human interest, it
gains in the impression produced of a fitting instrument
to carry out the purpose of a Power working secretly for a
distant end.
The effect of the same idea is apparent in the way in
which the action is furthered by special revelations, visions,
prophecies, omens and the like. These intimations of the
future are, for the most part, altogether of an unpoetical
and unimaginative character. The omens by which the
Fates make their will known, such as the omen of the
cakes and of the white-sow with her litter, are, like those
that occur so often in the pages of Livy, of an essentially
prosaic type : not like those in Homer, striking sights or
sounds acting on the imagination with the force of divine
warning. Occasionally Virgil's own invention, or perhaps
the guidance of some Greek predecessor, suggests signs of
a less trivial significance such as that of the meteor or line
of light marking out the way from the burning city to Mount
Ida
Illam, summa super labentem culmina tecti,
Cernimus Idaea claram se condere silva,
Signantemque vias 3 ;
1 Aen. viii. 679. 2 Aen. xii 192-3. 8 Aen. ii. 695-7.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 339
but for the most part the formal, superstitious, prosaic
element in the Roman religion the same element which
made their generals befofe some decisive battle allow
themselves to draw their auguries from the mode in which
chickens ate their food, is present in the religious guid-
ance of the action. The Roman belief in the supernatural
was arrested and stunted at a primitive stage of religious
development. So far from elevating the thought and en-
larging the imagination, that belief tended to repress all
speculation, lofty contemplation, and poetry. Even Virgil's
idealising art fails to conceal the triviality of the media
through which the invisible Power made its will and pur-
pose manifest.
The mythological machinery of the poem also, although
borrowed from the repertory of Homer, yet moves in
obedience to this silent, impersonal, uncapricious Power.
Juno endeavours to strive against it, till forced to confess
her impotence. Venus by her intrigues serves to further
its purposes. Yet both these Olympian divinities are but
puppets ' in some unknown Power's employ,' which makes
for its own end alike through their furtherance and an-
tagonism. The gods who take part in the action are of
Greek invention, but the Power which even they are ob-
liged to obey, if not Roman in original conception, is yet
essentially Roman in significance.
This thought of an unseen Power, working by means
of omens and miracles on the mind of the hero of the poem,
with the distant aim of establishing universal empire in
the hands of a people, obedient to divine will and observant
of all religious ceremonies, may be said to be the theolo-
gical or speculative idea of the poem. It is the doctrine
of predestination in its hardest form. It is a thought
much inferior both in intellectual subtlety and in ethical
value to that of the Fate of Greek tragedy in conflict with
human will. Yet there is a kind of material force and
greatness in Virgil's conception, and a consistency not with
ideal truth but with visible facts. The ideal truth of
Sophocles the idea of final purification and reconcilement
2 2
340 THE AENEID AS THE
of a noble human nature with the divine nature is not
manifest in the world : it is only in harmony with the
best hopes and aspirations of men. Virgil's idea was the
. shadow of the great fact apparent in his age, the vast,
inevitable, omnipotent, unsympathetic power of the Roman
empire.
But there is another personal and humane religious
element, not so prominent and not so influential on the
action, but pervading the poem like an atmosphere, puri-
fying it, and making it luminous with the light of a higher
region. This is the element of religious faith or hope,
personal to Virgil and yet catholic in its significance, and in
harmony with the convictions of religious men of all times.
The rigid, formal, and narrow conceptions of the Roman
religion came into collision both with the belief in gods of
like passions with men, revealed in the art and poetry of
the Greeks, and with the development of ethical feeling
and especially of the sentiment of humanity fostered by
Greek philosophy. Virgil's temperament, patriotic, ima-
ginative, and humane, was in accord with all these modes
of religious conception. If national destiny and some
portions of the destiny of individuals are shaped by an
inflexible power
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando,
yet the personal agency of Beings, in immediate relation
with man, who are not only ' memores fandi atque nefandi 1 ,'
but who also ' pios respectant,' is devoutly acknowledged
Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid
Usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti,
Praemia digna ferant 2 ."
Their relation to man is expressed by the same word,
pietas, which expresses man's relation to them
luppiter omnipotens, si nondum exosus ad unum
Troianos, si quid pietas antiqua labores
Respicit humanos 3 .
They are, like the gods of Tacitus, avengers of wrong
1 i- 543- 2 i- 603. 3 v. 687-9.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 341
as well as rewarders of righteousness : but their avenging
wrath against the strong springs from their mercy to the
weak
Di, si qua est caelo pietas, quae talia curet,
Persolvant grates dignas et praemia reddant
Debita, qui nati coram me cernere letum
Fecisti et patrios foedasti funere voltus 1 .
This close personal relation between men and an in-
visible Being or Beings, like to man in feelings and moral
attributes, but infinitely greater in power and knowledge,
exists in the Aeneid side by side with the doctrine of
the omnipotence of Fate, crushing, if necessary, human
wishes and human happiness under its iron determinations.
But in the final award of happiness or misery after death,
revealed in the sixth book, the agency of Fate gives
place to that of a moral dispensation awarding to men
their portions according to their actions. The way in
which Virgil indicates his belief in the spiritual life after
death is analogous to, as well as suggested by, the myths
in the Gorgias and in the tenth book of the Republic of
Plato. While there is a certain vagueness and uncertainty
in his view of the condition in which the soulsv^pf ordinary
men pass the thousand years of purification before drink-
ing of the waters of Lethe and entering again on a mortal
life, the class of sinners to whom eternal punishment is
awarded, and that of holy men who dwell for ever iri
Elysium, are indicated with great definiteness and beauty.
In the first class are those whom the old Roman world
regarded as impious or unnatural, those who have violated
the primal sanctities of life, who have dealt treacherously
with a client or the master of their household, who have
risen in rebellion against their country, who have sacrificed
their human affections and their duty as citizens to their
greed of gain
Hie, quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat,
Pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti;
Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis,
Nee partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est ;
1 " 535-7-
342 THE AENEID AS THE
Quique ob adulterium caesi, quique arma secuti
Impia, nee veriti dominorum fallere dextras,
Inclusi poenam expectant ....
*****
Vendidit hie auro patriam, dominumque potentem
Imposuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit:
Hie thalamum invasit natae vetitosque hymenaeos:
Ausi omnes immane nefas ausoque potiti 1 .
In the other class are those who have died in battle for their
native land, who have lived pure and holy lives as priests
or poets, who have served mankind by great discoveries, or
have left memorials of themselves in good deeds done to
their fellow-men
Hie manus, ob patriam pugnando volnera passi,
Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,
Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti.
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,
Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo 2 .
III.
Place which Virgil assigns to Augustus in the Aeneid.
The imperial and the religious ideas of Rome, as embodied
in the Aeneid, find their fullest realisation in the position
assigned to Augustus. The pride of empire, the loyalty to
the State, the religious trust, which in the age of Ennius
attached themselves to the * Respublica Romana,' found,
in the age of Virgil, a new centre of attraction in the
person of the Emperor. A poem, which should express
the dominant idea and sentiment of that age, could not fail
to bring into prominence the change through which the
government not of Rome only but of the whole civilised
world was then passing. The relations of the great poets
of the time to the men at the head of affairs made them
the fittest exponents of this new tendency. They used
their art with the view of giving to public sentiment a
permanent direction in favour of the new order of things.
1 vi. 608-14, 621-4. 2 vi. 660-4.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 343
The political object of glorifying the personal rule of
Augustus and of surrounding it with the halo of a divine
sanction associated itself with the artistic, the patriotic,
and the religious objects of Virgil. And although the
excess of eulogy and some modes of its manifestation
offend the modern, as they would have offended a more
ancient sentiment of personal dignity, there is no reason to
question the disinterested sincerity of Virgil's panegyric.
The permanence of the change introduced by Augustus
attests the fact that his policy not only kindled the
enthusiasm of the moment, but met the most deeply-felt
needs of the world. And though his personal qualities
and the great things accomplished by him do not touch
the imagination or awaken the sentiment of admiration in
modern times, like those of his immediate predecessor in
power, yet he was pre-eminently the man suited to his
age, as an age of restoration and re-organisation, and he
was pre-eminently a Roman of the Romans. The great
C. Julius, in his genius and qualities, ' towers ' not only
above his own nation but, ' like Hannibal, above all nations.'
The perfect success of Augustus was due to the fact not
only that he was the man wanted by his epoch, but that he
was the complete embodiment of the great practical talents
and character of Rome. He not only monopolised in his
own person all the chief functions, but in his administration
he displayed all the best and most varied capacities of
the Roman magistracy. In his government and in his
legislation he fulfilled the duties formerly assigned to Censor
and Chief of the Senate, to Consul and Proconsul, to Praetor
and Aedile. To the aptitudes for these various duties he
added those that fitted him at least to fill the place of
' Imperator * at the head of the Roman armies, and to give
new importance and efficacy to the office of Pontifex Maxi-
mus. He possessed also in a remarkable degree the per-
sonal qualities of industry, vigilance, practical sagacity,
authority, dignity, and urbanity, which are of most import-
ance in the government of men. If his character falls below
both the ancient and the modern ideal of heroism, it is
344 THE AENEID AS THE
thoroughly conformable to a Roman ideal of practical power
and usefulness. He is the representative man of the brighter
side of Roman imperialism, as Tiberius (till his final
retirement from Rome), in his strength of body and mind,
his military and administrative capacity, his unrelieved
application to business \ his unsympathetic impartiality, his
suspicious and ruthless policy in suppressing opposition,, his
callous indifference to suffering, is of its more sombre side.
It is a great enhancement of the representative character
of Virgil's national epic, that it is associated with the name
and acts of one who was not only the founder, but was the
most typical embodiment of the Roman empire.
Although the choice of the subject of the Aeneid was
determined, in a great measure, by its adaptability to the
personal and political object of Virgil, no attempt is made
to exhibit either the character or the actions of Aeneas as
symbolical of those of Augustus. Still less are we to look
for any modern parallels to the other personages of the
poem, such as Turnus or Dido, Latinus or Lavinia, Drances
or Achates. Yet the position assigned to Aeneas, as a
fatherly ruler over his people, their chief in battle, their
law-giver in peace, and their high-priest in all spiritual
relations, may have been intended as a kind of symbol of
the new monarchy. The Roman imagination acknowledged
two ideals of a ruler of men, the ideal of a Romulus and
that of a Numa. In Aeneas both are combined with the
characteristics of a new ideal which rather anticipated a
future, than reproduced any older type of character.
Augustus too might be regarded as at once the Romulus
and the Numa of the new empire ; and thus the parts
played by Aeneas, as chief in battle and legislator in
peace 2 , might be regarded as a kind of foreshadowing of
1 Cf. At Tiberius, nihil intermissa rerum cura, negotia pro solatiis accipiens.
Tac. Ann. iv. 13.
2 iii. 131-7:
Ergo avidus muros optatae molior urbis
Pergameamque voco, et laetam cognomine gentem
Hortor amare focos, arcemque attollere tectis,
*****
Jura domosque dabam.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 345
those which were afterwards played by Augustus on the
real stage of human affairs. But it would be no compli-
ment either to the intellectual power of Augustus or to the
discernment of Virgil, to suppose that the personal attri-
butes of Aeneas were intended to have any resemblance
to the strong and self-reliant character of the Emperor.
The relation to Aeneas adds to the personal glory of
Augustus by the ancestral distinction thus conferred upon
him, a distinction at all times highly prized among the
Romans, and especially prized by the Caesars as help-
ing to reconcile a proud aristocracy to their ascendency.
In the immediate successors of Augustus, the obscurity of
the Octavii and Atii was forgotten in the combined lustre
of the Julian and Claudian families. And on one of those
occasions, in which the sentiment of family pride was most
powerfully appealed to, the funeral of Drusus, son of
Tiberius, we read in Tacitus l ' funus imaginum maxime
inlustre fuit, cum origo luliae gentis Aeneas omnesque
Albanorum reges, et conditor urbis Romulus, post Sabina
nobilitas, Attus Clausus, ceteraeque Claudiorum effigies,
longo ordine spectarentur.' In thus throwing the halo
both of a remote antiquity and of a divine ancestry around
Augustus, Virgil helped to recommend his rule to the
sentiment of his countrymen.
In seeking to enhance the greatness of a living ruler
by associating him with the actions of a remote legendary
ancestor, the panegyric of Virgil does not transcend the
limits which Pindar allows himself in evoking the mythical
glories of the past in honour of his patrons. But Virgil
seeks to establish a closer connexion between the past
and the present, than that established by Pindar. The
connexion between the living man, who wins a victory
in the games, and his heroic ancestor, is adduced as a
proof of the inheritance by the descendant of the personal
qualities which first gave distinction to his race. But the
connexion between Aeneas and Augustus is the connexion
1 Ann. iv. 9.
346 THE AENEID AS THE
between means and end. The actions of Aeneas are not
held up as a mere example which his descendant might
emulate : they are the first links in the long chain of events
which reached from the siege of Troy to the victory of
Actium and the establishment of the empire. The distant
vision of the glory awaiting the greatest of his descendants
is, more than any immediate or personal end, the motive
which animates both the divine and human actors in the
enterprise. It is after a vivid picture of the martial and
peaceful glories of the Augustan reign that the stirring
appeal is made
Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis,
Aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra 1 ?
The means through which the vision of this distant future
is revealed, are the voice of Jove himself in unfolding the
volume of the fates to Venus, that of the beatified shade
of Anchises in exhibiting the spectacle of his unborn
descendants to Aeneas, and the art of Vulcan in framing
the ' clipei non enarrabile textum.'
The glory attributed to Augustus in the shield of Aeneas
is that of a great warrior and conqueror, the champion,
not, like his uncle, of the popular against the aristocratic
party in the State, of the Provinces against the Senate,
but of the nation against its old enemies, the monarchies of
the East. He appears as celebrating a mighty triumph, and
dedicating three hundred temples to the gods of Italy
in thankful acknowledgment of his victory. The glory
announced in the prophecy of Jupiter is that of the
establishment by Augustus of an Empire of Peace, as
the completion of his warlike triumph
Aspera turn positis mitescent saecula bellis :
Cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus
lura dabunt 2 .
And in the revelation of Anchises, Augustus is spoken
of as
Augustus Caesar, Divi genus: aurea condet
Saecula qui rursus Latio, regnata per arva
Saturno quondam 3 .
1 vi. 807-8. 2 i. 291-3. 3 vi. 793-4.
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 347
He is there proclaimed to be greater in the extent of his
conquests and civilising labours than Hercules and Bacchus.
And, though less prominently than in the Invocation to the
Georgics, divine honours and the function of answering
prayer are promised to him by the mouth of Jupiter
Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
Accipies secura ; vocabitur hie quoque votis l .
The personal figure of the Emperor is thus encompassed
with the halo of military glory, of beneficent action on the
world, of a divine sanction, and of an ultimate heritage of
divine honours.
The Aeneid considered as a representative work of genius
is thus seen to be the expression or embodiment of an idea
of powerful meaning for the age in which the poem was
written, for the centuries immediately succeeding that age,
and, through the action of historical associations, for all
times. As the great poem of Dante gained both imme-
diate and permanent attention by the human interest
which it imparted to the spiritual idea on which mediaeval
Europe based its life ; as the inspiration of Milton's great
Epic was drawn from his passionate sympathy with the
intensest form of religious and political life in his age ;
so the quality of Virgil's genius which secured for him the
most immediate and the most lasting consideration was his
sympathetic comprehension of the imperial idea of Rome
in its secular, religious, and personal significance. This
idea he has ennobled with the associations of a divine
origin and of a divine sanction ; of a remote antiquity and
an unbroken continuity of great deeds and great men ; of
the pomp and pride of war, and of the majesty of govern-
ment : and he has softened and humanised the impression
thus produced by the thought of peace, law, and order
given to the world. In his stately diction we are reminded
only of the power, glory, majesty, and civilising influence
with which the idea of Rome is encompassed. There is
nothing to obtrude the thought of the spirit, in which life,
1 i. 289-90,
348 THE AENEID AS THE
freedom, and individuality were crushed out of the world.
And this idea, of which Virgil's poem is the glorified repre-
sentation, was one actually realised, one which influenced
the lives of generations of men, and which was an import-
ant element in moulding the whole subsequent history of
the world. Yet the idea is one more adapted to be the
inspiring influence of a great historical work, like the
national history of Livy, or ' The Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire,' than of a great poem, which must
satisfy the human and moral sympathies of men as well
as their sense of power. Material greatness and civilisa-
tion, and the qualities of mind and character through
which these effects are produced, exercise a great spell
over the imagination and the masculine sympathies of the
world. But the highest art does more than this it
enlarges man's sense of a spiritual life, it purifies his
notions of happiness, it deepens his conviction of a righteous
government of the world. Through the imagination it speaks
to the soul. The idea of imperial Rome is rather that of
the enemy than of the promoter of the spiritual life or of
individual happiness : it impresses on the mind the thought
of a vast and orderly, but not of a moral and humane
government. The idea of the Roman Republic, as it shines
through the rude fragments of the Annals of Ennius in
such utterances as these
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque,
is suggestive of a nobler energy of character, of more
abundant public and private virtue, than the idea pervading
and animating the polished verse of the Aeneid. The
thought of the Rome of Ennius is associated in our minds
with the free political life of the Forum and the Campus
Martius, and with the grave deliberations of the Senate,
as well as with the exercise of military force and admi-
nistrative sovereignty. The idea of Italy pervading the
Georgics has everything to attract and nothing to repel
our sympathies : and thus notwithstanding the inferior
opportunities for awakening human interest which neces-
EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 349
sarily attach to a didactic when compared with an epic
poem, the charm exercised by that poem is more un-
mixed and unchanging than that of the poem which
evokes the proud memories of the Capitol. In the Aeneid,
Virgil is really the panegyrist of despotism under the
delusive disguise of paternal government. In so far as
there is any conflict between right and wrong in the Aeneid,
the wrong appears to be the ' victrix causa ' ' which pleases
the gods.' The religious idea of the Fates is invested with
none of the ethical mystery with which the analogous idea
in Greek poetry is invested. They act in a hard, plain,
arbitrary way, irrespective of right and wrong, regardless of
personal happiness or suffering. The actors in the poem
who move our sympathies are those who perish in blind
resistance to, or blind compliance with, their decrees Dido,
Pallas, Turnus, and Lausus. The opposition between
natural human feeling and the ' divom inclementia ' is
reverently accepted and acquiesced in by Virgil in the
person of his hero.
The conclusion at which we arrive as to the value of the
Aeneid as an epic poem representative of the Roman
Empire, is that Virgil has given a true, adequate, and
noble expression to an idea which actually has exercised a
greater spell over the imagination and a greater influence
over the daily lives of men, than any other which owed its
origin to their secular interests : but that this idea,
regarded from its political, religious, and personal side,
is one which does not touch the heart, or enlighten the
conscience : and this is an important drawback to the
claim which the Aeneid may have to the highest rank as a
work of art.
CHAPTER XL
THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE.
I.
General character of the action as affected by the Age in
which the poem was written^ and by the Author s
genius.
THE national, religious, and political ideas which form
the central interest of the poem have been considered
in the previous chapter. We have seen how Virgil was
moved by an impulse similar to that which acted on
Ennius in a ruder age, and in what way he strove to
express the meaning which the idea of Rome has for all
times, and to find an adequate symbol of the dominant
sentiment of his own time. It remains to consider how
far the poem sustains by its command over our sympathies^
the interest thus established in its favour ; and to ascertain
what value the Aeneid, as a poem of action, unfolding
a spectacle of human life, manners, character and passion,
possessed for the Romans and still possesses for ourselves.
The action of the poem, apart from its bearing on the
destinies of the world, has a grandeur and dignity of its
own. It is enacted on a great theatre, developes itself
by incidents giving free play to the highest modes of
human energy and passion, and through the agency of
personages already renowned in legend and poetry. In
that mythical age which the poet recalls to life no spectacle
THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM, ETC. 351
could be imagined more deserving to fix the attention of
the world than the fall of Troy, the building of Carthage,
and the first rude settlement on the hills of Rome. What-
ever else may be said of the personages of the story,
they are conceived of as playing no common part in human
affairs. In following their fortunes we breathe the air of
that high poetic region which forms the undetermined
border-land between mythology and history. We look
back on the ruined state of the greatest city of legendary
times, and we mark the first beginnings of the two Imperial
cities which in historical times disputed the empire of
the world. The poem evokes the associations, ancient
and recent, attaching to the various scenes through which
the action passes, Troy, Carthage, Sicily, the shores of
Latium, the Tiber, and the hills on which Rome was
built. The vagueness of the time in which the action is
laid enables the poet to connect together, in a most
critical position of human affairs, the fortunes of the chief
powers of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The spheres of man's
activity in which the action moves war and sea-adventure
in search of undiscovered lands give the fullest scope
to energetic representation. In his conception of the
voyage of Aeneas and of a great war determining the
issue of his enterprize, Virgil followed the greatest epic
examples, and found a subject to which he could impart
the interest of adventurous incident and heroic achievement.
In his conception of the part played in the action by
the passion of love, he introduced a more familiar and
modern phase of life which the examples of the Greek
tragedians and of the Alexandrine epic had proved to
be capable of idealising treatment.
The actors moreover who play their part in these critical
events are not ' common or mean.' The crisis is conceived
of as one so momentous, from the issues involved in it,
as to call forth the passions and the energies of the
old Olympian Powers. But even the human personages
of the story appear with a prestige of glory and sanctity,
and yet are sufficiently unfamiliar to excite new expecta-
352 THE AENEID AS AN
tions. Aeneas, as the son of a mightier goddess l , is
distinguished in the Iliad by the honours of a higher
lineage than Achilles. He is brave in war, the comrade
of Hector, a hero deemed worthy to encounter Achilles
himself as well as Diomede in battle. He is especially
dear to the gods, and is marked out by prophecy as
destined to bear, and transmit to his descendants, the rule
over the remnant of the Trojans. To Anchises attaches
the sanctity of one enjoying a closer communion with the
immortals, of one at once favoured and afflicted above
others, and elevated, like Oedipus, out of weakness and
suffering here, into honour and influence beyond the grave,
lulus receives a reflected glory from the transcendent
greatness of the Julian house. Dido or Elissa was a name
famous in Phoenician legend, and associated with the
ancient renown of Tyre. Evander is illustrious from his
Arcadian origin, from his relation to Hercules, from the
fame of his mother as one of the Italian Camenae. Even
the mere ethnical names of Latinus and Turnus receive
individuality by being introduced in the line of old Italian
dynasties, and in direct connexion with Faunus, Picus,
and other beings of the native mythology.
It may therefore be said that in the choice of the time
and the scenes in which his action is laid, in the character
of the action itself, and in the eminence of the personages
taking part in it, Virgil fulfils all the conditions of his art
which reflexion on the models of the past and on the
circumstances in life most capable of interesting the ima-
gination could teach him. The care with which he prepared
himself for his task is as remarkable as the judgment with
which he conceived its main conditions. The conduct of
his story shows the most intimate familiarity with the
incidents and adventures contained in the Iliad and
Odyssey, in the Cyclic poems and the dramas founded
on them, in the Homeric hymns and the Alexandrine
epic. It shows how Virgil so combines and varies the
details thus suggested, as to recall many features of the
1 II. xx. 105.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 353
Homeric age, and at the same time to produce the
impression of something new in literary art. The revived
image of that age must have affected the contemporaries
of the poet in a manner different from its effect on us.
To us both the Iliad and the Aeneid are ancient and
unfamiliar : the one comes before us as an original picture
of manners, the other as a copy taken in a long subsequent
age. But to a Roman of the time of Augustus the life
of the Homeric age must have appeared almost as remote
as it does to us. The direct imitations of Homer in the
Aeneid might produce on his mind the same mixed im-
pression of novelty and familiarity which is produced on
a modern reader by the reproduction and recasting of
the doctrines, incidents, and language of the Bible in the
two epic poems of Milton. The fascination of this world
of supernatural agency and personal adventure, brought
home to him for the first time in the most elevated tones
of his own language, may have charmed the Roman reader
in the same way as the revival of mediaeval romance in the
literary languages of modern Europe charmed the readers
of the latter part of the eighteenth and the first part of
the nineteenth centuries. And if such were the first im-
pressions produced by the poem, a closer examination
of it must have shown that the imagination of Virgil had
out of ancient materials built up something new in the
world. If his representation of the heroic age wants
the vivid truth and naivete of Homer's representation,
yet it is impressive with the dignity of antique associations,
and rich with the colouring of his own human sensibilities.
But the Aeneid not only revives the romance of the !
Greek heroic age : it creates the romance of * that Italy | \
for which Camilla the virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus and
Nisus died of wounds.' It bestows the colour and
warmth of human life on dim traditions, on vague names,
on the memories of early warfare clinging to ancient
towns, and on the origins of immemorial customs and
ceremonies. The task of giving poetic life to the dry '
prose of Cato, to the dust of antiquarian learning, and
VOL. I. A a
354 THE AENEID AS AN
to the rigid formalism of the old Roman ceremonial must
have taxed the poet's powers more than that of re-
awakening the interest in the old Homeric life. Virgil
accomplishes this result through his power of living at,
the same time in the past and in the present ; of feeling
(powerfully the associations of a remote antiquity, and
the immediate action of all that was most impressive to
thought and imagination in the age in which he lived.
The earlier works of Virgil had proved his strength in
descriptive and didactic poetry, and in the expression of
personal feeling, of national sentiment, and of ethical con-
templation ; but they had given no indication of epic,
and little of dramatic genius. Although the episode of
the 'Pastor Aristaeus' is a specimen of succinct, animated,
and pathetic narrative, it must be remembered that this
was a late addition to the Georgics, and was probably
written after considerable way had been made in the
composition of the Aeneid. An epic poet, over and above
his purely poetic susceptibility, must possess the art and
faculty of a prose historian. Homer has in an unequalled
degree the clearness, vividness, and movement in telling
his story, which characterise such writers as Herodotus.
The account given of Virgil's mode of composition proves
that he took great pains both with the plan and the
execution of his narrative. He is said to have arranged
the first draught of his story in prose, and then to have
worked on the various parts of it as they interested him
at the time of composition. There are clear indications
that the books were not written in the order in which
they stand ; and a few inconsistencies of statement between
the earlier and later books were left uncorrected at the
time of the author's death. The poem, in the careful
arrangement of its materials, bears the stamp of the manner
in which it was composed. Like that of every other
great Roman, the genius of Virgil was thoroughly orderly
and systematic. But along with the power of order Virgil
had what many Roman writers want, the power of variety.
The narrative of the Aeneid is full of movement, succinct
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 355
or ample according to the prominence intended to be
given to its different parts. The various streams of action
are kept separate, yet not too far apart to cause any
confusion or forgetfulness when the time comes to unite
them. There is at once weight and energy in the move-
ment of the main current: it neither hurries nor flags,
but advances for the most part steadily, * quadam intentione
gravitatis.' If it wants the buoyancy and vivacity of the
narrative of Herodotus, it shows the concentrated energy
which distinguishes the works of the great Roman historians.
It brings before us rather a series of grave events, bearing
on a great issue and following an inevitable course, than
the vicissitudes of individual fortunes and the play of.
human passions and impulses: and in this it is in accord-
ance both with the actual history of Rome, and with the
record of it contained in literature.
Virgil cannot be said to have failed either in the con-
ception of his subject, in the collection and preparation
of his materials, or in the art and faculty demanded for
impressive narrative. Yet all feel that the Aeneid is much
inferior to the Homeric poems in natural human interest,
as it is much inferior in reflective interest to the greatest
extant dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The poem,
as a whole, produces the impression rather of careful
construction than of organic growth. The reflexion em-
ployed on it is rather that of a critic applying artistic
principles to impart unity to many heterogeneous materials,
than that of an imaginative thinker, seeing his story unfold
itself before him in the light of some great intuition into
the secret meanings of life.
His inferiority to Homer in the power of making his
story at once vividly real and nobly ideal arises partly
from an inferiority in his own temper, and partly from
the inferior adaptability of the life of his own age to
imaginative treatment. There is no trace in Virgil of
that keen enjoyment of personal adventure and bodily
activity which is present in every page of the Homeric
poems. Virgil's materials are gathered from study and
A a 2
356 THE AENEID AS AN
reflexion, not from strong and many-sided contact with
life. Though he writes of 'arma virumque' with a Roman
sense of the duty of disregarding danger and death, he
has none of the 'delight of battle' which animates the
Iliad and the poetical and prose romances of Scott.
Neither does he make us feel that elevation of spirit
in the presence of the danger of the sea, which the author
of the Odyssey among ancient, and Byron among modern
poets, communicate to their readers.
But the vast difference in manners, feelings, and modes
of thought, between an early and a late age between the
spring and the autumn of ancient civilisation presented
still more insuperable obstacles to Virgil in his attempt to
accomplish the work of Homer. In the first period imagi-
nation is the ruling faculty of life, the great impeller to
action and discovery, the chief prompter both of hope and
fear ; and thus the movement and impulses of such an age
readily yield themselves to imaginative treatment. Poets
and dramatists of a later time who desire to represent life
in its most energetic phase endeavour to reproduce some
image of this early time by a constructive act of imagination.
A dramatist may take the mere outline of some ancient
legend and fill it with modern thought and sentiment.
He is not called on for that realistic reproduction of
manners and usages which an epic poet is expected to
exhibit on his larger canvas. The difficulty which the
latter has to meet is that of verifying by anything in his
own experience the impression which he forms from the
study of ancient art and records. Homer alone, by living
the imaginative life of an earlier time, was able to represent
that life in its truth, its fulness of being, its vivid sense
of pleasure and pain. The age mirrored in the Homeric
poems is the true age of romance and personal enterprise,
when the individual acquires ascendency through his own
qualities of strength, beauty, courage, force of mind, natural
eloquence ; when the world is regarded as the scene of
supernatural agencies manifesting themselves in visible
shape ; when men live more in the open air than in houses
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 357
and cities, and have to procure subsistence, comfort, and
security by energy of body and the inventive resources
of their minds ; and when their hearts are alive to every
natural emotion, not deadened by routine or enervated
by excess of pleasure. Hence it is that all Homer's
accounts of war and battles, of sea-adventure, of debates
in the council of chiefs or in the assemblies of the people,
of games and contests of strength, are so full of living
interest. Hence too comes the vivacity with which all
the details of procuring food, the enjoyment of eating
and drinking and sinking to sleep, the arming or clothing
of heroes, the management of a ship at sea, the ordinary
occupations of the hunter or the herdsman are described.
To the same cause is due the truth and appropriateness
of all the descriptions from Nature, of the dawn and
sunrise, of storms, of the gathering of clouds, of the con-
stellations, of the stillness of night, of the habits of wild
animals, of the more violent forces of the elements, of
the omens which suddenly appear to men engaged in
battle or assembled in council in the open air and awaiting
a sign for their guidance.
An image of this Homeric life Virgil has to reproduce
from the midst of a state of society utterly unlike it. The
Augustan age was pre-eminently an age of order and
material civilisation, in which great results were produced,
not by individual force, but by masses and combinations
of men directed by political sagacity and secret council ;
in which the life of the richer class was passed in great
cities and luxurious villas ; in which the comforts of life
were abundantly supplied through the organisation of
commerce and the ministrations of a multitude of slaves 1 ;
in which the outward world was enjoyed as a beautiful
1 For an instance of the number of slaves in a single household in the reign
of Nero compare the speech of C. Cassius in Tac. Ann. xiv. 43 : ' Quern nu-
merus servorum tuebitur, quum Pedanium Secundum quadringenti non pro-
texerint ? ' The simplicity of the old Roman life which Virgil idealises in the
Georgics, as compared with the luxurious indulgence of the later Republic and
the Empire, was in a great measure due to the comparative rarity of slavery
in the earlier ages of Roman history.
35 8 THE AENEID AS AN
spectacle rather than as a field of active exertion and
personal adventure ; in which the belief in the supernatural
was fixed in imposing outward symbols, but was no longer
a fresh source of wonder and expectation ; an age too, in
which the natural emotions of the heart and imagination
were becoming deadened by satiety and the 'strenua
inertia' of luxurious living.
The art of Virgil is thus powerless to produce a true
image of the life and manners of the Homeric age. Yet
he does surround the actors in his story with an environ-
ment of religious belief and observances, of political and
social life, of material civilisation, of martial movement and
sea-adventure, formed partly out of his poetical and anti-
quarian studies, partly out of the familiar spectacle of
his own age, partly out of his personal sympathies and
convictions. And this representation, though it necessarily
wants the vital freshness and vigour of Homer's repre-
sentation, has a peculiar dignity and charm of its own.
It must be accepted as an artistic compromise, and not
as the idealised picture of any life that has ever been
realised in the world. It is one of the earliest and
most interesting products of that kind of imagination
which has in modern times created the literature of ro-
mance 1 . The work in English poetry which comes most
near to the Aeneid in the union of modern ethical and
political feeling with the spectacle of the martial life and
the ideas of the supernatural belonging to a much earlier
time, is ' The Faery Queen 2 : ' though the allegorical
meaning of that poem is as different as possible from
the solid basis of fact the marvellous career of Rome
1 Cf. ' Virgil's Aeneis war der friiheste Versuch in dieser kiinstlichen oder
phantastichen Fassung des Epos, das erste romantische Heldengedicht, und
machte den Uebergang zu den gleich zwitterhaften Epen der modern en Zeit.'
Bernhardy, Griindriss der Romischen Litteratur.
2 It is probably too early to institute a comparison between the epic of
Virgil and any recent work of imagination, but not too early to indicate
adherence to those critics who find a parallel not in art and genius only, but
in the simplicity and sincerity of nature revealed in their works, between the
author of the Aeneid and the author of the ' Idyls of the King.'
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 359
on which the Aeneid is founded. Virgil produces much
more than Spenser the illusion of a kind of life not
absolutely withdrawn from mundane experience. The
scenes through which he guides the personages of his
story are the familiar places of central Italy, of Sicily,
of the Greek islands, of the shores of Africa. These
personages are engaged in important transactions, such
as make up the actual history of early nations, wars,
alliances, intermarriages, and the like. Even the super-
natural element in the poem produces the illusion, if not
of conformity with the belief of men in the age in which
the poem was written, yet of conformity with that stage
in the whole growth and decomposition of ancient beliefs
which, through the works of art and poetry, has made
the deepest impression on the world. Thus if Virgil's
representation of scenes, persons, incidents, modes of life,
supernatural belief, etc. wants both the freshness and
naivete of Homer and the ideality and exuberance of
fancy characteristic of Spenser, it is yet a solid creation
of the classical mind, exercised for the first time on a
great scale in bodying forth an imaginary foretime, peopling
it with the personages of earlier art or of the poet's fancy,
and filling up the outlines of tradition with the sentiment,
the interests, and the ideas of the age in which the poem
was written.
In addition to his great knowledge of antiquity and
his gift of living in the creations of earlier art and poetry,
Virgil possessed in his own imaginative constitution ele-
ments of power which enabled him to give solidity and
beauty to the world of his invention. Among these
elements of power his feeling of religious awe, his sense
of majesty investing the forms of government, his vene-
ration for antiquity, his susceptibility to the associations
attaching to particular places, are conspicuous. His sym-
pathy with the primary human affections suggests to him
the details of many pathetic situations. He has a Roman
admiration for courage, endurance, and magnanimous
bearing. His refined perceptions, perfected by a life of
360 THE AENEID AS AN
studious culture and by familiarity with the social life
of men inheriting the traditions of a great governing class,
enable him to make the various actors on his stage play
their parts with grace and dignity.
By some of these sources of imaginative power Ennius
also was moved in the composition of his epic. In that
which is Virgil's strength, sympathy with the primary
human affections, it would have been impossible for any
poet who came after them to have surpassed Homer,
Sophocles, or Lucretius. But in Homer this sympathy
is combined with a sterner, in Sophocles with a severer
mood. In Lucretius the feeling is identified with the
general melancholy of his thought. The feeling of
humanity in Virgil is as original and pervading as the
feeling with which Nature affects him. From all these
elements of inspiration, his imagination is able to body
forth the world of his creation in the remote border-land
of history and mythology, and to impart to it not only
solidity and self-consistency, but also grandeur of outline
and beauty of detail.
II.
Supernatural Agencies, Observances, and Beliefs in the
Aeneid.
- The first general impression produced by reading the
Aeneid immediately after reading the Iliad, is that the
supernatural 'machinery,' consisting in a great degree of
the agency of the Olympian gods in hindering or further-
ing the catastrophe, is the most imitative and conventional
element in the poem. But a closer examination of its
whole texture brings to light beneath the more con-
spicuous figures of the Homeric mythology, the presence
of other modes of religious belief, feeling, and practice.
And even the parts assigned to the greater deities have
been recast for the purposes of Virgil's epic. If these
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 361
deities have lost much in vivacity and energy, they have
gained in dignity of demeanour. The two most active
amongst them are indeed as little scrupulous in the means
they employ to attain their ends, as they show themselves
in the Iliad. They are as regardless of individual hap-
piness as they appear in some of the dramas of Euripides.
And we cannot attribute to Virgil, what has been attributed
to Euripides, the intention of bringing the objects of !
popular belief into disrepute l . He seems to feel that
they are above man's questioning ; that it is for him
' parere quietum;' and that it is well with him if through
long suffering he at last obtains reconciliation with them.
But the Venus and Juno of the Aeneid are at least exempt j
from some of the lower appetites and more ferocious
passions with which they are animated in the Iliad. They \
have learned the tact and dissimulation of the life of an
Imperial society. They are actuated by political rather
than by personal passions. They move with a certain
Roman state and dignity of bearing
pedes vestis defluxit ad imos
Et vere incessu patuit dea.
*****
Ast ego, quae Divotn incedo regina.
The action of Juno in the Aeneid reminds us of the leading
part taken by women in the political intrigues of the later
Republic and early Empire ; as by the /SOUTHS of Cicero's
Letters, and the younger Agrippina in the pages of
Tacitus. The ' mother of the Aeneadae ' combines a
subtlety of device and persistence of purpose with the
charm which befits the ancestress of a family in which
personal beauty, as is attested by many extant statues,
was as conspicuous as force of intellect and of character.
The Jove of the Aeneid, though he appears without the
outward signs of majesty which inspired the conception
of the Pheidian Zeus, and though the part he plays in
controlling the action appears somewhat tame, yet some-
1 This intention was well brought out in an article in Eraser's Magazine
which appeared a year or two ago.
362 THE AENEID AS AN
times gives utterance to, thoughts which recall the grave
and steadfast attributes which the Romans reverenced
under the title of ' luppiter Stator,'
Stat sua cuique dies ; breve et inreparabile tempus
Omnibus est vitae ; sed famam extendere factis
Hoc virtutis opus *.
Neptune comes forth to calm the storm raised by Aeolus
not with the earth-shaking might with which he passed
from the heights of Samothrace to Aegae, nor in the
radiant splendour in which he sped over the waves towards
the ships of the Achaeans, but with the calm and calming
aspect made familiar in the plastic art of a later time
alto
Prospiciens summa placidum caput extulit unda 2 .
Apollo is introduced taking part in the battle of Actium
with something of the proud bearing which the greatest of
his statues perpetuates
Actius, haec cernens, arcum intendebat Apollo
Desuper.
And as an augury of this late help afforded to his de-
scendant, he appears in the action of the poem as guiding
the hand and encouraging the spirit of the mythical
ancestor of the Julii in his first initiation into battle
Macte nova virtute, puer: sic itur ad astra,
Dis genite, et geniture decs : iure omnia bell a
Gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident :
Nee te Troia capit 3 .
Sympathy with the pure and heroic nature and the
untimely death of Camilla introduces Diana to tell her
early story and to express pity for her fate. Mars appears
only once aiding his own people against the foreign enemy 4 .
Mercury and Iris perform the customary part of mes-
sengers between heaven and earth. The Italian mythology
contributes some of the few beings endowed with human
personality which it produced. The creation of Egeria,
of the Nymph Marica, and of the goddess Juturna was
1 Aen. x. 467-9.
2 Cf. Weidner's Commentary on the First Two Books of the Aeneid.
3 Aen. ix. 641-4. * ix. 717.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 363
due to the same sentiment, associated with lakes, rivers,
and brooks, which gave birth to the Naiads and River-gods
of Greek mythology. Of these Juturna alone, as the
sister of the Italian hero of the poem, bears any part in
the action ; and as appearing in that personal human
shape in which Greek imagination embodied its concep-
tion of deity but from which Latin reverence for the most
part shrank, she is represented as enjoying that doubtful
title to distinction which made the innumerable heroines of
the Greek mythology a ' theme of song to men '
Extemplo Turni sic est adfata sororem,
Diva deam, stagnis quae fluminibusque sonoris
Praesidet : hunc illi rex aetheris altus honorem,
luppiter erepta pro virginitate sacra vit 1 .
Of the other powers of the Italian mythology Faunus is
introduced 2 in accordance with the national conception of
an undefined invisible agency guiding the conduct of men
by means of omens and oracles. And in accordance with
the euhemerism which suited the prosaic bent of the
Latin mind, the native deities Saturnus, Janus, and
Picus appear as a line of kings, who lived and reigned
in Latium before assuming their place in the ranks of the
gods.
The ordinary modes in which the divine personages
of Virgil's story take part in the action are suggested by
incidents in the Homeric poems or Hymns, and, appar-
ently in some instances, by the parts assigned to them
in the dramas of Euripides. Thus the office performed
by Venus in telling the story of Dido previous to the
landing of Aeneas on the shores of Africa, and by Diana
in telling the romantic incidents of Camilla's childhood,
may have been suggested by the prologues to the Hippoly-
tus, the Bacchae, and the Alcestis. But other manifestations
of supernatural agency, and those not the least impressive,
are due to Virgil's own invention, and are inspired by
1 Aen. xii. 138-41. This passage, with its monotonous and rhyming end-
ings, sororem sonoris honorem, is probably one of those which Virgil
would have altered had he lived to give the ' limae labor ' to his work.
2 vii. 81, etc.
364 THE AENEID AS AN
that sense of awe with which the thought of the invisible
world affects his imagination. Thus Juvenal, when con-
trasting the comfort which enabled Virgil to do justice
to his genius with the poverty of the poets of his own
time, selects as an instance of his imaginative power the
passage in the Seventh Book of the Aeneid which describes
the terror inspired by Allecto. And certainly the whole
description of the appearance of the Fury on earth, from
the time when she enters the palace of Latinus till she
disappears among the woods which add to the gloom of
the black torrent of Amsanctus, is full of energy. So too
is the brief description of Juno completing the work of her
agent one of many passages of which the solemn effect is
enhanced by the use of the language of Ennius
Turn regina deum caelo delapsa morantis
Impulit ipsa manu portas, et cardine verso
Belli ferrates rumpit Saturnia postes 1 .
Another passage in which the appearance of the Olympian
deities produces the impression of awe and sublimity is
that in which Venus reveals herself to her son in her divine
proportions
confessa deam, qualisque videri
Caelicolis et quanta solet
and, by removing the mist intervening between his mortal
sight and the reality of things, displays the forms of
Neptune, Juno, Jove himself, and Pallas engaged in the
overthrow of Troy,
Apparent dirae facies inimicaque Troiae
Numina magna deum.
But there are traces in the Aeneid of another religious
belief and practice more primitive and more widely spread
than the worship of the Olympian gods, or of the im-
personal abstractions of Italian theology. The religious
fancies which originally united each city, each tribe, and
each family into one community 2 , had been transmitted
in popular beliefs and in ceremonial observances from a
1 vii. 620-2. 2 Cp. Coulanges, La Cite Antique.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 365
time long antecedent to the establishment of the Olympian
dynasty of gods. This new and brighter creation of the
imagination did not banish the secret .awe inspired by
the older spiritual conceptions. Invisible Powers were
supposed to haunt certain places, to protect each city
with their unseen presence or under some visible symbol,
and to make their abode at each family hearth uniting
all the kindred of the house in a common worship.
These survivals of primitive thought appear in many
striking passages in the Aeneid. The idea of a secret
indwelling Power, identified with the continued existence
and fortunes of cities, imparts sublimity to that passage
in Book VIII. in which the Roman feeling of the sanctity
of the Capitol obtains its grandest expression
lam turn religio pavidos terrebat agrestis
Dira loci; iam turn silvam saxumque tremebant.
Hoc nemus, hunc, inquit, frondoso vertice collem,
Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus : Arcades ipsum
Credunt se vidisse lovem, cum saepe nigrantem
Aegida concuteret dextra nimbosque cieret 1 .
This belief imparts dignity to what from a merely human
point of view seems grotesque rather than sublime, the
reception by the Trojans of the 'fatalis machina feta
armis ' within their walls. The fatal error is committed
under the conviction that the protection enjoyed under
the old Palladium would be renewed under this new
symbol. The construction of the unwieldy mass is attri-
buted to Calchas, acting from the motive expressed in the
lines
Ne recipi portis aut duci in moenia possit,
Neu populum antiqua sub religione tueri 2 .
This same belief of the dependence of cities on their
indwelling deities pervades the whole description of the
destruction of Troy. Thus the despair produced by the
( first discovery of the presence of the enemy within the town
obtains utterance in the words
Excessere omnis adytis arisque relictis
Di, quibus imperium hoc steterat 3 .
1 viii. 349-54. 2 " 187-8. s ii. 351-2.
366 THE AENEID AS AN
When Panthus the priest of Apollo appears on the scene,
it is said of him
Sacra manu victosque decs parvumque nepotem
Ipse trahit 1 .
A kind of mystic glory from the companionship of these
'defeated gods/ for whom he was seeking a new local
habitation, invests the adventurous wanderings of Aeneas.
The preservation and re-establishment of these gods is
the pledge of the revival, under a new form and in a
strange land, of the ancient empire of Troy, and of her
ultimate triumph over her enemy.
But still more ancient than the belief in local deities
indwelling in the sites of cities was the worship of the
dead, the belief in their reappearance on earth, and of
their continued interest in human affairs. It is in Virgil,
a poet of the most enlightened period of antiquity, that
we find the clearest indications of the earliest form of
this belief and of the ceremonies to which it first gave
birth
Inferimus tepido spumantia cymbia lacte,
Sanguinis et sacri pateras, animamque sepulchro
Condimus, et magna supremum voce ciemus a .
The doctrine of the continued existence of the dead, the
most ancient and the most enduring of all supernatural
beliefs, affects Virgil through the strength both of his
human affection and of his religious awe. Both of these
feelings are wonderfully blended in that passage in which
the ghost of Hector appears to Aeneas, and entrusts to
him the sacred emblems and gods of the doomed city.
How deep on the one hand is the feeling of old affection
mingled with awful solemnity which inspires the address of
Aeneas to his ancient comrade
O lux Dardaniae ! spes o fidissima Teucrum !
Quae tantae tenuere morae? quibus Hector ab oris
Expectate venis? ut te post multa tuorum
Funera, post varies hominumque urbisque labores,
Defessi aspicimus : quae caussa indigna serenos
Foedavit voltus, aut cur haec volnera cerno 3 ?
1 ii. 320-1.
2 Aen. iii. 66-8. The passage is referred to by M. Coulanges in one of the
early chapters of La Cit6 Antique.' 3 ii. 281-6.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 367
And how pure appears the love of country still moving
the august shade in the world below, in the lines which
follow
Hie nihil, nee me quaerentem vana moratur,
Sed graviter gemitus imo de pectore ducens,
' Heu fuge, nate dea, teque his, ait, eripe flammis :
Hostis habet muros : ruit alto a culmine Troia :
Sat patriae Priamoque datum : si Pergama dextra
Defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent.
Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates:
Hos cape fatorum comites, his moenia quaere,
Magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto.'
Under the influence of the same feelings of affection and
reverence, Andromache is introduced bringing annual
offerings to the empty tomb and altars consecrated to the
Manes of her first husband
Sollemnis cum forte dapes, et tristia dona
Ante urbem in luco falsi Simoentis ad undam,
Libabat cineri Andromache manisque vocabat
Hectoreum ad tumulum, viridi quein caespite inanem
Et geminas, caussam lacrimis, sacraverat aras l .
Similar honours are paid by Dido to the spirit of
Sychaeus
Praeterea fuit in templis de marmore templum
Coniugis antiqui, miro quod honore colebat,
Velleribus niveis et festa fronde revinctum 2 .
The long account of the ' Games ' in Book V., which, from
a Roman point of view, might be regarded as a needless
excrescence on the poem, is justified by the considera-
tion that they are celebrated in honour of the Manes of
Anchises.
The whole of the Sixth Book the master-piece of
Virgil's creative invention is inspired by the feeling of
the greater spiritual life which awaits man beyond the
grave. The conceptions and composition of that Book
entitle Virgil to take his place with Aeschylus, Sophocles,
and Plato among the four great religious teachers, the
' pii vates ' who, in transmitting, have illumined the spiritual
intuitions of antiquity.
The sense of devout awe is the chief mark of dis-
1 iii. 301-5. 2 iv. 457-9.
368 . THE AENEID AS AN
I tinction between the ' Inferno ' of Virgil and that of
Homer, the conception of which is due to the suggestive
force of natural curiosity and natural affection. The dead
do not appear to Virgil merely as the shadowy inhabitants
of an unsubstantial world, VZKVUV ancvrjva Kapr]va, but
i as partakers in a more august and righteous dispensation
than that under which mortals live. The spirit of Virgil
is on this subject more in harmony with that of Aeschylus
than of Homer, but his thoughts of the dead are happier
and of a less austere majesty than those expressed in
the Choephoroe. The whole humanising and moralising
influence of Greek philosophy, and especially of the
Platonic teaching, combines in Virgil's representation with
the primitive fancies of early times and the popular beliefs
and practices transmitted from those times to his own
age. But just as he fails to form a consistent conception
of the action of the powers of Heaven out of the various
beliefs, primitive, artistic, national, and philosophical, which
he endeavours to reconcile, so he has failed to produce a
consistent picture of the spiritual life out of the various
popular, mystical, and philosophical modes of thought
which he strove to combine into a single representation.
Perhaps if he had lived longer and been able to carry
further the ' potiora studia ' on which he was engaged
simultaneously with the composition of the Aeneid, he
might have effected a more specious reconcilement of
what now appear irreconcileable factors of belief. Or,
perhaps, in the thought which induces him to dismiss
Aeneas and the Sibyl by the gate through which
falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes
we may recognise a trace, not certainly of Epicurean
unbelief, but of that sad and subtle irony with which the
I spirit of man inwardly acknowledges that it is baffled
in its highest quest. The august spectacle w r hich is un-
folded before Aeneas, that too like the vision of Er the
son of Armenius, is but a juCtfos, a symbol of a state
of being, which the human imagination, illuminated by
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 369
conscience and affection, shadows forth as an object of
hope, but which it cannot grasp as a reality. In the
grandeur of moral belief which inspires Virgil's shadowy
representation, in his recognition of the everlasting
distinction between a life of righteousness and of un-
righteousness, of purity and of impurity, he but reproduces
the profoundest ethical intuitions of Plato. But in the
indication of that trust in a final reunion which has com-
forted innumerable human hearts
coniunx ubi pristinus illi
Respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem
the Roman poet is moved by the tender affection of his
own nature, and follows the light of his own intuition.
Ancient commentators have drawn attention to the large
place which the account of religious ceremonies occupies in
the Aeneid, and to the exact acquaintance which Virgil
shows with the minutiae of Pontifical and Augural lore.
It is irr keeping with the character of Aeneas as the hero
of ( a religious epic, that the commencement and completion
of every enterprise are accompanied with sacrifices and
other ceremonial observances. M. Gaston Boissier 1 , fol-
lowing Macrobius, has pointed out the special propriety of
the offerings made to different gods, of the peculiar use
of such epithets as ' eximios ' applied to the bulls selected
for sacrifice, of the ritual application of the words { por-
ricio 2 ' and * porrigo,' and of the words addressed to
Aeneas by the River-Nymphs 3 , 'Aenea, vigila,' which
would recall to Roman ears those with which the com-
mander of the Roman armies, on the outbreak of war,
shook the shields and sacred symbols of Mars. Other
1 Cp. ' Un Poete Theologien/ in the Revue des deux Mondes.
2 Cf. Aen. v. 236:
Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum
Constituam ante aras, voti reus, extaque salsos
Porriciam in fluctus, et vina liquentia fundam.
viii. 273:
Quare agite, O iuvenes ! tantarum in munere laudum
Cingite fronde comas et pocula porgite dextris.
3 Created out of his ships.
VOL. I. B b
370 THE AENEID. AS AN
passages would remind the readers of Virgil of the
ceremonial observances with which they were familiar, as
for instance that in which Helenus prescribes to Aeneas
the peculiarly Roman practice of veiling the head in
worship and sacrifice
Quin, ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes,
Et positis aris iam vota in litore solves,
Purpureo velare comas adopertus amictu ;
Nequa inter sanctos ignis in honore deorum
Hostilis facies occurrat et omina turbet 1 .
There are traces also of a worship, which from its wider
diffusion, and its late survival, seems to. belong to a
remoter antiquity than the peculiar ceremonial of Rome,
as in the prayer offered to the god of Soracte
Summe deum, sancti custos Soractis, Apollo,
Quern primi colimus, cui pineus ardor acervo
Pascitur, et medium freti pietate per ignem
Cultores multa premiums vestigia pruna 2 .
The desire to infuse a new power into the religious ob-
servance, belief, and life of his countrymen thus appears
to have acted as a strong suggestive force to Virgil's
imagination. This is apparent in the importance which
he attaches to the offices of Priest or Augur, to the dress,
ornaments, or procedure of the chief person taking part
in prayer or sacrifice, to the ceremonies accompanying
every important action, to the sacred associations attach-
ing to particular places. Amid all the changes of the
world, Virgil seems to cling to the traditions of the re-
ligious and spiritual life, as Lucretius holds to the belief
in the laws of Nature, as the surest ground of human
trust. He has no thought of superseding old beliefs or
practices by any new
Vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum,
but rather strives to reconcile the old faith with the more
enlightened convictions and humaner sentiments of men.
2 xi. 785-8. Cp. the Beltane fires which are said to be still kept up among
remote Celtic populations, and which seem to be a survival of a primitive Sun-
worship.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 371
His religious belief, like his other speculative convictions,
was composite and undefined ; yet it embraced what was
purest and most vital in all the religions of antiquity, and,
in its deepest intuitions, it seems to look forward to some
aspects of the belief which became dominant in Rome four
centuries later.
III.
Representation of Political and Social Life> etc. in the
Aeneid.
While the various religious elements in Virgil's nature
find ample scope in the representation of the Aeneid,
his apathy in regard to active political life is seen in the (
tameness of his reproduction of that aspect of human
affairs. In the Homeric /3ovX?j and ayopa we recognise not
only the germs of the future political development of
the Greeks, but the germs out of which all free political
life unfolds itself. To the form of government exhibited
in the Aeneid, the words which Tacitus uses of a mixed
constitution might be more justly applied, * laudari
facilius quam evenire, vel, si evenit, haud diuturna esse
potest V And even if the Virgilian idea could be realised
in some happy moment of human affairs, it does not
contain within itself the capacity of any further develop-
ment. The difficulties of the problem of government are
solved in Virgil by the picture which he draws of passive
and loyal submission on the part of nobles and people
to a wise, beneficent, and disinterested ruler and legislator 2 .
The idea of the ruler in the Aeneid is the same as that
of the ' Father.' It is und'er such a rule, exercised from
1 Ann. iv. 33.
2 It is true, as Gibbon remarks in his Dissertation on the Sixth Book of the
Aeneid, that the expression ' dare iura ' is only once applied to Aeneas but it is
the regular expression used of a ruler of a settled community, as for instance of
Dido. It is applied at the end of the Georgics to Augustus, ' per populos dat
iura.'
B b 2
372 THE AENEID AS AN
Rome as its centre, that the unchanging future of the
world is anticipated
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet, imperiumque Pater Romanus habebit l .
The case of Mezentius does indeed show that Virgil
recognised the ultimate right of rebellion when the paternal
king passed into the tyrannical oppressor ; but such an
instance affords no scope for representing the manifestation
of political passions and virtues. The free play of con-
flicting forces in a community has no attraction for Virgil's
imagination. He suggests no thought either of the popular
liberty realised in the best days of the Roman common-
wealth, or of the sagacity and steadfast traditions of the
Roman Senate. The only trace of discussion and oppo-
sition appears in the debate within the court of Latinus.
But the antagonism between Drances and Turnus is one
of personal rivalry, not of political difference ; and the
only limit to the sovereignty of Latinus lies in his own
weakness of will and in the opposition of his household.
But besides the ideals of popular freedom and sena-
torian dignity which were realised in the Republic, the
Roman mind was impressed by another political ideal,
the ( Majesty of the State.' The one political force that
remained unchanged, amid the various changes of the
Roman constitution from the time of the kings to the
time of the emperors, was the power of the executive.
And this power depended not on material force, but on
the sentiment with which the magistrate was regarded
as the embodiment for the time being of that attribute
in the State which commanded the reverence of the people.
The greatest political offence which a Roman could commit
under the Republic was a violation of the ' majesty of
the Commonwealth;' under the Empire 'of the majesty
of the Emperor.' The sentiment out of which this idea
1 Cp. the application of ' pater ' as an epithet of Aeneas, and Horace's line in
reference to Augustus
Hie ames dici pater atque princeps.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 373
arose was felt by Virgil in all its strength. Thus although
the actual government of Latinus is exhibited as a model
neither of wisdom nor of strength, it is invested with
all the outward semblance of powerful and ancient
sovereignty
Tectum augustum, ingens, centum sublime columnis,
Urbe fuit summa, Laurentis regia Pici,
Horrendum silvis et religione parentum.
Hie sceptra accipere et primes attollere fasces
Regibus omen erat; hoc illis curia templum,
Hae sacris sedes epulis ; hie, ariete caeso,
Perpetuis soliti patres considere mensis 1 .
The spectacle of the fall of Troy acquires new grandeur
from the representation of Troy, not, as it appears in
Homer, as a city with many allies, but as the centre of
a wide and long-established empire
Postquam res Asiae Priamique evertere gentem
Inmeritam visum Superis, ceciditque superbum
Ilium et omnis humo fumat Neptunia Troia 2 .
Urbs antiqua ruit, multos dominata per annos 3 .
Haec finis Priami fatorum; hie exitus ilium
Sorte tulit, Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem
Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
Regnatorem Asiae 4 .
The tragic splendour of Dido's death is enhanced by
her proud sense of a high destiny fulfilled and of queenly
rule exercised over a great people
Vixi, et, quem dederat cursum Fortuna, peregi :
Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago.
Urbem praeclaram statui, mea moenia vidi 5 .
Thus although the necessities of his position and his own
' inscitia reipublicae' prevented Virgil in his representation
from appealing to the generous political emotions of a
free people, he was able not only to gratify the pride
of empire felt by his countrymen, but to sustain among
them the sense of imaginative reverence with which the
sovereignty of the State over its individual members deserves
to be regarded.
But there is another class of political facts which interest
1 vii. 170-6. 2 iiu 1-3. s ii. 363. 4 ii. 554-7. 5 iv. 653-5.
374 THE A EN El D AS AN
the mind as much as those which arise out of the play
of conflicting forces within a free commonwealth, viz.
the relations of independent powers with one another.
And of this class of facts both Homer and Virgil make use
in their representations. In Homer we see the spectacle,
never realised in actual Grecian history at least till the
days of Alexander, of the many independent Greek powers
united under one leader in a common enterprise, and of
the various powers of the western shores of Asia combined
in defence of their leading State. The antagonism between
the Greeks and Trojans is, in point of general conception,
more like the hostile inter-relations of nations in modern
times, than like the wars of city against city, with which
the pages of later Greek history are filled J . The union of
the Italian tribes and cities under the command of Turnus,
and that of Trojans, Arcadians, and Etrurians all foreigners
recently settled in Italy under Aeneas, may be compared
to the union of independent Greek powers under Aga-
memnon, and that of ' the allies summoned from afar,'
who, while following their own princes, yet submitted to
the command of Hector. Yet in Virgil's conception of
the great powers of the world, and even of cities most
remote from one another, as having an intimate knowledge
of each other's fortunes, in the idea of what in modern
times would be called a 'foreign policy* and 'the balance
of power/ which dictates the mission of Turnus to Diomede,
and the appeal of Aeneas to the Etrurians to take part
with him in averting the establishment by the Rutulians
of a sovereignty over the whole of Italy, we meet with
a condition of international relations and policy, which,
if based on the experience of any period of ancient history,
might have been suggested by the memory of the time
when Hannibal's great scheme of combining the fresh
vigour of the western barbarians, the smouldering elements
1 The Peloponnesian war, which united the Dorian and Oligarchical States
of Greece under the lead of Sparta against Athens and her allies, admits, as is
indicated by Thucydides in his Introduction, of the best parallel to the Trojan
war, as represented by Homer.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 375
of resistance in Italy, and the military power and prestige
of the old monarchies of Macedonia and Syria, was defeated
not more by the irresolution and disunion among those
powers, than by the traditional policy through which Rome
had made her dependent allies feel that her interest was
identified with their own. But this aspect of the world,
though an anachronism from the point of view either of
the time when the poem was written, or of that in which
the events represented are supposed to happen, enhances
the dignity of the action, by exhibiting the enterprise
of Aeneas as a spectacle attracting the attention and
involving the destinies of the great nations of the world.
The state of material civilisation exhibited in the Aeneid
must be regarded also as a poetical compromise between
the simplicity and rude vigour of primitive civilisation and
the splendour and refinement of the age in which the poem
was written, Thus Acestes, the friendly king and Sicilian
host of Aeneas, welcomes him on his return from Carthage
in the rough dress of some primitive hunter
Horridus in iaculis et pelle Libystidis ursae.
Evander receives him beneath his humble roof,
stratisque locavit
EfFultum foliis et pelle Libystidis ursae.
The Arcadian prince is roused in the morning by the song
of birds under the eaves, and proceeds to visit his guest ac-
companied by two watchdogs which lay before his door. On
the other hand the description, in the account of the build-
ing of Carthage, of the foundation of the great theatre
hie lata theatris
Fundamenta petunt alii, immanisque columnas
Rupibus excidunt, scaenis decora alta futuris 1 ;
the picture of the great Temple of Juno
Aerea cui gradibus surgebant limina nexaeque
Acre trabes, foribus cardo stridebat aenis 2 ;
of the rich frescoes and bas-reliefs adorning it
Artificumque manus inter se operumque labores
Miratur, videt Iliacas ex ordine pugnas
Bellaque iam fama totum volgata per orbem 3 ;
1 i- 427-9- 2 i- 448-9. 3 . 455-7-
THE AENEID AS AN
of the great dome under which the throne of Dido is
placed
media testudine templi, etc.;
the description of the Temple of Apollo at Cumae, the
account of the banquet in the palace of Dido with its
blaze of 'festal light'
dependent lychni laquearibus aureis
Incensi, et noctem flammis funalia vincunt,
(a picture partly indeed, like that in Lucretius
Si non aurea stint iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.,
suggested by the imaginative description of the banquet
in the Palace of Alcinous) appear to owe their existence
to the impression produced on the mind of Virgil by
some of the great architectural works of the Augustan
Age such as the Theatre of Marcellus, the Pantheon,
the Temple of the Palatine Apollo, and by the spectacle
of profuse luxury which the houses and banquets of the
richer classes at Rome exhibited.
The class from which the personages of the Aeneid
are taken is almost exclusively that of those most elevated
in dignity and influence. Virgil does not attempt to bring
before us the rich variety of social grades, which adds
vivacity and verisimilitude to the spectacle of life and
manners presented by Homer, Chaucer, and Shakspeare.
It does not enter into Virgil's conception of epic art to
introduce types of the class to which Thersites, Irus,
Eumaeus, Phemius, and Eurycleia belong. If he makes
any exception to his general practice of limiting his repre-
sentation to the class of royal and noble personages, it
is in the glimpse which he affords of devoted loyalty in
the person of Palinurus and of affection and grief in that
of the bereaved mother of Euryalus. Where, after the
example of Homer, he introduces various figures belonging
to the same class, he fails to distinguish them from one
another by any individual trait of character or manners.
Thus Dido has her suitors as well as Penelope ; but the
former produce no life-like impression of any kind, like
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 377
that produced by the careless levity and gay insolence
of Antinous and Eurymachus.
As a painter of manners Virgil adopts the stately and j
conventional methods of Greek tragedy rather than the '
vivid realism of Homer. The intercourse of his chief
personages with one another is conducted with the dignity
and courtesy of the most refined times. Homer's per-
sonages indeed act for the most part with a natural dignity
and courtesy of bearing, proceeding from the commanding
character which he attributes to them, as well as from
the lively social grace of their Greek origin, which can
neither be surpassed nor equalled by any conventional
refinement. But these social virtues can be rapidly ex-
changed for vehemence of passion and angry recrimination.
In the manners of Virgil's personages we recognise the
influence of refined traditions, and of the habits of a
dignified society. His personages show not only courtesy
but studied consideration for each other. Thus while
Latinus addresses Turnus in words of courteous acknow-
ledgment of which the original suggestion may be traced
to a tragedy of Attius
O praestans animi iuvenis ! quantum ipse feroci
Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est
Consulere, atque omnis metuentem expendere casus 1 ;
Turnus replies to him in the terms of respect which are
due to his age and position
Quam pro me curam geris, hanc precor, optime, pro me
Deponas letumque sinas pro laude pacisci.
Et nos tela. pater, etc.
The element of self-command amid the deepest movements
of feeling and passion enhances the stately dignity of
manners represented in the poem. Thus in the greatest
sorrow of Evander, when he is recalling with fond pride
the youthful promise of Pallas
Tu quoque nunc stares immanis truncus in
Esset par aetas et idem si robur ab annis,
Turne 2 ,
173-
378 THE AENEID AS AN
he remembers that he is detaining the Trojans, who had
come to pay the funeral honours to his son
sed infelix Teucros quid demoror armis?
Vadite et haec memores regi mandata referte.
The queenly courtesy of Dido springs from deeper elements
in human nature than conformity to the standard of de-
meanour imposed by elevated rank
Solvite corde metum, Teucri, secludite curas.
Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt
Moliri et late finis custode tueri.
Quis genus Aeneadum, quis Troiae nesciat urbem
Virtutesque virosque, atit tanti incendia belli?
Non obtunsa adeo gestamus pectora Poeni,
Nee tarn aversus equos Tyria Sol iungit ab urbe, etc. 1
The sea-adventures of the Aeneid seem to be suggested
rather by the experience of travellers in the Augustan
Age, than by the spirit of wonder and of buoyant
resistance with which Odysseus and his companions en-
counter the perils of unexplored seas and coasts. The
fabulous portents of legendary times appear in the shape
of the Harpies, the Cyclops, the sea-monster Scylla, etc.,
but they do not produce that sense of novelty and
verisimilitude which the same or similar representations
produce in the Odyssey. The description of the Harpies
is grotesque rather than imaginative. There is a touch
of pathos in the introduction of the Cyclops
Lanigerae comitantur oves : ea sola voluptas
Solamenque mali 2 ,
reminding us of the Kpte ireirov, etc. of the Odyssey ; and
the picture of his assembled brethren
Cernimus adstantis nequiquam lumine torvo
Aetnaeos fratres, caelo capita alta ferentis,
Concilium horrendum 3
is conceived with a kind of grim power, showing that
the imagination of Virgil does not merely reproduce, but
endows with a new life the figures which he borrows
most closely from his original. But the vivid sense of
reality, the combined humour and terror of Homer's
1 i. 561, etc. 2 iii. 360-1. 3 iii. 677-9.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 379
representation, are altogether absent from the Aeneid.
These marvellous creations appear quite natural in the
Odyssey ; they are in keeping with the imaginative
impulses and the adventurous spirit of the ages of
maritime discovery ; but they stand in no real relation
to the feelings and beliefs with which men encountered
the occasional dangers and the frequent discomforts of
the Adriatic or the Aegean in the Augustan age.
In his conception of these real dangers of the sea, which
have to be met in the most advanced as well as the most
primitive times, Virgil's inferiority to Homer both in
general effect and in life-like detail is very marked. The
wonderful realism of the sea-adventures in the Fifth Book
of the Odyssey produces on the mind the impression that
the poet is recalling either a peril that he himself had
encountered, or one that he had heard vividly related
by some one who had thus escaped ' from the issue of
death:' and that there was in the poet too the genuine
delight in danger, the spirit
'That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine,'
which has been attributed to the companions of his hero's
wanderings.
Odysseus, like Aeneas, feels his limbs and heart give
way before the sudden outburst of the storm ; but though
swept from the raft and overwhelmed for a time under
the waves, he never loses his presence of mind or his
courage
dX\* ou5' o/s trxeS"?* tirfXrjOfTO Tfip6p.fvos irep,
d\\a fjieOopfjirjOels Zvi Kvpaaiv lAAdjSer' auTTjs,
If fjieaari Se KaOife rt\os Oavarov
The poet of the Odyssey may have encountered such
storms as are described in the passage here referred to,
and we cannot doubt that in such case he bore his part
bravely, ' redeeming his own life and securing the safe
return of his comrades.' If Virgil in some unadventurous
voyaging ever happened to be * caught in a storm in the
open Aegean/ it probably was in the position of a helpless
380 THE AENEID AS AN
and suffering spectator that he contemplated the wild
commotion of the elements.
On the other hand he shows a keen enjoyment of the
pleasure of sailing past famous and beautiful scenes with a
fair wind and in smooth water
Linquimus Ortygiae portus pelagoque volamus
Bacchatamque iugis Naxon, viridemque Donysam,
Olearon, niveamque Paron, sparsasque per aequor
Cycladas, et crebris legimus freta consita terris.
Nauticus exoritur vario certamine clamor 1 .
The first sight of land from the sea is vividly brought
before the eye in such passages as these
Quarto terra die primum se attollere tandem
Visa, aperire procul montis, ac volvere fumum 2 .
Tamque rubescebat stellis Aurora fugatis,
Cum procul obscures collis humilemque videmus
Italiam 3 .
Crebrescunt optatae aurae, portusque patescit
lam propior, templumque apparet in arce Minervae 4 .
The disappearance of the shores left behind, and the open-
ing up of new scenes in the rapid onward voyage, leave on
the mind a fresh feeling of novelty and life in such passages
as
Protinus aerias Phaeacum abscondimus arces,
Litoraque Epiri legimus, portuque subimus
Chaonio, et celsam Buthroti accedimus urbem 5 ;
and in this in which the historic associations of famous
cities are evoked
Apparet Camarina procul, campique Geloi,
Immanisque Gela, fluvii cognomine dicta.
Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe
Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum, etc. 6
These and similar passages such as that describing the
moonlight sail past the enchanted shores of Circe remind
us of the great change which had come over the world
between the Age of the Odyssey and that of the Aeneid.
The one poem is pervaded by the eager curiosity of the
youthful prime of the world, attracting the most daring
1 iii. 124-8. 2 iii. 205-6. 3 iii. 521-3. * iii. 530-1.
5 iii. 291-3. 6 iii. 701-4.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 381
and energetic spirits to the discovery and peopling of \
new lands ; the other by that more languid curiosity,
awakened by the associations of the past, by the longing
for some change to break the routine of a too easy life,
and by the refined enjoyment of beauty, urging men to
encounter some danger and more discomfort for the sake of
visiting scenes famous in history, rich in natural charms, or
in works of art, the inheritance from more creative times.
In his scenes of battle, Virgil is as inferior to the poet
of the Iliad as he is to the poet of the Odyssey in those
of sea-adventure. In the details of single fights, in the
account of the wounds inflicted on one another by the
combatants, in the enumeration of the obscurer warriors
who fall before the champions of either side
his addit Amastrum
Hippotaden, sequiturque incumbens eminus hasta
Tereaque Harpalycumque et Demophoonta Chromimque l ,
he follows closely in the footsteps of Homer. He is,
however, more sparing of these details, so as to avoid
the monotony of Homer's battle-fields and single com-
bats. The Iliad was originally addressed to a people of
warriors
olffiv apa Zeus
(K VeOTTJTOS ZSoJKe KCLI 4s yfjpaS TO\V1TevtlV
dpyaXeovs TroAe/uous, o(f>pa tpOiofieaOa ?a<TTOs 2 .
And although through the mouth of the wisest of his
heroes, Homer expresses some sense of weariness of the
' war and broils, which make
Life one perpetual fight'
alif/a re (pv\6tri8os TreAcTCtt Kopos dvdpuiroiffi
yet all accepted this life as their destiny; and those who
first listened to the song of the poet would know no satiety
in the details of battle and records of martial prowess,
glorifying perhaps the reputed ancestors of those chiefs
whom they themselves followed to the field or to the
1 Aen. xi. 673-5.
2 II. xiv. 85-7. The fascination which the poem has even for modern
readers is due, in no slight degree, to the spell which some aspects of war
exercise over the imagination in all times.
382 THE AENEID AS AN
storming of cities. To Virgil's readers, the record of such a
time as that described in the Iliad would come like echoes
from an alien world. In so far as the Romans of the
Augustan Age had any vital passion corresponding to
the interest with which Homer's Greeks must have
witnessed in imagination the spectacle of wounds and
death in battle, it was in the basest form which the lust
of blood has ever assumed among civilised men, the
passion for the gladiatorial shows. It is clear that Virgil
himself, though he can feel and inspire the fire of battle
at some critical moment
ingeminant hastis et Troes et ipse
Fulmineus Mnestheus;
though he can express a Roman contempt for
death,
Est hie, est animus lucis contemptor,
and can sympathise with the energetic daring of his Italian
heroes and heroine, Turnus, Lausus, Pallas 1 , and Ca-
milla, yet shares the sentiment with which his hero looks
forward to peace as the crown of his labours, and regards
the wars which he was compelled to wage as a hated task
imposed on him by the Fates
Nos alias hinc ad lacrimas, eadem horrida bella,
Fata vocant 2 .
Yet even in the incidents of his battle-pieces Virgil does
not follow Homer slavishly. The warlike action of the
poem is not a mere succession of single combats, or a
confused melee of battle, surging 'this way and that,'
between the rampart that guards the ships and the walls
of the city. It is said that the greatest soldier of modern
times, in the enforced leisure of his last years, condescended
to express a criticism, not indeed a favourable one, on
Virgil's skill as a tactician ; and it is an element of novelty
1 Cf. viii. 510:
ni, mixtus matre Sabella,
Hinc partem patriae traheret.
2 xi. 96-7. Cf. the epithet ' lacrimabile,' which he applies to war.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 383
in the representation of the Aeneid that it suggests at least
some image of the combined operations of modern warfare.
But it is in the play which Virgil gives to the other human
emotions of his personages, tempering and counteracting
the blind rage of battle, that the poet of a more advanced I
era most conspicuously appears. The ancient world at its '
best, whether we judge of it from the representations of its
poets, or the recorded acts of its greatest men and most
powerful and enlightened States, did not rise to that height
of chivalrous generosity which scorns to take an enemy at
a disadvantage, or to wipe away the memory of defeat or
disaster by a cruel revenge. Achilles in his treatment of
Hector, Caesar in his treatment of Vercingetorix, the
Spartans in dealing with Plataeae, the Syracusans with
the remnant of the defeated Athenians, the Athenians
themselves with the helpless defenders of Melos, the
Romans with the Samnites who spared their lives at the
Caudine Forks, all alike fall below the standard of noble-
ness which men of temper inferior to that of the great men
and nations of antiquity often reached in mediaeval times.
Those who appear to come nearest this standard in ancient
times, who could at least honour courage in an enemy or
refuse to press too heavily upon him in his defeat, are the
Carthaginian Hannibal and his not unworthy conqueror.
Virgil cannot be said, in this respect, to rise altogether
superior to the spirit of the old Greek and Roman world.
In the Aeneid it is thought no shame, but rather a glory,
for soldiers to slay defenceless or wounded men in battle
or in the dim confusion of a night foray. Yet the senti-
ments of his warriors engaged in battle are more tempered
with humanity than those of the heroes of the Iliad.
There is no word of throwing the bodies of the slain to
dogs and vultures. There is no such deadly struggle over
the bodies of Lausus or Pallas as over that of Patroclus.
Turnus and Aeneas alike act on the principle expressed
in the request of the dying champion of Italy,
Ulterius ne tende odiis.
Not only is the warlike passion less cruel in the Aeneid,
384 THE AENEID AS AN
\ but the feeling of the sanctity which invests the dead is
stronger. The only passage in the Aeneid which might
have exposed Virgil to the reproach of Lucretius, as for-
getting in the supposed interests of religion the certain
claims of humanity, is that in which Aeneas, following the
example of Achilles, sets aside the captive youths for
immolation to the Manes of Pallas.
But the chief source of interest in the Virgilian battle-
pieces is the pathetic sympathy awakened for the untimely
death of some of the nobler personages of the story. The
tender compassion called forth by the blight which fell in
his own time upon the earliest of the * breves et infaustos
populi Romani amores,' and reappeared again in the deaths
of Drusus and Germanicus that compassion which dictates
the words
si qua fata aspera rumpas
Tu Marcellus eris,
appears in his description of the fates of Pallas and Lausus,
of Euryalus and Camilla. The reverence for the purest of
human affections which shines through the lines
Transiit et parmam mucro levia arma minacis,
Et tunicam, molli mater quam neverat auro,
and
At vero, ut voltum vidit morientis et ora,
Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris,
Ingemuit miserans graviter dextramque tetendit,
Et men tern patriae subiit pietatis imago 1 ,
may be discerned also in some of the minor incidents of
the poem, as in these lines
Vos etiam, gemini, Rutulis cecidistis in arvis,
Daucia, Laride Thymberque, simillima proles,
Indiscreta suis gratusque parentibus error 2 .
The emotions awakened by the deaths of Mezentius
and of Turnus are of a sterner character. So too the
poet's compassion for the heroine of his later books,
Camilla, falling by the hand of an ignoble antagonist, is
1 x. 817-8, 821-4. 2 x - 390-2.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 385
mixed with a sense of scornful satisfaction at the retribu-
tion which immediately followed
Extemplo teli stridorem aurasque sonantis
Audiit una Arruns haesitque in corpore ferrum.
Ilium expirantem socii atque extrema gementem
Obliti ignoto camporum in pulvere linquunt ;
Opis ad aetherium pinnis aufertur Olympum 1 .
Virgil's susceptibility to local associations and to im-
pressions of a remote antiquity must also be taken into
account as supplying materials and stimulus to his inven-
tive faculty. No poet so often appeals to the imaginative
interest attaching to the earlier condition of places or
things of old renown or famous in the later history of
the world. Thus the building of Carthage, the first view
of the Tiber
Hunc inter fluvio Tiberinus amoeno
Verticibus rapidis et multa flavus harena
In mare prorumpit
the gathering of the Italian races from 'mountainous
Praeneste, from the tilled lands around Gabii, from the
banks of the cool Anio, and the rivulets sparkling among
the Hernican hills,' the contrast between the primitive
pastoral aspect of the Tarpeian Rock and the Capitol, of
the site of the Forum and the Carinae, and the familiar
spectacle of outward magnificence which they presented
in the Augustan Age, are brought before the mind with
a more stimulating power than the experiences of storm or
battle through which the hero of the poem is conducted.
The local associations of Mount Eryx, of the lake of
Avernus, of the fountain Albunea, of the valley of Am-
sanctus, of the Arician grove, of the site of Ardea are
evoked with impressive effect. The names of the pro-
montories Palinurum, Misenum, and Caieta are invested
with an interest derived from their connexion with the
imaginary incidents and personages of the poem. The
ritual observances and the legend connected with the Ara
Maxima suggest the description of ceremonies and the
narrative of events in the earlier half of Book viii. ; and
1 xi. 863-7-
VOL. I. C C
386 THE AENEID AS AN
the custom so ancient that its original meaning was for-
gotten of opening the gateway of Janus Quirinus on the
rare occasions when a state of war arose out of a state
of unbroken peace, is traced back to a time antecedent
to the existence either of Rome or Alba
Mos erat Hesperio in Latio, quern protinus urbes
Albanae coluere sacrum, nunc maxima rerum
Roma colit, etc.
****#
Ipse Quirinali trabea cinctuque Gabino
Insignis reserat stridentia limina Consul ;
Ipse vocat pugnas, sequitur turn cetera pubes,
Aereaque adsensu conspirant cornua rauco 1 .
Perhaps the most original and not the least impressive
of those personages whom Virgil introduces into his com-
posite representation the Sibyl is conceived under the
strong sense of the mystery and sanctity which invested
the oracles of the Sibylline books.
The personal and national susceptibilities of Virgil's
imagination and the circumstances of the age in which
he lived, are thus seen largely to modify that representa-
tion of life and manners of which the main outlines are
suggested by the Homeric poems, and of which many of
the details are derived from the Cyclic poems, from the
Greek tragedies founded on the events which followed on the
death of Hector, and from the Italian traditions and
aetiological myths which Cato had preserved in his 'Ori-
gines/ and Varro and other writers in their works on
antiquities. Virgil's power as an epic poet does not
consist in original invention of incident or action, but in
combining diverse elements into a homogeneous whole, and
in imparting poetic life to old materials, many of them not
originally conceived in a poetic spirit. The interest which
he thus imparts to his narrative is different from, and
inferior to, that attaching to the original representation
in the Homeric poems. Had Virgil's representation been
as faithfully drawn from the life as that of Homer, it still
would have been less interesting, from the fact that ancient
1 vii. 601-15.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 387
Romans are less interesting in their individuality than the
Greeks of the great ages of Greek life, and from the fact
also that the manners of an advanced age do not affect the
imagination in the way in which those of a nation's youth
affect it. Not only was Virgil's own genius much less
creative than that of Homer, his materials possessed much
less plasticity. There is no need of any act of recon-
structive criticism to enable us to feel the immediate power
of the Iliad and the Odyssey. To do justice to the power
of the Aeneid we must endeavour to realise in imagination
the state of mind of those who received the poem in all
the novelty of its first impression, at once * rich with the
spoils of time,' and ' pregnant with celestial fire.'
IV.
Conception and Delineation of Character in the Aeneid.
The most important element in the Aeneid, regarded as
a poem of heroic action, remains still to be considered,
viz. the conception and delineation of individual character.
The greatest of epic poets in ancient times was also en-
dowed with the most versatile dramatic faculty. And this
faculty was displayed not only in the conception of a great
variety of noble types of character, but also in the modes in
which these conceptions were embodied. The Greek lan-
guage is greatly superior to the Latin in its adaptability to
natural dialogue. In this respect Cicero's inferiority to
Plato is as marked as Virgil's inferiority to Homer. The
language of Homer and the language of Plato are equally
fitted for the expression of the greatest thoughts and feel-
ings, and for the common intercourse of men with one j
another. Neither that of Virgil nor of Cicero adapts itself
easily to the lively play of emotion or to the rapid inter-
change of thought. The characters of Homer, like the
characters of Shakspeare, reveal themselves in their com-
plete individuality, as they act and re-act on one another in
C c 2
388 THE AENEID AS AN
many changing moods of passion and affection. The
personages of Virgil are revealed by the poet, partly in
his account of what they do, and partly through the
medium of set speeches expressive of some particular
attitude of mind. Virgil's imagination is the imagination
of the orator rather than of the dramatist. It is not a
complete and complex man, liable to various moods, and
standing in various relations to other men, but it is some
powerful movement of the Ov^os in man, that the oratorical
imagination is best fitted to express. Milton also, like
Virgil, reveals the characters of his personages with the
imaginative power of an orator rather than with that of
a dramatist. But he possesses another resource in the
analytical power with which he makes his chief personage
reveal his inmost nature and most secret motives in truthful
communing with himself. It is through the soliloquies in
the * Paradise Lost' that we can best realise the whole
conception of Satan, in his ruined magnificence, and in his
lost but not forgotten capacity of happiness and nobleness.
The soliloquies of these personages perform for the epic
poet the part performed by the elaborate introspection and
discussion of motives in modern prose fiction. Homer also
avails himself frequently of the soliloquy, as he does of
natural dialogue and more formal oratory. In the Aeneid
the chief personage is often introduced, like the heroes of
the Iliad and Odyssey,
' This way and that dividing his swift mind ; '
but the process generally ends in the adoption, without
any weighing of conflicting duties or probabilities, of the
obvious course indicated by some supernatural sign. The
soliloquies of Dido are to be regarded rather as passionate
outbursts of prayer to some unknown avenging power than
as communings with her own heart. The single soliloquy,
if it may be called such, which brings the speaker nearer to
us in knowledge and sympathy, is the proud and stately
address in which Mezentius seems to make the horse, which
had borne him victorious through every former war, a par-
taker of his sorrow and his forebodings
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 389
Rhaebe, diu, res siqua diu mortalibus ulla est,
Viximus, etc. l
But not only are the media through which Virgil brings
his personages before us less varied and flexible than
those of Homer, but the characters themselves are more
tamely conceived, and less capable of awakening human
sympathy. And this is especially true of the character
of Aeneas as contrasted with those of Achilles and of
Odysseus. The general conception of Aeneas is indeed
in keeping with the religious idea of the Aeneid. He is
intended to be an embodiment of the courage of an ancient
hero, the justice of a paternal ruler, the mild humanity of
a cultivated man living in an age of advanced civilisation,
the saintliness of the founder of a new religion of peace
and pure observance, the affection for parent and child,
which was one of the strongest instincts in the Italian
race. A life-like impersonation of such an ideal would
have commanded the reverence of all future times. Yet at
no time has the character of Aeneas excited any strong
human interest. No later poet, or moralist set it up, as
Horace sets up the characters of Achilles and of Ulysses,
as a subject of ethical contemplation. Ovid in the deepest
gloom of his exile retains enough of his old levity to jest
at his single lapse from saintly perfection
Et tamen ille tuae felix Aeneidos auctor
Contulit in Tyrios arma virumque toros 2 .
As compared with the hero of the Odyssey, Aeneas is
altogether wanting in energy, spontaneity, intellectual
resource, and insight. The single quality in which he is
strong is endurance. The principle which enables him to
fulfil his mission is expressed in the line
Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.
His courage in battle springs from his confidence in his
destiny
Turn socios maestique metum solatur lull
Fata docens.
One of the few touches of nature which redeem his
1 Aen. x. 861, etc. a Trist. ii. 533-4.
390 THE AENEID AS AN
character from tameness is the momentary feeling of the
rage of battle roused by the resistance of Lausus
saevae iamque altius irae
Dardanio surgunt ductori.
The occasion in which he seems most worthy of his place
as a leader of men is after the death of Mezentius, where
the self-restraint of his address contrasts favourably with
the intemperate ardour expressed in some of the speeches
of Turnus 1
Maxima res effecta viri : timer omnis abesto.
He appears as a passive recipient both of the devotion and
of the reproaches of Dido. He undergoes no passionate
struggle in resigning her. The courtesy and kindliness of
his nature elicit no warmer expression of regret than the
words
nee me meminisse pigebit Elissae,
Dum memor ipse mei, dum spiritus hos regit artus.
The only exercise of thought required of him is the right
interpretation of an omen, or the recollection of some
dubious prediction at some critical moment. Even the
strength of affection which he feels and which he awakens
in the hearts of his father and son does not move us in
the way in which we are touched by the feelings which
unite Odysseus to Penelope and Telemachus, to Laertes
and the mother who meets him in the shades, and tells
him that she had 'died neither by the painless arrows of
Artemis nor by wasting disease '
1 This contrast was suggested by Mr. Nettleship's interpretation of the
character of Turnus ('Suggestions,' etc., pp. 15 et seg.). As will appear later,
I am inclined to think that he insists too exclusively on the 'violentia,'
which is undoubtedly a strong element in the character of the Italian hero.
The antagonism of Turnus to Aeneas, as of the Italians to the Trojans, he
justly regards as an instance of the strife of passion with law. If the
Greek drama suggested the ethical aspect of this strife, a comparison with
Horace, Ode iii. 4, of which Ode the leading idea is the superiority of the
'vis temperata' over the 'vis consili expers,' as illustrated in the wars of the
Olympian Gods with the Titans, and in the triumph of Augustus over the
elements of disorder opposing him, suggests that the political inspiration of
the idea came from ' the stately mansion on the Esquiline '
'Molem propinquam nubibus arduis.'
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 391
dAA.d fie &6s Tf iroOos ad TC ^tiySea, </>at8i/*' 'O5vo r <7t5,
arj T' a.~favo<t>poavvq fj.e\iij8ea Ov^v dirrjvpa.
The failure of Aeneas to excite any lively personal in-
terest is not to be attributed solely to a failure of power
in the poet's imagination. In the part he plays he is
conceived of as one chosen by the supreme purpose of
the gods, as an instrument of their will, and thus neces-
sarily unmoved by ordinary human impulses. In the
words of M. Coulanges, ' Sa vertu doit etre une froide
et haute impersonalite, qui fasse de lui, non un homme,
mais un instrument des dieux V The strength required
in such an instrument is the strength of faith, submis-
sion, patience, and endurance ; and it is with this strength
that Aeneas encounters the many dangers and vicissi-
tudes to which he is exposed, and withdraws from the
allurements of ease and pleasure. The very virtues of
his character act as a check rather than as a stimulus
to those natural impulses out of which the most living
impersonations are formed. To compare great things in
art with what are not so great, the impression produced
by the superiority of Aeneas to ordinary passion is like
the impression produced by the superior tolerance and
enlightenment of some of Scott's heroes, when contrasted
with the more animated impulses and ruder fanaticism
of the other personages in his story. That he is, on the
one hand, the passive receptacle of Divine guidance, and,
on the other, the impersonation of a modern ideal of
humanity, playing a part in a rude and turbulent time,
are the two main causes of the tame and colourless cha-
racter of the protagonist of the Aeneid. And as loyalty
to a leader is the sole form of political, as distinct from
patriotic virtue which Virgil acknowledges, the other
Trojan chiefs the faithful Achates, the speaker Idome-
neus, the more martial figures of Mnestheus and Serestus
do little more than play the part of the ayyeAos or of the
Kw0a 7rpoVa)7ra in a Greek tragedy. The interest awakened
by Anchises arises solely from the halo of sacred associa-
1 La Cite Antique.
392 THE AENEID AS AN
tions investing him. lulus, as the eponymous ancestor of
the lulii, seems to be a favourite of the author ; yet he
fails to interest us as a youth of high spirit and promise.
Telemachus we know and sympathise with in his rising
rebellion against the insolence of the suitors
vvv 8' ore 8r) /xe*yas et/i/, Kal a\\ow pvOov aitovcav
iTvvQavo^ai, Kal 817 poi degerai cvSoOi 6vfj.6s,
in his longing for the return of his father to redress his
wrongs, in his kindly hospitality, and sense of the out-
raged honour of his house
vffj.(aoi]OT) 8' tvl 6vfj.(j}
itvov 87705 Ovprjffiv e(f)<jTaiJ.(i/.
That lulus fails to awaken a similar interest, that we do not
share his ardour in the chase or the glow of pride with
which he lays his first enemy low, is due to the fact that
the poet's imagination fails in the vital realisation of his
conception.
Most of the minor characters who appear in the Aeneid
require no analysis. Creusa, Anna, and Andromache are
vague impersonations of womanly tenderness and fidelity
of affection. Lavinia, the shadowy Helen of the story,
appears only for a moment, and though she is described by
images suggestive of beauty and of a delicate nurture
mixta rubent ubi lilia multa
Alba rosa,
we are left without the knowledge by which to measure
the extent of the wrong done to her and Turnus by the
enforced severance of their affections. Amata exhibits the
blind animal rage of a mother whose affections have been
outraged, but her figure wants the firm outlines and sub-
stance of the Hecuba of the Iliad. The prophetic office
of Helenus enables him to advance the action of the
story by preparing the mind of Aeneas for his immediate
future : the jealous interference of larbas accelerates the
doom of Dido : Acestes performs the part of a kindly host
to the Trojans in Sicily. But of any individual traits of
character they exhibit no trace whatever. Drances serves
as a vehicle of impassioned oratory, and as a kind of foil to
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 393
the generous impulsiveness of Turnus, just as the timid craft
of Arruns is a foil to the splendid rashness of Camilla ;
and perhaps he is not much less real to our imaginations
than Polydamus, who is the only personage of the Iliad
that we think of rather as the embodiment of an abstract
quality, moderation, than as a living man. But in the
delineation of Drances there is no sign of that power which,
by a few graphic strokes of description and the force of
dramatic insight, has made Thersites stand forth for all
times as the type of an envious and ignoble demagogue.
Though there is more effort of thought in the delineation
of Latinus as swayed to and fro by his religious sense of
duty and the influence of others, and though there is true
pathos in the words with which he allows the declaration of
war to be made
Nam mihi parta quies, omnisque in limine portus:
Funere felici spolior:
yet he does not live before us as Priam lives in the scene
with Helen on the walls of the town, and he has no power
to move our hearts with the awful compassion which the
grief of Priam awakens in the last books of the Iliad.
Perhaps the most impressive of the secondary personages
in the Aeneid is Evander, as he appears in the dignity of
his simple state in the eighth Book, and in the dignity of
his great sorrow in the eleventh. Pallas and Lausus,
Nisus and Euryalus, afford occasions for pathetic situations,
rather than perform any part affording scope for the
display of character. The romantic career of Camilla
interests us : and she has the further attraction to modern
readers of reminding them of a martial heroine of actual
history : but we scarcely recognise in the vivid delineation
of her deeds those complex elements which in their union
form a whole character for our imaginations, whether in the
representations of literature or in our experience of life.
The chief personal interest of the story is centred in
those whose fortunes and action bring them into antago-
nism with the decrees of Fate, and who perish in conse-
quence, in Turnus, Mezentius, and Dido. Patriotism,
394 THE AENEID AS AN
courage, and passion are exhibited in a fatal but not
ignoble struggle with the purposes and chosen instruments
of Omnipotence. The tragic interest of this antagonism
stimulates the imagination of the poet to a more energetic
delineation of character. And in the representation of this
struggle it is quite true, as has been well shown by Mr.
Nettleship, that Virgil's own sympathies go with the
' victrix causa ' which ' pleased the gods,' not with the
1 victa ' which pleases our modern sensibilities. He pro-
fesses not to question but
'To justify the ways of God to men.'
The death of Mezentius satisfies poetical as well as politi-
cal justice. Turnus brings his doom upon himself by the
intemperate vehemence and self-confidence with which
he asserts his personal claims. Though Aeneas and Dido
are both represented as ' forgetful of their better name,'
yet as happens in real life even more generally than in
poetry, it is the woman only who suffers the penalty of
this forgetfulness. Yet though in all these cases the doom
of the sufferers is brought about in part through their
own fault, Virgil does not, as an inferior artist might do,
endeavour to augment the sympathy with his chief person-
age, by an unworthy detraction from his antagonist. No
scorn of treachery or cowardice, no indignation against
cruelty mingles with the feeling of admiration which the
general bearing of Turnus excites. The basis of his
character seems to be a generous vehemence and proud
independence of spirit. If Aeneas typifies the civilising
mission of Rome and is to be regarded as an embodiment
of the qualities which enabled her to give law to the world,
Turnus typifies the brave but not internecine resistance
offered to her by the other races of Italy, and is an
embodiment of their high and martial spirit of that
' Itala virtus ' which, when tempered by Roman discipline,
gave Rome the strength to fulfil her mission. The cause
which moves Turnus to resist the Trojans is no un-
worthy one, either on patriotic grounds or on grounds
personal to himself. If the Greeks were justified in making
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 395
war against the Trojans on account of Helen, the Italians
may be justified in making war against the same people on
account of Lavinia. His appeals to his countrymen are
addressed to the most elemental of patriotic impulses
nunc coniugis esto
Quisque suae tectique meinor : nunc magna referto
Facta, patrum laudes.
He slays his enemy in fair battle, and though he shows
exultation in his victory, yet he does not sully it by
any ferocity of act or demeanour
qualem meruit Pallanta remitto,
Quisquis honos tumuli, quidquid solamen humandi est
Largior l .
After his hopes of success are shaken by the first defeat of
the Latins, and by the failure of the mission to Diomede, and
when the timidity of Latinus and the envy of Drances urge
the abandonment of the struggle, he still retains a proud
confidence in his Italian allies
Non erit auxilio nobis Aetolus et Arpi,
At Messapus erit, felixque Tolumnius, etc.
He is ready, like an earlier Decius, to devote his life in
single combat against the new Achilles, armed with the
armour of Vulcan
vobis animam hanc soceroque Latino
Turnus ego, haut ulli veterum virtute secundus,
Devovi: 'Solum Aeneas vocat.' Et vocet oro :
Nee Drances potius, sive est haec ira deorum,
Morte luat, sive est virtus et gloria, tollat 2 .
He sees { the inspiring hopes of triumph disappear, but
the austerer glory of suffering remains, and with a firm
heart he accepts that gift of a severe fate 3 : '
Usque adeone mori miserum est? Vos o mihi Manes
Este boni, quoniam Superis aversa voluntas :
Sancta ad vos anima atque istius inscia culpae
Descendam, magnorum haut unquam indignus avorum 4 .
In the final encounter he yields, not to the terror inspired
1 Cp. the contrast :
jj pa KOI "Etcropa 5iov dtiKta n^Sero fpya.
2 Aen. xi. 440, etc.
3 Napier's Peninsular War, Death of Sir John Moore.
* Aen. xii. 644-8.
396 THE AENEID AS AN
by his earthly antagonist, but to his consciousness of the
hostility of Heaven
di me terrent et luppiter hostis.
His last wish is that the old age of his father Daunus
should not be deprived of the consolation of his funeral
honours. Although the headlong vehemence of his own
nature, no less than his opposition to the beneficent
purposes of Omnipotence, seems to justify his fate, yet,
as in the Ajax of Sophocles, the avdabua in Turnus is
rather the flaw in an essentially heroic temper, than his
dominant characteristic. The poet's sympathy with the
high spirit of youth, as manifested in love and war, and his
pride in the strong metal out of which the Italian race
was made, have led him, perhaps involuntarily, to an
embodiment of those chivalrous qualities, which affect the
modern imagination with more powerful sympathy than
the qualities of a temperate will and obedience to duty
which he has striven to embody in the representation of
Aeneas.
The vigorous sketch of Mezentius, as he appears in
Book x., has received from some critics more admiration
than the sustained delineation of Turnus through all the
vicissitudes of feeling and fortune through which he passes.
Chateaubriand says, that this figure is the only one in the
Aeneid that is * fierement dessinee.' Landor describes him
as ' the hero transcendently above all others in the Aeneid.'
And there is certainly a vague grandeur of outline in this
conception of the ' contemptor divom ' and oppressor of his
people, who is ' not only the most passionate in his grief
for Lausus, but likewise gives way to manly sorrow for
the mute companion of his warfare/ indicative of a bolder
invention than that which is usually ascribed to Virgil.
It is remarkable that poets whose spirit is most purely
religious, both in the strength of conviction and the
limitation of sympathy produced by the religious spirit
Aeschylus, Virgil, and Milton seem to be moved to their
most energetic creativeness by the idea of antagonism
to the supreme will on the part of a human, or superhuman
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 397
but limited will : and that they cannot help raising in
their readers a glow of admiration as well as a sense of
awe in their embodiment of this clash between finite and
infinite power. The sketch of Mezentius cannot indeed be
compared with two of the most daring conceptions and
perfected creations of human genius, the Prometheus of
Aeschylus and the Satan of Milton, yet, if it does not
enlist our ethical sympathies like the former of these, like
the second it receives the tribute of that involuntary admi-
ration, which is given to courage, even when allied with
moral evil, so long as it is not absolutely divorced from the
capability of sympathetic and elevated emotion.
In the part which Dido plays in the poem, Virgil finds a
source of interest in which he had not been anticipated by
Homer. And although the passion of love, unreturned or
betrayed, had supplied a motive to the later Greek tragedy
and to the Alexandrine epic, it was still not impossible
for a new poet to represent this phase of modern life with
more power and pathos than any of his predecessors. It
was comparatively easy to produce a more noble and vital
impersonation than the Medea of Apollonius. But the
Dido of Virgil may compare favourably with the creations
of greater masters, with the Deianeira of Sophocles, with
the Phaedra and the Medea of Euripides. And Virgil's
conception is at once more impassioned than that of
Sophocles, and nobler and more womanly than those of
Euripides. Her character, as it is represented before the
disturbing influence of this new passion produced by
supernatural artifice, is that of a brave and loyal, a great
and queenly, a pure, trusting, and compassionate nature.
The most tragic element in the development of her love
for Aeneas is the struggle which it involves with her high-
strung sense of fidelity to the dead
Ille meos primus qui me sibi iunxit amores
Abstulit : ille habeat secum servetque sepulchre.
The first feeling awakened in her mind by Aeneas is
compassion for his sufferings, and the desire to make the
Trojans sharers in the fortune which had attended her own
398 THE AENEID AS AN
enterprise. When by the unsuspected agency of the two
goddesses she has been possessed by the fatal passion, it
is to no ignoble influence that she succumbs. It is the
greatness and renown of one whom she recognises as of
the race of the gods, which exercise a spell over her imagi-
nation
Multa viri virtus animo, multusque recursat
Gentis honos; haerent infix! pectore voltus
Verbaque, nee placidam membris dat cura quietem.
No weakness, no unwomanly ferocity mingles with the
reproaches which she utters on first awakening to the
betrayal of her trust. A feeling of magnanimous scorn
makes her rise in rebellion against the plea that her deser-
tion was the result of divine interposition
Scilicet is Superis labor est ! ea cura quietos
Sollicitat ;
and a lofty pathos animates her trust in a righteous
retribution, the knowledge of which will comfort her among
the dead
Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt,
Supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido
Saepe vocaturum. Sequar atris ignibus absens,
Et, cum frigida mors anima seduxerit artus,
Omnibus umbra locis adero: dabis, improbe, poenas:
Audiam, et haec Manis veniet mihi fama sub imos.
The awe inspired by supernatural portents, by restless
visions in the night, by the memory of ancient prophecies,
by the voice of her former husband summoning her from
the chapel consecrated to his Manes, confirms her in
her resolution to die. Her passion goes on deepening in
alternations of indignation and recurring tenderness. It
reaches its sublimest elevation in the prayer for vengeance,
answered long afterwards in the alarm and desolation
inflicted upon Italy by the greatest of the sons of Car-
thage
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,
Qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos,
Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore vires.
In her last moments she finds consolation in the great
memories of her life
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 399
Urbem praeclaram statui: mea moenia vidi:
Ulta virum, poenas inimico a fratre recepi :
Felix, heu ! nimium felix, si litora tantum
Nunquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae.
Her latest prayer is that even though no outward retribution
overtake her betrayer, yet that the bitterness of his own
heart may be her avenger
moriemur inultae,
Sed moriamur, ait: sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.
Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto
Dardanus, et secum nostrae ferat omina mortis.
Once more she appears among the Shades, and maintains
her lofty bearing there as in the world above. No sym-
pathy with his hero makes the poet here forget what was
due to her. She listens in scornful silence to the tearful
protestations of her ' false friend V and passes on without
any sign of forgiveness or reconciliation
Tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit
In nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi
Respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem.
V.
Style of the Aeneid.
That the passion of Dido is powerfully conceived and
delineated, that it satisfies modern feeling more legitimately
than the representation of the unhallowed impulses of
Phaedra, or of the cruel and treacherous rancour of Medea,
will scarcely be questioned. Yet perhaps it is doing no
injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power
in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving
some state of feeling, some pathetic or passionate situation,
rather than in the creation and sustained development of
living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry
1 ' Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood,
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
From her false friend's approach in Hades, turn,
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.'
The Scholar Gipsy, by Matthew Arnold.
400 THE AENEID AS AN
and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations
than the personages of history or those whom we know in
life, come into being, is a question which probably their
authors themselves could not answer. Though reflexion on
human nature and deliberate intention to exemplify some
law of life may precede the creative act which gives them
being, and though continued reflexion may be needed to
sustain them in a consistent course, yet no mere analytic
insight into the springs of action can explain the process
by which a great artist works. The beings of his ima-
gination seem to acquire an existence independent of the
experience and of the deliberate intentions of their author,
and to inform this experience and mould these intentions
as much as they are informed and moulded by them.
Virgil's imagination in the creation of Dido seems to be
possessed in this way. She grows more and more real
as her passion deepens. Virgil's intention in this repre-
sentation may have been to show the tragic infatuation of
a woman's love
furens quid femina possit :
but his sympathetic insight into this passion an insight
already shown in the Eclogues stimulates the forces of
his imagination to a nobler as well as a more vital creation
than in any other of his impersonations. Dido ranks for
all times as one of the great heroines of poetry. So
long as she appears on the scene the interest in the
exhibition of her nature overpowers all other interests.
But this is not the case with Virgil's other personages.
We are more interested in what they say and in what
happens to them than in what they are. In other words,
it is by his oratorical and descriptive, rather than by his
dramatic faculty, that he secures the attention of his
readers. As oratory was one of the most important
powers in ancient life, so it became a prominent element
in ancient epic and dramatic poetry, in Homer, Ennius,
and Virgil, as well as in Sophocles, Euripides, and the
Roman tragedians. The oratory of the Aeneid shows
nothing of the speculative power of the application of
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 401
great ideas to life which gives the profoundest value not
only to many speeches in Sophocles, but also to some
of those in the Iliad, and notably to such as proceed from
the mouth of Odysseus. It cannot equal the vivid natu-
ralness of the speeches of Nestor, nor the impassioned
grandeur of those of Achilles. Neither is it characterised
by the subtle psychological analysis which is the most
interesting quality in the rhetoric of Euripides. On the
other hand, it is not disfigured by the forensic special plead-
ing and word-fencing which is an occasional flaw in the
dramatic art of Sophocles, and a pervading mannerism in
that of the younger poet. The impression of grave poli-
tical deliberation is left on the mind by some of the
fragments of Ennius more effectually than by anything
uttered in the councils of gods or men in the Aeneid.
But it is in the greatest of modern epics that the full force
of intellect and feeling animating grave councils of state
is most grandly idealised. The speeches in Virgil, though
they want the intellectual power and the majestic largeness
of utterance of those in Milton, are, like his, stately and
dignified in expression ; they are disfigured by no rhetori-
cal artifice of fine-spun argument or exaggerated emphasis ;
they are rapid with the vehemence of scorn and indigna-
tion, fervid with martial pride and enthusiasm, or, occa-
sionally, weighty with the power of controlled emotion.
They have the ring of Roman oratory, as it is heard in
the animated declamation of Livy, and sometimes seem to
anticipate the reserved force and 'imperial brevity' of
Tacitus. They give a true voice to 'the high, magnani-
mous Roman mood,' and to the fervour of spirit with
which that mood was associated. And this effect is some-
times increased by the use which the polished poet of the
Augustan Age makes of the grave, ardent, but unformed
utterances 'rudes et inconditae voces' of the epic and
tragic poets of the Republic.
The descriptive faculty of Virgil is quite unlike that of
Homer, but yet it has great excellences of its own. In
the Iliad and Odyssey man appears ' vigorous and elastic
VOL. I. D d
402 THE AENEID AS AN
such as poetry saw him first, such as poetry would ever see
him 1 ;' and the outward world is described in the clear
forms and the animated movement which impress them-
selves immediately on the sense and mind of men thus
happily organised. Virgil too presents to us the varied
spectacle of human life and of the outward world under
many impressive aspects. But these aspects of things do
not affect the mind with the immediate impulse which the
natural man receives from them, and of which he retains
the vivid picture in his mind. As in his pastoral poems
and in . the Georgics, Virgil seems to abstract from the
general aspect of things the characteristic sentiment which
Nature inspires in particular places and at particular times,
and to see the scene which he describes under the influence
of that sentiment, so in the Aeneid various human ' situa-
tions ' are conceived under the influence of some sense
of awe or wonder, of beauty or pathos, of local or antique
association ; and the whole description is so presented as
to bring this central interest into prominent relief. The
thought of the whole situation, not the sequence of events
in time or causal connexion, is what determines the group-
ing and subordination of details.
Thus in the description of the storm in Book i., the
dominant feeling by the light of which the circumstances
are to be realised is that of sudden and overwhelming power
in the elements and of man's impotence to contend against
them. In the description of the harbour in which the ships
of Aeneas find refuge we feel the sense of calm and peace
after storm and danger. In the interview between Venus
and her son the impression left on the mind is that of a
mysterious supernatural grace enhancing the charm of
human beauty, such as is produced by the pictorial repre-
sentations of religious art. We seem to look on the rising
towers and dwellings of Carthage with that joyful sense
of wonder and novelty with which the thought of the
beginning of great enterprises, or of the discovery of
1 Lander's Pentameron.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 403
unknown lands, and the first view of ancient and famous
cities, such as Rome or Venice, appeal to the imagination.
In the second Book the effect of the whole representation is
enhanced by the sentiment of awe and mystery with which
night, and darkness, and the intermittent flashes of light
which break the darkness, impress the mind. Thus as
a prelude to the terrible and tragical scenes afterwards
represented, the apparition of Hector comes before Aeneas
in the deepest stillness of the night
Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegris
Incipit.
Then follow the confused sights and sounds of battle, like
those of the WKro^ayjia in the seventh Book of Thucydides
and of that in the Vitellian war of Tacitus, the spectacle
revealed by the light of the burning city
Sigaea igni freta lata relucent;
the vivid gleams in which the death of Priam, the cowering
figure of Helen, the majestic forms of the Olympian gods
taking part in the work of destruction, are for a moment
disclosed out of the surrounding darkness, the alarm and
bewilderment of the escape from the house of Anchises
and of the vain attempt of Aeneas to recover the lost
Creusa
Horror ubique, animos simul ipsa silentia terrent.
The third Book is pervaded by the feeling of the sea,
not as in the Odyssey of its buoyant and inexhaustible
life, nor yet of the dread which it inspired in the earliest
mariners, but in that more modern mood in which it
unfolds to the traveller the animated spectacle of islands
and coasts famous for their beauty or their historic and
legendary associations. In the fifth Book, as is pointed
out by Chateaubriand, the effect of the limitless and
monotonous prospect of the open sea in producing a
sense of weariness and melancholy, such as that expressed
in ' The Lotus-eaters'
' but evermore
Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar,
Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,'
D d 2,
404 THE AENEID AS AN
is profoundly felt in the passage
At procul in sola secretae Troades acta
Amissum Anchisen flebant cunctaeque profundum
Pontum adspectabant flentes; 'heu tot vada fessis
Et tantum superesse maris,' vox omnibus una.
It was seen how the sense of supernatural awe adds to
the tragic grandeur of the despair and death of Dido, as in
the lines, which bear some trace of a vivid passage in
Ennius
agit ipse furentem
In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui
Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur
Ire via^ et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra.
Thus too the mmd is prepared for the spectacle revealed
in the Descent into Hell by the awful sublimity of the
Invocation
Di quibus imperium est animarum umbraeque silentes.
The description of the funeral rites of Pallas produces
that complex impression of sadness and solemnity mixed
with proud memories and thoughts of the pomp and cir-
cumstance of war which affects men in the present day,
when witnessing the spectacle of the funeral of some great
soldier who has died full of years and honour
Post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon
It lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora.
Hastam alii galeamque ferunt, nam cetera Turnus
Victor habet. Turn moesta phalanx Teucrique sequuntur
Tyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis.
In the employment of illustrative imagery Virgil is much
more sparing than Homer. The varied forces of Nature
and of animal life supplied materials to the Greek poet by
which to enhance the poetical sense of the situation which
he describes ; and all these forces are apprehended by him
with a vivid feeling of wonder, and presented to the
imagination with a truthful observation of outward signs,
and with a sympathetic insight into their innermost nature.
Virgil is not only more sparing in the use of these figures ;
he is also tamer and less inventive in their application. In
those drawn from the life of wild animals he, for the most
part, reproduces the Homeric imagery, though we note
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 405
as one touch of realism in them that the wolf, familiar to
Italy, frequently takes the place of the lion, which was
probably still an object of terror in Western Asia at the
time when Homer lived. Another class of images repro-
duced from Homer is that of those in which a mortal is
compared to an immortal, as at i. 498
Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi,
Exercet Diana chores, etc.,
though in this some variations are introduced from a simile
in Apollonius. Another passage of the same kind is im-
mediately derived from the Alexandrine p^et
Qualis, ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique 4wenta, etc. 1
There is, however, another class of ' similes J used by
Virgil in his epic, after the example of the* Alexandrines,
which can scarcely be said to fulfil the function of a poetical
analogy, but merely to give a realistic outward symbol of
some movement of the mind or passions, without any
imaginative enhancement of the situation. Such, for in-
stance, is the comparison at vii. 377, etc. of the mind of
Amata to a top whipped by boys round an empty court,-
a comparison suggested by a passage in Callimachus 2 ; and
that again at viii. 22, etc. of the variations of purpose in
the mind of Aeneas, produced by the surging sea of cares
besetting him, to the variations of light reflected from the
water in a copper cauldron, a comparison directly imitated
from Apollonius (iii. 754, etc.). There are others again
of what may be -called a somewhat conventional cast, which
acquire individuality from the colour of local associations,
such as the introduction (at xii. 725) of two bulls battling
together (as they are also described in the Georgics)
ingenti Sila, summove Taburno;
the comparison (at xii. 701 etc.) of Aeneas, towering in all
his warlike power, to Athos or Eryx
aut ipse, coruscis
Cum frsmit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivali
Vertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras;
1 iv. 143, etc. Referred to in the 'Parallel Passages' in Dr. Kennedy's notes.
2 Referred to by M. Benoist.
40(5 THE AENEID AS AN
and that at ix. 679, etc., in which the two sons of Alcanor
are likened to two tall oaks growing
Sive Padi ripis, Athesim seu propter amoenum.
But there are other comparisons in Virgil indicative of
more original invention, observation, and reflexion, which
serve the true purpose of imaginative analogies, viz. that
of exalting the peculiar sentiment with which the poet
desires the situation he is describing to be regarded. In
the perception of these analogies it is not merely intellectual
curiosity that is gratified by the apprehension of the rovro
tKctvo in the phenomena ; but the imagination is enlarged
by the recognition of analogous forces operating in different
spheres, which separately are capable of producing a vivid
and noble emotion. As an instance of this perception of
the analogy between great forces in different spheres, the
one of human the other of natural activity, we may take
the comparison of the Italian host advancing in orderly
march after its tumultuous gathering from many quarters,
to the movement of mighty rivers when their component
waters have found their appointed bed
Ceu, septera surgens sedatis amnibus, alttis
Per taciturn Ganges, aut pingui flumine Nilus
Cum refluit campis et iam se condidit alveo l .
Others again show the vivid interest mixed with poetical
wonder which animated Virgil's power of observation in
his Georgics as for instance that at i. 430 of the busy
workers in Carthage to bees in early summer toiling among
the flowery fields an image ennobled also by Milton,
who characteristically describes the bees as ' conferring
their state-affairs,' while it is not to their political, but
to their industrial, martial, and social or domestic apti-
tudes
(cum gentis adultos
Educunt fetus)
that Virgil draws attention. Of the same class is the
comparison at iv. 402, etc., of the Trojans preparing to
leave the shores of Carthage to the movement of ants
1 ix. 30-2.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 407
engaged in gathering together some heap of corn for their
winter's store
It nigrum campis agmen, etc.
Others again are suggested by his subtle and sympathetic
discernment of the conditions of inward feeling ; as the
comparison at iv. 70, etc. of Dido to the hind, which,
unsuspecting of danger, has received a mortal wound from
a hand ignorant of the harm which it has inflicted
haeret later! letalis harundo.
The awe and mystery of the unseen world suggests the
comparison of the crowd of shades pressing round Charon's
boat to innumerable leaves falling in the woods, or to
flocks of birds driven across the sea by the first cold of
autumn
Quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terrain gurgite ab alto
Quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
Trans pontum fugat et terris inmittit apricis 1 .
The point of comparison in this simile is not merely the
obvious one of the number of leaves falling or birds flying
across the sea in autumn, but rather the inner likeness
between the passive helplessness with which the leaves
have yielded to the chill touch of the year, and that with
which the shades VZK.VU>V a^vrjva Kaprjva have yielded to
the chill touch of death. Nor perhaps is it pressing the
language of Virgil too far to suppose that in the words
' terris inmittit apricis ' he means to leave on the mind
a feeling of some happier possibilities in death than the
certainty of ' cold obstruction's apathy.' One of the most
characteristically Virgilian similes that at vi. 453
qualem primo qui surgere mense
Aut videt, aut vidisse putat per nubila Lunam
is almost a translation of the lines of Apollonius (iv. 1447)
rws ISeciv, els ris Tf vfw li/t ^/xart fjLrjvrjv
T) i8ev, fj e86Kr)fffv k-na^Xiiovaav ideoOat,
but the whole poetical power of the passage consists in the
application of the image to the sudden recognition by
Aeneas of the pale and shadowy form of his forsaken? love,
1 vi. 309-312.
408 THE AENEID AS AN
dimly discerned through the gloom of the lower world.
Other images are suggested by the poet's delicate sense of
grace in flower or plant, combined with his tender com-
passion for the beauty of youth perishing prematurely.
Such are those which enable us more vividly to realise the
pathos of the death of Euryalus and of the burial of Pallas.
Yet though these images are characteristically Virgilian,
they also bear unmistakeable traces of imitation. The
lines
Purpureus veluti cum flos succisus aratro
Languescit moriens, lassove papavera collo
Demisere caput, pluvia cum forte gravantur;
and again
Qualem, virgineo demessum pollice, florem,
Seu mollis violae, seu languentis hyacinthi,
Cui neque fulgor adhuc, nee dum sua forma recessit;
Non iam mater alit tellus, viresque ministrat
recall not only the thought and feeling of Homer
HTJKCDV 8' &s Ire/wo 1 * K&prj 0d\v etc.,
but the cadences and most cherished illustrations of
Catullus, in whose imagination the grace of trees and the
bloom of flowers are ever associated with the grace and
Zoom of youth and youthful passion.
Had Virgil lived to devote three more years to the
icvisal of his work, there is no reason to suppose that he
would have added anything to its substance. Some
inconsistencies of statement, as that between iii. 256 and
vii. 123, would have disappeared, and some difficulties
would have been cleared up. But the chief part of the
< limae labor ' would have been employed in bringing the
rhythm and diction of the poem to a more finished per-
fection than that which they exhibit at present. The
unfinished lines in the poem would certainly have been
completed and more closely connected with the passages
immediately succeeding them. There is no indication that
these lines were left purposely incomplete in order to give
emphasis to some pause in the narrative. Virgil was the
last poet likely to avail himself of so inartistic an innova-
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 409
tion to give variety to his cadences. For the most part
they appear to be weak props ('tibicines 1 ') used provision-
ally to fill up the gap between two passages, and indicating
but not completing the thought that was to connect them.
What more of elegance, of compact structure, or of varied
harmony Virgil might have imparted to his rhythm, it is
impossible to determine. We might conjecture that his
aim would have been, as regards both expression and
metrical effect, to act on the maxim 'ramos compesce
fluentes,' than to give them ampler scope. In a long
narrative poem like the Aeneid that perfect smoothness
and solidity of rhythmical execution which characterises
the Georgics in which poem the position and weight of
each single word in each single line is an element con-
tributing to the whole effect is hardly to be expected.
A narrative poem demands a more easy, varied, and even
careless movement than one of which the interest is con-
templative, and which requires to be studied minutely line
by line and paragraph by paragraph, before its full meaning
is realised. If the movement in the Aeneid appears in
some places rougher, or less compact, or more languid than
in others, this may be explained not only by the imperfect
state in which the poem was left, but by the difficulty or
impossibility of maintaining the same uniform level of
elevation in so long a flight. Yet it cannot be said that
there is any loss of power, any trace of contentment with a
lower ideal of perfection in the general structure of the
verse of the Aeneid. The full capacities of the Latin
hexameter for purposes of animated or impressive narra-
tive, of solemn or pathetic representation, of grave or
impassioned oratory, of tender, dignified, or earnest appeal
to the higher emotions of man, are realised in many
passages of the poem. Virgil's instrument fails, or, at
least, is much inferior to Homer's, in aptitude for natural
1 ' Ac ne quid impetum moraretur quaedam imperfecta transmisit, alia levis-
simis versibus veluti fulsit, quos per iocum pro tibicinibus interponi aiebat
ad sustinendum opus, donee solidae columnae advenirent.' Donatus, quoted by
Ribbeck in the Life prefixed to his smaller edition of Virgil.
410 THE AENEID AS AN
dialogue or for bringing familiar things in the freshness of
immediate impression before the imagination. The stateli-
ness of movement appropriate to such utterances as
Ast ego quae Divom incedo regina
does not readily adapt itself to the description of the
process of kindling a fire or preparing a meal
Ac primum silici scintillam excudit Achates,
Suscepitque ignem foliis atque arida circum
Nutrimenta dedit rapuitque in fomite flammam.
To English readers the verse of the Aeneid may appear
inferior in majesty and fulness of volume to that of Milton
in his passages of most sustained power ; but it is easier
and less encumbered and thus more adapted to express
various conditions of human life than the ordinary move-
ment of the modern epic. It flows in a more varied,
weighty and self-restrained stream than the more homo-
geneous and overflowing current of Spenser's verse. The
Latin hexameter became for Virgil an exquisite and
powerful medium for communicating to others a know-
ledge of his elevated moods and pensive meditativeness,
and for calling up before their minds that spectacle of
a statelier life and a more august order in the contem-
plation of which his spirit habitually lived.
The last revision would also have removed from the
poem some redundancies, obscurities, and weakness of
expression. There is a greater tendency to use * otiose '
epithets than in the Georgics, and a minute criticism has
taken note of the number of times in which such words as
' ingens ' and ' immanis ' occur in the poem. Though the
interpretation of the meaning of the Aeneid as a whole is
probably as certain as that of any other great work of
antiquity, yet there are passages in it which still baffle
commentators in deciding which of two or three possible
meanings was in the mind of the poet, or whether he had
himself finally resolved what turn he should give his
thought. As there are lines left incomplete, so there are
lame conclusions to lofty and impassioned utterances of
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 411
feeling. Such for instance is the prosaic and tautological
conclusion of the passage in which Lausus is brought on
the scene
dignus, patriis qui laetior esset
Imperiis et cui pater haud Mezentius esset.
But it is only a microscopic observation of the structure
of the poem that detects such blemishes as these. In the
Aeneid Virgil's style appears as great in its power of
reaching the secrets of the human spirit, as in the Georgics
it proved itself to be in eliciting the deeper meaning of
Nature. He combines nearly all the characteristic excel-
lences of the great Latin writers. His language appears
indeed inferior not only to that of Lucretius and Catullus
but even to that of Ennius in reproducing the first vivid
impressions of things upon the mind. The phrases of
Virgil are generally coloured with the associations and
steeped in the feeling of older thoughts and memories.
Yet if he seems inferior in direct force of presentation, he /
unites the two most marked and generally dissociated cha-
racteristics of the masters of Latin style, the exuberance
and vivacity of those writers in whom impulse and imagi-
nation are strong, such as Cicero, Livy, and Lucretius, the
terseness and compactness of expression, arising either from
intensity of perception or reflective condensation, of which
the shorter poems of Catullus, the Odes and Epistles of
Horace, the writings of Sallust, and the memorial inscrip-
tions of the time of the Republic and of the Empire afford
striking examples. Virgil's condensation of expression
often resembles that of Tacitus, and seems to arise from
the same cause, the restraint imposed by reflexion on the
exuberance of a poetical imagination. By its combination
of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once
an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative,
of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impas-
sioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses
also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers,
of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperish-
able characters on the mind
412 THE AENEID AS AN
Tu ne cede mails sed contra audentior ito.
Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis.
Aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum
Finge deo.
But Virgil is not only great as a Latin writer. The
concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all
times, marks him out as one of the greatest masters of
the language which touches the heart or moves the manlier
sensibilities, who has^ever lived. A mature and mellow
truth of sentiment, a conformity to the deeper experiences
of life in every age, a fine humanity as well as a generous
elevation of feeling, and some magical charm of music in
his words, have enabled them to serve many minds in
many ages as a symbol of some swelling thought or over-
mastering emotion, the force and meaning of which they
could scarcely define to themselves. A striking instance
of this effect appears in the words in which Savonarola
describes the impulse which forced him to abandon the
career of worldly ambition, which his father pressed on him,
in favour of the religious life. It was the voice of warning
which he ever heard repeating to him the words
Heu, fuge crudeles terras, fuge litus avarum 1 .
And while his tenderness of feeling has made Virgil the
familiar friend of one class of minds, his high magnanimous
spirit has equally gained for him the admiration of another
class. The words of no other poet, ancient or modern, have
been so often heard in the great debates of the English
Parliament, which more than any other deliberations
among men have reproduced the dignified and masculine
eloquence familiar to the Roman Senate. One of the
greatest masters of expression among living English
writers has pointed, as characteristic of the magic of Virgil's
style, to ' his single words and phrases, his pathetic half-
lines giving utterance, as the voice of Nature herself, to
that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which is
the experience of her children in every time V It is in the
1 Mentioned by Mr. Symonds in his History of the Renaissance in Italy.
2 Grammar of Assent, by J. H. Newman, D.D.
EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. 413
expression of this weariness and deep longing for rest, in
making others feel his own sense of the painful toil and
mystery of life and of the sadness of death, his sense too
of vague yearning for some fuller and ampler being, that
Virgil produces the most powerful effect by the use of
the simplest words in their simplest application.
' O passi graviora '
' Vobis parta quies '
' Dis aliter visum '
'Di, si qua est caelo pietas '
' Heu vatum ignarae mentes '
' lam pridem invisus superis et inutilis annos
Demoror '
'Si pereo hominum manibus periisse iuvabit '
' Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis '
'Nesciaque humanis precibus mansuescere corda *
' Impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum '
'Quod te per caeli iucundum lumen et auras '
' Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore '
' Secures latices et longa oblivia potant '
these and many other pregnant sayings affect the mind
with a strange potency, of which perhaps no account can
be given except that they make us feel, as scarcely any
other words do, the burden of the mystery of life, and
by their marvellous beauty, the reflexion, it may be, from
some light dimly discerned or imagined 1 beyond the
gloom, they make it seem more easy to be borne.
1 Aut videt, aut vidisse putat.
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