UC-NRLF PA 6804 A42 C45 1876 MAIN B 3 IMl "^53 r Virgil and Pollio. 4 AN ESSAY ON S^* BY FRANg. DAN. CHANGUION. 1 I WEIGH A user's PRINTING OFFICE. (Rcnno Sclnrnbe.) 1876. VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES II-Y. 1 1 OF THE University of California. Class Virgil AND PoLLio. AX ESSAY OX VIRGIL'S ECLOGUES II-V. BY FRANg. DAN. CHANGUION. Schweighauser's Printing Office. (Itciiiio Srlivabe.) 187G. MKGIL AND POLLIO. An pssnv ly iullieres to those easy morals which will always be most palatable to youthful minds, unless peculiar circumstances happen to turn them to more serious thoughts. This too may be considered as a reason why, when referring to the Epicurean doctrines of his time, he frequently names Aristippus as his authority, who, without indulging in the scientific speculations of Epicure, appears to have been his superior in a fine and consis- tent appreciation of man. — Virgil, on the contrary, like his great predecessor Lucretius, was evidently captivated by what he considered the scientific character of the Epicurean system. When in his Georgics he praises the happiness which science bestows on its adepts : Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus; he clearly had before his mind those celebrated lines of the Roman interpreter of Epicurism : Humana ante oculos fcede cum vita jaceret, In terris oppressa gravi sub religione, Quse caput a cceli regionibus ostentabat, Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, Primus Grajus homo mortales tendere contra Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra; Quern neque fama deum nee fulmina, nee minitanti Murmure compressit ccelura, sed eo magis acrem Irritat animi virtutem, effringere ut arcta Nature primus portarum claustra cupiret. In fact Epicurism exactly corresponds to the system which at present is generally known by the name of na- — 8 — turalisni, and had all the attractions for the minds of young Home which f. i. Darwinism has for the scientitic minds of our generation. An other benefit which both Horace and Virgil pro- bably derived from their studies in the capital were the relations into which they got with some of the leading men of the age. It is quite possible that their own friendship was formed at that time; and when we find Virgil, perhaps little more than a year after the battle of Philippi, recommending Horace to his powerful friend Mae- cenas, it can hardly be doubted that his own relations with Ma3cenas commenced at a far earlier period. And so it is likewise anything but improbable that already during the time of his rhetorical studies he got acquainted with Pollio, whose relations with him at a later period will form the main subject of this essay. II. C. Asinius Pollio, born, as it would seem, of an eques- trian family, had entered the senate shortly before the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, and accordingly must have been Virgil's elder by several years. His birth is commonly assigned to the year 75 before Christ, on the authority of a statement of Eusebius concerning the year of his death and his age at that time. Such state- ments, however, are often of little value, and from the manner in which he speaks about himself, when referring to his position in the beginning of the civil war, it is clear that he must have been a man of some note at that time and therefore at least of senatorial age. — In the war he took Caisar's part, and at the time of Caisar's — 9 — death he was in comniaiul of an army in Spain. During the war of ]\Iutina lie was considered botli l)y tlie senate and by ]\Iark Antony a most desirable ally, and the let- ters whicli in those days lie wrote to Cicero show him to have studied Epicurean ethics with great success ; for finer specimens of the art of keeping safe between the conten- ding parties until „the battle's lost and won" are hardly found anywhere else. After the triumvirate had settled the affairs of Rome, Pollio got the command of the coun- try beyond the Po under Antony. In the Perusine war he abstained from active interference, a fact which is suf- ticiently explained by the open demonstrations of Lucius Antonius in favour of republican government, which were hardly such as to be approved of by his brother Marcus. But at the same time he rendered an important service to the latter by procuring him the assistance of Domitius, one of the heads of the old aristocratical party, who since the defeat of Brutus and Cassius had held an independent position in the Grecian seas at the head of a powerful fleet. The end of the war saw him a consul, and after the affairs of the Roman empire hat once more been ar- ranged between Antony and Octavian, he was intrusted with a command in Dalmatia, which in the next year pro- cured him the honour of a triumph. • But it is not on account of his participation in the political events of his time that a prominent i)lace is to be assigned to Pollio among his contemporaries. The so called Augustan age is chiefly celebrated for the large number of first-rate literary talents which adorned it, and for the liberal patronage Avhich Augustus himself and the chief men of his court afforded to every thing connected with literary pursuits. Now Pollio was considered in his days as — lo- an experienced orator and a first rate tragic poet; as an ex- cellent historian of the civil wars, whicli had just come to an end, and as gifted with most eminent powers of literary criticism. And above all, he vied with Maecenas in patro- nising the literary talents of his time. While imbued with the Epicurean spirit which prompted so many of his con- temporaries to submit to monarchy and to do away with those feelings of independence which had led to the murder of C?esar, he likewise showed himself a true follower of Epi- cure bv the interest he took in scientific matters. Parts at least of Virgil's pastoral poems were written at a time when Virgil belonged to what Horace Avould have called the „studiosa cohors" of Pollio. When Pollio commanded beyond the Po, Virgil lived in a villa near Mantua, of which he would have been deprived by the agrarian measures which Octavian had executed in behalf of the armies of the triumvirate, had not the timely in- tercession of powerful friends helped him again to his property. From Virgil's Eclogues it appears that none of those friends was more highly prized by him in those days than Pollio, and it is hardly possible to get at the real meaning of the poems themselves, unless the connexion between the poet and his patron is carefully attended to. Before entering, however, upon a review of those Eclogues which are connected with the subject of this essay, it will be necessary to give a few hints about the general nature of Virgil's pastoral poetry. Pastoral poetry originated with the Alexandrian school. It sprung up together with the scientific poetry of Aratus and the learned endeavours of Apollonius to imitate the epic poems of Homer. With epic poetry it was itself connected. The difference was merely this that Homer's — 11 — epic poems unrolled the whole world with nil its motive powers to their wondering hearers, whereas Theocritus, the father of pastoral poetry, limited himself to luh'V.iu, — small pictures of life, exhil)iting at one time the doings and conversations of shepherds and shepherdesses, at another a bit of life from the time of old, when the Cyclops lon- ged for the love of his dear Galatea, sometimes even a scene from the bustle of the Egyptian capital. It can hardlv be doubted that Theocritus was as rio^ht in his time in devoting his poetical talent to pastoral poetry as Gathe was in writing his immortal poem of Hermann and Dorothea. For real epic poetry is only tit for those times Avheu poets can fancy themselves to be the inter- preters of all things existing; but wiienever the solution of the problems of life is left to scientific research, objec- tive poetry will have to encompass itself within a smaller circle and give a picture of real life as it is still to be hit upon by mere poetical intuition, without the aid of science or speculation. In many respects Virgil took Theocritus as his model. We shall even see him adopt a studied coarseness of ex- pression, where the Alexandrian poet unconsciously used rather incongruous language. But it w^as not consistent with the genius of Koman poetry to remain within the limits of objectivity. In all great poets of the Augustan age the subjective vein predominates. And so, while Theocritus scarcely introduces himself and his friends to the readers of his poems, Virgil's shepherds mostly be- long to the literary circle of Pollio and descant on va- rious topics connected with the poet and his friends. In ancient commentaries on Virgil hints about the persons and things he refers to are often given : sometimes — 12 — as iiisnlse us any scholiast can invent tliem, f. i. when Silenus in tlie sixth Eclogue is stated to he Siron the Epicurean philosopher; sometimes probahle enough in them- selves, but not such as to be of much assistance in catching the drift of the poem. The main fact, however, is beyond all doubt. Everybody will see at once that the first Eclogue refers to Octavian's decision to leave the poet in the quiet possession of his landed property. And that Galatea and Amarvllis, Phvllis and Alexis must have been well known girls and lads the poet was in love with, is clearly seen from a passage of Ovid's „Art of making love", where, in advising lovers not to spend too much in presents to their ladies, he adds, with reference to Eel. II. 52 : Let your servant bring them either grapes or Quas Amaryllis amabat — Sed non castaneas nunc amat ilia — nuces. For these words would be quite without a meaning, unless we assume that in Ovid's time Amaryllis was well known as an old ladv of the demi-monde, who had uti- lized her liaison with the poet to get into fashion and had ultimately succeeded in putting by a nice sum of mo- ney, the revenues of which were now far more palatable to her than the chestnuts on which, in other times, she was regaled by her Corydon. # HI. So Virgil, shy as he Avas, had become one of the most l>rominent members of that circle of Avhich Pollio was the centre. The softness and nicety of expression which clia- racterized his hexametres was contrasted with the more vigorous poetry of Varius. As a follower of Epicure, as — 13 — an admirer of those studies which professed to leave no- thing undiscovered in the Avliole reign of nature, he could not but feel at lionie when dailv associatino: witli the great patron of learning. By wliatever we know of Viri^il the idea is all but excluded that he harboured tliat strong feeling of independence wliich prompted Horace, in his se- venth Epistle, rather to submit to tlie loss of all the be- nefits which Maecenas had bestowed on liim. tlian to \o^o. the slightest particle of his liberty. Still a simple perusal of the second Eclogue — for- mosum pastor Corydon ardebat Alexin — will show at once that the poet, situated as he was, did not feel and could not feel happy. To understand the train of thought in wliich this masterly poem was written, w-e shall have to return once more to that passage of the Georgics where science is ce- lebrated as the most splendid gift of mankind. No greater happiness he know^s than to be initiated by the Muses in all the secrets of nature, to discover how it is that the sun is eclipsed and the moon goes through its various phases; that the tide rises and ebbs and that the sun in winter hastens to plunge into the ocean. „But if, so he goes on, „the obtuseness of my faculties forbids me to take such a view of nature, may I then, void of fame, spend my days in the enjoyment of rural life and the sight of nature. For happy is he who has learned the causes of things; w^ho has triumphed over every fear, even that of death. But fortunate too is he who knows the rural gods. Pan and father Silvanus, and those sisterly dei- ties, the Nymphs." There were, in fact, two men in Virgil. His intellectual self revelled in the thought of realizing that triumph of the human understanding, which — 14 — is to disclose every secret of nature. But at the same time there were in him that keen perception of the beau- ties of nature, those passioaate longings for what is in- finite and beyond human thought which distinguish ar- tistic and imaginative minds from scientific ones. Alexis is the unconscious expression of the struggle between Vir- gil the poet and Virgil the philosopher. The common tradition is that Alexis was a young slave of great beauty and good parts, who was a favou- rite of his master Pollio, and with whom Virgil was deeply in love. This tradition is borne out by the poem itself. Corydon the shepherd — this is the gist of the poem, — was in love with Alexis, his master's favourite, and did not know what he could hope for. The only thing he could do was to roam about through the lonely woods and to make them resound with the rustic songs addressed to his love. Then Corj^don's song opens with a splendid description of the heat of an Italian summer day, when towards noon even the green lizards hide themselves and the weary rea- pers have to restore their languid bodies with a dish of strongly flavoured herbs. But he, while driven by his pas- sion to look for the foot-steps of his beloved, is only met by the chirping of the grasshoppers. Yet he is not a man whom Alexis should despise : neither in wealth, in talent, nor in beauty he is deficient. And now follows a burst of passion: „0h if you only would enjoy with me my humble country-life; if you would hunt with me the stags and drive about the flocks, with green tufts of hibis- cus ! I should teach you songs such as many would envy. All nature will bestow on you her finest gifts : the nicest fruits, the choicest flowers will fall to your lot. - 15 — — But you are a fool, Corydon; wliat does Alexis care for presents ? And if you try to gain him with presents, lollas (that is Pollio) will be as liberal." This thought brings Corydon back to tlie reality of his situation. Still he makes one ett'ort more. „Whom do you flee from ?" he cries, „even gods have inhabited the woods. Let Pallas throne in her lofty seats; we long only for the woods. As the wolf follows the goat, as the goat the cytisus, so I follow you, Alexis. The oxen are coming home from their work and the setting sun doubles the shadows, but my love is burning as much as ever." Once more he returns to the thouglit that his love, after all, is doomed to be vain and might even cause him to neglect his business; and poor Corydon, who a moment ago told Pallas and all the learning of Pollio's Epicurean circle to leave him to the enjoyment of his woods and his love, ends as any Epicurean might do, with : „you may find an other Alexis, if this one spurns you." The difference between our moral feelings and those of Roman society will probably prevent most modern rea- ders from bemg equally charmed with VirgiPs Alexis as with some of the love-songs which Horace addresses to his mistresses. Still it is very seldom — chiefly perhaps in the songs addressed to Lydia, — that Horace even ap- proaches the depth of feeling and of passion which we find in Alexis. On the whole, Horace is in love-matters a perfect Epicurean. He knows love as one of the great powers of nature; he knows from experience, as he tells his friend Pettius, that the finest reasonings of his own and the most serious exhortations of his friends will not cure him of it; but at the same time he is sure that the sight of a handsome girl may cure him at any time — 16 — of his present flame. Now, to a certain extent this is takino' a rational view of the case. But Yirs^il feels that there is a love that will look for poor and lonely places and lowly huts — „sordida rnra atque humiles casas;" — that will prefer the simple pursuits of rural life to any enjoyments of a more refined nature, because they allow the loving pair to devote themselves entirely to each other; and that will find its highest joy in bestowing whatever nature can yield on its object. These are no Epicurean ideas, were it only because they imply an absolute do- minion of love, and because, whatever is absolute, must be eternal, whereas the eternity of individual man was denied by the followers of Epicure. To this point we shall presently revert. It matters little to us whether Virgil ultimately met with success in his love. At all events we find him soon in quite a difterent mood. His third Eclogne was pro- bablv written shortlv after the second one; for both of them are quoted together in the fifth one, and Alexis is named first. So we shall now liave to consider this most curious production of Virgil's rural Muse. Horace, when mentioning the poems of his younger days, commonly calls them „ trifles" (nescio quid meditans nugarum), « which he playfully throws upon paper" (illudo chartis). Now there is no poem in Latin to which the epitheton of „ playful" may be better applied than Virgil's third Eclogue. And when we notice the few hints which the poet gives in it of his own state of mind, we shall soon find the cause whv he wrote in such a strain. Damoetas and Menalcas, two shepherds, meet each other and soon get into a quarrel, where coarse expres- sions, savonrins^ of the realitv of Italian roiintrv-life. are — 17 — by no means spared. At last it is found that Damoetas, being charged with the tlieft of a goat, does not deny having taken the animal, but asserts tliat he had a right to do so, its owner having lost it to him in a singing match. „Can you defeat any one by singing?" says Me- nalcas; and so they are soon brought to try which of tliemselves is the better singer. Against a cow of Damoe- tas Menalcas otters to stake a pair of wooden cups, cu- riously carved and adorned with the images of — a ma- thematician and an astronomer. So those very shepherds wlio a moment ago abused each other in the coarsest terms, at once take their place among the polished and learjied members of Pollio's circle. — „ Neighbour Palsemon", who just happens to pass by, is requested to be the umpire, and opens the contest with one of those splendid scraps of descriptive poetry of which both Virgil and Horace knew the secret, and which put at once the whole scenery before the reader. At his bid- ding the contending parties alternately put in a distich, Damoetas starting with an invocation of Jove, taken from Aratus, the father of that didactic poetry which in the Latin world has Lucretius as his representative. Then, as true shepherds, they speak of love-matters, the homely nature of which is betrayed by Damoetas. „Send me Phyllis to day", he says; „it is my birth-day, lollas; when I shall kill a cow as an off'ering in behalf of my harvest, you may come yourself." — „ Phyllis is my dar- ling", says Menalcas, answering as if he were lollas; „ la- tely she cried when I took leave from her, and her par- ting words „„farewell, handsome lollas"", long sounded in my ear. We know from Alexis who lollas is, and here we — 18 — are taught that whatever faults Pollio may have been charged with, he cannot have been jealous as far as his mistresses were concerned. But soon fictitious names are dropped, and the singers openly address their patron. „Pollio likes our Muse, rustic as she be", sings Damoetas; ^Pierian goddesses, keep a cow to feast your reader." — ,Pollio himself, replies Menalcas, „ makes poems in a new strain; something better than a cow is to be in store for him.'' — flMay he, who loves you, Pollio, be successful as you are ; may honey flow for him and may he gather balsam from thorns." — „ Whoever is fond of Bavins" — a literary antagonist of Pollio's circle, — ^may his doom be to like the verses of Mcevius." From this withering sarcasm we are again taken to the homely scenes of rural life, till towards the end of the poem we meet with a distich which has puzzled many a commentator, but which, after all, is easily explained, when the peculiar character of the whole poem is properly attended to. The verses alluded to run as follows : Dammtas. Die quibus in terris, — et eris mihi magnus Apollo, — Tres pateat coeli spatium non amplius ulnas. — To which Menalcas replies : Die quibus in terris inscripti nomina regum Nascantur flores; et Phyllida solus habeto. — At this point of the contest Palsemon declares that he cannot decide between the two rivals, and the poem comes to an end. Now it is clear that the culminating point of the poem is to be sought for in the verses where Pollio is praised by name, not only as a patron of poets, but also — 19 — as a poet himself. It is known from Horace and Yirgil tliat his poems were imitations of Attic tragedies, and from the eighth Eclogue, where they are called worthy of Sophocles, it may perhaps be inferred that lie took espe- cially Sophocles as liis model. When, after having indulged in the praise of his pa- tron, the poet returns once more to rural life, his object cannot have been to divert the thoughts of his hearers from Pollio and to fix them on snakes in the field and goats washed in the brook. If he had done so, they would have eagerly looked out for another allusion to the great man, and have felt disappointed on finding that, after cutting down Bavius and Mievius in such a splendid manner, Damoetas and Menalcas had become as tame and as devoted to their own business as ever shepherds can be. But on the other hand it would not do once more to name Pollio. The best way for Virgil to satisfy both his patron and his hearers would be to end his poem with an allusion to those „nova carmina" with which Pollio had lately enriched Eoman literature. Such an allusion is clearly found in the distich of Menalcas. The king whose name was written on a flower was Ajax, as every reader of Ovid knows; and surely there is no reason why we should not assume that Pollio, as Sophocles did before him, wrote an Ajax, and that in the narration with which he wound up the piece, the story of the flower was referred to. And now for Damo3tas. The explanation of the „coeli spatium" which of late has been adopted by most editors, is that of Asconius Pediauus, who had been told that Virgil, from a desire to puzzle his readers, had referred to a certain Ccelius who, having spent the whole of his patrimony, liad left no other landed — 20 — property at his death than his grave. Now this is rather a sorry joke; but if Virgil had indulged in it, could he find no other enigma to match it than the one of the flower with the name of Ajax, which is no enigma at all? Heaven forbid that we should think so low of him ! The only question that remains, is whether „the sky extending for the space of three cubits" can be referred to some expression in one of Pollio's lost tragedies. And this question is easily settled. Antigone, in a celebrated tragedy of Sophocles, is locked up in a subterranean pri- son. Why cannot Pollio, when writing an Antigone of his own, have tried to embellish this scene by a complaint of his heroine about her being all but precluded from getting a sight of heaven ? When adopting this explanation of the last distichs of the poem, it will not be difficult to get an idea of the whole of it. — Virgil, being cured of his love for Alexis, had momentarily succeeded in finding himself at home in Pollio's circle. Momentarily, we say; for the view which his poem gives us of the life led by Pollio and his friends, a life mixed up of literary experiments and literary squabbles, scientific researches and easy amours, could not satisfy a mind like Virgil's, for any length of time. But its very emptiness must have prompted him to give at the same time a playful record of it and a document of his own poetical power. In both respects he has wonderfully succeeded. The allusions which are spread over the poem and to which the coarse language of the quarreling shep- herds form a most appropriate introduction, must have been far more pointed to readers acquainted with Amyntas and Galatea, Bavius and Msevius, than to us, but even we can to a great extent make out how things were going — 21 — on at Pollio's. And these disticlis, each of them giving a complete image of some bit of real life, are endowed with such cliarms that they have found their way every- where, and are household words even with those who otherwise have no idea of Virgil except, perhaps, in con- nexion with the times when the rod of their teacher or an impending examination compelled them to find their way through a couple of books of the Aeneid. rv. Hardly any year in Roman history opened with worse prospects than that of Pollio's consulship. Italy was a prey to the unruly soldiery of the triumvirate. Octavian, who had still to learn ho^v to manage them, was engaged in an open war with a powerful party pretending to act in behalf both of Antony and of republican government. Property was unsafe, and want of the first necessaries of life was to be expected, as long as the fleet of Sextus Pom- peius offered a refuge to fugitive slaves and would cut oft' supplies at any moment. Antony, whose presence in Asia was soon to be required by an invasion of the Parthians, would presently have to leave for Italy in defence of his own interests. This must have been the time Avhen Ho- race, despairing of the fate of his country (nuper sollici- tum qua; mihi taedium), predicted that the civil war could not end but in the destruction of Rome, and looked out for those happy countries beyond the ocean which no im- pious foot had trodden. Fortunately for Rome, Octavian had got the better of those that were actually in arms against him, and had arranged several other important matters, before Antony — 22 — ■ reached Italy. After Antony's arrival there was, it is true, some appearance of a renewal of hostilities ; but soon the friends of the triumvirs succeeded in bringing about a reconciliation. The compact which had united Octavian and Antony was once more renewed, and seemed to de- rive additional strength by Antony's marriage with Octa- vian's sister. As to Pompey, both parties at first had courted his alliance, and in connexion witli such plans Octavian had married Scribonia, a near relation of Pom- pey 's wife. But when the triumvirs made their peace, their first idea was, not to include Pompey in it, and not until a later period he too, for a short time, was allowed to participate in it. Octavian never was a model of conjugal fidelity, and Scribonia was less inclined to ignore his peccadilloes than Livia, who was soon to take her place. Accordingly her husband divorced from her immediately after she had born him a daughter. — For all we know, Julia's birth may be assigned to the beginning of 39 before Clirist, and Scribonia's pregnancy may have been the great topic of Roman town-talk in the latter part of 40, the year of Pollio's consulship. The prospect of an heir being born to the fated ruler of the Roman Empire, coinciding as it did witli that of having the blessings of a lasting peace substituted for the horrors of a succession of civil wars, drew from Virgil that famous prophecy of a golden age which is known by the name of Pollio. For Pollio is addressed by the poet as the happy consul under whose rule justice Avill once more return to the earth, and the terror whicli the crimes of man had brought over the world, will vanish for ever. As soon as the child will be born who is to live with — 23 — gods and heroes and to rule a world pacitied by his lather's virtue*), flowers will :^pring from its cradle; serpents and noxious herbs will perish. Soon the happy times will come when he will be able to read the exploits of his father and to learn what virtue is; but even then a few traces of the old will still remain : a new Argo will have to cross the seas, and great Achilles will once more at- tack Troy ; — in other words : Pompey is to be got rid of, and Antony is to subdue the Parthians. But when the child will be a man, the happy time Avill have come when no merchant will go for foreign wares, no field will be ploughed; every country will yield every thing by itself, and the bright colours w^hich the art of man uses to impart to wool will then adorn the live sheep. And so at last the day will come when, taking himself the reins of government in hand, that glorious offspring of the gods will see to the full how the whole universe rejoices in the happiness bestowed on it. if the poet might live to see this ! Neither Orpheus nor Linus would equal his songs. „ Begin, o child", — and here we have a most delicate hint to Scribonia, whose temper, unless sof- tened by the cares of maternity, might go far to spoil the prospects of her child, — » begin to know your mother by her smiles. With one unfavoured by his parents' smiles, no god ever shared his table, no goddess her couch." — *) It is evident that Virgil never thought of the possibility of the child turning out to be a girl, and not improbable that he thought Scribonia's confinement neai'er than it was, so that it would take place before the end of PoUio's consulship. Still the expression ^incipient magni procedere menses'* might seem to imply that he wanted his poem to stand good even in case only Scribouia's pregnancy could be referred to P(jllio's year. ' — 24 — It has been conjectured that Virgil, in thus celebrating a new golden age, may have been influenced, consciously or inconsciously, by Messianic ideas imported from the Orient; and in fact, it is well known that in Virgil's time Jewish ideas on religious matters had widely spread among his countrymen. But after all, Virgil's prophecy, when viewed in connexion with the history of his time, will prove so thoroughly Roman that it seems hardly safe to have re- course to such conjectures. First of all we have to attend to the fact that the evils from which Rome suffered in the first years of the triumvirate were infinitely worse than anything that hap- pened before. Sulla had been a far worse tyrant than Cae- sar; but before taking government in hand, he had van- quished his adversaries; he was master of his soldiers; and he shared his power with no one. The triumvirs, on the contrary, were dependent on their soldiers, whose aid they needed against Brutus and Cassius; even after Philippi they found a dangerous enemy in Pompey; and their quarrels among themselves constantly threatened to bring on a new civil war. Virgil, unlike Horace, could not look for happier abodes beyond the ocean : his splen- did eulogy of Italy in the second book of the Georgics, his conception of Rome's great epic poem, altogether re- move the thought that under any circumstances he would have left his country. So he had to look for a golden age, when Horace dreamed of happy islands; and when trying to get his fancies into a tangible shape, he con- nected them with the ultimate triumph of Caesar's dynasty. In this respect, again, Virgil's ideas, though perhaps slightly in advance of that time, would soon be shared by the great bulk of his contemporaries. There were those, — 25 — as vet, — ami Pollio liimself was one of them, — who preferred Antony to Octavian, because the former had got to the top by liis talents, whereas the latter was indeb- ted wholly to his birth for liis commanding position in the empire. But still, the very fact that Octavian's po- wer equalled that of Antony, clearly showed how the idea of hereditary monarchy had gained ground among the Ro- mans. No Roman poet scruples to assign to Augustus a place among the Gods; but this is no mere flattery. Like Jupiter he ruled the Roman empire without having a fixed sphere of action in the mechanism of the Roman republic; like Jupiter he derived his power not from an act of the senate or the people, but from the mere fact of his exis- tence. All this can have been felt by Yirgil even before the exertions of Octavian in behalf of Rome and the Em- pire and his triumph over Antony had impressed it on the minds of the public ; and so it is by no means strange that, when the birth of an heir to the name and power of the Caesars appeared to be near, he celebrated it as a most auspicious event, with which he was allowed to con- nect his boldest fancies of a better state of things. Now for those fancies themselves. Whv did he not limit them to the restoration of that reign of justice and happiness which to a certain extent was realised by Au- gustus y Why fancy a state of tilings in which the earth would not require to be tilled, nor the sea be open for commerce ? The answer to this question will be found by atten- ding to the current ideas on the state of public morality, such as we find them in the authors of the period. In a well known passage in Horace the human race is repre- sented as undergoing a constant process of deterioration; — 26 — and when looking in his poems for the great moral evils of the epoch, we shall find the same vices which Sallust too calls the plagues of Roman society : luxury and ava- rice. The two great types of the perverseness of man- kind which are constantly recurring in Horace are the merchant committing himself to the angry seas merely for the sake of gain, and on his return spending his ill gotten wealth in shameful lust (dedecorum pretiosus emptor)? and the rich nobleman, building palaces and laying out parks, as if he were to inhabit them for ever, expelling his poor tenants from their humble abodes and trespassing on the domain of the sea, as if he wanted to show that neither the claims of justice and humanity, nor the laws of nature were to limit the extent of his desires. Now, inclined though we may be to look upon such complaints as common to all ages and to all minds, except such as have learned to take a larger and more enlightened view of the progress of humanity, it cannot be denied that the poet has hit upon real and peculiar evils of Roman society. When the Roman republic, driven by the instinct of self-preservation, rather than by a desire for dominion, gradually extended its power over the shores of the Medi- terranean, a constant influx of capital from the provinces into Italy was the consequence. For the provinces, of course were not only tributary to the republic, but also to the magistrates sent to govern them; and being master of the sea, Rome naturally became the great commercial state of the time. But onlv two classes were benefited by the change : the aristocracy, who had to deal with the provinces in various official capacities, and those smaller capitalists who had to do with them as publi- cans or as engaged in mercantile business. The smaller — 27 — lauded proprietors who originally tbriiied the middle class of Italian society, found themselves ruined by the exten- sion of the Roman empire; for they could neither cope witli the importers of foreign corn, nor attend to their business, when obliged to serve as soldiers in foreign coun- tries. Industrial pursuits, such as in former times nou- rished whole populations of Greek cities, were all but un- known in Italy. As lower agents in mercantile and other business, slaves were preferred. So the old and decent means of gaining a livelihood had to be relinquished; the new pursuits of wealth, more hazardous and less reputable, were limited to a comparatively small number of men, and the social body gradually got into such a state of dissolution that even measures of apparently a most per- nicious tendency, such as the corn-laws of Cajus Gracchus and Saturninus, became a matter of absolute neccessity. For bad as it was to foster the indolent habits of the lo- wer classes and to make Rome a repair of idlers and va- grants, it Avas infinitely better than to deny the masters of the Avorld the only benefit which their power gave them : that of having cheap corn secured to them. The evils under which Roman society suffered, being the immediate consequence of Rome's greatness, were without a remedy. The agrarian laws of Tiberius Gracchus had failed to regenerate the middle classes, as every attempt to arrest the natural course of things will fail. Monarchy might cure the worst excesses, but would not touch the root, of the evil. Proud as all Romans were of the im- mense power of their native city, they must have instinc- tively felt that tlie evils complained of would not have come to such a point, if the forces of Rome had not spread over Spain and Africa, Greece and Asia, ^nd if — 28 — this had not led to a total change in the ordinary pur- suits of life. And so it was that Virgil, when trying to sketch that ideal happiness which the Caesarian dynasty was soon to realize, at once hit upon a state of things which, while uniting the whole world under the sway of the Roman emperor, would render its different countries altogether independent on each other as far as the wants of life were concerned, and which at the same time would do away with the necessity for such exertions to procure wealth by labour and business, as had hitherto been limi- ted to a few and of profit to a few. So it was that in his new golden age every country would yield every kind of produce ; that the earth would not suffer under the hoe nor the ox under the yoke ; and that the luxuries and embellishments of life, which hitherto had required the la- bour of man, would henceforth be lavished on him by the kind hand of nature, without any exertion on his part. Surely, although Virgil's paradise has some relish of what we would call Epicurism, it has little to do with that rational and scientific Epicurism which had caught hold of the poet's mind in his earlv vouth and which reigned supreme in Pollio's circle. Even Pollio's own poli- tical predilections, which where not altogether in favour of Octavian, are lost sight of in the poem which bears his name. The imaginative powers which were in Vir- gil's nature had evidently got the better of his scientific turn of mind when he set about writing his prophecy of happier ages. And if he had at the time some real pro- phetic foresight of things that were to come, he might well congratulate himself with the future fruit of his exer- tions. No poem, perhaps, has so much contributed to the reverence paid to his name in Christian ages as his pro- 90 phecy of the child whose birtli would restore peace and happiness to the earth. Whatever variety of opinions there may still exist as to the real meaning of Virgil's Pollio, the one which makes it refer to the birth of Christ may be set apart as antiquated. Still the value of the poem as a histori- cal document of the deepest interest cannot be understood unless it be viewed in connexion with the rise of Christianity- It is not in an essay like the present one that we can touch upon the great question of the divine origin of Christianity. But whatever opinions may be held on this subject, all will agree that Christianity could not have triumphed over heathenism, if its seed hat not found a soil fit to receive it. When it first entered the Roman world, it chiefly struck the minds and drew on itself the reproof of those not adhering to it by two particulars. On one hand it protested against the state of things, so- cial as well as religious, which it found established throughout the Roman empire. (This is the „ odium ge- neris humani" which Tacitus charges the Christians with.) On the other it longed for a better and happier condition of mankind, which for a time, perhaps, it was thought possible to realize in this world, but which soon came to be looked for solely in the next. (Here we have that un- reasonable readiness to die which the emperor Marcus finds fault with.) But the fact was that those very lon- gings and that very protest touched upon chords in many a heart which were to resound in spite of repression and persecution, and ultimately to silence all discordant voices. Now, little as Virgil's paradise with its easy luxury appears to have in common with the Kingdom of Heaven, it undoubtedly likewise protests, in the name of a better — 30 — and ideal state of things, against the evils which reigned supreme in Roman society, and so the wants which Christi- anit}' was to suppl}' were proclaimed by Virgil full forty years )3efore the birth of Christ. Neither shall we look in vain in his songs for those passionate longings for eter- nal bliss which prompted Christians to revel in death as in a triumph. This point, however, will be better consi- dered in connexion with another of Virgil's poems. V. Virgil's fifth Eclogue was written after tlie second and tliird, which are quoted in it, and, judging by the intimate relation which it bears with the third, before the time when Pollio's circle was temporarily broken up by his departure for Dalmatia. Internal evidence will show it to be slightly posterior to the fourth. Some par- ticulars of it are most easily explained, when we consider it as the poet's parting gift to the friends whose company he was no longer to enjoy. As in the third Eclogue, two shepherds meet and agree to try their musical powers. By one of these, Me- nalcas, it is stated that the poet meant himself; by Mopsus, the other, a poetical friend of his. It is more probable, however, that both of them, as in the third, are merely ideal shepherds, serving as mouth-pieces to the poet. There is more internal evidence for an other statement; that by iVmyntas, whom Menalcas names as the only musical com- petitor of Mopsus, a rival of the poet is meant; and so, when Alcon and Phyllis, Codrus and Stimichon are men- tioned, we shall once more have to think of actual mem- bers of that auditory who had first enjoyed the exhibi- - 31 — tion of Corvdon's love and of tlic quarrel between Da- moBtas and Menalca>^. This time the two slie^dierds ad- dress each other in terms as exquisite and as complimen- tary as those of the third Eclogue were coarse and quar- relsome. In fact, in taking leave of his friends, it would not do for the poet to represent his shepherds and them- selves otherwise than as perfect gentlemen. Mopsus at once agrees to sing first; and Menalcas, though acknow- ledging his own inferioritv, is ready to follow, full as he is of the subject which his friend has chosen. The subject of both songs is the death of Dj^plinis. — Daphnis, it appears, was a legendar}^, perhaps even a mystical personage, born from Mercury and a Nymph, edu- cated by shepherds and charming all those that knew him by his beauty and his songs. He too gained the love of a Xymph, but having broken his vow of belon- ging to her alone, he was punished by the loss of his eyes. So, at least, the story is told by Servius and others; but it is evident that Virgil followed another tra- dition, holding that death was the punishment of his in- constancy. With the legend of Daphnis a local worship in Sicily is said to have been connected; and it is not un- likely that we meet here with one of the nutnerous forms of that myth of the dying god which appears to have been common to the Greek race and the Semitic one, from whom the Greek may have taken it. The song of Mopsus simply describes the universal mourning over the cruel death of Daphnis. *) The nymphs *) The difficulty occurring in the first four lines of Mopsus' song will be best solved, 1 should say, by assuming that the first Clique of vs. 23 connects the word deo>i with an Other object, not expressed, but understood, of the verbe meat, viz Ni/injjhas. — 32 — wept over it; no herdsman took his cattle to the trough; no cattle touched the grass; even the lions of Africa mour- ned for Daphnis. Neither was this strange: it was he who had taught the Armenian tigers to submit to the yoke and mankind to rejoice in the holy rites of Bacchus. The world, since he left it, had lost its choicest orna- ment : the fields were no longer either cared for by their tutelar deities, or tilled by the hands of men; thorns and thistles are growing where violets and daffodils flowered. The onlv thino- left to his friends to do for him is to raise a mound on his grave and to write his praise on it as the fairest of shepherds. Splendidly worded as Mopsus' song^ is, it can hardlv boast of other merits than those of a happy reproduction of an old theme. But although Servius, in his commentary on the poem, mentions a tra- dition of Daphnis being consoled for the loss of his sight by a place in heaven, it is every thing but improbable that Virgil himself has added a new fact to the legend of Daphnis by making his exaltation the subject of the song of Menalcas. Theocritus, at least, has nothing of the kind. ^In glorious light and with wondering looks" — thus runs Menalcas' song, — „ Daphnis reaches the threshold of Olympus and descries the clouds and stars below his feet. So joy spreads through the woods and joy fills the minds of rural deities; the flocks are safe from wolves and the stags from nets; peace reigns everywhere; the very mountains and rocks resound with the words : „he is a god, Menalcas.'' Cast a gracious eye over the friends you have left on earth : we shall worship you like Phoe- bus; joyous rites like those of Bacchus will be prepared in your honour, both in summer and in winter. As long as the wild-boar will enjoy the mountains and the fish — 33 — the river; as long as bees will feast on thyme and grass- hoppers on dew, so long your name and your praise will be celebrated. With solemn vows the ploughman will in- voke your favour, and like Bacchus and Ceres you will listen to his prayer.'- „What shall 1 give you for such a song", says Mopsus. „ Neither the soft rushing of the wind, nor the murmur of the brook ever so charmed mv ear". — _1 fur me shall present you with this flute'*, is the answer of his friend. „0n this I played the tune to Corydou's love; on this to the contest of Damoitas and Menalcas." — „So you take this staff, which Antigenes, lovely as he was, could never get from me", says Mopsus; and so they part. The great question, in judging this poem, does not refer to the person of Daphnis. Ancient commentators have sought in it for allusions to the murder and apo- theosis of Caesar and to the death of various other indi- viduals; but it is evident that Daphnis is simply to be taken for the image of an ideal poet. Tradition itself makes him the inventor of pastoral poetry, and when Mopsus represents him as having tamed tigers and intro- duced the rites of Bacchus, it is clear that Virgil wants to bestow on him tliat civilizing influence which is the gift of poetry in general, not merely of pastoral poetry. ]3ut now the question arises whether the deification of Daphnis is merely intended for an exaltation of poetry or whether other feelings prompted the Roman poet to make this new addition to an old theme. We know Virgil as being addicted in theory to Epi- curism : praising his master, after the example of Lucre- tius, for having removed the fear of death, and accor- dingly considering death as tlip total annihilation of indi- 3 — 34 — vidnal man. But we have seen too that his poems often betray a want of harmony between his theory and liis feelings. We have seen how. after all, he did not feel at home among the Epicurean friends of his patron, and how he turned from a jocular image of the life he led with them, to a prophetic description of a happier age. And. last but not least, we have seen how. in imao-inimr those better times, he does not stand alone, but is a re- presentative of those numerous voices that would, within a century's time, call out to the world that it was to- tally wrong and that the great change impending was to be hailed by all those for whom real life was kept in store. Why not assume that also the other of those great wants of the age which Christianity was to supply, — the lono^inof for another and better and eternal life. — was felt by Virgil and made him employ all his poetical power in the deification of what he might justly consider his own image ? If so, whe shall have to consider the song of Daphnis not only as connected with the third Ecloo^ue, but also witli the fourth. In Pollio the poet had depicted in glorious co- lours the happy age that was to come, and uttered an ar- dent wish that he might live so see it. In Daphnis he turns from the fate of mankind to that of individual man, and revels in the idea of his own image being raised to the Gods and an object of worship for posterity. — In both the poetical and slightly mystical tendencies of his mind have got the better of his Epicurean naturalism. And none, I think, of modern adherents of naturalism will be sorry for it, while reading the splendid poems in which the defeat of his system is visible. THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY WILL INCREASE TO 50 CENTS ON THE FOURTH DAY AND TO $1.00 ON THE SEVENTH DAY OVERDUE. FEB 22 1934 HI 23 1934 FF' ■' FEB 25 ig.-^^ FEg 2 « 1S34 LD 21-100m-7,'33 YB 41840 2074bH