MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 93-81519- MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction Is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research." If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: GLOVER, TERROT REAVELEY TITLE: VIRGIL PLACE: LONDON DA TE: [1917?] COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT Master Negative # BIBLIOGRAPHIC MICROFORM TARGET Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record • •tf Glover, Terrot Reaveley, 1869-1945« Virgil, by T.R« Glover ••• 3d ed< Methuen, ^lOlTTj xvii, 343 p« 23 om« Londoxif -First published under titles Studies in Virgil* D87VD Copy in Olassles Reading Roon^ 4tli •d. 1920 • G512 128223 Restrictions on Use: FILM SIZE: IMAGE PLACEMENT: DATE FILMED: FILMED BY: TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: /O'^ ITIALS f C BIBLIOGRAPHIC IRREGULARITIES MAIN ^ , V ENTR Y: V3'\o^";^j \f->r-^0 V Bibliographic Irregulariries in the Original Document List volumes and pages affected; include name of institution if filming borrowed text. 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Columbia ''uLful'^ hvr' '"'"i u""^'^""" ^^ ^^^"^« '««• Tng » ^y pUL.« i^ruii ''^^rvi::t ';^r ^-^-"^^v*^'^- and the gods; pantheism in (7^rj^^^^^^^ ^^"^^ Italian gods; influence of RoL-n T * "^"'^"c ^^ '« ^^id; influen<; of P ato T^lfw " '^^"^''l ^'^ «>nceptions of gods indecision; " dI^; Qt^^^z us^r^^ Virgil',' or poetry, p. 291. ' ^^^ ^'^^ of Cecrops " ; Stoicism PACK M7 172 CONTENTS CHAPTER XII. INTERPRETATION OF LiFE:— 5. RESULTS The "ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy" ; poetry and "the problems of the universe," p. 306. L I>^ ^H^er visum : death, obscurity, and exile ; quae lucis miseris tarn dira cupido ? p. 309. II Lucretius on death ; the "voice of Nature," according to Lucre- tins and according to Virgil ; the Stoics and bereavement ; Euripides Andromache, p. 3'5. HI. "The problem" in the ^^^^/^^ in the Aeneid; labor improhus and tendimus in Lattum ; the future r _ -iQ IV. The individual's case ; the strenuous mind ; effects of suffering; consolations, p. 323— V. Conclusion; Yj-^gil^.^he grea^ voice of hope and gladness in the Roman world; Virgil and Christianity, p. 330- INDEX ...•••'• XVll PAC« 306 335 208 233 273 VIRGIL 1'' \ l1 \ : f VIRGIL CHAPTER I THE AGE AND THE MAN OtHafiev 7dp 6ti raaa ii KrUnt 'd^et Koi ffuPioSivei, — St Paul. IT is a commonplace that to understand a poet we need some knowledge of his time and place. His mind will take colour from his surroundings, by sympathy or antipathy. He will share at least some of the limitations of his age and generation, while, in common with his contem- poraries, he belongs to a stage of moral and intellectual development in advance of his predecessors. At the same time it must be remembered that a great poet will generally also be in advance of his contemporaries in the fullness with which he realizes the life of his day, with its problems and its solutions of those problems; and he will represent in some measure, whether he means it or not, the standpoint of a later age.^ He will have grasped all that his own age has to say, and he will feel more than other men the weak points in a position with which they are satisfied. Even if he does not consciously feel these weak points, they will often be brought out by his work. For while a great poet's work will rise to a region of feeling and insight where he has to handle things of eternal and universal significance, and where we forget that he is a poet of a certain time and place, — so truly does he present to us the permanent and common life of man, — yet even in such a region will his own age claim him, as he develops those aspects of truth which are wanting to the common thought of his day. A great » "The artist," said Schiller, "it is true, is the son of his time ; but pity for him, if he is its pupil, or even its favourite." 1 J I ■* I (%i )! I" 2 VIRGIL poet will, of course, not be what is called didactic, whatever he may have to teach ;— indeed, when he explains in prose what he means, it is never quite the same thing. None the less he will have something to say that is urgent and significant, and this will have been suggested to him, somehow, by the life around him — how we may not be able to see very readily, for the processes of a poet's thought are more mysterious than those of other men; but, somehow, he will not be satisfied, his work will not please him, till all is adjusted to the harmony which he feels must be the mark of the right view of the universe. Virgil is, of course, the great poet of the Augustan age, according to the common account. M. Patin,* however, suggests that neither Virgil's nor Horace's is the typical poetry of the time, but that both represent a recoil from the current fashion. Another French critic, M. Pierron,* maintains that Virgil, if born fifty years earlier or later, would still have been Virgil — a less perfect Virgil, but yet Virgil — while Horace would not have been Horace at any other time. " Horace," he continues, " if I may so say, is the age of Augustus personified." Probably the poetry of no great poet is ever, in the sense which M. Patin means, " typical " of its age, for the poetry, or what passes for poetry, of every age seems, like its prose, to be at best common- place, or more probably bad. Yet Virgil and Horace must after all be genuine representatives of their era, for their contemporaries read and treasured their poetry, and left the works of the rest to wrap the incense aad the pepper of which Horace speaks.' Is the poet, who touches the heart of his time and his people, or the average poetaster, the truer type of the age? Setting aside the poetasters, who were many,* setting aside even names of greater note, such as Tibullus and Ovid, are we to call Horace or Virgil the » Patin, Etudes sur la PoisU latine, i. c. viil ; cf. Tyrrell, Latin Poetry, p. 23 f. « La Littirature romaine, 405-6. Compare the remark of Goethe cited by Carlyle, Essay on Diderot : ♦'Thus, as the most original, resolute and self-directing of all the Modems has written : * Let a man be but bom ten years sooner, or ten years later, his whole aspect and performance shall be different.' " » Cf. Horace, Epp. ii. I, 267 ; Catullus, 95, 9 ; and Persius, I, 43. * Ovid, ex PontOy iv. 16, enumerates some thirty contemporary poets. THE AGE AND THE MAN 3 poet of the period ? Is Horace— Horace the prophet of common sense, who never transcended the sterling, but hardly inspiring, moralities of his most worthy father— is Horace really after all the interpreter of the life of the Augustan age? Is he fundamentally in sympathy enough with all men, or with any man, to tell his age all that is in its heart— its longing, its quest, and its despair? If Horace is not the poet we seek, is Virgil ? Allowing at once that he sees beyond the men of his time, that he knows their spirit as they do not know it themselves, and that in many ways he is spiritually nearer to Marcus Aurelius than to Augustus, let us try to see him in relation to his age and to realize how he expresses the deepest mind of the Roman world around him.^ The "age of Augustus" is a phrase with which we are familiar, and it has a certain suggestion of splendour and promise, but more of this than we suppose may be due to Virgil himself. It is he who has taught us to associate greatness and prosperity with the name of Augustus, but, if we substitute for " Augustus " the name " Octavian," some of the grandeur and most of the hopefulness is lost. We find, in fact, that while Virgil bade his countrymen look forward for all that was happy to the age opening before them, he was himself the child of another and a darker age, and that his vision of a brighter day was at least as much prayer as prophecy. For the century which lay behind the inception of the y^^w^/V/ knew more of the works of Octavian than of Augustus. Augustus had indeed ended this century, and the system which he introduced into the Roman world was to save the world from its repetition. But it was one thing to prevent the recurrence of such a period of pain and of rapid decline, and quite another to undo the effects which survived from a hundred years of civil war. Let the Emperor have credit for all he did, but let us remember that if Vii-gil prophesied peace for that age • 1 "The Historian of a national Poetry," says Carlyle, "has to record the highest Aim of a nation in its successive directions and developments ; for by this the Poetry of the nation modulates itself ; this is the Poetry of the nation."— £«fly on Historic Survey of German Poetry, if il t 4 VIRGIL of Augustus, at the dawn of which he died, his life had been lived in times of confusion, of war, of treachery, and degeneration. The Roman people had lost in some measure its early character. If war sometimes discovers the finer qualities of a nation, it also develops the worse and the darker. The long struggle with Hannibal displays in the most splendid way the stability and the manhood of Rome at her best,^ but it profoundly affected the history of the Roman spirit With it began the decline of Italian agriculture and the rise of the professional army, both attended with in- evitable mischief. It was followed by the rapid extension of Roman power over the Mediterranean and the accentua- tion of the pride of the sword. Conquest brought wealth and the pride of wealth. Rich and conquering, Rome came Into contact with the older and decaying civilizations of Greece and Asia, with peoples far advanced in moral and intellectual decadence. The old ideals of the Roman farmer- state were already shaken before the conquest of the East flooded Rome with the ideas and the luxury of Greece and of Asia. The old dignity gave place to the vulgarity of mind which sudden wealth produces when it is not accompanied by reflection. The Roman had never before conceived of the possibilities which life offered of enjoyment, and when they came he did not know how to use them, and plunged from one excess of self-gratification to another. This new appetite for unreserved indulgence was neither checked nor compensated by the simultaneous rise of Greek influence over Rome. It was a degenerate Greece that took her captor captive, and the arts she brought into rustic Latium were not as a rule those of Aeschylus and Phidias, nor were Plato and Aristotle the philosophers who made the first impression on Roman thought. A Polybius might meet a * Two lines from a great passage of Claudian may be quoted here : Nunquam succubuit damnis et territa nullo vulture post Cannas maior Tt ebiamqut fremehat.—Cons. Stil. iii. 144. \\ THE AGE AND THE MAN S Scipio on equal terms.^ each to be the larger and broader- minded man for intercourse with the other, but too often the Greek teacher had neither ideas nor ideals. He retailed the dogmata of a doubtful philosophy, and led his pupil in the paths of a scarcely doubtful morality. The more gifted he was, the more dangerous a guide was he for one as much his inferior in intelligence as his superior in wealth.* The degeneration in Roman character, with the loss of the sense of responsibility and of the idea of self-restraint, becomes more and more marked with time. Whether the senate or the people at Rome had by the time of Tiberius Gracchus fallen furthest from the worth and dignity of the senate and people of an earlier time it would be hard to say. Oligarchy and opposition alike used the constitution accord- ing to the letter, regardless of the spirit, and not un- naturally came to disregard the letter itself. Open murder in the street, secret murder in the home, judicial murder in the court of law led up to avowed civil war, and the cynical practice, introduced by Sulla, of posting lists of victims who might be killed with impunity. Side by side with this went on the careless spoliation of the provinces, destined to produce evils from which the empire was never to recover. Rome had, moreover, quarrelled with Italy, and the Social war, fought out some twenty years before Virgil's birth, gained indeed the Roman citizenship for the Italians, but left them with a temper scarcely more friendly to senatorial government than before the war. The ultimate position of Transpadane Gaul, where the poet was born, was still doubtful. Rome was after all repeating the experience of the Greek world, and with a somewhat similar result. Political life, with the opportunities it gave for the development of the political character and the political virtues, was gone, but room was left for the growth of other virtues less akin in the first instance to Greek or to Roman nature. Poetty and philosophy indicate the change coming over the world. 1 Polybius himself tells the story of their friendship, and it well deserves reading. Polyb. xxxii. 9, 10. , ^ ^ ' «;«;.«♦ • The career and the writings of Philodemus of Gadara are sufficient iliustratiun. 1 > . I .ly< It 6 VIRGIL The Tragedy of Euripides, the New Comedy of Menander, the idylls of Theocritus, the mimes of Herondas, and even the learned and didactic poetry of Aratus, show a shifting of the interest of mankind from the state to the individual, from high life to low life, from the city to the field. They show a certain contemplation of the virtues and feelings of people once overlooked, of humble people, shepherds, artisans, and slaves, which must be studied in conjunction with the new teaching of the philosophers. For the philosophers had left caring for the state, and were chiefly concerned in making life tolerable for individuals, who were now subjects rather than citizens. What was the temper best fitted for the subject of a great despot, of an Antiochus or a Philip ? How should he face a world vaster than geographer had guessed, vaster in its awful unity than politician had ever dreamed, a world on which he could exercise no influence? How could he, for whom life had meant political activity, resign himself to sit with his hands tied ? What virtues were needed for this new world to make human life still possible ? A closer study of human nature was necessary for poet and philosopher alike, and this closer study brought to light many things which changed the whole aspect of life. The outlook was over a larger world, and its first great result was the discovery of the common humanity of man. Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto} whether Terence said this spontaneously or took it from Menander, is a sentiment which is alien to the spirit of earlier Greece, and how much more to that of earlier Rome ! The Aeneas of the Aeneid is unintelligible till we realize that between him and Homer's Achilles stands this new principle. And not only Aeneas, but, as we shall see later on, the gods of Olympus themselves have ,^ learnt the lesson.^ There is another result of the decline of state-life, which is not quite so conspicuous, but must not be overlooked. Philosophy, though not perhaps so early as it began to devote itself to the individual, turned an occasional glance » * " I am a man ; nothing human do I count alien to me.' • See generally Beraaid Bosanquct, History of Aesthetic^ ch. v. THE AGE AND THE MAN 7 to the great movements of the empires which rose from the ruins of Alexander's. The spectacle of mankmd made one politically had been seen for a moment and lost agam, but it had left an indelible impression on the mmds of men. The incessant struggles of the successors of Alexander seem hard enough to link with any common idea, yet pejaps the idea is there, latent indeed and always further and further, it might seem, from realization, yet never forgotten. Ihe world had been one. And when Polybius looked out upon the course of history he found the great idea again. Other people might suppose if they liked, as long after him S Cyprian did,» that the kingdoms of this world rtse and fall ainTlessly by pure chance, but Polybius saw that it was otherwise. All things pointed one way to the universal dominance of Rome, and when he looked at Rome he hdd that she was worthy. A deep-lying design, or at least some element of rationality, made all history intelhgible and made it one, whose ever was the brain that concaved it The philosophy of history had begun to be.» Probably Virgil never read Polybius, but that is immaterial, for great ideas are independent of books, and fructify m ways past tracing. At all events, we may say that the ^-««^ P^^ supposes this discovery of the common destiny of man as well as that of his common nature. A certain ph>losophy of history gives its unity to the poem, and marks it out from all poetry yet written. . ' "From every moral death." says Carlyle, " there is a new birth- in this wondrous course of his, man may indeed Unge;. but cannot retrograde or stand still." We see then . Polybius opens hU history by reference «° ">%7^J"g»"°" °*. t^Tlto whole world bV the single city of Rome in about fifty years, and asks what L rr, «Juable Than to undersUnd so unprecedented an event. At Z S^Zg^^Tbe sif^book he returns to this prob.en., and endeavours ^»s^;;L-rr^"rcr;rI-^^^^^^ ^trxus^^xf rirui':s:;'Ltory: ,.~, a...^^.^^x^« > 8 VIRGIL I I that amid the wreckage of old states and old systems man's unconquerable mind has risen, independent of state and system alike, to the possession of new truth. Yet it must be admitted that there is a difference between earlier and later philosophy, which is ominous for the time. The new lessons have not been learned in quite the old way. There is a growing suspicion of the mind and its powers, a mistrust of the intellect, which issues in the denial of the power of the mind to reach reality, in the rise of a sceptical tendency and of another, and a related, tendency to seek truth rather by intuition than by reflection. Magna ilia ingenia cessere} if we may turn the phrase of Tacitus from history to philosophy, and men, mistrusting themselves and their contemporaries, are more content to accept and transmit dogmata, inherited from the great teachers of the past, than to ask questions and find answers for themselves. But when men forsake inquiry for opinion, when they once begin to deal in dogmata, in spite of the limitations of the dogmatic temper, the desire for intellectual safety prompts them to accept as many dogmata as possible, and eclecticism is born, and the same mind holds, or thinks it holds, the tenets of very different schools woven together in some strange reconciliation.^ There is a growing desire to gather up the fragments that nothing may be lost, but with every gathering the fragments grow more fragmentary. Yet this breaking up of the results of thought is not all loss, for one might almost say that it is only so that they become available for mankind at large. Philosophy, if its gaze is not so clear, nor its note so certain, has at least a larger audience than before, and if, like the successors of Alexander the successors of Plato and Aristotle are less and less great' nevertheless the general thinking of mankind is on a higher plane and on better lines than of old. Once more, we find this in the Aeneid. Aeneas has voyaged all round Greece and he reaches Latium a philosopher. ' Summing up, then, we may say that the poet of the first ^ ** The great intellects have ceased to be." J " ^" eclectics," says Novalis, -are essentially and at bottom scepUcs : the more comprehensive, the more sceptical." THE AGE AND THE MAN 9 century B.C. will have around him a society, more used to speculate, if not to speculate deeply, more open to receive truths of universal scope, more responsive to the gentler and tenderer emotions, in a word, more humane, than in any previous age.^ While we have to remember that Virgil's earlier manhood fell in a period of war and bloodshed, when all the worst passions of human nature were given their fullest freedom, we must reflect that it was yet a period when the pain of suffering and seeing others suffer would be most keenly felt. Still, though we speak of the decline of state-life 2 and its effects upon Greek thought, and recognize a similar process at work in the Roman world, we must not fail to notice that in Virgil's day the national life of Rome had not yet lost its zest and meaning. Doubtless there was already in many a mind that feeling of despair which everywhere comes from a sense of the hopelessness of personal activity on behalf of the state, and which, in the case of Rome, led later on to that general " indifference to the state, as if it did not belong to them," which Tacitus remarked as one of the leading characteristics of Romans under the Empire.^ But still the sense of responsibility for the government and well-being of their country was a dominant feeling and motive in the minds of citizens. It was impossible to fore- see the extinction of the republic. Even later on the elaborate pretence of " restoring the republic," which cloaked every fresh step taken by Augustus for the security and permanence of his system, is clear testimony to the vitality of republican and patriotic sentiment. Nor did this die till it became clear to every one that the empire belonged to no one but the Emperor, and that energy or enterprise on its behalf was a liberty which he might punish with death.* » Cf. Lecky, European Morals, i. p. 227, on the influence exerted by Greece for gentleness and humanity. « **The stote," says Dr Edward Caird, "ceased to be an ethical organization of life, and became only the maintainer of outward order." Greek Philosophy, ii. pp. 40, 49, 154. ^ . .t- ^ • » Tacitus, Hist. i. I. The "indifference " became far greater m the centuries that followed. Encouraged by the government, it was one of the strong factors in the fall of the ancient world. *Thc story of Syncsius and the barbarian invaders of the Cyrenaica may i i 1! \ lO VIRGIL f f i In picturing to ourselves the Roman state which Virgil knew, we see it as a rule with the eyes of Cicero or Cato of Utica. To them, we know, it was painful to think of their country's present position. But we should remember that, while they were conscious of the decay of old ideals of citizenship, the Italians as a rule had only recently become citizens. To them the joys of citizenship and responsibility were new and real. Rome meant more to them than she had ever meant before. For centuries they had been subjects of Rome, now they were Romans ; they themselves were part of that great national life— they were Rome. When we turn to Virgil's own district of Italy, we find further that this position, so recently achieved by the other Italians, was still, during the earlier part of his life, a hope and a dream. Thus, side by side with the matured and even ageing philosophy of Greece, we find Virgil under the influence of a young and buoyant sense of national life. For us who live under the British constitution, with its perplexing, if highly curious and interesting, medley of tradi- tions and ideas, feudal, monarchical, aristocratic, romantic, and democratic, it is difficult to understand without explana-* tion what may or may not be meant by loyalty to the state. To what are we loyal, and what do we mean by the state— which of all the elements blended in the constitution— the person of the monarch or the ideas of the race ? To us this last is scarcely intelligible, but there are nations who have no difficulty about it.i For them, quite apart from sentiment and the claims of common blood and of a common land certain ideas are associated with the thought of the people This or something like it, was true of the Romans. Greek and Jew were more conscious of race than of state • 2 the one had too strong a sense of the individual, while the other illustrate this (about 404 a.d. ). Cf. Synesius. Ept'sf. ,07. It is a pity that these de ightful letters are not better known to classical students Since this was first written, the swing of the pendulum is more clear and kT.: I '° ^''''^*'"^ ^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^ "Strongly the highest ideas w5^ which the history of our own people has been associated an .liT '° l!'''''^ \^"'°^^^ '""^'^'^ ^°^ '^' '^"^'"^^^ '^^' -'Athenian democracy is Z a^ T T'^"' '""'' ^" ^^^^^ '^'^"'^ ^"^ -^-'^ come neare?Se^ than anywhere else in antiquity- or than in most lands of a more moderTt mc THE AGE AND THE MAN II tended to subordinate his state to his religion. With the Roman race and state were one; he had certain clear conceptions as to its claims upon himself, his own part and responsibility in working out its history, and his own place and lot in the outcome of such work no less. The charter of the American colony, which proclaimed that he who planted a tree should eat the fruits thereof, is an old Roman notion that underlay the steady Roman antipathy to kings, that inspired the Plebeians in their struggle against the Patricians, that was the very essence of the Twelve Tables and the law which grew from them. The Roman knew what his state meant for himself and for every other Roman. He had no speculative habit, but the root of the matter was in him. Consequently he was full of the sense of the state. It was the embodiment of the ideas of the race, their expression of themselves. . But, unhappily, other ideals of life had made their appearance, and with them had come disorder, self-seekmg, and the betrayal of the state. The sixty years of faction, of wrong done recklessly or in cold blood to the idea of the community, shocked every man who thought. Most of all must they have been shocked who had newly come into the enjoyment of what they saw being sacrificed to private fancy and fury. Hence it is that Virgil's love of his country, one of the great notes of all his poetry, gives such an impression of depth and emotion ; it is conscious love ; it is sympathy and anxiety. II Virgil was born at Andes near Mantua on October 15,^ in the year 70 B.C. The year is significant as that of the consulship of Pompey and Crassus, when Sulla's constitution was finally undone, and free scope was given to the powers which worked for the destruction of the old republican system. It is significant too that he was born in a country t Suetonius, vtfa Vergilii (ed. Ncttleship). 2 Natus est Cn. Pompeio Magna M Lictnio Crasso primum coss iduum OctoMum die in pago qui Andes duitur et abest a Mantua n^iproculs Martial, xii. 68 Octobres Mmro consecravit Idus, I 12 VIRGIL THE AGE AND THE MAN 13 ^ district, that he grew up there amid country people and country occupations, " a Venetian, bom of rustic parents, and brought up in the midst of bush and forest." 1 We shall see how some minds in Rome found him a villager to the end. We shall find for ourselves other and more delightful traces of his early years. To begin with the village and countryside, Sainte-Beuve remarks the influence upon character exerted by the small- ness of a peasant's holding 2— everything means so much more than on a large estate ; the beasts are more closely watched, the crop is more a matter of daily thought, hopes and fears gather with quicker alternation and keener edge about everything ; the growing boy is in closer and more personal contact with every part of the farm labour. On a farm too the close relation of work and result is perhaps clearer than in many industries. All this would contribute to the Ec/o^es and the Geor^zcs in later years. Perhaps Horace would have been less in love with moderation i( he had not come from a small home. Boissier, again, calls attention to the tendency of village life to be conservative especially in religion.^ ' Prudentius has a beautiful and sympathetic picture of the influence on a child's mind of the very kind of training which Virgil must have had. " His first food was the sacred meal his earliest sight the sacred candles and the family ^ods growing black with holy oil. He saw his mother pale at her prayers before the sacred stone, and he too would be lifted by his nurse to kiss it in his turn." * Certainly the oast ;*nH above all the old religion of Italy exercised Vs^Zl:^^ on Virgil, which survived all his studies in Alexandrian literature and Epicurean philosophy- ^'^^^andrian fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes ^ It IS suggested by Sainte-Beuve • that the Jemi-fnsfesse * Boissier, La Relig, R^maine, i. 222-3 a:i™S"i^;1;"""""""' *• '"•^•♦- ' Have ab,idg«„he passage. of the Po-country had some share in developing Virgils melancholy. But, in the first place it would seem that the character of the country has been greatly changed by the clearing of the forests, as has very often happened in Canada and America during the nineteenth century; and in tiie second place such an influence as that supposed by Sainte- Beuve is not one on which we could very certainly reckon. Probably Virgil's melancholy had its roots elsewhere. Yet it is clear that that love of the country, which is the charming feature of Tibullus' poetry, is a vital and fundamental element of Virgil's character. We are left to conjecture the origin of Virgil s family. There are those who maintain that it must have had a Celtic strain. They rely on the etymology of the poets name and other names connected with him, and on certain elements of his genius which are supposed to be eminently Celtic The first line of argument is somewhat conjectural, and it is also used to support a conflicting view; the second is so closely connected with the larger theory that all genius is probably of Celtic origin that we may leave it to people of Celtic blood to enjoy to the fun.» Wilamowitz-Moellendorff believes Virgil's origin was Umbrian.» Cisalpine Gaul, as we call it, was perhaps once inhabited by Italians; it was certainly when first we hear of it. one of the main dwelling-places of the Etruscans before their expulsion by the Gauls.» Mantua, in particular, remained Etruscan down into Imperial times. A little town, it stood impregnable on its island in the wide and stagnant lagoons of Mincius, and the great movements passed it by and left it Etruscan still. Virgil himself pauses for a moment in the course of the Aeneid to speak (not too clearly) of his town's early days : " Mantua, rich in ancestry, yet not all of one blood, a threefold race, and under each • Yet the longer one associates with pure Saxons, the more tender one grows TvlriirmlT^M^UerrX J^s^ »• »V.<^. P-«5 (An den QueUen d« /-i;f«««nO He savs Maro is an Umbrian name for a village official. He 3::rth:';iewofM«xThat Virgil is a celt. "CatuU."he says. "UtFran^se. Vergil Italiener." » Polybius, ii. i7« * m !' r*i JB! 14 VIRGIL THE AGE AND THE MAN »5 I' :!» ^ i) race four cantons ; herself, she is the cantons' head, and her strength is of Tuscan blood." ^ When we turn from questions of ethnology to the poet's family history, we find an interesting, though short, account of his origin and upbringing. His father perhaps began life at Cremona ; at all events he lived there, and perhaps he married there. Some said he was a potter ; others, the hired servant of a petty official {viator) called Magius. A man of character and energy, he meant to get on in life and he succeeded. His industry won him his employer's daughter, by whom he had three sons. Of these, one. Silo, died in youth, another, Flaccus, in early manhood. Their father was not content with one occupation, but by keeping bees and by speculation in timber he made some money.* It is strange to think that Virgil owed his education to the turning of forest into lumber. It is clear that the father saw quality in his son and, with characteristic energy, deter- mined to develop it to the utmost. Altogether, he made, as we shall see, a strong impression upon his son. One would like to know more of him.^ Meantime, it is a pleasant reflection that in the fourth Georgic Virgil is going back to boyhood, when he writes with so much humour and affection of the bees. Nor was his father's other business outside his interests. Mr Menzies m his Forest Trees and Woodland Scenery, cited and praised by Professor Sellar,^ testifies to the general accuracy of Virgil s observation of woodcraft, maintaining that he must have watched keenly the details of the work which the foresters did around him, and adding that the art is indeed httle advanced since the days of Virgil. Yet there was one aspect of the lumberman's work in the forest, which may not greatly have moved himself, but Jl/T''^'"' 'f'^^' ^""y* ^- ^- •"• '9 (23) Mantua Tuscoum trans Padum sola rcU^ua Its importance as a fortress is medieval and modern-ZiU^ to the student of nmeteenth-century Italy. amuiar to « Suetonius r//. Verg, ,, egregiequc substantiae silvis coemendis et atibus ^gar. honey was an article of more importance than it i. .toniay ; e.g. Ep.ctetu^ ^ All this is from Suetonius, v. Vergilii, i. 2. 14. Vtrgil (2nd edition), p. 265. which appealed to his poet son. The forest had to come down • the land on which it stood had been idle for years, and man required it^ But while the axes swung and the trees fell, the young poet, watching, saw the havoc made of the birds' immemorial homes ; he saw the scattered nests, he saw the frightened birds hovering in the air over the spot where they were to build no more ; and though he hailed the cultivated field that was to be, he never forgot the sorrow of the birds. The ploughman of Mossgiel farm ploughed up the daisy and destroyed the nest of the field- mouse, but he felt what he was doing, and made mouse and daisy immortal. In later days Virgil lingered in his story of the reclaiming of the land to pity the rum of its most ancient inhabitants. He too is Truly sorry man's dominion Has broken Nature's social union. It is quite clear that Virgil was a " lover of trees." 2 Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes flumina amem silvasque inglorius » ((7. ii. 485)- The wood with its crowded life and strange solitude appealed to him, as we can see again and again in his poetry To take a striking instance, he sends his hero to find his way to the other world by another route from that of Odysseus. The Greek hero sailed there over the sea ; the Trojan passed there through woods «— tenent media omnia silvae {A, vi. 131) — » GtorHcs ii. 208 Et netnora evertit multos ignava per annos, \ antiquasqu* domes avium cum stirpibus imis \ emit ; illae altum nidisfetiere relictu. Horace afrspeaks of the reclaiming of forest lands, incultae pacantur vomere stlvae, SpTTas' Cf. Cowper, Poplar Field. "The blackbird has fled to another '"'.'Compare his glowing account of the use and beauty of the trees of the forest in C7. ii. 426-57, and the conclusion, O fortunatos mmtum agncolas I On [hetrlfof It'aly s'ee Deecke. Italy, ch. xi. § 2, and the many immigrant trees from America, Africa, and Australia, ch. vni. , . »_ , „ ..clet me delight in the country and the streams that freshen the valleys- let me love river and woc.dland with an unambitious love. (Conmgton.) The whole passage deserves quotation. ' . a u ^^^= * StiiboTv. 244. it is true, tells us that the region was surrounded by woods. but the fact is one thing and the poetic use of it another. i6 VIRGIL and whether the wonderful h*ne that describes the strange journey in the darkness, ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram refer to this or a slightly later stage of his journey, Virgil couples it with the magnificent simile of the path through the forest by night — Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna est iter in silvis, ubi caelum condidit umbra luppiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem.* With this love of trees we must link the poet's love of water — of river, stream and lake — no doubt likewise a love that went back to the island home of his boyhood.* Take his picture of the waters of Italy — Fluminaque antiques subterlabentia muros. An mare, quod supra, memorem, quodque adluit infra ? anne lacus tantos ? te, Lari maxume, teque, fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens Benace marino^ ((7. ii. 157). > Aeneid vi. 270-3. See Henry's comment, ad loc., in his Aeneidea. He says (p. 281): "The picture, as charming as the most charming of our author's always— when once rightly understood— charming pictures, cannot fail to recommend itself to every reader who, when travelling on a clear and fine dark night, has watched the spreading of the moonlight over the sky (LUCB maligna) when, owing to the horizon being hid from him either by woods or high grounds, he was still doubtful whether the moon was actually above the horizon or not ; " p. 285 : •• Incertam and maligna are the very words of all others we would expect Virgil to have chosen to describe moonlight in a wood— incertam ex- pressing its uncertain, flickering appearance as seen through the branches of the trees . . . and maligna expressing its scantiness." * The name Minciades, applied to Virgil by Juvcncus, Minciadae duUedo Maronis, has more truth and feeling about it than the corresponding MeXijatve^ht (of Homer), or " the bard of Avon." » " The rivers that flow below ancient walls. Or shall I speak of the two seas that wash it above and below ?— or of those mighty lakes— of thee, Larius the mighty, and thee, Benacus, rising with the waves and roar of the sea ? " The reader will remember Tennyson's possession by these lines amid the scenery Virgil describes — 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. THE AGE AND THE MAN 17 Or take the picture of the autumn rain-storm — Ruit arduus aether et pluvia ingenti sata laeta boumque labores diluit ; implentur fossae et cava flumina crescunt cum sonitu, fervetque fretis spirantibus aequor ^ {G. i. 324). Wc have one glimpse of Virgil's boyhood, which also serves to show us something of the country and its state. An epitaph is extant, which he is said to have written on a famous local brigand, an ex-gladiator, Ballista by name. It is a simple couplet, but it has a certain vivacity of expression, and it is perhaps not going too far to say that it shows the child as father of the man. From boyhood Virgil would seem to be on the side of order, on the side of industry and quietness. Perhaps, too, his grandfather was still a viator, Monte sub hoc lapidum tegitur Ballista sepultus ; nocte, die, tutum carpe, viator, iter.* Another piece of verse, attributed to Virgil, which may belong to this part of his life, is a parody of Catullus' phaselus tile. It is turned to account for a mule-driver. It is a curious coincidence, if the poem is Virgil's, that both he and Milton should have begun by attempting humour upon carriers.^ He is also said to have written, at the age of sixteen, a poem called the Culex.^ This is well attested ; For Benacus (Garda) compare Catullus 31 {O venusta Sirmio.). It may perhaps be permissible to say that the line describing Benacus always brings Ontario before my mind, as I have seen it under a south-west gale. In many ways I think the scenery of the New World is nearer that of Virgil's Italy than most of what we see in Europe to-day, though I am afraid the old towns are wanting. » " Down crashes the whole dome of the firmament, washing away before the mighty rain-deluge all those smiling crops, all for which the ox toiled so hard. The dykes are filled, the deep streams swell with a roar, and the sea glows again through every panting inlet " (Conington). Deecke, Italy, p. 80, says Italy belongs to the region of winter and autumn rains. ■Suet. V. Verg. 17. " Under this mount of stones Ballista lies, buried and hid ; night and day, take thy way in safety, O traveller." » The piece is Catalepton 10 (8). Catullus* poem must be dated shortly after his return from Bithynia in 56 B.C. * *' The traveller," says Baedeker, " is not recommended to spend the night at Mantua in summer, as the mosquitoes here are exceedingly troublesome." 18 VIRGII. !':ii i,l i'"l ii If and it was believed in early times that the poem was that still extant under the name. Professor Nettleship held dubiously that this might be true.* If Virgil wrote it, we can only say that his later work is singularly unlike it in rhythm and style and treatment generally, but I believe the majority of critics are right in rejecting the piece. Virgil's early years were spent at Cremona, according to Suetonius, and the eighth of the Catalepton. From there his father sent him to study at Milan, and afterwards at Rome. I do not know whether there was much continuity in the story of a school in the Roman empire, but it is interesting to notice that a century and a half after Virgil the Milan school is the subject of a letter written to Tacitus by Pliny. Two and a half centuries later still St Augustine was engaged as a teacher of rhetoric in Milan.2 Two at least of Virgil's teachers we know by name. Parthenius taught him Greek, and Siro initiated him into philosophy. The traces of their teaching abode with him through life, but it is of more interest to study his eman- cipation from them, for it is characteristic. He was naturally influenced by them at first, but he was still open to other influences which corrected, and in time greatly modified, the impression they made on him. It is the lot of most teachers to be outgrown by their best pupils. Parthenius is known to us by one surviving work, a hand- book of love-tales (a6poiari9 rwv epwriKwi^ Tra^^y/xriro)*/), told in brief (olovei vTro/nvruuLaTtwv TpoVoi/), and dedicated to Virgil's friend Cornelius Gallus, in the hope that he may find some useful material among them for elegy writing. If we may believe the statement attributed to a scholiast, the Moretum is a translation by Virgil from the original Greek of Par- thenius. Two questions are involved here; but whether the extant Moretum is Virgil's or not, it is a delightful little poem, and one would be glad to think that Virgil had a » Ancient Lives of Virgil, p. 38. See Mr Mackail's most interesting lecture in his Lectures on Poetry ( 1 91 1 ). s ■ c lu * Pliny, Epp. ir. 13 ; Augustine, Conf. v. 13, 23. THE AGE AND THE MAN 19 teacher who could write anything so good.^ The handbook is an infinitely duller work. It is quite possible to suppose with M. Pierron, that Virgil, when he wrote the Eclogues, was " more familiar with the poets of the Greek decadence than with those of la belle antiquiti^' and that this was due to Parthenius, who would probably lead his pupils where he most enjoyed going— to Alexandria, in fact. The time came when Virgil sought out other and greater Greek poets for himself. Yet he paid Parthenius the same compliment as he did other poets, better and less known, for Aulus Gellius tells us that the source of Virgil's line. Glauco et Panopeae et Inoo Melicertae {G, i. 437) is one by Parthenius V\a\)Mp Kai 'Sfipei koi ecVaX/o) MeXtfcepr^.* Many hard things have been said of Alexandrine poetry, and not undeservedly, but Milton's countrymen can hardly blame Virgil for his sensitiveness to the music and enchant- ment of proper names, used as the Alexandrines used them. His mind was, however, too Italian to yield altogether to the Alexandrine manner, and the virile example of Lucretius » See Teuflfcl, I^aman Literature, § 230, and Schanz (1898) Rom. Lit. § 243* on the Moretum. The poem has been happy in its translators, for Cowper did it into English from Virgil's Latin. ^ • 1 • jl « Gellius. N. A. xiii. 27 ; for Parthenius see Erwin Rohde, Der Grtechisclu Roman, pp. 1 13-7; Macrobius, Sat. v. 17, 18 Parthenius quo grammatuo in Gratcis Virgilius usus est (but see ran Jan's note). He was a favourite poet ot the Emperor Tiberius, who set up his statue along with Euphonon of Chalcis and Rhianus (Suet. Tid. 70). Euphorion is referred to by Virgil {E. x. 50) as imitated by Gallus, not. I think, by himself, .as Pierron suggests {Lttt. Romatne, p. 387). Norden. Neue Jahrhiicher, 1901, p. 267, says: "Die Bucohca sind weniger im Stil Theokrits als der affectierten Manieristen Euphonon und Gallus gehalten, und gehoren daher zu den schwierigsten Gedichten in lateinischer Sprache, die uns erhalten sind"; a very characteristic judgement of this scholar, who has a great contempt for "aesthetic criUcism. He con- tinues: " Dicse Manier Uberwindet er durch das Studium des Lucrez und Ennius. des Homer und ApoUonius, und setzt an die Stelle ^^i docta poemaita erosse Werke in leichtverstandlicher Sprache." The Moretum is a most vivid picture of life, the servant (1. 32) niight be drawn from the negress of To-day, and the handmiU (1. 19) is still used by the Italian poor ; Deecke, Italy, p. 194. I: IT m ij j 20 VIRGIL guarded his thought and style from its dangers, and gave him something of The graver grace, wherewith he crowned The wild and sweet Sicilian strain.^ Of Siro we know less than we do of Parthenius, but we are helped by having two little poems, attributed to Virgil and very probably genuine, of which he is the subject. The first of these dates from the moment when Virgil turned from his preliminary studies to begin that of philosophy. The poem is very short, but it is full of natural and spontaneous feeling.* He bids an unregretted farewell to the rhetoricians, whom he had not found inspired, and to the grammarians— scholasticorum natio madens pingui — among whom he dares to include the great Varro,' and announces that he is setting sail for the haven of happiness, * F. W. H. Myers, Lugano. • For convenience the whole poem may be quoted — Ite hinc^ inanes^ ite^ rhetorum ampullae^ injlata \rheso non Achaico verba, [fread roti'\ et voSf Selique Tarquitique Varroqtu, scholasticorum natio madens pingui ^ ite hincy inanis cymbalon iuventutis. 5 tuque^ mearum cura, Sexte, curarum vale^ Sabine ; iam vaiete^/ormosi. nos ad beatos vela mittimus partus , magni petentes docta dicta SironiSy vitamque ab omni rnndicabimus euro. 10 ite hinCf CamencUy vos quoque ite salvete, dulces Camenae {nam fatebimur verum, dulces Juistis)y et tamen meas chartas revisitotey sedpudenter et raro. In line 7 there is a variant morosi ; the reading depends on whether we are to suppose that Virgil was addressing his fellow-studenU or his teachers. Line 3 is a restoration. Norden {Neue Jahrbiicher fiir kl. AUertumy 1901, p. 270, n. 3) accepts this poem as genuine, and characterizes it as beautiful. He makes the same point, that Virgil moved over to Stoicism. Nettleship {Ancient Lives y p. 38) says that *' Virgil probably, if we may judge by the traces of antiquarian study in the Aeneidy learned in after years to form a very different opinion of Roman scholarship." Professor Nettleship, however, had a weakness for grammarians and antiquarians, as readers of his Essays know well. « Perhaps he would have been less bold if he had known Varro, who certainly made Cicero nervous. See ad Atticum, xiii. 25, 3. THE AGE AND THE MAN 21 he is turning to the learned lore of Siro {docta dicta Siroms), and will thus rescue his life from all distracting care ; the Italian Muses, the Camenae, dear as they have been to him, must henceforth leave him-no, they must visit him still. but only at comely intervals. He does not ask the grammarians and rhetoricians to revisit him ; he had got from them all they had to give in quickening ; hereafter their work is mere dead matter for him till it is touched by philosophy and the Muses. It was not every Roman poet who saw this so clearly. There is an air of " glad confident morning" about these lines, which is not that of Virgil s later and greater works-a suggestion of youth, and of hope, which gives the piece its truth. Later on he reaUzed by thought and pain, that not even the learned lore of biro could rescue his life from all care. Siro was an Epicurean, and it is surely not a strange coincidence that Virgil's philosophy in his earlier work is also Epicurean, though the fourth (^..r^. mdicates already that he is perhaps not satisfied with the school. But probably an even stronger impulse than that ol biro was given to him in this direction by Lucretius, whose great work was in the hands of the Ciceros in the year 54 BC^ Virgil, whether the parody of Catullus is genuine or not, had certainly been a student of his fellow country- man : and it is hardly overbold (in view of the great influence of Ennius on such men as Cicero and Lucretius) to suggest that Virgil's knowledge of Ennius dates from his youth, though perhaps he did not admire him so much then as later on in life. When then there appeared such a poem as that of Lucretius, great every way, in its grasp of principles, in its exposition of the philosophy to which Virgil had so ioyfully looked forward, in its minute and sympathetic observation of nature, in its thoroughly stalwart Roman temper, and (not least perhaps in Virgil's eyes then or after- wards) in its brilliant handling of Latin metre, it is not surprising that Virgil was captured by it and remained its captive for many a year. It is characteristic, however, of » Cicero, ad Q, Fr, ii. 9 (") 4 Lucretii toemata ut scribis ita sunt, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis. ii 23 VIRGIL Virgil's genius that this loyalty did not interfere with other loyalties, and that philosophy is throughout subordinated to poetry. The combination of thought and art in Lucretius, which Cicero recognizes, may, as already suggested, have helped to save Virgil from subjection to Alexandrine methods in poetry. We may also remark that if Virgil was influenced by Lucretius, he also felt the influence of "the anti-Lucretius in Lucretius," as M. Patin very happily phrases it.^ He would thus return to Mantua with some part at least of his joyful prophecy fulfilled. He had escaped the pedants; he had entered under happy auspices on the study of philosophy ; his interest in nature was deepened and quickened ; and he had seen a wholly new field of serious art opened up before him. But he had not made his fortune. On the contrary, it is quite conceivable that practical people shook their heads over him. With all his philosophy and his rhetoric, he had not succeeded in his chosen vocation of a pleader. He had made one attempt in speaking at the bar, and then given it up altogether.* Once more we find that the poet Is weak ; and, man and boy, Has been an idler in the land. His poetical attempts were finding favour with people of importance ; still the fact remained that he was twenty-seven years of age and not yet very sure of any noticeable success in life. HI It may not be fanciful to suppose that perhaps the first public event of which Virgil took notice as a child or a boy » Patin, Audes sur la Po^sie Laiine, I. vii. « We might find perhaps a hint of the forsaken profession in the speech of Aeneas to Dido {A. iv. 333), which suggests the lawyer a little. The rhetorical training for the profession may be similarly read in the speech of Tumus {A. xi. 377-444), where the rhetoric surely goes beyond what we should expect of the speaker. Drances is more intelligible. " It is a strange trade, I have often thought, that of advocacy," says Carlyle in writing of Jeffrey ; of all trades perhaps farthest from poetry. THE AGE AND THE MAN 23 was the sedition of Catiline.^ There was some disturbance '' A^he grew older Virgil would learn more of what Catilin^s fiS Caesar rose Virgil with all the Transpadanes would first Caesar rose, virg ^^^^^ ^^^ watch with eager mterest the career wim w the end of the first 6^« enfranchising Novum after trying to get Cae^ recal ed ^ -^« J -^^.^ ,„ Caesar as a n-ani- Con.«m scourged one of the -^"^^ ,^^j^, cic. aJ A». v. ... » .^:-;rto\Lp"art^^r.:utr:r^^^^^^^^^ after his death. 24 VIRGIL f i could not offend the army.^ But the indignation of the sufferers did not stop here; and the short rising of L. Antonius followed. It was crushed at Perusia in 41, when Octavian displayed great severity in the hour of victory. Amongst the dispossessed was the family of Virgil. Mantua had suffered from its nearness to Cremona, and Virgil had to see a soldier take possession of his farm or his father's— dardarus has segetes ? His first care was to find a refuge for his father, who must have been an elderly man, and he found it in the little estate of his former teacher Siro. Villula, quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle, verum illi domino tu quoque divitiae : me tibi, et hos una mecum, quos semper amavi, siquid de patria tristius audiero, commendo, in primisque patrem. Tu nunc eris illi Mantua quod fuerat, quodque Cremona prius.^ {CataL 8 (10)). One or two things should be considered here. First, we do not know where this little villa was, nor what was Virgil's position with regard to it. Siro must have been dead, if the first two lines mean anything. Had he then left his estate to Virgil, as a favourite pupil ? In the second place this episode and this little peom should not be forgotten when we read of Aeneas carrying Anchises from Troy Of all human relations in the Aeneid that of father and son is dwelt on with most frequent and affectionate emphasis Let us take another illustration, the case of lapis, the surgeon He was of all men beloved of Apollo ; - to him Apollo y^ro..vo.aal r. [Man^ua vae miserac nimium vicina Cremonae\ ..X ro\ll71 re. xp^pa^o,,. rA, ,^ y^p eVi .^^BpoU, .a, 5^ erl ^,5^. a5..o0.. yly^Ja^ £^li tz^'lli "'^'^ '^'''''^»'^»' nequt possessorum graiiam tenuil Uvy, « "Little farm, once Siro's, poor little field ! but the wealth of him when he was thy lord; to thee I entrust myself, and these with me. whom iTuve always loved, if t.d.ngs of ill come from my countr>--most ;f all my fa her Lrr^^fofe!"' ^*^°" "^"^^ ^ " ""- "^^ -^- -- Mantua :L;^1';; THE AGE AND THE MAN 25 himself offered his own arts, his own gifts— augury and the lyre and swift arrows ; but he, to prolong the days of his father, given over to die, chose rather to know the virtues of herbs and the craft of healing, to ply inglorious a silent art."^ lapis rejected poetry for medicine; is it not that Virgil learnt with sadness how little poetry avails to ease pain, to give sight, to lengthen life ? The father he loved— in primisque patrem— ^as blind, partly or wholly. It is a moving picture of the village home which we gain when we realize that Virgil would have sacrificed his own supreme gift, if, like lapis, he could have given the blind father sight and life.^* Suetonius passes rapidly over the episode of the planta- tions, remarking that Virgil owed his escape from loss in this distribution of lands to Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, and that it was to celebrate them that he took to pastoral poetry. Now Virgil does not give us any concise account of the affair himself— one would hardly expect him to do so— and it has been assumed that he was twice expelled, and that after his restitution by Octavian he had to call in the help of a friend nearer at hand to save him from the barbarus in possession. It seems more probable that Eclogue ix, instead of referring to a second assault and expulsion, is really earlier in date than Eclogue i, and that the two poems refer to different stages of one and the same story, the first being set at the front of the book by way of special honour to the ruler. In any case it appears that Virgil had already been writing poetry of some sort, presumably Bucolic, as it was on the favour which his poetry had won with Varus and others that he relied for help in this time of trouble. If not himself, others had supposed this influence would secure him against dispossession. Yes, he says, so the story » ^«««Vf xii. 393. « Suet. V. Verg. 14. " Of all the forms of virtue," wrote Mr Lecky (^«r. Morcds i. 299), *• filial affection is perhaps that which appears most rarely in Roman history." As to the mother, who seems to have made a slighter impression on the poet, it is conjectured that she married again, as Virgd left most of his property to a half-brother. Incidentally, I do not bplieve that Magia's name has anything to do with Virgil's medieval repute as a magician. Rather, the popular mind could conceive of no other form of intellectual great- ness. Plato, too, was made into a magician in the East. 26 VIRGIL went, but songs in time of war are helpless as pigeons before the eagle — Audieras et fama fuit ; sed carmina tantum nostra valent, Lycida, tela inter Martia quantum Chaonias dicunt aquila veniente columbas {E. ix. ii). Yet after all he underestimated the power of his poetry, for it led his great friends to intercede for him with Octavian, who after a personal interview in Rome guaranteed him security for the future — a great concession, as we can see from what Appian says. The story of the visit to Rome and the interview is told in the first Eclogue in a curious and not very happy allegory. And there the episode ends. IV We must now consider the poetry. His education finished, and his one appearance made at the bar, Virgil, as we saw, went back to Mantua, and began serious work upon pastoral poetry. The mode was suggested by Theocritus, whose influence is very clearly marked in passage after passage of the poems. But, as we have seen, Virgil was not a man of one allegiance, and other influences are to be found, —as foi instance that of Lucretius in Eclogue vi, which is never- theless neither an imitation of Lucretius nor of Theocritus, but, while enriched by both of them, an original work. Critics have emphasized again and again VirgiPs dependence on Greek models, but here as everywhere else the sympathetic reader will scarcely feel this. There may be imitation, but the general effect is not that of imitative poetry. It is not Theocritus, nor Lucretius, whom we are reading, but Virgil, a poet and their peer. One is impressed with the justness of Horace's characterization of these poems — Molle atque facetum Vergilio adnuerunt gaudentes rure Camenae (5. i. lo. 44); the " exquisite playfulness and tenderness " 1 of Virgil leave » This is Leslie Stephen's description of Cowper's temperament. Thouch It was not mtended as a translation of Horace's phrase, the parallel it suggests may excuse the quotation. Mollis is used by Cicero to dcscril^ the nature of h,s hot-tempered brother Quintus {ad All. i. ,7. 3) . he me«.s THE AGE AND THE MAN 27 the most vivid and delightful impression. " True humour," says Carlyle, " is sensibility in the most catholic and deepest sense," ^ and Virgil has this mark of the great poet. It is a world that smiles to him— in spite of soldiers — and he smiles to the world. He goes hand in hand with Nature ; and when he draws her, he does it as he sees her with his own eyes. Theocritus and Lucretius call his attention to this and that in Nature, but he consults herself before he quite believes them. His heart is open {molle) to the men and women around him too, and, if he has not yet sounded their deepest moods, he has still read them aright so far. Man and Nature are in harmony, and Virgil has already begun to make Silenus and Lucretius friends. He looks already to find truth in reconciliation. The episode of the plantation of the veterans, like every real experience, left its mark upon the poet. Of course, from a worldly point of view, it made his fortune. It introduced him to Octavian, and thereafter he seems to have had little or no rough contact with the world in person. But this meant very little. The pain which he and his father had undergone had opened his mind. The sword had gone through his own soul also, and his own private trouble, soon healed as it was, became the symbol of universal suffering. He knew now. Perhaps it was not merely to compliment Caesar that he set at the front of his book that Eclogue in which he tells of Caesar's personal kindness to himself. Tityrus is restored to his beech-tree's shade and sings of his Amaryllis; the barbarian has restored to him his fields; but Meliboeus — what of him ? Nos patriae fines et dulcia linquimus arva ; nos patriam fugimus.^ sensibility. Quintilian may be consulted on jacetum, vi. 3. 19. Sainte-Beuve (on Medea, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1845) : "II est vrai qu'il n'y a pas seulement chet lui (Virgil) des traits de passion, on y trouve dej^ de la sensihiliti, quality moins precise et plutot moderne ; mais pourtant on est trop empress^ d'ordinaire 4 restreindre le genie ancien ; en I'etudiant mieux et en I'appro- fondissant, on d^couvre qu'il avait devine plus de choses que notre premiere prevention n'est port^e ^ lui en accorder." ^ Essay en RicA/er (iSzy). • ** We leave our country's borders and her sweet fields — we are exiles from %nt country." 28 VIRGIL Here in the forefront of his work is the picture of human sorrow, that sorrow which Virgil was to feel in ever-deepening intensity. It is a new element in his mind and heart, and it becomes the test by which he tries his philosophy and his poetry. As yet it has not shadowed the joy of life, but, as we shall see, it becomes more and more the background of all his thought— a part of his being. "Zeus," says Aeschylus, "made for man the road to Thought, and established ' Learn by suffering ' to be an abiding Law." » There is little episode in the remaining twenty years of Virgil's life. He became the friend of Maecenas and of Augustus, and they seem to have done all they could to make life easy for him.* It was probably not much that they could do. Sint Maecenates, non deerunt, Flacce, Marones* said Martial, who was. looking for a Maecenas. The sentiment has all the coarseness and want of inner truth that stamps so much of the poetry of Rome between Persius and Ausomus. Martial was wrong ; if any one man made Virgil. It was rather the barbams than Maecenas, but all the king^ horses and all the king's men, veterans and ministers, could never make a Virgil-least of all out of a Martial. Virgil owed something to Maecenas and Augustus, no doubt. The shepherd went to court, as Touchstone puts it, and learnt good manners-so they tell us. Myers, Sellar, and Sainte- Beuve all call attention to this, and doubtless Virgil did not mingle with men of affairs, with rulers and statesmen, wi^out learning from them. Aeneas might not have been the high and mighty prince" he is, if Virgil had not known Augustus ; he perhaps might not have had the grace and dignity of manner, nor the essentially states! * Aesch. Ag, 176— rw 4>povtiv ppoToi;t oSily. ffOPTa, t6» Trdeei fxados Oima Kvplui exay. gald^s'i^RolT " '""''°" "•~°'~° '"'""'• -""^ « "ouse near Ma«:e„as- THE AGE AND THE MAN 29 manlike cast of mind, which Virgil obviously admired in Augustus. . But when one considers who and what manner of men made up the court, we begin to wonder whether VirgU after all had so much to learn from them, and we are hardly surprised that at last he shrank from Rome. Who were these men ? In a most interesting essay on Horace M. Goumyi enumerates some of them. They were not of the old aristocracy, in the main ; they were new men, partisans and agents of Octavian (let us, for the moment, not say Augustus)-soldiers of fortune who had rallied to hmi as his opponents went down-Plancus morbo proditor;^ Dellius desuiior bellorunt dvilium;^ LoUius* and Murena (by adoption. Varro)"— men who were enriched by Uie civu wars by blood and confiscation. Horace addressed poems to these people, but even he, in spite of his curious pleasure in being the friend of the great,' found that in the long run he could have too much of Rome and the court. _ Virgil could hardly have met them without thinking of Siros villa. Even Augustus must at times have shocked him. Suetonius tells us. for instance, that Augustus offered Virgil the estate of some exile, but Virgil "could not bear to accept it — non sustinuit accipere? One is tempted to try to picture the interview and to wonder how Virgil expressed himselt. ' Goumy. U^ Latim, pp. 224-38. No one who has read this book will fail to regret the early death of ite author. „ • Velleius Paterculus, ii. 83. I. " Treachery was a disease with him. > Messalla's designation of him, Sen. Rhet. Suas. i. 7- ("The cucus-nder of the CivU Wars "-it means he always knew the exact moment when to -ump to the next horse.) • Veil. Pat. ii. 102 ; Pliny, N.H. ix. 35, 58, u*. • See Verrall, Sludia in Horace. • Cf. Satirt,, ii. I. 75 '<"«"' «' 1 """ ""^" "^"" '«'»"'>"*'f "/i'"' I i«vidia : and even later in life he says the same, Epp. i. 17- iipr,nc,pvbmplacm»t viris ncH ultima laus «/j and finally in his own literary epitaph he says rt aeain. Epp. i. 20. 23 me primis Urbis belli placuisse domique. And yet he was r^'cShant, and'perhfps even a reluctant CaesarUn. The boast of Horace \. found again in « letter of Sir Walter Scott's given by U«khart (ch. xxxix.) : " To have lived respected and regarded by some of the best men m our age, is enough for an individual like me." I believe Horace may quite weU have me«.t our Virgil in 0*x iv. 12. The phrase (1. 15) '''^'«7 .r**''?"?'!'^ Z. a description of Vinjil would strike him much less curiously than it does the Bodern reader. ' S«et .-. Verg. 12. 30 VIRGIL between conflicting leelings, for he would not wish to hurt his friend. We have a picture of Virgil at court from the hand of a freedman of Maecenas, Melissus by name.^ This man, though freeborn and entitled to freedom, had preferred to remain a slave to Maecenas. He was soon manumitted, and (says Suetonius) Augusta etiam insinuatus est, and becanrie a librarian. At sixty years of age he began to compile books of funny stories \lneptiae\ and achieved no less than 150 volumes, beside writing some comedies. Melissus tells us that Virgil was "very slow of speech, and almost like an uneducated person," while his countenance was that of a rustic.^ This is the hero as seen by the valet Still, we must be grateful to him for a picture, which is most probably true, though we must interpret it for our- selves. Virgil's silence in the court of Augustus we can readily accept, but for the true explanation let us consult another poet. Browning in the Epistle of Karshish describes the air of the quickened Lazarus among friends and stranccrs and the effect of Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth ; and substantially it is true of the poet. He holds on firmly to some thread of life, Which runs across some vast distracting orb Of glory on either side that meagre thread, The spiritual life around the earthly life ; The law of that is known to him as this. ... So is the man perplext with impulses Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on. Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, ' And not along, this black thread through the blaze > Suet, de Gramm 21 The books were probably not unlike those of Enclish anecdotographers. Specimens may be found in Macrobius, Saturnalia bk U openmg chapters. One of Macrobius' stories of Augustus I have heird Jd of Napoleon III. Pascal's -diseur de bons mots, mauvais caractire" mav be remembered. ' "^ J Suet. V, V^g. 16 insernione tardisnmum at poem indocto simiUm fuiss^ Melissm Itadit, Ibid. 8 facU rmticana, "'^'^w fuust THE AGE AND THE MAN 31 Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within Admonishes ; then back he sinks at once To ashes that was very fire before . . . He merely looked with his large eyes on me. The great poet spoke another language and thought other thoughts than these men of the court, and was probably never at home with them. He stumbled in his speech, and took refuge in silence, and then in flight from Rome, where there were other embarrassing incidents beside those of the court. For we are told that on one occasion, when his verses, probably the Eclogues, were being read in the theatre, he received from the people a demonstration usually reserved for Augustus.* Yet we have glimpses of a circle which he found congenial. Horace more than once refers to him, and always in terms of warm affection ; while Virgil's feeling for Horace is shown by his introduction of him to Maecenas. It is difficult to see in the Epodes and earlier Satires anything very much akin to Virgil's genius; but after all contrast is often a source of friendship, or at least of interest, and there was certainly a sturdy Italian manhood about Horace which may well have attracted Virgil. Of Varius we know little, but Horace classes him with Virgil among the " white souls," and Virgil made him his literary executor. Maecenas, the centre of the group, owes his immortality to his poet friends. With their aid and that of other writers, who have preserved memories of him, we can see him still— statesman, fop, husband, and friend, a man of affectations in dress and jewel, and precious beyond intelligibility in language ; who quarrelled a thousand times with his wife and had as many reconciliations, though without excessive faithfulness on either side; who flaunted his dislike for the toga so far as to refuse to wear it even when acting as the Emperor's deputy; who tormented his friends with his complaints » Tacitus, Dial. 13 po^ulus qui auditis in theatro versibus Veriilii surrexit universus et forte praesentem spectantemque Vergilium vetieratus eit sic quasi Augustum. Cf. Suet. v. Verg. 26 Bucolica to successu edidit ut in scatna quoque per cantores crebro pronuntiarentur. Compare the triumph of John Gtlptn in 1785, beyond the wish of the author. 3^ VIRGIL THE AGE AND THE MAN 33 about his health, gave them estates, h'stened to their poetry, and won their love ; and who, finally, was a shrewd and moderate statesman, sparing the sword, never abusing his power, and guilty of no outrage but upon his mother- tongue.* These and others were Virgil's intimates. It is easy to guess that it is to them that Suetonius refers when he speaks of Virgil reading his poems to others than Augustus, " but not often, and generally passages about which he was doubt- ful, with a view to criticism.''^ A poet who heard him read, Julius Montanus by name, " used to say that he would steal Virgil's voice and pronunciation and delivery, if he could, for verses would sound well when he read them which from any other lips were empty and dumb." * We hear of these readings from Propertius, who seems to have been present at one or more of them, and gave his countrymen a hint of what to expect when the Aeneid should be published.* That Horace read some of his lyrical poems to his friends we learn from Ovid,*^ who heard him, though we can hardly imagine much intimacy between these two men. Virgil, however, Ovid neither heard nor met — Vergilium vidi taniuni is the famous phrase.* Possibly Virgil's preference for living away from Rome was the cause; and in any case Ovid was only twenty-four years old when the great poet died. Virgil fled from Rome to Naples, to the "sweet Par- thenope," who cherished him "embowered in pursuits of inglorious peace." ' There he lived and wrote the Georgics ; there he was buried ; and after death he became the great legendary hero or patron saint of the place for centuries. » See Seneca, Ep. 114. 4.7 ; Macrobius, Sat, ii. 4. 12, and Horace, /ojww. •Suet. t'. Verg.ii. 1 n^j^ ^^ * Prop. iii. 32, 59-66 ; cf. Suet. v. Verg. 30. « Ovid, Tristia, iv. 10, 49. De la Ville de Mirmont,/fi/ww (COvide, 217, 218. « Ibid. 51. This phrase is familiar to the English reader in Sir Walter Scott'f account of his one meeting with Bums. Life of Scott y vol. i. p. 185. 'Conington's translation of the conclusion of (7. iv. Ileyne bracketed the four hnes of biography, but they seem to be generally accepted. Studm florentem ignobths oti surely should be above suspicion. Tacitus alludes to this retreat as a happy contrast with the life of an ox^Xox-malo secumm tt quittum Vergiht secissum, says one of the persons in the Dialogue on Orators (13) " I do not know whether the critics will agree with me," wrote Burns, who read Dryden's translation, "but the Georgics are to me by far the best of Virgil."^ This was Dryden's own opinion. In scope and conception the Georgics are greatly in advance of the Eclogues, The poet has more range, more freedom, more depth of reflection and insight, and more music; He has added, critics tell us, Hesiod, Aratus, and Nicander to his sources, and perhaps others as well ; but, as always in a great poet's work, our dominant impression is of a distinct and independent personality, an original mind. For, as we read the Georgics, we grow more and more conscious that they are the outcome of experience, of impression and thought. Here and there we meet, it is true, reminiscences of Alexandrine literature, which we are sometimes glad to forget, as they disturb rather than help us. They are so far useful, however, that they show the hold which that literature had upon Virgil ; and their relative unimportance in the Georgics as compared with the Eclogues reveals the progress of his emancipation. To one such passage we shall have to return. We may also, for the present, postpone all reference to Roman history, and, as far as possible, the consideration of the Georgics as a homage to Italy, and study the poem as a part of the history of the poet's mind. The poet of the Eclogues had had his experience of danger and privation, but the great note of the Eclogues is after all happiness, a youthful happiness. Life — apart from military colonies and the disturbance they bring — is bright and sunny, with plenty of beech-tree shade when it is too sunny ; and its main occupations are singing, while the goats graze, and making love to Amaryllis. Even in spite of his assertions, we hardly feel that the love-lorn shepherd is really inconsolable. But the Georgics show a diff'erent spirit Here we find the grim realization that * Litter to Mrs. Dunlop, May 4, 1788. So also jadged Montaigne, Essays ii. 10 (Florio), Essay 67 (Cotton). r 34 VIRGIL THE AGE AND THE MAN 3S I life involves a great deal more work than Menalcas and the rest had thought, hard work, and work all the year round; vigilance never to be remitted, and labour which it is ruin to relax. This Virgil brings out, in speaking of« pulse — " spite of all patience in choosing, spite of all pains in examining, I have seen it degenerate all the same, except man applied himself (vis humand) year by year, to pick out the largest one by one. So is it, all earthly things are doomed to fall away and slip back and back, even as, if a boatman, who scarcely manages to force his boat up stream by rowing, relax his arms by chance, the headlong current whirls him away down the river" {G. i. 197-203). Over and over again the work has to be done, the vines must be dressed, a toil cut nunquam exhausti satis est\ every year the ground has to be hoed " eternally " {aetemum frangenda bidentibus) ; round and round in a circle comes the husband- man's toil, as the year revolves upon itself {G. ii. 397-402). Scilicet omnibus est labor impendendus — the very rhythm tells its tale — work is to be paid into every- thing, and more than work, for labor is the toil that brings fatigue and exhaustion. And withal, " poor mortals that we are, our brightest days of life are first to fly ; on creeps disease and the gloom of age, and suffering sweeps us off and the ruthless cruelty of death" {G. iii. 36). Even the bees— the Italians of the insect world — are not exempt from " the chances oi our life" {G, iv. 251). There are those who find pessimism in this unflinching picture of human life, but this is not just. The poet is doing his proper work in presenting to us faithfully one aspect of life which cannot be obscured. If he stopped there, and showed us only a monotony of merciless toil without any corresponding values, the charge of pessimism would be just. But the emphasis lies quite as much on the values— on the recompense of labour and on the con- solations of Nature, the meaning of all which is only to be reached by a true apprehension of what they are required to do for us. They need their background, which is real experience of toil and pain. The work of the farmer is heavy and unceasing. Earth ts a hard mistress, but still she is the justest of all created Xycings—iustissima tellus {G. ii. 460)— and she makes no scruple about paying her wages promptly and in full, when the work required has been done for them — fundit humo facilem victum^ {G. ii. 460). Nature has appointed "laws and eternal ordinances'' {G, i. 60), and it is the disciple of Lucretius who uses the words, knowing quite well what they mean. The tree will readily do what you tell it, if you take the right way of telling it {G, ii. 52). Virgil uses the same word of farm labour as he does of Rome's imperial work. Such phrases as intperat arvis (G. i. 99), ^«^^ ^^^^^^ imperia (G. iii. 369), may be set side by side with the famous word of Anchises — tu regere imperio populos Romane memento *(-^. vi. 851), while the accompanying pads imponere moretn also suggests a comparison. The world of men and the world of nature are only to be ruled in one way— by obedience to the proper laws of their being. It may not be fanciful, perhaps, to connect with this Virgil's practice of directing the farmer to watch the stars and to regulate his work by them ; they mean as much to the farmer as to the sailor, he says. The Roman calendar had only recently emerged from incredible chaos, and it might easily have returned to it, but no college of pontiffs could reach the stellar system.* So long as the farmer, in Emerson's telling phrase, " hitched his wagon to a star," he was safe, he would reap the reward of his labour, and would have no cause to grumble at the universe. But apart from such rewards as Earth gives him, the farmer has a reward within himself in the hardening of his fibre and the sharpening of his faculties. Using the form of an old story, the poet tells us that Jupiter chose » "Earth, that givcf all their due, poure out from her soil plenteous susten- jmcc"(Conington). ., • i\i *^ • "Yours, Roman, be the lesson to govern the nations as their lord ... 10 impose the settled rule of peace " (Conington). » Suetonius, /i#/»tw 40, a very interesting chapter. See also p. 150. 36 VIRGIL that the culture of the land should not be easy ; by cares he meant to quicken mortal hearts. He himself gave the snake its poison, and bade the wolf raven, bade the sea toss, and put fire and wine out of reach, that experience by patient thought might hammer out the divers arts little by little. Thus came the arts — it was toil, unsparing toil, that won all the victories, and the pressure of want and grinding adversity — labor omnia vicit improbus et duris urgens in rebus egcstas {G, i. 121-146). * Look at the men whom this rough Italian farm-life has bred— those hard, and more than hard, frames they strip for the wrestling {G. ii. 53i)--.the Ligurian (a North Italian people, it should be noted) inured to hardship (adsuetumque malo Ligurem, G, ii. 168)— and the youth of Italy in general, patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus « {G. ii. 472). Is it surprising that a people bred in this hard school to be masters of themselves are masters of the world, a people of Marii and Scipios {G. ii. 167-172. 532 f)? But man has other sources of happiness as well, and here, I think, the value of the Georgtcs is still unexhausted. The poet looks at Nature, and if he does not find, like Bernardin de St Pierre, some special profit or pleasure designed for mankind in every detail of creation, he at least finds a pleasure and a happiness in them all, which may or may ,not have been meant for him, but it is there. The trees, with all their beauties and their feelings too {G. il 82) plants and their ways, wild and cultivated (the lucerne for example— "all Venetia is full of it," says Servius »), and birds and beasts and insects— he enjoys them all, thinks about . ' " f^ '^^^ conquered the world, relentless Toil, and Want that grinds in adver- sity (Conington). Compare a fine passage in Carlyle's essay entiUed CAarac- /^x/ir. beginning "Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually Here " and ending Ever must Pain urge us to Labour ; and only in free Effort can any blessedness be imagined for us." Cf. Alleyne Ireland. TAe Far £asrem Trcp^I pp^8-jio, on the growth of civilization in the temperate rone as distinct from th^ ■ ** A youth patient of toil and accustomed to icant fare." » Servius on G, i. 215, Huius plena Venetia est. THE AGE AND THE MAN 37 them and smiles to them. For all through the Georgtcs runs the most delicate humour. The farmer stamps out the insect and the vermin as mere pests, but the poet looks at things from their point of view, and the contrast is for him full of pathos and humour. The tiny mouse has her mansions and her granaries, quite as significant to her as his are to the farmer. How can the poet of work find in his heart anything but sympathy for the ant in her anxiety about her old age {G. i. 181 f.)? When he comes to the bees, he enters so heartily and delightfully into their concerns,— their care for their parvos Quirttes, their loyalty to their king, their true Italian passion for possession (amor habendt), their Cyclopean energy, their laws and constitution, their good looks, and those terrible commotions that a handful of dust will quiet,— that one could almost believe he had been a bee himself, but that bees on the whole seem a little deficient in humour. How much, in short, is his conclusion, " we see in nature that is ours." Turning to man's life Virgil finds it also full of charm and happiness. In passages that recall the humour and the close description of Cowper's Task, he tells of the joys of spring and autumn, of the genial winter {genialis hiems) in general and the winter night in the cottage — I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st, And dreaded as thou art . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know ( Task, bk. iv). The sum of the whole matter is given in the great passage which closes the second Georgic—o fortunatos—v^h^rt the poet sums up the joys of labour for the Earth and of her rewards, of the settled low content, the sturdy character, the yearly round with fresh pleasures in every season, and all the happiness of honest married life and children. There are signs in the Georgtcs of a change coming over the poet's philosophy and his attitude toward Epicureanism. I 38 VIRGIL This question must be reserved for treatment in another chapter. For the moment it is enough to say that he seems to be moving away from the position of Lucretius and Siro, and feeling his way toward another ; and meanwhile though he congratulates the man who grasps the laws of Nature — Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ^ (G, ii. 490), he himself finds his happiness elsewhere — Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores* (ibid. 493) ; happiness lying, that is, in the contemplation of Nature's beauty and the realization of the quieter joys possible to man. He has made progress, too, in his delineation of passion. It is a considerable step from Amaryllis to Eurydice. There is too much that is Alexandrine in the closing episode of the fourth Georgic, but there is feeling in the lines- Ilia * quis et me' inquit *miseram et te perdidit, Orpheu, quis tantus furor > en, iterum crudelia retro fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus. lamque vale ; feror ingenti circumdata nocte invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas ' * {G, iv. 494). But Virgil was to do greater work than this, for the language of passion in the Aeneid is clearer, stronger, and more simple. » " Happy the man who has gained a knowledge of the causes of things " (Conington). It is in such phrases as this— e.g. sunt lacHmae r*r» Cf. Macr. Sat. vi. i. 39. The lines of the Aeneid are vi. 621, and are modelled after Varius* vendidit hie Laiium populis agrosqtu Quiritum eripuit : Jixit leges pretio atque refixit. * Soet. V. Verg. 35 Triennioque continuo nihil amplius quam emendare Mi reliqua vita tantum philosophiae vcuaret. » A. vi. 314, «' and stretched forth passionate hands to the farther shore ** (Mackail). CHAPTER II LITERATURE.-I. LITERARY INFLUENCES "There i, through all art a 61iation. If you see a great ""t". y°» "^ always find that he used what was good in his predecessors, and that it was this which made him great. Men Uke Raphael do notjprmg o"' °f *« ground. They took their root in the antique and in the best wh.ch had b^n done before them. Had they not used the advantage, of 'le-r t.me the« would be little to say about them. "-Goethe, Conversatums with Ecktrmann, ^"^' Among ihe deadliest of poetical sins is imiUtion."-CARl.YLE, Essa^ on the StaU of German Lileraturi. SOMEWHERE about the year 400 A.D. a great educa- tional work was composed by the scholar Macrobius. He gathered up all that he considered best in the current criticism of Virgil, and, with some other cognate matter — literary, archaeological, and physiological re- miniscences—he constructed a long dialogue. The characters who take part in the conversation are sonie of the leading men in the pagan society of the time, wiUi a few scholars and savants, and in particular Servius. The time is the festival of the Saturnalia, from which the book takes its name, and the scene is laid from day to day m the houses of Praetextatus, Flavian, and Symmachus, the chief political leaders of the pagan party. A large part of the dialogue is given up to the criticism of Virgil, but we might be over-estimating the seriousness of Roman society at the time if we believed that the guests enjoyed equally the whole of the discussion. The scholar Eustathius, for example, has spoken of Virgil's debt to Homer, and Avianius (the father of Symmachus) asks him to continue and enumerate aU that Virgil has borrowed; "for what could be more delightful than to hear two supreme poets saying the same thing ? " " Give me a copy of Virgil then, says Eustathius, " because as I go from passage to passage 42 VIRGIL LITERARY INFLUENCES 43 I shall remember Homer's verses more easily." The book IS duly fetched by a slave, and Avianius asks the learned scholar, who had hoped that a few passages would suffice, not to pick them here and there, but "to begin at the beginning and go steadily through the book."* This is duly done, and all the parallel passages are written out side by side by Macrobius. Perhaps it was hardly necessary for him to tell us in his preface that the conversation never actually took place, but that he groups his material as a dialogue that it may be more readily grasped and digested. However, Macrobius hoped that this collection of parallel passages might be of use, and he followed it up by some criticism. Here Virgil excelled Homer; there the poets are equal, and there Homer is still pre-eminent. " Here Virgil is slighter {gracilior) than his model," for « remark Homer's swift movement without loss of weight" {vide ntmiam cekritatem salvo pondere, v. 13. 2). Much of this work upon Virgil was inherited, and some of it may have come down from Virgil's own day, from Perellius Faustus who "collected Virgil's thefts," and Q. Octavius Avitus, who made "eight books of parallels containing the borrowed verses and their sources." » So early had this kind of criticism begun. But Virgil did not merely borrow lines and phrases ; he transferred whole episodes from Homer to the Aeneid. Let us hear Eustathius again, speaking to Symmachus and his iriends. « And more, what of the whole of Virgil's work modelled, as it were, from a sort of mirrored reflection of Homers? For the storm is described with marvellous imitation-let any one who wishes compare the verses of them both»-and as Venus takes the place of Nausicaa. mu^Ta^:^^. 63 1' "■ '■ "^ *' •^"'~'" "* ^°""-''«'' ^-^•' •■- "^ Ja fntfrl:.— .•*^' '"■ '' "^ interesting that the same kind o( unintellieent and «t..poet.c cm, csm was early applied to Milton, who was supposed to l^e ^^Jr." M ;' '"-'''' °-' """»"• «« M^^/w: Be^.J/^ V'^"'7.'"''.r"'' ""' **" •"'?" Eustathius- hint to go to Sainte- Beuve^/^^™^ V,rg,U, pp. 20916 (and the passages before and after t^ n^e^^ to Eustathius himself, if he wishes toTlfe a real J:^':^t daughter of Alcinous, Dido herself recalls the picture of King Alcinous presiding over his banquet. Scylla too and Charybdis and Circe are suitably touched on, and mstead of the cattle of the Sun the Strophades islands are invented. Instead of the consultation of the dead we see Aeneas descend to them in the company of the priestess. Palinurus answers to Elpenor, the angry Dido to the angry Ajax, and the admonition of Anchises to the counsels of Tiresias. Then the battles of the Iliad and the description of the wounds (done with perfection of learning), the doiible enumeration of allies, the making of the arms, the variety of the funeral games, the treaty made between the kings and broken, the midnight reconnoitring, the embassy with a refusal from Diomedes (after Achilles' example), the lamentation over Pallas as over Patroclus, the altercation of Drances and Turnus drawn after that between Agamem- non and Achilles (for in both cases one thought of his own, the other of the public, good), the single conflict of Aeneas and Turnus as of Achilles and Hector, the reservation of captives to be slain at the burial " ^-here I may anticipate Macrobius' et reliqua, and with him omit to supply my sentence with a verb. There is nothing here that is not quite obvious, and we may place beside this another example of Virgil's borrowing, which Macrobius mentions as gen- erally known," "the commonplace of schoolboys" {puerts decantatdy For Virgil, he says, " transcribed the fall of Troy with his Sino and the wooden horse, and all the rest ot the second book, from Pisander, nearly word for word. The English reader may not remember Pisander, but he " is eminent among Greek poets for his work, which begins with the marriage of Jupiter and Juno, and comprises in ySat V. S. I3-I6. There U in Seneca, EpMk 108, 24 ff.. an interesting -.^;n the different ways in which grammarian and philosopher would r^ Sn^e passage of Virgil. The grammarian <&.«<«!» £««^«*«''"'^'y^«« (33.>' ^^TnoW^ancient usage ; and next>«.m dcindc « futat, quod .nvcmrU. umU visum sit VcrgUit dicert : futm super tngtns fcrta tonat catli : Kmnium kx ait Homtrt suirifuisse, Ennit Vergilium. S^^^et^^Tspeaks of having wasted time on the grammanans, Ep. 58, 5. 44 VIRGIL LITERARY INFLUENCES 45 one continuous story the whole history of the world during the intervening centuries down to Pisander's own age ; and it makes one structure out of all the gulfs of time, and in it, among other stories, the fall of Troy is narrated in this way, and by a faithful translation Maro has devised for himself his fall ofthellian city." 1 The case for the critics who enjoy the discovery of parallel passages could hardly be put more tersely than Macrobius has here stated it, but the allusion to Pisander betrays the real value of criticism by parallel passages. For Macrobius does not reject the popular account of Virgil's debt to Pisander, but, for the time, disregards it as too well known to need further discussion. If Virgil took the outline of his story of Troy's fall from Pisander " nearly word for word," and so many episodes, phrases, and verses from Homer in the same way — if these statements are made in the same breath, it would seem the natural conclusion that Virgil is singularly little indebted to Homer. Let us take a some- what similar instance of literary relations. Shakespeare's debt to North's translation of Plutarch's Lives is well known. Of Julius Caesar Archbishop Trench says, " it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the whole play is to be found in Plutarch. ... Of the incident there is almost nothing which he does not owe to Plutarch, even as continually he owes the very wording to Sir Thomas North." « He follows this out with a list of incidents taken from Plutarch's Lives of Julius Caesar, of Brutus and of Antony. From this last Life the play of Antony and Cleopatra was drawn, and in one striking example Archbishop Trench shows how Shakespeare uses at once the fact of Plutarch and * Sat, V. 2. 4, 5. Shakespeare, Voltaire says, only turned into dialogue the romance of Claudius, Gertrude, andHamUt, written in full by Saxo Grammaticus, "4 qui gloire soit x^n^^t.^'—Appel h touUs Us nations, 1761 {.CEuvres, xl. p. 263)! On Pisander and this passage, see A. Forstemann, Aeneasmythus, p. 6. • Trench, Plutarch : His Life, his Parallel Lives and His Morals, 1874, Pp. 66-74. SUpfer, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Engl, tr.) p. 299, suggest! It might be shorter to say what Shakespeare had added or altered ; he has followed Plutarch more closely and completely in Antony and Cleopatra than in the other plays ; but in all "Shakespeare, who usually treated the sources of his matenals with but scant courtesy, showed the utmost deference and submission towards Plutarch." the words of North.^ When the soldiers found Cleopatra dead, " one of them seeing her woman, Charmion, angrily said unto her: 'Is that well done, Charmion?' *Very well,' said she again, 'and meet for a princess descended from the race of so many noble kings : ' she said no more, but fell down dead hard by the bed." So Plutarch and North : and Shakespeare hardly alters it. First Guard, Charmian, What work is here ! Charmian, is this well done? It is well done, and fitting for a princess Descended of so many royal kings. On the other hand, while North and Plutarch tell how Antony unfolded the robe which Caesar wore when he was murdered, and how he " called the malefactors cruel and cursed murtherers," Shakespeare (as the necessities of drama required) made a speech for Antony, but what a speech ! * Here, then, we have illustrations in Shakespeare of verbal indebtedness and indebtedness for incident. How far are we to say Shakespeare is "influenced " by Plutarch, or " under the influence " of Plutarch ? And in the same way, we may ask if we are after all much helped to a real judgement on Virgil by the information that he took such and such episodes, passages, lines or phrases from Homer or Pisander? Was his mind in the least degree influenced by Pisander? How far does Homer affect his mind ? A poet's work may show traces of the influence of a predecessor or a contemporary either in matter, or in style, or in spirit Probably, so far as matter is concerned, a poet may borrow with the utmost freedom without impairing his independence or originality. Shakespeare seems never to have invented a plot* Style, on the other hand, is so closely related to spirit, that if a poet go beyond a certain point in • It has been remarked that Shakespeare follows North in his mistakes in translation. • Heine, Letzte Gedichte und Gedanken, p. 230 ** Wie Homer nicht allein die Ilias gemacht, hat auch Shakespeare nicht allein seine Tragodien geliefert — er gab nur den Geist, der die Vorarbeiten beseelte." • Barrett Wendell, The Seventeenth Century in English Literature, p. 36, on Shakespeare's ** somewhat sluggish avoidance of needless invention." 46 VIRGIL LITERARY INFLUENCES 47 reproducing the style and manner of another, his claim to originality will be open to dispute.* For when we come to spirit, we are on safer ground, and the question is easier. If a poet is to be great at all, his spirit will be his own. Others may, and will, help to mould him, to train him in his business of seeing the world and of interpreting it to himself, as well as in the other part of his work, in his use of word and rhythm and colour, and the other means which he must employ to express his mind. Such and so much influence a multitude of masters may exercise over a poet's develop- ment, but if the influence of any of them goes beyond quickening, and becomes so great as to aflect the independ- ence of the poet's outlook on life, or even, we may probably add, of his habitual mode of expressing himself, then we may be sure at once that we are dealing with a mind of the second order. Now let us look at Virgil's relation to Homer. That Virgil owes much of his matter to Homer we hardly need Macrobius to tell us. His hero he took directly from the Iliad, and many of his hero's adventures from the Odyssey, while the battle-pieces of his last six books he modelled as closely as he could after Homer's battles. He used the same metre and much the same scale of length, and he gave to his work as much as he could of the manner and movement of the Homeric poem. Yet it may be said that the epic of Quintus of Smyrna stands nearer to Homer in all this than does the Aeneid. Writing four centuries after Virgil, Quintus more studiously reproduces the matter and the form of Homer. But he so utterly subordinates himself to Homer that in the end he is infinitely further from Homer. For the one dominant characteristic of Homer is life, and that is a quality that cannot be learnt and cannot be copied, and it is this quality which Quintus entirely lacks, but which has made » "The spirit and the manner of an author are terms that may, I think, be used conversely. The spirit gives birth to the manner, and the manner is an indica- tion of the spirit." Cowper (on Homer and Pope), Southey's Life of Cawper, ii. p. 197. the Aeneid the book of Western Europe for centuries. And what is true of Quintus is in measure true of Virgil— where in form and matter he reminds us most of Homer, there his work is generally least living; it has lost its power of appeal^ What then did Homer do for Virgil? He brought him into a world of men, where, like Odysseus, he might see the cities of many and learn their minds. He showed him the energies, the passions, and the infinite life of men and women in a larger air and on a grander and simpler scale than he could find it elsewhere, in art or in what people call real life. He showed him a broad, wide world, a world of battle and seafaring, of city and forest, where warrior, sailor, counsellor, fisherman, shepherd, all pursue their task with that keenness of interest, that calm in the face of danger and obstacle, and that fundamental content which a great poet can see, where a lesser finds only failure and despair, broken hopes and baffled endeavours. The minor poets— the people whom Goethe calls "the Lazaretto poets"— are overcome by the sense of man's failure, but Homer's note is different In him, man triumphs over the world because he can and will look it full in the face and find in the human spirit something to overcome the world. There is probably no passage in Homer better fitted to illustrate this than Sarpedon's speech to Glaucus : — " Friend of my soul, were it that, if we two were once escaped from this war, we should live for ever without old age or death, I would not fight myself among the foremost, nor would I send thee into the battle that gives men glory ; but, for fates of death stand over us, aye I ten thousand, which mortal man may not flee from nor escape, let us go on, and give glory to another or win it ourselves."^- y Nor can Homer's language have been without its eff'ect on Virgil's spirit. Here is a poet (Virgil lived long before Wolf, and we may for the present use the name " Homer," as Virgil did, without reference to the question of the single or divided origin of the Homeric poem^)— a poet, who, to quote Matthew Arnold, " expressed himself like a man of adult reason," who ^' Iliad xii. 322.8. The reader may be reminded of Matthew Arnold's discus- ), wm of thb passage in his book {On TranslaHng Homer). w ff 48 VIRGIL "has actually an affinity with Voltaire in the unrivalled clearness and straightforwardness of his thinking ; in the way in which he keeps to one thought at a time, and puts that thought forth in its complete natural plainness."^ Now Virgil's earlier interest in poetry had been directed to the writers of Alexandria, and it was probably comparatively late in life that he really found Homer. From the first his Roman sense and feeling had saved him from extreme Alexandrinism, and led him to leave Callimachus and Euphorion to Propertius and Gallus. The earnestness and passion of Lucretius helped him (if he needed help) to refuse that diction, which, though beloved of scholars, was neither earnest nor passionate. Then turning, a matured man, to the closer study of Homer, he found another language, " direct, simple, passionate, and noble." To say that Virgil could not have written such a language himself, without Homer's example, would be absurd. Yet there can hardly be no significance in the fact that the Latin poet, who gave to Homer a closer and a more sym- pathetic study than any man of his day, is also the one among Latin poets who, in spite of all the differences and developments due to the growth of the world's mind in the centuries between, yet resembles Homer most closely in breadth of view, in keenness of interest, in manhood, in the sympathy with which he looks upon man and man's life, and in the simplicity, passion, and grandeur of his language. But we cannot leave the matter here, for we have to recognize a great difference between the two poets. Virgil has the poet's eye for human life, but he does not see it with Homer's freshness. It is partly because Homer has done or watched the things about which he writes, while Virgil has read about them in books and pictured them with "the inner eye." Sainte-Beuve finds an excellent illustration of this detachment from the heroic age in the elaborate account of fire-lighting in the first Aeneid^ To Homer the operation is too obvious to need description ; for » On Translating Homer (1896 edition), pp. a6, 27. • £tudesur VirgiU, p. 239; Aen. i. 174-6. LITERARY INFLUENCES 49 Virgil it was a little away from ordinary experience, far enough to quicken interest. The most patent illustration, however, of the divergence between the Homeric and the Virgilian point of view is to be found in the descriptions of battle. On this point we may call a witness who, whatever his qualifications for literary criticism, at least understood war. Napoleon one day took the fancy to examine the second Aeneid^ and he announced his conclusion peremptorily that in all that concerns the military operations it is absurd from one end to the other. Homer, he said, was a man who knew where he stood, who had made war; "the journal of Agamemnon could not be more exact as to distances and time, and in the life-like character of the military operations, than is the Iliad.'' ^ Virgil was ** nothing but a regent of a college, who had never gone outside his doors, and did not know what an army was." It may be urged, on the other hand, that if Virgil had not made war he had some notions about it, for he alludes to modern operations which Homer's day did not know. He a llows the Rutu lians to assail Aenea^' camp with the formatio nncnown as thp (f^studo,^ and this witl^^^ut further remar k. Quin tus of Smyrna employ s i t too, but h e makes it appear as a happy thought of the moment, th e suggest ion, of course, of Ody sseus.^ Virgil, again, in the Qleventh book, sets Aeneas to attack Lau rentum, and fie tries to do it by a "turning movement. ^^^ Still, there can be little doubt that Napoleon is right. Virgil had not made * Sec Sainte-Bcuvc, Etude^ p. 238; Pierron, La Lit. romaine^ p. 401. Cf, Paul- Louis Courier (writing from Barletta, March 8, 1805): "Do not think I am losing my time ; I am studying here better than ever I did, from morning to night, after Homer's fashion, who had no books at all. He studied men ; one sees them nowhere as one does here. Homer made war ; do not doubt it. It was savage war. He was aide-de-camp ^ I dare say, to Agamemnon, or, very likely, his secretary. Nor would Thucydides either have had so true and so profound an understanding — that is not to be learnt in the schools. Compare, I beg of you, Sallust and Livy — ^tlie one talks pure gold [parU cCor)^ nobody could speak better; the other knows of what he talks. And who shall hinder me some day . . . ? Why should I not make some pictures, in which might be found some air of that naive truth which we find so charming in Xenophon ? I am telling you my dreams." * ix. 505 f. • Posthomerica^ xi. 358. * Boissier, NouvelUs Promenades ^ p. 340 (Engl. tr. p. 317}. ;i^ Ml.i . 1>!f 50 VIRGIL /. A •war, and his pictures of it are drawn from what he had read in books — and with a certain reluctance, even with pain. His only experience of it brought home to him its sufferings, not its exhilaration. When Homer is busy with a battle, he is absorbed in it ; he thinks of it all the time and of nothing else ; he feels the exhilaration of it, the earnest satisfaction, the joy of action and achievement; he deals every blow he describes, and exults whenever the blow does its work. But Virgil draws battle-scenes, not at all because he loves them, but because he must draw them. He feels every blow that is dealt, thinks of everything it involves, looks away from the battle to untilled fields — squalent abductis rura colonis^ (G. i. 507); to funeral pyres and nameless graves— cetera confusaeque ingentem caedis acervum nee numero nee honore cremant ^ (A, xi. 207) ; to lonely parents at their prayers — et nunc ille quidem spe multum captus inani fors et vota facit cumulatque altaria donis ' (A. xi. 49). The result of this is that Virgil falls far short of Homer in expressing " the stern joy that warriors feel." If the war spirit is to be depicted, Virgil's is hardly the way in which it will be done. If we are to go through a battle in earnest, whether in real life or in literature, we shall hardly manage it if we take Virgil's spirit into it. It will cost us too much. We need not perhaps deplore Virgil's failure to give us the enthusiasm of war, as the world has heard at least enough of the poetry of drum and trumpet. * ** The tiller is swept off and the land left to weeds " (Conington). * "The rest, a vast heap of undistinguishablc slaughter, they burn uncounted and unhonoured " (Mackail). Ccn/usae is the pathetic word here. All these dead bodies were once individual breathing men, and now—. Compare the grim effect of the adverb in Thucydides' account of what the Corcyreans did with the murdered oligarchs (iv. 48. 4): Kal a&rovs ol KrpKvpaioi, (ir€idi, vfi^pa :yiu€To, opfiri56y (cross-wise, two over two) iwl d/id^ot imfiaXorrts dr^ayoy e t« t^\ » •* And now he belike at this ver>' moment in the ieep delusion of empty hope is making vows to Heaven, and piling the altars with gifts" (Conington). LITERARY INFLUENCES 51 But this difference between Homer and Virgil is but one phase of a deeper contrast in mind and outlook. For the same detachment from the immediate concern which we feel in Virgil's battle-scenes is to be felt more or less in all his work. I je looks b efore and after, sees this and that, weigh s things and ponderr th6 hi, and when he cojnes to presen t either temper or action he is apt to be disconcerted b y thTlnuItltude of his renections. He looks at his object, i but he looks beyond it, and there is something in his | description which tells us he is dreaming. There is apt \ to be vagueness in his characters and halting in their \ actions. The same criticism has to be made of Virgil's verse as contrasted with Homer's. With each his verse answers to the picture in his mind. Homer's verse Matthew Arnold pronounced to be direct, rapid, and simple, and at the same time noble and " in the grand style." Now Virgil's is also noble and in the grand style, but it is not always direct or simple. He perhaps felt this himself, for we are told that he said himself of his verses that he had to lick them into shape as a bear might its cubs. He would write a number of lines, then spend the rest of the day in polish- ing, reshaping, and reducing them.* The verses not un- frequently bear witness to this process, at once in their wealth of suggested meanings and in their bewildering constructions.* Virgil can write as simply and directly as any man — nudus in ignota Palinure iacebis arena* (A. v. 871), but, to take one of his most wonderful lines, what does he mean by his sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt(y4. i. 462)? What does he not mean ? It is quite easy to find a meaning for this line, but which is ^ke meaning ? Or are we to say that all the meanings are not merely to be found in the > Suet. V. Verg, 22 Cum Georgica scriheret traditur cotidie meditaios mane plurimos versus diciare solitus, ac per totum diem retra^tando ad paucissimos redigere^ non absurde carmen se ursae more parere dicens et lambendo demum, tffingere. So Gcllius, N. A. xvii. 10. • •• Naked on an unknown shore, Palinurus, Thou must lie." % il \ ! ^' n- ii / 52 VIRGIL line, but were actually considered by Virgil? Professor Conington, at all events, who understood Virgil better than most commentators, says somewhere that with Virgil it is far less rash to suppose he realized any possible meaning for a line or a passage than that he did not. It is not at all that Virgil is obscure as Propertius and Lucan are in their stveral ways, for his obscurity is one that does not impress the reader at first. With those poets a little patience and a knowledge of mythology will often reveal the fact that the riddle is only a piece of vacuous pedantry or a half-finished epigram. But Virgil has his own Sibyl's habit— odscuns vera involvens^ (vi. lOO) — and his difficulty is due to excess rather than defect of meaning, to his seeing and trying to say several things at once.* II From Homer we pass to the Attic dramatists. Virgil tells us of his interest in them in a way that has em- barrassed critics. Agamemnonius scaenis agitatus Orestes^ (A. iv. 471) is a clear reference to Greek drama, and it is coupled with another to Euripides* play, the Bacchae, We need not now discuss the appropriateness of this allusion to the actual stage ; it is enough that we have Virgil confessing to his tastes in literature, as he did when Silenus borrowed his song from Lucertius. It is easy to find in Virgil suggestions taken from the Greek dramatists— phrases and thoughts.* Indeed, we can go further and rank the dramatists with Homer as his great * ** Robing her truth in darkness " (Conington). * It is here that William Morris seems to me to fail as a translator of Virgil. His bent is toward narrative somewhat in the style of Chaucer (though mucli more mannered), and where Virgil is bcwilderingly rich in suggestion, Morris \% apt to be swift and simple. » •• Agamemnon's Orestes rushing over the stage " (Conington). * For example, striking parallels have been remarked Utwcen the Aetuid KnA Sophocles' Ajax. Two may suffice — Dido killed herself with Aeneas' sword, turn hos quaesitum munus in usut (iv. 647), as Ajax fell upon Hector's sword, Ajax 661 rom' €Se^df,y,, wap"EKropot Sibpri^a 5wrfi€r€irrdTov : and the famous lines, disce fmer virtuttm ex nie vemnique laborem, fortunam ex aliis (xii. 435), point to Ajax 550 Si roT, T^mo rarp^t «vrvxf M poem; he does not find them there. They are pictures evciy one of them-and pretty pictures ; Aphrodite combing her hair. Aphrodite breaking Eros' arrows, Eros playing with Ganymede at dice, Aphrodite giving Eros a ball-all of these are of the type which Alexandrian painters loved to paint » but they have nothing to do with Jason and Medea. They are introduced to bribe the reader, as pictures are put into a child s reading-book. And they are trivial, in Ovid's style at best, and not very far from Lucian's Dia/ogues of the Gods. irrelevant and trivial, a surrender of the true ideal of poetry Alexandria loved them and Virgil refused them. What a poet rejects is as significant as what he chooses.* IV f^fr"! **!* ^'*f P°^*'' *•""" V'^e" "«'=<^- Macrobius turns to the Latin, and cites side by side the verses which Virgil borrowed, and the sources from which he took them. The two most important names are Ennius and Lucretius To these we may add Catullus, and consider more generally how they contributed to Virgil. Wc may dismiss for the present Macrobius' method and try that of M. Patin There IS." he says, "for a literature a moment,' slow to come and swift to pass, when the language, polished and made pliant by use, lends itself to the most vivW anfmost exact expression of conceptions, which have themseTes with Latin literature, when from that branch, long since severed from the old Homeric trunk, which t;o cent ,n« of culture had accustomed to the sky and soil of Latium Virgil and Horace came to gather the fruits of poetry' mature at last. All that the epic poetry of Naeviu'salid ^ '^ See Boissicr. Ro.n. e. P.„^.; eh. vi. S 3 , Mahaff,, Gr.i Life an, THou^H,. • Cf. Wordsworth. Prefece to Lyricai Ballads, 1800, " It is not .h«. k- .^posed that any one who holds that subline Motion of PoetiT^htr't ^^ Mtempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and wh n7 K" ^'"' by transuoor and accidental oma,nems, and .nd^^ur tlexc^e LC* .0 the study or poetr.-.r poeiics'lthjnt'strp otf L^d 'n'Trpir."^ LITERARY INFLUENCES 59 of Ennius, the tragedy of Pacuvius and Attius, the comedy of Plautus and Terence, the satire of Lucilius, the efforts of poets of every class, had accumulated in the portic treasury of the Romans— well-defined terms, subtle shades of meaning, natural analogies, graceful turns of expression. happy phrasing, striking images, harmonious combinations of words, that precision of form, that art in composition. upon which the easy inspiration of Lucretius lighted by happy chance, and which the skill and industry of Catullus sought and found-all this, such was the fortune of their birth, fell to Virgil and Horace to inherit, and entered into the formation of their genius, very much as, at the same time, the various powers of the republican constitution gathered together into one single hand to form the absolute authority of their imperial protector." ^ This is admirably said. Two centuries had been spent in the acquisition of ease, precision, and direction, and Virgil gathered the fruits. It is immaterial how many lines Virgil copied from Ennius, for Ennius' contribution to him is not be reckoned in that way. Ennius was the first Roman who attacked Homer in earnest, who really tried " to wrench his club from Hercules." « A man of action, he carried his vigour into his poetry; but the kingdom of heaven is not always to be taken by force. Virgil himself might have been glad to be the author of the line moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque,* but Ennius did not always write so well. Yet the spirit of the line seems to pervade all he does— a certain strong Roman quality, which he did not find in his Greek originals, which sometimes fitted ill and uncomfortably with what he did find there, but which is really, as Patin happily calls it, a "prophecy of Vii^il."* And to this we must add his deliberate choice of his country as his theme. There is a foolish story that Virgil, surprised with a copy ' Patin, La Poisie latint, i. p. 222. » The phrase is Virgil's ; Suet. v. Vtrg. 46. . » Ennius, AnnaUs xv. (MUUer). "On ancient wayi Romes common weal rests and on men. * Patin, La Poisie latine, i. p. 164. ill 1^'^ ii ; I k 6o VIRGIL 'ill ( of Ennius in his hand, said he was looking for jewels in the dunghill of Ennius.* But, if we may judge Virgil by his Aeneid, he was more likely to class Ennius among the pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti * {A. vi. ^2). The poet who looked with pleasure on rustic songs in the Saturnian metre, versibus imomptis {G. iu 386), must have recognized a real precursor of himself in this re-incarnated Homer, who thought the thoughu and told the deeds of Rome. But it is when we reach his own century that we find the Latin poet to whom Virgil owes most. From Gellius onward critics have remarked his indebtedness to Lucretius though Virgil, one may say. did not leave the critics to discover it, but announced the fact himself as plainly as the nature of his own subjects allowed. For instance, to take the first case, the sixth Eclogue pays homage to Lucretius. Silenus, " Forehead and brow with the juice of a blood-red mulberry dyed (E. vi. 22, Bowen), may seem remote enough from the austere poet of the Del^'rum Naturahnt he has hardly time to begin his song ^anebat utt is almost as explicit as the terminology of mag^tum per tnane coacta semina, and together thef bar the claim of Apollonius to be the original here, quite apart from the fact that his Orpheus gives the Argonauts 1 Epicurean but (properly enough) Orphic doctrine? with trac« of Empedoclean teaching* The bard lopas, who sings at Dido's feast as Demo- * It is in the life attributed to Donatus * j4r^0n. i. 496 f.— 'Osytua Kal o^papbs ^8i 0akatnra, rb vplp 4t' dWij\oi(n fu^ ffvpapvpAra fiopdm See Dietcnch, Nekyia, p. loi. LITERARY INFLUENCES 61 docus did at Alcinous*, is another witness to Lucretius* power. Hie canit errantem lunam solisque labores unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber et ignes^ {A, i. 742). But the most famous of all the passages is that in the second Georgia^ where Virgil speaks of the happiness of him who understands the principles underlying all nature, and by this knowledge has risen above all fears, above inexorable fate and the noise of greedy Acheron — Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum subiecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis avari {G. ii. 490). This passage comes after the expression of Virgil's desire to be the poet of science {G. ii. 475-82) ; it is full of Lucretian phrases,^ and it represents Lucretius' point of view. Like Catullus,^ Virgil read Lucretius with the close care of admiration and affection. His early longing for philosophy drew him to this great exponent of all nature. Virgil loved the country, and here was a man who looked on all the sights of field and shore with the eyes of genius, and gave a new meaning and a deeper value to all by subordinating all to great underlying principles — causae rerum, Lucretius had also the simplicity of genius. If he is at times hard to understand, it is because his matter is itself difficult, sometimes too difficult for his verse or any verse. No poet could be more honest in his confession that he is seeking for charm of language, but what makes this quest unique is its entire subordination to the main purpose in hand.* No Roman poet is more absolutely true in his language, just as * Sings of the moons that wander, of suns eclipsed and in pain. Whence the beginning of man and of beast, of the fire and the rain. (Bowen.) ■ Sec Munro on Lucr. i. 78, 253 ; iii. 449. Cf. the beginning of the Ciris^ which we are now told to attribute to Gallus. Cf. Skutsch.^«j Vergih Friihzeif, and the delightful lecture of Professor Mackail on the Circle of Virgil, Lectures 0H Poetry (1911). * See Munro on Lucr. iii. 57. * Lucr. i. 143-5. t ♦' .1 /; 62 VIRGIL 1) none is more single in his loyalty to truth in thought. He has nothing to say explicitly of his country and his people, but not Virgil himself is more profoundly Roman in solidity and integrity of thought and utterance. His verse is Latin in word, beat, movement, and there is much, for example, in Munro's suggestion that his avoidance of spondaic endings in his sixth book (though following the tradition of Ennius he had used them in the other five) is a sort of scornful criticism of the modish writing of poets around him, with whom the Alexandrine a-TrovSeid^wv was the latest prettiness.^ It was not Roman to be pretty. His master was Ennius, and he learnt of him a grander, a simpler, and a more severe speech. He is not so careful as Virgil to avoid monotony and rough- ness, but we shall not be far wrong in attributing to him some share in the creation of the Virgilian hexameter. If Catullus and his school gave it what M. Patin calls its precision, Lucretius contributed simplicity and dignity. Take as an example of " symphony austere " these lines— In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt, per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur, luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes, nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum ^ (v. 1188-93). Let these lines be tried by any test. The thought would be as sound m prose ; the language is near enough to that used by men to suit Wordsworth's canon— long before Wordsworth framed that canon Bentley had magnificently quoted the line luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa fro tuo venCia, and Catullus, Ixiv. 78-80. .he th,« comccuUve lines S mnuptarum, Mitulaurc, vexarentur. enaing • " And they placed in heaven the abodes and realms of the gods, because nieht and moon are seen to roll through heaven, moon day and night «,d n^^"slX constellations and night-wand.,i„g meteor, of the sky and flying b^f« "&^' rirturrc:;- tt^r^ •^^ -^ -^^ ™»W «.tz:. LITERARY INFLUENCES 63 as an example of the power of ** common words " * — the sense is direct, the movement is rapid, and the passage has the note of grandeur. Virgil might respond to the influence of Lucretius as he did to that of other poets, but he was no man's disciple. As he grew older he became dissatisfied with Lucretius* philosophy, and tried to reconcile it somehow with other aspects of truth, which he had himself realized. It became quite clear that this was not to be done, and Lucretius* Epicureanism had more and more to be modified. Virgil did not live to achieve the reconciliation which he felt to be necessary ; and we find in him a man distracted with the spiritual necessity of holding opinions, which clearly conflict, but which are yet valid for him in virtue of undoubted elements of truth. Oi/TOi avvey^eiv aXXa arvfKpiXeip €vv * might be a fair summary of his attitude to religious and philosophical thought. The temper is an entirely honest one ; but while it is a necessary stage in development, it hardly seems a final or a happy position. The prolongation of this period of suspense developed in Virgil a certain indistinct habit of thought. Dissatisfied with obvious antitheses as superficial, but unable to penetrate them and discover some fundamental unity underlying them, he seems at times to confuse rather than to reconcile, and eventually everything he does is apt to be affected by the habit. The same unhealed division of mind shows itself in his verse, which rarely keeps for long the clear and unclouded directness of Lucretius. It reflects the poet himself, which is after all what a poet's verse should do ; and it has its own grandeur, which is not that of Lucretius, but springs naturally from the poet's struggle, unsuccessful as it may be, to grasp the whole of things. It represents the last achievement of Roman poetry, for after Virgil no Roman poet rose to such heights .of mind. His ' See J ebb, Ben//ey, p. 69. * "'Tis not my nature to join in hating, but in loving." Sophocles' Antigofie 523 Oebb). "I 64 VIRGIL successors thought of little but style, and had no philosophy. Thus the last utterance of Roman poetry has the strong sad tone of Virgil's mind, that tone which led Tennyson to address the poet as Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind.^ Lastly we come to Catullus. Virgil's interest in Catullus is proved by one of the most extraordinary examples of his habit of borrowing. In the world below Aeneas meets Dido's shade and addresses her — Invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi * (A. vi. 460). It is a bold, clear, good statement, but it suggests the most disconcerting of all possible parallels. For it is a reminiscence of the translation which Catullus made of Callimachus* Coma Berenices, where the severed lock, thouirh already a constellation, professes to regret its departure from the queen's head — Invita, O regina, tuo de vertice cessi ' (Catullus, Ixvi. 39). This is the very last thing of which we should wish to be reminded in the situation. Yet, though happily an extreme case, it is a typical instance of the habit, which Virgil shared with his contemporaries, of transferring good lines from the pages of others to his own.* But after all it is quite accidental that Virgil finds in Catullus a line so readily to be converted to his own > It has been suggested that too much emphasis has been laid on Virgil's sadness. The criticism is just, if it is not remembered that there are other elements in the poet's thought. ■ "Against my will, O queen, I left thy shore." • *' Against my will, O queen, I left thy head." * The reader will remember the epis»Kic of Johnson and Boswell leaving Inch Keith, when Johnson called for **a classical compliment to the island." "I happened luckily, in allusion to the beautiful Queen Mary, whose name is upon the fort, to think of what Virgil makes Aeneas say, on having left the country of his charming Dido. * Invitus, regina, tuo de litore cessi.' •Very well hit off!' said he" {7 our to the Hebrides, Aug. 18). Consider- ing the origin of the line, one is tempted to say it is more in keeping here thaa in the sixth Aeneid, LITERARY INFLUENCES 65 purposes. His real debt to Catullus is profounder. I cannot do better here than to quote M. Patin once more. "Catullus does not improvise [as Lucilius did]; on the contrary, he weighs words, he even counts them ; he chooses, arranges, and plans ; he has already in his composition and in his style those definite and precise forms, that fine and delicate touch, that tempered strength, which moderates itself, which of set purpose refrains, which cloaks itself under the graces of urbanity — urbani parcentis viribus atque extenuantis eas consulto — in fact all those characteristics which are supposed to distinguish the poets of the following age." * In other words, just as Tennyson affected the composition of English poetry, even apart from clear imitators of himself, by compelling a more self-conscious and more studied style, so Catullus abolished the school of Ennius — yes, and Lucretius too, before he had time to found a school, — and compelled all later poets to reflect more upon style and all its niceties and minutiae than had ever been the custom in Rome before. None of these — we may disregard for the moment those who really did not succeed in opening their mouths— meditated upon his style as Virgil did. Propertius, no doubt, thought of nothing very much apart from style, yet he cannot be said to have achieved any of Matthew Arnold's "notes" of the great poet. Virgil, however, spoke out and had something to say, and yet could choose, refine and concentrate his diction with more patience and more power than any poet of them all. And in this we may find the influence of Catullus. Yet his debt to Lucretius is greater, for the whole history of his mind is affected by his attitude toward Lucretius' philosophy. Virgil, as we have seen, conformed to the contemporary practice in Rome and borrowed largely from his Greek and Latin predecessors, and often enough he transferred his material in a sufficiently external way. But yet, when » Patin, La Poisie latitu, i. p. 59 ; the quotation is from Horace, Sat, i. 10. 13. 66 VIRGIL every deduction is made for this, and when we have con- sidered the real influence which his great precursors had upon his mind and upon his outlook on life, we realize the substantial truth of Goethe's saying that " To make an epoch in the world two conditions are notoriously essential — a good head and a great inheritance." ^ Supplement these with another condition, on which Goethe elsewhere lays great emphasis, and VirgiPs endowment for his poetry is fairly stated. " We cannot deny," said Goethe of a con- temporary poet, " that he has many brilliant qualities, but he is wanting in — love" * * Conversations •with Eckermann^ May 2, 1824, « Ibid. Dec. 25, 1825. He is generally supposed to have meant Heine. Cf. Arnold in his poem Heine's Grave. w CHAPTER III LITERATURE— 2. CONTEMPORARIES ^ Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought ; Never from lips of cunning fell The thrilling Delphic oracle ; Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old ; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano's tongue of flame, Up from the burning core beiow — The canticles of love and woe. — Emerson, The Problem. ONE of the things that mark Virgil as different from the other poets of his day is the long and increas- ingly vigorous life of his poetic genius. Fate snuffed out some of his contemporaries in comparatively early manhood, but not, one thinks, before they had given mankind all, or nearly all, the light they had to give. Others survived their genius, and either became silent altogether or took refuge in imitating themselves. Horace avowed that poetry had been for him an affair of youth and poverty; that, now he was older and more well-to-do, he did not care to write ; he preferred reading Homer and making excursions into popular philosophy ; somebody else, who, like the soldier of Lucullus, had ** lost his purse," might write now.* It may have been that he felt, as he grew to have a deeper appreciation of the meaning and purpose of poetry, that he was not entirely fit for the work — though after all it is hard to see why a genuine Epicurean should ever wish to write poetry at all. But Virgil, on the other hand, shows a steady growth in insight and in power of expression. Poetry was not with him either an amusement or a trade. He wrote * Horace, Epp. ii. 2. 26-40, and following (cf. Epp. i. 2. i). Dean Wickham finds here ** some irony and exaggeration, no doubt, but some substantial truth " {JHorcuefor English Remders). 68 n VIRGIL neither for popularity nor advancement, neither to please others nor to amuse himself. Poetry was to him something like the " burden " of a Hebrew prophet, a necessity. Thought and feeling sought and compelled expression, not any ex- pression, but their " inevitable " expression. This necessity for the perfect utterance of his nature kept him beyond the reach of the dangers of lesser artists. Indolence could not rob the world of what was due to it from him, nor impatience wring it from him before it was mature. In him Art is " imitating Nature " ; it has something of the same inexhaustible vitality, the same necessity for self- expression ; it follows a somewhat similar method of evolu- tion, relentlessly sacrificing the unfit to the fit, the fit to the fittest, suffering nothing to go forth that has not life in itself and that cannot transmit this life— in a word his art is essentialiy quickening.^ Accordingly, as he began to feel himself nearer the com- pletion of the Georgics, his mind ranged forward to his next work. What was it to be ? The limits, within which he would seek a theme were narrower than we might suppose, for it was the tradition so far of Latin poetry to confine itself within the frontiers of Greek literature. The early development of native Italian literature had been slow—" the Romans had plenty of other things to do," says M. Patin, " to make their constitution, to defend themselves, to conquer the world. It was when they had achieved this task, when they had subdued Italy, crushed Carthage, taken possession of Greece, that they found poetry among their spoils, so to say, along with the statues which Mummius with such particular care, with such insensibility, gave orders to pack. Transported, transplanted to Rome, poetry flourished there under the influence of a luxury and a leisure both quite new for the Romans. . . . Rome had made a Roman province of Greece ; by a sort of compensa- tion, quite unexpected, Roman letters, Roman poetry became provinces of the Greek imagination." « Latin literature, one » I am glad here to quote Macrobius {Sat, v. i. 20) : Jgnoscitt nee nimium me vocehs qui naturcu rerum Vergilium comparavi. ■ ^tucUs sur la Poisit latine, i. p. lo. CONTEMPORARIES 69 might almost say, ceases to develop along its own lines. It is thoroughly Hellenized. At first it is rather that Greek ideas reappear in Latin phrase ; and the progress of Latin literature is from handling these ideas awkwardly to handling them with ease. Of course this is not entirely true, for the greater minds were still Italian, and the literature they produced was, if written after Greek models, Italian in spirit The Roman thought the thing out for himself, though he did it with more ease when he had a Greek at his elbow. Bellipotentes sunt magi' quam sapientipotentes, as Ennius said of the house of Aeacus.^ At first the Roman tried mere translation, and no doubt found some satisfaction in the task. Homer was hammered manfully and conscientiously into Latin hexameters. Crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos is a perfect translation of 'Q/Aov fie^pwOoi^ Hpia/JLOV ILpia/jiOio t€ iraiSa^i except that, as is suggested by the scholiast who saved it from oblivion, it omits the feeling.^ From Menander and Euripides the Roman poets turned to the Alexandrines, and the cantores Euphorionis^ were the prevailing school in the latter days of the republic. Nothing was too formid- able or portentous to find a translator. Even so great a poet as Catullus could hope to add to his fame by trans- lating from Callimachus. But, of course, the stronger writers as a rule would not translate or even be content with adaptation. It was rather that, after the careful study of the mind, the manner, and the phrase of a Greek author, they wrote something origi- nal and Latin, not without some very clear marks of its » ap. Cic. de Div, ii. 56. Xi6. " Mighty in war are they rather than mighty in wisdom." « Labeo transtulit Iliada et Odysseam, vtrbum ex verba, ridicule satis, quod verba potius quant sensum secutus sit, Eius est ille versus : crudum, &c. Schol. ad Pers. i. 4. ** Eat Priam raw and Priam's children." » Cicero, Tusc, iu. 19. 45. "Singers of Euphorion" (Latin imitators of the poetry of Euphorion of Chalcis). I 1 I.; 70 VIRGIL ii', r. If paternity. Sit sua similis patri^ might almost be a canon of this h'teraturc. Yet the Latin poetry of the age of Juh'us, so much of it as survives, \^ in the main independent and individual, the natural expression of the Latin mind, if it be allowed that the Latin mind is thoroughly steeped in Greek literature and has, in most cases, taken at least suggestion, if not inspiration, from some Greek model Thus Virgil's Eclogues are classed as imitations, in the first instance, of Theocritus, though they are, as we have seen, a great deal more. If his Italian scenery be, as critics say, confused with Sicilian and even with Arcadian, it is the Italian which leaves upon us the strongest impression. Poem by poem they are less Theocritean and more Roman and Italian. The Greek form fits the Latin spirit somewhat oddly to modern thinking, but it pleased the general Roman taste, even the cultured Roman taste. The Georgics, in like manner, owe suggestion to Hesiod—so Virgil says— Ascraeumque cano Romana per oppida carmen^ (G, ii. 176), to Nicander and Aratus too ; yet after all they owe but little to these Greek models, who have now little or no interest but for the fact that Virgil used them. And now that the Georgics were accomplished, where was he to turn ? to which of the Greeks ? So far he had been indebted chiefly to Alexandria, perhaps because he was as yet more familiar with Alexandrine than with classical literature. There were, however, signs that he was by no means under the yoke of Alexandria. There is a sense of nationality about his writing, a directness of appeal to his own Italian people at large, and a genial frankness of utterance— foreign to the poets of the Museum and tlieir Latin imitators, and promising something of even wider and deeper human interest than he had yet achieved. What would he do ? Setting aside didactic verse, we find that the enormous output of contemporary poetry may be roughly classified as dealing with mythology, the antiquities of Rome, history, » " Let him be like his father." • " The song of Ascra I sing through the towns of Rome." *»- - CONTEMPORARIES 71 personal experience, and national glory. Mythology came straight from Alexandria, entirely foreign, but fascinatmg and intimately connected with painting. The last days of the republic are marked by an astonishing outburst of anti- quarianism. History from Naevius and Ennius onward had been a favourite field for Roman poets. Catullus with his poems to Lesbia and his lampoons, Cicero with his auto- biographical epics, and Gallus, Propertius, Tibullus, and their school of erotic poetry, bear witness to the absorbing interest felt by the poets, if not always by their readers, in their own personal history. As for national consciousness, if Ennius had written histories in metre — OUi respondit rex Albai Longai,^ — he had struck a nobler note in such utterances as his Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,* ^^ ^^^ X. • a Moribus antiquis stat res Romana vinsque.' Virgil is, less than any of his contemporaries, an autobio- graphical poet* Pressure was to be put upon him to deviate into a poetry of a personal character, though he was not much interested in it But in the other four spheres of poetic activity mentioned he was keenly interested. He had given study and enthusiasm to them all, yet he was brought into bondage by none of them. It is instructive to inquire what his contemporaries were doing in these directions, and from the results of their attempts to deduce why Virgil would not go with them. I Mythology was one of the contributions of Alexandria to poetry, particularly mythology with an erotic tinge, but » MUller, Ennius Ann. i. 66. " To him replied the King of Alba Longa.'' • ** One man by delaying gave us back the State." » "On ancient ways rests Rome's common weal and on men.** * Four lines suffice him, lines full of character and charm — Illo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alehat Parthenope studiis fiorentem ignobilis oti^ Carmina qui lusi pastorum audaxque iuventa Tityre te patulae cecini sub tepnincfagi ((7. iv. 563-6). ff'l 72 VIRGIL scarcely, even on its erotic side, did it touch life. Still, mythological poetry received a warm welcome at Rome, and epics and elegies were written with the most Alexandrian tone and profusion. Propertius boasted to be the Roman Callimachus,! and wrote his elegies with unction, as we shall see, but the epics were too much even for his taste. Ponticus had written a Thebaid, which, Propertius protests "on his hopes of happiness," puts him next to Homer and even made Homer's primacy doubtful—// only the fates would be kind} Yet he goes on to say that if Ponticus is ever in love he will be sorry he ever touched Thebes, and he will recognise Propertius* supremacy — tunc ego Romanis praeferar ingeniis. In other words, Ponticus' Thebaid, like all the other Memnonids and Thebaids and Argonautica, might be never so meritorious, but it was dull— it had no vestige of human interest. Propertius did not seem to realize that one might have too much mythology even in an elegy. Let us take an example of mythology in an elegy, a short poem which he wrote to Postumus, who goes eastward to fight the Parthians and leaves his wife Galla behind Postumus will quaff the Araxes, and Galla will pine for good news Postumus is happy in having a chaste wife —he IS like another Ulysses with a faithful Penelope At this point comes a sort of index to the Odyssey a catalogue of Ulysses' adventures in twelve lines, so com- pact and complete that to count them on one's fingers is irresistible;* ^ Castra decern annorum et Ciconum manus, Ismara capta, exustaeque tuae mox, Polypheme, genae, ct Circae fraudes, lotosque herbaeque tenaces, Scyllaque et altemas scissa Charybdis aqu^, Lampeties Ithacis veribus mugisse iuvencos : * iv. 9. 43 inter Callimachi sat erit placuisse libelhs ; and v i (.a Umh^^ ■ i. 7' 4 '^'«^ modofata tuts mollia carminihus, • I hope no reader will complain, if I refuse to translate these foolish lincfc CONTEMPORARIES 73 (This is a real masterpiece— how many of his readers will know who was Lampetie ? The poet hastens to explain.) paverat hos Phoebo filia Lampetie : (Yes, of course, if the reader had read his Odyssey with real care, he would not have needed this note in the text to tell him who Lampetie was. See the Odyssey, says Propertius, book xii. line 132 — omitting to notice, however, that Homer does not identify Phoebus with Lampetie's father, the sun.) et thalamum Aeaeae flentis fugisse puellae (This is an easy riddle — Circe, of course.) totque hiemis noctes totque natasse dies, nigrantesque domos animarum intrasse silentum, Sirenum surdo remige adisse lacus, (We have left Homer's order of events here, but notice the fine allusiveness of surdo remige.) et veteres arcus leto renovasse procorum, errorisque sui sic statuisse modum. ** Oh I yes ! " the poet remembers with a start, " Penelope, of course — Penelope's special fame is eclipsed by Galla." * This is an easy example, for all the references are to a well-known book, but the genuine Alexandrine instinct was to make them to a book unknown if possible, as if the best poetry was that which could carry the largest and most irrelevant weight of dead matter — Professorenpoesie^ in fact.* Virgil, however, was a poet interpreting life to the living, and he realized the wisdom of leaving the dead to bury their dead in cyclopaedias or poems as they preferred. But there was another side to the mythology : another contemporary of Virgil's made his reputation by it Ovid, like Propertius, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, but he did not take it seriously.^ Gods and heroes lose in his hands that antique air which made them * Propertius, iv. 11. 25-36. ■ The word is taken from Wilamowitt-MoellendorflF. • See Boissier, Rome et Pompii^ ch. vi. § 4, p. 375 (Fr.) ; p. 405 (Engl. tr.). • ^ Ill I ) pi 74 VIRGIL venerable. He makes them into men, and men exactly like those among whom he lived. The heroines who write love- letters of such length and cleverness are really the contem- poraries of Corinna, and have been in good society and learnt the etiquette of gallantry in the Ars Amoris. Ovid adds to his Alexandrian learning an air of humour which gives it quite a new complexion. In fact, as M. Boissier brings out, the mythology is no more to him than to the painters of Pompeii. Helbig has reckoned that, of nearly 2CX)0 pictures found there, 1400 deal with subjects from the Greek mythology. Most of these subjects are love-stories— Danae, lo, Leda, Europa, Daphne, Aphrodite and Ares, coming over and over again— and they are not treated in any spirit of reverence or religion at all, rather with an air of mere sentimentalism, and occasionally of vulgarity. Jewelled heroines, old women selling little Cupids to young girls, Cupids dancing, gathering grapes, guiding teams of lions, bringing letters to Polyphemus from Galatea —It IS to this that the mythology has come. Even before Virgil's day in so serious a poem as Catullus' Artadne— a theme, by the way, treated in more than thirty Pompeian pictures— we have the pretty and the pictorial asserting Non flavo retinens subtilem vertice mitram, non contecta levi velatum pectus amictu, non tereti strophio lactentis vincta papillas, omnia quae toto delapsa e corpore passim ipsius ante pedes fluctus salis alludebant ^ (Ixiv. 63) Tum tremuli salis adversas procurrere in undas, mollia nudatae tollentem tegmina surae* (Ixiv. 128). > " Down dropp'd the fillet firom her golden hair, Dropp'd the light vest that veil'd her bosom fair. The filmy cincture dropp'd, that strove to bind Her orb^d breasts, which would not be confined ; And, as they fell around her feet of snow, The salt waves caught and flung them to Ind fro " (Sir Theodore Martin) « "Anon she rush'd into the plashing sea, Martm). Her fair soft Umbs unbaring to the knie." (Sir Theodore Martin). \| CONTEMPORARIES 75 Mythology, then, involved its votary in pedantry, or flippancy, or mere prettiness. But Virgil had already made his experiments in Alexandrinism. " The frigid mythology," says Mr Myers, " with which the first Georgic opens is absolutely bad. It is bad as Callimachus is bad, and as every other imitation of Callimachus is bad too." Is Tethys trying to buy Augustus as a son-in-law with a dowry of all her waters? or does Augustus propose to be a new star^ where a space is opening between Erigone and the Claws ?— the Scorpion is drawing in his arms already. He surely will not prefer to be king of Tartarus in spite of Greek accounts of Elysium. What does all this mean ? Does it mean anything ? What would Lucretius say to it, coming from a pupil of his own ? Virgil did not do it again. The meaning of the short clause at the opening of the second Georgic has been debated. Non hie te carmine ficto, atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo ^ {G. ii. 45-6) Whom is he addressing ? his reader ? Does he mean that at some future day he will weave some romantic or mythical strain, — something long, involved, and Alexandrine, — as Conington half thinks the words (especially hie) may imply, or is it an apology for the unreality of the flattering exordium of the first book ? ' At all events, when he reaches his third Georgie, he begins with a renunciation of Alexandria and its mythological themes which is clear enough. The episode of Aristaeus and Orpheus, at the end of the fourth, is indeed in the manner of that school, but it was not part of Virgil's original design, and in any case the story of the half-regained Eurydice redeems its setting. But the resolution of the poet not to go with any Callimachus, Cyrenian or Umbrian, * The redtutio ad absurdum of this is Claudian*s account of how Theodosius, after a last address to his sons, shot up into heaven and left a path of light on the clouds (ill. Cons. Hon. 162-74)— a strange pagan end for a Christian emperor. • " I will not detain thee here with mythic strains, or circuitous detail, or lengthy preambles " (Conington). » Myers, Essays Classical^ pp. I53-4' 76 VIRGIL CONTEMPORARIES 77 is significant for the vigour with which he expresses it, and with which he adheres to it. "All the themes," he says, "which once could have laid the spell of poesy on idle minds {vacuas mentes, a very significant phrase), are, all of them, hackneyed now. Who knows not Eurystheus, hardest of masters, or the altars of Busiris, whom never tongue praised ? Who has not told the tale of the lost boy Hylas, of Latona and her Delos, of Hippodamia and Pelops of the ivory shoulder, Pelops the driver of horses ? " {G. iii. 3). Why does the poet reject such themes ? Partly because the world had had far too many Herakleids and Pelopids and so forth already ; and partly, and chiefly, because Virgil felt that these were really idle and empty themes ; they did not touch life and they were irrelevant to his people.^ Virgil's rejection of mythology and Ovid's application of it, coming as they did in the same generation, explain one another amply. II But if Virgil was right in refusing Greek mythology, Latin and Roman antiquities, it might be urged, stood on another footing. There was a general awakening of interest in these matters at the time.* Varro in the course of his long life set in order some forty-one books oi Antiquities, according to St Augustine, twenty-five of which he gave to human subjects (six to men, six to places, six to chronology, and six to events {rebus\ and one for an introduction), and sixteen to the gods. " Who," Augustine asks, " ever sought out these matters with more care than Marcus Varro ? Who showed more learning in their discovery ? Who pondered them with more attention, or grouped them with more acuteness, or wrote of them with more diligence or at greater length ? Though he has not so agreeable a style, yet he is so full of information and ideas (sententiis), that in all those studies, which we call secular but they call liberal, he has as » Cf. Patin, La Po^sie latim, i. 209 : " Ccs vieux sujets. sans rapport aucun avec Ics preoccopwtions de la pens^ romaine." • Nordcn, Neuejahrlnichtr fiir kl. Aliertum, 1901, has an interesting arUdc on this movement, which he aptly calls Romanticism. much instruction for the student of such matters as Cicero has delight for the student of words." ^ But Varro was not alone in this. Dionysius of Halicarnassus wrote his twenty books of Roman Antiquities in the reign of Augustus, and Livy his first decade dealing with the Roman kings and the early wars of the Republic. The poets, too, began to look in this direction for inspira- tion. Propertius, after exhausting the poetic value of Cynthia, turned to Rome and her antiquities Sacra diesque canam, et cognomina prisca locorum * (v. i. 69), and he wrote one or two elegies dealing with the famous spots of the city, but he soon gave it up. He was too clever for his matter. Fictilibus crevcre deis haec aurea templa^ (v. i. 5) is a clever saying, but it hardly promises well for a really sympathetic treatment of the old days. But there is a couplet in the poem which excels it and leaves no more to be said — Optima nutricum nostris lupa Martia rebus, qualia creverunt moenia lacte tuo* (v. i. 55). The task which Propertius gave up was undertaken by Ovid, who wrote twelve books of Fasti^ dealing with old Roman customs and legends in the order of the calendar. Six alone have reached us, of which Mr Mackail remarks that " it cannot be said that Latin poetry would be much » Augustine, de Civitaie Dei, vi. 2 and 3. In the chapters that follow the Antiquary furnishes the saint with ammunition to be used against paganism. He had a bad name already with pious pagans of the day, cf. Servius, ad Ain. xi. 787 Varro ubique expugnator religionis. Varro was bom in Ii6 and died in 28 B.C. On Varro see Warde Fowler, Social Life at Rome (1908) pp. 335, 336 ; Varro, holding the Stoic doctrine of the animus mundiy co-ordinates it with the Graeco-Roman religion of the State in his day— the chief godsrepresent the /ar/« mundiy while the ^aifiovtt are used to rescue the Italian lares, genii, etc. « •• Of sacred rites and days will I sing, and of ancient names of places." » " For gods of clay these golden temples rose." * *• Best of nurses for our Sute, O Wolf of Mars, what walls have grown from thy milk!" \ 78 VIRGIL CONTEMPORARIES 79 poorer " if they had been suppressed with the other six. The author of the Heroidum Epistulae was not of the genuine antiquary type, and however laboriously he might ** dig the sacred usages out of the ancient annals/' ^ he did not really care for them. He wrote from his heart only when he was engaged on themes nearer himself and his day ; let others play with antiquity, he preferred, he says, to be modern ; his own age suited him exactly — Prisca iuvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum gratulor ; haec aetas moribus apta meis {A, A. 3. 121). Virgil too had felt the attraction of antiquity. Indeed at an earlier period of his life he had begun an epic dealing with the kings of Rome or of Alba, but he abandoned it Apollo, he says, touched his ear and said that a shepherd's business was to feed sheep — Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem vellit et admonuit : pastorem, Tityre, pinguis pascere oportet ovis, deductum dicere carmen * (E, vi, 3X In plainer language, he did not like the subject. Cum res Romanas incohasset, offensus materia ad Bucolka transiit? says Suetonius in his life of Virgil (§ 19). He probably felt himself unripe as yet for a great undertaking. But now he realized that the tales of Alba were after all as unimportant and as remote as the war of the Seven against Thebes. He wanted a larger theme, a subject of ecumenical significance, something involving a wider range of human » Satra recognosces annedibus eruta pHscis, F.'uj. "I have now," wrote Lord Macaulay, at the end of his Ovid, "gone through the whole of Ovid's works, and heartily tired I am o. him and them. Yet he is a wonderfully clever man. ' But he has two insupportable faults. The one is that he will always be clever ; and the other that he never knows when to have done. He is rather a rhetorician than a poet. There is little feeling in his poems. ... He seems to have been « very good fellow ... a flatterer and a coward ; but kind and generous." » " When I was venturing to sing of Kings and battles, the Cynthian god touched my ear, and appealed to my memory. * It is a shepherd's part, Tityrui, that the sheep that he feeds should be fat, and the songs that he sings thin'" (Conington). » "After beginning the history of Rome, he was displeased with his subject and turned to Bucolics." I syfcpathics, touching mankind at more points than a chronicle of village forays could possibly do. And he was In spite of the ease of Livy's style the reader wearies of the little wars and the long speeches in which the mythical chieftains of his first book indulge. So Virgil left the Fasti to Ovid, as he had left him the mythology. Ill But it might be suggested that, while undoubtedly Alba was very remote and dead, there were other periods of Roman history which were living, full of great men and great movements, capable surely of poetic treatment. Had not Ennius written of the Punic Wars? was not Varius writing of Julius and of Augustus } For the moment, let us reserve Varius and his epics, and ask why Virgil declined to write an historical poem. It brings us face to face with the other question, what is an epic } To discuss this with any fullness would take us too far away, but we can answer it in part by making clear the difference between an epic and an historical poem. One of the chief differences is the want of unity which will not allow the metrical history to become a poem. The poet is shackled to the fact, to the conscientious narration of a series of details. Event follows event, and all must be chronicled, whether capable or not of being fused, of being related to the central conception, without which a poem is impossible. Incidents and episodes may come in thick succession, but they remain incidents and episodes, mere disconnected fragments. As a rule they refuse to become organic parts of one living whole ; they delay us rather than help us onward, they scatter rather than concentrate the thought. Again, the functions of poetry and history are really distinct. " Poetry," says Aristotle, " is a more philosophical and a higher thing (cnrovSaioTepov) than history ; for poetry tends to express the universal, history the particular. By the universal I mean how a person of given character will on occasion speak or act, according to the law of probability or 8o VIRGIL CONTEMPORARIES 8t i n II necessity. The particular is, for example, what Alcibiades did or suffered/'^ History is full of accidents, strange chances, and anomalies, while poetry has no more to do with these than art with the illustration of oddities in the natural world. Even the philosophical treatment of history, in spite of its effort to exclude the accidental and reach the universal, is scarcely a proper theme for poetry. The conflict of national characters, for example, though real enough in its way, or the conflict of great principles maintained by opposing peoples over a great space of time, can only be conceived by certain abstraction of thought, and can hardly be represented by any group of symbols which poetry would care to use. Roman literature offers us two great examples of metrical history, of which one is absurd and the other tiresome. Silius Italicus wrote seventeen books of Punica, which he tried to embellish with what he supposed to be poetical ornament Hannibal fights under Juno's blessing, because Dido had been a favourite of Juno. Anna, Dido's sister, appears to him on the eve of Cannae to tell him what to do (she had counselled her sister in the Aeneid)^ and begins by explaining to him at length why in distant ages she had left Carthage after Dido's death, and how she had become an Italian goddess. The wind, which the Romans found so disastrous during the battle, was sent by Aeolus, anxious once more to oblige Juno. Lucan discarded all such imbecilities in his Pharsalia, and tried to carry off" his poem with masses of scientific information and academic declama- tion, though neither of these aids can hide the fact that his epic is broken-backed and, Like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along. We cannot tell whether Virgil had ever read Aristotle's PoeticSy but he probably would not have needed Aristotle to advise him to avoid attempting an historical epic. His ^ Poetics^ 9. 3, 4, tr. Butcher, whose remarks in his larger edition, pp. 163, 183, should be studied. Thucydides, whose work was used as a source by the writer of the 'A^iyva/wi' IloXtrf/a, but was little read in the fourth century B.C., might have suggested to Aristotle a higher conception of History. friend Varius had given himself to this kind of work. Virgil always speaks of him with respect, and indeed made him one of his executors, but he must have felt that as a poet his friend was astray. Posterity seems to have agreed with him. Horace, like Virgil, refused to attempt anything of the kind, modestly saying that charming as it would be to tell how temple and tower went to the ground, how battles were fought on river and on shore, it was not for him.^ Let us recognize once more the sanity of Virgil's genius and the sureness of his judgement. IV If historical poetry was to be avoided, the biographical epic was even less possible. To turn once more to Aristotle, " unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man's life, which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Herakleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Herakles was one man the story of Herakles must be also a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too — whether from art or natural genius — seems to have happily discerned the truth." * This would be one objection to writing the deeds of Augustus in an epic, but there was another. While Augustus would have been, from Aristotle's point of view, quite as bad a subject as Herakles, from another he was even worse. For, if Virgil could have been content with historical truth and have been willing to sacrifice poetry, Augustus probably did not much wish for historical truth; he preferred, and no doubt meant to have, panegyric. Augustus must have known something of the lively admiration which Virgil had for him, but he can hardly have understood his poetic ' Ep, ii. I. 250 f. • Poctust c. 8. 1-3 (Ir. Butcher). V \ 82 VIRGIL i temper. He probably remarked that Virgil stood higher than Varius in general estimation, and concluded that if one of the friends could panegyrize him, the other, the greater of the two, would do it even better. Indeed, Virgil seems to have given the suggestion some attention, and in the beginning of the third GeorgtCy after his rejection of mythology, he speaks of raising a temple in Caesar's honour, with pictures of the Nile and the cities of Asia, triumphal columns and trophies, and statues of the race of Assaracus — Trosque parens et Troiae Cynthius auctor — "for the meantime let us go back to the woods of the Dryads." So he went back to the Dryads, and his meta- phorical temple was never built. Virgil has not given us, perhaps he did not give Augustus, his reasons for not fulfilling this promise, but it is possible that the con- siderations indicated above were among them, and, even if he had no reasons, his poetic instinct was monitor enough.^ So far we have considered the classes of subjects which Virgil rejected, and we now come to the theme he chose, which after all has its affinities with every one of these classes, and yet escapes most of their limitations. He needed a subject, which should have a unity of its own, * Another view is advanced by Norden (Neue Jahrbiicher fiir kl. Altertum^ 1901, pp. 313-22). He quotes the passage I have taken from Aristotle, but dismisses the idea that Virgil was influenced in his change of plan by ** aesthetic " reasons. (Norden elsewhere shows great contempt for "aesthetic criticism.") He urges that we must look for Virgil's reasons in the politics of the day. The civil wars were over, peace was restored to the world, and Augustus wished to emphasize the fact, as indeed he did in the Monumentum Ancyranum, in other monuments, and on coins. "It was under the influence of the great triumphs that Virgil had given the promise to celebrate the wars of Caesar : how could he have kept it in a time, which was the antithesis of the past age of terror, when the prince was actually inaugurating his pro- gramme of peace for it, by materially reducing the number of the legions?** Norden fortifles his position by reference to Horace's last ode (iv. 15 Phoebus volentem)^ in which he finds a clear interpretation of Virgil's motives side by side vrith the more obvious reference to the Aeneid ( Troiamque et Anchisen it almae Progeniem Veneris canemus). I can only say that I have a fundamentally different idea of poetry — a higher idea, I think. CONTEM POR ARIES 83 and a grandeur, one in which he might express his inner- most thought upon what meant most to him, his thought upon his country and the life of man. Does Aeneas fulfil these requirements? The theme is hardly promising, a mass of obscure, straggling, and scattered stories, gathered accidentally around a Trojan of the second rank, who has no individuality, no renown, no legend in fact It is clear that a poem about Aeneas may be as dead as any Thebaid\ it may be as petty as any legend of Alba, and as lacking in unity as the Herakleid which Aristotle condemned. But the Aeneid is one, it is " grand," it interests, it expresses the Roman people, and it rises from time to time to be the utterance of humanity. It absorbs as much of Greek mythology as the most exacting taste could demand ; it is full of the ancient life and legends of Rome and Italy— so full as to make it the special study of anti- quaries for centuries, and yet it is never borne down by its weight of learning ; it touches and illumines the history of Rome from Rome's first origin in the decrees of Fate down to the achievement of the universal Roman peace under Augustus ; it does more for Augustus than any panegyric ever did or could do for any monarch ; and it has been the favourite poem of all Europe for eighteen centuries, express- ing for the most living races of mankind more than any single work of one man all they have felt of love and sorrow. The poem finds its unity in its central thought ; it is the poem of the birth of a great people, of a great work done to found a great race, of a spirit and temper brought into the world which should in time enable that race to hold sway over the whole world and be to the whole world, with all its tribes and tongues, the pledge and the symbol of its union and its peace. It is not the story of the life and adventures of Aeneas— there were those who called it the gesta populi Romani} a name which shows a fine sympathy with the poet's feeling, as if all the deeds of the Roman people sprang from and were summed up in the work of one man. It is » So Servius, ad Aen. vL 752. On this see Patin, La Po^sie lattm, i. 199; Myers, Essays Classical t p. 129. 84 VIRGIL I the story of the planting in Italy of the seed from which came Rome — Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem* {A. i. 33). The poet looks down the history of his race from Aeneas, he looks back through it from Augustus, and he finds it one, one story telling of one spirit. It is one spirit, and the same spirit, that brought Aeneas from Troy to the Tiber; that carried the Roman kings through the early wars of Rome ; that sacrificed in Brutus a father's affection to love of country ; that took Decii and Scipios from victory to victory ; that put Carthage and Alexandria, with all they meant of cruelty and disorder, under the feet of Rome; and that gave Augustus the world to pacify and to re- generate. Virgil finds still more in it. He finds here his philosophy of history, the unity of the story of mankind, the drama of the progress of man from war, disorder, and barbarism to peace and humanity. And he finds in this story of Aeneas a clue to the story of every man, the linking of divine decree with human suflfering and service, something to explain waste of life and failure of hope by a broader view of heaven's purposes and earth's needs, a justification of the ways of God to men, not complete, only tentative, but yet an anodyne and an encouragement in an unintelligible world.* * " So vast the effort it cost to build up the Roman nation " (Conington). ' It is curious and disappointing to find that so great a scholar as WilamowiU - Moellendorff can write as he does of the Aemid (Reden u, Vortrdg^, p. 266): "Das Heldengedicht, an dem jetzt sein Ruhm, bci uns seme Unterschatzung hangt, ist ihm wohl wider bessere Einsicht durch Maecenas und Augustus abgenotigt worden." The fact is that, for whatever reason, the Germans do not enjoy the poetry of Virgil as the French do, and to be a sound critic of a poet it is necessary to enjoy him. CHAPTER IV LITERATURE.— 3. THE MYTHS OF AENEAS ^ ** There is in genius that alchemy which converts all metals into gold." Carlyle, Essay on Schiller, WHEN Virgil chose Aeneas as his theme his choice was not idly made. Aeneas played a part, not per- haps of the highest importance, but still not an insignificant one, in the war of Txoy. Though he does not accomplish very much, nor waken any very keen interest, yet the Iliad seems to recognize in him a man of heroic nature and a man with a destiny. Consequently a poet who would treat of him again has the Iliad behind him, and stands as it were in the succession of Homer. His theme is at once Homeric, and epic. So much might perhaps be said of Sarpedon or of Teucer, but for Virgil these heroes would have lacked what he clearly desired in his theme — relevance to Rome. But with Aeneas the case was different, for, however it had happened, a mass of legend had grown up around him, which by degrees assumed some sort of consistency and at last became a more or less fixed tradition. Step by step it could be shown how Aeneas had made his way westward till he reached Latium, and though at one time it looked as if Sardinia might be a further stage in his westward journey, it was agreed that Latium was really his goal. Here he, or his son, or grandson, — Romus, Romulus, or some such person, — had founded Rome, or, if not Rome, Lavinium. At all events, if not Aeneas himself, some direct'' descendant of the hero had eventually founded Rome, and though chronologers might debate the number of intervening generations, there was an undoubted filiation between Rome * The reader may consult the work of Alhrecht Forstemann, Zur Geschichte des AeneasmythoSy Magdeburg, 1894. 86 VIRGIL THE MYTHS OF AENEAS 87 M' and Troy, Thus in Aeneas Virgil had a theme, if not thoroughly Roman, still closely connected with Rome— a theme which in his hands might at last grow to be intensely national. At the same time, he would have indeed to make dry bones live ; for though the story had been accepted by the Romans and even embodied in diplomatic documents, it was in no sense really popular, but was the creation of Greek scholars, evolved from a combination of discrepant local tales by a rationalizing and rather dull philology. Virgil made the story live, and so effectually that his reader is pursued by his influence even into the conscientious pages of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and finds it hard to imagine what the story was before Virgil took it in hand. To strip from it all that he gave it is hard, but by doing so we may gain a clearer appreciation of Virgil's greatness, and for this it is worth while to read Dionysius, and to survey the confusing collection of fictions which he has preserved for us. Let us first see what Homer says of Aeneas, and then follow him through literature and legend down to VirgiPs day. Of the passages in the Iliad dealing with Aeneas the most important belong to the strata of the poem which critics pronounce to be late. Aeneas comes into conflict with Diomedes, with Idomeneus, and finally with Achilles. The last of these encounters is for our present purpose the most significant It occurs in the twentieth book, with which it is only loosely connected, while with the story proper it has hardly any connexion at all. The real hero of the passage seems not to be Achilles so much as Aeneas himself, for whose glorification it is believed to have been inserted by the author, whoever he was. The situation is this. Achilles has been roused to fury by the death of Patroclus, and he starts from the Greek camp to find Hector (1. 75). The first enemy he meets is Aeneas, and here the story begins to waver. We are told that Apollo, in the form of one of Priam's sons, urged Aeneas to face Achilles (1. 79), but later on (1. 1 56 f.) Aeneas seems to be acting independently However that may be, Achilles is strangely unlike himself. He had rushed into battle furious ; now he is sarcastic, and, meeting Aeneas, he stops and begins by sneering at his position in Troy : — "Aeneas, why dost thou advance so far from out the crowd to stand here? Doth thy spirit bid thee fight with me, because thou hopest to rule over the horse-curbing Trojans with the dignity of Priam? But even if thou slay me not therefore will Priam put his honour in thy hand; there be his own sons, and he is sound of mind and dotes not yet" (XX ; i77-i83)> . . - He goes on to remind him of a previous meeting when Aeneas had run away, and advises him to go back and "mingle with the multitude before evil befall thee, and encounter me not : the fool is wise too late." To this Aeneas replies i— ~ - " Pelides, think not to frighten me with big words, like a child- well skilled am I also to speak with jibe or with courteous phrase. We know each other's race, and each other's parents ... I style myself the son of great-hearted Anchises, and my mother is Aphrodite. ... But if thou wouldest know my generation, I will tell it thee, a genera- tion known of many men ; first of my line was Dardanus, begotten of cloud-compelling Zeus ; and he builded Dardania, for holy Ilium was not yet builded in the plain, city of mortal men, but they dwelt in the skirts of many- fountained Ida. And Dardanus begat a son, Erichthonius the king, most opulent of men. [Here follows a further digression upon Erichthonius' miraculous horses.] . . . And Erichthonius begat Tros, king of the Trojans; and to Tros were born three blameless sons, Ilus and Assaracus and Ganymedes. [Here follow the pedigrees of Priam and Aeneas; Ilus, Laomedon, Priam; and Assaracus, Capys, Anchises, Aeneas.] And now no more ; let us not prattle on, like children (I. 244) •• • co"^« therefore (I. 258), let us speedily make trial of each other's force with the brazen sDear At the end of the previous book Achilles had held ^ I quote from Purves* translation throughout 88 VIRGIL THE MYTHS OF AENEAS 89 I .\ * converse with his horses, and when Xanthus " the twinkh'ng- footed steed" had prophesied his death, he rejoined, "Xanthus, why nam*st thou death? It needed not. Full well I know myself that my fate is to die here, far from my father and from my mother ; but yet I will not hold my hand until I have given the Trojans surfeit of war" (xix. 4203). But now it would seem he has changed his mind, and " holds his hand " to hear " a generation known of many men"; and when Aeneas begins the battle by hurling his spear, \chilles " held his shield "—the very shield on which Hephaestus had wrought the wonderful pictures, it should be remembered—" away from him with his firm hand, tn fear; for he thought that the long spear of great-hearted Aeneas would lightly pierce it through." Then he hurls his own spear with little effect Hereupon Aeneas picks up a huge stone, and " then had Aeneas stricken him with the stone in his assault on helmet or on death-averting shield, and Pelides had come upon him and taken his life with the blade, had not Poseidon, shaker of the land, been quick to see." Poseidon, not usually a friend of Trojans, addresses Hera, as little their friend, and they both agree that Aeneas should be rescued. So Poseidon "lifted Aeneas from the ground and whirled him away ; and many a line of men and many a line of horses did Aeneas pass over, as he bounded from the hand of the god ; and he came to the verge of the tumultuous war," where Poseidon had a word for him. So much for the fight of Achilles and Aeneas, but Poseidon's words to Hera deserve study. " Ah me, I am in pain," he says, " because of great-hearted Aeneas, who soon shall fall before Pelides, and go down to the house of death ; foolish, who listened to the biddings of far-fatal Apollo ; but he shall not deliver him from destruction. Ah, why should he stand thus in much sorrow, without a cause, himself guiltless, by the fault of others— he who ever renders acceptable gifts to the gods who hold wide heaven ? Come, let us rescue him from the stroke of death, lest Cronides [Zeus] be angry should Achilles slay him; also it is his fate to come off safe, that the line of Dardanus perish not without seed, and vanish away; Dardanus, whom Cronides loved above all his children, who were born of himself and of mortal women : for Cronion [Zeus] loveth not the race of Priam any longer, but in days hereafter the might of Aeneas shall rule over the Trojans, he, and his children's children that shall come after him" (xx. 293-308). We may dismiss the question as to whether Poseidon is quite clear about the scope of Fate, and do no more than remark the Virgilian character of /^>/^ which the god gives to the hero. Two points stand prominently out in this speech and the passage to which it supplies the key. First, — Aeneas belongs to the younger branch of the royal family, and there is jealousy between the two branches. We learn this even more explicitly in another passage (xiii. 460 f.), where Deiphobus "found Aeneas standing on the battle's verge ; for he was ever wroth with divine Priam, because he honoured him not, though valiant among men"; a little later, Aeneas found the people following him to battle '* as sheep follow the ram, when they come from the pasture to drink, and the shepherd's heart is proud, so did Aeneas' heart rejoice within him, when he saw the company of the people following" (xiii. 492-5). Second, the words of the god imply a tradition that the supremacy had actually passed from Priam's family to Aeneas' line, and this will bear examination. It is quite clear that the encounter of Achilles and Aeneas is in itself entirely trivial, and that, moreover, it blocks the progress of the story. What is its explanation? It is generally pronounced to be a late insertion in the poem,^ due to the desire of a Homerid poet to please some dynasty or great family of the Troad, who wished to connect them- selves with the founders of Troy, and fixed upon Aeneas as * See Amcis-Hentze, Anhangtu Homers Ilias, vol. ii. (1879-86), Introduction to book XX, for a conspectus of the views of critics ; and also Leaf, Companion to the Iliads Introduction, pp. 24, 25, and on the passages quoted. Sainte-Beuve, Atude sur Virgile^ in his excellent chapter on Aeneas in Homer (iv), does not do justice to this theory. Mr Andrew Lang {Homer and his Age^ p. 324) admits the passage to be an interpolation. Schwegler, Romische Ceschichte, i. 279-99, may also be consulted with advantage. 90 VIRGIL their ancestor,^ just as the great families of the Ionian cities traced their descent from Neleus of Pylos, or Codrus, king of Athens.* This explanation seems satisfactory, and we find it corroborated by one or two local traditions of the Troad. Dionysius (i. 47) says that, when Aeneas sailed for the west, he left Ascanius, his eldest son, behind, and Ascanius ruled over a people in the district known as Dascylitis, where lake Ascania is, but afterwards with Hector's son, Scamandrius, he moved back to Troy. This may have been a local story, or perhaps some grammarian's attempt at history.* However, Strabo (607-8) tells us definitely that at Scepsis in the Troad the tradition was clear.* Old Scepsis was higher up on Ida, but Scamandrius, Hector's son, and Ascanius, Aeneas' son, brought the people down to the Scepsis known to history, where both their families were "kings"*' for a long time. But this story, Strabo continues, does not agree with the popular accounts to the effect that Aeneas was spared on account of his quarrel with Priam (//. xiii. 460, cited above) and went westward; while Homer himself agrees neither with the one nor the other, "for he shows that Aeneas remained in Troy, and received the sovereignty, and left the succession to his children's children, the family of Priam being extinguished ; * for Cronion loveth not the race of * Keller remarks how well the poet knew the ground and the old folk-tales of the region {Landessagen), and concludes that the whole lay {Lied) comes from an old legend, and is designed for the glory of Aeneas, as ancestor of a house established on Mount Ida for centuries after the fall of Troy. ■ See e.g. Hdt. i. 147 ; Strabo, c. 633. • Stz Dion. H. i. 53 for a mass of grammarians' efforts at once to keep Aeneas in the Troad and to send him to Italy — were there two heroes called Aeneas, or did the genuine one first go to Italy and then return ? * Strabo was a man of real discernment, as can be seen in his chapters on Scepsis, *'a place so called either for some other reason or from its being a con- spicuous place {x€plv ipiKijSei /SouX^ BvfJ^piv eV fi)pvpitdpo¥ dxo Zdpdoio paKovra rev^^fiev Upov AffTV Kal iffffofiivoiffw dyrrrbv dydpunroiSy ainov hi voXvffirepeeffcri ^poroiffi Koipayieip' iK toO diyhos fUTOTiffdey dvd^eiw dxpi« i^' drroKl-nv re koX dKafidrov U€ffaiP dvd^ei, Kal ToTSes waLSeffai 5iafiir€pis eKyeydovTOi. Hesiod Tkeogony 1008, records the birth of Aeneas, the child of Cythereia and Anchises.'but makes no prophecy about him. He then adds that Circe bore to Odysseus sons named Agrios and Latinos who dwelt far m a recess among the islands and ruled over all the Etruscans. It is open to any one to quesUon the authenticity and the date of these latter lines. \ I 92 VIRGIL Apollo, which we find in book v. But in the meantime we have discovered, with some assistance from Strabo, that Homer (if we may use the name again as the Greeks used it) knew nothing of Aeneas' adventures in any western region, near or far, but thought of him as continuing the race of Dardanus in Dardanus' own land, which, in spite of Virgil,^ was not Italy but the Troad. So far only does Homer stand with Virgil, that, hymning a patron's ancestor, he makes that ancestor a great warrior, great enough to face Achilles and Diomedes, and dear enough to the gods, at once for his piety and his descent, to be rescued by miracle and reserved to fight again, " when Achilles dies and finds his fate " (//. xx. 337), and to found a line of kings.^ I II The problem now rises as to how, in the face of the words of Homer and of the traditions of the Troad, the story grew which brought Aeneas to Italy and to Rome. The growth of the story it is comparatively easy to trace, but why it should have grown at all is not so clear. No doubt the natural passion most men feel for pedigrees of their own and of other people plays a great part here, and so does the Greek habit of off-hand etymologizing. The connexion of Aeneas with Aphrodite is also an important factor, though the origin of this requires some explanation. First, let us see how Aeneas left Troy. Various accounts of this are quoted by Dionysius. Menecrates of Xanthus, for example, began his tale with Achilles' burial, and went on to narrate that Aeneas, from hatred of Priam and Paris, betrayed the city to the Achaeans. This version was hardly likely to be productive in literature, and it will suffice to * Aen, iii. 163 Est locttSy Hesperiatn Graii cognomine dicunt . . . 167 Hoe nobis propriae sedeSy hinc Dardanus ortus, « A scholiast on //. xx. 307 tells us that Acusilaus of Argos (a logographer of the sixth century, B.C.) discovered the real reason of the Trojan war in Aphrodite's ambition for her son. She set the whole war on foot simply and solely to transfer the sovereignty from the house of Priam to that of Aeneas— a very suggestive interpretation, which may be illustrated at large from the history of Greek cities and their tyrants and faciions — U-qr^. 2wXo/a (Strabo, c. 638). THE MYTHS OF AENEAS 93 say merely that Servius believed Virgil knew of it, that Dares adopted it, and that Gower used it in his Confessto Amantis> The next story is more famous and more fruit- ful. " Sophocles, the tragic poet," says Dionysius " in his drama of Laocoon has represented Aeneas on the eve of the city's capture as repairing to Ida, for so he was bidden by his father Anchises, in remembrance of the charge of Aphrodite; while in view of what had just befallen the family of Laocoon, he conjectured the approaching destruc- tion of the city. His iambics, spoken by a messenger, are as follows :— * And now Aeneas, son of the goddess, is at the gates ; on his shoulders he bears his father, the matter dripping on his robe of byssos from his back, burnt by the thunderbolt; and round about are all the company of his servants; and with him follows a multitude, beyond what thou thinkest, of Phrygians who desire to be of this colony.'"* This is perhaps the only known reference to Aeneas in Greek tragedy. Xenophon adds a little more information. " Aeneas saved the gods of his father and of his mother {rov^ irarpdoov^ kol firrptiov^ ^ OeoJ?), and saved his father too, and won thereby a name for. piety, so that the enemy granted to him alone of all whom they conquered in Troy immunity from being pillaged." * But neither of these accounts satisfies Dionysius of Halicarnassus,^ and he gives us "the most reliable story" as told by Hellanicus in his Trotca—2Ln explicit narrative of » Sec Chassang, fftstoin du Roman, p. 364. Servius, ad Aen. i. 242, 647. Antenor more commonly is credited with this betrayal. Cf. Strabo c. 608. » Dion. H. Ant. Rom. i. 48. Soph. Frag. 344 (Nauck). There are some slight variations in reading. For Kfpavviov ytLrov, cf. k. Aphr. 287-9 — B/ U K€v e^elTjjs Kal cVev^eu apovi OvfUfi iv iJHXoTriTi fuy^vai ewrrc^di'V Kvdepelri, Zeut (re xoX«ppw t^j AXoHTewt (UrTi\$€ t^» *IX(ov, kuL ol Kara raiVrd f^rtfe x^P^^^^' voXfiiovvri' crpartvaeiv ydp fVi Tpiixop drofirei/t Greeks, their ancestors had noi joined in the campaign against Troy.* It was probably the first time that a Greek state had ever made such a boast, and it implies a belief at least in Greece that Rome had accepted her Trojan origin. From this date onwards the fact is allowed and even emphasized by diplomacy and literature. It was not perhaps in harmony with the old and native legends of Rome's foundation, and by what process it came to be accepted it is hard for a modern to understand. Timaeus could, no doubt, satisfy himself easily enough that the Penates of Lavinium were of Trojan clay, and the heralds' staffs of brass and iron Trojan too. Similar stories were adopted by other towns in Latium and in Italy. Tusculum and Praeneste were founded by Telegonus; Lanuvium by Diomedes ; Ardea by a son of Circe or of Danae ; Politorium by Priam's son Polites * ; the Salentini were planted by Idomeneus ; Petelia by Philoctetes ^ ; Argyripa by Diomedes.* It is useless to ask the reason of such tales, though we may hazard the guess that they were more familiar to the readers of Greek books upon antiquities than to those who knew the legends of their own countryside alone. Where the tales were really taken in hand, they were well managed by the Greek scholars in Italy. Variants were dropped where they could not be harmonized, and chronology was carefully adapted to fit both the local and the foreign tales. It was, for example, a recognized fact (no doubt owing something to the same school of Greek redactors) that Rome had had seven kings only.^ Consequently Rome could not * Justin, xxviii. 1.6; 2. 2 ; of. Dion. H. i. 51. « See Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. i. 310, for all these places. Tusculum, Propert. ii. 32. 4 ; Dion. H. iv. 45, &c. Praeneste, Horace, Odes. iii. 29. 8 ; Ovid, Fasti, iii. 92 ; Virgil {A. vii. 678) and the Praenestines, however, said Caeculus, and there were also other stories. Lanuvium, Appian, B, C. ii. 20. Ardea, Dion. H. i. 72. Politorium, cf. Servius on Aen. v. 564 nomen avi re/erens Priamus, tua cara. Polite, \ progenies, auctura Italos. Sulmo by Solymus, Ovid, Fasti, iv. 70-82. » Virg. Aen. m. 400. * Aen. xi. 243-8. » The work of Ettore Pais seems to me to have shaken the orthodox tradition IS to the Roman kings (especially Servius Tullius), though this is not to say that all his theories are fiiUy established. I02 VIRGIL U r)j have been founded more than seven generations before the year at which the lists of consuls began. By a happy coincidence with Athenian history this year was 510 or 511, and reckoning roughly the usual three generations to a century (some authorities, however, preferring forty years to a generation), the historiographer reached the date 753 or 754. But Troy fell, by current reckoning, based e.g. on the date of Lycurgus {776) and his distance from his ancestor Herakles, some three hundred years earlier, and thus Aeneas could leave plenty of room for Romulus. Hence Aeneas did not found Rome, but Lavinium,i which may or may not have been (as some critics suppose) a kind of federal foundation in Latium, and therefore without a local legend of a founder. This explanation does not seem to account for Praeneste, Ardea, and the other places, though Schwegler and Boissier accept it* It now only remained for some ingenious person to collect and harmonize the tales of Aeneas' wanderings, and this was gradually done. Fabius Pictor adopted the story. Naevius, who served in the first Punic war, and wrote its history in Saturnian verse, was the first poet to touch the tale. He is supposed to have traced the feud of Rome and Carthage back to Aeneas and Dido,^ telling of Tro/s burning, of the escape of Aeneas and Anchises, the voyage, and the visit to Dido.* Ennius in his turn touched the tale, and made Ilia the daughter of Aeneas, and Romulus his grandson, a proceeding which, as we have seen, needed correction.^ By this time the fiction was common property. Philip V of Macedon had to recognize in a treaty with Ilium the town's hereditary connexion with Rome.« Flamininus, the great phil-Hellen, described his countrymen as Aeneadae.' Later on the fashion set in at Rome of finding ancestors among the Trojans. Julius Caesar, * The Lavinium story was helped by the coincidence that a neighbouring spot bore the name Troia— proof positive. I Schwegler, Rom. Gesch. i. 316 f. ; Boissier, Nouv. prom. p. 14c. Timaeus, cited by Dion. H. i. 74, said Carthage and Rome were founded contemporaneously. I Schwegler, Rom, Gesch. i. 85. » Preller, Rom. Mythologie, u. 31,, n. I. • LiTy, ««. ,2. 7 Plutarch. Flamininus^ xz. ^ ' THE MYTHS OF AENEAS 103 in his famous speech at the funeral of his aunt, the widow of Marius, laid claim to descent from lulus, the son of Aeneas.^ This of course settled the question of Aeneas* son, for so far, as we have seen, it had been uncertain whether Ascanius came to Italy or not. And indeed an Italian son of Aeneas by Lavinia is a competitor for the honour of being the Emperor's ancestor.* But many Romans beside Caesar claimed Trojan blood, and to some of these families Virgil gave credentials, while Varro (rather earlier) wrote a book on the whole subject— fl5?/^w/7«j Troianis? Among Virgirscontemporaries several, whose works survive, touched the story of Aeneas. Livy, for instance, begins his history with it, and even he leaves it shadowy and unsub- stantial.* Tibullus has left us a long address supposed to be delivered by a Sibyl to Aeneas, in which his future wanderings and arrival are told, but if Tibullus had never written in another vein this poem would never have made his name immortal.^ Horace and Propertius were both faintly in- terested in the ancient history of Rome, but Propertius never found very much inspiration in any theme but Cynthia, and Horace was no more an archaeologist than Omar Khayyam. They say the Lion and the Lizard keep The Courts where Jamsh^d gloried and drank deep : And Bahrdm that great Hunter— the Wild Ass Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep. What is this but a more poetical variant of Ire tamen restat Numa quo devenit et Ancus? Thus, when Virgil took the theme in hand, he found it a fairly complete and coherent tradition, but still, in spite of his predecessors, imbued with the prosaic flavour of the » Suetonius, /«/iW, 6. Norden {Netu Jahrhucher fur kl AUertum, 1901, p. 258) cites Babelon {Monnaies de la Rip. Rom. ii. p. 9 ff-) ^r the fact that the head of Venus appears on coins of the Julii about the period 154-134 B.C. •See Norden {Ntue Jahrbucher fur kl. Altertum, 1901, pp. 276-9) for a dis- cussion of the whole matter. • , 1 » Servius, ad Am. v. 704. Atticus did the same sort of genealogical work, Nepos, 18. 2. ^ .. ^ 4 Livy^ i. 1.2. • Tibullus, n. 5. 19-65. II I04 VIRGIL Greek chronographers ; and how prosaic and tiresome a Greek writer could be, no one knows who has not made excursions into Greek chronologies. The treatment of Naevius and Ennius was not that which Virgil would care to give to his story. No great poet would wish, in his happier moments" to be an annalist. If Virgil then was to make anything o/ the story of Aeneas, he must redeem it for himself. Homei no doubt, might help him in battle pieces, but he had nc Homer to give him his Italians. Evander, Remulus, Turnus are his own creations, even if legend had known them of old. The voyage of Aeneas might be made easier by reminiscences of the Odyssey, and the episode of Dido by the Hippolytus and the Argonauttca, But the substantial originality of Virgil is not diminished, even if we concede that he borrowed as much as the most hostile critic would wish to assert. No great poem was ever made entirely of borrowed material, and that the Aeneid is a great poem is beyond dispute. Its subject had so far inspired no great poetry whatever, and it is only under the touch of Virgil that we realize that it had any poetic possibilities in it. He found it a Greek antiquary's tale— to call it a fancy might imply too much imagination— he wrought it into life, and he left it a nation's epic filled through and through with the national Roman spirit and so instinct with human feeling that for generations men, to whom Rome was not what she was to Virgil, found in the Aeneid the word for every experience of human life. Con- versely, the poverty and the dryness of the story before Virgil, when we compare it with the wonderful epic brine home to us in a new way the genius of the Roman po^t CHAPTER V THE LAND AND THE NATION.— 1. ITALY Open my heart and you will see Graved inside of it, "Italy," Such lovers old are I and she : So it always was, so shall ever be. — Browning. AMONG the most original and significant features of the poetry of Virgil is its conscious appeal to a nation, as we understand the word "nation" to-day, to a people of one blood living within well-defined but broad limits, a people with various traditions all fusing in one common tradition. It is the poetry of a nation and a country, for the poet will not think of them apart ; and it is not the least of his greatness that he has linked them thus closely, and made people and land as a unity so distinct from the rest of the world. It was a new thing in literature. The Homeric poems are of course addressed to all the Greeks, and all Greeks saw in them a common inheritance, but the underlying idea is quite other than that of Virgil's Italy. Greeks lived here and there in Europe, Asia, and Africa, under every form of government, divided into many independent and often antagonistic communities, conscious indeed of their being of one blood, but resolved never to submit, if possible, to being under one government. Greek sold Greek to the barbarian as uniformly then as in a later age one Christian people in Eastern Europe has betrayed another Christian people to the Moslem. The conception of one Greece and a common citizenship of all Greeks was as impossible from Greek ways of thinking, even in the days of Aristotle, as it was geo- graphically incapable of being realized. If one may use an illustration from Aristophanes with a slight extension of its suggestion, the anxiety felt by Strepsiades, on his first 105 \\ io6 VIRGIL ITALY 107 I V A fe inspection of a map, to have Sparta removed as far as possible from Athens, would seem to have been shared by almost every Greek state with reference to its neighbours, unless there were some strong probability of those neighbours being subdued and annexed. • 0)9 €7^i;9 ¥IIXUiV' TOVTO TTCLVV Ef>p, i. II. " We come to this ; when o'er the world we range, Tis but our climate, not our mind we change" (Conington.) • Lucan, Pharsalia^ ix. 961. 'Ii I 112 VIRGIL the hardy race, schooled to bear evil, the patient builders of the little towns on the hill-tops— look at what they have done, look at their conquest of Nature, look at the fights they have fought for home and country, look at their victory over themselves — Salve magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus, magna virum! {G. ii. 173V What Virgil did once in the Georges he does again in the Aeneid. The scene is still Italy, but by the time the poet lays down his pen it is a new Italy, full of poetic associations, every region rich with heroic legend told in great language, itself moving and stimulating. * " Hail to thee, land p6vfifia Kai aarrvvofiov^ opyag.^ » " Haopy he who could learn the laws on which the world rests." • "Many are the wondrous things, and nought than man more wondrous. Sophocles, Antigom, 332- ' ^^^^' ^5^ I 3 (I 128 VIRGIL Thus history, and particularly the history of his own race, is to the poet no empty talc, but a long self-manifestation of the human spirit, of the utmost interest and pathos ; and to make it his own, to interpret it to himself, and to brmg it home to others, is the necessity laid upon him. Nor was it only the past that Virgil found so full of meaning ; he was no mere antiquary, and the past would have been nothing to him if the present had had no interest. The Empire as he saw it, and the City which was the Empire's heart, touched him and held him. Rome, the world's mistress, Rome, the centre of all the history of his people, was the Rome he walked the streets of,— the Rome he fled from to Naples,— the Rome his heart could never forget. All these links that bound him to Rome are to be found in the Aeneid, and we shall not understand Virgil and his poem until we begin to feel with him something of what he felt for Rome. I In the first Eclogue Virgil has recorded his first impression of Rome Tityrus tells Meliboeus that he had imagined Rome a sort of bigger Mantua, but still like Mantua, as a big dog is like a puppy, but that he had found it something quite different-something distinct in the nature of things. It was not so much the size as the splendour and the beauty of Rome that impressed him. He later on emphasizes this explicitly ; Rome is the most beautiful thing in the world— scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma^ {G, li. S34)' This judgement is also Plutarch's, who quite independently pronounces Rome "the most beautiful of all the works of man " * Virgil gently laughs at the splendid portals of the houses and the swarms of clients, who gape at the door- posts inlaid with tortoise-shell, the gold embroidery and the bronzes of Corinth {G. ii. 461); but, though he can » «• Yes and Rome has become the most beautiful thing in the world." « De/ortuna Romapiorum 316 E rCv i^vBpiarlvuiv ipy^P t6 *taXX*pTi' of generations to come abide in this observance " (Conington). • Ap. de Rhodes et Virgile, p. 149 f. • Dion. H. Ant. Rom, i. 39-42. • Livy, i. 7. ( 134 VIRGIL happily characterizes as « the torturing of mythology to the detriment of poetry, without profit to history." ^ Some explanation had to be given of the foreign ritual. Livy says it was the only foreign ceremony adopted by Romulus, and suggests that he had a prophetic sympathy for a deified hero. Virgil lets it date, foreign as it is, from the eariiest town on the destined site of Rome, and he eliminates some of the features that appear in Livy. Hercules is a deliverer, and no mention is made of his being cibo vtnoque gravatus}' Evander is very careful to make it clear to Aeneas that the sacrifice is not a mere novelty lightly adopted, as new religions were adopted at a later day in Rome.* " No idle superstition," he says, " that knows not the gods of old, hath ordered these our solemn rites, this customary feast, this altar of august sanctity ; saved from bitter perils, O Trojan guest, do we worship, and most due are the rites we inaugurate" (viii. 185, Mackail). The proper, traditional priestly families of Potitii and Pinarii wait upon the altar, already and for ever the Ara Maxima, The sacrifice is followed by a sacred dance of the Salii and a hymn in honour of the hero. In the general revival of ancient ceremonies under Augustus, the sacrifice, which does not seem to have fallen into disuse, would not lose importance, and Virgil by this account of it links the generations together. It is curious that, while Virgil emphasizes more than once the poverty of Evander, he should give so much splendour to Latinus, whose palace has the most Roman and patriotic air. " His house, vast and reverend, crowned the city, upreared on an hundred columns, once the palace of Laurentian Picus, amid awful groves of ancestral sanctity. Here it was held of good omen that the kings should receive the sceptre and have their fasces first raised before them ; this temple was their senate-house ; this their * Chassang, Hisioire du Romany p. 74. • " Heavy with food and wine." Virgil would have leant to Balaostion*f version of AUestis—eren against Euripides. •Tacitus, Ann. xv. 44 fua cuncfa undique atrocia aut pudenda cwjluunt ulebranturque. The historian is explaining how it was that the Christian religion came to Rome. >r' ROME 135 sacred banqueting-hall ; here, when a ram was slain, the elders were wont to sit down at long tables. Further, there stood a-row in the entry images of the forefathers of old in ancient cedar,^ Italus, and father Sabinus, planter of the vine, still holding in show the curved pruning-hook, and ancient Saturn, and the likeness of Janus with two faces, and the rest of the kings from the beginning, and they who had suffered wounds of war in fighting for their country. Moreover, there hung much armour on the sacred doors, captive chariots and curved axes, helmet-crests and massy gateway-bars, lances and shields, and beaks torn from war-ships. He too sat there, with the augur-sUff of Quirinus, girt in short augural gown, and carrying on his left arm the sacred shield {ancile\ Picus tamer of horses ; he whom Circe his spouse, blind with passion, smote with her golden rod and turned by her poisons into a bird of dappled wing" (vii. 170^1). "This edifice," says Conington in his note on the passage, " combines the temple and the senate-house. Virgil has also employed it as a sort of museum of Roman antiquities."* The ceremonies of entering on office, the gathering of the senate, the archaic statues of the king's ancestors, the trophies on the walls (most glorious ana- chronism of all, the erepta rostra carinis\ the lituus, the trabea, the anciU--^\\ these things were full of suggestion to the Roman reader, and reminded him of all that was noble and triumphant in the national history. They might also remind him a little of a palace and a temple on the Palatine, where another and a greater ruler was gathering up the nation's traditions in himself, amidst surroundings as crowded with revivals of old memories. Take again the description of the ancient usage of Latium in proclaiming war — "a custom kept sacred by the Alban cities and kept to this day by Rome, mistress of the world, when they stir the War-God to enter battle ; * The reader will remember how many {Aova mark the track of Aeneas through the pages of Dionysius of Halicamassus. ■ Robertson Smith, Religion oj the Semites, p. 147, on sanctuaries as ** public parks and public halls," and their use for the accumulation of treasure. The antiquarian interest of Latinus* building is due to the spirit of Virgil's age. I 136 VIRGIL ROME 137 whether it be against the Getae they purpose to carry tearful war,^ or against the Hyrcanians, or the Arabs, or to reach to India and track the Morning-Star to its home and reclaim the standards from the Parthians" (vii. 601-6). Here the last achievement of Roman power, the recovery of the standards lost by Crassus at Carrhae, is brought into connexion with the remotest antiquity of Rome— could the continuity of the nation's life find more striking expression? For, while we may doubt, and Virgil might agree with us in doubting, the existence of King Latinus, a religious or semi-religious practice of this kind is a genuine survival and tells a tale, much as the strange ceremonies employed at the opening of Parliament— ceremonies the origin of which no man perhaps knows certainly— speak of seven hundred years of English history, of the slow winning of freedom and democracy, and of the continuity of the race through it all. Nor should we forget that Virgil, in speaking of the opening of the twin gates of War, reminds his readers that they had been shut, when at last Rome had come within sight of her goal of universal peace under Augustus. And more, through all the years which have seen these customs live Rome has never ceased to be felix prole virum^ (A. vi. 784). With a fine daring Virgil takes a picture from Lucretius— the mother of the gods in procession ; but it is not as a type of Nature that he uses her, but as a parable of Rome, mother of heroes. And then, as if to match the Phrygian procession following the goddess, Virgil lets us see these heroes— Romulus, the founder; Numa, like so many of the Romans rising from small estate to glory, Curibus parvis et paupere terra missus in imperium magnum ^ (vi. 811); Brutus, the liberator, unhappy in having to choose between his sons and his country, but a Roman in his choice; Camillus; the Scipios ; Fabius Maximus the Delayer, saviour » Notice how the adjective lacrimabiU escapes Virgil even here. ■ ** Happy in her warrior brood." » " Sent from his homely Cures and a land of poverty into a mighty empire. ' of the commonwealth ; Caesar. Pompey I^L^TX^^ No age has failed to produce its own brood ^^ ^er^es, eve^ variefy of man doing all kinds of service, but all m same spirit and all for the same city. The shield of Achilles in the Ihad '^^'''^ ^^^^^3, ^u a picture of life, of human activity. Greek no doubt, but hafdly Greek in any exclusive or self-consc.ous --X- J^ the shield of Aeneas serves a different purpose. ^s P.^ures are not ornament ; they are to be prophecy. 1"^?"^^ '«"; h Lry. The matter of this shield answers m hke mann«^ to th7poem-both tell of Rome, of Roman life and Roman men — res Italas Romanorumque triumphos (viii. 626). Here we have more colour and action than in the other passage with its silent procession of the unborn. We see fhe mother-wolf with the Roman twins, proper founders for heir race, in^pavuii, the rape of the Sabine women and the peace they made between husbands and P^'^f ',£°'^!;'?^ baffled and angered by the boldness of a Coc^^nd^*^ Cloelia; the Capitol saved by Manl.us and the geese, tne punishment of Catiline among the dead; Cato on *e Sirone of Rhadamanthus ; and finally the last S-^^at battle S Rome against the East at Actium. the ^nf J)»"'"f fj Augustus and his Italians against Antony and his motley barbarian hordes, of the gods of Rome and Itayagains dog-faced Anubis and the monsters of the East and the viciry of right over wrong, of the Rornan over the Onenta spirit These are the pictures upon the shield-pictures ol joy and hope — rerumque ignarus im^ine gaudet (viii. 730). Critics have objected to the line, which ends the passage a. being something more like an epigram than one would expect of VirgU, yet. if we have caught the spirit of the pXwe can fee how alien the suggestion of an epigram ^^llyTs The hero, bearing the shield pictured with the Stiniet of his race, symbolizes what he is in sober earnest SpSures he carries are emblems of the destinies which 1 i ■ ^g-^ -ga 138 VIRGIL ROME 139 (. he also carries— his race and its future are really as well as symbolically laid upon him, as he goes attollens humero famamque et fata nepotum* (viii. 731). The poet, says Mr Myers, one of his most sympathetic critics, " was summing up in those lines like bars of gold the hero-roll of the Eternal City, conferring with every word an immortality, and, like his own Aeneas, bearing on his shoulders the fortune and the fame of Rome." ■ But there is more than a continuity of ritual and a recur- rence of heroism. Through all these centuries there runs a continuity of character clearly to be traced. In his interesting study of Aeolus in Homer and in Virgil Sainte-Beuve remarks the wide difference between the Homeric god, "a good enough fellow, a genuine patriarch among his family, given over on his island to enjoyment, to mirth and good cheer," and the Virgilian Aeolus, "this subaltern of a god, sombre, uninquisitive, a little bored upon his rock." " The rude Roman discipline," he continues, " has passed over the brow of VirgiPs Aeolus ; he is one of those chiefs who, as was said of Burrus, could have grown old in the obscure honours of some legion. There is in him some- thing of the centurion, or the military tribune, ennobled, deified." » " II y a en lui du centurion." It is exactly this that marks the great difference between Greek and Roman character, between the men and gods of Homer and the men and gods of Virgil. Greek history abounds in men who leave upon the mind a vivid impression of character, good or bad, but individual ; while in Roman history we instinctively think first of the state, and find as a rule only a very much modified individuality in the citizens. The Greek's gift of looking the world and nature, as it were, between the eyes * " He joys in the portraiture of the story he knows not, as he lifts upon his shoulder the fame and the fates of his children." ■ Essays Classical^ p. 143. » itude sur VirgiUy p. 204 ; De la Ville de Mirmont's objection that the "centurion " is very ready to forget his miliUry allegiance under the blandish- ments of Juno may be dismissed. Fimbria and Galba could give us plenty of parallels. for himself contributed at once to the political •mpotence and the intellectual and artistic sovereignty of h's race^ The Roman had less imagination; he -"^J^^'ir^^^^'l^^ take orders from a magistrate or an o^/^/f ^J^ "^"^ them out without any special reference to first principles^ He is above all things /ar negotio «/f VfTotluDremeS character, no doubt eminently useful, but not supremely "ThSonal character asserts itself m the ^.«.^.Aeolu^ b something of a centurion. When Juno bribes him with a wife, she thinks of lawful Roman wedlock— connubio iungam stabili propriamque dicabo« (^. i. 73)- " EUe sera comme une matrone romaine. une »^-^^^^^ du bon temps." for Pronuba Juno P^^^^^ °«^^P""^ '"^ When Jupiter rises from his golden throne the gods escort him home as if he were a Roman magistrate— caelicolae medium quem ad limina ducunt {,A. x. ii7).» The council of Jupiter is not like that of Zeus. " Z^"^;" ^J^ Homer "bade Themis call the go^^/*; ^^'l^lJ'y jl^^^ ^^ head of deeply^lelled Olympus; and she went hajer and thither, and bade them come to the house of Zeuj^ No nve was not there, save only Ocean. «° »y™P^/^ ^" P^'^^"' groves, or the river fountains, or the meadow leas they came to the house of cloud-compell.ng Zeus {Ihad, xx. 4T0 Purves). In fact the Homeric gods gather ma general Is e^bly. mich like the Homeric soldiers m the second Iliad. Virgil only admits the great gods ; he does noUet them drink before deliberating, and he makes them sit, grave as senators of the better sort in the senate-house. > " Eqoal to his task and not above it." . „ . .'rwiU unite bet to thee in lasting wedlock, and consecrate her thine own ^*^'^°L»enly people sarround «>d escort him to the doorway." Cf. Ovid ^TSis.ier.Xa;../*/^.-««.l-S4- -^'^o-rir'^ Jnpiter may be brought out by a few lines from Ov.d^ Met. u. 847 • ilU pater reclorqtu deum, cut dexta trisukis !| it i 14 \ I40 VIRGIL The same Roman character marks Aeneas' men, and indeed in such a degree as to impair to some extent the vigour of the poem. Not one of them has any clearly in- dividual character, any " physiognomy," to use Sainte-Beuve's word for it. Achates of course is yf^//j; he carries Aeneas* bow, and is always ready and at hand ; he is the first to sight Italy and to hail it ; but we do not know him. Gyas and Serestus are each of them forft's, Gyas, it is true, on one occasion forgets himself {pblitus decoris j«/— what a rebuke is in the phrase !) and throws his steersman overboard, but such outbreaks of individuality are rare. Ilioneus twice makes diplomatic speeches, grave, to the point, and dignified, as became a Roman ambassador, but he does not let himself go. The reason for all this can hardly be accident. The poet looks at these men much as a Roman general would have, and he conceives that Aeneas did the same. Watchful of their general interests, careful, kindly, Aeneas will not concern himself too closely with them as individuals, he thinks of them as a body. If Aeolus is a centurion, Aeneas is an imperator. He says " to this man, Go, and he goeth ; and to another. Come, and he cometh" ; and when the brave Serestus has loyally done what he is told to do, there is no more to be said about him. We might have preferred that realization of the last and least individual upon the scene, which we have in Homer, and above all in Shakespeare; but yet, if we had been given it by the poet, it might after all have made the general picture less Roman. The Roman Empire was made by men of little individual " physiognomy," if men of a wonderfully uniform practical capacity; by "average men," but men of an unexampled high average, every one of them gifted by nature with the instinct to rule and to be ruled. Fessi rerum they work on undaunted.* Hence Aeneas' men — quiet, patient, reliable, Roman as they are are hardly so interesting as his enemies. ignibus armata est^ qui nutu concutit orhem^ induitur faciem tauri mixtusqm iuvencis mugit et in teneris fomiosus obambulat herbis. A later Greek poet, Nonnus, seizes this occasion to make 2^08 say de/5ta fivdorbKor xXeou 'EXXo^a {Dionysiaca^ i. 385). » A. i. 178. ROME '^^ III Virgn. In Aeneas and his m«, shows - wh^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ka fVi^ ideal Roman temper, i nese are tnc pcu^iv, sends oLaUam to fuse with Latin and Italian, to conquej and to rule the world, and it is on this dest.ny of the. s that the epic turns.1 He has discarded the mock-epic moUve he played with in the first Georgtc— Laomedonteae luimus periuria Troiae» (<^- i- 502). It is true that as a sort of after-thought (a tribute to the eVends of Troy) he credits Juno with some resentment born IflvM h^ilty-spretae iniuria formae ; but he draws her iXe scale a' a n'obler Livy might have drawn HannjbaL T \ «f^:.ns emoire She too has something of the Roman n herX? whX- her original motive she plays a grea^ lame for a great stake, involving world-wide issues Fate fas decreed fhat one people shall rule the -rid ; she prefe- fu^,. ^r^A <;he trics conclus ons with Fate. Aeneas as ine ^::^r^::^i^^^^^rs. Hence Dr Henry was less awake than hTthought when, "just as he went to sleep and began U„ a t^ct. which is by no »ea„s as ^-^ ^ f J^f^^lt^d the Roman Empire (De Fortuna ^'"««'«^'" ' «J 'f^^^T X.y d^SpIi^.. calls Rome, in language ^"''"^•^"'T ^^l\S^u^ "lu ^«X"«' -*»'. «,.^p«^vo« r«, rM7^«' "T7^°Xeltritus Just as fee elements meTphors, he says, are borrowed rom '^^■"-^f^ J^, ,„,«, and he were at war till the Ki„m "n-ted them, so R""* """ ^^ j^inks ^ises the question: Does she -%""' ^^ ^-^ll "^f .XLsion of the rf,e owes much to both but h.s tract WU »™y "^^ ^^^„,„^. ^<.,f services Chance has rendered Rome, eg. *' ~ "P^^Xcupations of Rome's enemies. The reaaer is uisuppv, c^ui^mm calls the tract "a mere Rome owed her ^-tn- 'o ^-^ ,f ^ ht for Plutarch's credit, rhetorical exercise, and one *°""\ "^= however following Wyttenbach, Dr OaVesmith (RcUgion '/f '""'"■*• P^ ^nde^C and 6nS Uttle in the includes Providence ^ -'^^-^..f ^^.".^Jef See also Griard, Za r.r2 ^JCrS-^sHe h^it to Je been designed for a Rom«, aadience. . . rr «««,*.#lnn and his Troy." It is interesting to^rr ;:^- a^^r^t" f t I.J. com. as it i, U. 142 VIRGIL ROME 143 IP to forget himself," he parodied Conington in the graceful line, Juno's vixen and not fell.* It is rather on quo nuntine laeso that the stress falls— on Juno's divine will and purpose as crossing and thwarting the order of things decreed by Fate. For Fate has decreed that Aeneas shall found populum late regem belloque superbum ■ (A, i. 21). This is a profoundly true and forcible description of the Roman people. If Cineas found the Senate an " assembly of kings," outside its doors he might have found a sovereign people, sovereign as no other ancient people ever was. The world knew Alexander rex^ Ptolemaeus rex^ but here was populus rex? That very want of physiognomy, which marked the individual Roman character, gave force and power to the national character. The private citizen was content, was glad, to be fused in the populus Romanus. Roman generals might lose battles, Roman governors might govern ill, and Roman judges might sell justice; yet the nation never failed to carry a war through to victory; the nation ruled the world better than it had ever been ruled before ; the nation formed a body of laws which shaped the character of European institutions and differentiated, once and for all. Western from Oriental ideas of law, justice, and government For this people Fate " appoints neither period nor boundary of empire, but dominion without end " — his ego nee metas rerum nee tempora pono, imperium sine fine dedi * {A, i. 278). Fate, Jupiter continues, ordains them to be Romanes rerum dominos gentemque togatam ^ {A, i. 282). * Aeneidea^ i. p. 56. • "A nation, monarch of broad realms and glorious in war" (Conington). » Cf. C'xc. pro PlanciOt 4. 1 1 huius principis populi et omnium gentium domini atque victoris, * **To them I set neither limit of time nor space; empire without end I have given them." • *' Romans, lords of the world, the race of the toga." This is an addition to what we have heard. The sovereign^ of the world is to belong to the collective Roman people (rerum dominos), but the people is one whose distinctive mark is the garb of peace.^ A nation of citizens, unarmed, is to govern the world in peace, and the very object of its rule is peace. For. Jupiter adds, the day shall come when, under Augustus' sway, "the iron ages shall soften and lay war aside, the gates of war shall be shut," and the war-fury shall be shackled, a helpless prisoner. If Jupiter's prediction is not enough, we have the crown- ing word which Anchises speaks in the lower world on the duty and destiny of Rome — Excudent alii spirantia mollius aera (credo equidem), vivos ducent de marmore vultus. orabunt causas melius, caelique meatus describent radio et surgentia sidera dicent : tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento (hae tibi erunt artes) pacisque imponere morem, parcere subjectis et debellare superbos» (^. vi. 847-853)- 1 "Not merely." says Heniy. on gentm togatam. "Ae Ronmns. whose nationrdr^ U tf.e X^, commanding the world; but the Romans m thcxr ^iJ/ZT tk* Uog^l^ in their civUian character-a nahon of atizens- ^ml&e worS'" Conington, however, finds "no need to seek a pomt in any antithesis between tff^ia and /<)/a." « Others will mould their bronzes to breathe with a tenderer grace, Draw, I doubt not, from marble a vivid life to the face, Plead at the bar more deftly, with sapient wands of the wise. Trace heaven's courses and changes, predict us stars to arise. Thine, O Roman, remember to rule over every race ! These be thine arts, thy glories, the ways of peace to proclaim, Mere)' to show to the fallen, the proud with battle to tame. (Bowen.) Cf. the statement of Augustus on the Monument of Ancyra (3), ^""'^^^"^.^ ciMus sui>erstitibus peperci. Extemas gentes, quibus tuto tgncsct potuxt, con- :^re ^^^cxcid^rTalui, Also Horace, Carmen Seculare (B.C.I7, two years after Virgil's death), 1. 50, Clarus Anchisae Venensque sanguis . . . bellante prior , te^e funis inho^m. We may contrast the account of Persia, whi^ SyTus Ironically put into the mouth of a Persian, on the eve of the amval ofncwsofSalamis(/Vrjfl^, loif.)— ^ , ,1 , *i nin^i^, voKefiovs TVpyoSatKTOvt ^ 3i4T«r iTTiox^pfMS re K\6vovt, ToXecfir r* dpoffraceis. The last clause explains why the Persian Empire failed to leave any such impression as Rome's— there was nopacis imponere morem. \ t I \ 144 VIRGIL ROME 145 l! Pacts imponere morevi^ says Virgil, and the best com- mentary which can be quoted on the phrase is a passage of Claudian, written four centuries later — Rome, Rome alone has found the spell to charm The tribes that bowed beneath her conquering arm, Has given one name to the whole human race, And clasped and sheltered them in fond embrace ; Mother, not mistress, called her foe her son, And by soft ties made distant countries one. This to her peaceful sceptre all men owe, That through the nations, wheresoe'er we go, Strangers, we find a fatherland ; our home We change at will. We count it sport to roam To distant Thule, or with sails unfurled Seek the most drear recesses of the world ; That we may tread Rhone's or Orontes* shore That we are all one nation evermore.^ Claudian' s tone is not exactly the same as Virgil's, but his thought is inspired by Virgil's thought. He sees very much the same empire that Virgil saw, but he sees it after four hundred years of the rule of that Roman spirit which Virgil portrays in the Aeneid. His story is the fulfil- ment of Virgil's prophecy, and his central thought is the Claudian, Cons, Stil. iii. 150. The rendering is Dr Hodgkin's— Haec est in gnmium victos qua$ sola recepit humanumque genus communi nomine fornt matris non dominae ritu : civesque vocavit qttos domuity nexuque pio longinqua revinxit, Huius pacijicis debemus moribus omnes^ quod veluti patriis regionibus utitur hospes^ quod sedem mutare licet ^ quod cemtre Thulen lusus et horrendos quondam penetrare recessus, qu0d bibimus passim Rkodanum potamus Orontem^ quod cuncti gens una sumus. Nee terminus unquam Romanae dicionis erit. Nam cetera regna luxuries vitiis odiisque superbia vertit. It is also interesting to find the same sort of thought in Epictetus, who pro- bably like all the Greeks ignored Virgil and Latin literature : — 6/Kire y^p Sri elfr^PTjp fJL€yd\rjv Kaiaap r)/xiy 8ok€i iropex**'* ^* o*^* «^<'^t»' oi/Kin xoXifioif oOSi fidxcti, ovb^ XjiffTi^pia fieydXa, ov8i rfipariKd' eiXX' l^etrrt ira. III. xiii.). same. His paqfict mores represents very closely Virgil's facts imponere morem. The intervening ages had not been so golden as Virgil had hoped, at least not so glittering, but they were a period of the diffusion of the old world's gains and of a deepening and quickening of the human spirit If the fabric of the Roman state did not wear so well as Virgil had predicted, the mind of mankind had caught the mood and temper of the poet, and had learnt to find in a teaching which he never knew the satisfaction of the yearn- ings which he had uttered for ever in his poetry. The spiritual development of the Western world under the Empire is quite in consonance with Virgil's prophecy and with his own feelings. The connexion between this spiritual growth and the pacific rule of Rome is brought out and emphasized by Claudian's contemporary, Prudentius, who sees still deeper into the significance of Rome.^ Rome's purpose was not mere conquest. Augustus was not the only great conqueror of his day. Virgil shows us Antony victor ab Aurorae populis et litore rubro « {A. viii. 686), ^ 1 Prudentius, contra Symmackum, ii. 586 ff. : Discordes Unguis populos et dissona cultu regna volens sociare Deus^ subiungier uni imptrio, quidquid tractabile moribus esset^ concordique iugo retinacula molliaferre constituit^ quo corda hominum coniuncta tenertt relligionis amor : nee enimfit copula Christo digna nisi implicitas societ mens unicagentes . . . Miscebat Bellona furens mortalia cuncta armabatqueferas in vulnera mutua dexiras. Banc frenaturus rabiem Deus undique gentes inclinare caput docuit sub legibus isdem Romanosque omnes fieri . . . lus fecit commune pares et nomine eodem nexuit et domitos fratema in vincla redegit ... Hoc actum est tantis successibus atque triumphis Roman* imperii; Christo iam tunc venienti, crede, parata via est, quam dudum publica nostrae pads amicitia struxit moderamine Romae ... y lam mundus te, ChHste, capit, quern congrege nexu pax et Roma tenent. • " Conqueror from the races of the East and the Red Sea." 10 I ill 146 VIRGIL but Antony has abandoned the ideals of Rome. Self-indulg- ence and indifference to his country's claim have denationalized him, and he comes to battle with Cleopatra at his side and under the tutelage of dog-headed Anubis and the portentous gods of the East. Against him are ** the fathers and the people, the Penates and the Great Gods," and the world passes from his grasp to one who will rule it with more loyalty to the ideas and to the spirit of his race.^ Sainte-Beuve, in comparing the Argonautica of Apollonius with the Aeneid, allows it every claim it can lay to learning, elegance, and ingenuity, but, he concludes, it was the epic of no nation—" il ne fit battre aucun cceur." There, in that word, lies the supremacy of the Aeneid. It is a poem which appealed to a great people and to every citizen, and which still, though that people has ceased to be, " makes the heart beat." « * The battle of Actium, A. viii. 675-713. « I am glad to find a similar view held by Mr Warde Fowler. Sec his Religious Experience of the Roman PeopU (1911) pp. 409, 4I0. He finds the mission of Rome ia the world recurrent, like the subject of a fugue, through the whole poem. * 'There are drawbacks," he owns— e.g. the intervention of the gods after the Homeric manner, and " the seeming want of warm human blood in the hero" — ** but he who keeps the great theme ever in mind, watching for it as he reads, as one watches for the new entry of a great fugue-subject, will never fail to see in the Aentid one of the noblest efforts of human art— to undcnUnd what makes it the world's second great epic." 'i CHAPTER VII THE LAND AND THE NATION.— 3. AUGUSTUS Nam genus humanum^ defessum vi colere aevtm^ ex immicitiis languebat ; quo niagis ipsum sponte sua cecidit sub leges artaque itira. — LUCRETIUS, v. 1 145. " For myself," Goethe continued, '* I have always been a royalist." ECKBRMANN, Conversations with Goethe^ Feb. 25, 1824. PROBABLY there is nothing that startles the modem reader of Horace and Virgil so much as the deification of the Emperor Augustus. To us he hardly seems a poetical, still less a divine, figure.^ A shrewd and successful adventurer, without ideas of his own, he lived by assimilating the ideas of his uncle and adoptive father, while he cautiously discarded, either from inability to grasp them or from a feeling that they would militate against his success, some of those conceptions and thoughts of Julius which most appeal to us to-day. He is essentially the " middleman " who comes in the train of genius to break up, to distribute, and to utilize those gains, which genius can indicate but cannot gather either for itself or for the world. Like other political and intellectual middlemen, he was eminently successful in life, and owed his success at once to his practical adroitness and his intellectual inferiority. He stood near enough to Julius to understand his political plans, while he stood nearer than Julius did to the people he had to rule, nearer in the limita- tion of his outlook, in his slighter power of handling ideas, and in the resulting ability to follow the workings of the average Italian mind. Genius is apt to see too far, and range too high, and look reality too clearly in the face, to sympathize with the pedestrian limitations of its neighbours; * A friendly critic has held that this paragraph looks too like a final judgement, but it was definitely intended to represent one side of the case ; the other side, it was hoped, was presented strongly enough in the rest of the chapter. in >i I I V 11' 148 VIRGIL and Julius met his death through his mistake in supposing that the men about him were as much moved as he by the logic of realities and as little satisfied with the surfaces of things.^ Augustus, on the other hand, had a clearer notion of the ways of the common man and a more kindly feeling for his prejudices. He was intensely practical, he had a wonder- ful faculty for learning from the mistakes of others and for avoiding the repetition of his own, but he hardly seems to us the man to quicken a poet*s imagination. Dexterity, calculation, coolness are excellent qualities for a business man, but they hardly suggest inspiration. Yet Virgil and Horace write of Augustus with an enthu- siasm which, if not entirely real, is in the main genuine enough. When the utterances of both are weighed, it will be found perhaps that Horace has said more and meant less than Virgil. It is Horace who speaks of Augustus as a possible incarnation of Mercury or some other god,* who pictures him attaining godhead (cae/um) by the methods of Bacchus, Pollux, and Hercules, and " reclining among them to drink the nectar with purple lips " ; ^ who goes further still and proclaims that he shall be a god while yet he lives.* But the poet of the odes to Lalage and Lydia may fairly ask not to be taken too seriously, and we find that in the more prosaic affairs of life Horace held aloof from the Emperor; he refused to become his private secretary, de- clined to write an epic for him, and abstained from asking favours, till the Emperor wrote and accused him of despising his friendship, and asked if the poet were afraid posterity would count it against him to have been the intimate of Augustus.^ But Horace is not alone in speaking of Augustus as a god Does not Tityrus say deus nobis haec otia fecit ? • {E, I 6). » See Suetomtis,/tt/»«J cc. 76» 77, ^r eTidence on this point s Qjg^^ I 2. 41. * O^^* ">• 3- 9-^2 purpurea bibit ore nectar. • Odes, iii. 5. 2 praesem divus habebitur Augustus, • The letters are extant in the short life of Horace by Suetonius, and well deserre attention. • •* It was a god that gave us this peace." AUGUSTUS 149 Is there not at the beginning of the first Georgic an elaborate discussion of the Emperor's godhead ? Is not the Aeneid full of Augustus ? For Virgil poetry is a higher, a more serious, thing — cnrovSaiorepop — than for Horace. What then does he mean by this repeated adoration of the ruler ? How should a man of peace glorify the author of proscription and con- fiscation ? How should the pupil of Siro and Lucretius make a god of this man, who was assuredly no Epicurus ? How should the poet of Dido and Evander and Pallas find a place in such a company for a figure so essentially prosaic ? To answer these questions we must understand the rela- tions of the poet and the Emperor. The base suggestion which makes of Virgil a sort of glorified Martial, and finds the explanation of everything in a farm near Mantua and a house at Naples, may be at once dismissed. Great poetry does not spring from such motives. Nor can we say at once that Virgil was influenced merely by friendly or patriotic considerations. He was indebted to Augustus, he was his friend, and he admired him as a statesman ; and in view of all that Augustus was to the poet personally, and of all that he had done for their country, we cannot blame Virgil either for his friendship or his admiration. To connect his great work with such a friend's name would surely be a venial offence, if an offence at all. But Virgil has done more than this, for, whether it appear to us legitimate or not, he has tried to bring Augustus into vital relation with the whole of the Aeneid, and to make the whole poem turn, or at least seem to turn, upon the destiny of Augustus. Is it a triumph of the friend over the poet? That is a dangerous and doubtful suggestion to make about a great poet, as it involves misconception of a poet's habits of mind. The poet will generally be found to think first of truth and poetry, and, where these are concerned, to have a singular faculty of clear vision. Whatever his relations with philosophy, whatever the coincidence or difference of philosophic and poetic truth, the poet will always agree with the philosopher that " it is the best course, and indeed necessary, at least where truth is at stake, to sacrifice even what is near and dear to us j for. .1 li 1 ' . ,5o VIRGIL where both are dear to us, it is a sacred duty to prefer truth." » Is there then any poetic truth in Virgil's presentment of Augustus ? - It will perhaps be simplest to try to obtain some clear idea of what Augustus did and was ; and then to study the impression he made upon the poet ; and, thus prepared, to consider how the poet embodies his impression in his poetry. " Ce trop habile homme, par peur des poignards, n'organisa que Ic viager, et nc consacra que le mensonge." In this striking and epigrammatic form M. Goumy has summed up a great deal of criticism upon the imperial system which Augustus devised and handed down to his successor.* To attempt to reconcile such a judgement with " poetic truth " may seem like propounding a paradox, par- ticularly when it must be owned at the outset that M. Goumy in his way is right. But we have to distinguish between what Augustus did and what he wished the Roman world to think What he did was to carry into effect the ideas of Julius ; but he wished his fellow countrymen to suppose that he was doing the opposite. Now the very essence of the ideas of Julius was the recog- nition of the actual. It is hardly fanciful to take his correc- tion of the Calendar as typical of all he did in the re- organization of the government at large. " When he turned to set the republic in order," says Suetonius, "he put the Calendar right, which had been brought, by the recklessness of the pontifices in intercalation, to such confusion, that the harvest festival was not in summer, nor the vintage in » Aristotle, Ethics, i. 4. 6, p. 1096 a : ^\tiov eb^ai. koX Se'tp Irl (rtaTriplq, yt i^f aKyjdelas «oi tA olKtia djfaipttv, dXXwt re Kal ^X«r6^uf fiirof iii^toLV ydp ipTOiP « M. Henri Rochefort in the days of the Dreyfus troubles put the same thought in a maxim of wider range :— ** Every one knows, and the Ministers best of all. that to govern is to lie {goiwermr c'est menttr)." See F. C. Conybeare, The Dreyfus Case, p. 156. It is a brilliant phrase and many people, in ancient times and modern, have believed it— practical politicians and their critics— yes, and thinkers like Euripides and Tolstoi have said it in bitterness of heart. It deserves study. h AUGUSTUS iSi autumn. He adjusted the year to the course of the sun." ' There at least Julius was in touch with the ultimate fact It is clear throughout everything he does that his intention is to grasp the real state of the case, and then, in full view of everything material, to plan real provision for real need. This is the statesman's temper. It is recognizable in Julius from the beginning ; he of all men took the truest measure of Pompey from the first. But it was in Gaul that he had his first chance of exercising and developing his faculty. There he had a great country to deal with, large problems to face, and freedom in working them out. When he found himself master of the Roman world, he worked on in the same way. What were the real facts, the real requirements ? • The first and most clamant need of the Roman world was government The Roman constitution had not been con- trived for the inclusion of a subject empire. As province after province was added, one expedient and another were devised to meet each case as it came ; but wise and good as many of these expedients might be, there was an air of makeshift about the whole. By Caesar's day it was plain that the sovereign people would not take the thought and trouble necessary for the working of these expedients, while the upper classes looked upon the provinces chiefly as sources of private revenue for senatorial governors and for the leaders of the financial world, and hence as mere counters in the game of politics. In short, there was no serious government any longer, nothing but improvisation. There was no continuity of policy for the province ; there were no general principles of policy for the empire. The empire was not looked at as a whole; it was not studied with intelligence; even considered as a collection of estates it was badly managed. Yet it made itself felt in Rome, and now and then men recognized that the peculiar problems it presented required special and intelligent treatment For instance, in 67 B.C. * Suetonius, Julius, 40. May we quote Virgil in a new connexion : Solem Quis dicerefalsum audeat (G. i. 463) ? • Compare Carlyle, Fremh devolution voL iii. bk. 3, ch. i : *' Whatsoever man or men can best interpret the inward tendencies it [the Movement] has, and give them voice and activity, will obtain the lead of it" ^1 y 152 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 153 III piracy had reached such dimensions, that it was seen to be an imperial question, not to be managed by partial operations in the various provinces. It was clear that the thing needed was a central and comprehensive plan, steadily directed and controlled by an organizing mind, which must be in possession of all the facts to be faced, and able to set in motion forces adequate for the work to be done. The Gabinian law gave Pompey a free hand on the tacit condition that he actually did the work. This was, in fact, a direct denial of the whole scheme of senatorial and popular rule. The " talk of the dictatorship " current in Rome during Caesar's absence in Gaul proves that people recognized the want of government in the city itself and in the world at large. The first task of Caesar, therefore, was to govern. Government means responsibility, and Caesar undertook this himself. The whole executive of the empire became directly or indirectly responsible to himself, and he took care to be served by capable and reliable men. They were not always people of good family — he appointed a eunuch, the son of a freedman of his own, to be over three legions in Alexandria, and some of his slaves he set over the mint and the public revenue department. The old families of Rome grumbled ; but Caesar meant work to be done, and picked men who would do it, irrespective of old traditions — spreto patrio morey He realized further that the old division of the world into Rome and the subject empire had become, by the substi- tution of himself for senate and people as the ruling power, even more obsolete than it had virtually been for some long while before. His introduction of Gauls into the senate was the expression of this belief. The angry verses quoted round the town show what the Romans thought of this — Caesar led the Gauls in triumph; to the Senate-house he led; And the Gauls took off their trousers, wore the laticlave instead.* * Suetonius, /«/»W, 76. « Suetonius, /«/i«J, 80 Gallos Caesar in triumpkum ducit, idem in curiam, | GaiU bracas deposuerunt, latum clavum sumpserunt. The remark, which Suetonius tells us Caesar made, though a tactical blunder, was nevertheless a profound truth, and the l)asal truth of the whole imperial system. "The re- public," he said, " was nothing — it was a mere phrase without form or substance." ^ For this nothing Caesar substituted an intensely real something, which corresponded with every reality in the empire — the control of a single intelligence, which should make itself felt uniformly and everywhere in steady and intelligent government. Julius, we might perhaps say, was murdered for what he said* rather than for what he did. Augustus realized the one mistake of his uncle and did not repeat it, but what Julius had done before him he did again. He regained the personal control of the entire government, and established throughout the world at large that real something which Julius had seen to be demanded by the empire. Only in Rome, because the Romans had a traditional preference for the nothing, he gave it them in words. Whenever by change or development of plan he got a firmer grasp of everything and made the reality of his government more real, he repeated in a more noticeable tone his phrase about "the restoration of the republic."* He took care also to emphasize the time-limits set to his tenure of offices, which he intended all the same to keep as long as he lived and to hand on to his successor. This is what M. Goumy means by "organizing the temporary and consecrating falsehood." Augustus, it is said, on his death-bed asked his friends whether they thought he had played the farce of life well enough.* Viewed from this standpoint, his life was in measure a farce, but it was far from being this in reality. Augustus had maintained his power by the methods with which he won it. When the world was divided between * Suetonius, Julius 77 Nihil esse rempuhlicam, appellationem modo sine corpore ac specie. It is of course possible that Caesar had more tact than to say so. * Or what people said he said — a rather diflferent thing, though often enough a manufactured anecdote hits off a situation more accurately than a true one might. * On one such occasion he doubled the pay of his guards. * Suet. Au^. 99, ecquid its videretur mimum vitae commode transegisse* I'! li Ill 154 VIRGIL I * I himself and Antony, he had captured the general goodwill by genuine service of mankind. He had crushed piracy on the sea and brigandage in Italy ; he had given quiet to all the West; he had enabled industry and business to regain their ordinary activity— the fall in the rate of interest was the sign of this; by sense and firmness, combined with clemency, he had gained the confidence of serious people; and in negotiation and war he had maintained the credit of Rome with the foreigner. In every one of these details his success stood in vivid contrast to the failure of Antony. When he died, public talk in Rome owned that "no resource had been left for the distracted country but the rule of one man ; under his rule the frontiers had been pushed forward to the Ocean or to distinct rivers; the provinces, the armies, and the fleets of the empire had been brought into communication with one another; justice had been dispensed at home; con- sideration had been shown to the allies ; and the city itself had been sumptuously adorned." * All this is true work, and has to be weighed against the lies of statecraft with which the Emperor kept the senate quiet. We may go further still, and say that if, as most people admit upon a broad view of it, the genius of Rome was "to govern the nations, to crush disorder, to spare the subject, and to set up and maintain the wont and use of peace," Augustus was a genuine embodiment of this genius, and, whatever his defects of mind and character, he had, on the soberest estimate, fulfilled the destiny of his people, and given recognition and satis- faction to the instincts and demands of the whole Medi- terranean — in other words, that his work was an honest endeavour to give expression to the truth of the world around him. II Virgil first came into contact with Augustus, or Octavian as he was then called, in connexion with the confiscation 1 Tacitus, Annals, i. 9. The hostile criticisms quoted by Tacitus in the following chapter are personal, and do not touch the record of his real political services. AUGUSTUS 155 of his farm. That famous interview he describes— not very clearly, nor, even, very happily— in the first ^^^^£«^- He had seen Rome, the city without peer, and he had seen the young Caesar — hie ilium vidi iuvenem (42)— who had in the most bucolic terms encouraged him to go on with his farm life, and incidentally to make music with his pipe — ludere quae vellem calamo permisit agresti ^ — and who will, in consequence, be to him a god, whose face he can never forget. O Meliboee deus nobis haec otia fecit namque erit ille mihi semper deus * (6). Disentangling Virgil and his pipe from Tityrus and his cattle, we find that Augustus restored his farm to the poet, and made it possible for him to live the life of " inglorious quiet" {G. iv. 564) which his genius required. In process of time their relations became closer, and Virgil received from him various gifts of land and house property, though he refused, as we have seen, to accept an exile's confis- cated estate. Eventually a warm friendship bound them to each other. Augustus, from his peculiar position and the temper it bred, was a somewhat dangerous and even uncomfortable friend to have. He did not, we learn, make friends easily, but he kept them when he made them, and was willing to tolerate their vices and foibles «in moderation."* It should be remarked to the credit of Augustus, that of all who shared his friendship, two of the most successful in retaining it without loss of dignity or independence were men of humble origin, one indeed » " He set me free to play as I pleased upon my rustic pipe." « " O MeUboeus it was a god who gave us this peace-for a god he shaU ever be to me." . . j- ^ ^ • Suet Aug 66, sed vitia quoque et delicta, dumtaxat modtca, perpessus, an interesting chapter on the Emperor's friendships. Cf. Horace. Sat, u. I. 20 cut male si palptre recalcitrate I ) ' I 156 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 157 lltti a perfect man of the world, the other a shy and silent student— the poets Horace and Virgil. The intimacy rested on character and poetry, and it is pleasant to note the interest which Emperor and poet took in each other's work. Virgil, we learn, on one occasion read the whole of the Georgics to Augustus, spreading the work over four days, and handing the manuscript to Maecenas when his voice grew weary.^ In the Aineid, as was natural, the Emperor was keenly interested, and in the course of the Cantabrian war he wrote to the poet from Spain letters full of playful entreaties and equally playful menaces to wring from him " either a first draft of the poem, or at any rate some part of it." * Whether the letter of Virgil, which Macrobius has pre- served, was written in answer to these letters of Augustus from Spain it is impossible to say certainly, but it may very well have been. He begins, " I am receiving frequent letters from you " ; and, lower down he continues, " As to my Aeneas, if I really had him in a state worthy of your ears, I would gladly send him; but the subject I have taken in hand is so vast, that I feel it was madness to attack so big a work, particularly when I have, as you know, to devote other and more important study to that work." * However, at a later date, Virgil read the second, I Suet. V. Verg. 27 Georgica reverse post Actiacam victoriam Augusto atque Atellae reficiendartim faucium causa commorafiti per tontinuum quadriduum legit, suscipiente Maecenate legendi vicem, quotiens interpellaretur ipse voets offensiom. Pranuntiabat autem cum suavitate turn lenociniis miris. Ncttleship, Ancient Lives, p. 52, calls attention to the fact that the date given here by Suetonius is " merely a general expression." « Suet. op. cit, 31 efflagitabat ut sibi '' de Aeneide"* ut ipsius verba sunt vel prima carminis ifToypai/i vel quodlibet colon mitteretur. » Macr. Sat. i. 24. 1 1 Ipsius enim Maronis epistula, qua compellat Augus/um, ita incipit *' Ego vero frequentes a te litteras accipio'' et infra " de Aenea quidem meo, si mehercle iam dignum auribus haberem tuis, libenter mitterem, sed tanta [v i tantum^ incohata res est ut paene vitio mentis tantum opus ingressus mihi vid^ar, cum praesertim, ut scis, alia quoque studia ad id opus multoque potiora impertiar:' It is suggested that ad id opus may mean *' beside that work." Tacitus KDial. 13) seems to imply that the letters of Augustus to Virgil were extant • neque apud divum Augustum gratia caruit . . . testes Augusti epistolae. Seneca the elder may be referring to Virgil's letters, when he says t^Contrffv. iii. praef. 8), Ciceronem eloquentia sua in earmitiibus destituit, Vergilium ilia felicitas ingenii in oratione soluta reliquit. fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid to Augustus and Octavia. Suetonius records that, when the poet came to the famous passage Tu Marcellus eris, Octavia fainted.^ Finally, it was when travelling with Augustus that Virgil contracted, on a visit to the ruins of Megara, the illness of which he died. It has long been remarked how congenial Virgil found the political changes of Augustus. It was partly because neither hereditary nor personal ties bound him to the old order which Augustus had ended ; and partly that the real gains, which the rule of Augustus meant for the world and for Italy, appealed to the poet. The silence of the forum, which Cicero had found intolerable under Julius, meant nothing to the native of Cisalpine Gaul. " How many were left who had known the republic?" asks Tacitus, when he is explaining the peacefulness of the later period of Augustus* reign.* He refers to Romans. But the republic was little or nothing to Italians, excepting individuals who sought their fortune at Rome. For Cicero nearly the whole of life was bound up with republican constitution and usage; but even he, popular as he was with the Italians, could wake in them no enthusiasm for a government which had meant to them, oppression of every kind. The Senate and people of Rome had treated Italy with contempt and injustice ; they had refused the franchise, and, when it was wrung from them by force of arms, they had in great measure neutralized it by political chicane. The traditions of Sulla were all associated with that senatorial rule which he had laboured to make secure, and they made it the more unpopular ; nor had the careers of " Sulla's men," of Pompey and of Catiline, done anything to abate the ill-will which still attached itself to the name of Sulla. Virgil was no doubt familiar from childhood with the story of the political aspirations of his fellow-country- men, of Sulla and the Senate, and all his national feeling would direct his sympathies away from the fallen republic to the great house which had made Italy one. It must be ^ V, Verg, 32. Marcellus was her son who had died young. * Am»uUs, i. 3. 7* 158 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 159 li I I remembered, too, that Virgil neither had. nor, aPP^re^tly. wished to have, any experience of political hfe-hardly any of active life of whatever kind. For all his interest in Roman history, he had little or no sympathy for republican institutions, for the spectacle of a great people governing itself. The old Roman commonwealth, praised by Polybius and sighed for by Cicero, was a thing foreign to his mind. His own people had been governed for centuries; they had not governed themselves; they had had no share in the inner movement of Roman political life; they had been ruled from without. Consequently the republic, lying quite outside Virgil's experience, touched his imagination but little or not at all. And, again, Virgil's whole nature was on the side ot peace. His ideal was a quiet life unruffled by the storms of political disorder, and, still more, unassailed by the fiercer storms of civil war ; and for a century republican government had meant incessant strife, bloodshed, war, and confiscations— the utter unsettlement of life- tot bella per orbem, tam multas scelerum facies, non ullus aratro dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis ^ (G, I 505)- It was not until the republican party was finally driven out of Italy that the land began to recover itself; nor, until it was crushed throughout the world, that wars ceased and the temple of Janus was closed. In a word, the victory of Augustus meant the restoration of the proper and normal life of man. Augustus Caesar, divi genus, aurea condet secula qui rursus Latio regnata per arva Saturno quondam * (vi. 792). 1 " So many wars throughout the world, $0 many forms of sin ; none of the honour that is its due is left to the plough ; the husbandman is marched away and *^ « - A^tus'Sesar, true child of a god. who shall establish again for Utium a golden age in that very region where Saturn once reigned" (Conington). The original a«r«i secu/a were under Saturn's rule, according to Evander {Aefi, ▼iu. 324). This return of the golden age carried with it the restoration of all that was venerable and worthy in the past. Augustus restored or rebuilt the ancient temples, beside building new ones. " The number, dignity, and allow- ances of the priests he increased, particularly those of the Vestal virgins," says Suetonius ; " some too of the ancient ceremonies, which had gradually fallen into disuse, he reinstituted, as for example the Augurium Salutis, the flaminate of Jupiter, the Lupercal festival [we may add the Arval Brothers]. . . Honour next to that of the immortal gods he paid to the memory of the generals who had found the Roman people's empire small and made it great." ^ Everything that an Emperor could do he did by statute and example to encourage morality and family life. It must be owned that his laws compelling marriage were not very successful, but his severity in dealing with his luckless daughter Julia is evidence that he was in earnest in his resolve that marriage should be respected.* Just as he tried to purge the popular pantheon of alien unauthorized gods, such as Apis,* he purged the Senate of its more un- worthy members — no doubt, including among them some of the Gauls whom Julius had made senators— and he took care to restore to that body its ancient decorum and splendour, but not its old power. Even the dress of his fellow citizens did not escape the Emperor's eye, and in after years he could and did quote, "with indignation and in a loud voice," a great line of Virgil to support his zeal for the toga.* This religious reformation was bound to be superficial « ; it was certainly a piece of studied policy like the more elaborate pretence of " restoring the republic " by permitting the election of magistrates with republican titles. In the » Suet. Aug. 29-31. •See Boissier. L Opposition sous Us Cisars^ pp. 133 ff-» who shrewdly remarks that the Emperor's cold-blooded method of marrying and remarrying her, without reference to her own wishes, to men whom he forced to divorce wives really loved, was hardly calculated to **make a Lucretia of Julia." For the laws, cf. Suet. Aug, 34. ■ Suet. Aug, 93. The Emperor frowned on Judaism, too, among Romans. * Suet Aug. 40 Romanes rerum domincs gentemque togatam. •There was, however, a real revival of religion, which began at this time, but it did not develop along the lines laid down by the Emperor. ';( ;r ■I \\ ,60 VIRGIL long run the one was found to be «^«-*^»y "J^/^J^X of .Jthan the othe. ^'^ ^^^'^^ZS^: t^e. restoration appealed to the imagmai ^^^^^ It was supported by the poet ^°"'^^' r'°\...y „ the of Odes to show that he too would be as happy « Emperor himself to see <>l^- ^^^^'^'S^^^^rZ.orK Virgil, too, was mterested ^^^^/^^^^^l' '"^o^t violet-beds though the solemn utterances of H?--*^^ Z^"' ^3 ^^ the and pier-building, about the restoration o^ ^en^^'- ^ j,„ lex di maritandis ordtnibus, hardly came imo u r as to the antiquary, mere cunos.es ^^ b^^ton^^ ^"""^ rthe%e^'gtrdeu% a^n SSt^eople. with expressed the real granoeur o ^ i^itual kinship, whom he and his day might still feel » ^p^ru v^ If to Augustus this restoration of the past was a po»V2 as his personal friend and as the giver of Pf^" ^ *"» as nis pciaui thought that m him the country, was deepened by the tnougm u presenl was being re-Hnked to the past m a hundred ways, all full of poetic significance and suggestion. We may go further and recognize m Vii^il a cert^n .dm JatTon for the personal character of Augustus-an holding up the falling branch and the °^- ^^^^^.'^^^^^ ,,, Uer mo.c delightful than convinang. Odes u. I7, 27 , ana i4 .^ oJa strain of sup.rstitu,n ,n ^^t^'.-^:^^^^^ «.d refo.n.. body. The °<^-l -J^ f i,^^^^^^^ anyone taking them very seriously Perhaps Augustus thought they would do for his pubhc AUGUSTUS 161 along with their judgements upon the Emperor. It « part of the poet's character to " count nothing human as alien," and it not infrequently happens that the man of reflection finds a peculiar interest in the man of action, of capacity, of achievement— in the man who does things.^ In a world of scattered minds, of minds wasted by diffusion of effort, there is something magnetic in the man who will set before him one definite goal, who will steadily resist, even to the point of seeming insensible to them, the temptations offered by pleasure or by pain to lead him aside, and who at last achieves his goal in virtue of this singleness of aim. Augustus was a man of this type. The famous interview with Cleopatra is the standard illustration of his inflexi- bility ; but his whole life is one long repression of instinct and impulse, and not merely of his own, for he demanded as much of those around him — as his daughter and as Tiberius could testify. A hard, cold man, neither friend- ship nor hostility could distract him from policy. He could be reconciled to Plancus ; he could sacrifice his sister Octavia to Antony. But to his great purpose of ruling and regenerating the Roman Empire he was inexorably faithful. How far self-interest and patriotism conflict or conspire in shaping the purposes of a great ruler, especially of a ruler who has to fight his way to power, it is difficult to estimate in any case. Probably the mere love of personal power, which a vulgar mind feels, is in the case of greater men lifted into a higher region, and becomes a love of achievement, of construction ; and the man who is really fitted to use power enjoys it, not so much for possessing it, as for the opportunity it gives him to accomplish some- thing of broad reference, which could not be done, or could not be done so well, by another. Hence in a character like Augustus — or even Sulla — what in a smaller man we should have to regard as merely selfish has in reality a nobler element. The personal motive is subordinated to » Cf. Prof. Dowden, Shakespeare, His Mind and Art, ch. vi. p. 281 : " Shake- speare's admiration of the great men of action is immense, because he himself was primarily not a man of action." There is of course a school of critics who hold the opposite view — that Shakespeare preferred Richard II. to Henry V. See also Froude's Car ly lis Life in London, 19 February 1838, vol. i. p. 138. II I! 162 VIRGIL wider and more really generous considerations, and, while we have to own that the character is still unlovely, we have to admit a certain nobility. Thus in the case of Augustus Virgil looks to the higher quality of the man, to his rea^ patriotism, to his political wisdom, to his love of peace, and never forgets that, whatever the superficial or even the essential weakness and inadequacy of the Emperors nature, he had in truth sought and achieved peace and regeneration for his country and the Empire.* Virgil finds the colour and movement of human life and the unfolding of human character more moving than the play of political principles. When he contemplates Roman history, he is attracted more by the heroes than by the great forward movement of political thought implied in the growth and progress of the Roman republic. The temper and qualities, which he admires in the hero, are rather those necessary to any stable human society than those required for the self- governing state. Even if he speaks oi populum late regent, it is rather of Rome's government of the conquered that he thinks than of the republican constitution. A well-known simile in the first book will illustrate his mind.* As in a great assembly,* when Discord leaps at a word Suddenly forth, and ignoble crowds with fury are stirred, Firebrands fly, stones volley, the weapons furnished of wrath,— If perad venture among them a Man stand forth in the path Loyal and grave, long honoured for faithful service of years, Seeing his face they are silent, and wait with listening ears : He with his counsel calms their souls, assuages their ire. (A. i. 148-53, Bo wen.) This is not a sympathetic picture of Democracy, though it is fairly true for the last century of the republic ; and, when • Cf. J. R. Green, Stray Studies, p. 283 ; and Picnon, La Lit. rom. p. 399- So Georgii in a Programm (Stuttgart, 1880). cited by Norden. New Jahrbucher fiir das kl. Altertum, vol. vii. p. 250 : •* Augustus wird von Vergil nur verherr- lichl, sofern er die romischen Dinge aus klaglicher Verwirrung gerettet, den Weltfrietlcn begrUndet und das romische Volk ru seinem Bcrufc zurUckgcfdhrt haU" • Cf. Sainte-Beuve, ttvutes sur Virgile, pp. 229-32. • The word is populo^ and it is significant. AUGUSTUS 163 we set beside it the hopeless scene where Latinus consults his people (^4. xi), and the sketch of the typical democratic leader Drances, largus opum, lingua melior, sedttione potens^ (xi. 336-41), a man with some doubtful places in his pedigree, it can hardly be maintained that Virgil's admira- tion for the old Roman character included any regard for the old government. It is the vir pietaU gravis ac meritis whom he prefers— the hero. Poets as a rule are not poli- ticians, and, as they grow old, they often lapse into pre- ferring freedom to be " sober-suited." The author of our only " revolutionary epic " became a Tory prime minister and an earl.* Virgil then found in Augustus a friend, a saviour of his country, and a heroic character. Each of these considera- tions may help us to realize that, however much exaggerated we may think it, his praise of the Emperor is at least the outcome of honest feeling, and is so far legitimate. It remains now to review his references to Augustus in his poety, direct and indirect III Quite early in the Aeneid, in fact in the first utterance of Jupiter, we find the prophecy of Augustus' reign (i. 257). Whether the Julius (288) of Jupiter's speech is Augustus, as many editors think, or Julius the Dictator, as Dr Henry maintains, the immediate allusion to the closing of the temple of Janus clearly refers to Augustus. Venus may be » " LavUh of his wealth, a master with his tongue, powerful in the arts of faction." /o. ^ ^ rr- « See Dowden on Shakespeare's attitude to Democracy {Shakespeare, His Mind and Art, ch. vi. § 3» PP- 319 ff-) ' " It was only after such an immense achievement as that of 1789, such a proof of power as the French Revolution afforded, that moral dignity, the spirit of self-control and self-denial, the heroic devotion of masses of men to ideas and not merely interests, could begin to manifest themselves." See Wordsworth, Prelude, bk. ix. 354-389, on his dis- cussions with Beaupuy in 1793, with the specUcle before their eyes of a people from the depth Of shameful imbecility uprisen, Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked Upon their virtues ; saw, in rudest men, Self-sacrifice the firmest ; &c. 1 64 VIRGIL ' I d li I reassured; for in spite of the hate of Juno, the storms of Aeolus, and the violence of Turnus, Destiny will have its way ; Rome shall go forth conquering, until under Augustus, her last conquest complete, she sheathes the sword. The reign of Augustus is thus the crown and culmination of Roman history, and the two heroes,— Aeneas, sent to Latium to found the race, and Augustus, born to regenerate the race and complete its work,— are brought together from the very beginning of the poem. Nor are they ever long separated. When Aeneas descends to the other world the same revelation is made to himself. He sees the long line of his descendants, and chief among them the often-promised Augustus — Restorer of the age of gold In lands where Saturn ruled of old : O'er Ind and Garamant extreme Shall stretch his boundless reign. Look to that land which lies afar Beyond the path of sun or star. Where Atlas on his shoulder rears The burden of the incumbent spheres, Egypt e'en now and Caspia hear The muttered voice of many a seer. And Nile's seven mouths, disturbed with fear, Their coming conqueror know : Alcides in his savage chase Ne'er travelled o'er so wide a space, What though the brass-hoofed deer he killed, And Erymanthus forest stilled. And Lerna's depth with terror thrilled At twanging of his bow : Nor stretched his conquering march so far Who drove his ivy-harnessed car From Nysa's lofty height, and broke The tiger's spirit 'neath his yoke. And shrink we in this glorious hour From bidding worth assert her power, AUGUSTUS 165 Or can our craven hearts recoil From settling on Ausonian soil ? (vi. 792-807, Conington.) Whatever effect this may have had on Aeneas,— and it is not clear that in the rest of the poem the thought of Augustus recurs so much to him as Anchises here hoped it might, — the passage must have appealed to the Emperor. It set him before mankind at once as the vindicator of Roman majesty throughout the whole world — for even the allusion to Indians was not without an actual historical inspiration— and as the restorer of the golden age. The last fifty lines of the eighth book contain an even more elaborate account of the battle of Actium and of the triumph of Augustus over Antony and Cleopatra, of his temple-building and of the embassies of the nations, all pictured on the shield of Aeneas. Nettleship conjectures that the passage may have been rescued from the epic on Augustus, which Virgil was asked to write, and for which he may have designed this brilliant series of pictures. At all events we forget Aeneas for the moment in the glories of his descendant. These are the great passages which celebrate the Emperor, but we meet allusions to him again and again. Here it is the festival of Actium, here the game of Troy, now the closing of the Temple of Janus, again the Parthian surrender of Crassus* standards, once more the Palatine temple of Apollo, and the death of Marcellus. Even so small a matter as the Trojan ancestry of the Emperor's maternal grandfather is not overlooked, though nothing is said of the Octavii — Atys, genus unde Atii duxere Latini ^ (v. 568). Further detail will not be needed. The poem could hardly carry more of this direct kind of allusion to the Emperor. There is more of it than the modem reader — the non-Latin reader— cares to remember. Yet there are critics who go further still in looking for Augustus in the poem. * " Atys, from whom are descended the Latin Atii." If 166 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 167 It is sometimes said that Aeneas is drawn from the Emperor. Dunlop, cited by Sainte-Beuve, carries the parallel into detail.^ Aeneas has a remarkable filial piety for Anchises, as Augustus for Julius ; * he is compared to Apollo, as Augustus loved to be ; * the descent of the one into hell answers to the other's initiation into the mysteries; the war against Turnus, Latinus, and Amata, reproduces that against Antony, his brother Lucius, and Fulvia ; and Dido is Cleopatra herself. Turnus is Antony, says Dunlop ; Achates is Agrippa ; Lavinia, Livia ; the orator Drances (" oh ! ici je me revoke ") would be Cicero.* " Non, non, encore une fois non, me crie de toutes ses forces ma conscience po^tique," cries Sainte-Beuve, and every one with any poetic conscience at all will agree with him. But is there then no connexion between the characters of Augustus and Aeneas? An illustration (if one is needed) from English literature may help us to a right point of view. Browning was beset with questions by people who wished to know if his poem The Lost Leader referred to Wordsworth — was Wordsworth the Lost Leader? In 1875 he wrote to one of these correspondents the following explanation : " I did in my hasty youth presume to use the great and venerated personality of Wordsworth as a sort of painter's model ; one from which this or the other particular feature may be selected and turned to account ; had I intended more, above all, such a boldness as portraying the entire man, I should not have talked about * handfuls of silver and bits of ribbon.' These never influenced the change of politics in the great poet. . . . But just as in the tapestry on my wall I can recognize figures which have struck out a fancy, on occasion, that though truly enough thus derived, yet * Sainte-Beuve, thtde sur Vtrgiie, p. 63. Merivale, Hist, of Romans under Empire^ yoI. ▼. ch. xli. pp. 107-8, traces a somewhat similar series of parallels, though he owns that *' the opinion that Augustus himself is specially represented by Aeneas cannot be admitted without great reservation " — e.g. Aeneas' omens and tears and betrayal of Dido should be deducted. * Cf. Monument of Anc3rTa, § 2 qui parentetn meum tnteffeceiitnt, eos inexilium expuli tudiciis legitimis ultus eomm facinus. * Sec Patin, La Po4sie latine^ i. p. 64 ; cf. Suetonius, Augustus 7a * I gather from Conington's edition that Dunlop is not alone here. would be preposterous as a copy, so, though I dare not deny the original of my little poem, I altogether refuse to have it considered as the 'very effigies' of such a moral and intellectual superiority." ^ These words of Browning may fairly be applied to the case of Aeneas and Augustus. Virgil was "turning to account" many features which he admired in the character of the Emperor, and the Emperor was " a sort of painter's model," though we must not forget that after all the ideal figure, in which Virgil has embodied so many borrowed features, stands, as his ancestor, in a closer relation to the model than the Lost leader did to Wordsworth. If we go beyond this we shall find it difficult to explain what ad- vantage the Aeneid has over a mere historical poem. A creaking allegory, with a figure drawn from life in the very middle of it, is not likely to have been Virgil's idea of an epic. The poet draws the largest and most heroic figure he can conceive, and even if in some of its traits it resembles Augustus, it is more truly an ideal for the Emperor to follow than a portrait of what he actually is. A somewhat similar reply may be made to the critics who, without adopting the theory of Dunlop in all its wooden- ness, speak nevertheless as if the main purpose, or one of the main purposes, of the Aeneid was to serve as a sort of political pamphlet, " a vindication of monarchy," to quote Dean Merivale.* Olympus and Troy are monarchical ; all the demi-gods and heroes have been kings. " Hence the Romans may submit without dishonour to the sceptre " of Augustus, who " has recovered the kingdom of his ancestors," and whose " legitimate right may be traced to his illustrious ancestors " ; for by the extinction of the house of Ilus, " all its rights and honours, its hopes and aspirations, have reverted to the offspring of the cadet Assaracus." A French critic, who is generally sounder, takes the same line—" Qui dit monarchie, dit 16gitimit^. Virgile allait off^rir, dans xifUide, les parchemins attestant la legitimite de la maison » The Cambridge edition of Browning, p. 164 (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York). t.. , r « • Merivale, op. cit., pp. 104-5, from whom I gather the phrases which foUow. ../• i68 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 169 i: •:l i'N.' ' Julienne."! We may forgive M. Goumy for his epigram, but both he and Dean Merivale seem here to have left poetry for prose of the most commonplace level. To begin, Augustus was not king, and aimed at avoiding any appear- ance of monarchy ; and though Virgil, as we have seen, had no regrets for the old days of the republic, he understood and shared Roman feeling too deeply to flaunt a thoroughly un-Roman ideal. Aeneas is a king, but Augustus stands in the line of Brutus, of Fabius Cunctator, of Scipio, a hero and a saviour. Of course the Aenetd is full of personal rule— so IS the Iliad, which it professes to follow— but personal rule IS with Virgil a means and not an end. He has given us agam and again Augustus' title to rule— his fulfilment of Rome's destiny and his embodiment of the great ideas of the race. Aeneas' claim to Trojan loyalty is not his descent so much as his nature. Descent as a title to sovereignty was German and Oriental, and not Roman till Diocletian's era.* There is a vindication of Augustus, and a great one, runnmg through the Aenetd-, but to suggest that this appeal to ancestry and the monarchical Olympus is Virgil's conception of a defence of his hero is to mistake the values of things fundamentally, and to misrepresent the poet— and perhaps the Emperor, and certainly the Roman people, who were not to be won by such flimsy pleading. And, what is more important, if such a presentment of monarchy was politically futile, it was even more to be condemned from the point of view of poetry. Poets, it is true, have written to support all sorts of things-even to defend capital punish- ment. But Virgil, as we have seen, had deliberately rejected the project of writing an epic about Augustus, and he would probably have felt that to inculcate " royalist " or > Goumy Les Latins, p. 200. One feels M. Goumy must have been thinkimr of the Comte de Chambord and his cousins. Indeed English scholars ha^e n^ always been exempt from the charge of thinking about France and her revolmio^ when they supposed they were writing ancient history. <^voiuuons rn'tW 7!^T' "'^^f^^'K ^' * ^^^^^ *°^^^^' *"*^ °^« * good deal o the fact tijat it could be u^ against the papal theory that all kin^ deriv^ Whether the political value of such poetry has been more or less trifling than Its poetical value, may be questioned. Did Horace do more to promote m^S or Wordsworth to delay the Reform Bill ? marriage "legitimist" opinions in the course of the work he had chosen would have been to go back to an idea which he had rejected as unpoetical. Virgil put too serious a value on poetry to care to spend his genius on a matter so essentially trivial and external. Closely connected with this subject is another question. What was the attitude of Virgil to the deification of Augustus ? In the first Eclogue he announces that Octavian " will ever be a god for him," and that in his honour many a lamb shall stain the altar with its blood. In the beginning of the first Georgic he again speaks of Augustus' deity with much disquisition on the various spheres in which he may hereafter exercise his divine power. What does it all mean ? ^ Far too much stress may be laid on these passages. In the first place, the Eclogue is after all largely symbolic throughout. Virgil was not Tityrus, or at most he was only partially Tityrus; and, however appropriate or in- appropriate the proposal to make a god of Octavian may have been in the mouth of a herd and a freedman, there is so much in the rest of the poem which is manifestly absurd, if applied directly to Virgil, that it is wiser not to take this passage as the indication of any feeling of Virgil's other than gratitude. He was an Epicurean still, and even if gratitude made him write frigid poetry, it could not rob him of his sanity. As to the passage in the first Georgic? it should be compared with the rendering which Catullus made of the Coma Berenices. The elaborate enumera- tion of the realms of heaven, hell, and the sea, with all the accompanying mythological ornament, is a mere piece of Alexandrinism, and means absolutely nothing. Virgil had before him the precedent of Lucretius invoking in Venus a heavenly power in whom he did not believe, and the Epicureanism, which he expresses later on in the book, once more shows that he did not and could not believe in Augustus* godhead. In fact the passage is an experiment, ^ On deification see Plutarch's Life of Romulus 28 — a striking sentence at the end of the discussion shows how philosophic minds could find it natural and reasonable. • Sec Sellar, Virgil, eh. iii. p. 2x7. I'; I- I" I imm ,! I70 VIRGIL AUGUSTUS 171 \ ; I which Virgil was content perhaps to have made, but which he never repeated. Thereafter, when he praised Augustus, it was for his real services to mankind, and his praise is sincere and not unworthy of our respect. Once in the Aenetd Virgil alludes to the deification of a Caesar, but whether it is Julius or Augustus is disputed (i. 28690). He also compares Augustus to Bacchus and to Hercules, both semi-divine conquerors who attained heaven by services to mankind,^ but he does not picture him, as Horace does, " drinking nectar with purple mouth" in their company. The worship of the Emperor was no doubt already prominent though not so much emphasized by the government as it was a generation or two later. It was Greek and Asiatic rather than Roman, more fitted for the Ptolemies than the Julii. If Virgil could have been questioned on his views on the matter, he might probably have leant rather to some such doctrine as Cicero sets forth in his iJream of Sctpio— the future rewarding and glorifica- tion in a higher and more divine region of ail who have served their country. Indeed, if we can draw any safe inference from the vision granted to Aeneas in Hades, Augustus stands on essentially the same footing, and is subjected to the same conditions, as the other patriots there revealed — within and not without the cycle of recurrent life. But as a rule Augustus' glories are of this world, and the poet looks more to his power to benefit mankind by his human activity than to any shadowy apotheosis. To sum up ; Virgil was drawn to Augustus by personal affection, by admiration for his character, and by belief in \ N»'»° fhe apostate flattered himself that he was of the order of Dionysos and Heralcles. I do not now go so far as Vollert in construing this as a claim laid to actual deity. The whole question of the deification of a living emperor, or the incarnation in Julian or Augustus of some divine being, is bound op, I now see, with the Daemon theory, as set forth by Plutarch and Apuleius. In view of the current belief in daemons, scarcely distinguishable from men's souU except that the latter for the moment are possessed of bodies, it is quite easy to see how even a reasonable man could believe an emperor to be an incarnation of some- thing divme. I may perhaps be allowed to refer the reader to TAe Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire, where daemons are discussed at some length. his power and his will to save Italy and the Empire. In his earlier works he used expressions and methods, untrue and unpoetical, which he subsequently discarded. If the introduction of Augustus into the Aeneid must be conceded to be a failure to achieve the highest poetic truth, it was at least prompted by honest motives, and the attention of the reader is uniformly called to the really valid and sound features of the Emperor's work and character. i«a if. I! CHAPTER VIII INTERPRETATION OF LIFE.-l. DIDO Strong and fierce in the heart, Dear, With— more than a will— what seems a power To pounce on my prey, love outbroke here In flame devouring and to devour. Such love has lalx)ured its best and worst To win me a lover ; yet, last as first, I have not quickened his pulse one beat, Fixed a moment's fancy, bitter or sweet : Yet the strong fierce heart's love's labour's due. Utterly lost, was—you I— Brow ning. OVID tells US that no part of the Aeneid was so popular as the episode of Dido.i Though he makes this statement in self-defence we may well believe him m view of the abiding attraction of the story. Macrobius says that for centuries painters, sculptors, and workers in embroidery had turned to Dido, as if it were the only subject in which beauty was to be found, while the very actors had never ceased to tell her sorrows in dance and song 2 Augustine himself confesses that he wept to read of Dido and "how she slew herself for love," and he links her story with zpstus umbra Creusae} And to-day there are still those who maintain that "what touch of human interest the Aeneid can claim it gains from the romance of Dido." « That Dido has ruined the character of Aeneas with nine-tenths of his readers is the admission of one of Virgil's most sympathetic critics, who proceeds to ask the pertinent question whether the poet failed to see what his readers have seen, and why, if he saw it, he used the story as he did.^ Some » Ovid, Tristia, ii. 533. « Macrobius, Sat, v. 17. 5-6 tanquam unico argumtfUo decons, » Augustme, Conf. i. 13. 21. * Bernard Bosanquet, History of Aesthetic, p. 88. • J.^ R. Green, Stray Studies : the essay on Aeneas is one of the best trctt- DIDO 173 explanation is necessary if we are to understand the Aeneid as a whole. We need not here discuss at length the possibility of Dido being another name for the goddess known in other lands as Ashtoreth, Semiramis, and Aphrodite, though this identification would give us an attractive explanation of the original connexion of the names of Dido and Aeneas. It is enough at present to refer to the lost Punic War of the old Roman poet Naevius, a work "as delightful as Myro's sculpture."^ It had appealed to Ennius, it charmed Cicero, and Virgil borrowed from it. So at least Macrobius tells us. " In the beginning of the Aeneid a tempest is described ; Venus complains to Jove of the perils of her son, and is assured of the prosperity of his future. This whole passage is taken from Naevius — from the first book of the Punic War:' * It is generally conjectured that the poem went on to tell of the meeting of Dido and Aeneas and of the queen's unhappy love . If this be so, we have no longer to explain how Virgil came to introduce Carthage and Dido into his story, for they were in the story already. The question is rather why he retained the episode, for it was not unchallenged. Tertullian, the most brilliant of early Christian writers, was a Carthaginian, and three times over he alludes to Dido having preferred the pyre to marriage.* Macrobius says that everybody (universitas) knew the tale to be false; it was well known that Dido laid hands on herself to save her fair name— though, he adds, every one prefers the version of Virgil. The interpolator of Servius adds something more disconcerting still. He quotes Varro to ments of the character I have seen. I quote his pages from the first edition, 1876. Cf. also VVarde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Rofnan People (191 1) p. 416. **If for us the character of Aeneas suffers by his desertion of Dido, that is simply because the poet, seized with intense pity for the injured queen, seems for once, like his own hero, to have forgotten his mission in the poem." » Cicero, Brutus ^ 19. 75 bellum Punicum quasi Myronis opus delectat, * Macrobius, Saturftalia^ vi. 2. 31. • Apology 50 ; ad martyras 4 ; ad Natt, i. 18. \ »74 VIRGIL I the effect that it was Anna, and not Dido, who immolated herself for love of Aeneas.* And in the generation after Virgil, Velleius Paterculus wrote that "sixty-five years before Rome was founded, the Tyrian Elissa, whom some people call Dido, founded Carthage." « Thus here as else- where Virgil had considerable freedom of choice as to the turn he might prefer to give to the legend. If the conjecture as to Naevius be right, the tale of Dido and Aeneas formed in his poem a background to the Punic war. But with Virgil it is the other way ; the historical is the background of the legendary. He finds legend and history already linked, and he accepts them in their existing connexion, but he brings them into far closer contact. Dido and Aeneas formed a mere episode m the poem of Naevius. The Punic war is no episode at all in the Aeneid, and yet it underlies the whole narrative of the meeting and parting of the founder of Rome and the foundress of Carthage. We are not explicitly told of it but we feel again and again, tingling and burning through our tale of love and hate, memories of the conflict of the two nations. If the Aenetd was to be the epic of the Roman people, as the Romans recognized it to be, that great struggle could not be forgotten. From the' very begmnmg, and before the beginning, Carthage was the enemy of Rome, and the simple Annals of Naevius gave Virgil his opportunity for a more splendid and imaginative treatment of that rivalry, on the issue to which had turned the destiny of his people. For it is in virtue of the imaginative element that the old fable rises into poetry. Without it, however quaint it -l^'^r'"' VirgilsepischtTechnik,^. 1,3,0. I, suggests that it nuy be merely a co^ecture of Varro's to reconcile the discrepant stories of Dido. Macr. Sat, t. 16. 6 ; Servius, ad Aen, ir. 682 ; Veil. Pat i. 6. The cool phrase quam quidam Dido autumant may expUin the remarkable judgement of Ilr; ^^°7P»«iy^'?^-thRabirius, theauthorofahistoriJpo^monthe and QumtUuin x. 1. 90 classes him with Pedo as nan indigni cognitione, u vacef -a discouraging quahhcation. It is thought that some 67 hexameters on the Eg^tian war found m a papyrus roll at Herculaneum, may belong to the epic l^M sT ''' """"'^ ""^ " * moderately gifted poet" Sihana, Jm. DIDO 17s might be, it would be foolish, an impertinence in a serious work. But the poet transforms his hero and heroine into representatives, each embodying and expressing the genius of a race. The Punic wars are now no longer the result of hatred accidentally produced, but the inevitable outcome of the clash of two national tempers. Historically, Rome and Carthage fought for Sicily and the command of the sea— a struggle of greed with greed, some might say, but that is an inadequate way of judging history. Rather it is that the nations, seeking the realization and fulfilment of the life within them, came into conflict inevitably,^ and brought into it so many armies and fleets, no doubt, but also ideas and principles. Providence, we have heard, is on the side of the biggest battalions, and perhaps it is true ; for the biggest^^^att^Hons naturall y grav itate to the side of the larger ideals. In the Punic wars these were unques- \ tionably on the Roman side. Two great types of national thinking are in conflict — the Oriental and the Western character meet, and bring with them all that they imply, ideals of state and government, of citizenship, of law and thought. And when Virgil draws us Aeneas and Dido he gives us back this identical conflict. But beside the main issue there enter into every great struggle other issues, which complicate it and make decision difficult, and men from right motives take the wrong side. It is this confusion of issues that lies at the heart of all Tragedy, — the conflict of good with good, the division of the spirit against itself* Put the question as directly as man can, the answer will never be a plain Yes or No. But if the case is brought before us, not on the large and more nearly abstract scale, where nations are involved, but on a smaller stage, where the representatives of the ideas in conflict are individual men and women ; if the principles they maintain are entangled in all the reactions of personality upon personality, and we have to hold firmly to the thread, * This adverb is open to criticism, but I think the conflict of Rome and Carthage, in view of the position of things in the Mediterranean and the commercial theories of the age, was inevitable. • See Mr A. C. Bradley on Hegel's theory of Tragedy, in his Oxford Lectures pn Poetry^ an essay to which I owe a great deal. I 176 VIRGIL m which study of the final issue alone can give us, and to disregard for the while every appeal of sympathy and instinct, the task of judgement is immeasurably more difficult. For us to-day the issue between Carthage and Rome is so far away as to be relatively simple. If the poet chose to present it to us in a purely symbolic form, we might decide it easily, but we might not be greatly interested in it If Dido and Aeneas were merely figures in an allegory, probably no one would ever have wept over Dido extinctam ferroque extrema secutam. ^ " Abstract Ideas," says Carlyle, " however they may put on fleshly garments, are a class of character whom we cannot sympathize with or delight in." * We must have flesh and blood if we are to be moved as well as interested. Let hero and heroine represent types of national character, but they must still be individual, personal, human. Then the poet will touch us indeed, for in the persons of two creatures of our own nature he will let us see the same sort of warfare as too often occupies ourselves to this day, dividing brother from brother, and wrenching the same heart asunder, as love and duty pull different ways. If there is anything gained by using more technical language, the poet must show us the universal in the particular. Virgil took his theme from Naevius, if we are right in following conjecture. But in all probability his treatment of it was very different, for he had other models beside the old annalist. He had before him the tragic poets of the great age of Greece, and the Alexandrines, his own earlier allegiance, — in particular Euripides and Apollonius, both of whom it is clear that he studied with care and affection. Greek tragedy had delighted to show the conflict of character with character, and from the first had depicted with sympathy the play of passion and principle upon feminine nature. But when we come to Euripides we find that a great many of his plays deal with woman primarily, and only secondarily with man. Hecuba, Andromache, and Alcestis * Sec p. 56, n. 4. • Essay on Werner, DIDO 17; \\ are pictures of woman as wife and mother, but the poet did not stop there. In Phaedra an altogether new note in poetry is struck, for one of the main motives of the Hippolytus is the struggle of the heroine to resist passion. Love has been added to the domain of poetry, never to be lost again. Euripides was essentially a pioneer ; and those who followed him into this region were many, especially when, by the Macedonian conquest of the world, the thoughts of men were turned from the state to the individual. The love-tale in one lorm or other is one of the main constituents of Alexandrine poetry, sometimes overlaid with masses of irrelevant learning and cleverness, some- times, though less often, clear of all irrelevance, strong, direct, and true, as in Theocritus* Simaetha.^ From Euripides and the Alexandrines the love motive found its way into Latin poetry, and in Virgil's day it had perhaps more vogue than ever before or after in the history of Latin literature. Parthenius, for example, the teacher of Virgil, made a handbook of love-tales for another pupil, Gallus ; and however little or much influence Parthenius may have had on Virgil, Virgil was closely connected with Gallus and read his poetry, if indeed the two young poets had not for a while a sort of literary partnership.^ He also steeped himself in Catullus, whose story of Ariadne deserted by Theseus, and whose Attis he must have read with care. Ovid's Letters of the Heroines published perhaps a few years after Virgil's death, are an indication of the taste of the period before and after their appearance, a proof of the absorbing interest in pictures of passion. Virgil was too closely in touch with the great literature of the past and with the life of his time not to feel the attrac- tion of this particular study of human nature. It was essentially cognate to his peculiar gift of tenderness and sympathy, and we can almost trace the growth of his interest * Erwin Rohde in his book, Der griechische Roman^ has given a comprehen- sive and minute survey of the Alexandrine hterature concerned with love. See Part L ■ See the interesting essay of Mr J. W. Mackail on the Virgilian circle in his Lectures on Poetry, IS 178 VIRGIL DIDO 179 II i III 1 I in it. But perhaps nowhere can the sanity of Virgil's genius be more clearly remarked than here. Nothing will seduce him from the universal. The peculiar, the exaggerated, the pathological case alike repel him. The unbalanced and abnormal mind shocks and disgusts him, and he will not waste his mind upon it. He may use it at times as a foil, but no words are needed to show his entire acceptance of the words of Catullus at the end of the Attis — Procul a mea tuos sit furor omnis, era, dome; alios age incitatos, alios age rabidos.^ Every line he writes is a tacit protest. The lovers in the Eclogues are delightful and amiable young men, but we hardly think that they are really very much in love. When we come to the story of Orpheus we are tempted to believe that we have a more serious record of human experience, and yet a closer study of metre and language raises a doubt, which it is hard to lay. All is so stately, so musical, so picturesque. Take the very central words of the story, Eurydice*s farewell — Ilia " quis et me " inquit " miseram et te perdidit, Orpheu, quis tantus furor } en iterum crudelia retro fata vocant, conditque natantia lumina somnus. lamque vale : feror ingenti circumdata nocte invalidasque tibi tendens, heu non tua, palmas " * {G. iv. 494). The passage is beautiful, but does not its structure suggest meditation rather than emotion, painting rather than expe- rience? The first sentence with its double quis and its tantus ; the third with its rare and sleepy rhythm, far more effectively used elsewhere to describe in the third person sleep overcoming Palinurus ; * are they not a little studied ? But the last sentence is surely conclusive. Five thoughts clustering about one verb, and above all the parenthesis heu non tua, speak only too clearly of the distance between » «* Far from my house by all thy madness, goddess ; othen driTC thou head- long, other drive in frenzy." • For translation see p. 38. • A. V. 856 cunctanii^ue nataniia lumina solvit. utterance and realization. Emotion does not express itself in periods so involved, least of all in the moment of suffering. Do you see this ? Look on her, look, her lips, Look there, look there ! So cries the dying Lear. There is a moving simplicity in those lines of quiet despair which Catullus wrote at his brother's grave, in such passages as the address of Mezentius to his horse* and his dying request to Aeneas,* which speaks straight from the heart to the heart. The sentences are short, direct, and rapid ; they do not suggest skill ; but they throb with feeling and truth. In short, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is not a genuine transcript of passion, nor an imaginative present- ment of it* It is more like a masque of the Triumph of Music. Its nearest analogue is the Ariadne of Catullus, which also is somewhat disconnectedly set in the middle of another poem. But when we reach Dido we come into touch with the most serious mind of the poet. Here is-real passion, drawn with all the power and truth that the poet could put into his work. II One preliminary question has to be asked before we begin to study the tragedy of Dido, for here, as in the Hippolytus, we have a prologue, but a more difficult one. Whatever we make of Aphrodite in the play of Euripides, whether we suppose the poet to be directing a covert and ingenious attack on the Olympian gods,* or hold that he is figuring " a force of Nature or a Spirit working in the » A, X. 861 Rhaebe, diu, res si qua diu mortalibus ulla est, \ viximus. • A. X. 900-6. » After eight or ten years I let the passage stond as I wrote it, but while I do so, I should like to suggest that what my words might seem to deny is also true- that with the art there is still feeling in the passage of the fourth Georgic. None the less the fourth Aeneid sUnds on a far higher plane of truth to feeling. «*'Serait-il t^meraire de pr^tendre qu'Euripide, qui, tout en usant, comme poete, des croyances de sa patrie et de son temps, ne s'interdisait pas de t^moigner qu'elles r^pugnaient i sa raison, a voulu, lorsqu'il les a ainsi pr6sent6es aux regards dans toute leur nudit^, protester indircctement contre ellcs ? " Patin, Euripide, i. p. 44* :> tSo VIRGIL world," 1 a fact real enough, however hateful — whatever our conclusion about her, the language and the purpose of the goddess are alike clear. She announces her intention to punish Hippolytus for his neglect of her, and to use Phaedra as her instrument. She quite well realizes that this will mean Phaedra's undoing, but she does not care.* Seeing he hath offended, I this day Shall smite Hippolytus . . . And she, not in dishonour, yet shall die. I would not rate this woman's pain so high As not to pay mine haters in full fee That vengeance that shall make all well with me, Virgil's prologue, if the word may be used, is in two parts. We have in the first book the interview of Venus and Cupid, and the later dialogue of Venus and Juno in the fourth book. As a result of Juno's storm, Aeneas has been driven ashore close to the town, which of all places was to be most hostile to him and his race. His mother in alarm intercedes with Jupiter, and Mercury is sent to soften the hearts of the Carthaginians— especially the queen's — towards the newcomers.* Accordingly when Dido and Aeneas meet, it is in perfect amity and courtesy. But Venus is not yet at ease. She does not like the double- tongued Tyrians; and the thought comes to her again and again that her son is in the very stronghold of the foe, and practically at the mercy of Juno.. She resolves to storm the enemy's citadel, and to detach Dido from the schemes and influence of her patron-goddess by making her fall in love with Aeneas. Then, at least. Dido will do him no harm, and he will come away safely. Dido's fame or feelings she does not consider. She is only afraid ^ Mr Murray in notes to his translation, which I quote in the text. ■ "A 3' elt ifi' iiixdfyrrjKCj rifJMfyfyTOfiax 'lxir6\vT0P iv rp3' ^/xep^* (21 ) ^ 5' ti>K\€^i fJXPy dW 6fis ^6f>oin i/iol BLktjv roaavT-nw 6r et fulchro veniem in corpore virtm {A. v. 344). DIDO 183 For Aeneas, we are told, is like a god in countenance and shoulders, OS humerosque deo similis {A, i. 589). When Charon takes Aeneas into his craft, the size of the hero is emphasized in contrast to the craziness of the boat {A, vi. 413). But more striking is an allusion in the tenth book. It is a battle-scene. Aeneas pursues a foe, who stumbles in his flight. One moment of consciousness is left him, and he realizes a great shadow falling across him, and instantly he dies by the hand of Aeneas.^ ^ Perhaps in this connexion it may be permissible to find a feminine trait in Dido's pleasure in the gifts which Aeneas ^ brings her— the mantle of gold embroidery, the veil, the beaded necklace, and the circlet of gold, '-^' Dido has imagination. She can understand this great, tall, and rather melancholy hero better than many of his readers have done. My story being done. She gave me for my pains a world of sighs : She lov'd me for the dangers I had passed. To this Dido was helped by her own story. Non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco * {A. i. 630). For, in many particulars, the experience of both has been the same. She has left a lost husband, as he a lost wife, in a native land never to be seen again. She has been "tossed by the fates," and the wars of Africa, terra triumphis dives {A, iv. 37), Quem congressus agit campo, lapsumque superstam ^ immolaty ingentique umbra tegit {A. x. 540). The Ttfft€S reviewer (16 December 1904) suggests that this is letting '* literary instinct take the bit in its teeth." adding that "such over-subtle interpretation as this is to be deprecated with any great artist." He may very well be nght, but I leave the passage and quote the criticism—not the only one which I have found of value to me in the review-and suggest that the reader decides the point for himself. * *• Full well I know evil and learn to succour the unhappy." m. It Ii ii m 1 84 VIRGIL DIDO 185 have taught her what the long Trojan war meant. She too has sought a city. She has ruled, and she knows instinctively the ruler of men. She loves children. If she takes Ascanius to her heart taken by his likeness to his father— genitoris imagine capta (A, iv. 84), it is hardly too much to say that the child helped to win her for the father. The elaborate substitution of Cupid is really needless. Even before the god in disguise begins his work we are told that she is moved alike by the child and by the gifts— pariter puero donisque movetur (A, i. 714). She watches the boy with eyes and heart open, and takes nim to her bosom — Haec oculis, haec pectore toto haeret et interdum gremio fovet (A. i. 717). But she is herself childless, and she feels it When she learns of the Trojan preparations to sail, and challenges Aeneas with them, before his coldness wakes her rage, the last cry from her heart is that of the childless woman Had she only a little Aeneas to play in her hall, to recall his look ! Aeneas has a child, she has none.* Saltem siqua mihi de te suscepta fuisset ante fugam suboles, si quis mihi parvulus aula luderet Aeneas, qui te tamen ore referret non equidem omnino capta ac deserta viderer* (A. iv. 327). She js^childless ^d a widow —and what a story she has to remember! It is the marrmg-cTheTTrfe: ^ In t^^ back- rh\^T ^^^* '' "r^"^"^ ^^ ^^^ exclaimed, on hearing of the birth of the child, aften^ards James I : " The Queen of Scots U the mother of a fair son and I am a Urren stock." The diminutive par^u/us should be remarked T'b I think, the only one in Virgil's works-the only deUberate diminutive.' in whi;:h the form has its force ; and it is very significant J.l\^''\^ ^"' ^""f ^°^ °^'P""^ °^ y^" *^^°'^ y°«' fl»g>»^ were there bat some tiny Aeneas to play m my hall, and remind me of you, though but in look I should not then feel utterly captive and forlorn ^ (ConingtoL) ' ground of all her thoughts is the murder of her husband, Sychaeus, by Pygmalion, her brother. Heedless of her love in his greed of power and gold, he made his sister a widow. This may have been the legend, but the poet divined what it meant to a sensitive being — the crushing of natural instincts ; a wound dealt to the spirit, where it would be most felt; the killing of human love. Virgil's methods are not Hawthorne's, or he might have analysed the effects of such a blow upon character and nature, in the disordering of the natural courses of feeling, the accentuation of tendencies to extravagance and hysteria, the pathological susceptibility to be overcome by passion and emotion. These features of her disposition are not set out and catalogued, bist they are there, and they make themselves felt in the progress of the story. Dido is a queen, and a great queen. W ithout going_into the ancient history of the word, the Romans of Virgil's day had learnt in Egypt the meaning of regina.^ It has been suggested that Dido has been drawn from Cleopatra, but this is absurd, though Virgil may well have borrowed suggestion. He is not writing a historical epic, and he looks beyond the actual. Still, Cleopatra had revealed one side of feminine nature to the Romans, which, in spite of Clytaemnestra, antiquity had not known. Medea in Euri- pides is an injured and angry wife; Deianira is injured and forgiving. In Phaedra the queen, a queen-consort at most, is sunk in the woman. Ariadne is a forsaken girl. But Dido is a queen and always a queen. Her greatness and her fall hang together. The key-note is to be caught throughout — dux femina facti* (^. i. 364). Her magnificence is a queen's — urbem quam statuo vestra est^ {A, i. 573). The dowry she brings to Aeneas is a people, an empire; ' A, viii. 696 regina in mediis patrio vocat agmina ststro ; Horace, OdeSf i. 37 • The Englishman in Elisabeth's reign saw the meaning of this phrase. • "The dty I found— is yours." ^ \ lit ■J 'J • i86 VIRGIL the sneer may be Juno's, the generous act is Dido's.^ And when she dies, she dies a queen and the founder of a nation;* and in Hades itself she retains her queenly dignity.* IV One of the most obviously impossible things to explain is why any two people fall in love with each other ; and even if in the case of Dido and Aeneas we refer to the plotting of rival goddesses we are not much enlightened. D ido's love be£[an in svnr^pflthy fnr r.n^ whn'iR Iftt had b^^" """^ likf her own. It was helped forward bv her fondness for his chil d. His story, we are told and we can well believe it, was not without its effect; and in the imperceptible way in which these things happen the queen fc.l in love with her guest. From the first we can see it will go ill with her. Despite their splendour and charm, those gifts, which Aeneas has brought from the ships, are not all of happy omen. The robe of stiff gold embroidery and the veil had ^been Leda's once, and then Helen's — Ornatus Argivae Helenae, quos ilia Mycenis Pergama cum peteret inconcessosque hymenaeos extulerat*(^. i. 650). Their story was not a good one. They came from a family of bad women.^ They had already seen broken wedlock and all the ruin and suffering it brought. The later gift of the sword was scarcely happier.* * A, iv. loi — Ccmmunem hunc ergo populum paHbusqut regamus auspiciis ; liceat Phrygio servire marito dotalisque tttae Tyrios pemiittere dtxtre is haunted by breams . Dr Henry suggests that they are visions of her husband Sychaeus, in view of Anna's pointed allusion to the Manes of the dead.^ It will be remembered that dreams of Sychaeus had influenced her before in her flight from Tyre.^ She hasJ> ad dreams, and yet — w ho is this strange guest ? What a man he is ! What a countenance he has and what aframe ! No doubt, a child of gods. And what a life he has lived ! All this hints at passion, and the hint is immediately confirmed by her reference to her long-fixed resolve never again to marry. But for that, she "might have yielded to this one reproach. Anna— for I will own the truth — since the fate of Sychaeus, my hapless husband, he and he alone has touched my heart, and shaken my resolve till it totters. I_/ecognize the traces of the flame I knew of old ." The truth is out, and she realizes that there has been a weakening in her purpose. And here the poet is true to experience, for she instantly fortifies her wavering resolution with a curse, an appeal to her honour (Jmdor\ and an invocation of her old love — and bursts into tears. It is now that Anna comes into the story. The sister of the heroine is a familiar figure in Greek tragedy. Ismene, in the play of Sophocles, takes a lower and less reflective view of duty than Antigone, and is quite unable to grasp what it is that moves her sister to action. So here Anna represents a more commonplace type of mind. She is shrewd enough. Probably long before Dido got so far as Anna fatebor enim Anna had summed up the situation, and by the time the curse and the tears ended the speech she knew quite well what her own line would be. Anna is a woman of the common-sense school, not at all of an imaginative habit. To prove this, it is only » Henry, Aencidea, ii. p. 558, on A. iv. 9. ■ A, i. 353. Mi II Ml i88 VIRGIL necessary to anticipate by a little the moment when Dido has resolved to kill herself. Of such an outcome Anna never dreams for an instant — nee tantos mente furores concipit aut graviora timet quam morte Sychaei (iv. 501). "I think," wrote Fox, "the coarsest thing in the whole book (not, indeed, in point of indecency, but in want of sentiment) is verse 502. She thought she would take it as she did the last time is surely vulgar and coarse to the last degree." 1 Dr Henry warmly apostrophizes " Mr Fox " in an almost Montanist outburst upon second marriages in general, and ardently repels the suggestion that Virgil is coarse or deficient in sentiment. But whether Fox imagined or not that the view which he condemned as coarse was VirgiPs own, the criticism is entirely just, if it is directed upon Anna. It is Anna's view, and it is "coarse" and " wanting in sentiment." But it is hardly more so than her first speech to Dido on the subject of her new passion. It is a most significant utterance. Why, she asks, should Dido forgo the pleasures of husband and children? She has remained unmarried so far out of loyalty to Sychaeus. Id cinerem aut manes credis curare sepultos ? * (iv. 34). Sychaeus, like Frederick Prince of Wales in the old rhyme — Was alive and is dead ; There's no more to be said. Anna asks herself why Dido has never married again, and the only reason of which she can conceive—the only reason that could weigh with herself— is that she had not so far wished to do it. But if she wishes to now, why should she not? larbas and the Africans— she might well (shall we say }) mislike them for their complexion ; but Aeneas is a hero of another colour ; and if Dido cares to marry him placitone etiam pugnabis amori ? ^ (iv. 38). » Letter to Wakefield, in Russell's Memoirs of Fox, toI. iv. p. 426, cited by Henry ad loc. • " Think you that ashes and a ghost in a grave heed this ?" • '* Will you contend even with a love that is to your liking? *' DIDO 189 Anna is a Cyrenaic in her philosophy, and inclination is her guide in life. She proceeds to fortify her advice by a number of political considerations — nee venit in mentem quorum consederis arvis ? * (iv. 39). Gaetulians, Numidians, Barcaeans and Tyrians are all threatening Dido, and only to be overcome by the aid of Aeneas. But the real reason is still transparent Tu lacrimis evicta meis, says Dido later on, when she has realized her mistake.^ Ti (refJLvo/JivOeig *, ov Xoytav ^ixr^ixovuiv Set 'h>s race m the new land; and when he sleeps, he sees his fathers face troubled (turbida, iv. 353)-no longer his "solace m every care and chance " — omnis curae casusque levamen (iii. 709)» but an object of fear-he cannot look him in the eyes iterret iv. 353). He thinks of his son, of the wrong he does ihe child who also had shared the wanderings, and for whom the bright future overseas must mean more (iv ^54. 355). And all this makes the frantic passion of the queen less and less tolerable. Yet she too has a hold upon him ; he feels for her (iv. 332, 395)- The turning-point is reached when Mercury appears to Aeneas, and, faithful to the instructions of Jupiter, asks him the questions he has been asking himself— " He, he, the Sire, enthroned on high, Whose nod strikes awe thrpugh earth and sky, He sends me down, and bids me bear His mandate through the bounding air. What make you here ? what cherished scheme Tempts you in Libyan land to dream ? If zeal no more your soul inflame To labour for your own fair fame, Let young Ascanius claim your care : Regard the promise of your heir, To whom, by warranty of fate The Italian crown, the Roman state, Of right are owing." Hermes said. And e*en in speaking passed and fled.^ I A. iv. 268-76, Conington. I DIDO 19s HeaveiVsJlJBandate " takes, as it frequently does, the form onTquestion, the a'rticulate expression of what the mind has been shaping to itself. To such questions the answer is always ready. Heu quid agat ? What is he to do ? Aeneas has not been told to leave Carthage. If Jupiter uttered his wish in one word, naviget^ it was to Mercury, and Mercury did not repeat it. Aeneas will sail. On that he is clear enough, but how is he to do it ? How is he to broach it to the queen, who is even now only on the border-line of sanity — reginam furentem? This task he postpones, and Dido does it for him. The successive utterances of Dido from this point to the end are not to be translated, and here a bare summary must suffice. She at once charges Aeneas with the inten- tion of leaving her. Her love goes for nothing. It is winter;^ he is not even homeward bound; he seeks an unknown shore — and yet he leaves her. By everything that can move him, by everything she has been to him, she pleads for his pity. Her neighbours hate her on his account. Her good name has been sacrificed for him — te propter eundem extinctus pud or. His going means death to her. If only she had a child to recall his face, ^parvulus Aeneas^ she would not be so utterly lost.* Aeneas replies, and his answer is for the student one of some difficulty thrbugh its alternations of feeling and coldness. He admits what Dido has done for him, yet his phrase jars upon the ear ; he will never forget her — nee me meminisse pigebit Elissae. " But to come to the matter in hand " — pro re pauca loquar — he had not thought of stealing from her land, though he had never meant to stay there. Then in a strong outburst of truth * We might almost hate divined this from the beautiful song of lopas, A, i. 7 44 f. « iv. 305-30. S\ 196 VIRGIL I H II II m he tells her that, if fate allowed him to choose his life to please himself, first and foremost would he set the city of Troy, all that was left of his people— a new Troy should rise. But he is compelled by the gods to seek Italy. Let her think what Carthage has been to her, a new town as it is and on an unknown shore, and she would wonder no more at his seeking a strange land. He tells her of his dreams of his father, of his thoughts of his son, of his vision of Mercury. Let her not set herself and him on fire with words of passioa He has no choice. Italiam non sponte sequor.* The response of Dido is a wild outbreak of fury, in marked contrast to the delicacy and kindliness of her welcome of Aeneas in the first book, but after all nothing new or strange in her much-wronged and disordered heart. It has not shown itself markedly till now, but we realize at last that there is some touch of the Oriental in Dido, and we recognize that we have had hints of it before. Venus felt it— quippe domum timet ambiguam* (i. 661), but we have better evidence in the tale which Ilioneus tells. He had been attacked by the Carthaginians on the shore, and his ships were in danger of being burnt ; shipwrecked mariners, they were forbidden " the hospitality of the sand " (i. 522-41). In the graciousness of Dido's reply, we do not notice that she admits her own responsibility for this outrage on humanity — Res dura et regni novitas me talia cogunt moliri et late fines custode tueri « (i. 562). The savage element in her nature lies dormant during the early part of Aeneas' stay, but we have seen signs of its waking, and now it is not only awake but entirely master of her. Her eyes roll in fury, and she speaks in taunt and curse. 1 iv. 331-61. ■ *' She fears the two-faced generation." • "It is the stress of danger and the infancy of my kingdom that make me put this policy in motion and protect my frontiers with a guard all about." We may recall how Venus put a cloud about Aeneas on his way to the city (A. i. 4"). I'f DIDO 197 Goddess- born ! not he ! he is not even human ! Have her tears cost him a sigh ? Look at his hard, cold eyes — have they wept? Has he pitied her? She had pitied him, a shipwrecked beggar on her shore. So the gods send him to Italy ! And here Dido shows that, for all her supersti- tion, a hedonist is apt to be Epicurean. She has appealed to Juno and Jupiter, but now — Scilicet is superis labor est, ea cura quietos sollicitat (iv. 379).^ Let him go, if he likes, and hunt a kingdom through the waves — and be wrecked — if there is such a thing as divine justice and if it has so much power — siquid pia numina possunt* She will have vengeance.* She flings herself away, and leaves him "hesitating and fearing and thinking of a thousand things to say." * He can do nothing but push on his preparations, openly now. Dido's mood changes as she watches from her palace, and she sends Anna to entreat, but not now for the coniugium of her former hopes, not for the abandonment of his quest of Latium — with a dash of bitterness she calls it " beauti- ful Latium " ; she only asks time, empty time, a breathing- space to give her madness rest and room, till fortune teach her grief submission. But Aeneas will be entangled no more. His tears flow as he listens to Anna, but they flow in vain, his mind is unshaken — mens immota manet* {A, iv. 449). Despair achieves Dido's descent into insanity. She sees awful sights, and tells no one, not even her sister. The screech of the owl becomes an omen. All her Oriental * ** Aye, of course, that is the employment of the powers above, those the cares that break their rest ■* (Conington). * Does Virgil mean to recall Aeneas' words, i. 603 ? * A. iv. 362-87. * A. iv. 390 linquens multa metu cunctanttm et multa parantem dicere. * I am glad to think that Dr Henry holds the lacHmae volvuntur inanes to refer to Aeneas, though Conington dissents. 198 VIRGIL DIDO 199 I ■ n I I I I superstition is quickened, and her bad dreams become more frequent and terrifying. In her sleep Aeneas with unpitying face Still hounds her in a nightly chase ; And still companionless she seems To tread the wilderness of dreams, And vainly still her Tyrians seek Through desert regions, ah, how bleak ! ^ She resolves to kill herself, and with the cunning of mad- ness deceives her sister into making the preparations she requires by talking of magic. Anna's unemotional sanity fails, naturally enough, to divine her sister's feelings in the least. It will, she expects, be no worse than when Sychaeus was killed.* All is made ready, as Dido bids, and in the silence of night her trouble wakes again. What is left open to her? To trust herself to Aeneas and go with him ? Trust human gratitude, the gratitude of the race of Laomedon? Better to die, since she has not kept faith with Sychaeus.' Meanwhile all is ready on the Trojan fleet. Aeneas, resolved upon departure, is asleep on the poop of his ship, when Mercury again appears — this time in a dream — and tells him how things stand. Dido is resolved to die, but before she dies she will have vengeance; by morning the harbour will be a scene of flame and wreckage. Let him be up and going. " A thing of moods and fancies is woman." * And with these words the god is gone. Aeneas leaps up, calls his men and cuts his cable; his fleet is off" and away; and for him the story of Dido is ended — save for surmise and pain.^ With the first gleam of dawn Dido is at her outlook and sees the harbour empty, and in her uncontrolled outburst of rage she shows how well founded was the warning of * Virgil is thought to have had in mind some lines of Ennius : Annals, I firagm. xxxii. iVa so/a \ postilla^ germana soror, errare videhar \ tardaque vestigan §t quatrere te neque posse \ corde captssere ; b*c. ap. Cicero, de div. i. 20. 40. ^A. iv. 450-503. ^A. iv. 521-53. * Varium et mutabile semper femina, A. iv. 569. *A, v. 5-7. the dream. She begins with a scream of fury at his escape — can they not overtake him? Out with their oars and firebrands, down to the water with the ships! Then the queen in her asserts itself; her practical genius is aghast at her madness — Quid loquor ? aut ubi sum ? quae mentem insania mutat ? O ! that way madness lies ; let me shun that ; No more of that. " Poor Dido ! " she says in quieter strain, " now dost thou feel thy wickedness? That had graced thee then, when thou gavest away thy sceptre." ^ But the very thought of what she had given to Aeneas wakes madness once more, and her momentary self-control is gone ; she falls a-cursing, unpacks her heart with words. Murder is her thought — could she not have murdered him — his men — Ascanius — or, better, have killed the boy, and, like Thyestes, given him to his father to eat? Suppose there had been a battle? There might have been danger? What danger, when she meant to die, would die ? She pauses, and a change comes over her mood. When she speaks, it is in a quieter tone, and she utters the last great curse, the curse that embroils Roman and Carthaginian for ever. Eye of the world, majestic Sun, Who see'st whate'er on earth is done, Thou, Juno, too, interpreter And witness of this heart's wild stir, And Hecate, tremendous power. In cross-ways howled at midnight hour. Avenging fiends, and gods of death Who breathe in dying Dido's breath, * Surely Henry and Mackail are right in taking the/a^/a impta to be Dido's own. Henry cites Euripides, Medea, 796 Tjudprayov T6d\ ijvLK' i^eXifiwavov 66novs xoTpyoi/j, and Hippolytus, 1072 rbm arcvdl^eiv Kai TpoyivuxTKCLV ixpVVy 5"^' tls varpi^av AXoxov ippl^eip frXi;?, and for the tangunt the most dramatic line of the Hippolytus (310). Is the cause of Phaedra's sorrow, asks the nurse, her stepson ? , *Itt6Xvtoi' ; *AI. of/xot. TP. eirf^dv^i. aedep roSe ; These plays were very carefully studied by Virgil, and their evidence confirms the interpretation, if confirmation is needed. \ ' 200 VIRGIL m. Stoop your great powers to ills that plead To heaven, and my petition heed. If needs must be that wretch abhorred Attain the port and float to land ; If such the will of heaven's high lord, And so the fated order stand ; 615 Scourged by a savage enemy. An exile from his son's embrace^ So let him sue for aid, and see His people slain before his face ; Nor, when to humbling peace at length He stoops, be his or life or land, But let him fall in manhood's strength And lie unburied on the sand. This last of prayers to heaven I pour, This last I pray, and pray no more. And, Tyrians, you through time to come His seed with deathless hatred chase : Be that your gift to Dido*s tomb : No love, no league, 'twixt race and racp. Rise from my ashes, scourge of crime. Born to pursue the Dardan horde. To-day, to-morrow, through all time, Oft as our hands can wield the sword : Fight shore with shore, fight sea with sea, Fight all that are or e'er shall be ! ^ The preparations she had ordered have been made ; all is ready and she is ready. "Fluttered and fierce in her awful purpose, with bloodshot restless gaze, and spots on her quivering cheeks burning through the pallor of approaching death, she bursts into the inner courts of the house and mounts in madness the high funeral pyre." On it lay the bed — lectumque iugalem quo peril (A. iv. 496) — » J. iv. 607-27, Conington, but with an alteration or two. The reader will remember the anecdote that Charles I., drawing for a sars Vergiliana^ lit on the lines 615 f. — at bello attdacis populi vexaius etannis^ &c. DIDO 201 the dress of Aeneas, an image of him,^ and his sword, begged of him as a keepsake, but for no such use as now it finds. She drew it from its sheath, and pressed her bosom to the bed. " Sweet relics of a time of love. When fate and heaven were kind, Receive my life-blood, and remove These torments of the mind. My life is lived, and I have played The part that fortune gave, And now I pass, a queenly shade, Majestic to the grave. A glorious city I have built, Have seen my walls ascend. Chastised for blood of husband spilt, A brother, yet no friend. Blest lot ! yet lacked one blessing more, That Troy had never touched my shore." Then, as she kissed the darling bed, ** To die ! and unrevenged ! " she said, " Yet let me die : thus, thus I go Rejoicing to the shades below. Let the false Dardan feel the blaze That burns me pouring on his gaze. And bear along, to cheer his way, The funeral presage of to-day." * These are the last words of Dido. We need not linger to listen to Anna's lament, or to watch the slow death- struggle with its strange ending, suggested by the story of Death and Alcestis.* The story is told. St Augustine wept over Dido quia se occidit ob amorem)^ she killed * This to deceive Anna, perhaps. The use of an image in magic is familitir. Cf. Theocritus, ii. 28, and Virg. E. 8. 80. • A» iv. 651-62. Conington 's version. There are weaknesses in this translation, but in what translation of the passage are there not ? I am more and more conscious of my own inability to render Virgil. * The cutting of the lock of hair, done by Death in the case of Alcestis (Eurip. Ale. 74), is managed in Dido's by Iris, A, iv. 704. • Con/, i. 13. 20. i'i 202 I I VIRGIL herself for love, and let us end with that. Love for Aeneas after all has mastered her madness, and her hatred, and it is the dominant note in her death. VI Whereupon all the friendly moralists Drew this conclusion : chirped, each beard to each : " Manifold are thy shapings, Providence ! Many a hopeless matter gods arrange. What we expected never came to pass : What we did not expect gods brought to bear ; So have things gone, this whole experience through I " Thus Browning and Euripides tell us that the Chorus of the play will not pluck out for us the heart of the poet's mystery, but that if it is to be done we must do it for ourselves. Virgil seems to be of their opinion ; at any rate he gives us no Chorus and very little comment. What docs he mean ? We have the story of an entanglement, which results in the woman's death, while the man apparently escapes scot- free. Dido is drawn with such truth and interest by the poet, that she has enlisted the sympathies of all readers. Of whatever mistakes she is guilty, whatever the flaws of her character, she is a great woman. There is nothing incredible in her story — it happens every day — and our sympathies go with her, right or wrong. Our sympathies — but our judgement ? If the view here put forward has been true to Virgil's mind, we shall have to own that our judge- ment must reluctantly be given against her— but in the same spirit as it is given against Oedipus or King Lear. Like the ideal tragic hero of Aristotle, she falls from a height of greatness, and "the disaster that wrecks her life may be traced not to deliberate wickedness, but to some great error or frailty." ^ Her ruin is due to a failure of will. Accident throws Aeneas in her way, he becomes *Aristot Poet, xiii. 3 ; Butcher's essays, pp. 311 £ DIDO 203 to her a temptation, and she sacrifices her sense of right to her inclination. So much perhaps may be agreed, but we have to deal with the part of Aeneas in the tragedy. There is a declension from ideals in his case also, which may be judged from various standpoints with very different con- clusions. It is quite clear that he goes wrong in two ways, first, by staying in Carthage when his duty was to push on to Italy; and then by agreeing to the proposals made by Dido in her weakness. To-day readers will lay more stress on the second of these points, but at the time, when the Aeneid was written, probably the former would seem the more serious. We must remember that at that period marriage and love were terms which did not suggest each other. The connexion between them to-day seems so natural and in- evitable that it is hard to realize the ancient point of view. We are taught to admire Penelope for refusing the suitors, but it is not suggested that we should feel the least surprise at the relations of Odysseus with Circe and Calypso. Out- side the plays of Euripides — the " woman-hater " — it is hard to recall in ancient literature a case of love between man and woman parallel to that of Hector and Andromache. The Roman feeling is sufficiently revealed by the difficulty felt by Catullus in expressing his love for Lesbia. He wishes to describe a love pure of all selfish elements, and he says that he loved her, not as man would love a mistress, but as a father would his sons and sons-in-law.^ This extraordinary comparison indicates plainly enough the distance between the ancient and modern attitude. Hence faithfulness in a husband and chastity in a man were neither expected nor particularly admired. No one thought less of Julius because of his relations with Cleopatra, except in so far as he was under her influence.^ Roman opinion would not condemn Aeneas for a lapse — if lapse * Catullus, 72. 3, 4 Dilexi (contrast the verb with amare) turn U non tantuni ui vulgus amicam^ ud paier %U gnaios diligit et generos. " Cf. the letter of Antony, Suet. Aug. 69 : and the story of Titus»and Berenice, Suet. 7V/KJ, 7. 'X 11 204 VIRGIL DIDO 205 I . I It were 1— far less conspicuous than those of his great descendant And yet the same story comes differently from Suetonius and from Virgil. What is quite unnoticed in the common- place prose of the one makes the most painful impression when it comes in the poem of the other. Whether the poet felt as his readers feel to-day may be questioned.* He would perhaps not have been so much shocked at such an episode in the life of a contemporary, but it is almost inconceivable that he did not see how it would jar in the setting of his poetry. But whatever he thought or felt, he has at least made clear to his readers the real significance of such action. The character of Aeneas, as conceived by Virgil, is a background against which such conduct is seen for what it is— it becomes something very like sin. It is the reader, not Aeneas, who realizes this. And in his portrayal of Dido, too, the poet broke fresh ground. Nee me meminisse pigebit Elissae, says Aeneas (iv. 335), and Dido's reply is to kill herself with his sword. Can a thing be right, or even only slightly wrong, which makes such a painful contrast with the ideal of manhood and which costs so much to woman ? We are told often enough that literature has nothing to do with morality. In a sense this is true. The poet and the artist are concerned with reality, and have no business to preach; but if their work is true, it has inevitably, like all life, morality implied in itself. It may be true that no one has abstained from evil because of the story of Dido and Aeneas, but it is probably as true. » I should have thought it needless to explain that the words " if lapse it were " were designed to represent Roman opinion, not my own ; but, as a rVviewer in a ixpikit "'"'' """^'^^ ^'^ "^^"^"« ^"^' '^ '^ p^^haps J :zx Asc )•. \ AENEAS 209 himself and to everybody. Virgil has a right to require us to make some attempt to discover this. \ •• I < ; I CHAPl'ER IX THE INTERPRETATION OF LIFE— 2. AENEAS Ducimus autem hos quoque felices, qui ferre incommoda vitae nee iactare iugum vita didiccre magistra.— Juvenal, xiii. 20. CHARLES JAMES FOX, writing to his friend Trotter, speaks of the Aenetd thus : « Though the detached parts of the Aeneid appear to me to be equal to anything, the story and characters appear more faulty every time I read it. My chief objection (I mean that to the character of Aeneas) is of course not so much felt in the three first books ; but afterwards he is always either insipid or odious; sometimes excites interest against him, and never for him." The student of Virgil may turn to Dr Henry's tremendous vindication of the phrase Sum plus Aeneas (l 381), to which Fox takes especial exception, and if Dr Henry does not satisfy him, he can read Marlowe's Dtdo Queen of Carthage ; and from the Elizabethan Aeneas let him go back to Virgil's hero, and consider whether after all he is not at once more natural, more manly, and more attractive.^ But Fox's criticism is one to which it is probable that a large number of Virgil's readers will subscribe, and we are forced to ask ourselves whether it is just; whether it is possible that Virgil's highest conception of manhood is really so worthless.^ Or even if we suppose Fox to use the words " insipid " and " odious " with something of the exaggeration of Jane Austen's beaux, must we confess that Aeneas is still fundamentally a failure? By lightly accepting such a judgement we should probably lose something which the poet felt intensely to be vital to * Henry, Aeneidea^ i. 647 ff. I Probably no one has ever read Homer and Virgil without remarking the broad gulf between their two heroes. Every one recognizes at once the intense and true humanity of Achilles. There is no doubt that he is a real man, and, as is usual with the creations of a great poet, we like our kind better because Homer has shown us Achilles. We are reconciled to life and death, and have something of Ben Ezra's feeling — " Thanks that I was a man." Aeneas is not the natural man. He represents a stage at once beyond and behind that of Achilles. He has seen a great deal more of life» he has felt the lifting of a great purpose, he is part of a larger world. He is at once an older man than Achilles and the child of a later age of mankind. In the interval between the fall of Troy and his arrival in Italy he has seen many more cities than Odysseus saw and learnt the minds of many more men, and these many minds have confused him. He is a dreamer, and where Achilles looked straight before him, Aeneas " thinks of many things," ^ and amongst them there are some which remain for him unresolved mysteries. He has a mission ; he is a pilgrim ; he knows that heaven has a purpose for him. Ego poscor Olympo^ is deeply imprinted in his consciousness, but the inner meaning of the call of Olympus he has not reached. Achilles, like the rest of us, has to face the problems of life, but for him there are no such riddles as this which confuses Aeneas. For though Aeneas can explain to others where he is^ going and that it is the will of the gods, he does not seem able to make it clear to himself. He knows that he is to seek Italy, but in spite of his abundance of revelations he is outside the counsel of the gods. He needs from time to time the hand of heaven to push him forward. His quest is not a spiritual or inward necessity to him. Crete, Epirus, * A. vi. 332 ; cf. iv. 390. • A, viii. 533. i « 1»-' ■0 I'i If' I ' n I ||i! t- 2IO VIRGIL Sicily, or even Carthage would have satisfied himself. That he was not to rest till he reached Italy was no part of his conviction. The Pilgrim Fathers knew why the Mayflower crossed the Atlantic, and they knew what they meant to find at or near Plymouth Rock— or some other rock; the place was immaterial, but the impulse which drove them westward they felt, no doubt, to come from heaven, and they understood it. They might not see all that would follow, but they had that priceless gift which their descen- dants have never lost for long — a conviction of a future, which would be the necessary spiritual outcome of their principles. This Aeneas had not consciously, and though Virgil clearly means that the Roman Empire is the outcome of character of the type of his hero's, this want of clearness and conviction tends to mar a fine conception. Would he, for instance, so soon have yielded to Dido if Italy had been a spiritual necessity ? But this, of course, it could not be, for there was nothing as yet that it could suggest to him. Italy was a region, it was not an idea.^ Then again, we do not see the whole of Aeneas. It was not the Roman character to show feeling, nor would it perhaps have been natural for a man, schooled by so long a course of affliction, to lay bare his heart. In any case Aeneas does not often do it We see him in despair for a moment in the storm, but never again does he betray such weakness. He feels other people's sorrows keenly enough, but they do not throw him off his balance. Once, in the parting with Dido, feeling seems to surge up and demand expression, but it is instantly repressed — Desine meque tuis incendere teque querellis* {A, iv. 360). The word incendere shows his thought. Dido's words must rouse passion ; and passion, he feels, helps nothing forward, and he dreads it. This to the modern reader is one of the weaknesses in the character of Aeneas — there seems to be no passion there. It has been stamped out, or so nearly ^ The faint talcs that his remote ancestors came from Italy are of little conse- quence. They are in A. iii. 94-6 ; 163-8. ■ '* Cease thou to set me on fire, to set thyself on fire with these regrets." AENEAS 211 stamped out as to rob him of almost all that play of mood and feeling which is one of the essentially human things. Half his humanity is lost by his self-suppression, for it is so effectually done that we do not realize that there was any struggle within him. And a great part of the value of a man to us is our realizing, without his telling us, that he is victor in such a struggle.^ The result of Aeneas' subjection to heaven, and his conse- quent suppression of feeling (so far as his experience left any capacity for feeling which might need to be suppressed), is that he has lost the air of life. He has not enough freedom of will There are indeed such people to be met with in the world, but they rarely interest us.^ To sum up, Achilles satisfies us, because at every point we feel that he is a man ; he thinks, he feels, he suffers as a man ; and his experience, deep and intense as it is, is the common lot of humanity, felt and interpreted by a poet. Aeneas does not so readily satisfy us, for his experience, though not improbable, indeed though highly probable and often enough actually true, is not entirely interpreted to us. There remains something unintelligible about him. The character of Aeneas then is so far a failure,^ for want of completeness and conviction, but a failure which threw into the shade every poetic success between Euripides and Dante ; a failure which opened for poetry for all time a door into a new world, which brought under poetry's survey great conceptions, unthought and almost unfelt before, of man the agent of heaven, attempting and achieving acts small in themselves but of incredible consequence for man- kind ; of a divine purpose and providence, in the least as in the largest things, working through individual suffering the general good ; and of something like a mutual intelligibility • Nay, when the fight b^ins within himself A man 's worth something, says Browning's Blougram. • And yet after ten years more of life— I will not attempt autobiography, but Aeneas seems a more intelligible and sympathetic character. Years ago, I remember Mr R. A. Neil, of Pembroke College, suggesting that Virgil was no author for a healthy boy. • I do not like to say this ; I hope the reader will not press the word. '1 ^1 .^Mj^ UfelJ m ii li i ! 1 1 t 1 « i : I 212 VIRGIL of man and God, a community of purpose, perhaps even a spiritual unity. These things are not indeed worked out adequately in the Aeneid, but they are suggested or implied. The poet has caught sight of them and is quickened by the sight, but at times it comes over him that he may be deceived. Hence there is a wavering and an uncertainty about the whole poem, a feeling of pain and suspense — aut videt aut vidisse putat per nubila ^ {A, vi. 454). Aeneas is not at all a hero of the type of Achilles, and if we come to the Aeneid with preconceived opinions of what the hero of an epic should be, we run the risk of disappoint- ment and also of losing Virgil's judgement upon human life. Virgil obviously did not intend to make a copy of Homer's Achilles or of any of Homer's heroes. That was a feat to be left to Quintus of Smyrna. If, as it is, there is an air of anachronism about Virgil's Aeneas, there would have been a far profounder anachronism about him if in the age of Augustus he had been a real Homeric hero. The world, as we have seen, had moved far since Homer's day. Plato's repudiation of Homer meant that a new outlook and new principles were needed in view of new conditions of life and the new thoughts which they waked. In its turn the impulse, with which we connect the literature of Athens, and such names as Euripides, Plato, and Aristotle, was itself spent, though not before it had made an imperishable contribution to the growth of mankind. The world was awaiting another fresh impulse, and, till this should come, it was occupied in analysing, co-ordinating, and developing its existing stock of ideas, not without some consciousness that they were already inadequate. It was at this moment that Virgil wrote, and as he was a poet rather than a mere scholar or antiquary, he sought to bring his Aeneas into connexion with his own age, while, if possible, still keeping him a Homeric hero. It was hardly to be done. If Aeneas as the ideal hero was to be " heir of all the ages," it would be difficult to keep the simplicity of Homer's outlook and philosophy. Aeneas could not stand ^ *' He sees— or else he thinks he saw — through the mist" AENEAS 213 in Achilles' relation to men. He must have new virtues which had been discovered since Homer's day, if he was to be a hero near the hearts of Virgil's contemporaries — ^the new private virtues which Menander and Cleanthes and many more were finding out, and the new political virtues which Alexander and the Ptolemies, Julius and Augustus, were revealing to the world. Aeneas, again, could not stand in Achilles' relation to heaven. The gods no longer came among men in bodily form, they were far away ; and yet perhaps they were not so very far away after all — deum namque ire per omnes.^ This is another reason why Aeneas does not appeal to us as Achilles does. The fusion of the Homeric and the modern types is not complete. VirgiPs Aeneas is two heroes in one, perhaps more, for beside the Homeric hero and the modern hero one feels sometimes that we have another creature, which is not a hero at all, but an idea,* an allegory of a virtue, and a political virtue at that, partially incarnated. It is true, of course, that Virgil did not put the last touches to his poem ; but it is not clear that, even if he had, the character of Aeneas could have been given the final and convincing unity. To understand the character and the poem of which it is the centre, it will be helpful to analyse the various elements in Aeneas. In this process we shall necessarily lose our consciousness of what we have felt to be the great defect of the hero, his want of unity, and we shall probably gain a clearer notion of what the poet intended. ii; II First of all, there is Aeneas conceived as a Homeric hero. Aeneas has of course the heroic manner, in measure, but not quite the manner of Homeric heroes, a more magnificent, * G, iv. 221, "for God pervades all.'* * Goethe's word. He told Eckerinann (Oct. 29, 1823) *' You must do some degree of violence to yourself to get out of the idea." \\ i i 214 VIRGIL a more courtly manner. He has the wealth of the Homeric hero, and his habit of giving splendid presents and receiving them. At times, Virgil would have us think, he feels the same wild delight in battle which we find in Homer's heroes. " Lie there now, terrible one ! No mother's love shall lay thee in the sod, or place thy limbs beneath thine heavy ancestral tomb. To birds of prey shalt thou be left, or borne down in the eddying water, where hungry fish shall suck thy wounds." ^ This is what Virgil remembers to have read in the /had; he blends what Odysseus says to Socus with the words of Achilles to Lycaon.* But the club has not been wrested from Hercules;^ the words are still Homer's ; they do not belong to Aeneas. Again, the reservation of eight captured youths to be sacrificed to the Manes of Pallas * can be defended by the Homeric parallel of Achilles slaying Trojans over the pyre of Patroclus * and by more awful contemporary parallels, but still it is not con- vincing. Augustus may have ordered or performed a human sacrifice;® but when Virgil transfers this to Aeneas, the reader feels the justice of Aristotle's paradox : " there is no reason why some events that have actually happened should not conform to the law of the probable and possible."' This may have been an actual event, but it is not " probable " here. But perhaps the most incongruous Homeric touch in Virgil's story of Aeneas is the beautifying of the hero by his mother to enable him unconsciously to win Dido, That Aeneas is " like a god in face and shoulders " we can well believe ; but the addition of the " purple light of youth " ® to a man of years, " long tossed on land and sea," worn to grandeur by war and travel, is surely a triumph of imitation over imagination. * A. X. 557 (Mackail). ■ //. xi. 452, and xxi. 122. • Cf. the saying of Virgil in the Lt/e by Suetonius, c. 46 ; and Macrobius, Sa/umah'a, v. 3, 16. Cf. p. 59. * xi. 81 vinxerat et post terga manuSy gttos mitteret umbris \ infericLs^ caeso sparsurtts san^ine Jlammas ; cf. x. 5i7-2a » //. xxiii. 22-3. In 11. 175-6 Dr Leaf finds a "moral condemnation «f the act" by the poet possible, though not inevitable, in the Greek— xeurd W 0pe(r2 \ky\h€To fpya. • Suet. Aug. 1$. » Paefus, ix. 9. * A. I 588. AENEAS 215 This perhaps will be best realized if we consider for a moment the passage, or passages, in the Odyssey which Virgil had in mind. Twice Athene changes the aspect of Odysseus. First, at his meeting with Nausicaa, the goddess, after his bath, "made him greater and more mighty to behold, and from his head caused deep curling locks to flow, like the hyacinth flower . . . Then to the shore of the sea went Odysseus apart, and sat down, glowing in beauty and grace, and the princess marvelled at him." ^ And very naturally, for she was a young girl, and the goddess knew it, and made her appeal to the imagination in a true and natural way. Again, when Odysseus makes himself known to his wife, the poet uses the very words, and the simile that follows them, once again. Penelope " sat down over against Odysseus in the light of the fire. Now he was standing by the tall pillar, looking down and waiting to know if perchance his noble wife would speak to him when her eyes beheld him. But she sat long in silence, and amazement came upon her soul, and now she would look upon him steadfastly with her eyes, and now again she knew him not." Odysseus with- draws, and bathes, and comes back, and " Athene shed great beauty from his head downwards, and [made him] greater and more mighty to behold, and from his head caused deep curling locks to flow, like the hyacinth flower." ^ Once more it is an appeal to the imagination. Penelope has still a final test to make before she will be sure, but in her mind she sees her husband as he was twenty years before, young, strong and tall, as she had always pictured him during the long years of his absence. Homer is justified. But is Virgil justified ? People tell us that youth and beauty are not without their appeal to women in middle life or toward it, but the reader can hardly think of Dido as Venus would seem to have done. She was not Nausicaa. Nor can the poet claim Homer's plea in the second case, for Aeneas and Dido had never met before.^ In fact, it is a » Odyssey vi. 229 f. * Odyssey, xxiii. 156. » It may be objected that Teucer had told Dido of Aeneas long before {A, i. 619, a point made by Heinze, Veriils epische Technik, p. 119), and that there was a picture of Aeneas in Dido's temple {A. i. 488). H will hardly be maintained that it can have been a photographic likeness. ! ^1 I !ii \m I'Vlfj • I II 2l6 VIRGIL piece of imitation, dull and unconvincing, as nearly all the purely Homeric touches are in the character and the story of Aeneas.i III Vit^iPs Aeneas implies a new relation to heaven. While the whole question of Olympus and the gods will have to be reserved for separate treatment at more length, it will be convenient to anticipate a few points of importance. Greek thinkers had moved, and brought mankind with them, beyond the Olympus of Homer. Men no longer might expect to Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. There was a gain, however, in their loss, for it was a deepening consciousness of the real character of the Divine nature that carried men away from Olympus to look for divinity in a higher region. The divine was more remote, but it was more divine. It had less contact with humanity,' but it was freer from the weaknesses and the vices of humanity. It was perhaps less interested in the individual, but it might exercise a wider and a firmer power over the universe. The Homeric gods, in accordance with epic usage, had to watch over Aeneas, but they were gods in whom no one really believed. Hence Virgil handles them with a caution that excludes warmth. Though Aeneas is favoured with one theophany after another, and is for the while re-assured by them, he is not on such easy terms with the gods as was Achilles. He sees them less frequently, and his relations are more formal. In fact, the complete rejection of the Honieric pantheon by educated people in favour of eastern religion or Greek philosophy was too strong for the poet* Yet Virgil is far from refusing the idea of some divine * Sainte-Beauve has some excellent criticism on this episode of the bcautifica- tion. Etude sur VirgiU^ 274-6. « Cf. Sainte-Beauve, Etude sur Virgile, p. 276: "Avcc lui (Virgil) on est d^j4 dans la mythologie ; arcc Hom^re on etait dans la religion." AENEAS 217 government of the world. Some of the philosophers had rejected the Homeric theology, just because it did not sufficiently relate the world to the gods. They traced the world's origin back to divine intelligence ; they re- cognized the diviner element in man's nature, his power of remembering and re-discovering the divine " ideas " ; and they leant to a belief in the moral government of the universe. With the gradual direction of philosophy to individual life, men came to believe in a personal concern of heaven with the individual man. If Fate is hard and unrelenting, it has recognized the individual, and on the whole the individual may accept it without resentment. Hence Cleanthes bade Fate lead him in the destined way and he would be fearless, though, as he reminded himself meanwhile, there was no question about his following.* Man is thus entirely dependent upon the divine, and of this Aeneas is always conscious. It was, however, a con- sciousness never before presented in poetry, and Virgil, in loyalty to the traditions of the epic, endeavoured to present it by the means of the old, incredible Homeric gods. This was indeed to pour new wine into old bottles, with the inevitable result. This idea of Destiny, perhaps of Providence, is the dominant one in Virgil, and it is one of the things in which he is furthest from Homer. Destiny, as M. Boissier remarks, has its place in Homer. His heroes often know well that they are doomed to fall, but as a rule they forget it and act as if they had not the knowledge. The action is only now and again darkened by the shadow of Fate, but in general we have the free development of the individual's story, as he carelessly abandons himself to the fever of life, and forgets the menaces of the future in the interests of the present.* The same idea is well developed by M. Girard in his * A70U hk fji & ZeO Kal av y rj TleTpufjJyri 8toi Tod' vfjup el/jii diaTerayfiivos' uii €\ff0fjuii y doKvoi' Ijv di /it) 6t\uf KaKbs yewfxeifos oi)5^v ^vy€iv Pporov oxtS viraXi^ai, lOjULCP, ije TO) eS^oy ope^o/mev tje T19 ^/jliv.^ The Greek and the Trojan heroes in the /had recognize Destiny well enough, but they make up their own minds, and are ready to accept the consequences. They survey the world for themselves, look facts well in the face, and then shape their own courses. If the gods intervene, these calculations may be upset, it is true, but this is accident after all. Aeneas, on the contrary, is entirely in the hands of heaven, and for guidance keeps his eyes fixed on superior powers. He resigns himself to Providence as a willing, if not entirely intelligent, agent. Wherever his great quest is concerned, he is a man of prayer, anxiously waiting for a sign from heaven, which never fails him. It is the attitude of the Roman general taking the auspices. Haud equidem sine mente, reor, sine numine divom adsumus et portus de/ait intramus amicos ^ (A,v. 56). So says Aeneas, when wind and storm drive him out of his course, and land him at his father's grave in Sicily. Delati is the whole story of his voyage in one word — an involuntary quest, perpetually over-ruled by. a somewhat unintelligible divine will, but with a happy result. The hero, like a Christian saint, has surrendered his own will, though not with the same restfulness of mind.' * Girard, Le Sentiment rtUgieux en Grke^ pp. 705 ; Arnold, Chi Translating Homer ^ p. 18 ; Iliad xii. 310-28. *' But now a thousand fates of death stand over us, which mortal man may not flee from nor avoid ; then let us on, and give a glory, or obtain it ourselves" (Purves). ■ ** Not in truth, I deem, without the thought or the will of the gods are we here, driven as we are into a friendly haven." Ve.irs add beauty to such a couplet • TotoOi»Tes 7^/) rh d^\ij/xa toO XpiffTov evp-qaofitv Avdiravffiy is a Christian saying of the second century. It is in the homily known as Second Clement, 6, 7. Aeneas then is the chosen vessel of Destiny from first to last^-falo proftigus'y'^ he is guided by fate throughout all his wanderings — Nate dea, quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur ; quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est (A. v. 709)» says one of his captains.* He so entirely subordinates himself to Fate, and, in spite of Virgil's showing him to us "this way and that dividing the swift mind," he so fre- quently looks to divine intervention rather than to re- flection and resolution, that the reader feels that life is after all made plain to him even if it is not easy, and that his pilgrimage is tedious rather than dark or perplexing. It was a Roman conviction that Rome was under the special care of heaven — a belief which great Roman generals extended to cover their own personal fortunes. " It was not by numbers," says Cicero, "that we overcame the Spaniards, nor by our strength the Gauls, the Carthaginians by our cunning, or the Greeks by our arts, nor lastly was it by that sense, which is the peculiar and natural gift of this race and land, that we overcame the Italians themselves and the Latins ; but by piety (Jfietas) and by regard for the divine {religio\ and by this sole wisdom — our recog- nition that all things are ruled and directed by the will of the immortal gods — by these things we have overcome all races and peoples." ^ As this utterance is from a speech, we may take it to represent the belief rather of Cicero's audience than of himself, and this assumption is confirmed by similar language addressed to the Romans by Horace.* Probably Virgil shared this popular feeling more than either Cicero or Horace could, and consistently with his habit of showing the future in the past, the spiritual sequence of events from * A. i. 2, "an exilr* of destiny." * *' Goddess-born whither Fate draws us, onward or backward, let us follow ; come what may, every chance must be overcome by bearing it." * Cicero, de Harusp. Resp. 9. 19. Cf. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman people y pp. 249 ff., with notes. * Dis te minorem qiiod geris itnperas^ and other utterances of the kind. 220 VIRGIL principles, he endows Aeneas with this thoroughly Roman attitude towards the gods. Aeneas, the founder of the race, like all his most eminent descendants, holds the belief that his country — for he calls Italy his patria — is beloved and chosen of heaven; like them, he subordinates himself to heaven's purpose for his country, and, on every occasion, seeks to learn at once, and in the directest possible way, what is the will of the gods ; and, once more like them, he finds that heaven never fails Rome. One or two questions naturally rise at this point We may ask whether this Roman view, that Rome is the supreme thing for which Providence should care, is a true one ; but there is another inquiry which bears more closely upon Aeneas. Has he any real conviction that the gods care for him ? They care for Rome — that is evident enough — and for Aeneas as the destined founder of Rome. But do they care for the man as apart from the agent ? ^ Does he feel that they care for him ? On the whole, the answer is fairly clear. No one could well be more loyal than Aeneas to the bidding of heaven, but his loyalty gives him little joy. He is a man who has known affliction, who has seen the gods in person destroying what he had loved above all things — his native city;* who has been driven, and expects to be driven, over land and sea by these same gods to a goal foreign to his hopes and affections. He realizes that in the end some advantage will accrue to his people, or their descendants, from all that he undergoes, and he is willing to work for them. Sorrow, it will be seen, has not cramped him, but rather has broadened and deepened his nature. He lives for others; and because he is told that the planting of Rome will be a blessing to his people, he makes Rome " his love and his country " — hie amor, haec patria est {A, iv. 346). If his comrades grow weary, and despair, he has words of hope and cheerfulness for them. But for himself? For * Cicero*s Stoic said they did. Cf. de natura dtorum ii. 65, 164. * A. ii. 608 f., 622. AENEAS 221 himself, he only expects the repetition of the past. There is little comfort, little hope for himself. Even his goddess- mother seems to think as much of the ultimate Augustus as of her son. Does any one, God or man, think about Aeneas and his happiness } His thoughts are ever of wars behind him and wars before him ; and he hates war. He has nothing to which to look forward, and only too much to which to look back. Et nimium meminisse necesse est^ {A, vi. 514). Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem* {A, ii. 3). And with these thoughts he is perhaps the most solitary figure in literature. Virgil is true here to human experience, for with his story of pain, and with a doubt at his heart, Aeneas could hardly be other than he is. He can never forget the story he tells to Dido.' The poet has seized the meaning of the fall of Troy, and interpreted it in this quiet, wounded, self-obliter- ating man. If Virgil's hand shakes here and there, his picture, as he saw it in his mind, is true. Underneath the trappings of the Homeric hero is the warrior-sage, who has sounded human sorrow, and who, though he cannot solve the riddle, will not believe that all is vanity and a striving after wind. Virgil is anticipating a later age, and Aeneas resembles more closely the character of Marcus Aurelius than any other in classical history. " Such was his calm that neither sorrow nor joy changed his expression, devoted as he was to the Stoic philosophy."* This face of impassive calm * " But too good cause is there to remember." ■ "Too cruel to be told, O queen, is the sorrow you bid me revive.** * Aeneas' words to Dido, Aen, iv. 340, give the keynote of bis character. me si fata meis paterentur dacere vitam atispiciis et spcnte mea cotnponere curaSf urbem Troianam primuin dulcisque meorunt reliquiae colerem^ Priami tecia alta manerent et recidiva manu posuissem Pergama victis, sed nunc Italiamt etc. * EreU enim ipse^ says his biographer of Marcus, tantae tranquillitatis ut vultum nunquam mutaverit maerore vel gaudiOy philosophicu deditus Stoicae. Hist, Aug. M. Anton. 16. Cf. ille lovis nionitis immota tenebat lumina {A. iv. 331). It should be borne in mind that Aeneas* eyes were nztUT&Wy /aciies {A. viii. 310). f II 222 VIRGIL was the index of the mind within, unsatisfied in its deepest longings for an explanation of life, yet resolved to endure without satisfaction and with the slightest of hope to work on toward an impossible goal.^ It implied a conscious- ness of the inadequacy of all conceptions of the divine yet achieved. Virgil, Suetonius says, meant on finishing the Aeneid to give himself to philosophy. Of himself, as of his hero, the words are true — per mare magnum Italiam sequimur fugientem et volvimur undis* {A, v. 628). IV We have now to consider Aeneas as influenced by the long study of man which marks the centuries between Pisistratus and Augustus. We must begin by setting aside the elements in his character which are mere external imi- tations of Homer, and also the episode of Dido, which has not perhaps in the Aeneid its proper psychological effect on the mind of Aeneas.^ Few epithets have been more misconstrued than the untranslatable piusj which Virgil has associated with the ' Cf. Lecky, European Morals i. 249-255 on Marcus Aurelios and his solitade. •'Seldom," he says, "has such active and unrelaxing virtue been united with so little enthusiasm and been cheered by so little illusion of success." " " Over a vast sea we follow a flying Italy and arc tossed with the waves." Cf. nos adbeaios vela mUtimus i>ortus {Catalepton 5, 8) and note the contrast of tone. • I quote with pleasure the suggestion of the reviewer in the Athenaeum (4 March 1905) : " Unconsciously, perhaps, but with profound truth, Virgil draws Aeneas, after the Carthaginian episode, as always careworn^ brave in action, but pensive in reflection ; there stands between him and his past the shadow of a crime, a shadow which glares but will not speak {A. vi. 467-474) and turns away, as one who *does her true love know from another one,' to rejoin Sychaeus who has forgiven her. That is the most Virgilian thing in all Virgil." It might be urged that the first book shows Aeneas careworn already, but the suggestion deserves study. Mr Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People (191 1 ), pp- 410, 411 suggests that ''the development of the character of Aeneas under stress of perils, moral and material, was much more obvious to the Roman than it is to us, and much more keenly appreciated." See the whole chapter. " The character of Aeneas," he holds, ** is pivoted on religion." Also cf. his remarks on book v. pp. 417, 418, which seem to me to come nearer the heart of the thing than any comment I recall on that book. Ill AENEAS 223 name of Aeneas ; yet to understand it thoroughly is neces- sary, if we are to have a clear comprehension of the whole poem. What is pietas ? It is not merely " piety," for that is only a part of its connotation, nor is it enough to add " pity " to " piety," in accordance with the happy suggestion of a French critic, unless one give both the words a large and generous rendering. Let us take a few illustrations of the spirit indicated by the word. First, the death of Lausus, who in rescuing his father was killed by Aeneas in battle — At vero ut voltum vidit morientis et ora, ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris, ingemuit miserans graviter dextramque tetendit et mentem patriae subiit pietatis imago, "quid tibi nunc, miserande puer, pro laudibus istis, quid pius Aeneas tanta dabit indole dignum ? arma quibus laetatus habe tua ; teque parentum manibus et cineri, si qua est ea cura, remitto. hoc tamen infelix miseram solabere mortem : Aeneae magni dextra cadis (x. 821-30).^ This is how Aeneas makes war. Stern necessity compels him to strike down Lausus: but in a moment the dying face, the boyhood, and the filial love of his victim turn Aeneas from foe to friend. Lausus is but a hoy— puer — but he has done what Aeneas did himself years before, he * But when Anchises' son surveyed The fair, fair face so ghastly made. He groaned, by tenderness unmanned. And stretched the sympathizing hand, As reproduced he sees once more The love that to his sire he bore. ** Alas ! what honour, hapless youth. To those great deeds, that soul of truth, Can good Aeneas show ? Keep the frail arms you loved to wear ; The lifeless corpse I yield to share (If thought like this still claim your care) Your fathers' tomb below. Yet take this solace to the grave ; *Twas great Aeneas' hand that gave The inevitable blow " (Conington). i ( ( : r 4 224 VIRGIL AENEAS 225 has saved his father — the patronymic Anchisiades is not without purpose — and now all the honour that a hero can pay to a hero Aeneas will render to Lausus. Pietas covers his feeling for Lausus as well as his feeling for Anchises. We pass naturally to the scene that rose in the mind of Aeneas — the fall of Troy and the rescue of Anchises and the little lulus. Enough has been said of Anchises, but mark the picture of the child — dextrae se parvus lulus implicuit, sequiturque patrem non passibus acquis^ (ii. 723). The instinctive act of the child — slipping his hand into his father's — is his comment on Aeneas' pietas, and it is surely significant that at such an hour and in such a place the little footsteps of the child are one of the signal memories of the night.* Now another picture of lulus. During the siege of the camp (Book ix) he is galled by the taunts which Remulus Numanus levels at the Trojans, and, with a prayer to Jupiter for success, he shoots an arrow at him and brings him down. The boy is delighted with his shot, and the Trojans cheer him. His father is not there, but his place is for the moment taken by Apollo, and though the action and the words are Apollo's, they are in the spirit of Aeneas, and may illustrate the quality which we arc considering — pietas. The god applauds the boy in an aside, and then in clearer tone adds a word for gentleness — atque his ardentem dictis adfatur lulum : " sit satis, Aenide, telis impune Numanum oppetiisse tuis ; primam hanc tibi magnus Apollo concedit laudem et paribus non invidet armis ; cetera parce puer bello " ^ (ix. 652). 1 ** My little lulos has fastened his hand in mine and follows his father with ill-matched steps " (Conington). ■ J. R. Green, Stray StudieSy p. 267, brings this out welL • Enough, Aeneas' son, to know Your band, unharmed, with shaft and bow Numanus' life has ta'en ; "C'est k la fois," says Sainte-Beuve, "management et re- spect pour le fils de leur roi et pour I'esp^rance de la tige ; et puis Ascagne est trop jeune pour la guerre ; sijeune, on de- vient trop aisiment cruel, J'entrevois ce dernier sentiment sous-en t end u. " ^ That we are right to suppose that this is the real senti- ment of Aeneas as well as of Apollo we can see from Aeneas* words of farewell at the bier of Pallas — Nos alias hinc ad lacrimas eadem horrida belli fata vocant ; salve aeternum mihi, maxime Palla, aeternumque vale ^ (xi. 96). It is the revolt oi pietas, in its broadest and finest quality, against a destiny which drags the hero against his will into war. Let our last illustration of pietas be the familiar utter- ance of Aeneas when he saw the pictures of the Trojan warriors, including himself, on the walls of Dido's temple — Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt {A, i. 462). Professor Tyrrell holds that rerum and mortalia mean "things inanimate" and "the works of men's hands." In this case Virgil would mean to suggest the appeal of art to the sympathetic temper. Wordsworth and Sainte-Beuve think rather of the appeal of man's lot to man. Tears to human sufferings are due ; And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown Are mourned by man.* Such glory to your first of fields Your patron god ungrudging yields, Nor robs of praise the arms he wields : From further fight refrain. Conington has here omitted the significant ptur, which Sainte-Beuve seizes so well. * Sainte-Beuve, itude stir Virgih, p. 178. * "Once again war's dreadful destiny calls us hence to other tears: hail thou for evermore, O princely Pallas, and for evermore farewell." The modem reader will think here of the farewell of Catullus (ci.) to his brother, at the grave at Rhoeteum, and Tennyson's comment on in perpetuuniy and he may wonder how, if it were in Virgil's mind also, it squares with book vi. ■ Laodamia, Attention may be called to Henry's note, Aenetdea, ad loc, »5 11 ? I 1 226 VIRGIL The former rendering is not at all impossible or un- Virgilian, but the latter gives a broader and deeper sense. Aeneas recognizes that at Carthage too, human creatures have human hearts, and he takes courage, know- ing what appeal human sorrow makes to the human heart in himself. If to Terence's kumani nihil a me alienum puto we might add nihil diviniy the enlarged expression (if rather cumbrous) would very fairly represent that new attitude of the quick- ened man, with which Virgil endows his hero, giving it the name pietas, by which he links a modern and rather Greek habit of mind to an old Roman virtue, enlarging the one, and naturalizing the other. We have not yet considered Aeneas as prince. Achilles and Agamemnon are called kings by Homer, but the royalty of Virgil's Aeneas dwarfs them at once into Highland chief- tains. Mycene may have been rich in gold, and yet had, like Ithaca, a midden at the palace doors ; but Virgil was writing under a monarch who could boast that he had found Rome brick and left her marble.^ It was a boast that implied imperial resources, imperial power, and an imperial outlook, and all these come between the Homeric chiefs and Aeneas, and make him a prince in manner, in attitude, and in ideal. To take a telling example of the princely manner of Aeneas, we may turn to the episode of his killing the stags in the first book, which is of course modelled in Virgil's way after Odysseus' story of his stag-killing. It has been well handled by Sainte-Beuve, whose account of it may be para- phrased. "The difference between the two pictures," he says, "one feels instinctively. Aeneas and Odysseus are voyaging at the same time, but there is a distance of some centuries between their manners and methods. Odysseus, the hero of the simple ages, whose only aspiration is toward his poor Ithaca, withdraws alone from his companions and * Suet. Aug. 28 marmoream se relinquere quam kUericiam accepisset. AENEAS 227 goes to spy out the island ; he sees a big stag, one only, and it is quite enough ; he kills it without needing to ask his arms of his squire (he has no squire or confidant), and, as it is necessary to bring back the beast at once and this involves difficulty, he tells us in detail how he did it, how he made a cord, and how he lifted the animal on to his neck, and made his way, leaning on his spear; he forgets nothing. All is naive and frank, quite in the style of Robinson Crusoe, a style which Virgil is careful not to apply to the founder of the future Roman Empire. How could these two men, Aeneas and Achates, have carried their seven big beasts to the ships ? It is a question not even asked in so dignified a tale. Imagine the figure of Aeneas drawn with a stag upon his shoulders and his head appearing among the four feet of the animal ! Virgil could not for a moment entertain the idea of such a picture. Between his Aeneas and Odysseus had come cette production sociale finCy d^licate^ didaigneuse ; rurbaniti itait nie^ * Yes, urbanitas had been born, and Aristotle had written of the Magnificent Man. It was the mark of a vulgar mind, according to a Greek comic poet, to walk " unrhythmic- ally" in the street. Court etiquette had grown up round Alexander, and probably still more round his less great successors. Some part of this would inevitably find its way to Rome, where it would fit in well with the national affectation of gravitas. The world was still a long way from Abraham Lincoln. Let us, however, call the thing dignity in Aeneas, and recognize it as a mark of the great prince. But, if Aeneas has the outward bearing of the prince, he has the higher qualities too, for he is Virgil's picture of an ideal ruler. Morality for princes was probably * Sante-Beuve, Jttude sur Virgile^ p. 243. The passages of Homer and Virgil are Odyssey x. 144-71, and Aeneid i. 180-93. The German critic Rohde has also called the Odyssey **die alteste Robinsonade." Another French critic, however, shared the Roman feeling. La Motte, according to M. Patin (Eurtpide^ i. p. 52), ** regrettait qu'Hom^re efit d^grad^ son Achille en lui faisant de ses propres mains appreter son repas, et ne lui eOt pas donn^, pour soutenir son rang de heros, un mailre d*h6tel, ou, tout au moins, un cuisinier." See also on Homer's method, the letter of Cowper to Samuel Rose, 4 October 1789. 1' r. II !i 228 VIRGIL already becoming a branch of ethics ; certainly a little time after VirgiPs day it is well developed. Seneca's tract on Clemency, written for Nero, and Dio Chrysostom's treatises addressed to Trajan are early examples of this sort of litera- ture; while by the fourth century A.D. Julian, Claudian, and Synesius had a plentiful supply of honourable and ancient maxims for Emperors. But it is unlikely that Virgil troubled the minor philosophers for their commonplaces. With a poet's feeling he read the story of Alexander, and watched the work of Augustus, and rising, in his way, from the particular to the universal, he developed in his own mind the idea of a great prince and drew him in Aeneas. Aeneas has the statesman's temper. A man of broad out- look and of quick intelligence, he thinks for a nation, and as their ruler subordinates himself to the good of his people. Apart from the affair of Dido, nowhere does he fail to put his people, his people present and future, before himself. Not that he submits to their will or inclination, for he is every inch a King and not a President ; he gives orders and they are carried out, he does not take mandates except from the gods. Yet he is not unwilling to listen to advice — from Anchises or Nautes, from the old and the trusted. He will humour the weak, who judge themselves unworthy of his quest, and like an Alexander he dots the world with his foundations. The Homeric chief had destroyed towns ; Aeneas builds them. He makes war and peace as a prince with full appre- hension of what they mean for his people. If as a man, worn with war and travel, he desires peace, he also desires it as a prince for his people and his neighbours. To the Latins, who come to beg the bodies of the slain, he speaks thus — Pacem me exanimis et Martis sorte peremptis, oratis ? equidem et vivis concedere vellem ^ (xi. 1 10). This is always his attitude, but, if war is forced upon him, * ** Is it peace for the dead you ask of me, for them on whom the War-God'« lot has fallen ? Nay, to the liTing also would I grant it." AENEAS 229 he makes war like a prince. He carries his allies into action with him, and no cost of death or suffering will tempt him to falter. War, and real war, his enemies shall have, if they choose it ; but he had rather they chose peace.^ Aeneas is here a thorough Roman, and he hardly needed his father's words to supplement his own instinct — Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento, hae tibi erunt artes, pacisque imponere morem parcere subiectis et debellare superbos * (vi. 851). Latinus and Turnus are his foils ; the one unable or unwilling to make up his mind and act on it, and by this weakness bringing defeat and death on his people ; ^ the other heedless of national well-being or divine decree, if, at any cost to anybody and everybody, he can gratify his own wishes. If the reader wearies at times of Aeneas in the pageantry of the prince, still, as prince in council and prince in action Aeneas is well and strongly drawn. The weariness, which the reader feels, may be his own fault as much as the poet's, for it takes more mental effort to picture and to realize to oneself the hero as king than in some other characters. Aeneas represents, here as elsewhere, a later age than Homer. No doubt, in Homer the chief leads, and the people follow the chief as "shepherd of his people." But the Homeric chief is nearer Remulus Numanus ; he has the weakness, too persistent in Greece, for petty war and the pillaging of his neighbours — semperque recentes comportare iuvat praedas et vivere rapto* (ix. 612). Aeneas' mind is other, and he belongs to a later and more developed society. Witness his admiration of the rising ^ One might compare Caesar's ejaculation when he saw the dead of the enemy upon the field of Pbarsalia — htx: volturunt — quoted from Pollio by Suet. Jul. 30. Plutarch Caesar^ 46, roxno i^ovXi^Orjaav, els tovto fxe dvdyKTjs inrr/yayovTO. ' Translation on p 143. ' The querulous weakness of Latinus {A. vii. 598) nam mihi parta quies^ etc. • *' Ever it is our delight to gather fresh booty and to live by plunder." 230 VIRGIL AENEAS 231 i< ( i i'i Carthage, its walls, its senate-house, its port, its theatre — even its streets and their noise — miratur molem Aeneas, magalia quondam,^ miratur portas, strepitumque et strata viarum (i. 421). But it is as a prince that he looks at the great city, with the spirit of an Alexander rather than of a Pericles. Democracy and its factions flourish among the Italian tribes ; Drances and Turnus have each his party ; but there are no parties among the Trojans. They have no politics but loyalty to their prince. This means a certain lack of in- terest. The Trojans generally, as we have seen, "want physiognomy." Like the Romans under the later Emperors, they lack initiative; they are apt to be rather helpless, almost spiritless, when without their prince ; and the life of the nation is summed up in the prince. Virgil's political philosophy is not Cicero's. On the whole perhaps the poets are not generally very whole-hearted republicans. " For myself," Goethe said to Eckermann, " I have always been royalist." ' Aeneas is Virgil's ideal of a princely character, as he is his ideal of manhood. VI In conclusion, when we have weighed the character of Aeneas, and allowed for the incompleteness of presentation which we have remarked, we may sum up the matter perhaps most truly by saying that Aeneas is Virgil's picture of the "Happy Warrior." « The traditions of epic poetry, involving the Olympian gods, make Aeneas less reliant upon the " inward light " than Wordsworth's * "Aeneas admires the mighty structure, once mere huts; he admires the gates, and the noise and the paved streets." The magalia quondam has a trans- Atlantic tone. The thought behind it lies, as a rule, outside the experience of Englishmen, who misjudge the utterance in consequence. ■ 25 February 1824. • It should be remembered that the delineation of the perfect man was much in vogue. The Epicureans had their ideal sage in Epicurus. Lucretius' attack on Hercules points to a similar glorification of that hero. A later example is ApolUnius of Tyana. We may add the adoption by the Stoics of the reference to the personal example — e.g. Socrates and Zeno. warrior, even if Virgil had been as clear as Wordsworth on the possibility or sufficiency of such a guide in life. Aeneas if he be called upon to face Some awful moment, to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad, for human kind, is certainly not "happy as a lover," nor "attired with sudden brightness like a Man inspired." A genuine Roman, he is not supremely concerned with the labour "good on good to fix," nor, perhaps, to " make his moral being his prime care." Yet much of Wordsworth's poem is true of Virgil's Aeneas — Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, And Fear and Bloodshed, miserable train ! Turns his necessity to glorious gain : In face of these doth exercise a power Which is our human nature's highest dower ; Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves Of their bad influence, and their good receives ; By objects, which might force the soul to abate Her feeling, rendered more compassionate . . . Who comprehends his trust, and to the same Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; . . » Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes . . . More brave for this, that he hath much to love. The differences between the two characters are not so much contradictions as the result of a progression in the ideals of humanity. If Aeneas has sight of virtues un- known to Achilles, the "Happy Warrior" has in like manner advanced beyond Aeneas. The greatness of Achilles is not lost in Aenas, but developed by the ripening and enlarging of human experience. Aeneas is morally on a higher plane, in spite of the occasional vagueness in Virgil's drawing of him, and in spite of some uncertainty about the supreme things, which passes from the poet into his creation. The " Happy Warrior," in turn, has lost nothing of Aeneas' greatness, but he has regained the clear look "US, r ill I V 232 VIRGIL of Achilles; he is not distracted by unreconciled views of the universe ; he " finds comfort in himself and in his cause," and is "happy as a lover," because he has, what Aeneas at heart lacked, " confidence of Heaven's applause." Aeneas falls short of the " Happy Warrior," but he is of the same family.* * I may be allowed to quote Saintc-Beuve once more, Etude^ p. 112 : "Ce personnage si distinct, si accompli, le/i«j Aemas^ pieux cnvers les hommcs autant qu'envers les dieux, ct que (sauf son moment d'erreur et d'oubli k Car- thage), considerant toutes ses vertus, ses devotions et religions, ses preuves d'humanit^, de prud'homie, de courage, je suis tent6 de nommer le Godefroy de Bouillon, ou mieux (je I'ai dit d^ji) le saint Louis d'antiquit^ ;— le plus parfait ideal de heros que puisse presenter cettc religion des Numa, des X^nophon, dont Plutarque est pour nous le dernier pr6tre." CHAPTER X INTERPRETATION OF LIFE.— 3. HADES Thou soul of God's best earthly mould I Thou happy soul ! and can it be That these two words of glittering gold Arc all that must remain of thee ? — Wordsworth, Matthew, Hoc habet argumentum divinitatis suae {sc, animus] quod ilium divina delectant nee ut alienis sed ut suis interest. Seneca Naturales Quaestiones i., Prol. % 12. « A LL Virgil is full of learning," says Servius, in opening his commentary on the sixth book of the Aeneid, " but for learning this book takes the chief place. The greater part of it is from Homer. Some of it is simple narrative, much turns on history, much implies deep knowledge of philosophers, theologians, and Egyptians, to so great an extent indeed that many have written complete treatises on points of detail in this book." So much said, Servius turns at once to the text Our purpose, however, is rather to obtain a general view of Virgirs ideas about the other world, and to see, if possible, the various parts played by Homer and the philosophers in forming those ideas.^ Once more we shall find traces of the progress of human thought, and once more a strong Roman feeling running through the whole. "He knew," * In a poet with so many literary affinities as Virgil, a larger amount of space must be taken up with the study of his literary antecedents than in the case of a inore original speculator. Hence in this and the following chapter more attention is given to the history of speculation upon Hades and Olympus thaji may at first seem necessary, while for the specialist the chapters will not be interesting. I have a feeling that the specialist in primitive religion knows a great deal more about it than Virgil did and that this special knowledge of his therefore lies outside our present sphere. I am also quite clear that what Virgil did know meant incomparably more to him— if some friendly scholars will let me say so. "fm ^»w.^.- - -: >^. . I( 234 VIRGIL says Servius, "that various opinions are held on the sway of the gods, so very wisely he gave it a general treatment {tenuit generalitatem). In the main he follows Siro, his Epicurean teacher. The men of this school, as we know, deal with the surface of things, and never penetrate very deep."i Servius here speaks, as the Neo-Platonists of his day spoke, of Epicurus, but the hint he gives must not be disregarded. Whatever Virgil learnt from Homer and the philosophers, he was not a Neo-Platonist, and the early influence of Siro, and still more of Lucretius, could never be wholly eradicated from his mind. No doubt he was never so thorough an Epicurean as Lucretius ; his adherence depended more on training than on conviction ; but still his Epicureanism was enough to keep him from ever holding such a point of view as that of Plutarch. Again, we must remember that Virgil is pre-eminently a poet rather than a philosopher or a theologus, and we must expect him to treat this subject, like others, with the full freedom of a poet. In a word, while we look for dependence upon others who have treated the subject before him, we must also look for detachment. When we begin to examine the sources of Virgil's Hades, we are apt to think first of literature, of descriptions of Hades which we find in extant books, particularly in great books ; but the archaeologists would turn our attention elsewhere. By dint of careful reading of books, which are not literature, some, ancient manuals of antiquities, some, polemical treatises ; by elaborate study of ancient ritual with the constant aid of the excavator, they have brought to light another and very different side of ancient life. We have been accustomed in our study of the classics to hold to a traditional account of mythology, accepted eventually by Greeks and Romans as the traditional account of Old Testament history was by the Jews, and amongst other ^ Servius, ad Aen, vi. 264 5up§rficiem rirum tractart^ nuHguam tUiiora disquirert. HADES 235 matter a fairly consistent picture of Hades has reached us. Literature and art organized the mythology, and we have habitually accepted this organization. But nowadays the comparative study of religion has given us new principles and taught us to look for much that was before unnoticed, and the archaeologists have given us abundant material from the Greek world itself to which to apply our new methods. We find then in only too bewildering profusion ideas of things divine, demonic, or devilish, which we had not suspected ; now and then we find them glimmering perplexingly behind passages and phrases of our poets long familiar ; often it is the excava- tion of a grave or the discovery of an inscription which tells us how little we really knew of what the common people were thinking while the great minds were Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone. One or two important points should be noted. First of all, one feels more and more the imperative need of caution until our acquisitions are better known. We do not yet know from whom came the conceptions of the other world current in classical Greece, or indeed where, and still less when, they began. We may use such words as Pelasgic, chthonic, Orphic, and so forth, but it is diflRcult to use them with much definition, partly because our knowledge is only partial ; partly because, as M. Boissier says,^ where there is no monotheism there are no false gods, and it was even easier for one set of ideas to be merged in another, especially where neither dealt with anything definitely known, than for Catholicism to absorb and adapt the ideas and practices of its pagan environment. In the next place, as we gain insight into the confused and superstitious thinking of the common people, we realize more forcibly the grandeur and the value of what we call the Greek genius. The significance of that transcendence of current notions and of that clear strong grip of reality, which are its constant marks, becomes intensified. ^ La Religion romainf, i. p. 335 : ** Pour des gens qui nc croyaient pas a rexistence d'un Dieu unique, il n'y avait pas de faux dieux." J m r I I 236 VIRGIL / Let us turn at once to Homer's world of the dead. Homer has been scanned through and through by eager eyes anxious to find traces of what is called primitive religion, and singularly little has been found.^ Aeschylus is a richer field for such investigation. For the great mind, which it is hardly possible not to feel behind the Iliad and Odyssey as we have them (whatever their ultimate origin in whole or in part), divination, magic, the cult of the dead, ritual generally, are outside the circle of supreme interests ; they are dead, unreal, to be disregarded. That great mind, seems as unconscious of such things as Shakespeare habitually is of the religious controversies that raged around him. To take the first example, discussion has risen about the libations which Odysseus pours at Circe's bidding, and the blood which the ghosts drink. Is there here some trace of the cult of the dead ? If there is, the German critic Kammer would cut the passage out as an insertion ; or, if the passage is not so easily to be detached, the whole Nekyia, the visit to the dead, must be set down as of late date ; so alien to Homer is the suggestion of such a cult. On the other hand, Rohde maintains that, while the cult of the dead is long anterior to Homer's age and lasted long after it, it was not practised at the actual time — it was re- membered, however, and the poet used it But at all events, whatever the origin of the rites performed by Odysseus, the poet has his own explanation — the " strength- less heads of the dead " drink of the blood to gain vision and speech. Anticleia, the hero's mother, is not suffered to approach the blood till Teiresias has spoken, and then Odysseus says, " I see here the spirit of my mother dead ; lo, she sits in silence near the blood, nor deigns to look her son in the face nor speak to him ! Tell me, prince, how may she know me again that I am he ? " Teiresias says that she must drink the blood. So Anticleia " drank the dark blood, and at once she knew me." * The sacrifice is lost in the contrivance. Thus, in general. Homer's is the * The reader may consult Professor Gilbert Murray's Rise of the Greek Epic ; and Mr Andrew Lang's World of Homer (1910) pp. 126, 127, 133. * Odyssey f xi. 141 f. (Butcher and Lang). HADES 237 poetry of live men, and he "lets the dead bury their dead." 1 But why does Odysseus go to visit the dead at all? Especially, it is asked, why should he go to learn of Teiresias what Circe can and does tell him in more fullness ? In reply, another question is raised. Did he go at all in the oldest form of the story ? Now, when we begin to speak of the oldest form of the story, it is time to pause. What is the oldest form of the story ? We take the Odyssey as we find it; and, analysing it, we recognize stories here and there which we meet elsewhere. Failing another name, we call them " folk-tales " — stories told from of old everywhere : to whom do they belong or what is their oldest form ? More than three hundred variants of Cinderella have been col- lected. When we have recognized our folk-tales in the Odyssey y we can make our conjectures as to how the poem may have grown. Whatever the original germ, it now includes so many elements of immemorial antiquity — who shall say how, or when, or where it came by them ? Some of them fit into their places only loosely, some have interpol- ations within themselves.* Odysseus really visits the dead in virtue of the old instinct, which in other lands and among other peoples sent some one to explore the undiscovered country and return, and the very looseness of connexion between book xi and the rest of the Odyssey betrays the original character of the tale. In the Kalevala, Walnamolnen, " like all epic heroes, > See H. Weil, ktudes sur Vantiquiti grecque, p. 12, on Homer's attitude to the abode and the religion of the dead generally. " Dans ses poemes il fait grand jour." See also the fine chapter on "The House of Death" in Miss F. Melian Stawell's Homer and the Iliad — on the question of the blood and the ghosts, p. 157. « Rohde Psych^y pp. 49 ff., on the descent of Odysseus, holds it is "one of the few certain results of critical analysis " that this was not originally a part of the Odyssey. Miss Stawell, Homer and the Iliad, p. 165, has another view : "The loss of weight to the Odyssey if this Book were removed can hardly be over- estimated." I am less and less in a hurry to discuss the Homeric question ; I fetl that so far more learning than real feeling for literature has been in most cases brought to bear on it. It is for that reason that with a warm welcome for the books of Mr Murray, Miss Stawell, Mr Lang and others, I do not want to make up my own mind. The study of poety grows more fascinating and more perplexing as one reads the poets. 238 VIRGIL HADES 239 visits the place of the dead," ^ and from his story we can glean a hint or two for future use. " The maidens who play the part of Charon are with difficulty induced to ferry over a man bearing no mark of death by fire or sword or water " — this was what Aeneas found. Again, on his return, Walnamoinen warns mankind to "beware of perverting innocence, of leading astray the pure heart; they that do these things shall be punished eternally in the depths of Tuoni. There is a place prepared for evil-doers, a bed of stones burning, rocks of fire, worms and serpents." The " somewhat lax and wholesale conversion " of the Finns to Christianity left them much where they were, but we can feel here, with Mr Lang, that this revelation is coloured by ideas which were not those of the primitive Finns. In the same way we are not surprised to be told that scholars question the age of that passage in the Nekyia where Odysseus sees Minos judging and Tityos, Tantalus, and Sisyphus in torment (568-600).* Whoever added them to the story was so absent-minded as not to notice that they could not well come to Odysseus like the other shades. They are there, it is clear, to point a moral. Similarly to safeguard tradition, a late hand added the explanation, not a very lucid one, of how it is that Herakles can be at once a god in Olympus and be seen by Odysseus, a shade in hell. Odysseus visits the other world, and while it is better for us not to question too closely as to the reason for his going, we may ask what he finds there. We have put on one side the moral tales of Sisyphus and the others, and it is generally agreed that we must also set aside the charming but rather irrelevant heroines, who seem to have been sent to see him to please another and a less poetic age.' * Andrew Lang, Custom and Mytk^ p. 171. • Weil, itudeSf p. 22, points out that ancient and modern criticism agrees heie. Miss Stawell, op, cit. p. 154, would omit Minos, Sisyphus, and Herakles. » Miss Stawell, op. cit. 159, defends the heroines, against the view of WilamowiU that the choice of figures is accidental. In view of recent research in the folk- lore of the Dioscuri, it is perhaps worth while to note in passing that every heroine who is mentioned in the passage as having a god for her lover bore twins. The mother of Herakles is not an exception. But this is a little remote from Virgil. Odysseus, then, sets his sails, and "a breeze of the North wind " (x. 507), sent by Circe (xi. 6), bore the ship " to the limits of the world, to the deep-flowing Oceanus. There is the land and the city of the Cimmerians, shrouded in mist and cloud, and never does the shining sun look down on them with his rays, neither when he climbs up the starry heavens, nor when again he turns earthward from the firmament, but baleful night is outspread over miserab|le mortals. Thither we came and beached the ship." He disembarks and goes on foot to '* the place which Circe had declared." Circe's geography is still a little vague. She had told him to beach his ship by deep-eddying Oceanus, " but go thyself to the dank house of Hades." " Thereby, she continues, " into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon and Cocytus, a branch of the water of the Styx, and there is a rock and the meeting of the two roaring waters." One may wonder whether Circe actually named these streams, which Odysseus does not again mention, or whether they came into the story with Sisyphus and the heroines. However, on reaching the place, wherever it was, Odysseus drew his sword, dug his pit, a cubit in length and breadth, and " poured a pouring " to all the dead, of mead and wine and water. Then he sprinkled white meal, prayed and promised other offerings — a black heifer for them all, and a black ram for Teiresias — to be given on his return. So much said, he bled the sheep over the trench, " and lo ! the spirits of the dead that be departed gathered them from out of Erebus. Brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maidens with grief yet fresh at heart; and many there were, wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight with their bloody mail about them. And these many ghosts flocked together from every side about the trench with a wondrous cry, and pale fear got hold on me." ^ The sheep are burnt and prayer made to mighty Hades and to dread Persephone. When at last the dead begin to speak with Odysseus, we get from them the clearest picture of their state. " Where- fore," asks Teiresias, " hast thou, poor man, left the sunlight » Od. xi. 36-43. I i^ 240 VIRGIL HADES 241 '( 11 i and come hither to behold the dead and a joyless land?"* Odysseus tries to embrace his mother, but thrice she flits from his hands " like a shadow or a dream," and he asks if she is but a phantom. "Ah! me! my child, Persephone, daughter of Zeus, doth in no wise deceive thee, but even thus is it with mortals when a man dies. For the sinews no more bind together the flesh and the bones, but the great force of burning fire abolishes these, so soon as the life has left the white bones, and the spirit like a dream flies away and is gone. But to the light haste with all thy heart" (216-23). The shade of Agamemnon wept and shed tears, but could not embrace Odysseus. " It might not be, for he had now no steadfast strength nor power at all, such as was afore- time in his supple limbs" (393). "How," asks Achilles, " durst thou come down to the house of Hades, where dwell the senseless dead, the phantoms of men outworn ? " (475). "Nay, speak not comfortably to me of death," he cries. " Rather would I live on ground, as the hireling of another, with a landless man, who had no great livelihood, than bear sway among all the dead that be departed "(488-91). "Persephone doth in no wise deceive thee!" The dead are as shadows or dreams, dwelling in a joyless land with- out light or sun. Their lot is duller than the dullest and weariest the living can know — "a nerveless, noiseless ex- istence." So judged the poet of the Odyssey^ Later hands confused his tale with moral instances, and the long develop- ment of hell began.' But even so, apart from the three great sinners of legend, it is startling to realize how empty * Note the force of omitting line 92, which is absent from the MSS. Tciresias does not recognize the visitor, until he has drunk the blood. '* Anticleia," says Mr Nairn, " seems to have had a vague knowledge of her son before she had drunk the blood : hence she lingers . . . full consciousness she only attains with the draught." ■ The second Nekyia does not belong to the picture. The ghosts are, perhaps a little livelier — they have at least something to talk about ; they are not the ghosts of the first Nekyia, they are an imitation and not a good one. The local colour of the " White Rock " and Hermes and his rod are all of a later age. See Ettig, Acheruntica^ p. 276. • Dieterich, Nekyia (Teubner, 1893), p. 77, holds that these insertions were made by men who were far above the ideas criticized by Plato (see p. 249), but who yet were Orphics. after all is the eventual hell of the Odyssey. Whatever may be the function of the Homeric Erinnyes,! it is not exercised in this Hades. There is no Tartarus, no Elysium, so no Minos is needed to send the dead to the one or the other.* Proteus, it is true, prophesies to Menelaus that he will not die in Argos, "but the deathless gods will convey thee to the Elysian plain and the world's end, where is Rhadamanthys of the fair hair, where life is easiest for men. No snow is there, nor yet great storm, nor any rain ; but always Oceanus sendeth forth the breeze of the shrill West to blow cool on men ; yea, for thou hast Helen to wife, and thereby they deem thee ((r0«i/) to be son-in-law of Zeus" (iv. 561-70). Of all this Odysseus sees nothing whatever, and, even on Proteus' showing, it seems to be reserved for the sons-in-law of Zeus. The history of the Greek ideas of the other world is the story of the conquest of Elysium for common people, the introduction of merit and eventually of morals into life beyond the grave and the consequent necessity for Tartarus. Perhaps the first order introduced into the world of the dead is due to " the clear but clumsy intellect " » of Hesiod, but even he does not take us very far. The dead of the golden age are " good demons, above ground, guardians of mortal men"; those of the silver age are underground, but blessed, conspicuously coming second, yet in honour; those of the bronze age are in "the dank house of chill Hades, nameless " ; the heroes, the fourth race, are no longer where Homer left them, but, "with hearts free from care, are in the islands of the blessed, by the eddies of Oceanus " {Works and Days, 109-73). As for the men of his own day, Hesiod shows us that things are bad enough on earth, but their eventual lot he omits to mention. The Titans are in murky darkness, with no escape, girt by a wall and gates of brass {Theog, 720-45). * See Iliad, xix. 259 'EptinJet, aX 6^ vt6 youat^ dpepdnrovs rivvtrrau, oris /c' iirlopKov ofxoaoTi. In //. iii. 278 the Erinnyes yield place to a vaguer ol * Minos e€fufiii i 4' I Jll' li I li 242 VIRGIL II The chief sources ot teaching on the other world were the various mysteries, especially those of Eleusis. It is difficult to distinguish the confluent streams of thought, but three stages in the history of Eleusis and its rites are recognized — the first, that represented in the Homeric hymn to Demeter ; the second, marked by the gradual introduction of orgiastic and Dionysiac rites and associated with the mystic name of lacchus ; and the third, connected more closely with the name Dionysus Zagreus, with Orphic religion and Oriental rite, and dating from about the time of Alexander the Great* The Homeric hymn speaks of Demeter teaching Tripto- lemus and other kings, whose names grew more mystic in later days, "the doing of sacred things, and awful rites (opyia (re/jLva), that none may transgress nor ask of, nor tell — great awe of the gods checks speech. Happy is he among men on earth who has seen them ; and he that is not initiate, and he that has part therein, have never the same lot, when dead, and in dank darkness below " (474-82). Does happi- ness imply immortality ? Many strange ideas have been current about what was done in the mysteries and what there was to conceal. Ex- cavation of the site of the Hall of Mysteries has revealed that it was not a temple, had no statue of a deity, knew no sacrifices within doors. The arrangements for exit, seating, and so forth are so free from any suggestion of mystery as to cause " a shade of disillusion " * — in fact, as Pompey found at Jerusalem, we find at Eleusis nu//a intus deum effigii * Pcrqr Gardner, New Chapters in Grtek History, ch. xvii. p. 385 f. ; Lenormant, Contemporary Review, May, 1880 (vol. i. p. 859). Here again, as in the previous section on Homer, I may be allowed to apply to myself the re- mark of Servius quoted at the beginning of the chapter — ** he knew there were various opinions, but tenuit generalitatem " — or, like Poins, tried to keep to the middle of the road. The real aim of the chapter is lightly to sketch such views as Virgil probably knew about — not to discuss archaeological problems, non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites, • P. Gardner, op. cit,^ p. 391 ; Lenormant, C. ^., Sept., 1880, p. 419. HADES 243 vacuam sedem et i?tania arcana.^ It would seem that miracle plays, as we should call them, and these of no very intricate or elaborate machinery, were performed — plays turning on the stories of Demeter, and, later on, of Zagreus. That representations of the tortures of Tartarus or the delights of Elysium were given is apparently very doubtful. Con- fronted with Aristophanes' Frogs, Lenormant holds that ** the boldness of the poet appears to demonstrate just the opposite of that which it is sought to infer from it. If the sight of the infernal regions had been placed before the eyes of the initiated in the mysteries, an illusion so direct would have been considered as a violation of the secret." Nor does it seem that the priests taught any theological or mystical doctrine, or had indeed any ideas, very different from those current without the precincts. Synesius of Cyrene (not yet a bishop), in criticizing the ecstatic virtues of the Christian monks and priests, complains that there is no reason or reflection about them; the monks remind him of what Aristotle said of men being initiated in the mysteries — "they learnt nothing, but had feelings, were put into a frame of mind — supposing, of course, they were in a fit state beforehand," and this fit state (is this Aristotle or Synesius speaking?) was aXoyoy, had nothing to do with reason.^ No wonder that Pindar, hinting at the mysteries, says ifxcva^vra (rvveroicTLv.^ Professor Gardner suggests a comparison with Christian sacraments, which may be only too apposite.* More important than the original contribution of Eleusis to the doctrine of another life are those of two schools of thought, differing in their initial aims and ideas but uniting at last in one great tradition— the Pythagoreans and the Orphics. Into their origin we cannot here inquire. It will be enough to say that direct or indirect indebtedness to the * Tacitus, Hist. v. 9. "No image within of a god, the shrine vacant, the mysteries empty." "Synesius. Dio, p. 48, Migne col. 1 133. Ar. Frag., ed. Heitz, p. 40; 0^ lULdeiv rl «et {yp. ri dttv) is Migne's text * Oi. ii. 93, " with a voice for such as understand." * Op, cit., p. 402. Cf. Dr Hatch's Hiddert Lectures, x. pp. 295 ff., on the historical connexion between Greek and Christian •* mysteries." 244 VIRGIL HADES 245 Ll ' in \\ fair East has been asserted of Pythagoras, and that side by side with the Thracian connexion of Orphism there has been recognized considerable affinity with Egyptian thought* To be brief, Pythagoras was led to emphasize the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.* The Orphic teaching found its centre in the myth of Dionysus Zagreus, the child-god mutilated and devoured by the Titans, whose heart, however, was rescued by Athene and swallowed by Zeus to reappear as the new Dionysus.' The Titans were struck by the thunderbolt, and from their ashes rose mankind, creatures of a two-fold nature, Titanic and divine, ever to be torn this way and that by these conflicting elements of evil and good linked in uneasy union. Traces are here of very different lines of thought — in the rending of the child-god asunder we are near the strange rites that cluster round the sacramental animal, the camel of the Arabs, the calf of the Maenads, rites surviving in a purified form in the Hebrew Passover.* In the war of Titans and gods, and the resulting double nature of man, we are not far from doctrines most familiar to the western world in Manichaeanism.^ With * See Gomperz, Greek Thinkers^ bk. i. eh. 5 ; Dieterich, Nekyia, pp. 72-107. Jevons, Intr. to Hist, of Religion^ pp. 352 f., 376. Miss Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion^ passim. ■ ** Leave off beating the dog ; for I recognize in his tones the voice of the soul of a friend." So Xenophanes reports him to have said ; ap. Di<^enes Laerttus, viii. 36 : KoX irori fuv arufpeXi^Ofiiyov CKvXaKOS rapiorra $ UvBayoptaTiii ruv veKpwp. fiovoun yd.p ro&r(Hffi t6v UXo&rupa ffvcartlv i(pii 3, evx^pi} Oehp Xiytii €l TOtf ftvTOV fUffToiaiv ^Serou ^wibv. See also Dieterich, Nekyia, pp. 78, "9 ; Ettig, Mheruntica, p. 288. [1 248 VIRGIL HADES 249 ■1 II for instance, we read : " The body of all men is subject to all-powerful death, but alive there yet remains an image of the living man ; for that alone is from the gods. It sleeps when the limbs are active, but to them that sleep in many a dream it revealeth an award of joy or sorrow drawing near." * The ideas of reward and punishment after death stamped themselves upon the common mind. Cephalus, in the Republic, tells how in advancing age he is haunted by them.2 The forms which reward and punishment would take were also well known— as is shown by the dialogue in the Frogs between Dionysus and the slave newly landed in Hades — Dionysus. Slave. Dionysus. Slave. Dionysus. Well, and what have we here ? Darkness — and mud. Did you see any of the perjurers here, And father-beaters, as he said we should ? Why, didn't you ? I? Lots.' Public opinion was just as clear about the rewards: "the blessings which Musaeus and his son give from the gods are gayer still (yeaviKun-epa) j for in their story they take them down to Hades and make them sit down, and then they get up a banquet of the *holy' and display them, crowned, with nothing to do henceforth and for ever but to get drunk. For the finest possible prize for virtue, they seem to think, is eternal drunkenness." * * Koi (TUfM yuh xdifTtav fTertu Oavdrif) irepiipiroicav xaX<^<<^'' Te KpLaiv. Pindar, Threni fr. 96. See Dr James Adam, "Doctrine of the Celestial Origin of the Soul from Pindar to Plato," in his Vitality of Platonism, 1911. " Rep . i. 330, D KaTay€\u)fi€Voi rim Tint ^ rrpitpowi t^p fvx^v H-^ dXiT^efT Staiv. * Aristophanes, /r^^, 273 (Murray). Dionysus looks at the audience as he speaks these last words. * Plato, Rep. ii. 363 c. See Dr Adam's notes. Weil, itiidesy p. 41 ; " c'est nn ideal quelque peu thrace.*' The interesting word here is " the holy," which is almost a technical term for the initiated.^ It shows us at once the weak spot in the Mysteries. They are not in any decisive way connected with morality. The language of the gold plates, already quoted, is beautiful, but what is meant by "pure"? Is it actually and spiritually "pure," or only ceremonially and technically ? We may be fairly sure that, with the majority of people, there was a general consensus of opinion that to secure the joys of " eternal drunkenness " it was only necessary to be initiated, that a sacrament, in fact, could veto the operation of moral law. Virtue, says Plato, is hard ; wickedness pleasant and profitable ; and then "quacks and prophets go to rich men's doors and persuade them that they have power from the gods, by means of sacrifices and chants, to cure any wrong deed of their own or their ancestors in a course of pleasures and feasts " ; they quote Homer to the effect that even the gods themselves can be won by prayer, that men turn them aside by sacrifices and winning supplications, by drink offering and the smoke of the victim ; they produce piles of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, sacrificial liturgies in fact, and "persuade men and cities that there are absolu- tions and atonements by means of sacrifices and pleasures for them while they live, and, when we are dead, the mys- teries (reXeraO, as they call them, rid us of trouble, over there; but if we have not sacrificed, terrible things await us."* Yet Plato did not reject Orphism.^ His apocalypses (it one may use the word) are full of Orphic and Pythagorean ideas. The accounts of the other world given by him in the Phaedrus^ the Gorgias, the Phaedo, and the Republic have been woven by Doring into a complete and harmonious whole.* The whole story of the soul is given in the Phaedrus — its condition before incarnation, the fall due to * The reader will remember the use of the term "saints" in the New Testament. * Plato, Rep. ii. 364 A- 365 A. Homer, //»W, ix. 497-501. See Robertson Smith, Religion of the SemiteSy lect. vii. p. 261, on the gaiety of sacrifices. ■See article by Mr F. M. Cornford, in the Classical Review, Dec. 1903, " Plato and Orpheus." * A. Doring, Die eschalologischen Mythen Platos, in Archiv fur Gesch. dir Philosophies vol. vi. 1893. Weil, Etudes, pp. 65 f., 82. W^ gl'T'W^^T' 2SO VIRGIL HADES 251 h ! II ' i the inability of reason to control desire, the first incarna- tion and its meaning {aZfia^cni^ia)} the judgement with punishment or reward, and lastly the new choice of life. It is in the Gorgias that the most vivid account is given of the judgement after death. "The judge must be naked, dead, with very soul contemplating the very soul of each immediately on death (airrp riJ ^^XW ^^^v Tfjv \frvxhv Oeuypovvra e^aKpvff^ oLTTodapovTog eKatTTov), alone without a kinsman be- side him, all the trappings of his life left behind on earth, that the judgement may be just (523 E)." " Everything is visible in the soul when it is stripped of the body. Every- thing that belongs to it by nature, and the results in a man's soul of every pursuit " (524 D.) The judge does not know whose soul it is— it may be a king's soul, which he finds unsound through and through, " full of scars of deceit and injustice, which each man's deeds have left printed (eiwfiopiaTo) upon the soul, all crooked with lying and trickery, nothing straight" (524 E). Such were Tantalus, Sisyphus, and Tityos in Homer, " most dynasts being bad " (526 B). The main concern of life is to go to the judge with the healthiest possible soul, so made by the search for truth (t^ aXriOeiav aKoirwv $26 D). " For you will suffer nothing terrible, if you will really be honourable and good, and practise virtue" (527 D). It should be noticed that nothing is said here about service of the state, which plays a large part in the judgement as described by Cicero and Virgil. In the Phaedo we have the topography of the other world, its underground rivers of fire and mud, and its abysses. The souls judged are divided into ^\^ classes. " Average " people are sent by way of Acheron to the Acherusian lake for shorter or longer terms, to be rewarded and purified as they deserve, and thence they pass to be born again as animals (113 D, A). Incurable sinners go at once to Tartarus for ever (i 13 E). Those guilty of great sins, but not too great for punishment, go to Tartarus for a year, when, if those they have wronged are willing, they may pass to the Acherusian lake (114 A, B). The fourth class, who have been pre-eminent for holiness, "ascend to their > The doctrine may be compared with the Hindu Karma. pure habitation and dwell on the earth's surface. And those of them who have sufficiently purified themselves with philosophy live thenceforth without bodies and pro- ceed to dwellings fairer than these, which are not easily described" (114 B, C). "A man of sense," concludes Plato, "will not insist that these things are exactly as I have described them. But I think he will believe that some- thing of the kind is true of the soul and her habitations." In the last book of the Republic Plato adds more on choice in reincarnation, but as Virgil passes over this we need not now discuss it. The Orphism of Plato is thus quite distinct from the confused thinking of the mass of Orphics, and quite distinct too from the miracle-plays which Clement of Alexandria so pitilessly describes. Which of these forms was dominant at any given time is a question perhaps hard to answer ; which influenced most the development of Greek thought it is easier to say. Before we leave Greece for Rome, one point already mentioned may be recalled. A short study of popular Orphism and a little acquaintance with Orphic mysteries will help to explain the real greatness of Epicurus. Neo- Pythagoreans, Neo-Platonists, religious men, and men who made their living by religion, united in giving him a low place in the hell he denied. But his bold application of the science of Democritus to religious questions, his reference of all existence to law, in spite of all inconsistencies and failures, was, as Lucretius says, a great victory. Quare religio pedibus subiecta vicissim opteritur, nos exaequat victoria caelo ^ (i. 78). To-day we are able to sympathize with both sides in the quarrel, and to avail ourselves of all they had of permanent value. It is part of the greatness of Virgil that after an Epicurean training he was able to grasp and use the real contribution of the other side, without surrendering the freedom which Lucretius had taught him to prize. * ** Therefore religion is put under foot and trampled upon in turn ; us his victory brings level with heaven" (Munro). |1 : II 252 VIRGIL III The Italians seem to have developed no very definite or well oi^anized scheme of things divine, though it is clear that they had some notions of an after-world, not less dreadful for being dim. There are in Etruscan tombs pictures of demons of frightful aspect. One, called Tuchul- cha, is drawn brandishing a snake, and yelling. Another, who occurs very frequently, is called Charun — a perversion of Charon. He has a large mouth and teeth, wings on his back, and a hooked nose ; he carries a hammer, and, to crown all, he is painted green. In one picture he stands by Achilles, who is sacrificing his prisoners in honour of Patroclus.^ In the age of Virgil two great men of letters dealt deliberately with the other world in works which are of interest and importance to the student of the sixth Aeneid, In his attack upon the gods Lucretius could not overlook the popular dread of punishment after death, and he dis- cussed it at some length. Cicero likewise, imitating Plato, concluded his Republic with a myth of his own, which turns upon the future life. A thorough-going materialist, Lucretius energetically argues for the mortality of the soul. It is like the body material, and Nature has a claim upon all matter for her own purposes, and only lends it to us — vitaqua mancipio nuUi datur, omnibus usu • (Lucr. iil 790- Even if time gather again our matter after our decease, rearrange it in the same way, and again give it the light of life, that has nothing to do with us when once our con- sciousness of identity has been broken — interrupta semel cum sit repetentia nostri (iii. 851). » Boissier, ff»race et Virgile, pp. 94-7 (tr. 87-90). " Cf. a slightly different turn of the same thought in Euripides, Phoenissae, 55$ oCrot TO XP^fMT' (8ia K€KrnvTai ^porol, | ro rJfy tfewr 8' ixorT€S ^re^a'— HADES 253 No, the great truth is that mortal life ends for us in im- mortal death — mortalem vitam mors cum immortalis ademit (iil 869). Philosophy thus effects the emancipation of man's mind by driving headlong out of doors " the dread of somethmg after death," which disturbs and paralyses all within. Nature cannot afford to dismiss any matter to Tartarus; her economy is our salvation (iii. 964-6). But what of Avernus? Is it not the mouth of Hell, as people said? No, the fact is that Avernus near Cumae is only one of several such places, where birds and other creatures cannot breathe because of sulphur fumes, an entirely natural phenomenon easily explained by natural law.« The stones which poets, and Ennius in particular, tell of hell are really true of this life— Tityos is merely the lustful man, while Sisyphus is the politician with ambitions, defeated again and again at the poll* In short, the only real hell is the hell fools make of their lives on earth- hie Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita (iii. 1023). Lastly, as if Lucretius had divined what the sixth Aeneid would be, he applied to one of its central doctrines the most splendid reductio ad absurdum, and finally disposed of the ideas of immortality and transmigration. He pictures the transmigrant souls jostling to get places in new bodies. Is it at birth, or perhaps at conception, he asks, that the im- mortal beings elbow one another in their headlong eager- ness for mortal members ? Or do they arrange to go on the plan of " first come, first served ? " ^ In the first book of the Tusculan Disputations Cicero discusses the immortality of the soul as a philosophical question, and in the epilogue to his Republic he gives a vivid I Et metus illeforas fraexeps Acheruntts agenduSy funditus humanam qui vitam turbai ab imo emnia sufundens ntortis nigrore (iii. 37-9). • Strabo, c. 244, tells us that this idea is as old as Ephorus. He seems to imply that the story about the birds was fiction, or had at least ceased to be true. » Lucr. Ti. 738-68, omnia quae naturali ratione genmtur (760). * Lucr. iii. 978-1023. * Lucr. iii. 776-83. \ 254 VIRGIL HADES 255 if 1^ w and startling presentation of the after-life. It is in the form of a dream, which came to Scipio Africanus the younger outside the walls of Carthage. He finds himself with the elder Africanus and his own father, Aemilius Paullus, in a place high and bright and full of stars, which proves to be the Milky Way. From it he beholds the world, and the sense of infinite space and infinite time is brought home to him.i The soul, he learns, is but a prisoner in the body ; the life men know on earth being more really death. It comes from the eternal fires called stars, for the stars are animated with a divine intelligence. All on earth is transitory except the soul, the gift of the gods, while beyond the moon all is eternal. The mind is the man (mem cuiusque is est quisque\ and it is divine. Man's work is the service of the community of which he is a member. " For all who have saved, helped, or increased their country (patriam\ there is a sure and definite place in the sky {certum esse in caelo definitum locum), where in happiness they may enjoy eternal life. For to that supreme God, who rules the universe, nothing that is on earth is more grateful than those gather- ings and ordered societies of men which are called states. The rulers and saviours of these proceed hence and return again hither "—to the Milky Way. The universe consists of nine related spheres, of which the outermost, which guards and contains the rest, is the supreme God himself. It is he who has given man his soul, and without his order (iniussu eius) man must not leave life, lest he "seem to have abandoned the human task assigned by God." The myth is a medley of borrowed matter. It is chiefly valuable for our present purpose because it shows so clearly the ideas of a Roman of culture and sensibility. Infinite time and infinite space— the centre of them for the Roman in Rome. The gods have set him there, and without their leave he must not quit his post. No one will quarrel with such a view, however fantastic the setting, and we shall find that Virgil holds it fully as strongly as Cicero. As for the tales which the poets in the old days had told * Cf. Seneca, Nat, Qtmest,, i. Prologue 8 7 ; and Carlyle's ReminUcencts, vol. I P* 44 (of James Carlyle). about Hades, Cicero several times lets us know that they are freely ridiculed— should not a philosopher be ashamed to boast that he is not afraid of such things > ^ For people— and even Epicureans— did fear them. On the other hand, there were those who marked with anxiety the passing of belief in Hades. Long before Polybius had said that the scrupulous fear of the gods kept the Roman commonwealth together— that it was not idly that the ancients had instilled into the vulgar the belief in punishments in Hell; there was risk to the state in the rejection of these beliefs.^ So, in VirgiFs own day, the historian Diodorus remarked that the old tales—" the mythology," fictitious as it might be— did contribute to piety and righteousness in the many.^ The restoration of religion, attempted by Augustus, was no doubt in part a police measure to counteract the spirit of the times, though that it was not merely this is proved by the clear traces of superstition and romanticism in that hard and shrewd character. The poet's view of the matter will probably not be that of the pure philosopher. Still less will he take up the position of the practical moralist or of the Emperor, the arch-policeman of th^ state. Yet it is quite possible that, however unphilosophic and unpractical, he may come nearer to the truth of things, and that is what we have now to see. In the first Georgic Virgil gently laughed at " the Elysian fields which Greece admires " ; * he could never deride or attack in the style of Lucretius. In the second book he spoke with admiration of the philosopher victorious over " all fears " and " the noise of greedy Acheron," ^ but he did so with some consciousness of detachment from him — his own happiness lying elsewhere. In his story of Orpheus in the fourth Georgic he has given a sketch of Hades himself, but, as the dominant motive is the recovery of Eurydice, it will not surprise us that the treatment leans more to literature than to religion. » Tusculans, L 21, 48. « Polybius, vi. 56. • Diod. Sic. i. 2 ^ rCv ^ ^Sov fivSoKoyla, rV viroSeaiP xevXturtUvTiw exovaa, roWd ffvfi^XKerai rots dvdpunroii irpos ^vai^nav koX SiKau>^a and .,^a) w^J^'^^J^^^^ explicitly later on. but surely we have it here already '"xSh the darkness comes a dim and sad fig-e-barely recognizable as the ghost of Palinurus the jnbu^^ied steeLan.1 This is clearly suggested by ^e similar episode in the Odyssey? where Odysseus sees am°"^ ^e dead Elpenor. whom he had supposed to be alive. Ihe ancient world at large had gloomy thoughts about the unburied and their lot in the other -'^^Id.m spite of Ae assurance philosophers felt We cannot imagine the appearance of such a story as this in the G^^e^^^'^^'^^^ pS^lar idea was long-lived. Four centuries later Syne lus tells us that he and his fellow passengers on a ^h'P'^'d stress fastened gold or jewels to themse ves in order ^o tempt any^ who mi-ht find their dead bodies on the beach, to bury ^emTn"rcturn for the gift they brought.' Elpe-r was m no more distress than any other ghost. His desire for a grave was a natural one ; and his suggestion that he might become « a curse from the gods " (0e£. ^mf^a) to Odysseus if he were left unburied, is very far from the passionate sen e of need which is marked in Palinurus. Virgil is here m close touch with popular sentiment, and though we may reconcile it somehow with the rest of his picture we feel that philosophy has here waived its rights to poetry-and • S« the cnrious note of Servias ad Ac». vi. 340. who explain, the d.m- nest^n *e ^und that Palinurus had not reached the !o.a f^r^''"" rX. he iys, say of souU in the world beyond, x^ifurgata. .nc.p,u»t e.s. ''■^^i 5-80. See Miss F. Melian Stawell. Hcmer andth, Iliad, p. IS?- » Bf. 4.' Cf. Horace. Odes, i. 28. on the unburied Aichytas. I; !! 1 262 VIRGIL HADES 263 u 1 perhaps to patriotism, for Cape Palinurus is our parting thought. Aetemumque locus Palinuri nomen habebit^ (vi 381). Italy haunts the poet's mind even in Hades. Once across Acheron Aeneas passes through five regions of Hades, about which there has been a great deal of controversy.^ They are occupied respectively by children who died in infancy, by those unjustly condemned to death, by innocent people who have committed suicide, by un- happy lovers, and by those who have fallen in war. Norden wishes to group these five regions as one intermediate state, finding the common likeness among these five rather dif- ferent classes of people in the fact that they all have been cut off prematurely. He produces a certain amount of evidence to show that views were current upon the aa>poi or fiiaiodavaroif as such people were called, to the effect that they had to reach the period originally assigned to their lives before they could be properly ranked with the dead.* In this he is not generally followed. Fallen heroes, for example, do not belong to this class in any case, and if they did, it is hard to see why some should be in Elysium already (649) and others not If Virgil had meant to represent all his five classes as ^laioOdvaroi, he could, as Norden admits, have explained this in a line or two. He did not explain it, and Norden says it is not worth while to ask why he did not.* It is simpler and sounder not to attempt reconcilia- * "For ever the place shall bear the name of Palinurus.'' » See E. Norden, Vergilsiudien in Hermes^ 1893. See also Weil, Etudes, p. 88, and Dieterich Nekyia^ 152, n., for criticisms of weight and significance upon Norden's views. * e.g. Servius on Aen. iv. 386 dicunt physici biotkanatorum animas non redpi in originem suam nisi vagantes Ugitimum Umpusfati compltverint. Plato, Rep, X. 615 C, alludes, without explanation, to the condition below of those who die at birth. * Norden's own words may be quoted. Hermes^ 1893, p. 388: " Hittc Vergil nur mit Hnem Worte darauf hingedeutet, dass alle diese in der Zwischen- region sich aufhaltenden Seelen, wenn ihre Zeit erfullt sei, aus diesem Aus- nahmezustand erlost werden, so ware die missverstandliche Aufbssung dieser Stelle ausgeschlossen gewesen. Warum er es nicht gethan hat, ist UberflUssig za fragen : dass er keineswegs die Kenntniss dieser abstrusen Lehre bei seinen Lesem voranssetzen durfte, wird dadurch bewiesen, dass in den ausserordentlich tions which the poet has not troubled to make. Norden's thes s t tha the book is a finished and cons stent whol^ Ind to support this he feels that d-f-P-^" "?f,i ,) ::clciled.^ut the almost casual allus.^^^^^^^^^ su^pests incomplete revision ; or, it it aocs nut suggesib uicui ^ important a figure ;:;:jstdTts;:r ::;hrermaiurd insignificant ^'ZwhTver logical consistency we may int-du- into thispUage by bringing all five classes ""^^ °"^,f ^^"^^j ion. it is important to remember that, even rf Vrgd^m^^ this there still remains a moral >nco"s,stency^ We c^ understand Plato putting infant children m ^ class J*/ themselves {Rep. x. 615 C); they at least ^-e -"^^/"^^, to a limbo of their own. as they "%f f ^', "??'hL the mmoraL The intermediate position in Hades heW by Ae spSts of adult persons of no ve^ distmct ^^ral ^^^^^^^^^^^ which Plato describes in the Phaedo, is ^'^J^^''''^^^^ inteni. ch. iL ! ^, ; t- J « &> " As when the mind of a man runs up and down, a here oMhere.- in his keen desire ; as swift as that d.d lady Hera fly. 11 278 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 279 I ■ m • . 1 1 J' i become more "spiritual" might be ambiguous in view of Christian terminology. Yet the gods are beginning to connect themselves with moral as well as with physical law. Zeus is " protector of those rights on which depend all the relations of men with one another." He is god of the oath, of the family, of the suppliant, the herald and the beggar. There are signs, dim and intermittent, that he will yet be the sole and supreme god.^ In a famous passage Homer gives a premonition of this future faith, though in a strangely anthropomorphic garb. •* Make trial," says Zeus, " if ye will, that all may know ; let down a golden chain from heaven to earth, and all ye gods and goddesses take hold ; but ye will not draw down Zeus, the most high counsellor, from heaven to the ground, no, not with much endeavour. But were I to draw, and put to my strength, I could updraw you all and earth and sea to boot, and bind the chain about a horn of Olympus, and leave all hanging." ^ But after all, it is neither as powers of nature nor as guardians of moral law that the Homeric gods make their strongest impression upon the reader : it is rather as a society of very human persons. One is tempted at first to think that their individual characters as presented in the poems are survivals of an earlier age, for it is clear that human morality is far in advance of divine. No one in heaven, in the best circle of heaven, has at all the moral grandeur of Achilles, Hector or Sarpedon. Yet while this suggestion may be partly true, it is also to be remembered that the god closely resembles the Greek tyrant of a later day. " Absolute power," says Herodotus, " would set even the best ^ Cf. Girard, Lt Sentiment religieux^ p. 59, ** C'^tait un monoth^isme incomplet et grossier." Cf. also Watson, Christianity and Idealism^ p. 29, *' Even in Homer there are elements which show that the Greek religion must ultimately accomplish its own euthanasia. There was in it from the first a latent contradiction which could not fail to manifest itself openly at a later time." ' Iliad^ viii. iS-26, Purves. This chain is turned by Plato into the sun, Tkeaetetus^ 153 c. Macrobius and the Neo-Platonists made it into the descent in being from the Supreme One through all nature. Comm. Somn. Scip, \. 14, 15. The English reader will remember how Spenser, speaking of "this worlds faire workmanship," thinks of "that great golden chaine," "with which it blessed Concord hath together tide." of men outside the customary thoughts." ^ The Homenc god has not the safeguard that lies for us in consciousness of limitations. The gods are stronger than men, but they have no moral or spiritual superiority whatever.* ^ The gods then are a community of immortals living on Olympus, and Zeus is their king. When they meet m council, they can remonstrate with Zeus, but they dare not oppose him. They have their own functions and their relative dignities, though there is occasional vagueness m these. On the other hand, their characters are cleariy and strongly marked. Homer's gods are as individual as his heroes, and their histories are as well known. The sensu- ality and favouritism of Zeus are not cloaked. He likes sacrifices, he enjoys the strife of the Olympians ;» he is cut to the heart by the death of Sarpedon ; and he indulges in furious outbreaks of anger against other gods. Hera out- wits and cajoles him easily and successfully, though she too has suffered from his anger.* She is of all the immortals the most unpleasant ; she is very powerful, quite unscrupu- lous, and frankly savage. Zeus twits her with the will to eat Priam and Priam's sons alive. Poseidon is similarly arbitrary and unrestrained in his animosities. Athene and Apollo are of all the gods the most rational and honourable. Athene is the cleverest and most effective of all the Olympian deities, though " she will never be forgiven for the last betrayal of Hector." ^ Apollo is a genial god, prophet, giver of oracles, and lord of the bow, but hardly as yet the sun-god, for fcelios (Helios) is a distinct personality, nor yet god of healing, for that place is taken by Paieon. As god of the Lycians and lord of Chrysa he befriends the Trojans. Aphrodite is a goddess of great power, but yet contemptible. Athene urges Diomedes not to fear her on the field of battle, and thus encouraged he wounds Aphrodite on the wrist without incurring any special censure from » Hdt. iiL 80 iKTh% rwr iuefmav voTifidrufv, • Mr Andrew Lang, in The World of Homer (1910) p. 120, draws a distmction, well worth noting, between the religion of Homer, "a good faith to Uve and die in," and his mythology. » Iliad, XX. 22. * ^^'^» »• 586-94. » Gilbert Murray, Ancient Greek Literature, p. 36. 'M i ih 28o VIRGIL OLYMPUS 281 higher powers.^ She is harsh and cruel, as, for instance, with Helen ; and in the lay of Demodocus in the Odyssey the most explicit tale is told of her humiliation in the net of Hephaestus. II Had oxen or had lions but had hands Wherewith to draw and work such work as men, They too had painted pictures of the gods, And given them bodies like unto their own ; The horse's god were horse, the cow's a cow.* So wrote Xenophanes of Colophon in the sixth century B.C., and in this vigorous fashion called the attention of the Greeks to the fact that anthropomorphism was outworn. Asiatic Greece had fallen before the Persians, and in long wandering and observation the philosopher had pondered the matter and had found the explanation in the low moral standards of his people, and these he connected with their religion. Homer and Hesiod, whom the Greeks regarded as the founders of their religion, he attacked in epic, elegy, and iambic, for what they said of the gods. Homer and Hesiod cast against the gods All that is shame and blame among mankind. The gods, they said, work all unrighteousness, They steal, deceive, commit adultery.* Himself perhaps the first geologist, impressed by Nature and her power, and by the vast variety of human opinion, he made no gods in human or other form ; yet he allowed gods to be, but thought of One Supreme, "a uniform and all-per- vading power, governing the universe as the soul governs the body, endowing it with motion and animation, but inseparably bound up with it." He was, says Aristotle, " the * Dione, in consoling Aphrodite, threatens Diomedes very gently, //. ▼. 381.415. Contrast Aen. xi. 269-77, where Diomedes speaks of his act The change of tone is noticeable. « Ritter and Prelier (sixth ed.) § 83. Clem. Alex. Strom, v. § 109, p. 715 P. Cf. the ironical passage in Heine Atta Trolly viii. on bear- theology. » Ritter and Prelier, § 82. Sextus Empiricus Adv, Math. i. 289 ; ix. 193. first partisan of the One." The attack upon the gods springs from a higher conception of the divine nature, and it is made by one " god-intoxicated "—a phenomenon which will recur.^ t. j r a Within a century these views of the gods had found a more enduring position in literature. A poet, the most popular after Homer of all Greek poets, steeped in the teaching of the philosophers, and above all things impressed by man's capacity for wretchedness, set the legends of Olympus side by side with human misery, and left the world to draw its inferences. Dissatisfaction had long been felt with the moral content of the popular religion, but so far the great poets, Pindar, Aeschylus,^ and, in measure, Sophocles had accepted the religion and endeavoured to inspire it with higher conceptions of God and more serious ideals of duty.3 It was not to be done. The new thoughts refused to blend with the old legends. Euripides realized this, and instead of trying to blend them he contrasted them.* J . 4.1, A striking example of this contrast is to be found in the Troades. The play begins with a dialogue between Poseidon and Athena. The goddess complains that the Greeks have treated her and her temple with disrespect— Aj ax has violated its technical sanctity Without comment or rebuke. She proposes to destroy the fleet, and Poseidon agrees. God and goddess bury their old quarrel in their desire for revenge, for it is nothing else. And all the while in the dirt at their feet Hecuba is lying unpitied. The gods are coolly discussing their own trivial wrongs, and they never betray the slightest feeling for the great queen's 1 For Xenophanes see Gomperz. Gruk Thinkers, bk. u. cb. L Bumet.^ar/y Greek PhUcsophy (2nd ed., 1908) §§ 55*62 ; Adam, h^eligious Teachers of Greece, DO 108 ff. The question of the monotheism of Xenophanes is remote from Zx p^sent purpose. The quotation in the text is from Gomperz (on whom, how- ever, see Burnet's criticism) ; it is he too who borrows for Xenophanes the phrase «« g(il.intoxicated " from Novalis, who used it of Spinoza. The geology is proved from Hippolytus, Ref. Haer. i. 14, who tells of his speculations about fossil shel^ found near Syracuse : raura U 07; <5e t^ Seia-iSai/uLovlav), is the very thing which keeps the Roman commonwealth together. To such an extraordinary extent is this carried among them (iKTerpaywSrjrai), both in private and public business, that nothing could exceed it. Many people might think this unaccountable ; but in my opinion their object is to use it as a check upon the common people. If it were possible to form a state wholly of philosophers, such a custom would perhaps be unnecessary. ... To my mind, the ancients were not acting without purpose or at random when they brought in among the vulgar those opinions about the gods, and the belief in punishments in Hades : much rather do I think that men nowadays are acting rashly and foolishly in rejecting them.* In fact, as Varro put it, it was to the state's advantage that people should be deceived in religion.^ But there was another side to the religion. The very vagueness of the powers and characters of these gods made them more awful, just as under the early empire the in- * The phrase is Boissier's. • Gellius, jV. A. ii. 28. * Cic, de Leg. ii. 9. 22 nequis agrum consecraio. CX Cic. de domo stM, 49, 127 * Polybius, vi. 56. 6-12, tr. Shuckburgh. * Varro ap. Aug. C. D. iv. 27. Expedit homines /alii in religione. Cf. the very remarkable verses of Critias on the invention of the gods ; cited by Sextus Empir. adv. Math. ix. 54. OLYMPUS 289 determinate nature of the relations of emperor and senate made both miserable and nervous in their dealings with one another.^ No one knew where or how he might meet and offend a god. " To tell the truth," says Cicero,^ " super- stition has spread everywhere, and has crushed the minds of wellnigh all men, and made itself mistress of human weakness. ... It follows you up ; it is hard upon you ; wherever you turn it pursues you. If you hear a prophet, or an omen; if you sacrifice; if you catch sight of a bird ; if you see a Chaldaean or a haruspex\ if it lightens, if it thunders, if anything is struck by lightning ; if anything like a portent is born, or occurs in any way— something or other of the kind is bound to happen, so that you can never be at ease and have a quiet mind. The refuge from all our toils and anxieties would seem to be sleep. Yet from sleep itself the most of our cares and terrors come." ^ So too said Plutarch of superstition— " Alone it makes no truce with sleep."* Plutarch's Lives are full of dreams. In the reign of Marcus Aurelius a work in five books was written on the interpretation of dreams by Artemidorus Daldianus, which is still extant* All this superstition Lucretius attacked with an energy and an anger that testify plainly to its power over men's minds, and perhaps over his own. Over and over he insists that such gods as there are live lapped in eternal peace, unconcerned with us and our doings ; that nothing happens that cannot be explained by natural causes, or by pure chance ; that therefore neither in this life need we fear the gods, who take no interest in us in any way, nor in any other life, because there is no other life. Epicurus has brought us salvation ; he is the real god of mankind ; he has given us peace of mind and happiness. And yet — ** When we look up to the great expanses of heaven, the » On this aspect of the Empire see Boissier, Cicero and his Friends (tr.) p^ ,86 f. * Cicero, de Div. ii. 72. 148-50. » See Martha, Lucrke, ch. iv. La religion de Lucr^ce. It should be noted that the Stoics accepted divination. * Plutarch, de Super stitione 165 E (§ 3) M!>»^ T^P o'^ cxhltrxu. tr^% rhv ^irvov. ^ » Similar works, of some size too, are current in modern Greek, and there is a steady sale for small " books of dreams" in English. 19 290 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 291 aether set on high above the glittering stars, and the thought comes into our mind of the sun and the moon and their goings; then indeed in hearts laden with other woes that doubt too begins to wake and raise its head— Can it be perchance, after all, that we have to do with some vast divine power that wheels those bright stars each in its course ? " ^ What the great poet felt and expressed in this moving way we need not doubt that smaller minds experienced, who had less grasp of Epicurean principles, and fluctuated wretchedly between unbelief and superstition. There is yet a third aspect of the old religion. To some minds it was full of quiet charm and beauty. A tendency akin to romanticism meets us in the age of Virgil, and perhaps it is to this that we should refer the affection felt by some for the old gods of the countryside rather than to conviction of their divinity. •* Lares of my fathers ! ** says Tibullus, "keep ye me safe; for ye were my guardians when a tiny child I ran about at your feet. No shame it is that you are of ancient wood ; even thus it was ye dwelt in the house of my grandsire of old. In those days they kept faith better, when in the little shrine a god of wood was content with humble offerings." • But neither tradition, nor Epicureanism, nor romanticism will suffice for the religious temper, and for it there was nothing so strong and helpful as the practical Roman Stoicism. Whatever the origin of its various doctrines, a summary of them is given by Cicero in his second book De Natura Deorum,^ Surveying the gods, the Roman Stoic 1 Lucretius, v. 1204-10 : Nam cum suspicimus magni caeUstia mundi templa super stellisque micantibus aethera Jixum^ tt venit in mentem solis lunaequt viarum^ tunc aliis oppressa malts in pectora cura ilia quoque expergefcutum caput erigere tnfii, nequcu forte deum nobis immense pctestas sit, vario motu quae Candida sidera verset. • Tibullus, i. 10. 15-20 aluistis et idem cursarem vestros cum tener ante pedes. • Cicero owns frankly that he used Greek originals in composing his philosophic works— ad Atticum xii. 52, 3, dir^pa^tt sunt, minore labore Jiunt\ verba tantum ad/iro quibus abundo. found some to be deified men— Hercules, Castor, and Romu- lus (24, 62)— some deifications of divine gifts (23, 60), and some personified forces of nature ; " but when we look up at the sky and contemplate the celestial bodies, what is so clear as that there is a divine power of excelling intelligence, whereby they are guided?" (2,4). The universe is a vast organism permeated and controlled by an intelligent and sentient nature ; " and when we say the universe consists and is directed by nature, we do not speak of it as a clod, or a chip of stone, or something of the kind with no natural cohesion, but as a tree or an animal " (32, 82). The gods, the Stoic holds, are not distinct and opposed beings, but the varied activity of the one God under various names; and their proper worship is veneration with pure, honest, and incorrupt mind and voice (28, 71). Divine Providence thus rules the universe (30, 75), and not only do the gods think for mankind, but for men (65, i6/^y IV Our preliminary survey has been long, but it may have enabled us to get a clearer view of the elements which went to form Virgil's conceptions of the divine. He was an Italian, brought up in his native village, no doubt, to hold the old traditional views of his people. His first great teacher, however, in early youth was Lucretius. As his experience of life enlarged, he began to feel the weak points of Epicureanism, and simultaneously he was reading very widely in Greek literature. That he studied Euripides carefully is clear, and it is hardly conceivable that he read none of Plato's works. A matured man, he wrote his epic on the model of Homer ; and he had, in accordance with tradition, to produce gods of a conventional Homeric type. » I quote the last clause, as of special import : Nee vera universe generi homi- num solum sed etiam singulis a dis immortalibus consuli et provideri selet, I have borrowed a phrase or two from Dr J. B. Mayor. Since this book was written, three volume! have appeared, dealing with Stoicism— Prof. W. L. Davidson, The Stoic Creed {1907) ; Mr R. D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean (1910) ; Prof. E. V. Arnold, Roman Stoicism, There is also a chapter on it in The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (1909)- 4 ISi: 292 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 293 But to do this exactly was impossible for one of so inde- pendent a character and such wide sympathies. The gods in consequence have a tendency to fall away from the standard of Homer, and to betray other influences. In the Eclogues and in the second conclusion to the fourth Georgic the gods are frankly literary and Alexandrine. But in the rest of the Georgics we come nearer to the poet's mind. The clear and picturesque outlines of the literary gods fade away, and we find sometimes a half-romantic leaning toward the old country gods of Italy, sometimes a gleam of a vaster and still more moving conception. He tells us of the fascination for him of the scientific outlook on life.i The Muses, dear above all things to him. would teach him, if they would hear his prayer, the laws of heaven and earth and sea, the great principles that underlie all Nature. But if this is beyond him— the re- flection shows a certain consciousness that his true sphere is elsewhere— be it his to love the country with its gentle streams and woods, and to let glory go. Happy indeed is he who has mastered Nature's secrets and by their aid has triumphed over the terrors of superstition (nietus omnes) and of death ; but there is another blessedness in the knowledge of the country gods. Pan, Silvanus, and the nymphs. These names are not to be taken literally, as the rustics might have taken them, but as embodying a point of view which is on the whole new to literature. He means that he will turn to Nature herself in her smiling rather than in her scientific mood; he will "view the outward shows of sky and earth, of hill and valley," and, while the man of science is busy and bustling on the track of laws, he will wait for " impulses of deeper birth," feeding his mind "in a wise passiveness." And this he did, and after deciding in his first Georgic that the weather-wisdom of the crows is not a divine gift,* he came at last to a view, which may be called technically Stoic or Pythagorean, but which is no mere dogma of the schools but an acquisi- » G. ii. 475- • Contrast Epictetus (Z>. i. 17) oi&W rhv KopaKa Bavfjd^onep If rV fcoptipriv dXXA rip dtov rov ui. • A. vii. 189. ^- ^"*- 3^ % 296 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 297 where we thy worshippers in pious faith print our steps amid the deep embers of the fire "^ — he is called Apollo, but we may be sure it was not his original name. In close connexion with Apollo are the Penates, who, according to the story, came from Troy,* but are certainly Italian. Ancient antiquaries indeed debated whether Apollo were not one of the Penates himself, which would be quite un- Homeric.3 Jupiter has both Greek and Italian traits. To Evander he is (by a beautiful inspiration) the Arcadian Jupiter ;* in another place he is Jupiter Anxurus ; ^ he is at the same time Jove of the Capitol, as a famous passage attests ; ^ and to larbas he seems to have been Ammon.'' In a word, he is the Jove of the Roman Empire, a god of many name^ and characters, a symbol of Rome's policy in dealing with religions. Juno likewise is Hera of Samos,* Juno Lacinia,® Juno of Gabii,!® and Juno Caelestis of Carthage. The rites which are paid to these gods are generally Roman, without distinction between those of Greek and those of Italian origin. Virgil is endeavouring to bring all the gods into real contact with Rome, and to do this he has to make them serious beings, possessed of Roman dignity and gravity. * ^. xi. 785-8 (Mackail). Pliny {N, H. vii. 2. 19) alludes to the fact, but says nothing. Servius' comment may be quoted. " So says Virgil ; but Varro, everywhere an opponent of religion {uhigue expugnaior religionis)^ in describing a certain drug, says, * as the Hirpini do, who, when they have to walk through fire, touch their soles with a drug.'" Fire- walking may still be seen in Japan ; a friend of mine has described to me how one of his own students in Economics pulled off his patent leather boots and did it before his eyes. Mr Saville, of the London Missionary Society, saw it done on Huahine, near Tahiti. It is also done on Kandaru, in the Fiji group, by the inhabitants of a particular village, with whom it is hereditary. See Andrew Lang, Modem Mythology ^ ch. xii. * A. ii. 296 ; iii. 12, &c. ^ Macrobius, Sat. iii. 4. 6. Nigidius and Cornelius Labeo thought the Penates must be Apollo and Neptune. Warde Fowler, Religious Experience of the Roman People^ Lecture iv. (on the religion of the family). * A. viii. 573 : At vos, superi et divum tu maxime rector luppiter^ Arccuiii, guaeso^ miserescite regis. De la Ville de Mirmont, Ap. et Virg. p. 230 on this conflate Jupiter. * A. vii. 799. • A. viii. 351 f. ' A. iv. 198, " A.i. 1 2- 1 6, Carthage is preferred by her to Samos. * A. iii. 552. " A. vii. 6S2. Consequently he no longer plays with them as the Alex- andrine poets did, and as he did himself with the delightful old Silenus in the sixth Eclogue, whose bad ways we forgive for his good temper and the song he steals from Lucretius— and for his brow and temples stained with the mulberry juice. Everything is more serious. For instance, the inter- view between Venus and Cupid, with reference to Dido, was suggested by a similar episode in the ArgonauttcaM'^ it is graver, more dignified, and less pretty. Cupid is not a Ptolemy baby like Eros in the poem of Apollonius, but " a puer bullatus of the good old days." ^ Virgil's gods are thoroughly Roman, in whatever epics they have adventured themselves in the past. There is a fine Roman propriety about them, which is a little stiff perhaps, but very proper to reclaimed characters who are trying to forget they were ever at Alexandria. Venus, a cruel and rather contemptible character in the Iliad, is in the Aeneid pre-eminently a divine mother— ^/w« Venus. Sainte-Beuve calls her " invariably charming, tender, loving, and yet sober and serious." In an interesting study he contrasts the meeting of Aphrodite and Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite with that of Venus and Aeneas in the first Aeneid} Virgil had read the Hymn, but his treatment is very different. That Venus is Aeneas' mother accounts for much of the change, but the whole interview is conceived in a different tone. Venus appears in the garb and guise of Diana, as a huntress maiden. There is grace, dignity, and charm about her, but nothing voluptuous, as in the Hymn. Jupiter, however, is in many ways the most interesting of Virgil's gods.3 He has Homeric traits, but he is mainly Roman. He has come nearer to mankind than Apollonius allowed him ; from a Ptolemy, we might say, he has become an Augustus. He is a grave and wise god, free from the tyrannical and sensual characteristics of the Homeric Zeus. As with Aeneas, so in Jupiter's case, Virgil lapses at times * De la Ville de Mirmont, Ap. de Rh. et Virgile, p. 647. * Etude sur Virgile, pp. 250-8. » Boissier, La Religion romaint, i. 254. See p. 57. I , m. 298 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 299 into weak imitations of Homer, and we hear of Juturna and of Ganymede in connexion with him ; but as a rule he conforms more to what Plato thinks the divine nature should be. " If the poets will not so far respect all the gods," says Plato, "at least we shall entreat them not to presume to draw so unlike a picture of the highest of the gods as to make him say, * Ah me, now is it fated that Sarpedon, my beloved, shall fall beneath the hand of Patroclus, Menoetius' son.'"i Accordingly in the Aeneid it is Hercules who sheds unavailing tears for Pallas, while Jupiter consoles him. " ' Each has his own appointed day, short and unrecoverable is the span of life for all; but to spread renown by deeds is the task of valour. Under high Troy town many and many a god*s son fell ; nay, mine own child Sarpedon likewise perished. Turnus too his own fate summons, and his allotted period has reached the goal.* So speaks he, and turns his eyes away from the Rutulian fields."* Jupiter feels the sorrow of men here, but he does not propose, as he did in the Iliads to overturn the order of things by rescuing the doomed hero. His attitude at the Council of the Gods has been compared to the undecided conduct of Latinus, and his general position with reference to Destiny is on the whole vague. But in the main he sustains the character of a great and wise god very successfully. Wercules too is a god who owes something to the philosophers. The Herakles of the Attic stage, braggart, bully, and glutton, has given way to the Herakles of Prodicus* fable, a god vowed to the service of Yirfue,^ not undeserving of his canonization by the Stoics."^ Virgil » Plato, Rep, iii. 388. Iliad, xvi. 433. • A. x. 467-74. Mackail. » Xcnophon, Mtm. ii. I. 21 flf., "The choice of Herakles." Cf. Diod. Sic, i. 2. * Seneca, DiaL ii. 2. i, counts Hercules among the sages ; Epictetus D. iii. 24, on his trust in Zeus his father, and D. iii. 26, on Herakles as eiiraywTti&s hxvi.iw\iVT\% KoX offtorijTos ; Apuleius, Florida, iv. 22, calls him a philosopher ; and Julian, Qr. vi. p. 187 c, says that, besides conferring other benefits on mankind, he was the founder of the Cynic philosophy. Horace himself recognizes the god's new dignity : hoc arte Pollux et vagus Hercules (C. iii. 3. 9). See Nettleship, Essays^ i. p. 135. Compare also the question of Cotta in Cicero, N. D. iii. 20. 42 quern p§tissimum HercuUtn calamus, scire velim ; plures enim trathtnt nobis, . nuts into the mouth of Evander, the most serious and venerable figure in Italy, the story of Hercules* connexion with Rome, and the justification of his cult, as that ot a saviour and deliverer. Non haec sollemnia nobis, has ex more dapes, banc tanti numinis aram vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum imposuit^ (^. viii. 185). Conington remarks that one might almost suppose Virgil here to be defending religion against Lucretius, who had taken pains to depreciate Hercules in comparison with Epicurus.* - In the same spirit Virgil tones down or apologizes tor legends which he has to tell. For instance, Misenus challenged Triton to a contest in trumpeting, and the god slew him for jealousy {aemulus). So said the legend ; but envy, according to Plato, "stands outside the divine chorus," * so the poet adds a caveat of his own- si credere dignum est* Si credere dignum est\ The exclamation raises a deeper Usue and one of wider import than the character of Triton ; for is not all Olympus involved ? So at le^t the poet hints, or half hints, at the very beginning of IF- poem. Tantaene animis caelestibus irae i * He knew the answer that all the philosophers, from Plato to Lucretius, would make. It was his own answer. At the 1 " No idle superstition that knows not the gods of old has ordered these our solemn rites, this customary feast, this altar of august sancUty (Mackail). * Lucretius, v, exordium, » Plato, Phatdrus, 247 A : ^ovo% yap f|a; deiov xopov XararaL. *>f vi 173 " If belief .is due." Cf. the same expression (G. ui. 391) m Uie case of another legend, borrowed by Virgil from Nicander (Macr. Sat. v. 22. lO), and from Virgil by Browning, Pan and Luna. • " Can heavenly natures hate so fiercely and so long?" (Conington). 300 VIRGIL OLYMPUS 301 end he addresses the question directly to Jove himself, and in a more searching form — Tanton' placuit concurrere motu, luppiter, aeterna gentes in pace futuras?^ (A, xii. 503). The question goes beyond Jupiter, for even he admits that things lie on the knees— not of gods, but of still higher powers. At a critical moment in the war between Aeneas and Turnus, Jupiter declares that he will do nothing ; he will be impartial — rex luppiter omnibus idem. Venus elsewhere hints that Fate, which she loosely connects with Jupiter, is the supreme power in the world ;* and Juno at the last admits, on the suggestion of her husband, that Fate is too powerful for her and yields to it» But Jupiter is more frank. He will take no part in the war, he says, cloaking his inaction with the fine phrase quoted, and continuing " the Fates will find a way." Fata viam invenient. "The poet seems," writes an ancient commentator, "to have shown here that the Fates are one thing and Jupiter another."* But Jupiter says more than this, for, though we must give him leave to speak as loosely as we do ourselves in common talk, it is remarkable that he recognizes another factor in human affairs — Sua cuique exorsa laborcm fortunamque fercnt. «* As each has begun, so shall his toil and his fortune be." Jupiter is raising the same question which Tacitus debated a century after Virgil's day. "As for myself," 1 " Was it thy will, O God, that nations destined to everlasting peace should clash in so vast a shock?" (Mackail). t A. iv. no. » ^. xii. 794. 795 ; 810-20. * Interpolation in Servius, ad A, x. ill (the passage in question) vtditur hu oslindisst aiiud tssefcUa^ aliud lovem. wrote the historian, "my mind remains in doubt whether human affairs are ordered by fate and unchangeable necessity or proceed by chance. For you will find the wisest of ancient philosophers and their followers at variance on this point Many firmly believe that the gods take no care for our beginning or our end, or for mans life at all . . . Others again hold that there is a corre- spondence between fate and the course of events ; only that this does not depend upon the movements of the stars but on certain elemental principles, and on the sequence of natural causes. Yet even so they would leave to us our choice of life; which once made, what comes after is fixed immutably." » Does Jupiter mean by his sua exorsa at all what Tacitus means by his ubteUgerts} -that in some way men are the authors of their own destiny, and must go through with what they begin? Is this Jupiter's idea? He does not explain it. and the gods do not ask.' , . , i. :. :. Whatever interpretation we put on Jupiter s speech, it is quite clear that the gods are not the supreme rulers of the Serse. Nor are they, it also follows from the study of the Aeneid, even those manifestations of the supreme divinity, which the Neo-Platonists later on held them to be. Vireil filled with the thought of the divine life pervading all thi'ngs. hardly seems to conceive of the Olympian gods as sharing that life. He has done everything PO^^'^le for them ; he has toned down the dark elements in their stories ; he has emphasized the grave and moral ; he has Platonized them as far as he could; but he has not made them live. Set in the Aeneid, as in the plays of Euripides side by side with human life and all it means of love and sorrow, but drawn with more kindliness of feeling, the « Tacitus Aunah, vi. 22 (Ramsay's translation) Fatum quidem .ongruere uins *.JnTled «Te vagis stem, vcrum apud frinHfia et mxus »aturaln.m ""f^Z T2. 333-6. attributes his coming to luly at once to fate. fortutHndd^ine oracles. Servius tries to explain the sUtement by reference ZZCL and to the ingenuity of Virgil. See Gellius N. A. ™. (v..) .. for an interesting discussion by Cbrysippus of fate and freewill. 11 '( \ 302 VIRGIL Olympian gods are found to be dead beyond disguise — ^thc truth cannot be hid. They are mere epic machinery. Nor is it otherwise with the gods of Italy ; they perhaps had never lived in any personal way. Is the throne of heaven vacant, or is there no throne at all, or has it another occupant ? It is quite clear from the sixth book that Virgil is no longer an Epicurean. The traditional gods of heaven are conspicuously absent from man's existence before birth and after death, but all his life is permeated by divine law and is indeed itself divine, and this is Stoic doctrine. Throughout the whole Aeneid we are taught to think that Destiny, if not divine, at least greater than the traditional gods, has plans and aims, which it achieves; in other words, that Providence rules the affairs of men, whatever Providence may be and in whatever way it works. This again is Stoic doctrine. But this is not the whole matter. " ' Dear city of Cecrops,' says he of old ; and will not you say, * Dear city of Zeus ' ? " So wrote Marcus Aurelius in his diary,^ and the form of utterance is significant The exclamation may seem a natural deduction from the Stoic view of the world, but the Stoic does not easily say, " Dear city of Zeus," because it remains after all only a deduction for him. But to the poet of the Georgics it is no mere deduction, it is a living truth. The world is a " dear city " to Virgil — The beauty and the wonder and the power. The shapes of things, their colours, lights * and shades, Changes, surprises. To him, as to Goethe, the world is the living garment of Deity.' The Stoic finds little value in the particular beauties ^ Marcus Aurelius, iv. 23 *'&Ktivm lUv (Pfijffi' IIoXi 0^17 [KiicpoTot' ffi/ Ik oCk iptis' *Q woXi ^iXri Aios ; '* He" is Aristophanes in a lost play. ' Cf. Georgics i. 46 {incipiai\ sulco cUtritus splendescere vonur, » Faust ^ Part I. Sc. i. The Gcist speaks: In Lebensfluthen, im Thatensturm Wall' ich auf und ab . . . So scbaflT ich am s;\usenden V^ebstuhl der Zeit, Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid. OLYMPUS 303 of Nature, which means so much to Virgil. ** Decay is in the material substance of all things; they are but water, dust, bones, stench." ^ The " dear city of Zeus " is after all a depressing place of abode, or at least the visible part of it, the suburb of our habitation. Pan and Silvanus and the nymphs are very unphilosophic creatures, but they at least represent a feeling that all Nature is not " water, dust, bones, stench," and they are so far real — a poetic protest against one side of Stoicism. Again, the " dear city of Cecrops " is the expression of a poet's love for Athens, a feeling which the Stoic would only doubtfully approve. "The Stoics," writes Dr Caird, "are driven back upon the isolated inner life of the individual, and have to confine the absolute good to the bare state and direction of the will. Now the mistake of this negative attitude may easily escape notice, so long as it shows itself merely in treating wealth, or fame, or pleasure, as indifferent ; but when it leads the Stoics to deal in the same way with the ties of kindred and friendship, of family or nation, and to place virtue in obedience to an abstract law which is independent of all these, we begin to suspect some mistake or over-statement. . . . They do not realize that the con- sciousness of self as a moral being, and the consciousness of other selves as members of one society, are two factors that cannot be separated." * Dr Caird writes from a point of view which will hardly be attributed to Virgil, and yet Virgil in his own way felt the same weakness in the Stoic position. Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem.' Was there not a danger that in turning away from Juppiter Capitolinus, from Vesta and the Penates, the philosopher might lose something real, of which these had been a symbol ? ^ Marcus Aurelius, ix. 36. This is not the only mood oi Marcus, it may be noted. • Dr Edward Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. it P- "53- ' *' So mighty a task it was found the Roman race." 504 VIRGIL There lies the essence of Virgil's uncertainty. On one side is the teaching of the philosophers with an imperious call which he was glad to obey; but on the other side there was the poet's instinct, as imperious and as true. The delight he took in Nature, the deep love he felt for his country, seemed to be bound up with the old gods of farm and city. Figments they might be, or slight embodiments of the divine, but so long as men had held by them the great cardinal virtues had lived and flourished in Italy, and men had set the state before themselves. Who was to guarantee as much of Stoicism? Marcus Aurelius had not yet lived, and even he did not keep all that Virgil wanted. But we may go further still. Individualistic as Stoic teaching was, it did not provide enough for the individual. The Stoic sage is a solitary in the world around him, however much he is at home in ** the city of Zeus " of his thoughts— and perhaps even Zeus leaves him a little too much alone. He has to be for ever assuring himself and adjuring himself; it is all his own mind's doing, and no assurance, none at least of a distinct kind, comes to him from heaven. The diary of Marcus is a melancholy record. Now the old religion had been cheerful. The sage might smile at the gods of clay and ancient wood, and at their poor little offerings of meal and salt ; yet in the old days and in the old religion man and god had come very near together, they had known one another, the god was interested in the individual— and this was a happiness which the Stoic would have as a rule to forgo, which he might despise. But if ever a man's being was an expression of a need of the divine, the character of Aeneas is just such an expression. His melancholy anticipates that of Marcus, and has the same root. The poet craves for recognition by God, and if he does not express this craving in the articulate speech of philosopher or devotee, in the no less real voice of poetry it is clearly to be heard. Stoicism draws him and holds him, but the poet in Virgil cries out against a world with no content and no meaning, where the only reality is the individual, and even he is OLYMPUS 30s incomplete. The old religion had in its crude and poor way provided against these evils, and so far the poet felt it to be true and clung to it His mind and his reason go with the philosophers ; his heart turns to the faith of the past. He realizes the truth in both, but how to reconcile them was his problem, as it is ours. Wf *i 20 II CHAPTER XII INTERPRETATION OF LIFE.— 5. RESULTS 'Tis not the calm and peaceful breast That sees or reads the problem true ; They only know on whom 't has prest Too hard to hope to solve it too. — Clough, 'Ap/Moviri d Ibid., Oct. IS, 1825. ■ In the preface he wrote for the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads, mm I ',1 I'l If 3o8 VIRGIL comfort myself as well as I could and to set the Good against the Evil, that I might have something to distinguish my Case from worse ; and I stated it very impartially like Debtor and Creditor, the Comforts 1 enjoy'd against the Miseries I suffer'd." The balance in his account, it will be remembered, was in favour of good " upon the whole ; and he proceeds to the generalization "that we may always find something to comfort ourselves from and to set, in the JJe- scription of Good and Evil, on the Credit side of _ the Account" The something may indeed be *' negative, he admits, as :-« I see no wild Beasts to hurt me. Now a^ this was very philosophic of the " Solitaire," but we sha 1 want more of our poet when he deals with life jn general. If his view is merely that, on subtracting the evil from the good, there is a balance of ten per cent in favour of the good, we shall feel that nine-tenths of life is without meaning for him and we shall find little satisfaction in his ten per cent optimism. Still less shall we be content if adopting the debtor and creditor plan, he forgets to make his subtraction. But we shall prefer some other method that will give back the lost nine-tcnths-some method of addition rather than subtraction-by which we may find meaning in the whole of life. It will be harder to manage, but we have a feeling that we cannot be content with less, and that " the problem of the universe " is after all to make this addition. It is not easy to add up happiness and misery, but the poet must do it-and know what he is doing. He must, for sample, stand with Lear upon the heath, and share his mood. In such a night as this ! O Regan, Goncril ! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,- O ! that way madness lies : let me shun that But the poet must not shun it, he must suffer and under- ftand it.'^as he enjoys and understands the haPPmeW Perdita among her flowers. Brutus and Sir Toby Belch, and Timon— he must sympathize with them all. Humani nihil a me alienum puta RESULTS 309 When he has surveyed all, suffered all, and enjoyed all ; when he has been through " the whole tragedy and comedy of life," ^ he will be able to make his addition, for he will know what he has to add to what. And then perhaps he will not be in so great a hurry as people of less experience to say what is good and what is bad, and to make subtractions and strike balances. He will have a feeling that heaven does not make quite the same distinctions as we do, and that the universe means more when we look at it from that point of view. I Seneca, moralizing to Lucilius, quotes three words of Virgil in a way which shows at once how the poet's phrase had passed into common speech, and how his thought answered to the experience of his readers. " You will feel," he says, " and you will acknowledge it, that of all these dear and desirable things none is of use, unless you fortify yourself against chance and all it involves ; unless often and without complaint, as one thing after another is lost, you quote to yourself the poet's dis aliter visum'' * Dis aliter visum breaks from Aeneas' lips when he tells of the death of Rhipeus, " most just, most careful of right of all men in Troy " — Cadit et Rhipeus, iustissimus unus qui fuit in Teucris et servantissimus aequi— dis aliter visum {A. ii. 426-8). It is not a suggestion of any divergence of view as to the merits of Rhipeus. It is rather an ejaculation on the diffi- culty of understanding Heaven's ways—" Heaven's will be done ! " is Conington's rendering.^ Mortal gratitude would have made the man some return, but the gods are not grateful to men for their piety. Goodness constitutes no claim to be exempt from the common lot, and, if the gods give any rewards for spiritual excellence, they are not » Plato, Phikbus, 50 B r^ tqv plov ^vfiTdffri rpaytpdU/. Kai Ktafu^Uq,. « Seneca, Epp. 98. 4. He goes on to say that Di melius would be carmen fortius ac ius/ius. * Mr Mackail renders it : " The gods' ways are not ours." M' '€ 3IO VIRGIL paid in material currency. Aeneas is stating in a vivid way the criticism which Adeimantus in the Repuhltc bnngs upon the teaching of Hesiod and Horner.^ No one, again, has lived a better or more useful life than Evander. He sends his son off to the war, with a movmg prayer to the god of his fathers that they may meet again. At vos o superi et divom tu maxime rector luppiter Arcadii, quaeso, miserescite regis, et patrias audite preces « {A, viii. 572-4)- The gallant Pallas encounters Turnus in single conflict, and addresses a prayer to Hercules, the god whose cult Evander had been celebrating with such ceremony a day or two before. But it is in vain. Hercules, we are told, wept, but they were idle tears, and when Jupiter himself sought to console him his words only emphasized the hapless lot of men. "Each hath his own appointed day; short and irrecoverable is the span of life for all ; but to spread renown by deeds is the task of valour. Under high Troy town many and many a god's son fell ; nay, mine own child Sarpedon likewise perished." ^ Saying so much, Jupiter turned his eyes from the battlefield. If he felt for men, his pity was ineffectual. Pallas had won glory, but it did not keep Evander's heart from breaking— the gods had not heard his prayers, nulli exaudita deorum vota precesque meae* (i4. xi. 157). But not all who thus fall reach glory. Mimas, the friend of Paris, is a man who gains none. His story is that of many a common man— pain, exile, death, and obscurity. ^ Rep. ii. 363. Cf. A. C. Bradley, Shakespearetm Tragedy, p. 326, discussion on the death of Cordelia in King Lear. . ^ • . 1 r ♦>,. •^c « " But you, great powers above, and thou, Jupiter, mightiest ruler of the gods, pity, I beseech you, an Arcadian king, and hear a father's prayers." » A. X. 467 : Stat sua cuique dies : breve et irreparabtle tempus omnibus est vitae : sedfamam extender e factis^ hoc virtutis opus. , * " Alas for those my vows and prayers, that found no audience with any of the gods " (Coningion). RESULTS 3" •* His mother Theano bare him to Amycus on the same night that queen Hecuba bare Paris, the torch she had carried in her womb. Paris lies in the city of his father ; Mimas on the shore of Laurentum, a stranger m a strange land." Ignarum Laurens habet ora Mimanta * {A. x. 702-6). Born on one night in one town, Paris has ruined his people and lies with his ancestors in his own land ; Mimas falls hundreds of miles away on a foreign shore. But there is more than this, for the Laurens ora is the land of promise, sought for seven years in weary travel over land and sea, and found at last ; and now the journey is over, the goal is reached, and all the land of promise has to give is a grave. There is perhaps a certain consciousness of glory, or at least of right-doing, in a life of quest for him who chooses it— but for those who do not choose it ? In the fifth book, while the men celebrate Anchises with game and race, Virgil shows us the women sitting apart and weeping for him. fl t_ a. Amissum Anchisen flebant, says the poet ; but the reader thinks of the captive women who wailed for " Patroclus in seeming, but every one in her heart for her own calamity." ^ And Virgil tells us that we are right . , Cunctaeque profundum pontum aspectabant flentes. They weep as they look at the sea ; and yet, as Sainte-Beuve says 4 it is the same Sicilian sea, with its blue horizon, which the little shepherd in Theocritus only asks to see for ever for ever to have before his eyes, as he sits on the rock with his shepherdess in his arms, while his flock and hers 1 Dr Henry holds with Seryius that ignarum means that he is kUled by an unexpected blow, before he knows it. , r. r • ^ . .j*. ,nU « Compare the death of Aeolus : d^mus alta sub Ida, Lyrnesi domus alia, solo Laurentrsepulcrum {A. >ii. 546) ; and the Latins killed in their city gates, sed amine in ipso moenibus in patriis atque inter tufa domorum confixi exptrant animas {A. xi. 881). - n * \ ku.^^.^ *A V 614. Cf. //. xix. 301 iTl Si ar€pixoyro yvvaiK€i, HarpofcW rpfi^acrtv, ^ - '«» * . - j,}u' i^fin-rr, * Etude sur Virgile, p. 1 66. \ i 312 VIRGIL graze round them.* "But exile changes the colours." So many seas they have crossed, and still one more, is the women's thought. Per mare magnum Italiam sequimur fugientem et volvimur undis* (-^. v. 628). It is a picture of human life in general— ever some un- known Italy before us, but the nearer we come to it the further it flies from us, and meanwhile wave and storm- wind have us at their mercy. Once more for what ? That we find in the eleventh book. We seek a flying Italy to bury the dead there. The episode is a moving one. First we see the hewing of timber for the pyres, a vigorous picture of activity. Then the day breaks which is appointed for the burial. Dawn, as ever, displays her genial light, but to the eyes of these Trojans it is not welcome ; it brings back pain and trouble. Yet they must be up and doing. All along the winding shore stand the pyres, and on them they lay their dead. The fires are lit, and the thick smoke of the kindling wood rolls in clouds to the sky. They wait till the pyres blaze, and then in old Roman fashion, with shout and trumpet, they ride thrice round them. Some throw into the flames the spoils the dead had taken; but some of the fallen had taken no spoils and receive only their own shields, their own luckless arms, ipsorum clipeos et non felicia tela. Victims are slain over the pyres, and then the ceremonies are over that kept the mind occupied. Now comes the waiting, and the mind is released to prey upon itself. "Then all along the shore they sit and gaze while their friends are burning, and watch the slow-consuming pyres, nor can tear themselves away, till dewy night wheels round the sky, set with its burning stars." • The picture is drawn with the same realism which has given their charm to the Georgics, but which here with every touch deepens the impression of pain. The poet » Theocritus, 8, 53-6. « " Over a vast sea we follow a flying Italy and are tossed by the waves.** *A. xi. 134-8; 182.202. RESULTS 313 makes no reflection, except perhaps in the miseris mortalibuSy and that is traditional and from the past.^ It is doubtless, also, not without purpose that he uses at the end the familiar phrase of his great predecessor Ennius — caelum stellis ardentibus aptum.^ The contrast gains from the old words. Here is human sorrow — Infinite passion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn — set before us in these silent watchers, brooding beside the dying flames, and the background is the night and the eternal and passionless stars. It is Pindar's old thought again — enrafiepoi' rl Si Tig ; Ti S" ou Tig ; (TKiag ovap avSponTTog*^ It is not only what we have to bear that gives life its pain. Doing is sometimes worse than suffering. Aeneas has to make war and how reluctantly ! He bids Lausus withdraw, but Lausus still presses on, till Aeneas must kill him. One blow drives the sword through the poor gear of the brave lad, through the tunic his mother's love had woven. In that instant the look of death passes over the boyish face, and the older man groans to see what he has done. It is with meaning that Virgil here calls him Anchisiades} With the picture of burning Troy ever in his mind and memories of the brutal flames {flammae furentes) that leapt ' Senrius says, from Homer ; JctXourt pporoiffi. * A combination of two forms, for Macrobius tells us (Sat. vi. I. 9) that Ennius twice used cat/um stellis fulgentibus upturn, and once ncx stellis ardentibus apta. Virgil had already varied it in A. iv. 482 axem . . . stellis ardentibus aptum. The Iliad, 23, 217-25, may be compared, but the storry night is not there. •Pindar, Pythians, 8. 95, "Creatures of a day 1 what are we, or what not? A dream of a shadow is man." • A, X. 8ai At vera ut voltum vidit morientis et orUy ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris, ingemuit miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit^ et mentem patriae subiit pietatis imago. Contrast the satisfaction of the young Ascanius in killing a man for the first time— ^. ix. 652— and cetera parce puer bello. See p. 224. 314 VIRGIL and exulted amid scenes which meant everything to his heart, Aeneas is hounded by fate from land to land, and when he reaches Italy it is the tale of Troy again. He has to fight, to kill men— and boys even— to make women childless and children fatherless. Is it strange that, when among the shades his father showed him souls hastening to reincarnation, the words sprang from his lips — O pater, anne aliquas ad caelum hinc ire putandum est sublimes animas iterumque ad tarda reverti corpora ? quae lucis miseris tam dira cupido ? * (A, vi. 719). He has had enough, too much, of life : « they must be pitiable who could wish a second life. This is not Achilles' thought — ^ov\oi/jii]v K eirapovpog edv. For Achilles life in the sun is good, and the shadowy existence beyond the grave is not to be compared with it But the mood which inspired Ecclesiastes was by now familiar to the western world—" I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive "—and it sprang from the same source — from " all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and the tears of such as were oppressed." " The gods in Jove's house marvel at the rage, the empty rage of both," Trojan and Italian, " and all the agonizing ot' mortals." 3 In the Iliad the gods had enjoyed the sight; they would even take part in the fray. But Virgil's gods, like philosophers, look at it sadly. The troubles and labours of man are an amazement to the gods themselves, and they are after all "a striving after wind." The gods pity man, but their pity is idle as his pain — fruitless and ineffectual* 1 " O my father ! and are there, and must we believe it," he said, " Spirits that fly once more to the sunlight back from the dead ? Souls that anew to the body return and the fetters of clay ? Can there be any who long for the light as blindly as they ? " (Bo wen). « Cf. King Lear v. 3, 3041 ** And my poor fool is hanged ! No, no, no life I" » A, X. 758. _ . ^ * Cf. Hugo von Trimberg (cited by Carlyle, Essay on Early German Literature). *' God might well laugh, could it be, to see his mannikins live so wondrously on this earth ; two of them will take to fighting, and nowise let it alone ; nothing serves but with two long spears ihey must ride and stick at one RESULTS 31S The problem, it will be agreed, is fairly adequately presented by Virgil. Has he a solution for it ? II When Virgil wrote his description of the watchers by the dying flames of the funeral pyres, he was raising once more a question which his master Lucretius had settled. One of the most striking passages of the De Rerum Natura deals with death and bereavement. "Now no more, say the mourners, "shall thy house give thee glad welcome, nor a most virtuous wife and sweet children run to be the first to snatch kisses and touch thy heart with a silent joy. No more mayst thou be prosperous in thy doings, a safeguard to thine own. One disastrous day has taken from thee, luckless man, in luckless wise all the many prizes of Ufe. « We with a sorrow that would not be sated, have wept for thee as on the hateful pyre thou didst turn to ash, and no length of days shall pluck everlasting sorrow from our heart."! That is a fair presentment of the question of human sorrow. , The answer of Lucretius is that such feelmgs are largely irrational. Reflect, he says, that if the dead shall see no more his wife or child, it is as true that " now no longer does any desire for them remain to him " ; sunk in the deep sleep of death, so shall he continue for all time, free from all pain and grief. " What," he asks, " is there so passing bitter, if it come in the end to sleep and rest ? "-particularly when, as he states, in that sleep of death no dreams will come. . . - Finally, he pictures Nature suddenly uttering a voice and herself rallying us. " What hast thou, O mortal, so much at heart to yield to this excess of sorrow? Why moan and bewail death? For say thy life past and gone has been welcome to thee, and thy blessings have not all, as if another : greatly to their hurt ; for when one is by the other skewered through the bowels or through the weasand, he hath small profit thereby. But who forced them to such straits?" Carlyle's own rendering of this m Sartor Resarius will be remembered. > Lucr. iii. 894-9 ; 9o6-9- 3i6 VIRGIL poured into a leaky vessel, run through and been lost without avail ; why not then take thy departure as a guest who has had his fill of life («/ plenus vitae convivd)} , . . There is nothing more that I can contrive and discover for thee to give thee pleasure." Life, he says, is not given us in fee-simple, we have it only in usufruct — Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu (Lucr. iii. 971). Our substance is needed for other beings.^ Why not accept the fact quietly ? " Is there aught that looks appalling in death, aught that wears an aspect of gloom ? is it not more untroubled than any sleep ? " So sounds the voice of Nature to Lucretius, but eager spirits are not always the best listeners. Much as Lucretius heard of what Nature had to say, there was a word which he did not notice, but which caught his pupil's ear — Insatiabiliter dedevimus, aetemumque nulla dies nobis maerorem e pectore demet * (Lucr. iii. 907). The master had indeed heard the sentence and triumphantly brushed it aside ; it was merely the voice of man, irrational man. The pupil was not so sure ; he could not rid himself of the feeling that Nature speaks in man as well as else- where — that a broken heart is as distinctly a voice of Nature as any syllogism. To him Nature does not argue so quickly and so logically — gives birth To no impatient or fallacious hopes, No heat of passion or excessive zeal, No vain conceits ; provokes to no quick turns Of self-applauding intellect* For Virgil, as for the modern poet, the lonely roads Were open schools in which I daily read ^ For a Stoic view of the resolation of man c/f rd ^CKa ml trvyytr^^ tit t& rrocxcia, see Epictetos (Z>. iii. 13), though he adds rather curiously rdrra OtCiw fuffrd Kal dcufi6p« naiuraU destdenum suorutn est. Quis negai, quamdiu modicum est} , . , There is, of course, a certain value in » Viucarum unc die alterave mugitus auditur. But contrast Lucr. u. 352. * Epictetus D. ui. 24. Ct D. iii. 18, and Manual 14. 16. "If you weep with a friend, let it be m^xp* ^M^, ^ooV to it ti.^ koX lerwtfev ar^i^^t. i 318 VIRGIL i Anaxagoras,* "that I had not begotten an immortal."* In fact Stoic and Epicurean are at one in their practical advice, for if the pleasure of life is to be unruffled, or if the soul is to live in the universal and eternal, it is better without the temporary connexions of state and family; on the whole, insensibility is best. But Nature has refused us this gift — Nature, as to whom, according to Pliny,' we can never quite decide whether she is mother or step- mother. Starting from the obvious, our moral philosophers have led us on amiably and logically, till they ask us to affirm that the ideal of humanity is virtually inhumanity.* It is here that the poets intervene. They may theorize too, but they have an instinct to keep " in company with flesh and blood." They have divined The value and significance of flesh, and they come to the aid of the philosophers, when they grow abstract. The deep indebtedness of poetry to philosophy, despite the ancient quarrel, must not obscure for us the fact that the obligations are not all on one side. Long ago Euripides had put into the mouth of one of the very unhappiest of mothers words true to human experience, truer far than Stoic or Epicurean taught in theory. iracri S* avQpwiroi^ ap ^v yfrvxh T€KV' 0(TTt9 ^ atjT airetpo^ (ov xfrcyei, ^a-aov fxip aXye?, Svo-tvxwv 6' evSaijuioveL^ Though Virgil does not make an aphorism of it, his poetry ^ The ascription is doubtfal, as the story is also told of Solon and Xenophon. See EpictetusZ?. iii. 24 (near end) ; Seneca Cons, ad Pol. 30 ; Cic. Tusc. iii. 13 ; Plutarch, Cons, ad Apoll. 118 D. ■ The magnificent treatment of this in Tristram Shandy is only too just. • Pliny, N. H. vii. i parens nitlior hcniini an tristior noverca, * Cf. the rcTolt of Plutorch {^Cons, ad Apoll. 102 B) against r^v Ar^piov khX CKK-npop dTddeiojf, citing (102 D) Grantor rb fdp ivdl)8im» toOt' oi>K A»€v fieyoKuif iYyiverat r^ d¥$p(inf(fi' T€$rjpiQo$cu yap cUbt iK€i pukv ' frtpou /Stov, oiJ5^ Oeuv Keviv, oiSi « m. 332 VIRGIL i Jl the fact of death, the poet in Virgil cannot accept it, but the philosopher in him cannot yet see how to escape it. Mean- while, as we have seen, whatever the outcome, Virgil stands with the lovers for the larger life.^ Most of us will probably allow that if Virgil has not solved the problem of the universe he has felt it with some fulness. " La venue meme du Christ n'a rien qui etonne quand on a lu Virgile," says Sainte-Beuve.^ The early history of the Church illustrates the truth of this conclusion. To minds touched with the same sense of life*s problems which pervades the poetry of Virgil, the Gospel brought the rest and peace which they could not find elsewhere. The early Church was quick to recognize a friend and a forerunner in Virgil. If to-day we discard the interpretations which the early Christians put upon the fourth Eclogue^ we can share their deeper feeling for Maro vates Gentilium? An unknown student of the poet has embodied in a stanza of a Mass of St Paul a fine appreciation of the worth and significance of Virgil's poetry and of the one thing which the new view of life could have added to it. He pictures St Paul pausing on his journey to Rome to visit the mausoleum of Virgil at Naples. Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus fudit super eum Piae rorem lacrimae ; * A very remarkable letter of Mazzint to Mrs Carlylc on this subject (date of 15 July 1846) will be found in Froude's Carlyit^s Life in London i. p. 413. * Etude sur VirgiUy p. 68. This phrase was criticized in The Spectator as ** a silly and audacious epigram, which . . . will hardly be accepted by real students of Virgil and of the Gospels." After an interval of years I still deliberately accept it. The critic, I may mention, gave his own point of view by adding : " To study the philosophical or religious views of some great poet is an amusement which is now very fashionable.'' I am glad to find that Mr Warde Fowler {Religious Experience of the Roman People^ p. 404) compares the phrase of Sainte- Beuve with the more cautiously worded judgement of Sellar, Virgil, p. 371, and gives his verdict that *' the feeling that underlies both utterances is a true one." I think that any one who has tried in earnest to grapple with a great poet of antiquity will not call it an amusement, but a discipline, and will be glad to have submitted his mind to such a teacher in such an intimacy. ' 'RTaida7(^yfi yap Kal 17 t 'Eppalovt elt Xpiardvy wrute Clement of Alexandria {Strom, i. 28). If Greeks had read Latin poetry, so catholic a mind could have said as much for Virgil. RESULTS Quem te, inquit, reddidissem, Si te vivum invenissem, Poetarum maxime.^ I «« Virgil's tomb the saint stood viewing, And his aged cheek bedewing, Fell the sympathetic tear ; « Ah ! had I but found thee living, What new music wert thou giving, Best of poets and most dear I ' " Cited by Comparetti, Vergil in the Middle Ages, pt. i. ch. 7, P- Virgil's peculiar adjective should be noted. 333 98; The use of ,.geviiBiiiLLL ' . 1 ' INDEX Achilles — among the dead, 240, 314. contrast with Aeneas, 209-213, 294. fight with Aeneas, 86-92. Aeneas, chs. iv, ix. i. Mythology and Literature — myths of, ch. iv, 85-104. origin of his connexion with Aphrodite, 96, 97. origin of his name, 96. fight with Achilles, 86-92. his wanderings, 92-99. founder of towns, 90, 95, 228. his temples to Aphrodite, 95- 97- his tombs, 95. in Iliady 86-92. in Latin literature, 102. ii. Virgits presentment of Aeneas — as ideal hero, 212, 226, 230- 232. character of Aeneas, ch. ix, 32i> 322, 329- character of Aeneas m epi- sode of Dido, 203-207. contrast with Achilles, 209- 213, 294. ^ietas^ 89, 222-226. feehng on war, 228, 313. quest of Italy, 193-196. the strenuous life, 264. self-repression, 210. relations with gods, 209, 211, 216-222, 304. character of his allies, 123. how far modelled after Augustus, 28, 166-169. as prince, 226-230. as Homeric hero, 213-216. Aeneas — continued. compared with The Happy Warrior^ 230-232. iii. Episode of Dido, See ch. • • • vm. height and appearance of Aeneas, 183. beautified by Venus, criti- cism of this, 214, 215. prepares to leave Carthage, sails from Carthage, 198. Aeneid, 39, 83, 84, 104, 156- gesta populi Romania 83. its place in Europe, 46, 47. Aeolus, 138. Aeschylus, 236, 281. After-life. See Hades. Albula, 131. Alexandrine literature, 19, 33» 55-58, 106, 177-179, 285. influence of painting, 58, 73-70. AUecto, 328. Ancestors, 92, 102-103. Anchisesand Aeneas, 87, 93, 194, 266-270, 327. and Aphrodite, 97. Anna (sister of Dido), 172, 187- 190, 193* i97» 198* 201. Antiquarianism, 76-79. Antiquities, 76-78, 95, 10 1. Antony, 137, 146, i54i 165, 166, 322. Ants, 37. Aphrodite, 56-57, 95-99- ^^ Venus. Apollo in Italy, 296. ApoUonius of Rhodes, 55-58, 146, 176, 285, 286. Archaelogy and primitive religion, 235- 881 \\\ 336 VIRGIL INDEX 337 Aristophanes, 105, 106, 243, 248, 282, 302. Aristophon, 247. Aristotle, 227, 243, 281. Poetics, 68, 79, 81, 202, 214. Ethics, 150. Arnold (M.^ 47. 5i» 218, Art and Nature, 68. Ascanius. See lulus. Athenaeum, 222. Augustan age, 2, 3, i43- Augustine (St), 18, 76, 172, 201, 287. 330- .. Augustus, ch. vii; 3, 9. 24 26- 29. 39i 82. age of, 3. apotheosis, i47> 167-171. attitude to ideas of Julius, 147, 153- attitude to Republic, 9, 168. as subject for poetry, 79, 147. panegyrical epic, 81, 165-168. references in Aeneid, 163-171. compared with Aeneas, 166. friendship with Virgil, 39, 81, peace, 158, 162, 168. religion, 159-160, 255. his character, 147, 161. his court, 29. his work, 150-4, 159, 164, 170, 171. Ausonius, 112. Beautification of Aeneas, 214- 2X6. Bees, 14, 34, 37- /S/a/o^avaro/, 262, 263. Birds, 15, 118-119, 257, 260. Boswell (J.), 64. Browning, 30, 129, 202, 209, 313. 325, 331- „^ ^ , Browning and Wordsworth, 166. Buddhism, 244. Bums, 15, 33. Caesar (C. Julius), 23, 103, 147- 153. 203, 229. his mind, 150, 151. Caird (E.), 9, 267, 303. Calendar, 35, 150. Callimachus, 72, 75. Carlyle, 2, 3, 7. 22, 36, 41, 85, 151, 161,176,254,307,314. Carthage — war with Rome, 174, 175, I99- destruction of, 130. Catalepton, 18-21, 222. Catiline, 23, 265. Catullus, 17, 21, 58, 65, 169, 179, 188, 203. Ariadne^ 74, 177, i79« Celts, 13. Character, 319-329- Chronologists, 10 1, 102, 104. Cicero (M.), 21, 157, 166, 289- 291. dream of Scipio, 170, 253, 254. City- charm of a, 129-130. destruction of a, 130, 313. City of Zeus, 302-304, 319. Claudian, 75, i44i M5» 274, 325- Cleanthes, 217. Clement of Alexandria, 244, 251, 332. Cleopatra, 146, 185. Clough, 273, 306. Corfinium, 107. Courier (P. L.), 49- Cowper, 15, i9» 26, 29, 37, 461 117, 227. Culex^ 17, 18. Daemons, 170. Dead. See Hades. burial of, 312, 313. cult of, 236. Deification, 169, 170. Dido — popularity of VirgiFs Dido, 54. 172. Dido — continued, is she equivalent to Aphrodite ? 97» 173- . in early Latin poetry, 173. character, 182-186, 191, 194. love of children, 184. passion for Aeneas, 186-202. her dreams, 187, 198. passionate nature, 185, 187, 196. abandons her ideals, 190, 192. religion, 190, 191. her capture of Aeneas, 192. her desertion, 194, f- her madness, 197-201. suicide, 199-202. significance of her story, 202- 207. Diodorus Siculus, 7, 255. Dionysius of Halicamassus, 92- 100, 134, 287. Dionysus Zagreus, 244. Dis aliter visum, 309 f. Divination, 236, 266, 271. Dogmata, 8. Drances, 163, 166, 230. Euripides, 6, 53, 54, 106, 176, 202, 203. and gods, 281-283. popularity with Romans, 53. and Virgil, 53-55. Andromache, 318. Bacchae, 53. Hecuba, 53. Hippolytus, 53, 177, 1 79-181, 189, 199. Ion, 282. Medea, 53, 199. Phoenissae, 252. Troades, 53-55, 281. Eurydice, 38, 179, 255. Evander, 121-123, 132-134, 3io* Farm-life, etc. See Georgics. 12, i4> 15. 34-36, 319- Fate, 141-142, 217-219, 300-301. Fire- walking, 296. Fox (C. J.), 188, 208. Fowler (W. Warde), 38, 77, 131, 146, i73» 222, 287, 296, 332. ECCLESIASTBS, 3 1 4. Eclecticism, 8. Eclogues, 25-28, 31, 33, 128, 169, 178, 292, 322. Elysium, 241, 251, 265, 267-270, 324- Emerson, 35, 67. Empire (imperial system), 9, 150- 154. Ennius, 53, 59, 60, 71, 173, 198, 253, 313. Epictetus, i44f 292, 298, 316, 317,318. Epicurus and Epicureanism, 21, 37> 38, 197, 251-253. See Lucretius. Erinnyes, 241. Eryx, 98. Etruscans, 13, 252. Euphorion, 69. 22 Callus, 18, 25, 48, 177, 256. Gaul, Transpadane, 5, 23, 107. Caesar in Gaul, 151. Gellius (A.), 288, 295, 301. Genius, 269. Georgics,zz-2,9^ 75» i69» 255-257, 292-293, 319, 322. Girard, 192, 218, 276-278. Gods, ch. ix, § 3, ch. xi. in Homer, 275-280, 283, 284, 293-295» 314. . . a crude monotheism m Homer, 278. turned into men by Homer, 97. traditional in epic, 273, 274. in Argonautica, 56, 57, 285, 286. in Georgics, 292-293. in Acfieid, 180-182, 216-221, 293-3oo> 3H- omitted by Lucan, 273. r. 338 VIRGIL INDEX 339 .!■ II Gods — continued. Italian gods, 252, 287, 288, 290-291, 295-299, 304. Penates brought to Italy by Aeneas, 123-124, 296. evolution of gods, 216-222, 275-279» 283-285. fate and the gods, 217-220, 300-301. personal relations with men, 220-222, 304. prayer, 286. Goethe, 41, 66, 147, 213, 302, 306, 322. " Golden Age," 322. Greeks — their divisions, 105-106. Greek individuality, 138. Greek genius, 235. Hades and after-life, ch. x — Homer's picture of it, 236-241. isles of the blest, 240-241. Achilles on Hades, 240, 314. development in ideas of Hades, 240-241. influence of Orphism and mys- teries, 242-243. descents into Hades : Odysseus, 236-240. Wainamoinen, 237-238. Orpheus, 247. Pythagoras, 247. Dionysus, 247 (in Ar. Ran.^ 248). Aeneas, 258-271. in literature, 255-256. rewards and punishments : none in Homer, 241. dependent on initiation, 242, 248, 249, 266. dependent on character, 245, 250. Plato's ideas of Hades, 249-2 5 1 . criticism of Hades by Epicurus and school, 251. Epicurus in hell, 251. Hades and after-life — continued, Etruscan ideas, 252. Cicero and after-life, 253-254. as deterrent, 255. in Georgics, 255-257. Aeneid vh 258-271. limbo, 262. survival of personality, 252-253, 272, 327. transmigration of souls. See Re-birth. Heine (H.), 66, 280. Herakles and Hercules, 133-134* 148, 170, 238, 291,298-299, 310- Hero, ideal, ch. viii. Herodotus, 278. Hesiod, 76, 91, 97, 241, 276. History — philosophy of, 7, 126-128. and poetry, 79, 80. Homer, 46-52» 59» 69» 8i» 97> i^Si 116, 140, 236-241. Odyssey, 72, 215, 226, 227, 236- 240. I/iadf 86-92, 137. vfxuia 236-241, 263. and Plato, 212, 283-284. Homeric heroes, 209-215. Homeric gods, 275-80, 283, 284, 293-295, 314. . compared with Virgil, 4i-43» 46-51. Homeric hymns, 91, 93, 97» 242* 297. Horace, 2, 12, 29, 31, 32, 67, 81, 103, 108, III, i47» h8, 160, 256, 257, 261. Humanity — study of, 5, 6. progress, 7. Iapis, 24-25. Imitation, 45-4^, 69-70. lopas, 61, 195. lUlians, 10, 112, 120-123. character, 36, 121-123, 125. Italy- scenery, 16, 111-114, 116-117, 129. fauna, 11 7- 119. legends, 114, 115. towns founded by Greeks and Trojans, 100-102. what Trojans did for Italy, 123- 125 early history, 121- 123. gods of Italy, etc., 252, 287, 288, 290, 295-296. Virgil poet of Italian unity, 105-108. lulus (and Ascanius), 90, 98, 103, 224-225. Janus, 135-136, 158, 295. Jews, 10, .331. Juno, 139, 141-142, 180-181, 294. Jupiter (and Zeus), 132, 139, 193- 194, 276, 278, 279, 285-286, 294-298, 300-303. Jutuma, 294. Juvenal, 129, 190, 208. Kalevala^ 237, 238. King Lear, 179, 308. Labour, Virgil on, 34-37i 13O1 319, 320. Lamb (C), 325. Latin literature, 58, 70-71. influence of Greek literature, 68-70. Latinus, 134, 229. Lausus, 223, 313, 326. " Lazaretto-poetry," 306. Lecky(W. E. H.),9, 23, 117,222. Livy, 77, 103, 134, 141. Lucan, 80, 273-274. Lucretius, 21, 22, 27, 53, 61-63, 115, 169, 327. and Virgil, 60-63, 65, 115, 136. on gods, 289-290. Lucretius — contintted, on after-life, 252-253, 316. on bereavement, 315-31 7- Macaulay (Lord), 78. Macrobius,4i-44,68,ii6,i72-i73. Maecenas, 28, 30-32, 156. Magia, 25. Magi us, 14. Manichaeanism, 244. Mankind, progress of, 5-8, 212- 213, 320-322. Mantua, 13, 17, 23, 119. Marcus Aurelius, 2, 221, 222, 302-304. Marius, 23. Martial, 11, 28. Mazzini, 332. Melissus, 30. Metempsychosis, 245, 250, 264, 267-270. Milton, 17, 19, 53, 141. Mimas, 310, 311. Mincius, 13, 16. Misenus, 100, 114, 299. Monarchy, 156, 157. Morality of sexes, 203-207. MoretuMy 18, 19. Morris (William), 52. Mosella, 112. Mysteries, 242-249, 284. slight connexion with morality, 243i 249- Mythology, 7^-76, 255. Naevius, 173. Napoleon on Virgil and Homer, 49. Nation in poetry, new, 105. Nature, 6, 14-17, 27, 36-37, 109- III, 1 1 7-1 19, 30^- personified by Lucretius, 315- 316. Neil (R. A.), 211. Neo-Platonists, 234, 264, 278, 301 Nonnus, 276. Novalis, 8, 281. 340 VIRGIL INDEX 341 OcTAViAN. See Augustus. Olympus, ch. xi. See Gods. Omar, 103. Orpheus (music), 255-256. Orphism,etc.,6o,243-247,265-266. Orphic tablets, 245-246. Plato and Orphism, 249-250. Ovid 32, 58, 73-74, 77-78> 172, 177. Prince, 226-230. Propertius,32,48,52,72-73,77»i32. Providence, 219-220. Prudentius, 12, 145, 265. Pudor, 190. Punic wars, 174 U 199-200- Pythagoras and his school, 243- 244, 245i 247i 292- Painting, 58, 74. Pais (Ettore), loi. Palinurus, 51, ii4» 178,261,262. Pallas (son of Evander), 298, 310. 1 Parthenius, 18, 19, i77« Parthians, 136. Passover, 244. Patin, 22, 58, 59, 65, 68, 126, 179. Penates, 123-124, 296. Petronius, 274. Philodemus of Gadara, 5. Philosophy, progress in later Greece, 6. Pietas, 89, 222-226. Pindar, 248, 281, 282, 313. Pisander, 43-44- Plato, 309. criticism of Homer, 212, 283- 284, 310. on mysteries, 248-249. doctrine of future life, 249-251, 263, 267, 269, 271. and the gods, 283, 285, 298. and righteousness, 324. Pliny (elder), 131, 318. Pliny (younger), 18, 119. Plotia Hieria, 204. Plutarch, 141, 286, 289, 318, 323. and Shakespeare, 44, 45- Poetry, i, zo6 f. borrowing and imitation, 44-46. expressing the universal, 80. and history, 79, 80. "ancient quarrel with philo- sophy," 277, 306, 318. PoUio, 25. Polybius, 5, 7, 57i 255, 288. QuiNTUS of Smyrna, 46, 49» 9'» 312. Re-birth, 245, 2 50, 264, 267-270. Remulus Numanus, 121-122,126, 229. Republic and republican senti- ment, 9-10. Caesar's criticism, 153. Virgil's feeling, 162-1 63. Rewards and punishments, 324- 326. Rivers, 16, 117, i30-'3i- Robinson Crusoe, 227, 307308. Rochefort (H.), 150. Rohde (E.), 237, 270. Roman character, 4, 10, 11,83-84, i38-i43» 321- want of " physiognomy,' 140. usage and ritual, iZZ'^Z^' people (populus), 142. heroes, 136-138. Romanticism, 290. Rome — significance of, 126-128. continuity of her history, 125, 133- foundation of, 85, 100-2. expansion into Italy, 107. Trojan legend, 1 00-101. stories from her history, 137. national life of, 9, 10. reliance on gods, 219-220. character of her rule, 142-146. decline of republic, 11, 150. the city, 128-132. its streets, 129. Rome — continued, its famous sights, 133. Rumon, 131. Rumour, 192. Sainte-Beuve, 13, 138, 146, 166,225, 226-227, 232, 311, 332. Sarpedon, 47» 218, 278-279, 298. Saturnalia, 41-44; Scenery, interest in, 1 08-1 15. Scott (Sir Walter), 29, 32, 108. Seneca, 43. 2331 254, 309» 3i7» 325» 326. Servius, 36, 41, 93, i73» 233-234, 256,258,261, 262, 269,271, 2931 295, 296, 300, 301, 311, 313- Servius Sulpicius, 39. Shakespeare, 44-45* M0» i^i, 179, 308. Silenus, 27, 60, 297. Silius Italicus, 80, 274. Siro, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24. Sophocles, 52, 93, 127, 187, 381. Soracte, fire-walking on, 296. Sors Vergiliana, 200. Spectator, 332. Spenser (E.), 1 30, 121, 278. Stapfer, 44. Starry sky, 290, 312-313. State, service of, 10, 11, 161, 170, 228, 250, 254. Stawell (F. M.), 237, 238. Stoicism, 221, 291, 292, 302-304, 317-3191 323» 327- Strabo, 15, 90, 129, 253. Suetonius, 11, i4> 25, 30, 35, 39, 148, 156, 157* 159- Sulla, 23, 157, 161. Superstition, 249, 288, 289. Synesius, 9, 343, 361. Tacitus, 9, 300-301. Tennyson, 16, 64, 225. TertuUian quoted, 56, 179. Theocritus, 26, 109, 177, 311. Thomas of Celano, 257. Thucydides, 49, 50. Tiber, 130-132, 295. TibuUus, 13, 103, 290. Tityrus, 27, 148, 169, 329. Toga, 142. Tragedy, 53-55» i75* i87- Travel, no, in. Trees, 14, i5» i^, 36. Trojans in luly, 123-125. Tucca, 39. Turnus, 229, 230, 294, 298. 1 Twelve tables, 11, 264. Urb ANITAS, 237. Varius, 30, 39, 4o» 79> 8 ^ 204, 3 70. Varro, 20, 76, 103, 115, "7. i73» 288, 296. Varus, 25. Velleius Paterculus and Vwgil, 174. Venus. See Aphrodite. 181-182, 214-215, 295, 297. Vergiliomastix, 39. Virgil. i. Personal History — his native land, 5, 9. his father, 14, 24, 25. birth, II. home life, 11-15. boyhood, 17. training and education, 12, 18-22. 6if 81-84, i49f 154-163. method of composition, 53, 305. 342 VIRGIL Virgil — continued. read his poetry, 32, 156. letter to Augustus, 1 56. sayings, 51, 59, 60, 205, 214. voice, 32. feature and manners, 28. popularity, 31, 39- at Naples, 32, 39. journey to East, 39. death, 39. , / . ii. Relations to other authors (not contemporaries). See also under their own names — Alexandrines, 19, 20, 55-58* 74.76. Catullus, 17, 64-65. Ennius, 59-60. Euripides, 53-55- Homer,4i-43»46-5i»59>2i4- Lucretius, 21, 22, 27, 38, 60-63, 65, 115, 136, 291, 3i5-3i9» 327- Sophocles, 52. iii. National Life- fast to treat of " nation " m poetry, 105. national feehng, 83, 84, 105 f., 111-119. politics, 23, 157-163. notademocrat, 158,1162-163. city-life, 129, 130. See also : Italy, ch. V. Rome, ch. vi. iv. VirgiPs Character and Tastes— mind very open to impression, 63,160,177-178,259,321. sensibility, 26, 27. humour, 14, 26-27, 37. feeling for character, 160-161, 321-322. love of peace, i45> ^5^, 260, 322. love of nature, 14-^7, 36-37, ii7-"9» 329- melancholy, 13,220-221,329- 332. Virgil — continued. dislike of abnormal, 178. antiquities, 78, 132, 134-136, 259» 295, 304- women, 203-205. the sea, 16, 109, ii3- V. VirgiPs Mind and Philosophy. See also Plato, Stoicism, Epicurus, development of his mind, 27, 33 ^• philosophy, 20-21, 34-38, 4°, 57,123,221-222, 234, 258- 259,261,264,269,271-272, 274"275» 292-2931 297-305* 316-319* 324 f. . seeks truth in reconciliation, 27, 51* 305* 3?3- the gods, ch. xi, esp. 291- 305. fate, 300-301. the question of evil, 36, 307- 309, 328-329- history, 127-128. religion of the state, 160. righteousness, 324-326. character, 320-326. morality of sexes, 203-207. treatment of passion, 38, 1 7 7- 179* 317* 3^?* 330- judgment on Dido, 202-207. human sorrow, ch. xii, 28, 309-314, 327-329- no pessimist, 34, 331. suicide, 264, 324. the large experience, 317- 319* 327,332; SeePietas. the strenuous mind, 260-261, 264, 322, 324-325. happiness, 25, 34, 35* 328- 329, 33i« the soul, 267-272. presentment of Hades, 258- 272. his conclusions, 323-332. vi. Virgil's Works— methods, 51, 205. • I i /. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 87VD G5111 ■•■tii t <-4 f^ MS 00 o ai O O MAR 16 ]a