VERGIL

_A Biography_

By

TENNEY FRANK

_Professor of Latinin theJohns Hopkins University_

1922

_TO_

THE MEMORY OF

W. WARDE FOWLER

PREFACE

Modern literary criticism has accustomed us to interpret our masterpiecesin the light of the author's daily experiences and the conditions of thesociety in which he lived. The personalities of very few ancient poets, however, can be realized, and this is perhaps the chief reason why theirworks seem to the average man so cold and remote. Vergil's age, with itsterribly intense struggles, lies hidden behind the opaque mists of twentycenturies: by his very theory of art the poet has conscientiously drawn aveil between himself and his reader, and the scraps of information abouthim given us by the fourth century grammarian, Donatus, are inconsistent, at best unauthenticated, and generally irrelevant. 

Indeed criticism has dealt hard with Donatus' life of Vergil. It hasshown that the meager _Vita_ is a conglomeration of a few chance factsset into a mass of later conjecture derived from a literal-mindedinterpretation of the _Eclogues_, to which there gathered during thecredulous and neurotic decades of the second and third centuries anaccretion of irresponsible gossip. 

However, though we have had to reject many of the statements of Donatus, criticism has procured for us more than a fair compensation from anothersource. A series of detailed studies of the numerous minor poemsattributed to Vergil by ancient authors and mediaeval manuscripts--tillrecently pronounced unauthentic by modern scholars--has compelled mostof us to accept the _Appendix Vergiliana_ at face value. These poems, written in Vergil's formative years before he had adopted the reservedmanner of the classical style, are full of personal reminiscences. Theyreveal many important facts about his daily life, his occupations, hisambitions and his ideals, and best of all they disclose the processes bywhich the poet during an apprenticeship of ten years developed the matureart of the _Georgics_ and the _Aeneid_. They have made it possible for usto visualize him with a vividness that is granted us in the case of noother Latin poet. 

The reason for attempting a new biography of Vergil at the present timeis therefore obvious. This essay, conceived with the purpose of centeringattention upon the poet's actual life, has eschewed the larger task ofliterary criticism and has also avoided the subject of Vergil's literarysources--a theme to which scholars have generally devoted too muchacumen. The book is therefore of brief compass, but it has been keptto its single theme in the conviction that the reader who will studyVergil's works as in some measure an outgrowth of the poet's ownexperiences will find a new meaning in not a few of their lines. 

T. F. 

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I MANTUA DIVES AVIS

II SCHOOL AND WAR

III THE CULEX

IV THE CIRIS

V A STUDENT OF PHILOSOPHY

VI EPIGRAM AND EPIC

VII EPICUREAN POLITICS

VIII LAST DAYS AT THE GARDEN

IX MATERIALISM IN THE SERVICE OF POETRY

X RECUBANS SUB TEGMINE FAGI

XI THE EVICTIONS

XII POLLIO

XIII THE CIRCLE OF MAECENAS

XIV THE GEORGICS

XV THE AENEID

VERGIL

I

MANTUA DIVES AVIS

Among biographical commonplaces one frequently finds the generalizationthat it is the provincial who acquires the perspective requisite fora true estimate of a nation, and that it is the country-boy reared inlonely communion with himself who attains the deepest knowledge of humannature. If there be some degree of truth in this reflection, PubliusVergilius Maro, the farmer's boy from the Mantuan plain, was in so farfavored at birth. It is the fifteenth of October, 70 B. C. , that theMantuans still hold in pious memory: in 1930 they will doubtless inviteItaly and the devout of all nations to celebrate the twentieth centenaryof the poet's birth. 

Ancient biographers, little concerned with Mendelian speculation, havenot reported from what stock his family sprang. Scientific curiosityand nationalistic egotism have compelled modern biographers to becomeanthropologists. Vergil has accordingly been referred, by some criticor other, to each of the several peoples that settled the Po Valley inancient times: the Umbrians, the Etruscans, the Celts, the Latins. Theevidence cannot be mustered into a compelling conclusion, but it may beworth while to reject the improbable suppositions. 

The name tells little. _Vergilius_ is a good Italic _nomen_ found in allparts of the peninsula, [1] but Latin names came as a matter of coursewith the gift of citizenship or of the Latin status, and Mantua withthe rest of Cisalpine Gaul had received the Latin status nineteen yearsbefore Vergil's birth. The cognomen _Maro_ is in origin a magistrate'stitle used by Etruscans and Umbrians, but _cognomina_ were a recentfashion in the first century B. C. And were selected by parents of themiddle classes largely by accident. 

[Footnote 1: Braunholz, _The Nationality of Vergil_, _Classical Review_, 1915, 104 ff. ]

Vergil himself, a good antiquarian, assures us that in the _heroic_age Mantua was chiefly Etruscan with enclaves of two other peoples(presumably Umbrians and Venetians). In this he is doubtless following afairly reliable tradition, accepted all the more willingly because of hisintimacy with Maecenas, who was of course Etruscan:[2]

 Mantua dives avis, sed non genus omnibus unum, Gens illis triplex, populi sub gente quaterni, Ipsa caput populis; Tusco de sanguine vires. 

[Footnote 2: Aeneid, X, 201-3. ]

Pliny seems to have supposed this passage a description of Mantua inVergil's own day: Mantua Tuscorum trans Padum sola reliqua (III. 130). That could hardly have been Vergil's meaning, however; for the Celts whoflooded the Po Valley four centuries before drove all before them exceptin the Venetian marshes and the Ligurian hills. They could not have leftan Etruscan stronghold in the center of their path. Vergil was probablynot Etruscan. 

The case for a Celtic origin is equally improbable. From the time whenthe Senones burned Rome in 390 B. C. Till Caesar conquered Gaul, the fearof invasions from this dread race never slumbered. During the wearyyears of the Punic war when Hannibal drew his fresh recruits from the PoValley, the determination grew ever stronger that the Alps should becomeRome's barrier line on the North. Accordingly the pacification of theTranspadane region continued with little intermission until Polybius[3]could say two generations before Vergil's birth that the Gauls hadpractically been driven out of the Po Valley, and that they then held buta few villages in the foothills of the Alps. If this be true, the opencountry of Mantua must have had but few survivors. And the few thatremained were not often likely to have the privilege of intermarryingwith the Roman settlers who filled the vacuum. Romans were too proud oftheir citizenship to intermarry with _peregrini_ and raise children whomust by Roman laws forego the dignities of citizenship. [4]

[Footnote 3: Polybius, II. 35, 4 (written about 140 B. C. ). ]

[Footnote 4: Ulpian, _Dig_. V. 8, ex peregrino et cive Romano, peregrinusnascitur. ]

A Celtic strain of romance has been from time to time claimed forVergil's poetry, though those who employ such terms seldom agree in theirdefinition of them. His romanticism may be more easily explained byhis early devotion to the Catullan group of poets, and the Celtictraits--whatever they may be--by the close racial affiliations betweenCelts and Italians, vouched for by anthropologists. But the difficulty ofapplying the test of the "Celtic temperament" lies in the fact that thereare apparently now no true representatives of the Celtic race fromwhom to establish a criterion. The peoples that have longest preserveddialects of the Celtic languages appear from anthropometric researchesto contain a dominant strain of a different race, perhaps that of thepre-Indo-European inhabitants of Western Europe. It may be, therefore, that what Arnoldians now refer to the "Celts" is after all not Celtic. Atbest it is unsafe to search for racial traits in the work of genius; inthis instance it would but betray loose thinking. 

The assumption of Celtic origin is, therefore, hazardous. [5] There is, however, a strong likelihood that Vergil's forbears were among the Romanand Latin colonists who went north in search of new homes during thesecond century B. C. Vergil's father was certainly a Roman citizen, fornone but a citizen could have sent his son to Rome to prepare for apolitical career. Mantua indeed, a "Latin" town after 89 B. C. , did notbecome a Roman municipality until after Vergil had left it, but Vergil'sfather, according to the eighth _Catalepton_, had earlier in his lifelived in Cremona. That city was colonized by Roman citizens in 218 B. C. And recolonized in 190, and though the colonists were reduced to the"Latin status, " the magistrates of the town and their descendants securedcitizenship from the beginning, and finally in 89 B. C. The whole colonyreceived full citizenship. But quite apart from this, all of CisalpineGaul, as the region was called, was receiving immigrants from all partsof Italy throughout the second century, when the fields farther southwere being exhausted by long tilling, and were falling into the handsof capitalistic landlords and grazers. Since Roman citizenship was apersonal rather than a territorial right, such immigrants couldpreserve their political status despite their change of habitation. Theprobabilities are, therefore, that in any case Vergil, though born in theprovince, was of the old Latin stock. 

[Footnote 5: Vergil we know was tall and dark. The Gauls were as a rulefair with light hair. The Etruscans on the other hand, while dark, were generally short of stature. Such data are however not of greatimportance. ]

About the child appropriate stories gathered in time, but what thebiographers chose to repeat in the credulous days of Donatus, when Romewas almost an Oriental city, need not detain us long. To Donatus, nodoubt, _Magia_ seemed a suitable name for the mother of a poet who knewthe mysteries of the lower world; that she dreamed prophetically of thecoming greatness of her son, we may grant as a matter of course. Soberjudgment, however, can hardly accept the miraculous poplar tree whichshot up at the place of nativity, or the birth-stories deriving"Vergilus" from _virga_, contrary to early Latin nomenclature andphonology. It is well to mention these things merely so that we may keepin mind how little faith the late biographers really deserve. 

Donatus is also inclined to accept the tradition that Vergil's father wasa potter and a man of very humble circumstances. That Vergil's fathermade pottery may be true; a father's occupation was apt to be recorded inAugustan biography--but it requires some knowledge of Roman society tocomprehend what these words meant at the end of the Republic. In Donatus'day a "potter" was a day-laborer in loin-cloth and leather apron, earningabout twenty cents for a long day of fourteen hours. Needless to say, Vergil's leisured competence during many years did not draw from such atrickling source. Donatus had forgotten that in Vergil's day the economicsystem of Rome was entirely different. At the end of the Republic, thepotters of Northern Italy conducted factories of enormous output, forthey had with their artistic red-figured ware captured the markets of thewhole Mediterranean basin. The actual workmen were not Roman citizens byany means, but slaves. And we should add that while industrial producers, like traders, were in general held in low esteem, because most of themwere foreigners and freedmen, the producers of earthenware had byaccident escaped from the general odium. The reason was simply thatearthenware production began as a legitimate extension of agriculture--itwas one form of turning the products of the villa-soil to the bestuse--and agriculture as we remember (including horticulture andstock-raising) continued into Cicero's day the only respectableincome-bringing occupation in which a Roman senator could engage withoutapology. That is the reason why even the names of Cicero, Asinius Pollio, and Marcus Aurelius are to be found on brick stamps when it would havebeen socially impossible for such men to own, shall we say, hardware orclothing factories. Donatus was already so far away from that day thathe had no feeling for its social tabus. The property of Vergil'sfather--possibly a farm with a pottery on some part of it--could hardlyhave been small when it supported the young student for many years in hisleisured existence at Rome and Naples under the masters that attractedthe aristocracy of the capital. The story of Probus, otherwise not veryreliable, may, therefore, be true--that sixty soldiers received theirallotments from the estates taken from Vergil's father. 

Of no little significance is the fact that Vergil first prepared himselffor public life, [6] and progressed so far as to accept one case in court. In order to enter public life in those days it was customary to trainone's self as widely as possible in literature, history, rhetoric, dialectic, and court procedure, and to attract public notice for electionpurposes by taking a few cases. It was not every citizen who dared entersuch a career. This was the one occupation that the nobility guarded mostjealously. While any foreigner or freedman might become a doctor, banker, architect or merchant prince, he could not presume to stand up before apraetor to discuss the rights and wrongs of Roman citizens; and since theadvocate's work was furthermore considered the legitimate preliminary tomagisterial offices it must the more carefully be protected. It wouldhave been quite useless for Vergil to prepare for this career had it beenobviously closed. We have no sure record in Cicero's epoch of any youngman rising successfully from the business or industrial classes to acareer in public life except through the abnormal accidents provided bythe civil wars. Presumably, therefore, Vergil's father belonged to alandholding family with some honors of municipal service to his credit. 

[Footnote 6: Donatus, 15; _Ciris_, l. 2; _Catal_. V. ; Seneca, _Controv_. III. Praef. 8. ]

Of the poet's physical traits we have no very satisfactory descriptionor likeness. He was tall, dark and rawboned, retaining through life theappearance of a countryman, according to Donatus. He also suffered, says the same writer, the symptoms that accompany tuberculosis. Thereliability of this rather inadequate description is supported by asecond-century portrait of the poet done in a crude pavement mosaic whichhas been found in northern Africa. [7] To be sure the technique is sofaulty that we cannot possibly consider this a faithful likeness. Butwe may at least say that the person represented--a man of perhapsforty-five--was tall and loose-jointed, and that his countenance, withits broad brow, penetrating eye, firm nose and generous mouth and chin, is distinctly represented as drawn and emaciated. 

[Footnote 7: See _Monuments Piot_. 1897, pl. Xx; _Atene e Roma_, 1913, opp. P. 191. ]

There is also an unidentified portrait in a half dozen mediocrereplicas representing a man of twenty-five or thirty years which somearchaeologists are inclined to consider a possible representation ofVergil. [8] It is the so-called "Brutus. " The argument for its attributiondeserves serious consideration. The bust, while it shows a far youngerman than the African mosaic, reveals the same contour of countenance, ofbrow, nose, cheeks and chin. Furthermore it is difficult to think of anyother Roman in private life who attained to such fame that six marblereplicas of his portrait should have survived the omnivorous lime-kilnsof the dark ages. The Barrocco museum of Rome has a very lifelikereplica[9] of this type in half-relief. Though its firm, dry workmanshipseems to be of a few decades later than Vergil's youth it may well be afairly faithful copy of one of the first busts of Vergil made at the timewhen the _Eclogues_ had spread his fame through Rome. 

[Footnote 8: See British School _Cat. Of the Mus. Capitolino_, p. 355;Bernoulli, _Röm. Ikonographie_, I, 187, Helbig, '3 I, no. 872. ]

[Footnote 9: Mrs. Strong, _Roman Sculpture_ plate, CIX; Hekler, _Greekand Roman Portraits_, 188 a. The antiquity of this marble has beenquestioned. ]

A land of sound constitutions, mentally and physically, was the frontierregion in which Vergil grew to manhood; and had it not later been drainedof its sturdy citizenry by the civil wars and recolonized by the wreckageof those wars it would have become Italy's mainstay through the Empire. The earlier Romans and Latins who had first accepted colonial allotmentsor had migrated severally there for over a century were of sterner stuffthan the indolent remnants that had drifted to the city's corn cribs. These frontiersmen had come while the Italic stock was still sound, notyet contaminated by the freedmen of Eastern extraction. Cities likeCremona and Mantua were truer guardians of the puritanic ideals of Cato'sday than Rome itself. The clear expressive diction of Catullus' lyrics, full of old-fashioned turns, the sound social ideals of Vergil's_Georgics_, the buoyant idealism of the _Aeneid_ and of Livy's annalsspeak the true language of these people. It is not surprising then thatin Vergil's youth it is a group of fellow-provincials--returning sonsof Rome's former emigrants--that take the lead in the new literarymovements. They are vigorous, clever young men, excellently educated, free from the city's binding traditionalism, well provided also, manyof them, with worldly goods acquired in the new rich country. Such wereCatullus of Verona, Varius Rufus, Quintilius Varus, Furius, and Alfenusof Cremona, Caecilius of Comum, Helvius Cinna apparently of Brescia, andValerius Cato who somehow managed to inspire in so many of them a lovefor poetry. 

II

SCHOOL AND WAR

To Cremona, Vergil was sent to school. Caesar, the governor of theprovince, was now conquering Gaul, and as Cremona was the foremostprovincial colony from which Caesar could recruit legionaries, the schoolboys must have seen many a maniple march off to the battle-fields ofBelgium. Those boys read their _Bellum Gallicum_ in the first edition, serial publication. When we remember the devotion of Caesar's soldiers totheir leader, we can hardly be surprised at the poet's lasting reverencefor the great _imperator_. He must have seen the man himself, also, forCremona was the principal point in the court circuit that Caesar traveledduring the winters between his campaigns--whenever the Gauls gave himrespite. 

The _toga virilis_ Vergil assumed at fifteen, the year that Pompey andCrassus entered upon their second consulship--a notice to all the worldthat the triumvirate had been continued upon terms that made Julius thearbiter of Rome's destinies. 

That same year the boy left Cremona to finish his literary studies inMilan, a city which was now threatening to outstrip Cremona in importanceand size. The continuation of his studies in the province instead of atRome seems to have been fortunate: the spirit of the schools of the northwas healthier. At Rome the undue insistence upon a practical education, despite Cicero's protests, was hurrying boys into classrooms ofrhetoricians who were supposed to turn them into finished public menat an early age; it was assumed that a political career was everygentleman's business and that every young man of any pretensions mustacquire the art of speaking effectively and of "thinking on his feet. "The claims of pure literature, of philosophy, and of history wereaccorded too little attention, and the chief drill centered about thetechnique of declamatory prose. Not that the rhetorical study was itselfmade absolutely practical. The teachers unfortunately would spin thetechnical details thin and long to hold profitable students over severalyears. But their claims that they attained practical ends imposed on theparents, and the system of education suffered. 

In the northern province, on the other hand, there was less demandfor studies leading directly to the forum. Moreover, some of the bestteachers were active there. [1] They were men of catholic tastes, who intheir lectures on literature ranged widely over the centuries of Greekmasters from Homer to the latest popular poets of the Hellenistic periodand over the Latin poets from Livius to Lucilius. Indeed, the young mentrained at Cremona and Milan between the days of Sulla and Caesar werethose who in due time passed on the torch of literary art at Rome, while the Roman youths were being enticed away into rhetoric. Vergil'sremarkable catholicity of taste and his aversion to the crampingtechnique of the rhetorical course are probably to be explained in largemeasure, therefore, by his contact with the teachers of the provinces. Vergil did not scorn Apollonius because Homer was revered as the suprememaster, and though the easy charm of Catullus taught him early to lovethe "new poetry, " he appreciated none the less the rugged force ofEnnius. Had his early training been received at Rome, where pedant waspitted against pedant, where every teacher was forced by rivalry into apartizan attitude, and all were compelled by material demands to providea "practical education, " even Vergil's poetic spirit might have beendulled. 

[Footnote 1: Suetonius, _De Gram_. 3. ]

How long Vergil remained at Milan we are not told; Donatus' _paulo post_is a relative term that might mean a few months or a few years. However, at the age of sixteen Vergil was doubtless ready for the rhetoricalcourse, and it is possible that he went to the great city as early as54 B. C. , the very year of Catullus' death and of the publication ofLucretius' _De Rerum Natura_. The brief biography of Vergil contained inthe Berne MS. --a document of doubtful value--mentions Epidius as Vergil'steacher in rhetoric, and adds that Octavius, the future emperor, was afellow pupil. This is by no means unreasonable despite a differenceof seven years in the ages of the two pupils. Vergil coming from theprovinces entered rhetoric rather late in years, whereas Octavius musthave required the aid of a master of declamation early, since at the ageof twelve he prepared to deliver the _laudatio funebris_ at the grave ofhis grandmother. Thus the two may have met in Epidius' lecture room inthe year 50 B. C. Vergil could doubtless have afforded tuition under sucha master since he presently engaged the no less distinguished Siro. Wehave the independent testimony of Suetonius that Epidius was Octavius'and Mark Antony's teacher. 

If Antony's style be a criterion, this new master of Vergil's was arhetorician of the elaborate Asianistic style, [2] then still orthodox atRome. This school--except in so far as Cicero had criticized it forgoing to extremes--had not yet been effectively challenged by the risinggeneration of the chaster Atticists. Hortensius was still alive, andhighly revered, and Cicero had recently written his elaborate _DeOratore_ in which, with the apparent calmness of a still unquestionedauthority, he laid down the program of the writer of ornate prose whoconceived it as his chief duty to heed the claims of art. While not anout and out Asianist he advocates the claims of the "grand-style, "so pleasing to senatorial audiences, with its well-balanced periods, carefully modulated, nobly phrased, precisely cadenced, and pronouncedwith dignity. To be sure, Calvus had already raised the banner ofAtticism and had in several biting attacks shown what a simple, frugaland direct style could accomplish; Calidius, one of the first Romanpupils of the great Apollodorus, had already begun making campaignspeeches in his neatly polished orations which painfully eschewed allshow of ornament or passion; and Caesar himself, efficiency personified, had demonstrated that the leader of a democratic rabble must be a masterof blunt phrases. But Calvus did not threaten to become a politicalforce, Calidius was too even-tempered, and Caesar was now in the north, fighting with other weapons. Cicero's prestige still seemed unbroken. Itwas not till Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49, after Hortensius had died, and Cicero had been pushed aside as a futile statesman, that Atticismgained predominance in the schools. Later, in 46, Cicero in severalremarkable essays again took up the cudgels for an elaborate prose, butthen his cause was already lost. Caesar's victory had demonstrated thatRome desired deeds, not words. 

[Footnote 2: Octavius was drawn to the Atticistic principles by the greatmaster Apollodorus. ]

When Virgil, therefore, turned to rhetoric, probably under Epidius, he received the training which was still considered orthodox. Hisfarewell[3] to rhetoric--written probably in 48--shows unmistakably thenature of the stuff on which he had been fed. It is the bombast and thefutile rules of the Asianic creed against which he flings his unsparingscazons. 

[Footnote 3: _Catalepton_ V (Edition, Vollmer). Birt, _Jugendverse undHeimatpoesie Vergils_, 1910, has provided a useful commentary on the_Catalepton_. ]

 Begone ye useless paint-pots of the school; Your phrases reek, but not with Attic scent, Tarquitius' and Selius' and Varro's drool: A witless crew, with learning temulent. And ye begone, ye tinkling cymbals vain, That call the youths to drivelings insane. 

Epidius, to be sure, is not mentioned, but we happen to know thatVarro--if this be the erudite friend of Cicero--was devoted to theAsianic principles. And Epidius, the teacher of the flowery Mark Antony, may well be concealed in Vergil's list of names even if mention of himwas omitted for reasons of propriety. 

This poem reveals the fact that Vergil did not, like the young men ofCicero's youth, enjoy the privilege of studying law, court procedure, andoratory by entering the law office, as it were, of some distinguishedsenator and thus acquiring his craft through observation, guidedpractice, and personal instruction. That method, so charmingly describedby Cicero as in vogue in his youth, had almost passed away. The schoolhad taken its place with its mock courts, contests in oratory, set themesin fictitious controversies. The analytical rules of rhetoric weregrowing ever more intricate and time-wasting, and how pedantic they wereeven before Vergil's childhood may be seen by a glance into the anonymous_Auctor ad Herennium_. The student had to know the differences betweenthe various kinds of cases, demonstrativum, deliberativum and judiciale;he must know the proportionate value to the orator of inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronuntiatio, and how to manage each;he must know how to apply inventio in each of the six divisions of thespeech: exordium, narratio, divisio, confirmatio, confutatio, conclusio. On the subject of adornment of style a relatively small task lay inmemorizing illustrations of some sixty figures of speech--and so on adinfinitum. _Inane cymbalon juventutis_ is indeed a fitting commentary onsuch memory tasks. The end of the poem cited betrays the fact that thepoet had not been able to keep his attention upon his task. He had beenwriting verses; who would not?

Quite apart, however, from the unattractive content of the course, thegradual change in political life must have disclosed to the observantthat the free exercise of talents in a public career could not continuelong. The triumvirate was rapidly suppressing the free republic. Even in52, when Pompey became sole consul, the trial of Milo was conducted undermilitary guard, and no advocate dared speak freely. During the next twoyears every one saw that Caesar and Pompey must come to blows and thatthe resulting war could only lead to autocracy. 

The crisis came in January of 49 B. C. When Vergil was twenty years old. Pompey with the consuls and most of the senators fled southward indismay, and in sixty days, hotly pursued by Caesar, was forced toevacuate Italy. Caesar, eager to make short work of the war, to attackSpain and Africa while holding the Alpine passes and pressing in pursuitof Pompey, began to levy new recruits throughout Italy. [4] Vergil alsoseems to have been drawn in this draft, since this is apparently thecircumstance mentioned in his thirteenth _Catalepton_. "Draft, " however, may not be the right word, for we do not know whether Caesar at this timeclaimed the right to enforce the rules of conscription. In any case, itis clear from all of Vergil's references to Caesar that the great generalalways retained a strong hold upon his imagination. Like most youths whohad beheld Caesar's work in the province close at hand, he was probablyready to respond to a general appeal for troops, and Labienus' words toPompey on the battlefield of Pharsalia make it clear that Caesar'sarmy was largely composed of Cisalpines. The accounting they gave ofthemselves at that battle is evidence enough of the spirit which pervadedVergil's fellow provincials. Nor is it unlikely that Vergil himselftook part, for one of the most poignant passages in all his work is thepicture of the dead who lay strewn over the battlefield of Pharsalia. 

[Footnote 4: Cic. _Ad Att_. IX. 19, in March. ]

It is also probable that Vergil had had some share in the cruises on theAdriatic conducted by Antony the summer and winter before Pharsalia. Not only does this poem speak of service on the seas, but his poemsthroughout reveal a remarkable acquaintance with Adriatic geography. Ifhe took part in the work of that stormy winter's campaigns, when morethan one fleet was wrecked, we can comprehend the intimate touches in thedescription of Aeneas' encounters with the storms. 

The thirteenth _Catalepton_, which mentions the poet's military service, is not pleasant reading. Written perhaps in 48 or 47 B. C. , directedagainst some hated martinet of an officer, it bears various disagreeabletraces of camp life, which was then not well-guarded by charitableorganizations of every kind as now. We need quote only the first fewlines:[5]

 You call me caitiff, say I cannot sail The seas again, and that I seem to quail Before the storms and summer's heat, nor dare The speeding victor's arms again to bear. 

We know how frail Vergil's health was in later years. His constitutionmay well have been wrecked during the winter of 49 which Caesar himself, inured though he was to the storms of the North, found unusually severe. Vergil, it would seem from these lines, was given sick-leave andpermitted to go back to his studies, though apparently taunted for notlater returning to the army. 

[Footnote 5: Jacere me, quod alta non possim, putas Ut ante, vectari freta, Nec ferre durum frigus aut aestum pati Neque arma victoris sequi. The verses were written before 46 B. C. When the _collegia compitalicia_were disbanded; Birt, _Rhein. Mus_. 1910, 348. ]

There is another brief epigram which--if we are right in thinking Pompeythe subject of the lines--seems to date from Vergil's soldier days, thethird _Catalepton_:

 Aspice quem valido subnixum Gloria regno Altius et caeli sedibus extulerat. Terrarum hic bello magnum concusserat orbem, Hic reges Asiae fregerat, hic populos, Hic grave servitium tibi iam, tibi, Roma, ferebat (Cetera namque viri cuspide conciderant), Cum subito in medio rerum certamine praeceps Corruit, e patria pulsus in exilium. Tale deae numen, tali mortalia nutu Fallax momento temporis hora dedit. [6]

[Footnote 6: Behold one whom, upborne by mighty authority, Glory hadexalted even above the abodes of heaven. Earth's great orb had he shakenin war, the kings and peoples of Asia had he broken, grievous slavery washe bringing even to thee, O Rome, --for all else had fallen before thatman's sword, --when suddenly, in the midst of his struggle for mastery, headlong he fell, driven from fatherland into exile. Such is the will ofNemesis; at a mere nod, in a moment of time, the faithless hour tricksmortal endeavor. ]

Whether or not Pompey aspired to become autocrat at Rome, many of hissupporters not only believed but desired that he should. Cicero, who didnot desire it, did, despite his devotion to his friend, fear that Pompeywould, if victorious, establish practically or virtually a monarchy. [7]Vergil, therefore, if he wrote this when Pompey fled to Greece in 49, orafter the rout at Pharsalia, was only giving expression to a convictiongenerally held among Caesar's officers. Quite Vergilian is the repressionof the shout of victory. The poem recalls the words of Anchises onbeholding the spirits of Julius and Pompey:

 Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo Proice tela manu, sanguis meus. 

[Footnote 7: Cic. _Ad Att_. VIII, 11, 4; X, 4, 8. ]

This is the poet's final conviction regarding the civil war in which heserved; his first had not differed widely from this. 

Vergil's one experience as advocate in the court room should perhaps beplaced after his retirement from the army. Egit, says Donatus, et causamapud judices, unam omnino nec amplius quam semel. The reason for his lackof success Donatus gives in the words of Melissus, a critic who ought toknow: in sermone tardissimum ac paene indocto similem. The poet himselfseems to allude to his disappointing failure in the _Ciris_: expertumfallacis praemia volgi. How could he but fail? He never learned to cramhis convictions into mere phrases, and his judgments into all-inclusivesyllogisms. When he has done his best with human behavior, and thesentence is pronounced, he spoils the whole with a rebellious dis alitervisum. A successful advocate must know what not to see and feel, and hemust have ready convictions at his tongue's end. In the _Aeneid_ thereare several fluent orators, but they are never Vergil's congenialcharacters. 

III

THE "CULEX"

It was apparently in the year 48--Vergil was then twenty-one--that thepoet attempted his first extended composition, the _Culex_, a poem thathardly deserved the honor of a versified translation at the hands ofSpenser. This is indeed one of the strangest poems of Latin literature, an overwhelming burden of mythological and literary references saddled onthe feeblest of fables. 

A shepherd goes out one morning with his flocks to the woodland gladeswhose charms the poet describes at length in a rather imitative rhapsody. The shepherd then falls asleep; a serpent approaches and is about tostrike him when a gnat, seeing the danger, stings him in time to savehim. But--such is the fatalism of cynical fable-lore--the shepherd, stillin a stupor, crushes the gnat that has saved his life. At night thegnat's ghost returns to rebuke the shepherd for his innocent ingratitude, and rather inappropriately remains to rehearse at great length the taleof what shades of old heroes he has seen in the lower regions. The poemcontains 414 lines. 

The _Culex_ has been one of the standing puzzles of literary criticism, and would be interesting, if only to illustrate the inadequacy ofstylistic criteria. Though it was accepted as Vergilian by Renaissancereaders simply because the manuscripts of the poem and ancient writers, from Lucan and Statius to Martial and Suetonius, all attribute the workto him, recent critics have usually been skeptical or downright recusant. Some insist that it is a forgery or supposititious work; others that itis a liberally padded re-working of Vergil's original. Only a few haveaccepted it as a very youthful failure of Vergil's, or as an attempt ofthe poet to parody the then popular romances. Recent objections have notcentered about metrical technique, diction, or details of style: theseare now admitted to be Vergilian enough, or rather what might well havebeen Vergilian at the outset of his career. The chief criticism isdirected against a want of proportion and an apparent lack of artisticsense betrayed in choosing so strange a character for the ponderoustitle-role. These are faults that Vergil later does not betray. 

Nevertheless, Vergil seems to have written the poem. Its ascription toVergil by so many authors of the early empire, as well as the concensusof the manuscripts, must be taken very seriously. But the internalevidence is even stronger. Octavius, to whom the poem is dedicated, isaddressed _Octavi venerande_ and _sancte puer_, a clear reference to theremarkable honor that Caesar secured for him by election to the office ofpontiff[1] when he was approaching his fifteenth birthday and beforehe assumed the _toga virilis_. Vergil was then twenty-one years ofage--nearing his twenty-second birthday--and we may perhaps assume inDonatus' attribution of the _Culex_ to Vergil's sixteenth year a mistakein some early manuscript which changed the original XXI to XVI, acorrection which the citations of Statius and Lucan favor. [2] Finally, when, as we shall see presently, Horace in his second _Epode_, accordsVergil the honor of imitating a passage of the _Culex_, Vergil returnsthe compliment in his _Georgics_. We have therefore not only Vergil'srecognition of Horace's courtesy, but, in his acceptance of it, hisacknowledgment of the _Culex_ as his own. [3]

[Footnote 1: Vellius, II. 59, 3, pontificatus sacerdotio _puerum_honoravit, that is, before he assumed _the toga virilis_ on October 18th. Nicolaus Damascenus (4) confirms this. Octavius received the office madevacant by the death of Domitius at Pharsalia (Aug. 9). His birthday wasSept. 23, 63. This high office is the first indication that Caesar hadchosen his grandnephew to be his possible successor. The boy was hardlyknown at Rome before this time. See _Classical Philology_, 1920, p. 26. ]

[Footnote 2: Anderson, in _Classical Quarterly_, 1916, p. 225; and_Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 26. The dedicatory lines of the _Culex_ implythat the body of the poem was already complete. Whether the interval wasone of weeks or months or years the poet does not say. ]

[Footnote 3: _Classical Philology_, 1920, pp. 23, 33. ]

The _Culex_, therefore, is the work of a beginner addressed to a younglad just highly honored, but after all to a schoolboy whom Vergil had, presumably two years before, met in the lecture rooms of Epidius. Doesthis provide a key with which to unlock the hidden intentions of ourstrange treasure-trove of miscellaneous allusions? Let the readerremember the nature of the literary lectures of that day whendictionaries, reference books, and encyclopedias were not yet to be foundin every library, and school texts were not yet provided with conciseAllen and Greenough notes. The teacher alone could afford the voluminous"cribs" of Didymus. Roman schoolboys had not, like the Greeks, drunk inall myths by the easy process of nursery babble. By them the legends ofHomer and Euripides must be acquired through painful schoolroom exegesis. Even the names of natural objects, like trees, birds, and beasts cameinto literature with their Greek names, which had to be explained to theRoman boys. Hence the teacher of literature at Rome must waste muchtime upon elucidating the text, telling the myths in full, and givingconvenient compendia of metamorphoses, of Homeric heroes, of "trees andflowers of the poets, " and the like. Epidius himself, a pedagogue of theprogressive style, had doubtless proved an adept at this sort ofthing. Claiming to be a descendant of an ancient hero who had one daytransformed himself into a river-god, he must have had a knack for thesetales. At any rate we are told that he wrote a book on metamorphosedtrees. [4] When Octavius read the _Culex_, did he recognize in the quaintpassage describing the shepherd's grove of metamorphosed trees (124-145)phrases from the lecture notes of their voluble teacher? Are therereminiscences lurking also in the long list of flowers so incongruouslymassed about the gnat's grave and in the two hundred lines that detailthe ghostly census of Hades? If this is a parody at all, it is to remindOctavius of Epidian erudition. In any case it is a kind of prompter ofthe poetic allusions that occupied the boys' hours at school. The simpleplot of the shepherd and the gnat was selected from the type of fablelore thought suitable for school-room reading. It served by its veryincongruity as a suitable thread for a catalogue of facts and fiction. Vergil himself furnishes the clue for this interpretation of the _Culex_, but it has been overlooked because of the wretched condition of the textthat we have. The first lines[5] of the poem seem to mean:

"My verses on the _Culex_ shall be filled with erudition so that allthe lore of the past may be strung together playfully in the form of astory. " That Martial considered it a boy's book appropriate for vacationhours between school tasks is apparent from the inscription:[6]

 Accipe facundi _Culicem_, studiose, Maronis, Ne nucibus positis, _Arma virumque_ legas. 

[Footnote 4: Pliny, _Nat. Hist_. XVII. 243; Suetonius, _De Rhetoribus_, 4. ]

[Footnote 5: Lines 3-5: lusimus (haec propter culicis sint carmina docta, omnis ut historiae per ludum consonet ordo notitiae) doctumque voces, licet invidus adsit. ]

[Footnote 6: Martial, XIV. 185. ]

The _Culex_ is then, after all, a poem of unique interest; it takes usinto the Roman schoolroom to find at their lectures the two lads whosenames come first in the honor roll of the golden age. 

The poem is of course not a masterpiece, nor was it intended to beanything but a _tour de force_; but a comprehension of its purpose willat least save it from being judged by standards not applicable to it. Itis not naïvely and unintentionally incongruous. To the modern reader itis dull because he has at hand far better compendia; it is uninspiredno doubt: the theme did not lend itself to enthusiastic treatment; theobscurity and awkwardness of expression and the imitative phraseologybetray a young unformed style. To analyze the art, however, would be totake the poem more seriously than Vergil intended it to be when he wrotecurrente calamo. Yet we may say that on the whole the modulation of theverse, the treatment of the caesural pauses[7] and the phrasing comparerather favorably with the Catullan hexameters which obviously served asits models, that in the best lines the poet shows himself sensitive todelicate effects, and that the pastoral scene--which Horace complimentsa few years later--is, despite its imitative notes, written withenthusiasm, and reminds us pleasantly of the _Eclogues_. 

[Footnote 7: For stylistic and metrical studies of the _Culex_, see _TheCaesura in Vergil_, Butcher, _Classical Quarterly_, 1914, p. 123; Hardie, _Journal of Philology_, XXXI, p. 266, and _Class Quart_. 1916, 32 ff. ;Miss Jackson, _Ibid_. 1911, 163; Warde Fowler, _Class. Rev_. 1919, 96. ]

IV

THE "CIRIS"

It was at about this same time, 48 B. C. , that Vergil began to write the_Ciris_, a romantic epyllion which deserves far more attention than ithas received, not only as an invaluable document for the history of thepoet's early development, but as a poem possessing in some passages atleast real artistic merit. The _Ciris_ was not yet completed at the timewhen Vergil reached the momentous decision to go to Naples and studyphilosophy. He apparently laid it aside and did not return to it until hehad been in Naples several years. It was not till later that he wrote thededication. As we shall see, the author again laid the poem away, and itwas not published till after his death. The preface written in Siro'sgarden is addressed to Messalla, who was a student at Athens in 45-4B. C. , and served in the republican army of Brutus and Cassius in 43-2. Init Vergil begs pardon for sending a poem of so trivial a nature at a timewhen his one ambition is to describe worthily the philosophic system thathe has adopted. "Nevertheless, " he says, "accept meanwhile this poem: itis all that I can offer; upon it I have spent the efforts of early youth. Long since the vow was made, and now is fulfilled. " (_Ciris_, 42-7. )[1]

[Footnote 1: On the question of authenticity, see, Class. Phil. 1920, 103ff. ]

The story, beginning at line 101, was familiar. Minos, King of Crete, hadlaid siege to Megara, whose king, Nisus, had been promised invincibilityby the oracles so long as his crimson lock remained untouched. Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, however, was driven by Juno to fall in love withMinos, her father's enemy; and, to win his love, she yields to thetemptation of betraying her father to Minos. The picture of the girl whenshe had decided to cut the charmed lock of hair, groping her way in thedark, tiptoe, faltering, rushing, terrified at the fluttering of her ownheart, is an interesting attempt at intensive art: 209-219:

 cum furtim tacito descendens Scylla cubili auribus erectis nocturna silentia temptat et pressis tenuem singultibus aera captat. Tum suspensa levans digitis vestigia primis egreditur ferroque manus armata bidenti evolat: at demptae subita in formidine vires caeruleas sua furta prius testantur ad umbras. Nam qua se ad patrium tendebat semita limen, vestibulo in thalami paulum remoratur et alti suspicit ad gelidi nictantia sidera mundi non accepta piis promittens munera divis. 

Her aged nurse, Carme, comes upon the bewildered and shivering girl, folds her in her robe, and coaxes the awful confession from her; 250-260:

 haec loquitur mollique ut se velavit amictu frigidulam iniecta circumdat veste puellam, quae prius in tenui steterat succincta crocota. Dulcia deinde genis rorantibus oscula figens persequitur miserae causas exquirere tabis. Nec tamen ante ullas patitur sibi reddere voces, marmoreum tremebunda pedem quam rettulit intra. Ilia autem "quid me" inquit, "nutricula, torques? quid tantum properas nostros novisse furores? non ego consueto mortalibus uror amore. "

Scylla does not readily confess. The poet's characterization of heras she protracts the story to avoid the final confession reveals anambitious though somewhat unpracticed art. Carme tries in vain todissuade the girl, and must, to calm her, promise to aid her if all othermeans fail. The aged woman's tenderness for her foster child is veryeffectively phrased in a style not without reminiscences of Catullus(340-48):

 his ubi sollicitos animi relevaverat aestus vocibus et blanda pectus spe luserat aegrum, paulatim tremebunda genis obducere vestem virginis et placidam tenebris captare quietem inverso bibulum restinguens lumen olivo incipit ad crebros (que) insani pectoris ictus ferre manum assiduis mulcens praecordia palmis. Noctem illam sic maesta super morientis alumnae frigidulos cubito subnixa pependit ocellos. 

On the morrow the girl pleads with her father to make peace, withhumorous naïveté argues with the counsellors of state, tries to bribe theseers, and finally resorts to magic. When nothing avails, she securesCarme's aid. The lock is cut, the city falls, the girl is captured byMinos--in true Alexandrian technique the catastrophe comes with terriblespeed--and she is led, not to marriage, but to chains on the captor'sgalley. Her grief is expressed in a long soliloquy somewhat tooreminiscent of Ariadne's lament in Catullus. Finally, Amphitrite in pitytransforms the captive girl into a bird, the Ciris, and Zeus as a rewardfor his devout life releases Nisus, also transforming him into a bird ofprey, and henceforth there has been eternal warfare between the Ciris andthe Nisus:

 quacunque illa levem fugiens secat aethera pennis, ecce inimicus atrox magno stridore per auras insequitur Nisus; qua se fert Nisus ad auras, illa levem fugiens raptim secat aethera pennis. [1]

[Footnote 1: These four lines occur again in the _Georgios_, I. 406-9. ]

The _Ciris_ with all its flaws is one of our best examples of theromantic verse tales made popular by the Alexandrian poets ofCallimachus' school. The old legends had of course been told in epicor dramatic form, but changing society now cared less for the stirringaction and bloodshed that had entertained the early Greeks. The timeswere ripe for a retelling from a different point of view, with a morepatient analysis of the emotions, of the inner impulses of the momentbefore the blow, the battle of passions that preceded the final act. Wenotice also in these new poems a preponderance of feminine characters. These the masculine democracy of classical Athens had tended todisregard, but in the capitals of the new Hellenistic monarchies, manyinfluential and brilliant women rose to positions of power in thesociety of the court. A poet would have been dull not to respond to thisinfluence. This new note was of course one that would immediately appealto the Romans, for the ancient aristocracy, which had always accordedwoman a high place in society and the home, had never died out at Rome. Indeed such early dramatists as Ennius and Accius had already felt theneed of developing the interest of feminine roles when they paraphrasedclassical Greek plays for their audiences. Thus both at Alexandria andat Rome the new poets naturally chose the more romantic myths of the oldregal period as fit for their retelling. 

But the search for a different interpretation and a deeper contentinduced a new method of narration. Indeed the stories themselves were toowell known to need a full rehearsal of the plot. Action might frequentlybe assumed as known and relegated to a significant line or two hereand there. The scenic setting, the individual traits of the heroes andheroines, their mental struggles, their silent doubts and hesitations, became the chief concern of the new poets. Horace called this the"purple-patch" method of writing. 

The narrative devices, however, varied somewhat. Some poets discardedall idea of form. They roamed through the woods by any path that mightappear. This is the way that Tibullus likes to treat a theme. Whateversemi-apposite topic happens to suggest itself, provided only it containspleasing fancies, invites him to tarry a while; he may or may not bringyou back to the starting point. Other poets still adhere to form, thoughthe pattern must be elaborate enough to hide its scheme from the casualreader, and sufficiently elastic to provide space for sentiment andpathos. In his sixty-eighth poem Catullus employs what might be called ageometrical pattern, in fact a pyramid of unequal steps. He mounts to thecentral theme by a series of verses and descends on the other side by acorresponding series. In the sixty-fourth poem, however, the _epyllion_which the author of the _Ciris_ clearly had in mind, Catullus used anintricate but by no means balanced form. The poem opens with the seavoyage of Peleus on which he meets the sea-nymph, Thetis. Then the poetleaps over the interval to the marriage feast, only to dwell upon thesorrows of Ariadne depicted on the coverlet of the marriage couch; thencehe takes us back to the causes of Ariadne's woes, thence forward to thevengeance upon Ariadne's faithless lover; then back to the second sceneembroidered on the tapestry; and now finally to the wedding itself whichends with the Fates' wedding song celebrating the future glories ofPeleus' promised son. 

The _Ciris_, to be sure, is not quite so intricate, but here again wehave only allusions to the essential parts of the story: how Scyllaoffended Juno, how she met Minos, how she cut the lock, and how the citywas taken. We are not even told why Minos failed to keep his pledge tothe maiden. In the midst of the tale, Carme suspends the action by a longreference to Minos' earlier passion for her own daughter, Britomartis, which caused the girl's destruction, but the lament in which this storyis disclosed merely alludes to but does not tell the details of thestory. The whole plot of the _Ciris_ is in fact unravelled by means ofa series of allusions and suggestions, exclamations and soliloquies, parentheses and aposiopeses, interrogations and apostrophes. 

In verse-technique[2] the _Ciris_ is as near Catullus' _Peleus_ and_Thetis_ as it is the _Aeneid_: indeed it is as reminiscent of the formeras it is prophetic of the latter. The spondaic ending which made the linelinger, usually over some word of emotional content, (l. 158):

 At levis ille deus, cui semper ad ulciscendum

was to Cicero the earmark of this style. The _Ciris_ has it less oftenthan Catullus. Being somewhat unjustly criticized as an artifice it wasusually avoided in the _Aeneid_. There are more harsh elisions in the_Ciris_ than in the poet's later work, reminding one again of Catullantechnique. In his use of caesuras Vergil in the _Ciris_ resemblesCatullus: both to a certain extent distrust the trochaic pause. Itsyielding quality, however, brought it back into more favor in variousemotional passages of the _Aeneid_; but there it is carefully modified bythe introduction of masculine stops before and after, a nuance which ishardly sought after in the _Ciris_ or in Catullus. Finally, the sentencestructure has not yet attained the malleability of a later day. While the_Ciris_, like the _Peleus and Thetis_, is over-free with involved andparenthetical sentences, it has on the whole fewer run-over lines so thatindeed the frequent coincidence of sense pauses and verse endings almostborders on monotony. 

[Footnote 2: See especially Skutsch, _Aus Vergils Frühzeit_, p. 74;Drachmann, _Hermes_, 1908, p. 412 ff. ; L. G. Eldridge, _Num. Culex etCiris_, etc. Giessen, 1914; Rand, _Harvard Studies_, XXX, p. 150. Theintroduction which was written last is more reminiscent of Lucretius. Onthe question of authenticity, see Drachmann, _loc. Cit_. Vollmer, _Sitz. Bayer. Akad_. 1907, 335, and _Vergil's Apprenticeship_, _Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 103. ]

These are but a few of the minor details that show Vergil in his youth aclose reader of Catullus, and doubtless of Calvus, Cinna and Cornificius, who employed the same methods. It was from this group, not from Homer orEnnius, that Vergil learned his verse-technique. The exquisite finish ofthe _Aeneid_ was the product of this technique meticulously reworked tothe demands of an exacting poetic taste. 

The _Ciris_ gave Vergil his first lesson in serious poetic composition, and no task could have been set of more immediate value for the trainingof Rome's epic poet. In a national epic classical objectivity could notsuffice for a people that had grown so self-conscious. Epic poetry mustbecome more subjective at Rome or perish. To be sure the vices of theepisodic style must be pruned away, and they were, mercilessly. The_Aeneid_ has none of the meretricious involutions of plot, none of thepuzzling half-uttered allusions to essential facts, none of the teasinginterruptions of the neoteric story book. The poet also learned to avoidthe danger of stressing trivial and impertinent pathos, and he rejectedthe elegancies of style that threatened to lead to preciosity. What hekept, however, was of permanent value. The new poetry, which had emergedfrom a society that was deeply interested in science, had taught Vergilto observe the details of nature with accuracy and an appreciation oftheir beauty. It had also taught him that in an age of sophistication thepoet should not hide his personality wholly behind the veil. There isa pleasing self-consciousness in the poet's reflections--never tooobtrusive--that reminds one of Catullus. It implies that poetry isrecognized in its great role of a criticism of life. But most of allthere is revealed in the _Ciris_ an epic poet's first timid probing intothe depths of human emotions, a striving to understand the riddles behindthe impulsive body. One sees why Dido is not, like Apollonius' Medea, simply driven to passion by. Cupid's arrow--the naive Greek equivalentof the medieval love-philter--why Pallas' body is not merely laid on thefuneral pyre with the traditional wailing, why Turnus does not meet hisfoe with an Homeric boast. That Vergil has penetrated a richer vein ofsentiment, that he has learned to regard passion as something more thanan accident, to sacrifice mere logic of form for fragments of vitalemotion and flashes of new scenery, and finally that he enriched theLatin vocabulary with fecund words are in no small measure the effect ofhis early intensive work on the _Ciris_ under the tutelage of Catullus. 

Vergil apparently never published the _Ciris_, for he re-used itslines, indeed whole blocks of its lines with a freedom that cannot beparalleled. The much discussed line of the fourth _Eclogue_:

 Cara deum suboles, magnum Jovis incrementum, is from the _Ciris_ (I. 398), so is the familiar verse of _Eclogue_ VIII(I. 41):

 Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error, and _Aeneid_ II. 405:

 Ad caelum tendens ardentia lumina frustra, and the strange spondaic unelided line (_Aen_. III. 74):

 Nereidum matri et Neptuno Aegaeo, and a score of others. The only reasonable explanation[3] of this strangefact is that the _Ciris_ had not been circulated, that its lines werestill at the poet's disposal, and that he did not suppose the originalwould ever be published. The fact that the process of re-using began evenin the _Eclogues_[4] shows that he had decided to reject the poem asearly as 41 B. C. A reasonable explanation is near at hand. Messalla, towhom the poem was dedicated, joined his lot with that of Mark Antony andEgypt after the battle of Philippi, and for Antony Vergil had no love. The poem lay neglected till he lost interest in a style of work that waspassing out of fashion. Finding a more congenial form in the pastoral hesacrificed the _Ciris_. 

[Footnote 3: Drachmann, _Hermes_, 1908, p. 405. ]

[Footnote 4: Especially in 8, 10, and 4. This method of re-working oldlines reveals an extraordinary gift of memory in the poet, who so vividlyretained in mind every line he had written that each might readily fallinto the pattern of his new compositions without leaving a trace of thejoining. Critics who have tried the task have been compelled to confessthat the criterion of contextual appropriateness cannot alone determinewhether or not these lines first occurred in the _Ciris_. ]

V

A STUDENT OF PHILOSOPHY AT NAPLES

The _Culex_ seems to have been completed in September 48 B. C. , and themain part of the _Ciris_ was written not much later. Now came a crisis inVergil's affairs. Perhaps his own experience in the law courts, or theconviction that public life could contain no interest under an autocracy, or disgust at rhetorical futility, or perhaps a copy of Lucretius broughthim to a stop. Lucretius he certainly had been reading; of that the_Ciris_ provides unmistakable evidence. And the spell of that poet henever escaped. His farewell to Rome and rhetoric has been quoted in partabove. The end of the poem bids--though more reluctantly--farewell to themuses also:

 Ite hinc Camenae; vos quoque ite jam sane dulces Camenae (nam fatebimur verum, dulces fuistis): et tamen meas chartas revisitote, sed pudenter et raro. 

It is to Siro that he now went, the Epicurean philosopher who, closelyassociated with the voluminous Philodemus, was conducting a very populargarden-school at Naples, outranking in fact the original school atAthens. It is not unlikely that this is where Lucretius himself hadstudied. 

It is well to bear in mind that the ensuing years of philosophical studywere spent at Naples--a Greek city then--and very largely among Greeks. This fact provides a key to much of Vergil. Our biographies have somehowassumed Rome as the center of Siro's activities, though the evidence infavor of Naples is unmistakable. Not only does Vergil speak of a journey(Catal. V. 8):

 Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus Magni petentes docta dicta Sironis, and Servius say _Neapoli studuit_, and the _Ciris_ mention _Cecropushorrulus_, and Cicero in all his references place Siro on the bay ofNaples, [1] but a fragment of a Herculanean roll of Philodemus locates thegarden school in the suburbs of Naples. 

[Footnote 1: _De Fin_. II. 119, Cumaean villa; _Acad_. II. 106, Bauli;_Ad. Fam_. VI. 11. 2; Vestorius is a Neapolitan; of. _Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 107, and _Am. Jour. Philology_, XLI, 115. For other possiblereferences, see _Am. Jour. Phil_. 1920, XLI, 280 ff. ]

Even after Siro's death--about 42 B. C. --Vergil seems to have remained atNaples, probably inheriting his teacher's villa. In 38 he with Varius andPlotius came up from Naples to Sinuessa to join Maecenas' party on theirjourney to Brundisium; Vergil wrote the _Georgics_ at Naples in thethirties (_Georg_. IV. 460), and Donatus actually remarks that the poetwas seldom seen at Rome. 

As the charred fragments of Philodemus' rolls are published one by one, we begin to realize that the students of Vergil have failed to appreciatethe influences which must have reached the young poet in these years ofhis life in a Greek city in daily communion with oriental philosopherslike Philodemus and Siro. After the death of Phaedrus these men weredoubtless the leaders of their sect; at least Asconius calls the former_illa aetate nobilissimus_ (_In Pis_. 68). Cicero represents them as_homines doctissimos_ as early as 60 B. C. , and though in his tiradeagainst Piso--ten years before Vergil's adhesion to the school--he mustneeds cast some slurs at Piso's teacher, he is careful to compliment bothhis learning and his poetry. Indeed there seems to be not a little directuse of Philodemus' works in Cicero's _De finibus_ and the _De naturadeorum_ written many years later. In any case, at least Catullus, Horace, and Ovid made free to paraphrase some of his epigrams. And these versesmay well guard us against assuming that the man who could draw to hislectures and companionship some of the brightest spirits of the day isadequately represented by the crabbed controversial essays that hislibrary has produced. These essays follow a standard type and do notnecessarily reveal the actual man. Even these, however, disclose a mannot wholly confined to the _ipsa verba_ of Epicurus, for they show moreinterest in rhetorical precepts than was displayed by the founder of theschool; they are more sympathetic toward the average man's religion, andnot a little concerned about the affairs of state. All this indicates ahealthy reaction that more than one philosopher underwent in coming incontact with Roman men of the world, but it also doubtless reflects thetendencies of the Syrian branch of the school from which he sprang; forthe Syrian group had had to cast off some of its traditional fanaticismand acquire a few social graces and a modicum of worldly wisdom in itslong contact with the magnificent Seleucid court. 

Philodemus was himself a native of Gadara, that unfortunate Macedoniancolony just east of the Sea of Galilee, which was subjected to Jewishrule in the early youth of our philosopher. He studied with Zeno ofSidon, to whom Cicero also listened in 78, a masterful teacher whosefollowers and pupils, Demetrius, Phaedrus, Patro, probably also Siro, and of course Philodemus, captured a large part of the most influentialRomans for the sect. [2]

[Footnote 2: _Italiam totam occupaverunt_. Cic. _Tusc_. IV, 7. ]

How Philodemus taught his rich Roman patrons and pupils to value not onlyhis creed but the whole line of masters from Epicurus we may learn fromthe Herculanean villa where his own library was found, for it containeda veritable museum of Epicurean worthies down to Zeno, perhaps notexcluding the teacher himself, if we could but identify his portrait. [3]

[Footnote 3: See _Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 113. ]

The list of influential Romans who joined the sect during this period isremarkable, though of course we have in our incidental references but asmall part of the whole number. Here belonged Caesar, his father-in-lawPiso, who was Philodemus' patron, Manlius Torquatus, the consularsHirtius, Pansa, and Dolabella, Cassius the liberator, Trebatiusthe jurist, Atticus, Cicero's life-long friend, Cicero's amusingcorrespondents Paetus and Callus, and many others. To some of these theattraction lay perhaps in the philosophy of ease which excused them fromdangerous political labors for the enjoyment of their villas on the Bayof Naples. But to most Romans the greatest attraction of the doctrine layin its presentation of a tangible explanation of the universe, weary asthey were of a childish faith and too practical-minded to have patiencewith metaphysical theories now long questioned and incomprehensibleexcept through a tedious application of dubious logic. 

Vergil's companions in the _Cecropius hortulus_, destined to be hislife-long friends, were, according to Probus, Quintilius Varus, thefamous critic, Varius Rufus, the writer of epics and tragedies, andPlotius Tucca. Of his early friendship with Varius he has left aremembrance in _Catalepton_ I and VII, with Varus in _Eclogue_ VI. Horacecombined all these names more than once in his verses. [4] That the fourfriends continued in intimate relationship with Philodemus, appears fromfragments of the rolls. [5]

[Footnote 4: Cf. Hor. _Sat_. I. 5. 55; i. 10. 44-45 and 81; _Carm_. I. 24. ]

[Footnote 5: _Rhein. Mus_. , 1890, p. 172. The names of Quintilius andVarius occur twice; the rest are too fragmentary to be certain, butthe space calls for names of the length of [Greek: Plo]tie] and [Greek:Ou[ergilie] and the constant companionship of these four men makes therestoration very probable. ]

Of the general question of Philodemus' influence upon Varius and Vergil, Varus and Horace, the critics and poets who shaped the ideals of theAugustan literature, it is not yet time to speak. It will be difficultever to decide how far these men drew their materials from the memoriesof their lecture-rooms; whether for instance Varius' _de morte_ dependedupon his teacher's [Greek: peri thanatou], as has been suggested, or towhat extent Horace used the [Greek: peri orgaes] and the [Greek: perikakion] when he wrote his first two epistles, or the [Greek: peirikolakeias] when he instructed his young friend Lollius how to conducthimself at court, or whether it was this teacher who first calledattention to Bion, Neoptolemus, and Menippus; nor does it matter greatly, since the value of these works lay rather in the art of expression andtimeliness of their doctrine than in originality of view. 

In the theory of poetic art there is in many respects a marked differencebetween the classical ideals of the Roman group and the rather luxuriousverses of Philodemus, but he too recognized the value of restraint andsimplicity, as some of his epigrams show. Furthermore his theories ofliterary art are frequently in accord with Horace's Ars Poetica on thevery points of chaste diction and precise expression which this Augustangroup emphasized. It would not surprise his contemporaries if Horacerestated maxims of Philodemus when writing an essay to the son andgrandsons of Philodemus' patron. However, after all is said, Vergil hadquestioned some of the Alexandrian ideals of art before he came under theinfluence of Philodemus, and the seventh Catalepton gives a hint thatVarius thought as Vergil. It is not unlikely that Quintilius Varus, Vergil's elder friend and fellow-Transpadane, who had grown up anintimate friend of Catullus and Calvus, had in these matters a strongerinfluence than Philodemus. 

There are, however, certain turns of sentiment in Vergil which betray anon-Roman flavor to one who comes to Vergil directly from a reading ofLucretius, Catullus, or Cicero's letters. This is especially true of theOriental proskynesis found in the very first _Eclogue_ and developed intocomplete "emperor worship" in the dedication of the _Georgics_. Thislanguage, here for the first time used by a Roman poet, is not tobe explained as simple gratitude for great favors. It is not evensatisfactorily accounted for by supposing that the young poet wassomewhat slavishly following some Hellenistic model. Catullus hadparaphrased the Alexandrian poets, but he could hardly have inserted apassage of this import. Nor was it mere flattery, for Vergil has shownin his frank praise of Cato, Brutus, and Pompey that he does not merelywrite at command. No, these passages in Vergil show the effects of thelong years of association with Greeks and Orientals that had steepedhis mind in expressions and sentiments which now seemed natural to him, though they must have surprised many a reader at Rome. His teachers atNaples had grown up in Syria and had furthermore carried with them thetradition of the Syrian branch of the school that had learned to adaptits language to suit the whims of the deified Seleucid monarchs. AsEpicureans they also employed sacred names with little reverence. Was notAntiochus Epiphanes himself a "god, " while as a member of the sect hebelittled divinity?

Naples, too, was a Greek city always filled with Oriental trading folk, and these carried with them the language of subject races. It is atPompeii that the earliest inscriptions on Italian soil have been foundwhich recognize the imperial cult, and it is at Cumae that the bestinstance of a cult calendar has come to light. It is a note, one of thevery few in the great poet's work, that grates upon us, but when he wroteas he did he was probably not aware that his years of residence in the"garden" had indeed accustomed his ear to some un-Roman sounds. [6]Octavian was of course not unaware of the advantage that accrued to theruler through the Oriental theory of absolutism, and furtively acceptedall such expressions. By the time Vergil wrote the Aeneid the Roman worldhad acquiesced, but then, to our surprise, Vergil ceases to accord divineattributes to Augustus. 

[Footnote 6: Julius Caesar began as early as 45 B. C. To inviteextraordinary honors for political purposes, but Roman literature seemsnot to have taken any cognizance of them at that time. ]

Again, I would suggest that it was at Naples that Vergil may most readilyhave come upon the "messianic" ideas that occur in the fourth _Eclogue_, for despite all the objections that have been raised against using thatword, conceptions are found there which were not yet naturalized in theOccident. The child in question is thought of as a Soter whose _deeds_the poet hopes to sing (l. 54), and furthermore lines 7 and 50 containunmistakably the Oriental idea of _naturam parturire_, as Suetoniusphrases it (_Aug_. 94). Quite apart from the likelihood that the Gadarenemay have gossiped at table about the messianic hopes of the Hebrews, which of course he knew, it is not conceivable that he never betrayed anyknowledge of, or interest in, the prophetic ideas with which his nativecountry teemed. Meleager, also a Gadarene, preserved memories of thepeople of his birthplace in his poems, and Caecilius of Caleacte, whoseems to have been in Italy at about this time, was not beyond quotingMoses in his rhetorical works. [7]

[Footnote 7: It is generally assumed that his book was the source for thequotation in _Pseudo-Longinus_. ]

Furthermore, Naples was the natural resort of all those Greek andOriental rhetoricians and philosophers, historians, poets, actors, andartists who drifted Romeward from the crumbling courts of Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. There they could find congenial surroundings whilediscovering wealthy patrons in the numerous villas of the idle rich nearby, and thither they withdrew at vacation time if necessity called themto Rome for more arduous tasks. Andronicus, the Syrian Epicurean, broughtto Rome by Sulla, made his home at nearby Cumae; Archias, Cicero'sclient, also from Syria, spent much time at Naples, and the poetAgathocles lived there; Parthenius of Nicaea, to whom the early Augustanswere deeply indebted, taught Vergil at Naples. Other Orientals likeAlexander, who wrote the history of Syria and the Jews, and Timagenes, historian of the Diadochi, do not happen to be reported from Naples, butwe may safely assume that most of them spent whatever leisure time theycould there. 

Puteoli too was still the seaport town of Rome as of all Central Italy, and the Syrians were then the carriers of the Mediterranean trade. [8]That is one reason why Apollo's oracles at Cumae and Hecate's necromaticcave at Lake Avernus still prospered. When Vergil explored that region, as the details of the sixth book show he must have done, he had occasionto learn more than mere geographic details. 

[Footnote 8: Frank, _An Economic History of Rome_, chap. Xiv. ]

That Vergil had Isaiah, chapter II, before his eyes when he wrote thefourth _Eclogue_ is of course out of the question; there is not a singleclose parallel of the kind that Vergil usually permits himself to borrowfrom his sources; we cannot even be sure that he had seen any of theSibylline oracles, now found in the third book of the collection, which contains so strange a syncretism of Mithraic, Greek, and Jewishconceptions, but we can no longer doubt that he was in a general waywell informed and quite thoroughly permeated with such mystical andapocalyptic sentiments as every Gadarene and any Greek from the Orientmight well know. It speaks well for his love of Rome that despite theseinfluences it was he who produced the most thoroughly nationalistic epicever written. 

The first fruit of Vergil's studies in evolutionary science at Naples wasthe _Aetna_, if indeed the poem be his. The problem of the authorshiphas been patiently studied, and the arguments for authenticity conciselysummarized by Vessereau[9] make a strong case. The evidence is brieflythis. Servius attributed the poem to Vergil in his preface and again inhis commentary on _Aeneid_, III, 578. Donatus also seems to have done so, though some of our manuscripts of his _Vita_ contain the phrase _de quaambigitur_. Again, the texts of the _Aetna_ which we have agree also inthis ascription. Internal evidence proves the poem to be a work of theperiod between 54 and 44, which admirably suits Vergilian claims. Itsclose dependence upon Lucretius gives the first date, its mention of the"Medea" of the artist Timomachus as being overseas, a work which wasbrought to Rome between 46 and 44, gives the second. Finally, the _Aetna_is by a student of Epicurean philosophy largely influenced by Lucretius. It would be difficult to make a stronger case short of a contemporaneousattribution. Has not Vergil himself referred to the _Aetna_ in thepreface of his _Ciris_, where he thanks the Muses for their aid in anabstruse poem (l. 93)?

 Quare quae _cantus_ meditanti mittere _caecos_[10] Magna mihi cupido tribuistis praemia divae. 

What other poem could he have had in mind? The designation does not fitthe _Culex_, which is the only poem besides the _Aetna_ that could be inquestion. It is best, therefore, to take the _Aetna_[11] into account instudying Vergil's life, even though we reserve a place in our memoriesfor that stray phrase _de qua ambigitur_. 

[Footnote 9: Vessereau, _Aetna_, xx ff. ; Rand, _Harvard Studies_, XXX, 106, 155 ff. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Senecaattributed the _Aetna_ to Vergil in _ad Lucilium_ 79, 5: The words"Vergil's complete treatment" can hardly refer to the seven meager linesfound in the third book of the _Aeneid_. ]

[Footnote 10: Lucretius is very fond of using the word _caecus_ withreference to abstruse and obscure philosophical and scientific subjects. ]

[Footnote 11: When Vergil wrote the _Georgics_, on a subject which thepoet of the _Aetna_ derides as trivial (264-74) he seems to apologize forabandoning science, in favor of a meaner theme, _Georgics_ II, 483 ff. Isnot this a reference to the _Aetna_?]

The poet after an invocation to Apollo justifies himself for rejectingthe favorite themes of myth and fiction: the mysteries of nature are moreworthy of occupying the efforts of the mind. He has chosen one out ofvery many that needs explanation. The true cause of volcanic eruption, hesays, is that air is driven into the pores of the earth, and when thiscomes into contact with lava and flint which contain atoms of fire, it creates the explosions that cause such destruction. After a secondinvitation to the reader to appreciate the worth of such a theme hetells the story of two brothers of Catania who, when other refugees fromAetna's explosion rescued their worldly goods, risked their lives to savetheir parents. 

The poem is not a happy experiment. There is no lack of enthusiasm forthe subject, despite the fact that the science of that day was whollyinadequate to the theme. But Vergil could hardly realize this, since bothStoics and Epicureans had adopted the theory of the exploding winds. The real trouble with the theme is its hopelessly prosaic ugliness. Lucretius, by his imaginative power, had apparently deceived him intothinking that any fragment of science might be treated poetically. Inhis master the "flaring atom streams" had attained the sublimity of aPlatonic vision, and the very majestic sadness of his materialism carriedthe young poet off his feet. But the mechanism of Aetna remained merely apuzzle with little to inspire awe, and the theme contained inherently nodeep meaning for humanity--which, after all, the scientific problem mustpossess to lend itself to poetic treatment. The poet indeed realized allthis before he had finished. He sought, with inadequate resources, tostir an emotion of awe in describing the eruption, to argue the readerinto his own enthusiasm for a scientific subject, to prove the humanisticworth of his problem by asserting its anti-religious value, and finally, in a Turneresque obtrusion of human beings, to tell the story of theCatanian brothers. But though the attempt does honor to his aestheticjudgment the theme was incorrigible. Perhaps the recent eruptions ofAetna--they are reported for the years 50 and 46 B. C. --had given thetheme a greater interest than it deserved. We may imagine how refugeesfrom Catania had flocked to Naples and told the tale of their suffering. 

There is another element in the poem that is as significant as it isprosaic, a spirit of carping at poetic custom which reminds the reader ofPhilodemus' lectures. Philodemus, whether speaking of philosophy or musicor poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he hassoundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the_Aetna_ has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbityusually turns the reader away before he has reached the centraltheme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the_Georgics_--Lucretius also has a touch of it--but the _Aeneid_ has freeditself completely. 

The compensation to the reader lies not so much in episodical myths, descriptions, and the story at the end, apologetically inserted onLucretius' theory of sweetened medicine, as rather in the poet'scontagious enthusiasm for his science, the thrill of discovery and thesense of wonder (1. 251):

 Divina est animi ac jucunda voluptas!

Men have wasted hours enough on trivialities (258):

 Torquemur miseri in parvis, terimurque labore. 

A worthier occupation is science (274):

 Implendus sibi quisque bonis est artibus: illae Sunt animi fruges, haec rerum est optima merces. 

And science must be worthy of man's divine majesty (224):

 Non oculis solum pecudum miranda tueri More nec effusis in humum grave pascere corpus; Nosse fidem rerum dubiasque exquirere causas, Ingenium sacrare caputque attollere caelo, Scire quot et quae sint magno fatalia mundo Principia. 

This may be prose, but it has not a little of the magnificence of theLucretian logic. The man who wrote this was at least a spiritual kinsmanof Vergil. 

VI

EPIGRAM AND EPIC

The years of Vergil's sojourn in Naples were perhaps the most eventfulin Rome's long history, and we may be sure that nothing but a frailconstitution could have saved a man of his age for study through thoseyears. After the battle of Pharsalia in 48, Caesar, aside from thelotus-months in Egypt, pacified the Eastern provinces, then in 46 subduedthe senatorial remnants in Africa, driving Cato to his death, andin September of that year celebrated his fourfold triumph with amagnificence hitherto undreamed. All Italy went to see the spectacle, anddoubtless Vergil too; for here it was, if we mistake not, that he firstresolved to write an epic of Rome. The year 45 saw the defeat of thePompeian remnants in Spain, and the first preparations for the greatParthian expedition which, as all knew, was to inaugurate the newMonarchy. Then came the sudden blow that struck Caesar down, the civilwar that elevated Antony and Octavian and brought Cicero to his death, and finally the victory at Philippi which ended all hope of a republic. Through all this turmoil the philosophic group of the "Garden" continuedits pursuit of science, commenting, as we shall see, upon passing events. 

The _Aetna_--which seems to date from about 47-6--reveals the youngphilosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotionto his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth _Catalepton_ hewas not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainlyvisible all through these brief poems, there was added the exampleof Philodemus who wrote epigrams from time to time. Several of the_Catalepton_ may belong to this period. The very first, [1] addressed toVergil's lifelong friend Plotius Tucca, is an amusing trifle in the veryvein of Philodemus. The fourth, like the first in elegiacs, is a gracioustribute to a departing friend, Musa, perhaps his fellow-townsman OctaviusMusa. [2] It closes with a generous expression of unquestioning friendshipthat asks for no return:

 Quare illud satis est si te permittis amari Nam contra ut sit amor mutuus, unde mihi?

[Footnote 1:Dequa saepe tibi, venit? sed, Tucca, videre Non licet. Occulitur limine clausa viri. Dequa saepe tibi, non venit adhuc mihi; namque Si occulitur, longe est tangere quod nequeas. Venerit, audivi. Sed iam jnihi nuntius iste Quid prodest? illi dicito cui rediit. ]

[Footnote 2: See Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 82; Servius on _Ecl_. IX. 7; BerneScholia on _Ecl_. VIII. 6. ]

That is the trait surely that accounts for Horace's outburst ofadmiration. 

 Animae quales neque candidiores Terra tulit. 

The seventh is an epigram mildly twitting Varius for his insistence uponpure diction. The crusade for purity of speech had been given a newimpetus a decade before by the Atticists, and we may here infer thatVarius, the quondam friend of Catullus, was considered the guardian ofthat tradition. Vergil, despite his devotion to neat technique, may havehad his misgivings about rules that in the end endanger the freedom ofthe poet. His early work ranged very widely in its experiments in style, and Horace's _Ars Poetica_ written many years later shows that Vergil hadto the very end been criticized by the extremists for taking libertieswith the language. The epigram begins as though it were an erotic poem inthe style of Philodemus. Then, having used the Greek word _pothos_, hechecks himself as though dreading a frown from Varius, and substitutesthe Latin word _puer_, Scilicet hoc fraude, Vari dulcissime, dicam: "Dispeream, nisi me perdidit iste pothos. " Sin autem praecepta vetant me dicere, sane Non dicam, sed: "me perdidit iste puer. "

For the comprehension of the personal allusions in the sixth and twelfthepigrams, we have as yet discovered no clue, and as they are trifles ofno poetic value we may disregard them. 

The fourteenth is, however, of very great interest. It purports to be avow spoken before Venus' shrine at Sorrento pledging gifts of devotion inreturn for aid in composing the story of Trojan Aeneas. 

 Si mihi susceptum fuerit decurrere munus, O Paphon, o sedes quae colis Idalias, Troius Aeneas Romana per oppida digno Iam tandem ut tecum carmine vectus eat: Non ego ture modo aut picta tua templa tabella Ornabo et puris serta feram manibus-- Corniger hos aries humilis et maxima taurus Victima sacrato sparget honore focos Marmoreusque tibi aut mille coloribus ales In morem picta stabit Amor pharetra. Adsis o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat. 

The poem has hitherto been assigned to a period twenty years later. Butsurely this youthful ferment of hope and anxiety does not represent thecomposure of a man who has already published the _Georgics_. The eageroffering of flowers and a many-hued statue of Cupid reminds one rather ofthe youth who in the _Ciris_ begged for inspiration with hands full oflilies and hyacinths. 

However, we are not entirely left to conjecture. There is indubitableevidence that Vergil began an epic at this time, some fifteen yearsbefore he published the _Georgics_. It seems clear also that the epic wasan _Aeneid_, with Julius Caesar in the background, and that parts of theearly epic were finally merged into the great work of his maturity. Thequestion is of such importance to the study of Vergil's developing artthat we may be justified in going fully into the evidence[3]. As ithappens we are fortunate in having several references to this earlyeffort. The ninth _Catalepton_, written in 42, mentions the poet'sambition to write a national poem worthy of a place among the greatclassics of Greece (l. 62):

 Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales. 

The sixth _Eclogue_ begins with an allusion to it:

 Prima Syracusio dignata est ludere versu Nostra, nec erubuit silvas habitare Thalia. Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem Vellit et admonuit, pastorem Tityre pinguis Pascere oportet oves, deductum dicere carmen. 

[Footnote 3: Cf. _Classical Quarterly_, 1920, 156. ]

This may be paraphrased: "My first song--the _Culex_--was a pastoralstrain. When later I essayed to sing of kings and battles, Phoebuswarned me to return to my shepherd song. " On this passage Serviushas the comment: significat aut Aeneidem aut gesta regum Albanorum. Donatus finally in his _Vita_ says explicitly: mox cum res Romanasinchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transit. The poem, therefore, was on the stocks before the _Bucolics_. We may surmise that the deathof Caesar, whose deeds seem to have brought the idea of such a poem toVergil's mind, caused him to lay the work aside. 

Returning to the fourteenth _Catalepton_, we find what seems to be adefinite key to the date and circumstances of its writing. The closinglines are:

 Adsis, o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat. 

It was on September 26 in 46 B. C. , that Julius Caesar so strikinglycalled attention to his claims of descent from Venus and Aeneas bydedicating a temple to Venus Genetrix, the mother of the Julian gens. Itwas on that day that Caesar "called Venus from heaven" to dwell in hernew temple. [4]

[Footnote 4: Cassius Dio, 43, 22; Appian, II. 102. There is independentproof that _Catalepton_ XIV is earlier than the _Georgics_. In _Georgics_II, 146, Vergil repeats the phrase _maxima taurus victima_, but thephrase must have had its origin in the _Catalepton_, since here _maxima_balances _humilis_. In the _Georgics_ the phrase is merely a verbalreminiscence, for there is nothing in the context there to explain_maxima_. On the order of composition of the Aeneid, see M. M. Crump, _TheGrowth of the Aeneid_]

Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic ofAeneas? Vergil was then living at Naples, and we can picture the poetfevered with the new impulse, sailing away from his lectures across thefair bay for a day's brooding. Could one find a more fitting place thanVenus's shrine at Sorrento for the invocation of the _Aeneid_?

How far this first attempt proceeded we shall probably not know. Vergil'sown words would imply that his early effort centered about Aeneas' warsin Italy; the sixth _Eclogue_, Cum canerem reges et proelia, is rather explicit on this point. Furthermore, the erroneous reference ofCalaeno's omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicatethat this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third, for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgottenit if it had already been written. 

It is, however, in reading the first and fifth books that I think wemay profit most by keeping in mind the fact that the poet had begun the_Aeneid_ before Caesar's death. In Book I, 286 ff. , occurs a passagewhich Servius referred to Julius Caesar. It reads:

 Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar, Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo. Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum, Accipies secura; uocabitur his quoque uotis. [5]

[Footnote 5: The following lines (291-6) refer to the succeeding reignof Augustus as the poet is careful to indicate in the words _tumpositis-bellis_. ]

Very few modern editors have dared accept Servius' judgment here, andyet if we may think of these lines as adapted from (say) an originaldedication to Julius Caesar written about 45 B. C. , the difficulties ofthe commentators will vanish. The facts that Vergil seems to have in mindare these: in September 46 B. C. , Julius Caesar, after returning fromThapsus, celebrated his four great triumphs over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, andAfrica, displaying loads of booty such as had never before been seen atRome. He then gave an extended series of athletic games, of the kinddescribed in Vergil's fifth book, including a restoration of the ancient_ludus Troiae_. When these were over he dedicated the temple of VenusGenetrix, thereby publicly announcing his descent from Venus, andpresently proclaimed his own superhuman rank more explicitly by placing astatue of himself among the gods on the Capitoline (Dio, XLIII, 14-22). Are not the phrases, _imperium Oceano_ and _spoliis Orientis onustum_a direct reference to this triumph which, of course, Vergil saw? And didnot these dedications inspire the prophecy _uocabitur hic quoque uotis?_Be that as it may, it is difficult to refuse credence to Servius in thiscase, for Vergil here (I, 267-274 and 283) accepts Julius Caesar's claimof descent from Iulus, whereas in the sixth book, in speaking of thedescent of the royal Roman line, he derives it, as was regularly done inAugustus' day, from Silvius the son of Aeneas and Lavinia (VI, 763 ff. ). We must notice also that in the _Aeneid_ as in the _Georgics_ Augustus isregularly called 'Augustus Caesar' or 'Caesar, ' whereas in the only otherreferences to Julius in the _Aeneid_ the poet explicitly points to him bysaying 'Caesar et omnis _Iuli_ progenies' (VI, 789). 

Servius, therefore, seems to be correct in regarding Julius as thesubject of the passage in the first book, and it follows that the passagecontains memories of the year 46 B. C. , whether or not the lines were, asI suggest, first written soon after Caesar's triumph. 

The fifth book also, despite the fact that its beginning and end show alate hand, contains much that can be best brought into connection withVergil's earlier years. It is, for instance, easier to comprehend thepoet's references to Memmius, Catiline, and Cluentius in the forties thantwenty years later. 

Vergil's strange comparison of Messalla to the _superbus Eryx_ in_Catalepton_ IX, written in 42 B. C. , [6] is also readily explained if wemay assume that he has recently studied the Eryx myth in preparation forthe contest of Book V (11. 392-420). The poet's enthusiasm for the _ludusTroiae is well understood as a description of what he saw at Caesar'sre-introduction of the spectacle in 46. At Caesar's games Octavian, thensixteen years of age, must have led one of the troops:[7] in the fifthbook Atys the ancestor of Octavian's maternal line led one column by theside of Iulus:

 Alter Atys, genus unde Atii duxere Latini (1. 568). 

[Footnote 6: See Chapter VIII. ]

[Footnote 7: The brief account of Nicolaus of Damascus (9) mentions thatOctavius had charge of the Greek plays at the triumphal games. ]

Then, too, marks of youth pervade the substance of the book. Thequestionable witticisms might perhaps be attributed to an attempt torelieve the strain, but there is an unusual amount of Homeric imitation, and inartistic allusion to contemporaries which, as in the youthful_Bucolics_, destroys the dramatic illusion. Thus, Vergil not only dwellsupon the ancestry of the Memmii, Sergii, and Cluentii, but insists uponreminding the reader of Catiline's conspiracy in the _Sergestus, furensanimi_, who dashes upon the rock in his mad eagerness to win, andobtrudes etymology in the phrase _segnem Menoeten_ (1. 173). One istempted to suspect that the whole narrative of the boat-race is filledwith pragmatic allusions. If the characters of his epic must be connectedwith well-known Roman families, it is at least interesting that theconnections are indicated in the fifth book and not in the passages wherethe names first meet the reader. Does it not appear that the body of thebook was composed long before the rest, and then left at the poet's deathnot quite furbished to the fastidious taste of a later day?

Finally, I would suggest that the strange and still unexplained[8] omenof Acestes' burning arrow in 11. 520 ff. Probably refers to some event ofimportance to Segesta in the same year, 46 B. C. We are told by the authorof the _Bellum Africanum_ that Caesar mustered his troops for the Africancampaign at Lilybaeum in the winter of 47. We are not told that whilethere he ascended the mountain, offered sacrifices to Venus Erycina, andordered his statue to be placed in her temple, or that he gave favors tothe people of Segesta who had the care of that temple. But he probablydid something of that kind, for as he had already vowed his temple toVenus Genetrix he could hardly have remained eight days at Lilybaeum sonear the shrine of Aeneas' Venus without some act of filial devotion. IfVergil wrote any part of the fifth book in or soon after 46 this wouldseem to be the solution of the obscure passage in question. 

[Footnote 8: See however DeWitt, _The Arrow of Acestes, Am. Jour. Phil_. 1920, 369. ]

It is of importance then in the study of the _Aeneid_ to keep in mindthe fact that the plot was probably shaped and many episodes blocked outwhile Vergil was young and Julius Caesar still the dominant figure inRome. Many scenes besides those in the fifth book may find a new meaningin this suggestion. Does it not explain why so many traits in Dido'scharacter irresistibly suggest Cleopatra, [9] why half the lines of thefourth book are reminiscent of Caesar's dallying in Egypt in 47? Donot the protracted battle scenes of the last book--otherwise soun-Vergilian--remind one of Caesar's never-ending campaigns against foesspringing up in all quarters, and of the fact that Vergil had himselfrecently had a share in the struggle? The young Octavius, also, whoseboyhood is so sympathetically sketched by Nicolaus (5-9)--a leader amonghis companions always, but ever devoted and generous--seems to peerthrough the portrait of Ascanius. [10] Vergil's memories of the boy atschool, the recipient of the _Culex_, the leader of the Trojan troop atCaesar's games, the lad of sixteen sitting for a day in the forum as_praefectus urbi_, seem very recent in the pages of the epic. 

[Footnote 9: Nettleship, _Ancient Lives of Virgil_, 104; Warde Fowler, _Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 415. ]

[Footnote 10: See Warde Fowler, _The Death of Turnus_, pp. 87-92, on thecharacter of Ascanius. ]

It would be futile to attempt to pick out definite lines and claim thatthese were parts of the youthful poem. Indeed the artistry of most of theverses discussed is, as any reader will notice, more on the plane of thelater work than of the _Ciris_, written about 47-3 B. C. It is safe to saythat Vergil did not in his youth write the sonorous lines of _Aen_. I, 285-290, just as they now stand. But as we may learn from the _Ciris_, which Vergil attempted to suppress, no poet has more successfullyretouched lines written in youth and fitted them into mature work withoutleaving a trace of the process. 

Critics have always expressed their admiration for the comprehensivescope of the _Aeneid_, its depth of learning, its finished artistry, andits wide range of observation. The substantial character of the poem isnot a mystery to us when we consider how long its theme lay in the poet'smind. 

VII

EPICUREAN POLITICS

Caesar fell on the Ides of March, 44. The peaceful philosophic communityat Herculaneum "seeking wisdom in daily intercourse" must have feltthe shock as of an earthquake, despite Epicurean scorn for politicalambition. Caesar had been friendly to the school; his father-in-law, Piso, had been Philodemus' life-long friend and patron, and, if we maybelieve Cicero, even at times a boon companion. Several of Caesar'snearest friends were Epicureans of the Neapolitan bay. Their futuredepended wholly upon Caesar. Dolabella was Antony's colleague in thatyear's consulship, while Hirtius and Pansa had been chosen consuls forthe following year by Caesar. To add to the shock, the liberators hadbeen led by a recent convert to the school, Cassius. 

The community as a whole was Caesarian, a fact explained not wholly byPiso's relations to Philodemus and the friendly attitude of so manyfollowers of Caesar, but also by the consideration that the leadingspirits were Transpadanes: Vergil, Varius and Quintilius, at least. Butat Rome the political struggle soon turned itself into a contest todecide not whether Caesar's regime should be honored and continued in thefamily--Octavius seemed at first too young to be a decisive factor--butwhether Antony would be able to make himself Caesar's successor. When inJuly Brutus and Cassius were out-manoeuvered by Antony, and Cicero fledhelplessly from Rome, it was Piso who stepped into the breach, not tosupport Brutus and Cassius, but to check the usurpation of Antony. Thisgave Cicero a program. In September he entered the lists against Antony;in December he accepted the support of Octavian who had with astonishingdaring for a youth of eighteen collected a strong army of Caesar'sveterans and placed himself at the service of Cicero and the Senate intheir warfare against Antony. Spring found the new consuls, Hirtiusand Pansa, both Caesarians, with the aid of Octavian, Caesar's heir, besieging Antony at the bidding of the Senate in the defence ofDecimus Brutus, one of Caesar's murderers! Such was Cicero's skill ingeneralship. Of course Caesarians were not wholly pleased with thisturn of events. Cicero's success would mean not only the elimination ofAntony--to which they did not object--but also the recall of Brutus andCassius, and the consequent elimination of themselves from politicalinfluence. Piso accordingly began to waver. While assuring the Senateof his continued support in their efforts to render Antony harmless, he refused to follow Cicero's leadership in attempting the completerestoration of Brutus' party. Cicero's _Philippics_ dwell with no littleconcern upon this phase of the question. 

We would expect the Garden group, friendly to the memory of Caesar, toadopt the same point of view as Piso and for the same reasons. They couldhardly have sympathized with the murderers of Caesar. On the other hand, they had no reason for supporting the usurpations of Antony, and seem tohave enjoyed Cicero's _Philippics_ in so far as these attacked Antony. Extreme measures were, however, not agreeable to Epicureans, who ingeneral had nothing but condemnation for civil war. However, Octavian'sstrong stand could only have pleased them: Caesar's grand-nephew and heirwould naturally be to them a sympathetic figure. 

A fragment of Philodemus, recently deciphered, [1] reveals the teacheradopting in his lectures the very point of view which we have alreadyfound in Piso. The fragment is brief and mutilated, but so much is clear:Philodemus criticizes the party of Cicero for carrying the attack uponAntony to such extremes that through fear of the liberators a reactionin favor of Antony might set in. We find this position reflected even inVergil. He never speaks harshly of the liberators, to be sure; infact his indirect reference to Brutus in the _Aeneid_ is remarkablysympathetic for an Augustan poet, but we have two epigrams of hisattacking partizans of Antony in terms that remind us of passages inCicero's _Philippics_. It would almost appear that Vergil now drew histhemes for lampoons from Cicero's unforgettable phrases, [2] as Catullushad done some fifteen years before. How thoroughly Vergil disliked Antonymay be seen in the familiar line in the _Aeneid_ which Servius recognizedas an allusion to that usurper (_Aen_. VI. 622):

 Fixit leges pretio atque refixit. 

[Footnote 1: _Hermes_, 1918, p. 382. ]

[Footnote 2: Three other epigrams, VI, XII, XIII, have been assumed bysome critics to be direct attacks upon Antony, but the key to them hasbeen lost and certainty is no longer attainable. ]

If Servius is correct, we have here again a reminder of those stormyyears. This, too, is a dagger drawn from Cicero's armory. Again and againthe orator in the _Philippics_ charges Antony with having used Caesar'sseal ring for lucrative forgeries in state documents. It is interestingto find that Vergil's school friend, Varius, in his poem on Caesar'sdeath, called _De Morte_[3] first put Cicero's charges into effectiveverse:

 Vendidit hic Latium populis agrosque Quiritum Eripuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit. 

[Footnote 3: Some recent critics have suggested that the poem may havebeen a general discussion of the fear of death, but Varius is constantlyreferred to as an epic poet (Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 43; _Carm_. I. 6and Porphyrio _ad loc_). His poem was written before Vergil's eighth_Eclogue_ which we place in 41 B. C. (Macrobius, _Sat_. VI. 2. 20) andprobably before the ninth (see I. 36). ]

The reference here, too, must have been to Antony. The circle was clearlyin harmony in their political views. 

The two creatures of Antony attacked by Cicero and Vergil alike areVentidius and Annius Cimber. The epigram on the former takes the formof a parody of Catullus' "Phasellus ille, " a poem which Vergil had goodreason to remember, since Catullus' yacht had been towed up the Minciopast Vergil's home when he was a lad of about thirteen. Indeed we hopehe was out fishing that day and shared his catch with the home-returningtravelers. Parodies are usually not works of artistic importance, andthis for all its epigrammatic neatness is no exception to the rule. Butit is not without interest to catch the poet at play for a moment, andlearn his opinion on a political character of some importance. 

Ventidius had had a checkered career. After captivity, possibly slaveryand manumission, Caesar had found him keeping a line of post horses andpack mules for hire on the great Aemilian way, and had drafted him intohis transport service during the Gallic War. He suddenly became animportant man, and of course Caesar let him, as he let other chiefs ofdepartments, profit by war contracts. It was the only way he couldhold men of great ability on very small official salaries. Vergil haddoubtless heard of the meteoric rise of this _mulio_ even when he wasat school, for the post-road for Caesar's great trains of supplies ledthrough Cremona. After the war Caesar rewarded Ventidius further byletting him stand for magistracies and become a senator--which of courseshocked the nobility. Muleteers in the Senate! The man changed hiscognomen to be sure, called himself Sabinus on the election posters, butVergil remembered what name he bore at Cremona. Caesar finally designatedhim for the judge's bench, as praetor, and this high office he entered in43. He at once attached himself to Antony, who used him as an agent tobuy the service of Caesarian veterans for his army. It was this thatstirred Cicero's ire, and Cicero did not hesitate to expose the man'scareer. Vergil's lampoon is interesting then not only in its connectionswith Catullus and the poet's own boyhood memories, but for itsreminiscences of Cicero's speeches and the revelation of his ownsympathies in the partizan struggle. The poem of Catullus and Vergil'sparody must be read side by side to reveal the purport of Vergil'sepigram. 

 Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites, Ait fuisse navium celerrimus, Neque ullius natantis impetum trabis Nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis Opus foret volare sive linteo. Et hoc negat minacis Adriatici Negare litus insulasve Cycladas Rhodumque nobilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Ponticum sinum, Ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit Comata silva: nam Cytorio in iugo Loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma. Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer, Tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima Ait phaselus: ultima ex origine Tuo stetisse dicit in cacumine, Tuo imbuisse palmulas in aequore, Et inde tot per inpotentia freta Erum tulisse, laeva sive dextera Vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter Simul secundus incidisset in pedem; Neque ulla vota litoralibus deis Sibi esse facta, cum veniret a mari Novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lacum. Sed haec prius fuere; nunc recondita Senet quiete seque dedicat tibi, Gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris. 

Vergil's parody, [4] which substitutes the mule-team plodding through theGallic mire for Catullus' graceful yacht speeding home from Asia, followsthe original phraseology with amusing fidelity:

 Sabinus ille, quem videtis, hospites Ait fuisse mulio celerrimus, Neque ullius volantis impetum cisi Nequisse praeterire, sive Mantuam Opus foret volare sive Brixiam. Et hoc negat Tryphonis aemuli domum Negare nobilem insulamve Caeruli, Ubi iste post Sabinus, ante Quinctio Bidente dicit attodisse forcipe Comata colla, ne Cytorio iugo Premente dura volnus ederet iuba. Cremona frigida et lutosa Gallia, Tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima Ait Sabinus: ultima ex origine Tua stetisse (dicit) in voragine, Tua in palude deposisse sarcinas Et inde tot per orbitosa milia Iugum tulisse, laeva sive dextera Strigare mula sive utrumque coeperat

 * * * * *

 Neque ulla vota semitalibus deis Sibi esse facta praeter hoc novissimum, Paterna lora proximumque pectinem. Sed haec prius fuere: mine eburnea Sedetque sede seque dedicat tibi, Gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris. 

[Footnote 4: See _Classical Philology_, 1920, p. 114. ]

The other epigram referred to (_Catalefton II_) also attacks a creatureof Antony's, Annius Cimber, a despised rhetorician who had been helpedto high political office by Antony. Again Cicero's _Philippics_ (XI. 14)serve as our best guide for the background. 

 Corinthiorum amator iste verborum, Iste iste rhetor, namque quatenus totus Thucydides, Britannus, Attice febris! Tau Gallicum min et sphin ut male illisit, Ita omnia ista verba miscuit fratri. 

It might be paraphrased: "a maniac for archaic words, a rhetor indeed, heis as much and as little a Thucydides as he is a British prince, thebane of Attic style! It was a dose of archaic words and Celtic brogue, Ifancy, that he concocted for his brother. "

There seem to be three points of attack. Cimber, to judge from Cicero'sinvective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and oftrying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pass as a descendant ofsome unfortunate barbarian prince. Since his brogue was Celtic (_tauGallicum_) he could readily make a plausible story of being British. Vergil seems to imply that the brogue as well as the name Cimber had beenassumed to hide his Asiatic parentage. The second point seems to be thatCimber, though a teacher of rhetoric, was so ignorant of Greek, thatwhile proclaiming himself an Atticist, he used non-Attic forms andvaunted Thucydides instead of Lysias as the model of the simple style. Finally, it was rumored, and Cicero affects to believe the tale, thatCimber was not without guilt in the death of his brother. Vergil is, ofcourse, not greatly concerned in deriding Atticism itself: to this schoolVergil must have felt less aversion than to Antony's flowery style; it isthe perversion of the doctrine that amuses the poet. 

Taken in conjunction with other hints, these two poems show us where thepoet's sympathies lay during those years of terror. There may well havebeen a number of similar epigrams directed at Antony himself, but ifso they would of course have been destroyed during the reign of thetriumvirate. Antony's vindictiveness knew no bounds, as Rome learned whenCicero was murdered. 

VIII

LAST DAYS AT THE GARDEN

Vergil's dedication of the _Ciris_ to Valerius Messalla was, as the poemitself reveals, written several years after the main body of the poem. The most probable date is 43 B. C. , when the young nobleman, then onlyabout twenty-one, went with Cicero's blessing[1] to join Brutus andCassius in their fight for the Republic. Messalla had then, besidesmaking himself an adept at philosophy--at Naples perhaps, since Vergilknew him--and stealing away student hours at Athens for Greek versewriting, gained no little renown by taking a lawsuit against the mostlearned lawyer of the day, Servius Sulpicius. Cicero's letter ofcommendation, which we still have, is unusually laudatory. 

[Footnote 1: Cicero, _Ad Brutum_, I, 15. ]

The dedication of the _Ciris_ reveals Vergil still eager to win his placeas a rival of Lucretius. We may paraphrase it thus:

"Having tried in vain for the favor of the populace, I am now in the'Garden' seeking a theme worthy of philosophy, though I have spent manyyears to other purpose. Now I have dared to ascend the mountain of wisdomwhere but few have ventured. Yet I must complete these verses that Ihave begun so that the Muses may cease to entice me further. Oh, if onlywisdom, the mistress of the four sages of old, would lead me to her towerwhence I might from afar view the errors of men; I should not then honorone so great with a theme so trifling, but I should weave a marvelousfabric like Athena's pictured robe . .. A great poem on Nature, and intoits texture I should weave your name. But for that my powers are stilltoo frail. I can only offer these verses on which I have spent many hoursof my early school-days, a vow long promised and now fulfilled. "

It is apparent that the student still throbs with a desire to becomea poet of philosophy, and that he is willing to appease the muses oflighter song only because they insist on returning. But there is anotherpoem addressed to Messalla that is equally full of personal interest. 

Messalla, as we know from Plutarch's _Brutus, _ drawn partly from theyoung man's diary, joined Cassius in Asia, and did noteworthy service inhelping his general win the Eastern provinces from the Euxine to Syriafor the Republican cause. Later at Philippi he led the cavalry chargewhich broke through the triumvirate line and captured Octavius' camp. That was the famous first battle of Philippi, prematurely reported inItaly as a decisive victory for the Republican cause. Three weeks laterthe forces clashed again and the triumvirs won a complete victory. Messalla, who had been chosen commander by the defeated remnant, recognized the hopelessness of his position and surrendered to thevictors. 

Vergil's ninth _Catalepton_ seems to have been written as a paean inhonor of Messalla on receipt of the first incomplete report. The poemdoes not by any means imply that Vergil favored Brutus and Cassius orfelt any ill-will towards Octavian. Vergil's regard for Messallawas clearly a personal matter, and of such a nature that politicaldifferences played no part in it. The poet's complete silence in thepoem about Brutus and Cassius indicates that it is not to any extent the_cause_ which interests him. Nor can a eulogy of a young republican atthis time be considered as implying any ill-will toward Octavian, to whomVergil was always devoted. At this early day Antony was still looked uponas the dominating person in the triumvirate, and for him Vergil had nolove whatever. He may, therefore, though a Caesarian and friendly toOctavian, sing the praises of a personal friend who is fighting Antony'striumvirate. 

The ninth _Catalepton, _ like most eulogistic verse thrown off at highspeed, has few good lines (indeed it was probably never finished), but itis exceedingly interesting as a document in Vergil's life. 

Since it has generally been placed about fifteen years too late andtherefore misunderstood, we must dwell at length on some of itssignificant details. The poem can be briefly summarized:

"A conqueror you come, the great glory of a mighty triumph, a victor onland and sea over barbarian tribes; and yet a poet too. Some of yourverses have found a place in my pages, pastoral songs in which twoshepherds lying under the spreading oak sing in honor of your heroine towhom the divinities bring gifts. The heroine of your song shall be morefamous than the themes of Greek song, yes even than the Roman Lucrece forwhose honor your sires drove the tyrants out of Rome. "

"Great are the honors that Rome has bestowed upon the liberty-loving(Publicolas) Messallas for that and other deeds. So I need not sing ofyour recent exploits: how you left your home, your son, and the forum, toendure winter's chill and summer's heat in warfare on land and sea. Andnow you are off to Africa and Spain and beyond the seas. "

"Such deeds are too great for my song. I shall be satisfied if I can butpraise your verses. "

The most significant passage is the implied comparison of ValeriusMessalla with the founder of the Valerian family who had aided the firstBrutus in establishing the republic as he now was aiding the last Brutusin restoring it. The comparison is the more startling because ourMessalla later explicitly rejected all connection with the first Valeriusand seems never to have used the cognomen Publicola. The explanation ofVergil's passage is obvious. [2] The poet hearing of Messalla's remarkableexploit at Philippi saw at once that his association with Brutus wouldremind every Roman of the events of 509 B. C. , and that the populace wouldas a matter of course acclaim the young hero by the ancient cognomen"Publicola. " Later, after his defeat and submission, Messalla hadof course to suppress every indication that might connect him with"tyrannicide" stock or faction. The poem, therefore, must have beenwritten before Messalla's surrender in 42 B. C. 

[Footnote 2: The argument is given in full in _Classical Philology_, 1920, p. 36. ]

The poet's silences and hesitation in touching upon this subject of civilwar are significant of his mood. The principals of the triumph receivenot a word: his friend is the "glory" of a triumph led by men whose namesare apparently not pleasant memories. Nor is there any exultation overa presumed defeat of "tyrants" and a restoration of a "republic. " Theexploit of Messalla that Vergil especially stresses is the defeat of"barbarians, " naturally the subjection of the Thracian and Pontic tribesand of the Oriental provinces earlier in the year. And the assumption ismade (1. 51 ff. ) that Messalla has, as a recognition of his generalship, been chosen to complete the war in Africa, Spain, and Britain. Mostsignificant of all is Vergil's blunt confession that his mind is notwholly at ease concerning the theme (II. 9-12): "I am indeed strangely ata loss for words, for I will confess that what has impelled me to writeought rather to have deterred me. " Could he have been more explicit inexplaining that Messalla's exploits, for which he has friendly praise, were performed in a cause of which his heart did not approve? And doesnot this explain why he gives so much space to Messalla's verses, and whyhe so quickly passes over the victory of Philippi with an assertion ofhis incapacity for doing it justice?

To the biographer, however, the passage praising Messalla's Greekpastorals is the most interesting for it reveals clearly how Vergil cameto make the momentous decision of writing pastorals. Since Messalla'sverses were in Greek they had, of course, been written two years beforethis while he was a student at Athens. Would that we knew this heroineupon whom he represents the divinities as bestowing gifts! Propertius, who acknowledged Mesalla as his patron later employed this same motiveof celestial adoration in honor of Cynthia (II. 3, 25), but surelyMessalla's _herois_ was, to judge from Vergil's comparison, a person offar higher station than Cynthia. Could she have been the lady he marriedupon his return from Athens? Such a treatment of a woman of socialstation would be in line with the customs of the "new poets, " Catullus, Calvus, and Ticidas, rather than of the Augustans, Gallus, Propertius, and Tibullus. Vergil himself used the motive in the second _Eclogue_ (l. 46), a reminiscence which, doubtless with many others that we are unableto trace, Messalla must have recognized as his own. 

The pastoral which Vergil had translated from Messalla is quite fullydescribed:

 Molliter hic _viridi patulae sub tegmine quercus_ Moeris pastores et Meliboeus erant, Dulcia jactantes alterno carmina versu Qualia Trinacriae doctus amat iuvenis. 

That is, of course, the very beginning of his own _Eclogues_. When hepublished them he placed at the very beginning the well-known line thatrecalled Messalla's own line:

 Tityre, tu _patulae recubans sub tegmine fagi_. 

What can this mean but a graceful reminder to Messalla that it was he whohad inspired the new effort?[3]

[Footnote 3: Roman writers frequently observed the graceful custom ofacknowledging their source of inspiration by weaving in a recognizablephrase or line from the master into the very first sentence of a newwork: cf. _Arma virumque cano_--[Greek: Andra moi ennepe] (Lundström, _Eranos_, 1915, p. 4). Shelley responding to the same impulse paraphrasedBion's opening lines in "I weep for Adonais--he is dead. "]

We may conclude then that Vergil's use of that line as the title of his_Eclogues_ is a recognition of Messalla's influence. Conversely it isproof, if proof were needed, that the ninth _Catalepton_ is Vergil's. Wemay then interpret line thirteen of the ninth _Catalepton:_

 pauca tua in nostras venerunt carmina chartas, as a statement that in the autumn of 42, Vergil had already written someof his _Eclogues_, and that these early ones--presumably at least numbersII, III, and VII--contain suggestions from Messalla. 

There was, of course, no triumph, and Vergil's eulogy was never sent, indeed it probably never was entirely completed. [4] Messalla quickly madehis peace with the triumvirs, and, preferring not to return to Rome indisgrace, cast his lot with Antony who remained in the East. Vergil, whothoroughly disliked Antony, must then have felt that for the present, atleast, a barrier had been raised between him and Messalla. Accordinglythe _Ciris_ also was abandoned and presently pillaged for other uses. 

[Footnote 4: It ought, therefore, not to be used seriously in discussionsof Vergil's technique. ]

The news of Philippi was soon followed by orders from Octavian--to bethoroughly accurate we ought of course to call him Caesar--that landsmust now, according to past pledges, be procured in Italy for nearlytwo hundred thousand veterans. Every one knew that the cities that hadfavored the liberators, and even those that had tried to preserve theirneutrality, would suffer. Vergil could, of course, guess that lands inthe Po Valley would be in particular demand because of their fertility. The first note of fear is found in his eighth _Catalepton_:

 Villula, quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle, Verum illi domino tu quoque divitiae, Me tibi et hos una mecum, quos semper amavi, Si quid de patria tristius audiero, Commendo imprimisque patrem: tu nunc eris illi Mantua quod fuerat quodque Cremona prius. 

It is usually assumed from this passage that Siro had recently died, probably, therefore, some time in 42 B. C. , and that, in accordance with acustom frequently followed by Greek philosophers at Rome, he had left hisproperty to his favorite pupil. The garden school, therefore, seems tohave come to an end, though possibly Philodemus may have continued itfor the few remaining years of his life. Siro's villa apparently provedattractive to Vergil, for he made Naples his permanent home, despite thegift of a house on the Esquiline from Maecenas. 

This, however, is not Vergil's last mention of Siro, if we may believeServius, who thinks that "Silenum" in the sixth _Eclogue_ stands for"Sironem, " its metrical equivalent. If, as seems wholly likely, Serviusis right, the sixth _Eclogue_ is a fervid tribute to a teacher whodeserves not to be forgotten in the story of Vergil's education. The poemhas been so strangely misinterpreted in recent years that it is time tofollow out Servius' suggestion and see whether it does not lead to someconclusions. [5]

[Footnote 5: Skutsch roused a storm of discussion over it by insistingthat it was a catalogue of poems written by Gallus (_Aus VergilsFrühzeit_. ) Cartault, _Étude sur les Bucoliques de Virgile_ (p. 285), almost accepts Servius' suggestion: "un résumé de ses lectures et de sesétudes. "]

After an introduction to Varus the poem tells how two shepherds foundSilenus off his guard, bound him, and demanded songs that he had longpromised. The reader will recall, of course, how Plato also likened histeacher Socrates to Silenus. Silenus sang indeed till hills and valleysthrilled with the music: of creation of sun and moon, the world ofliving things, the golden age, and of the myths of Prometheus, Phaeton, Pasiphaë, and many others; he even sang of how Gallus had been capturedby the Muses and been made a minister of Apollo. 

A strange pastoral it has seemed to many! And yet not so strange when webear in mind that the books of Philodemus reveal Vergil and QuintiliusVarus as fellow students at Naples. Surely Servius has provided the key. The whole poem, with its references to old myths, is merely a rehearsalof schoolroom reminiscences, as might have been guessed from the fineLucretian rhythms with which it begins:

 Namque canebat, uti magnum per inane coacta Semina terrarumque animaeque marisque fuissent Et liquidi simul ignis; ut his exordia primis Omnia et ipse tener mundi concreverit orbis; Tum durare solum et discludere Nerea ponto Coeperit, et rerum paulatim sumere formas; Iamque novum terrae stupeant lucescere solem. Altius atque cadant summotis nubibus imbres; Incipiant silvae cum primum surgere, cumque Rara per ignaros errent animalia montis. 

The myths that follow are meant to continue this list of subjects, onlywith somewhat less blunt obviousness. They suggested to Varus the usualEpicurean theories of perception, imagination, passion, and mentalaberrations, subjects that Siro must have discussed in some such way asLucretius treated them in his third and fourth books of the _De RerumNatura_. 

It is, of course, not to be supposed that Siro had lectured uponmythology as such. But the Epicurean teachers, despite their scornfor legends, employed them for pedagogical purposes in several ways. Lucretius, for instance, uses them sometimes for their picturesqueness, as in the _prooemium_ and again in the allegory of the seasons (V. 732). He also employs them in a Euhemeristic fashion, explaining them aspopular allegories of actual human experiences, citing the myths ofTantalus and Sisyphus, for example, as expressions of the ever-presentdread of punishment for crimes. Indeed Vergil himself in the _Aetna_--ifit be his--somewhat naïvely introduced the battle of the giants for itspicturesque interest. It is only after he had enjoyed telling the storyin full that he checked himself with the blunt remark:

 (1. 74) Haec est mendosae vulgata licentia famae. 

Lucretius is little less amusing in his rejection of the Cybele myth, after a lovely passage of forty lines (II, 600) devoted to it. 

Vergil was, therefore, on familiar ground when he tried to remind hisschoolmate of Siro's philosophical themes by designating each of them bymeans of an appropriate myth. Perhaps we, who unlike Varus have not heardthe original lectures, may not be able in every case to discover thetheme from the myth, but the poet has at least set us out on the rightscent by making the first riddles very easy. The _lapides Pyrrhae_ (I. 41) refer of course to the creation of man; _Saturnia regna_ is, inEpicurean lore, the primitive life of the early savages; _furtumPromethei_ (I. 42) must refer to Epicurus' explanation of how fire camefrom clashing trees and from lightning. The story of Hylas (I. 43)probably reminded Varus of Siro's lecture on images and reflection, Pasiphaë (I. 46) of unruly passions, explained perhaps as in Lucretius'fourth book, Atalanta (I. 61) of greed, and Phaeton of ambition. As forScylla, Vergil had himself in the _Ciris_ (I. 69) mentioned, only toreject, the allegorical interpretation here presented, according to whichshe portrays:

 "the sin of lustfulness and love's incontinence. "

Vergil had not then met Siro, but he may have read some of his lectures. 

Finally, the strange lines on Cornelius Gallus might find a readyexplanation if we knew whether or not Gallus had also been a memberof the Neapolitan circle. Probus, if we may believe him, suggests thepossibility in calling him a schoolmate of Vergil's, and a plausibleinterpretation of this eclogue turns that possibility into a probability. The passage (II. 64-73) may well be Vergil's way of recalling to Varus awell-beloved fellow-student who had left the circle to become a poet. 

The whole poem, therefore, is a delightful commentary upon Vergil'slife in Siro's garden, written probably after Siro had died, the schoolclosed, and Varus gone off to war. The younger man's school days arenow over; he had found his idiom in a poetic form to which Messalla'sexperiments had drawn him. The _Eclogues_ are already appearing in rapidsuccession. 

IX

MATERIALISM IN THE SERVICE OF POETRY

It has been remarked that Vergil's genius was of slow growth; he wastwenty-eight before he wrote any verses that his mature judgmentrecognized as worthy of publication. A survey of his early life revealssome of the reasons for this tardy development. Born and schooled ina province he was naturally held back by lack of those contacts whichstimulate boys of the city to rapid mental growth. The first few years atRome were in some measure wasted upon a subject for which he had neithertaste nor endowment. The banal rhetorical training might indeed havemade a Lucan or a Juvenal out of him had he not finally revolted sodecisively. However, this work at Rome proved not to be a total loss. His choice of a national theme for an epic and his insight into thetrue qualities of imperial Rome owe something to the study of politicalquestions that his preparation for a public career had necessitated. Helearned something in his Roman days that not even Epicurean scorn forpolitics could eradicate. 

However, his next decision, to devote his life to philosophy, againretarded his poetic development. Certainly it held him in leash duringthe years of adolescent enthusiasms when he might have become a lyricpoet of the neoteric school. A Catullus or a Keats must be caughtearly. Indeed the very dogmas of the Epicurean school, if taken in allearnestness, were suppressive of lyrical enthusiasm. The _Aetna_ showsperhaps the worst effects of Epicurean doctrine in its scholasticinsistence that myths must now give way to facts. Its author was stilltoo absorbed in the microscopic analysis of a petty piece of researchto catch the spirit of Lucretius who had found in the visions of thescientific workshop a majesty and beauty that partook of the essence ofpoetry. 

In the end Vergil's poetry, like that of Lucretius, owed more toEpicureanism than modern critics--too often obsessed by a misapplied_odium philosophicum_--have been inclined to admit. It is all too easyto compare this philosophy with other systems, past and present, andto prove its science inadequate, its implications unethical, and itsattitude towards art banal. But that is not a sound historical method ofapproach. The student of Vergil should rather remember how great was theneed of that age for some practical philosophy capable of lifting themind out of the stupor in which a hybrid mythology had left it, and how, when Platonic idealism had been wrecked by the skeptics, and Stoicismwith its hypothetical premises had repelled many students, Epicureanpositivism came as a saving gospel of enlightenment. 

The system, despite its inadequate first answers, employed a scientificmethod that gave the Romans faith in many of its results, just at a timewhen orthodox mythology had yielded before the first critical inspection. As a preliminary system of illumination it proved invaluable. Untrainedin metaphysical processes of thought, ignorant of the tools of exactscience, the Romans had as yet been granted no answers to their growingcuriosity about nature except those offered by a hopelessly naïve faith. Stoicism had first been brought over by Greek teachers as a possibleguide, but the Roman, now trained by his extraordinary career in worldpolitics to think in terms of experience, could have but little patiencewith a metaphysical system that constantly took refuge in a faith inaprioristic logic which had already been successfully challenged bytwo centuries of skeptics. The Epicurean at least kept his feet on theground, appealed to the practical man's faith in his own senses, andplausibly propped his hypotheses with analogous illustrations, oftentimesapproaching very close to the cogent methods of a new inductive logic. Herested his case at least on the processes of argumentation that the Romandaily applied in the law-courts and the Senate, and not upon flights ofmetaphysical reasoning. He came with a gospel of illumination to a raceeager for light, opening vistas into an infinity of worlds marvelouslycreated by processes that the average man beheld in his daily walks. 

It was this capacity of the Epicurean philosophy to free the imagination, to lift man out of a trivial mythology into a world of infinite visions, and to satisfy man's curiosity regarding the universe with tangibleanswers[1] that especially attracted Romans of Vergil's day to the newphilosophy. Their experience was not unlike that of numberless men ofthe last generation who first escaped from a puerile cosmology by wayof popularized versions of Darwinism which the experts condemned asunscientific. 

[Footnote 1: It is not quite accurate to say that the Romans made a dogmaof Epicurus' _ipse dixit_ which destroyed scientific open-mindedness. Vergil uses Posidonius and Zeno as freely as the Stoic Seneca doesEpicurus. ]

Furthermore, Epicureanism provided a view of nature which was apt in theminds of an imaginative poet to lead toward romanticism. Stoicism indeedpretended to be pantheistic, and Wordsworth has demonstrated the valueto romanticism of that attitude. But to the clear of vision Stoicismimmediately took from nature with one hand what it had given with theother. Invariably, its rule of "follow nature" had to be defined in termsthat proved its distrust of what the world called nature. As a matter offact the Stoic had only scorn for naturalism. Physical man was to him acreature to be chained. Trust not the "scelerata pulpa; peccat et haec, peccat!" cries Persius in terror. 

The earlier naïve animism of Greece and Rome had contained more ofaesthetic value, for it was the very spring from which had flowed all thewealth of ancient myths. But the nymphs of that stream were dead, slainby philosophical questioning. The new poetic myth-making that stillshowed the influence of an old habit of mind was apt to be ratherself-conscious and diffident, ending in something resembling the patheticfallacy. 

Epicureanism on the other hand by employing the theory of evolution wasable to unite man and nature once more. And since man is so self-centeredthat his imagination refuses to extend sympathetic treatment to natureunless he can feel a vital bond of fellowship with it, the poetry ofromance became possible only upon the discovery of that unity. This isdoubtless why Lucretius, first of all the Romans, could in his prooemiumbring back to nature that sensuousness which through the songs of thetroubadours has become the central theme of romantic poetry even to ourday. 

 Nam simulac species patefactast verna diei . .. Aëriae primum volucres te diva tuumque Significant initum perculsae corda tua vi, Inde ferae pecudes persultant pabula laeta. 

Vergil, convinced by the same philosophy, expresses himself similarly:

 Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres amor omnibus idem. 

And again:

 Avia tum resonant avibus virgulta canoris Et Venerem certis repetunt armenta diebus Parturit almus ager Zepherique trementibus auris Laxant arva sinus. 

It is, of course, the theme of "Sumer is icumen in. " Lucretius feels sostrongly the unity of naturally evolved creation that he neverhesitates to compare men of various temperaments with animals ofsundry natures--the fiery lion, the cool-tempered ox--and explain thedifferences in both by the same preponderance of some peculiar kind of"soul-atoms. "

Obviously this was a system which, by enlarging man's mental horizon andsympathies, could create new values for aesthetic use. Like the crudeevolutionistic hypotheses in Rousseau's day, it gave one a more soundlybased sympathy for one's fellows--since evolution was not yet "red intooth and claw. " If nature was to be trusted, why not man's nature? Whycurse the body, any man's body, as the root-ground of sin? Were not theinstincts a part of man? Might not the scientific view prove that thepassions so far from being diseases, conditioned the very life andsurvival of the race? Perhaps the evils of excess, called sin, were afterall due to defects in social and political institutions that had appliedincorrect regulative principles, or to the selfishly imposed religiousfears which had driven the healthy instincts into tantrums. Rid man ofthese erroneous fears and of a political system begot for purposesof exploitation and see whether by returning to an age of primitiveinnocence he cannot prove that nature is trustworthy. [2]

[Footnote 2: Lucretius, III, 37-93; II, 23-39; V, 1105-1135. ]

There is in this philosophy then a basis for a large humanitarianism, dangerous perhaps in its implications. And yet it could hardly have beenmore perilous than the Roman orthodox religion which insisted only uponformal correctness, seldom upon ethical decorum, or than Stoicism withits categorical imperative, which could restrain only those who werealready convinced. The Stoic pretence of appealing to a natural law couldbe proved illogical at first examination, when driven to admit that"nature" must be explained by a question-begging definition before itsrule could be applied. 

Indeed the Romans of Vergil's day had not been accustomed to look forethical sanctions in religion or creed. Morality had always been for thema matter of family custom, parental teaching of the rules of decorum, legal doctrine regarding the universality of _aequitas_, and, more thanthey knew, of puritanic instincts inherited from a well-sifted stock. Itprobably did not occur to Lucretius and Vergil to ask whether this newphilosophy encouraged a higher or a lower ethical standard. Cicero, asstatesman, does; but the question had doubtless come to him first out ofthe literature of the Academy which he was wont to read. Despite theircreed, Lucretius and Vergil are indeed Rome's foremost apostles ofRighteousness; and if anyone had pressed home the charge of possiblemoral weakness in their system they might well have pointed to theexemplary life of Epicurus and many of his followers. To the Romans thisphilosophy brought a creed of wide sympathies with none of the "lustfor sensation" that accompanied its return in the days of Rousseau and"Werther. " Had not the old Roman stock, sound in marrow and clear ofeye, been shattered by wars and thinned out by emigration, only to bedisplaced by a more nervous and impulsive people that had come in bythe slave trade, Roman civilization would hardly have suffered from theapplication of the doctrines of Epicurus. 

Whether or not Vergil remained an Epicurean to the end, we must, to befair, give credit to that philosophy for much that is most poetical inhis later work, --a romantic charm in the treatment of nature, a deepcomprehension of man's temper, a broader sympathy with humanity and aclearer understanding of the difference between social virtue and mereritualistic correctness than was to be expected of a Roman at this time. 

It is, however, very probable that Vergil remained on the whole faithfulto this creed[3] to the very end. He was forty years of age and onlyeleven years from his death when he published the _Georgics_, which arepermeated with the Epicurean view of nature; and the restatement of thiscreed in the first book of the _Aeneid_ ought to warn us that his faithin it did not die. 

[Footnote 3: This is, of course, not the view of Sellar, Conington, Glover, and Norden, --to mention but a few of those who hold that Vergilbecame a Stoic. See chapter XV for a development of this view. ]

X

RECUBANS SUB TEGMINE FAGI

The visitor to Arcadia should perhaps be urged to leave his microscope athome. Happiest, at any rate, is the reader of Vergil's pastorals who cantake an unannotated pocket edition to his vacation retreat, forgettingwhat every inquisitive Donatus has conjectured about the possiblehidden meanings that lie in them. But the biographer may not share thatpleasure. The _Eclogues_ were soon burdened with comments by critics whosought in them for the secrets of an early career hidden in the obscurityof an unannaled provincial life. In their eager search for data theyforced every possible passage to yield some personal allusion, till thepoems came to be nothing but a symbolic biography of the author. Themodern student must delve into this material if only to clear away alittle of the allegory that obscures the text. 

It is well to admit honestly at once that modern criticism has noscientific method which can with absolute accuracy sift out all thefalsehoods that obscure the truth in this matter, but at least abeginning has been made in demonstrating that the glosses are notthemselves consistent. Those early commentators who variously place theconfiscation of Vergil's farm after the battle of Mutina (43 B. C. ), after Philippi (42) and after Actium (31), who conceive of Mark Antonyas a partizan of Brutus, and Alfenus Varus as the governor of a provincethat did not exist, may state some real facts: they certainly hazard manyfutile guesses. The safest way is to trust these records only when theyharmonize with the data provided by reliable historians, and to interpretthe _Eclogues_ primarily as imaginative pastoral poetry, and not, exceptwhen they demand it, as a personal record. We shall here treat the_Bucolics_ in what seems to be their order of composition, not the orderof their position in the collection. 

The eulogy of Messalla, written in 42 B. C. , reveals Vergil already atwork upon pastoral themes, to which, as he tells us, Messalla's Greekeclogues had called his attention. We may then at once reject thestatement of the scholiasts that Vergil wrote the _Eclogues_ for thepurpose of thanking Pollio, Alfenus, and Gallus for having saved hisestates from confiscation. At least a full half of these poems had beenwritten before there was any material cause for gratitude, and, as weshall see presently, these three men had in any case little to do withthe matter. It will serve as a good antidote against the conjectures ofthe allegorizing school if we remember that these commentators of theEmpire were for the most part Greek freedmen, themselves largely occupiedin fawning upon their patrons. They apparently assumed that poets as amatter of course wrote what they did in order to please some patron--aquestionable enough assumption regarding any Roman poetry composed beforethe Silver Age. 

The second _Eclogue_ is a very early study which, in the theme of thegift-bringing, seems to be reminiscent of Messalla's work. [1] The thirdand seventh are also generally accepted as early experiments in the morerealistic forms of amoebean pastoral. Since the fifth, which should beplaced early in 41 B. C. , actually cites the second and third, we have a_terminus ante quem_ for these two eclogues. To the early list the tenthshould be added if it was addressed to Gallus while he was still doingmilitary service in Greece, and with these we may place the sixth, discussed above. 

[Footnote 1: See Chapter VIII. ]

The lack of realistic local color in these pastorals has frequently beencriticized, on the supposition that Vergil wrote them while at home inMantua, and ought, therefore, to have given true pictures of Mantuanscenery and characters. His home country was and is a monotonous plain. The jutting crags with their athletic goats, the grottoes invitingmelodious shepherds to neglect their flocks, the mountain glades andwaterfalls of the _Eclogues_ can of course not be Mantuan. The Po Valleywas thickly settled, and its deep black soil intensively cultivated. Afew sheep were, of course, kept to provide wool, but these were herded byfarmers' boys in the orchards. The lone she-goat, indispensable to everyItalian household, was doubtless tethered by a leg on the roadside. Therewere herds of swine where the old oak forests had not yet been cut, butthe swine-herd is usually not reckoned among songsters. Nor was anypoetry to be expected from the cowboys who managed the cattle ranchesat the foot hills of the Alps and the buffalo herds along the undrainedlowlands. Is Vergil's scenery then nothing but literary reminiscence?

In point of fact the pastoral scenery in Vergil is Neapolitan. The eighth_Catalepton_ is proof that Vergil was at Naples when he heard of thedangers to his father's property in the North. It is doubtful whetherVergil ever again saw Mantua after leaving it for Cremona in his earlyboyhood. The property, of course, belonged not to him but to his father, who, as the brief poem indicates, had remained there with his family. Thepastoral scenery seldom, except in the ninth _Eclogue_, pretends to beMantuan. Even where, as in the first, the poem is intended to conveya personal expression of gratitude for Vergil's exemption from harshevictions, the poet is very careful not to obtrude a picture of himselfor his own circumstances. Tityrus is an old man, and a slave in a typicalshepherd's country, such as could be seen every day in the mountains nearNaples. And there were as many evictions near Naples as in the North. Indeed it is the Neapolitan country--as picturesque as any in Italy--thatconstantly comes to the reader's mind. We are told by Seneca thatthousands of sheep fed upon the rough mountains behind Stabiae, andthe clothier's hall and numerous fulleries of Pompeii remind us thatwool-growing was an important industry of that region. Vergil's excursionto Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay. BehindNaples along the ridge of Posilipo, [2] below which Vergil was laterburied, in the mountains about Camaldoli, and behind Puteoli all theway to Avernus--a country which the poet had roamed with observanteyes--there could have been nothing but shepherd country. Here, then, are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in the_Eclogues_. 

[Footnote 2: The picturesque road from Naples to Puteoli clung to theedge of the rocky promontory of Posilipo, finally piercing the outermostrock by means of a tunnel now misnamed the "grotto di Sejano. " Most ofthe road is now under twenty feet of water: See Günther, _Pausilypon_. Tosee the splendid ridge as Vergil saw it from the road one must now rowthe length of it from Naples to Nésida, sketching in an abundance ofilexes and goats in place of the villas that now cover it. ]

And here, too, were doubtless as many melodious shepherds as everTheocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people asthe Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical thanthose of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except foran occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting--by anallegorical turn invented before Vergil--there is no serious confusionin the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of Vergil's_Eclogues_. But by failing to make this simple assumption--naturally dueany and every poet--readers of Vergil have needlessly marred the effectof some of his finest passages. 

The fifth _Eclogue_, written probably in 41 B. C. , is a very melodiousDaphnis-song that has always been a favorite with poets. It has been andmay be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron godof singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil'slove of symbolism, suspected that a more personal interest led him tocompose this elegy. The death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar is stillthought by some to be the real subject of the poem, while a few haveaccepted another ancient conjecture that Vergil here wrote of hisbrother. The person mourned must, however, have been of more importancethan Vergil's brother. On the other hand, certain details in thepoem--the sorrow of the mother, for instance--preclude the conjecturethat it was Caesar, unless the poet is here confusing his details morethan we need assume in any other eclogue. 

It is indeed difficult to escape the very old persuasion that a sorrowso sympathetically expressed must be more than a mere Theocritanreminiscence. If we could find some poet--for Daphnis must be that--nearto Vergil himself, who met an unhappy death in those days, a poet, too, who died in such circumstances during the civil strife that generalexpression of grief had to be hidden behind a symbolic veil, would notthe poem thereby gain a theme worthy of its grace? I think we have sucha poet in Cornificius, the dear friend of Catullus, to whom in factCatullus addressed what seem to be his last verses. [3] Like so many ofthe new poets, Cornificius had espoused Caesar's cause, but at the endwas induced by Cicero to support Brutus against the triumvirs. AfterPhilippi Cornificius kept up the hopeless struggle in Africa for severalmonths until finally he was defeated and put to death. If he be Vergil'sDaphnis we have an explanation of why his identity escaped the notice ofcurious scholars. Tactful silence became quite necessary at a time whenalmost every household at Rome was rent by divided sympathies, and yetbrotherhood in art could hardly be entirely stifled. From the point ofview of the masters of Rome, Cornificius had met a just doom as a rebel. If his poet friends mourned for him it must have been in some such guiseas this. 

[Footnote 3: Catullus, 38. ]

In this instance the circumstantial evidence is rather strong, for we aretold by a commentator that Valgius, an early friend of Vergil's, wrote elegies to the memory of a "Codrus, " identified by some asCornificius:[4]

 Codrusque ille canit quali tu voce canebas, Atque solet numeros dicere Cinna tuos. 

[Footnote 4: _Scholia Veronensia_, Ecl. VII, 22. The evidence ispresented in _Classical Review_, 1920, p. 49. ]

That "shepherd" at least is an actual person, a friend of Cinna, anda member of the neoteric group; that indeed it is Cornificius isexceedingly probable. The poet-patriot seems then, not to have beenforgotten by his friends. 

All too little is known about this friend of Catullus and Cinna, but whatis known excites a keen interest. Though he was younger than Cicero bynearly a generation, the great orator[5] did him no little deference asa representative of the Atticistic group. In verse writing he was ofCatullus' school, composing at least one epyllion, besides lyric verse. According to Macrobius, Vergil paid him the compliment of imitating him, and he in turn is cited by the scholiasts as authority for an opinion ofVergil's. If the Daphnis-song is an elegy written at his death--and itwould be difficult to find a more fitting subject--the poem, undoubtedlyone of the most charming of Vergil's _Eclogues_, was composed in 41 B. C. It were a pity if Vergil's prayer for the poet should after all not cometrue:

 Semper honos, nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt. 

[Footnote 5: See Cicero's letter to him: _Ad Fam_. XII, 17, 2. ]

The tenth _Eclogue_, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associationsof pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus' Daphnis to our own"Lycidas" and "Adonais, " has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmospherethat should not be disturbed by biographical details. However, we mustintrude. Vergil's associations with Gallus, as has been intimated, werethose, apparently, of Neapolitan school days and of poetry. The sixth_Eclogue_ delicately implies that the departure of Gallus from the circlehad made a very deep impression upon his teacher and fellow students. 

What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empirefor a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each! Thisbrilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was verynearly Vergil's age. A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career, he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy's enduringadmiration. Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric tophilosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullanromances, as a matter of course. It was Cytheris, the fickle actress--ifthe scholiasts are right--who opened his eyes to the fact that there werethemes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales;and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his monthsof service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Romanself-pity, this first poet of the _poitrinaire_ school. His subsequentcareer was meteoric. Octavian, fascinated by a brilliancy that hid alack of Roman steadiness, placed him in charge of the stupendous taskof organizing Egypt, a work that would tax the powers of a Caesar. Theromantic poet lost his head. Wine-inspired orations that delighted hisguests, portrait busts of himself in every town, grotesque catalogues ofcampaigns against unheard-of negro tribes inscribed even on the venerablepyramids did not accord with the traditions of Rome. Octavian cut hiscareer short, and in deep chagrin Gallus committed suicide. 

The tenth _Eclogue_[6] gives Vergil's impressions upon reading one of theelegies of Gallus which had apparently been written at some lonely armypost in Greece after the news of Cytheris' desertion. In his elegy thepoet had, it would seem, bemoaned the lot that had drawn him to the Eastaway from his beloved. 

"Would that he might have been a simple shepherd like the Greeks abouthis tent, for their loves remained true!" And this is of course the verytheme which Vergil dramatizes in pastoral form. 

[Footnote 6: This is the interpretation of Leo, _Hermes_, 1902, p. 15. ]

We, like Vergil, realize that Gallus invented a new genre in literature. He had daringly brought the grief of wounded love out of the realm offiction--where classic tradition had insisted upon keeping it--into theimmediate and personal song. The hint for this procedure had, of course, come from Catullus, but it was Gallus whom succeeding elegists allaccredited with the discovery. Vergil at once felt the compelling forceof this adventuresome experiment. He gave it immediate recognition in his_Eclogues_, and Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid became his followers. 

The poems of Gallus, if the Arcadian setting is real, were probablywritten soon after Philippi. Vergil's _Eclogue_ of recognition may havebeen composed not much later, for we have a right to assume that Vergilwould have had one of the first copies of Gallus' poems. If this be true, the first and last few lines were fitted on later, when the whole bookwas published, to adapt the poem for its honorable position at the closeof the volume. 

XI

THE EVICTIONS

The first and ninth _Eclogues_, and only these, concern the confiscationsof land at Cremona and Mantua which threatened to deprive Vergil's fatherof his estates and consequently the poet of his income. There seems to beno way of deciding which is the earlier. Ancient commentators, followingthe order of precedence, interpreted the ninth as an indication of asecond eviction, but there seems to be no sound reason for agreeing withthem, since they are entirely too literal in their inferences. Coningtonsanely decides that only one eviction took place, and he places the ninthbefore the first in order of time. He may be right. The two poems at anyrate belong to the early months of 41. 

The obsequious scholiasts of the Empire have nowhere so thoroughlyexposed their own mode of thought as in their interpretations of thesetwo _Eclogues_. Knowing and caring little for the actual course ofevents, having no comprehension of the institutions of an earlier day, concerned only with extracting what is to them a dramatic story fromthe _Eclogues_, they put all the historical characters into impossiblesituations. The one thing of which they feel comfortably sure is thatevery _Eclogue_ that mentions Pollio, Gallus and Alfenus Varus must havebeen a "bread and butter" poem written in gratitude for value received. Of the close literary associations of the time they seem to be unaware. To suit such purposes Pollio[1] is at times made governor of CisalpineGaul, and at times placed on the commission to colonize Cremona, Alfenusis made Pollio's "successor" in a province that does not exist, andGallus is also made a colonial commissioner. If, however, we examinethese statements in the light of facts provided by independent sources weshall find that the whole structure based upon the subjective inferencesof the scholiasts falls to the ground. 

[Footnote 1: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, pp. 51 ff. ]

We must first follow Pollio's career through this period. When thetriumvirate was formed in 43, Pollio was made Antony's _legatus_ inCisalpine Gaul and promised the consulship for the year 40. [2] AfterPhilippi, however, in the autumn of 42, Cisalpine Gaul was declareda part of Italy and, therefore, fell out of Pollio's control. [3]Nevertheless, he was not deprived of a command for the year remainingbefore his consulship (41 B. C. ), but was permitted to withdraw to theupper end of the Adriatic with his army of seven legions. [4] His duty wasdoubtless to guard the low Venetian coast against the remnants of therepublican forces still on the high seas, and, if he had time, to subduethe Illyrian tribes friendly to the republican cause. [5] During thisyear, in which Octavian had to besiege Lucius Antony at Perusia, Pollio, a legatus of Mark Antony, was naturally not on good terms with Octavian, and could hardly have used any influence in behalf of Vergil or any oneelse. After the Perusine war he joined Antony at Brundisium in the springof 40, and acted as his spokesman at the conference which led to themomentous treaty of peace. We may, therefore, safely conclude that Polliowas neither governor nor colonial commissioner in Cisalpine Gaul whenCremona and Mantua were disturbed, nor could he have been on such termswith Octavian as to use his influence in behalf of Vergil. The eighth andfourth _Eclogues_ which do honor to him, seem to have nothing whateverto do with material favors. They doubtless owe their origin to Pollio'sposition as a poet, and Pollio's interest in young men of letters. 

[Footnote 2: Appian, IV. 2 and V. 22. ]

[Footnote 3: Appian, V. 3 and V. 22. ]

[Footnote 4: Velleius Paterculus, II. 76. 2; Macrobius, _Sat_. I. XI. 22]

[Footnote 5: A task which he performed in 39. ]

With regard to Alfenus and Gallus, the scholiasts remained somewhatnearer the truth, for they had at hand a speech of Callus criticizing theformer for his behavior at Mantua. By quoting the precise words of thisspeech Servius[6] has provided us with a solid criterion for acceptingwhat is consistent in the statements of Vergil's earlier biographers andeliminating some conjectures. The passage reads: "When ordered to leaveunoccupied a district of three miles outside the city, you includedwithin the district eight hundred paces of water which lies about thewalls. " The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner onthe colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' errorof making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor[7] afterCisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus hadin any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else. In fact itreveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land. Vergil, [8] of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in hisninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy toMantua:

Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis . .. 

And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man ofliterary ambitions. [9] But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear tohis plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius'supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet[10] seemsto rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth _Eclogue_ wasobsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, QuintiliusVarus has a better claim to that poem. 

[Footnote 6: Servius _Dan_. On _Ecl_. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii inAlfenum. Cf. Kroll, in _Rhein. Museum_ 1909, 52. ]

[Footnote 7: Servius _Dan_. On _Ecl_. VI. 6. ]

[Footnote 8: Vergil, _Eclogue_ IX, 26-29. ]

[Footnote 9: See _Suffenus and Alfenus, Classical Quarterly_, 1920, p. 160. ]

[Footnote 10: On _Eclogue_. VI. 6. ]

The quotation from the speech of Gallus also lends support to a statementin Servius that Gallus had been assigned to the duty of exacting moneysfrom cities which escaped confiscation. [11] For this we are dulygrateful. It indicates how Alfenus and Gallus came into conflict sincethe latter's financial sphere would naturally be invaded if the formerseized exempted territory for the extension of his new colony of Cremona. In such conditions we can realize that Gallus was, as a matter of course, interested in saving Mantua from confiscation, and that in this efforthe may well have appealed to Octavian in Vergil's behalf. In fact hisinterpretation of the three-mile exemption might actually have savedVergil's properties, which seem to have lain about that distance from thecity. [12]

[Footnote 11: Servius _Dan_. On _Ecl_. VI. 64. ]

[Footnote 12: Vita Probiana, _milia passuum_ XXX is usually changed toIII on the basis of Donatus: _a Mantua non procul_. ]

Again, however, there is little reason for the supposition that Vergil's_Eclogues_ in honor of Gallus have any reference whatever to this affair. The sixth followed the death of Siro, and the tenth seems to precede thedays of colonial disturbances, if it has reference to Gallus as a soldierin Greece. If the sixth _Eclogue_ refers to Siro, as Servius holds, thenVergil and Gallus had long been literary associates before the first andninth were written. 

The student of Vergil who has once compared the statements of thescholiasts with the historical facts at these few points, where theyrun parallel, will have little patience with the petty gossip which waselicited from the _Eclogues_. The story of Vergil's tiff with a soldier, for example, is apparently an inference from Menalcas' experience in_Eclogue_ IX. 15; but "Menalcas" appears in four other _Eclogues_ wherehe cannot be Vergil. The poet indeed was at Naples, as the eighth_Catalepton_ proves. The estate in danger is not his, but that of hisfather, who presumably was the only man legally competent of action incase of eviction. Vergil's poem, to be sure, is a plea for Mantua, but itis clearly a plea for the whole town and not for his father alone. Thelandmark of the low hills and the beeches up to which the property wassaved (IX. 8) seems to be the limits of Mantua's boundaries, not ofVergil's estates on the low river-plains. We need not then concernourselves in a Vergilian biography with the tale that Arrius or Clodiusor Claudius or Milienus Toro chased the poet into a coal-bin or duckedhim into the river. [13] The shepherds of the poem are typical charactersmade to pass through the typical experiences of times of distress. 

[Footnote 13: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, p. 58. ]

The first _Eclogue, Tityre tu_, is even more general than the ninth inits application. Though, of course, it is meant to convey the poet'sthanks to Octavian for a favorable decree, it speaks for all the poorpeasants who have been saved. The aged slave, Tityrus, does notrepresent Vergil's circumstances, but rather those of the servileshepherd-tenants, [14] so numerous in Italy at this time. Such men, thoughrenters, could not legally own property, since they were slaves. But inpractice they were allowed and even encouraged to accumulate possessionsin the hope that they might some day buy their freedom, and with freedomwould naturally come citizenship and the full ownership of theiraccumulations. Many of the poor peasants scattered through Italy were_coloni_ of this type and they doubtless suffered severely in theevictions. Tityrus is here pictured as going to the city to ask for hisliberty, which would in turn ensure the right of ownership. Such is theallegory, simple and logical. It is only the old habit of confusingTityrus with Vergil which has obscured the meaning of the poem. However, the real purpose of the poem lies in the second part where the poetexpresses his sympathy for the luckless ones that are being driven fromtheir homes; and that this represents a cry of the whole of Italy andnot alone of his home town is evident from the fact that he sets thecharacters in typical shepherd country, [15] not in Mantuan scenery as inthe ninth. The plaint of Meliboeus for those who must leave their homesto barbarians and migrate to Africa and Britain to begin life again isso poignant that one wonders in what mood Octavian read it. "En quodiscordia cives produxit miseros!" was not very flattering to him. 

[Footnote 14: See Leo, _Hermes_, 1903, p. 1 ff. , questioned by Stampini, _Le Bucoliche_, '3 1905, p. 93. ]

[Footnote 15: Capua and Nuceria were two of the cities near Naples whereVergil could see the work of eviction near at hand. ]

The very deep sympathy of Vergil for the poor exiles rings also throughthe _Dirae_, a very surprising poem which he wrote at this same time, but on second thought suppressed. It has the bitterness of the first_Eclogue_ without its grace and tactful beginning. The triumvirs were inno mood to read a book of lamentations. "Honey on the rim" was Lucretius'wise precept, and it was doubtless a prudent impulse that substitutedthe _Eclogue_ for the "Curses. " The former probably accomplished littleenough, the latter would not even have been read. 

The _Dirae_ takes the form of a "cursing roundel, " a form once employedby Callimachus, who may have inherited it from the East. It calls downheaven's wrath upon the confiscated lands in language as bitter as everMt. Ebal heard: fire and flood over the crops, blight upon the fruit, andpestilence upon the heartless barbarians who drive peaceful peasants intoexile. 

The setting is once more that of the country about Naples, of theCampanian hills and the sea coast, not that of Mantua. [16] It isdoubtless the miserable poor of Capua and Nuceria that Vergilparticularly has in mind. The singers are two slave-shepherds departingfrom the lands of a master who has been dispossessed. The poem ispervaded by a strong note of pity for the lovers of peace, --"pii cives, "shall we say the "pacifists, "--who had been punished for refusing toenlist in a civil war. A sympathy for them must have been deep in thegentle philosopher of the garden:

 O male deuoti, praetorum crimina, agelli![17] Tuque inimica pii semper discordia ciuis. Exsul ego indemnatus egens mea rura reliqui, Miles ut accipiat funesti praemia belli. Hinc ego de tumulo mea rura nouissima uisam, Hinc ibo in siluas: obstabunt iam mihi colles, Obstabunt montes, campos audire licebit. [18]

[Footnote 16: It is just possible that "Lycurgus" (l. 8) who is spoken ofas the author of the mischief is meant for Alfenus Varus, who boasted ofhis knowledge of law. Horace lampoons him as _Alfenus vafer_. ]

[Footnote 17: Ye fields accursed for our statesmen's sins, O Discord ever foe to men of peace, In want, an exile, uncondemned, I yield My lands, to pay the wages of a hell-born war. Ere I go hence, one last look towards my fields, Then to the woods I turn to close you out From view, but ye shall hear my curses still. ]

[Footnote 18: The _Lydia_ which comes in the MS. Attached to the _Dirae_is not Vergil's. Nor can it be the famous poem of that name written byValerius Cato, despite the opinion of Lindsay, _Class. Review_, 1918, p. 62. It is too slight and ineffectual to be identified with that work. The poem abounds with conceits that a neurotic and sentimental pupil ofPropertius--not too well practiced in verse writing--would be likely tocull from his master. ]

For Vergil there was henceforth no joy in war or the fruits of war. Hisdevotion to Julius Caesar had been unquestioned, and Octavian, when heproved himself a worthy successor and established peace, inherited thatdevotion. But for the patriots who had fought the losing battle he hadonly a heart full of pity. 

 Ne pueri ne tanta animis adsuescite bella, Neu patriae validos in viscera vertite viris; Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo, Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!

XII

POLLIO

We come finally to the two _Eclogues_ addressed to Asinius Pollio. Thisremarkable man was only six years older than Vergil, but he was just oldenough to become a member of Caesar's staff, an experience that maturedmen quickly. To Vergil he seemed to be a link with the last greatgeneration of the Republic. That Catullus had mentioned him gracefullyin a poem, and Cinna had written him a _propempticon_, that Caesar hadspoken to him on the fateful night at the Rubicon, and that he had beenone of Cicero's correspondents, placed him on a very high pedestal inthe eyes of the studious poet still groping his way. It may well be thatGallus was the tie that connected Pollio and Vergil, for we find in aletter of Pollio's to Cicero that the former while campaigning in Spainwas in the habit of exchanging literary chitchat with Gallus. That was inthe spring of 43, at the very time doubtless when Pollio--as young menthen did--spent his leisure moments between battles in writing tragedies. Vergil in his eighth Eclogue, perhaps with over-generous praise, comparesthese plays with those of Sophocles. 

This _Eclogue_ presents one of the most striking studies in primitivecustom that Latin poetry has produced, a bit of realism suffused with aromantic pastoral atmosphere. The first shepherd's song is of unrequitedlove cherished from boyhood for a maiden who has now chosen a worthlessrival. The second is a song sung while a deserted shepherdess performswith scrupulous precision the magic rites which are to bring herfaithless lover back to her. There are reminiscences of Theocritus ofcourse, any edition of the _Eclogues_ will give them in full, but Vergil, so long as he lived at Naples, did not have to go to Sicilian books forthese details. He who knows the social customs of Campania, the magicalcharms scribbled on the walls of Pompeii, the deadly curses scratched onenduring metal by forlorn lovers, --curses hidden beneath the thresholdor hearthstone of the rival to blight her cheeks and wrinkle her sillyface, --knows very well that such folks are the very singers that Vergilmight meet in his walks about the hills of the golden bay. 

The eighth _Eclogue_ claims to have been written at the invitation ofPollio, who had apparently learned thus early that Vergil was apoet worth encouraging. That the poem has nothing to do with theconfiscations, in so far at least as we are able to understand thehistorical situation, has been suggested above. It is usually dated inthe year of Pollio's Albanian campaign in 39, that is a year after hisconsulship. Should it not rather be placed two years earlier when Polliohad given up the Cisalpine province and withdrawn to the upper Adriaticcoast preparatory to proceeding on Antony's orders against the Illyrianrebels? In the spring of 41 Pollio camped near the Timavus, mentioned inline 6; two years later the natural route for him to take from Rome wouldbe via Brundisium and Dyrrhachium. [1] The point is of little interestexcept in so far as the date of the poem aids us in tracing Pollio'sinfluence upon the poet, and in arranging the _Eclogues_ in theirchronological sequence. 

[Footnote 1: Antony's province did not extend beyond Scodra; the roadsdown the Illyrian mountain from Trieste were not easy for an army totravel; if the _Eclogues_ were composed in three years (Donatus) the year39 is too late. Finally, Vellius, II, 76. 2, makes it plain that in 41Pollio remained in Venetia contrary to orders. He had apparently beenordered to proceed into Illyria at that time. ]

Finally, we have the famous "Messianic" _Eclogue_, the fourth, which wasaddressed to Pollio during his consulship. By its fortuitous resemblanceto the prophetic literature of the Bible, it came at one time to be thebest known poem in Latin, and elevated its author to the position ofan arch-magician in the medieval world. Indeed, this poem was largelyinfluential in saving the rest of Vergil's works from the oblivion towhich the dark ages consigned at least nine-tenths of Latin literature. 

The poem was written soon after the peace of Brundisium--in theconsummation of which Pollio had had a large share--when all of Italy wasexulting in its escape from another impending civil war. Its immediatepurpose was to give adequate expression to this joy and hope at once inan abiding record that the Romans and the rulers of Rome might read andnot forget. Its form seems to have been conditioned largely by a strangeallegorical poem written just before the peace by a still unknown poet. The poet was Horace, who in the sixteenth epode had candidly expressedthe fears of Roman republicans for Rome's capacity to survive. Horace hadboldly asked the question whether after all it was not the duty of thosewho still loved liberty to abandon the land of endless warfare, and founda new home in the far west--a land which still preserved the simplevirtues of the "Golden Age. " Vergil's enthusiasm for the new peaceexpresses itself as an answer to Horace:[2] the "Golden Age" need not besought for elsewhere; in the new era of peace now inaugurated by Octavianthe Virgin Justice shall return to Italy and the Golden Age shall cometo this generation on Italian soil. Vergil, however, introduces a new"messianic" element into the symbolism of his poem, for he measures theprogress of the new era by the stages in the growth of a child who isdestined finally to bring the prophecy to fulfillment. This happy ideamay well have been suggested by table talks with Philodemus or Siro, whomust at times have recalled stories of savior-princes that they had heardin their youth in the East. The oppressed Orient was full of propheticutterances promising the return of independence and prosperity under theleadership of some long-hoped-for worthy prince of the tediously unworthyreigning dynasties. Indeed, since Philodemus grew to boyhood at Gadaraunder Jewish rule he could hardly have escaped the knowledge of the verydefinite Messianic hopes of the Hebrew people. It may well be, therefore, that a stray image whose ultimate source was none other than Isaiah camein this indirect fashion into Vergil's poem, and that the monks of thedark ages guessed better than they knew. 

[Footnote 2: Sellar, _Horace and the Elegiac Poets_, p. 123. Ramsay, quoted by W. Warde Fowler, _Vergil's Messianic Eclogue_, p, 54. ]

To attempt to identify Vergil's child with a definite person would be afutile effort to analyze poetic allegory. Contemporary readers doubtlesssupposed that since the Republic was dead, the successor to power afterthe death of Octavius and Antony would naturally be a son of one ofthese. 

The settlements of the year were sealed by two marriages, that ofOctavian to Scribonia and that of Octavian's sister to Antony. It wasenough that some prince worthy of leadership could naturally be expectedfrom these dynastic marriages, and that in either case it would be achild of Octavian's house. [3] Thus far his readers might let theirimagination range; what actually happened afterwards through a series ofevil fortunes has, of course, nothing to do with the question. Pollio isobviously addressed as the consul whose year marked the peace which allthe world hoped and prayed would be lasting. 

[Footnote 3: See _Class. Phil_. XI, 334. ]

We have now reviewed the circumstances which called forth the _Eclogues_. They seem, as Donatus says, to have been written within a period of threeyears. The second, third, seventh and sixth apparently fall within theyear 42, the tenth, fifth, eighth, ninth and first in the year 41, whilethe _Pollio_ certainly belongs to the year 40, when Vergil became thirtyyears of age. The writing of these poems had called the poet more andmore away from philosophy and brought him into closer touch with thesufferings and experiences of his own people. He had found a theme afterhis own heart, and with the theme had come a style and expressionthat fitted his genius. He abandoned Hellenistic conceits with theirprettiness of sentiment, attained an easy modulation of line readilyresponding to a variety of emotions, learned the dignity of his ownlanguage as he acquired a deeper sympathy for the sufferings of his ownpeople. There is a new note, as there is a new rhythm in:

 _Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo_. 

XIII

THE CIRCLE OF MAECENAS

Julius Caesar had learned from bitter experience that poets weredangerous enemies. Cicero's innuendoes were disagreeable enough but theymight be forgotten. When, however, Catullus and Calvus put them intobiting epigrams there was no forgetting. This was doubtless Caesar'schief reason for his constant endeavor to win the goodwill of the youngpoets, and he ultimately did win that of Calvus and Catullus. WhetherOctavian, and his sage adviser Maecenas, acted from the same motive wedo not know, though they too had seen in Vergil's epigrams on Antony'screatures, and in Horace's sixteenth epode that the poets of the newgeneration seemed likely to give effective expression to politicalsentiments. At any rate, the new court at Rome began very soon to makegenerous overtures to the literary men of the day. 

Pollio, Octavian's senior by many years, and of noble family, couldhardly be approached. Though gradually drawing away from Antony, hehad so closely associated himself with this brilliant companion of hisGallic-war days, that he preferred not to take a subordinate place at theRoman court. Messalla, who had entered the service of Antony, was alsoout of reach. There remained the brilliant circle of young men at Naples, men whose names occurred in the dedications of Philodemus' lectures:Vergil, Varius, Plotius and Quintilius Varus, three of whom at least werefrom the north and would naturally be inclined to look upon Octavian withsympathy. 

Varius had already written his epic _De Morte_ which seems to havemourned Caesar's death, and, though in hidden language, he had alludedbitterly to Antony's usurpations in the year that followed the murder. Before Vergil's epic appeared it was Varius who was always considered theepic poet of the group. Of Plotius Tucca we know little except that he iscalled a poet, was a constant member of the circle, and with Variusthe literary executor who published Vergil's works after his death. Quintilius Varus had, like Varius, come from Cremona, known Catullusintimately, and, if we accept the view of Servius for the sixth_Eclogue_, had been Vergil's most devoted companion in Siro's school. Healso took some part in the civil wars, and came to be looked upon asa very firm supporter of sound literary standards. [1] Horace's _Ouisdesiderio_, shows that Varus was one of Vergil's most devoted friends. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 440. ]

Vergil's position as foremost of these poets was doubtless established bythe publication of the _Eclogues_. They took Rome by storm, and were evenset to music and sung on the stage, according to an Alexandrian fashionthen prevailing in the capital. Octavian was, of course, attracted tothem by a personal interest. The poet was given a house in Maecenas'gardens on the Esquiline with the hope of enticing him to Rome. Vergildoubtless spent some time in the city before he turned to the moreserious task of the _Georgics_, but we are told that he preferred theNeapolitan bay and established his home there. This group, it would seem, was definitely drawn into Octavian's circle soon after the peace ofBrundisium, and formed the nucleus of a kind of literary academy that setthe standards for the Augustan age. 

The introduction of Horace into this circle makes an interesting story. He was five years younger than Vergil, and had had his advanced educationat Athens. There Brutus found him in 43, when attending philosophicallectures in order to hide his political intrigues; and though Horacewas a freedman's son, Brutus gave him the high dignity of a militarytribuneship. Brutus as a Republican was, of course, a stickler for allthe aristocratic customs. That he conferred upon Horace a knight's officeprobably indicates that the _libertinus pater_ had been a war captiverather than a man of servile stock, and, therefore, only technically a"freedman. " In practical life the Romans observed this distinction, eventhough it was not usually feasible to do so in political life. AfterPhilippi Horace found himself with the defeated remnant and returned toItaly only to discover that his property had been confiscated. He waseager for a career in literature, but having to earn his bread, he boughta poor clerkship in the treasury office. Then during spare moments hewrote--satires, of course. What else could such a wreckage of enthusiasmand ambitions produce?

His only hope lay in attracting the attention of some kindly disposedliterary man, and for some reason he chose Vergil. The _Eclogues_ werenot yet out, but the _Culex_ was in circulation, and he made the pastoralscene of this the basis of an epode--the second--written with no littlegood-natured humor. Horace imagines a broker of the forum reading thatpassage, and, quite carried away by the succession of delightful scenes, deciding to quit business for the simple life. He accordingly draws inall his moneys on the Calends--on the Ides he lends them out again![2]What Vergil wrote Horace when he received a copy of the _Epode_, weare not told, but in his next work, the _Georgics_, he returned thecompliment by similarly threading Horace's phrases into a description ofcountry life--a passage that is indeed one of the most successful in thebook. [3]

[Footnote 2: Horace's scenes (his memory is visual rather than auditory)unmistakably reproduce those of the _Culex_; cf. _Culex_ 148-58 with_Epode_ 26-28; _Culex_ 86-7 with _Epode_ 21-22; _Culex_ 49-50 with_Epode_ 11-12; etc. A full comparison is made in _Classical Philology_, 1920, p. 24. Vergil could, of course, be expected to recognize theallusions to his own poem. ]

[Footnote 3: _See Georgics_, II, 458-542, and a discussion of it in_Classical Philology_, 1920, p. 42. ]

The composition of the sixteenth epode by Horace--soon after the second, it would seem--gave Vergil an opportunity to recognize the new poet, andanswer his pessimistic appeal with the cheerful prophecy of the fourthEclogue, as we have seen. By this time we may suppose that an intimatefriendship had sprung up between the two poets, strengthened of courseby friendly intercourse, now that Vergil could spend some of his timeat Rome. Horace himself tells how Vergil and Varius introduced him toMaecenas (_Sat_. 1. 6), an important event in his career that took placesome time before the Brundisian journey (_Sat_. 1. 5). Maecenas hadhesitated somewhat before accepting the intimacy of the young satirist:Horace had fought quite recently in the enemy's army, had criticizedthe government in his _Epodes_, and was of a class--at leasttechnically--which Octavian had been warned not to recognize socially, unless he was prepared to offend the old nobility. But Horace's dignifiedcandor won him the confidence of Maecenas; and that there might be nomisunderstanding he included in his first book of _Satires_ a simpleaccount of what he was and hoped to be. Thus through the efforts ofVergil and Varius he entered the circle whose guiding spirit he wasdestined to become. 

Thus the coterie was formed, which under such powerful patronage wasbound to become a sort of unofficial commission for the regulation ofliterary standards. It was an important question, not only for the youngmen themselves but for the future of Roman literature, which directionthis group would take and whose influence would predominate. It might beMaecenas, the holder of the purse-strings, a man who could not check hisambition to express himself whether in prose or verse. This Etruscan, whose few surviving pages reveal the fact that he never acquiredan understanding of the dignity of Rome's language, that he wastemperamentally un-Roman in his love for meretricious gaudiness andprettiness, might have worked incalculable harm on this school had histaste in the least affected it. But whether he withheld his dictum, or itwas disregarded by the others, no influence of his can be detected in theliterature of the epoch. 

Apollodorus, Octavian's aged teacher, a man of very great personalinfluence, and highly respected, probably counted for more. In hislectures and his books, one of which, Valgius, a member of the circle, translated into Latin, he preached the doctrines of a chaste anddignified classicism. His creed fortunately fell in with the tendenciesof the time, and whether this teaching be called a cause, or whether thepopularity of it be an effect of pre-existing causes, we know that thisman came to represent many of the ideals of the school. 

But to trace these ideals in their contact with Vergil's mentaldevelopment, we must look back for a moment to the tendencies of theCatullan age from which he was emerging. In a curious passage written notmany years after this, Horace, when grouping the poets according to theirstyles and departments, [4] places Vergil in a class apart. He mentionsfirst a turgid epic poet for whom he has no regard. Then there areVarius and Pollio, in epic and tragedy respectively, of whose forcefuldirectness he does approve. In comedy, his friend, Fundanius, representsa homely plainness which he commends, while Vergil stands for gentlenessand urbanity (molle atque facetum). 

[Footnote 4: _Sat_. I. 10, 40 ff. ]

The passage is important not only because it reveals a contemporaneousview of Vergil's position but because it shows Horace thus early as thespokesman of the "classical" coterie, the tenets of which in the endprevailed. In this passage Horace employs the categories of the standardtext-books of rhetoric of that day[5] which were accustomed to classifystyles into four types: (1) Grand and ornate, (2) grand but austere, (3)plain and austere, (4) plain but graceful. The first two styles mightobviously be used in forensic prose or in ambitious poetic work likeepics and tragedies. Horace would clearly reject the former, representedfor instance by Hortensius and Pacuvius, in favor of the austere dignityand force of the second, affected by men like Cornificius in prose andVarius and Pollio in verse. The two types of the "plain" style wereemployed in more modest poems of literature, both, in prose and in suchpoetry as comedy, the epyllion, in pastoral verse, and the like. Severesimplicity was favored by Calvus in his orations, Catullus in hislyrics 5 while a more polished and well-nigh _précieuse_ plainness wasillustrated in the speeches of Calidius and in the Alexandrian epyllionof Catullus' _Peleus and Thetis_ and in Vergil's _Ciris_ and _Bucolics_. 

[Footnote 5: E. G. Demetrius, Philodemus, Cicero; of. _Class. Phil_. 1920, p. 230. ]

In choosing between these two, Horace, of course, sympathizes with theideals of the severe and chaste style, which he finds in the comedies ofFundanius. Vergil's early work, unambitious and "plain" though it is, falls, of course, into the last group; and though Horace recognizes histype with a friendly remark, one feels that he recognizes it for reasonsof friendship, rather than because of any native sympathy for it. By hisjuxtaposition he shows that the classical ideals of the second and thirdof the four "styles" are to him most sympathetic. _Mollitudo_ does notfind favor in any of his own work, or in his criticism of other men'swork. Vergil, therefore, though he appears in this Augustan coterie asan important member, is still felt to be something of a free lance whoadheres to Alexandrian art[6] not wholly in accord with the standardswhich are now being formulated. If Horace had obeyed his literaryinstincts alone he would probably have relegated Vergil at this periodto the silence he accorded Callus and Propertius if not to the openhostility he expressed towards the Alexandrianism of Catullus. It issignificant of Vergil's breadth of sympathy that he remitted not a jot inhis devotion to Catullus and Gallus and that he won the deep reverence ofPropertius while remaining the friend and companion of the courtly groupworking towards a stricter classicism. If we may attempt to classifythe early Augustans, we find them aligning themselves thus. The strictclassicists are Horace the satirist, Varius a writer of epics, Pollioof tragedy; while Varus, Valgius, Plotius, and Fundanius, though lessproductive, employ their influence in the support of this tendency asdoes Tibullus somewhat later. Vergil is a close personal friend of thesemen but refuses to accept the axioms of any one school; Gallus, hisfriend, is a free romanticist, and is followed in this tendency a fewyears later by Propertius. 

[Footnote 6: Horace had doubtless seen not only the _Culex_ but severalof the other minor works that Vergil never deigned to put into generalcirculation. ]

The influences that made for classicism were many. Apollodorus, theteacher of Octavian, must have been a strong factor, but since his workhas been lost, the weight of it cannot now be estimated. Horace imbibedhis love for severe ideals in Athens, of course. There his teachers wereStoic rhetoricians who trained him in an uncompromising respect forstylistic rules. [7] He read the Hellenistic poets, to be sure, andreveals in his poems a ready memory of them, but it was the great epochof Greek poetry that formed his style. Such are the foreign influences. But the native Roman factors must not be forgotten. In point of fact itwas the classicistic Catullus and Calvus, of the simple, limpid lyrics, written in pure unalloyed every-day Latin, that taught the new generationto reject the later Hellenistic style of Catullus and Calvus asillustrated in the verse romances. Varus, Pollio, and Varius were oldenough to know Catullus and Calvus personally, to remember the days whenpoems like _Dianae sumus in fide_ were just issued, and they were poetswho could value the perfect art of such work even after the authors ofthem had been enticed by ambition into dangerous by-paths. In a word, itwas Catullus and Calvus, the lyric poets, who made it possible for thenext generation to reject Catullus and Calvus the neoteric romancers. 

[Footnote 7: For the stylistic tenets of the Stoic teachers seeFiske, _Lucilius and Horace_, pp. 64-143. Apollodorus seems to be therhetorician whom Horace calls Heliodorus in _Sat_. I, 5, see _Class. Phil_. 1920, 393. ]

For the modern, therefore, it is difficult to restrain a just resentmentwhen he finds Horace referring to these two great predecessors with asneer. Yet we can, if we will, detect an adequate explanation of Horace'sattitude. Very few poets of any time have been able to capture and holdthe generation immediately succeeding. The stronger the impression madeby a genius, the farther away is the pendulum of approbation apt toswing. The _neoteroi_ had to face, in addition to this revulsion, themisfortunes of the time. The civil wars which came close upon them hadlittle use for the sentimentality of their romances or the involutionsof their manner of composition. And again, Catullus and Calvus had beenover-brutal in their attacks upon Julius Caesar, a character lifted tothe high heavens by the war and the martyrdom that followed. And, asfortune would have it, almost all of the new literary men were, as wehave seen, peculiarly devoted to Caesar. We know enough of wars to havediscovered that intense partizanship does silence literary judgmentexcept in the case of a very few men of unusual balance. Vergil was oneof the very few; he kept his candle lit at the shrine of Catullus still, but this was hardly to be expected of the rest. 

In prose also the Augustans upheld the refined and chaste work ofclassical Atticism, an ideal which they derived from the Romans of thepreceding generation rather than from teachers like Apollodorus. Pollioand Messalla are now the foremost orators. Pollio had stood close toCalvus as well as to Caesar, and had witnessed the revulsion of feelingagainst Cicero's style which continued to move in its old leisurelycourse even after the civil war had quickened men's pulses. Messalla mayhave been influenced by the example of his general, Brutus, a man whonever wasted words (so long as he kept his temper). Messalla and Polliowere the dictators of prose style during this period. 

We find Vergil, therefore, in a peculiar position. He was stillrecognized as a pupil of Catullus and the Alexandrians at a time when thependulum was swinging so violently away from the republican poets thatthey did not even get credit for the lessons that they had so well taughtthe new generation. Vergil himself was in each new work drifting more andmore toward classicism, but he continued to the last to honorCatullus and Calvus, Cinna and Cornificius, and his friend Gallus, incomplimentary imitation or by friendly mention. The new Academy was proudto claim him as a member, though it doubtless knew that Vergil was toogreat to be bound by rules. To after ages, while Horace has come to standas an extremist who carried the law beyond the spirit, Vergil, honoringthe past and welcoming the future, has assumed the position of Rome'smost representative poet. 

XIV

THE "GEORGICS"

The years that followed the publication of the _Eclogues_ seem to havebeen a season of reading, traveling, observing, and brooding. Maecenasdesired to keep the poet at Rome, and as an inducement provided him witha villa in his own gardens on the Esquiline. The fame of the _digituspraetereuntium_ awaited his coming and going, his _Bucolics_ had been setto music and sung in the concert halls to vehement applause. [1] He seemseven to have made an effort to be socially congenial. There is intimateknowledge of courtly customs in the staging of his epic; and in Horace'sfourth book a refurbished early poem in Philodemus' manner pictures aVergil--apparently the poet--as the pet of the fashionable world. Butthese things had no attraction for him. Rome indeed appealed to hisimagination, _Roma pulcherrima rerum_, but it was the invisible Romerather than the _fumum et opes strepitumque_, it was the city of pristineideals, of irresistible potency, of Anchises' pageant of heroes. Whenhe walked through the Forum he saw not only the glistening monuments intheir new marble veneer, but beyond these, in the far distant past, thestraw hut of Romulus and the sacred grove on the Capitoline where thespirit of Jove had guarded a folk of simpler piety. [2] And down thecenturies he beheld the heroes, the law-givers, and the rulers, who hadmade the Forum the court of a world-wide empire. The Rome of his own daywas too feverish, it soon drove him back to his garden villa near Naples. 

[Footnote 1: Tacitus, _Dialogus_, 13: Malo securum et quietum Vergiliisecessum, in quo tamen neque apud divum Augustum gratia caruit neque apudpopulum Romanum notitia. Testes Augusti epistulae, testis ipse populus, qui auditis in theatro Vergilii versibus surrexit universus et fortepraesentem spectantemque Vergilium veneratus est quasi Augustum. ]

[Footnote 2: _Aeneid_ VIII. ]

It was well that he possessed such a retreat during those years of pettypolitical squabbles. The capital still hummed with rumors of civil war. Antony seemed determined to sever the eastern provinces from the empireand make of them a gift to Cleopatra and her children--a mad course thatcould only end in another world war. Sextus Pompey still held Sicily andthe central seas, ready to betray the state at the first mis-step onOctavian's part. At Rome itself were many citizens in high position whowere at variance with the government, quite prepared to declare forAntony or Pompey if either should appear a match for the young heir ofCaesar. Clearly the great epic of Rome could not have matured in thatatmosphere of suspicion, intrigue, and selfishness. The convulsions ofthe dying republic, beheld day by day near at hand, could only haveinspired a disgust sufficient to poison a poet's sensitive hope. It wasindeed fortunate that Vergil could escape all this, that he could retainthrough the period of transition the memories of Rome's former greatnessand the faith in her destiny that he had imbibed in his youth. The timecame when Octavian, after Actium, reunited the Empire with a firm handand justified the buoyant optimism which Vergil, almost alone of hisgeneration, had been able to preserve. 

During these few years Vergil seems to have written but little. We have, however, a strange poem of thirty-eight lines, the _Copa_, which, tojudge from its exclusion from the _Catalepton_, should perhaps beassigned to this period. A study in tempered realism, not unlike theeighth _Eclogue_, it gives us the song of a Syrian tavern-maid invitingwayfarers into her inn from the hot and dusty road. The spirit isadmirably reproduced in Kirby Smith's rollicking translation:[3]

[Footnote 3: See Kirby Flower Smith, _Marital, the Epigrammatist and, Other Essays_, Johns Hopkins Press, 1920, p. 170. The attribution of thepoem to Vergil by the ancients as well as by the manuscripts, and thestyle of its fanciful realism so patent in much of Vergil's work placethe poem in the authentic list. Rand, _Young Virgil's Poetry_, HarvardStudies, 1919, p. 174, has well summed up the arguments regarding theauthorship of the poem. ]

'Twas at a smoke-stained tavern, and she, the hostess there--A wine-flushed Syrian damsel, a turban on her hair--Beat out a husky tempo from reeds in either hand, And danced--the dainty wanton--an Ionian saraband. "'Tis hot, " she sang, "and dusty; nay, travelers, whither bound?Bide here and tip a beaker--till all the world goes round;Bide here and have for asking wine-pitchers, music, flowers, Green pergolas, fair gardens, cool coverts, leafy bowers. In our Arcadian grotto we have someone to playOn Pan-pipes, shepherd fashion, sweet music all the day. We broached a cask but lately; our busy little streamWill gurgle softly near you the while you drink and dream. Chaplets of yellow violets a-plenty you shall find, And glorious crimson roses in garlands intertwined;And baskets heaped with lilies the water nymph shall bring--White lilies that this morning were mirrored in her spring. Here's cheese new pressed in rushes for everyone who comes, And, lo, Pomona sends us her choicest golden plums. Red mulberries await you, late purple grapes withal, Dark melons cased in rushes against the garden wall, Brown chestnuts, ruddy apples. Divinities bide here, Fair Ceres, Cupid, Bacchus, those gods of all good cheer, Priapus too--quite harmless, though terrible to see--Our little hardwood warden with scythe of trusty tree. 

"Ho, friar with the donkey, turn in and be our guest!Your donkey--Vesta's darling--is weary; let him rest. In every tree the locusts their shrilling still renew, And cool beneath the brambles the lizard lies perdu. So test our summer-tankards, deep draughts for thirsty men;Then fill our crystal goblets, and souse yourself again. Come, handsome boy, you're weary! 'Twere best for you to twineYour heavy head with roses and rest beneath our vine, Where dainty arms expect you and fragrant lips invite;Oh, hang the strait-laced model that plays the anchorite!Sweet garlands for cold ashes why should you care to save?Or would you rather keep them to lay upon your grave?Nay, drink and shake the dice-box. Tomorrow's care begone!Death plucks your sleeve and whispers: 'Live now, I come anon. '"

Memories of the Neapolitan bay! The _Copa_ should be read in the arbor ofan _osteria_ at Sorrento or Capri to the rhythm of the tarantella wherethe modern offspring of Vergil's tavern-maid are still plying the arts ofsong and dance upon the passerby. [4]

[Footnote 4: Unfortunately the evidence does not suffice to assign the_Moretum_ to Vergil, though it was certainly composed by a genuine ifsomewhat halting poet, and in Vergil's day. It has many imaginativephrases, and the meticulous exactness of its miniature work might seem tobe Vergilian were it not for the unrelieved plainness of the theme. Evenso, it might be considered an experiment in a new style, if the ratherdubious manuscript evidence were supported by a single ancient citation. See Rand, _loc. Cit. _ p. 178. ]

There are also three brief _Priapea_ which should probably be assigned tothis period. The third may indeed have been an inscription on a pedestalof the scare-crow god set out to keep off thieving rooks and urchins inthe poet's own garden:

This place, my lads, I prosper, I guard the hovel, too, Thatched, as you see, by willows and reeds and grass that grewIn all the marsh about it; hence me, mere stump of oak, Shaped by the farmer's hatchet, they now as god invoke. They bring me gifts devoutly, the master and his boy, Supposing me the giver of the blessings they enjoy. The kind old man each morning comes here to weed the ground, He clears the shrine of thistles and burrs that grow around. The lad brings dainty offerings with small but ready hand:At dawn of spring he crowns me with a lavish daisy-strand, From summer's earliest harvest, while still the stalk is green, He wreathes my brow with chaplets; he fills me baskets cleanWith golden pansies, poppies, with apples ripe and gourds, The first rich blushing clusters of grapes for me he hoards. And once to my great honor--but let no god be told!--He brought me to my altar a lambkin from the fold. So though, my lads, a Scare-Crow and no true god I be, My master and his vineyard are very dear to me. Keep off your filching hands, lads, and elsewhere ply your theft:

Our neighbor is a miser, his Scare-Crow gets no gifts, His apples are not guarded--the path is on your left. 

The quaint simplicity of the sentiment and the playful surprise at theend quickly disarm any skepticism that would deny these lines to Horace'spoet of "tender humor. "

During this period the poet seems also to have traveled. Maecenas enjoyedthe society of literary men, and we may well suppose that he took Vergilwith him in his administrative tours on more than the one occasionwhich Horace happens to have recorded. The poet certainly knows Italyremarkably well. The meager and inaccurate maps and geographical works ofthat day could not have provided him with the insight into details whichthe Georgics and the last six books of the _Aeneid_ reveal. We know, ofcourse, from Horace's third ode that Vergil went to Greece. This famouspoem, a "steamer-letter" as it were, is undated, but it may well be acontinuation of the Brundisian diary. The strange turn which the poemtakes--its dread of the sea's dangers--seems to point to a time whenHorace's memories of his own shipwreck were still very vivid. 

There was also time for extensive reading. That Vergil ranged widely anddeeply in philosophy and history, antiquities and all the world's bestprose and poetry, the vast learning of the _Georgics_ and the _Aeneid_abundantly proves. The epic story which he had early plotted out musthave lain very near the threshold of his consciousness through thisperiod, for his mind kept seizing upon and storing up apposite incidentsand germs of fruitful lore. References to Aeneas crop out here and therein the _Georgics_, and the mysterious address to Mantua in the third bookpromises, under allusive metaphors, an epic of Trojan heroes. Nor couldthe poet forget the philosophic work he had so long pondered over. Doubtsincreased, however, of his capacity to justify himself after the suresuccess of Lucretius. A remarkable confession in the second book of the_Georgics_ reveals his conviction that in this poem he had, throughlack of confidence, chosen the inferior theme of nature's physicaland sensuous appeal when he would far rather have experienced theintellectual joy of penetrating into nature's inner mysteries. [5]

[Footnote 5: Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, Quarum sacra fero ingenti percussus-amore, Accipiant, caelique vias et sidera monstrent-- Sin, has ne possim naturae accedere partes, Frigidus obstiterit circum praecordia sanguis, Rura mihi et rigui placeant in vallibus amnes. _Georgics_, II. 475. Ff. 

Was this striking _apologia of the Georgics_ forced upon Vergil bythe fact that in the _Aetna_, 264-74, he had pronounced peasant-loretrivial in comparison with science?]

Though we need not take too literally a poet's prefatorial remarks, Vergil doubtless hoped that his _Georgics_ might turn men's thoughtstowards a serious effort at rehabilitating agriculture, and thepractical-minded Maecenas certainly encouraged the work with some suchaim in view. The government might well be deeply concerned. The veteranswho had recently settled many of Italy's best tracts could not havebeen skilled farmers. The very fact that the lands were given them forpolitical services could only have suggested to the shrewd among themthat the old Roman respect for property rights had been infringed, and that it was wise to sell as soon as possible and depart with sometangible gain before another revolution resulted in a new redistribution. Such suspicions could hardly beget the patience essential for thedevelopment of agriculture. And yet this was the very time when farmingmust be encouraged. Large parts of the arable land had been abandoned tograzing during the preceding century because of the importation of theprovincial stipendiary grain, and Italy had lost the custom of raisingthe amount of food that her population required. As a result, the youngerPompey's control of Sicily and the trade routes had now brought on aseries of famines and consequent bread-riots. Year after year Octavianfailed in his attempts to lure away or to defeat this obnoxious rebel. At best he could buy him off for a while, though he never knew at whatseason of scarcity the purchase price might become prohibitive. Thechoice of Vergil's subject coincided, therefore, with a need that all menappreciated. 

The _Georgics_, however, are not written in the spirit of a colonialadvertisement. In the youthful _Culex_ Vergil had dwelt somewhat tooemphatically upon the song-birds and the cool shade, and had drawn uponhimself the genial comment of Horace that Alfius did not find conditionsin the country quite as enchanting as pictured. This time the poet paintsno idealized landscape. Enticing though the picture is, Vergil insists onthe need of unceasing, ungrudging toil. He lists the weeds and blights, the pests and the vermin against which the farmer must contend. Indeedit is in the contemplation of a life of toil that he finds his honestphilosophy of life: the gospel of salvation through work. Hardships whetthe ingenuity of man; God himself for man's own good brought an end tothe age of golden indolence, shook the honey from the trees, and gavevipers their venom. Man has been left alone to contend with an obstinatenature, and in that struggle to discover his own worth. The _Georgics_are far removed from pastoral allegory; Italy is no longer Arcadia, it isjust Italy in all its glory and all its cruelty. 

Vergil's delight in nature is essentially Roman, though somewhatmore self-conscious than that of his fellows. There is little of thesentimental rapture that the eighteenth century discovered for us. Vergilis not likely to stand in postures before the awful solemnity of thesea or the majesty of wide vistas from mountain tops. Italian hill-topsafford views of numerous charming landscapes but no scenes of entrancinggrandeur or awe-inspiring desolation, and the sea, before the days of thecompass, was too suggestive of death and sorrow to invite considerationof its lawless beauty. These aspects of nature had to be discovered bylater experiences in other lands. At first glance Vergil seems to caremost for the obvious gifts of Italy's generous amenities, the physicalpleasure in the free out-of-doors, the form and color of landscapes, the wholesome life. As one reads on, however, one becomes aware of anintimacy and fellowship with animate things that go deeper. Particularlyin the second book the very blades of grass and tendrils of the vinesseem to be sentient. The grafted trees "behold with wonder" strangeleaves and fruits growing from their stems, transplanted shoots "put offtheir wild-wood instincts, " the thirsting plant "lifts up its head" ingratitude when watered. Our own generation, which was sedulously enticedinto nature study by books crammed with the "pathetic fallacy, " hasbecome suspicious of everything akin to "nature faking. " It has learnedthat this device has been a trick employed by a crafty pedagogy for thesake of appealing to unimaginative children. Vergil was probably far frombeing conscious of any such purpose. As a Roman he simply gave expressionto a mode of viewing nature that still seemed natural to most Greeks andRomans. The Roman farmer had not entirely outgrown his primitive animism. When he said his prayers to the spirits of the groves, the fields, andthe streams, he probably did not visualize these beings in human form;manifestations of life betokened spirits that produced life and growth. Vergil's phrases are the poetic expression of the animism of theunsophisticated rustic which at an earlier age had shaped the greatnature myths. 

And if Vergil had been questioned about his own faith he could well havefound a consistent answer. Though he had himself long ceased to payhomage to these _animae_, his philosophy, like that of Lucretius, alsosought the life-principle in nature, though he sought that principle astep farther removed in the atom, the vitalized seeds of things, foreverin motion, forever creating new combinations, and forever working themiracles of life by means of the energy with which they were themselvesinstinct. The memorable lines on spring in the second book are cast intothe form of old poetry, but the basis of them is Epicurean energism, asin Lucretius' prooemium. Vergil's study of evolution had for him alsounited man and nature, making the romance of the _Georgics_ possible; ithad shaped a kind of scientific animism that permitted him to accept thelanguage of the simple peasant even though its connotations were for himmore complex and subtle. 

Finally, the careful reader will discover in Vergil's nature poetry avery modern attention to details such as we hardly expect to find beforethe nineteenth century. Here again Vergil is Lucretius' companion. This habit was apparently a composite product. The ingredients are thecapacity for wonder that we find in some great poets like Wordsworth andPlato, a genius for noting details, bred in him as in Lucretius by longoccupation with deductive methods of philosophy, --scientific pursuitshave thus enriched modern poetry also--and a sure aesthetic sense. This power of observation has been overlooked by many of Vergil'scommentators. Conington, for example, has frequently done the poet aninjustice by assuming that Vergil was in error whenever his statementsseem not to accord with what we happen to know. We have now learned to bemore wary. It is usually a safer assumption that our observation isin error. A recent study of "trees, shrubs and plants of Vergil, "illuminating in numberless details, has fallen into the same error hereand there by failing to notice that Vergil wrote his _Bucolics_ and_Georgics_ not near Mantua but in southern Italy. The modern botanicalcritic of Vergil should, as Mackail has said, study the flora of Campanianot of Lombardy. In every line of composition Vergil took infinitepains to give an accurate setting and atmosphere. Carcopino[6] has justastonished us with proof of the poet's minute study of topographicaldetails in the region of Lavinium and Ostia, Mackail[7] has vindicatedhis care as an antiquarian, Warde Fowler[8] has repeatedly pointedout his scrupulous accuracy in portraying religious rites, and nowSergeaunt, [9] in a study of his botany, has emphasized his habit ofmaking careful observations in that domain. 

[Footnote 6: Carcopino, _Virgile et les origines d'Ostie_. ]

[Footnote 7: Mackail, _Journal of Roman Studies_, 1915. ]

[Footnote 8: Warde Fowler, _Religious Experience of the RomanPeople_. P. 408. ]

[Footnote 9: Sergeaunt, _Trees, Shrubs, and Plants of Virgil_. ]

This modern habit it is that makes the _Georgics_ read so much likeFabre's remarkable essays. The study of the bees in the fourth book is, of course, not free from errors that nothing less than generations ofclose scrutiny could remove. But the right kind of observing has begun. On the other hand the book is not merely a farmer's practical manualon how to raise bees for profit. The poet's interest is in the amazinginsects themselves, their how and why and wherefore. It is the mysteryof their instincts, habits, and all-compelling energy that leads him tostudy the bees, and finally to the half-concealed confession that hisphilosophy has failed to solve the problems of animate nature. 

XV

THE AENEID

While Caesar Octavian, now grown to full political stature, was reunitingthe East and the West after Actium, Vergil was writing the last pages ofthe _Georgics_. The battle that decided Rome's future also determined thepoet's next theme. The Epic of Rome, abandoned at the death of Caesar, unthinkable during the civil wars which followed, appealed for a hearingnow that Rome was saved and the empire restored. Vergil's youthfulenthusiasm for Rome, which had sprung from a critical reading of her pastcareer, seemed fully justified; he began at once his _Arma virumque_. 

The _Aeneid_ reveals, as the critics of nineteen centuries havereiterated, an unsurpassed range of reading. But it is not necessaryto repeat the evidence of Vergil's literary obligations in an essayconcerned chiefly with the poet's more intimate experiences. In point offact, the tracking of poetic reminiscences in a poet who lived when noconcealment of borrowed thought was demanded does as much violence toVergil as it does to Euripides or Petrarch. The poet has always beenexpected to give expression to his own convictions, but until recently ithas been considered a graceful act on his part to honor the good work ofhis predecessors by the frank use, in recognizable form, of the linesthat he most admires. The only requirement has been that the poet shouldassimilate, and not merely agglomerate his acceptances, that he should asVergil put it, "wrest the club from Hercules" and wield it as its master. 

In essence the poetry of the _Aeneid_ is never Homeric, despite theincorporation of many Homeric lines. It is rather a sapling of Vergil'sHellenistic garden, slowly acclimated to the Italian soil, fed richly byyears of philosophic study, braced, pruned, and reared into a tree ofnoble strength and classic dignity. The form and majesty of the treebespeak infinite care in cultivation, but the fruit has not lost thedelicate tang and savour of its seed. The poet of the _Ciris_, the_Copa_, the _Dirae_, and the _Bucolics_ is never far to seek in the_Aeneid_. 

It would be a long story to trace the flowering in the Aeneid of theseedling sown in Vergil's boyhood garden-plot. [1] The note of intimacy, unexpected in an epic, the occasional drawing of the veil to reveal thepoet's own countenance, an un-Homeric sentimentality now and then, thegreat abundance of sense-teeming collocations, the depth of sympathyrevealed in such tragic characters as Pallas, Lausus, Euryalus, theinsistent study of inner motives, the meticulous selection of incidents, the careful artistry of the meter, the fastidious choice of words, andthe precision of the joiner's craft in the composition of traditionalelements, all suggest the habits of work practiced by the friends ofCinna and Valerius Cato. 

[Footnote 1: For a careful study of this subject see Duckett, _Hellenistic Influence on the Aeneid, _ Smith College Studies, 1920. ]

The last point is well illustrated in Sinon's speech at the opening ofthe second book. The old folktale of how the "wooden horse, " left on theshore by the Greeks, was recklessly dragged to the citadel by the Trojanssatisfied the unquestioning Homer. Vergil does not take the improbableon faith. Sinon is compelled to be entirely convincing. In his speech heuses every art of persuasion: he awakens in turn curiosity, surprise, pity, admiration, sympathy, and faith. The passage is as curiouslywrought as any episode of Catullus or the _Ciris_. It is not, as has beenheld, a result of rhetorical studies alone; it reveals rather a nativegood sense tempered with a neoteric interest in psychology and a neotericexactness in formal composition. And yet the passage exhibits a greatadvance upon the geometric formality of the _Ciris_. The incident is nottreated episodically as it might have been in Vergil's early work. Thepattern is not whimsically intricate but is shaped by an understandingmind. While its art is as studied and conscious as that of the _Ciris_, it has the directness and integrity of Homeric narrative. Yet Vergilhas not forgotten the startling effects that Catullus would attain bycompressing a long tale into a suggestive phrase, if only a memory of thetale could be assumed. The story of Priam's death on the citadel is toldin all its tragic horror till the climax is reached. Then suddenly withastonishing force the mind is flung through and beyond the memories ofthe awful mutilation by the amazingly condensed phrase:

 jacet ingens litore truncus avulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus. 

There Vergil has given only the last line of a suppressed tragedy whichthe reader is compelled to visualize for himself. 

Neoteric, too, is the accurate observation and the patience with detailsdisplayed by the author of the _Aeneid_. In his youth Vergil had, to besure, avoided the extremes of photographic realism illustrated by thevery curious _Moretum_, but he had nevertheless, in works like the_Copa_, the _Dirae_, and the eighth _Eclogue_, practiced the craft of theminiaturist whenever he found the minutiae aesthetically significant. Torealize the precision of his strokes even then one has but to recall thecouplet of the _Copa_ which in an instant sets one upon the dusty road ofan Italian July midday:

 Nunc cantu crebro rumpunt arbusta cicadae nunc varia in gelida sede lacerta latet. 

Throughout the _Aeneid, _ the patches of landscape, the retreats forstorm-tossed ships, the carved temple-doors, the groups of accoutredwarriors marching past, and many a gruesome battle scene, are remindersof this early technique. 

What degrees of conscientious workmanship went into these results, we arejust now learning. Carcopino, [2] who, with a copy of Vergil in hand, hascarefully surveyed the Latin coast from the Tiber mouth, past the site ofLavinium down to Ardea, is convinced that the poet traced every manoeuvreand every sally on the actual ground which he chose for his theatre ofaction in the last six books. It still seems possible to recognize thedeep valley of the ambuscade and the plain where Camilla deployed hercavalry. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that for the sake of aheroic-age setting Vergil studied the remains and records of most ancientRome. There were still in existence in various Latin towns sixth-centurytemples laden with antique arms and armor deposited as votive offerings, terracotta statues of gods and heroes, and even documents stored forsafe-keeping. In the expansion of Rome over the Campus Martius unmarkedtombs with their antique furniture were often disclosed. It is apparentfrom his works that Vergil examined such material, just as he delved intoVarro's antiquities and Cato's "origins" for ancient lore. His remarkson Praeneste and Antemnae, his knowledge of ancient coin symbols, of theearly rites of the Hercules cult, show the results of these early habitsof work. It must always be noticed, however, that in his mature art he ismaster of his vast hoard of material. There is never, as in the _Culex_and _Ciris_, a display of irrelevant facts, a yielding to the temptationof being excursive and episodic. Wherever the work had received the finaltouch, the composition shows a flawless unity. 

[Footnote 2: Carcopino, _Virgile et les origines d'Ostie_. ]

The poet's response to personal experience reveals itself nowhere morethan in the political aspect of the _Aeneid_ a fact that is the moreremarkable because Vergil lived so long in Epicurean circles where aninterest in politics was studiously suppressed. 

What makes the poem the first of national epics is, however, not adevotion to Rome's historical claims to primacy in Italy. The narrowimperialism of the urban aristocracy finds no support in him. Not thecity of Rome but Italy is the _patria_ of the _Aeneid_, and Italy as acivilizing and peace-bringing force, not as the exploiting conqueror. Here we recognize a spirit akin to Julius Caesar. Vergil's hero Aeneas, is not a Latin but a Trojan. That fact is, of course, due to theexigencies of tradition, but that Aeneas receives his aid from the GreekEvander and from the numerous Etruscan cities north of the Tiber whilemost of the Latins join Turnus, the enemy, cannot be attributed totradition. In fact, Livy, who gives the more usual Roman version, saysnothing of the Greeks, but joins Latinus and the Latian aborigines toAeneas while he musters the Etruscans under the Rutulian, Turnus. Theexplanation for Vergil's striking departure from the usual patrioticversion of the legend is rather involved and need not be examined here. But we may at any rate remark his wish to recognize the many races thathad been amalgamated by the state, to refuse his approval of a narrowurban patriotism, and to give his assent to a view of Rome's placeand mission upon which Julius Caesar had always acted in extendingcitizenship to peoples of all races, in scattering Roman coloniesthroughout the empire, and in setting the provinces on the road to afull participation in imperial privileges and duties. With such a policyVergil, schooled at Cremona, Milan, and Naples, could hardly fail tosympathize. 

It has been inferred from the position of authority which Aeneas assumesthat Vergil favored a strong monarchial form of government and intendedAeneas to be, as it were, a prototype of Augustus. The inference isdoubtless over-hasty. Vergil had a lively historical sense and in hishero seems only to have attempted a picture of a primitive king of theheroic age. Indeed Aeneas is perhaps more of an autocrat than arethe Homeric kings, but that is because the Trojans are pictured as amigrating group, torn root and branch from their land and government, andfollowing a semi-divine leader whose directions they have deliberatelychosen to obey. In his references to Roman history, in the pageant ofheroes of the sixth book, as well as in the historical scenes of theshield, no monarchial tendencies appear. Brutus the tyrannicide, Pompeyand Cato, the irreconcilable foes of Caesar, Vergil's youthful hero, receive their meed of praise in the _Aeneid_, though there were many whoheld it treason in that day to mention rebels with respect. 

It is indeed a very striking fact that Vergil, who was the first of Romanwriters to attribute divine honors to the youthful Octavian, refrainsentirely from doing so in the _Aeneid_ at a time when the rest of Romehesitated at no form of laudation. Julius Caesar is still recognized asmore than human, vocabitur hic quoque votis, but Augustus is not. The contrast is significant. The language of thevery young man at Naples had, of course, been colored by Orientalforms of expression that were in part unconsciously imbibed from theconversations of the Garden. These were phrases too which Julius Caesarin the last two years of his life encouraged; for he had learned fromAlexander's experience that the shortest cut through constitutionalobstructions to supreme power lay by way of the doctrine of divineroyalty. In fact, the Senate was forced to recognize the doctrine beforeCaesar's death, and after his death consistently voted public sacrificesat his grave. Vergil was, therefore, following a high authority in thecase of Caesar, and was drawing the logical inference in the case ofOctavian when he wrote the first _Eclogue_ and the prooemium of the_Georgics_. This makes it all the more remarkable that while hisadmiration for Augustus increased with the years, he ceased to give anycountenance to the growing cult of "emperor worship. " That the restraintwas not simply in obedience to a governmental policy seems clear, for Horace, who in his youthful work had shown his distrust of thegovernment, had now learned to make very liberal use of celestialappellatives. 

Augustus, then, is not in any way identified with the semi-divine Aeneas. Vergil does not even place him at a post of special honor on the mountof revelations, but rather in the midst of a long line of remarkable_principes_. With dignity and sanity he lays the stress upon the greatevents of the Republic and upon its heroes. We may, therefore, justlyconclude that when he wrote the epic he advocated a constitution of thetype proposed by Cicero, in which the _princeps_ should be a true leaderin the state but in a constitutional republic. 

It is the great past, illustrated by the pageant of heroes and theprophetic pictures of Aeneas's shield, that kindles the poet'simagination. His sympathies are generous enough to include every racewithin the empire and every leader who had shared in Rome's making, from the divine founder, Romulus, and the tyrannicide, Brutus, to therepublican martyrs, Cato and Pompey, as well as the restorers of peace, Caesar and Augustus. He has no false patriotism that blinds him to Rome'sshortcomings. He frankly admits with regret her failures in arts andsciences with a modesty that permits of no reference to his own savingwork. What Rome has done and can do supremely well he also knows: she canrule with justice, banish violence with law, and displace war by peace. After the years of civil wars which he had lived through in agony ofspirit, it is not strange that such a mission seemed to him supreme. Andthat is why the last words of Anchises to Aeneas are:

 Hae tibi erunt artes: pacisque imponere morem Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos. 

The tragedy of Dido reveals better perhaps than any other portion ofthe _Aeneid_ how sensitively the poet reflected Rome's life andthought rather than those of his Greek literary sources. And yet theirrepressible Servius was so reckless as to say that the whole book hadbeen "transferred" from Apollonius. Fortunately we have in this case thealleged source, and can meet the scholiast with a sweeping denial. Bothauthors portray the love of a woman, and there the similarity ends. Apollonius is wholly dependent upon a literal Cupid and his shafts. Vergil, to be sure, is so far obedient to Greek convention as to playwith the motive--Cupid came to the banquet in the form of Ascanius--butonly after it was really no longer needed. The psychology of passion'sprogress in the first book is convincingly expressed for the first time inany literature. Aeneas first receives a full account of Dido's deeds ofcourage and presently beholds her as she sits upon her throne, directing the work of city building, judging and ruling as lawgiverand administrator, and finally proclaiming mercy for his shipwreckedcompanions. For her part she, we discover as he does, had long knownhis story, and in her admiration for his people had chosen the deeds ofTrojan heroes for representation upon the temple doors: Sunt lacrimaererum. The poet simply and naturally leads hero and heroine throughthe experience of admiration, generous sympathy, and gratitude toan inevitable affection, which at the night's banquet, through asoul-stirring tale told with dignity and heard in rapture, could onlyripen into a very human passion. 

The vital difference between Vergil's treatment of the theme andApollonius' may be traced to the difference between the Roman and theGreek family. Into Italy as into Greece had come, many centuries before, hordes of Indo-European migrants from the Danubian region who had carriedinto the South the wholesome family customs of the North, the verycustoms indeed out of which the transalpine literature of medievalchivalry later blossomed. 

In Greece those social customs--still recognizable in Homer and the earlymythology--had in the sixth century been overwhelmed by a back-flow ofAegean society, when the northern aristocracy was compelled to surrenderto the native element which constituted the backbone of the democracy. With the re-emergence of the Aegean society, in which woman was relegatedto a menial position, the possibility of a genuine romantic literaturenaturally came to an end. 

At Rome there was no such cataclysm during the centuries of the Republic. Here the old stock though somewhat mixed with Etruscans, survived. Theancient aristocracy retained its dominant position in the state andsociety, and its mores even penetrated downward. They were not stifledby new southern customs welling up from below, at least not until theplebeian element won the support of the founders of the empire, andfinally overwhelmed the nobility. At Rome during the Republic there wasno question of social inequality between the sexes, for though in law thepatriarchal clan-system, imposed by the exigencies of a migrating group, made the father of the family responsible for civil order, no inferenceswere drawn to the detriment of the mother's position in the household. Nepos once aptly remarked: "Many things are considered entirely properhere which the Greeks hold to be indelicate. No Roman ever hesitates totake his wife with him to a social dinner. In fact, our women invariablyhave the seat of honor at temples and large gatherings. In such matterswe differ wholly from the Greeks. "

Indeed the very persistence of a nobility was in itself a favorablefactor in establishing a better position for women. Not only did theaccumulation of wealth in the household and the persistence ofcourtly manners demand respect for the _domina_ of the villa, but thetransference of noble blood and of a goodly inheritance of name and landthrough the mother's hand were matters of vital importance. The nobilityof the senate moreover long controlled the foreign policy of the empire, and as the empire grew the men were called away to foreign parts onmissions and legations. At such times, the lady in an important householdwas mistress of large affairs. It has been pointed out as a significantfact that the father of the Gracchi was engaged for long years inambassadorial and military duties. The training of the lads consequentlyfell to the share of Cornelia, a fact which may in some measure accountfor the humanitarian interests of those two brilliant reformers. Theresponsibilities that fell upon the shoulders of such women must havestimulated their keenest powers and thus won for them the high esteemwhich, in this case, we know the sons accorded their mother. One doesnot soon forget the scene (Cicero, _Ad Att_. XV, II) at which Brutus andCassius together with their wives, Porcia and Tertia, and Servilia, themother of Brutus, discussed momentous decisions with Cicero. When Brutusstood wavering, Cicero avoiding the issue, and Cassius as usual losinghis temper, it was Servilia who offered the only feasible solution, and it was her program which they adopted. Is it surprising that Greekhistorians like Plutarch could never quite comprehend the part in Romanpolitics played by women like Clodia, Porcia and Terentia? In sheerdespair he usually resorts to the hypotheses of some personal intriguefor an explanation of their powerful influence. 

It is in truth very likely that had Roman literature been permitted torun its own natural course, without being overwhelmed, as was the Italianliterature of the renaissance, it would have progressed much farther onthe road to Romanticism. Apollonius was far more a restraining influencein this respect than an inspiration. As it is, Vergil's first and fourthbooks are as unthinkable in Greek dress as is the sixth. They constitutea very conspicuous landmark in the history of literature. 

Vergil does not wholly escape the powerful conventions of his Greekpredecessors: in his fourth book, for instance, there are suggestions ofthe melodramatic "maiden's lament" so dear to the music hall gallery ofAlexandria. But Vergil, apparently to his own surprise, permits his Romanunderstanding of life to prevail, and transcends his first intentionsas soon as he has felt the grip of the character he is portraying. Didoquickly emerges from the role of a temptress designed as a last snare totrap the hero, and becomes a woman who reveals human laws paramount evento divine ordinance. Once realizing this the poet sacrifices even hishero and wrecks his original plot to be true to his insight into humannature. The confession of Aeneas, as he departs, that in heeding heaven'scommand he has blasphemed against love--_polluto amore_--how strange athought for the _pius Aeneas_! That sentiment was not Greek, it was a newflash of intuition of the very quality of purest Romance. 

The _Aeneid_ is also a remarkably religious poem to have come from onewho had devoted so many enthusiastic years to a materialistic philosophy. Indeed it is usual to assume that the poet had abandoned his philosophyand turned to Stoicism before his death. But there is after all nolegitimate ground for this supposition. The _Aeneid_ has, of course, noneof the scientific fanaticism that mars the _Aetna_, and the poet hasgrown mellow and tolerant with years, but that he was still convinced ofthe general soundness of the Epicurean hypotheses seems certain. Manypuzzles of the _Aeneid_ are at least best explained by that view. Therepetition of his creed in the first _Aeneid_ ought to warn us thathis enthusiasm for the study of _Rerum natura_ did not die. Indeed the_Aeneid_ is full of Epicurean phrases and notions. The atoms of fire arestruck out of the flint (VI, 6), the atoms of light are emitted from thesun (VII, 527, and VIII, 23), early men were born _duro robore_ and livedlike those described in the fifth book of Lucretius (VIII, 320), andConington finds almost two hundred reminiscences of Lucretius in the_Aeneid_, the proportion increasing rather than decreasing in the laterbooks. [3]

[Footnote 3: Servius, VI, 264, makes the explicit statement: ex majoreparte, Sironem, id est, magistrum Epicureum sequitur. ]

It is, however, in the interpretation of the word _fatum_ and the roleplayed by the gods[4] that the test of Vergil's philosophy is usuallyapplied. The modern equivalent of _fatum_ is, as Guyau[5] has said, _determinism_. Determinism was accepted by both schools but with adifference. To the Stoic, _fatum_ is a synonym of Providence whosepopular name is Zeus. The Epicurean also accepts _fatum_ as governing theuniverse, but it is not teleological, and Zeus is not identified with itbut is, like man, subordinated to it. Again, the Stoic is consistentlyfatalistic. Even man's moral obligations, which are admitted, imply noreal freedom in the shaping of results, for though man has the choicebetween pursuing his end voluntarily (which is virtue) or kicking againstthe pricks (which is vice), the sum total of his accomplishments is notaltered by his choice: _ducunt volentern fata, nolentem trahunt_. On theother hand, Vergil's master, while he affirms the causal nexus for thegovernance of the universe:

 nec sanctum numen _fati protollere fines_ posse neque adversus naturae foedera niti

[Footnote 4: The passages have been analyzed and discussed frequently. See especially Heinze, _Vergils Epische Technik_, 290 ff. , who interpretsZeus as fate; Matthaei, _Class. Quart_. 1917, pp. 11-26, who denies theidentity; Drachmann, Guderne kos Vergil, 1887; MacInnis, _Class. Rev_. 1910, p. 160, and Warde Fowler, _Aeneas at the Site of Rome_, pp. 122 fF. For a fuller statement of this question see _Am. Jour_. Phil. 1920. ]

[Footnote 5: _Morale d'Epicure_, p. 72. ]

(Lucr. V, 309), posits a spontaneous initiative in the soul-atoms of man:

 quod _fati foedera rumpat_ ex infinite _ne causam causa sequatur_. 

(Lucr. II, 254). If then Vergil were a Stoic his Jupiter should beomnipotent and omniscient and the embodiment of _fatum_, and his humancharacters must be represented as devoid of independent power; but suchideas are not found in the _Aeneid_. 

Jupiter is indeed called "omnipotens" at times, but so are Juno andApollo, which shows that the term must be used in a relative sense. In afew cases he can grant very great powers as when he tells Venus: Imperiumsine fine dedi (I, 278). But very providence he never seems to be. Hedraws (sortitur) the lots of fate (III, 375), he does not assign them atwill, and he unrolls the book of fate and announces what he finds (I, 261). He is powerless to grant Cybele's prayer that the ships may escapedecay:

 Cui tanta deo permissa potestas? (IX, 97. )

He cannot decide the battle between the warriors until he weighs theirfates (XII, 725), and in the council of the gods he confesses explicitlyhis non-interference with the laws of causality:

 Sua cuique exorsa laborem Fortunamque ferent. Rex Jupiter omnibus idem. Fata viam invenient. (X, 112. )

And here the scholiast naïvely remarks:

 Videtur his ostendisse aliud esse fata, aliud Jovem. [6]

[Footnote 6: Serv. _ad loc_. MacInnis, _Class. Rev_. 1910, p. 172, citesseveral other passages to the point in refutation of Heinze. ]

Again, contrary to the Stoic creed, the poet conceives of his humancharacters as capable of initiating action and even of thwarting fate. Aeneas in the second book rushes into battle on an impulse; he couldforget his fates and remain in Sicily if he chose (V, 700). He might alsoremain in Carthage, and explains fully why he does not; and Dido, if left_nescla fati_, might thwart the fates (I, 299), and finally does, slayingherself before her time[7] (IV, 696). The Stoic hypothesis seems to breakdown completely in such passages. 

[Footnote 7: See Matthaei, _Class. Quart_. 1917, p. 19. ]

Can we assume an Epicurean creed with better success? At least in so faras it places the _foedera naturae_ above the gods and attributes somefreedom of will and action to men, for as we have seen in both ofthese matters Vergil agrees with Lucretius. But there is one apparentdifficulty in that Vergil, contrary to his teacher's usual practice, permits the interference of the gods in human action. The difficulty is, however, only apparent, if, as Vergil does, we conceive of these godssimply as heroic and super-human characters in the drama, accepted froman heroic age in order to keep the ancient atmosphere in which Aeneas hadlived in men's imagination ever since Homer first spoke of him. As suchcharacters they have the power of initiative and the right to interferein action that Epicurus attributes to men, and in so far as they areof heroic stature their actions may be the more effective. Thus far anEpicurean might well go, and must go in an epic of the heroic age. Thisis, of course, not the same as saying that Vergil adopted the godsin imitation of Homer or that he needed Olympic machinery because hesupposed it a necessary part of the epic technique. Surely Vergil wasgifted with as much critical acumen as Lucan. But he had to accept thesecreatures as subsidiary characters the moment he chose Aeneas as hishero, for Aeneas was the son of Venus who dwelt with the celestials atleast a part of the time. Her presence in turn involved Juno and Jupiterand the rest of her daily associates. Furthermore, since the tale was ofthe heroic age of long ago, the characters must naturally behave as thecharacters of that day were wont to do, and there were old books likeHomer and Hesiod from which every schoolboy had become familiar withtheir behavior. If the poet wished to make a plausible tale of thatperiod he could no more undertake to modernize his characters than couldTennyson in his _Idylls_. The would-be gods are in the tale not toreveal Vergil's philosophy--they do not--but to orient the reader in theatmosphere in which Aeneas had always been conceived as moving. Theyperform the same function as the heroic accoutrements and architecturefor a correct description of which Vergil visited ancient temples andstudied Cato. 

Had he chosen a contemporary hero or one less blessed with celestialrelatives there is no reason to suppose that he would have employed thesuper-human personages at all. If this be true it is as uncritical tosearch for the poet's own conception of divinity in these personages asit would be to infer his taste in furniture from the straw cot which hechooses to give his hero at Evander's hovel. In the epic of primitiveRome the claims of art took precedence over personal creed, and so theywould with any true poet; and if any critic were prosaic enoughto object, Vergil might have answered with Livy: Datur haec veniaantiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiorafaciat, and if the inconsistency with his philosophy were stressed hecould refer to Lucretius' proemium. It is clear then that while theconceptions of destiny and free-will found in the _Aeneid_ are atvariance with Stoic creed at every point, they fit readily into theEpicurean scheme of things as soon as we grant what any Epicurean poetwould readily have granted that the celestials might be employed ascharacters of the drama if in general subordinated to the same laws ofcausality and of freedom as were human beings. 

What then are we to say of the Stoic coloring of the sixth book? In thefirst place, it is not actually Stoic. It is a syncretism of mysticalbeliefs, developed by Orphic and Apocalyptic poets and mystics fromPythagoras and Plato to a group of Hellenistic writers, popularized bythe later less logical Stoic philosophers like Posidonius, and gaining inVergil's day a wide acceptance among those who were growing impatient ofthe exacting metaphysical processes of thought. Indeed Vergil contributedsomething toward foisting these beliefs upon early Christianity, thoughthey were no more essential to it than to Stoicism. 

Be that as it may, this mystical setting was here adopted because thepoet needed for his own purposes[8] a vision of incorporated souls ofRoman heroes, a thing which neither Epicurean nor orthodox Stoic creedcould provide. So he created this _mythos_ as Plato for his own purposecreated a vision of Er. [9] The dramatic purpose of the _descensus_ was ofcourse to complete for Aeneas the progressive revelation of his mission, so skilfully developed by careful stages all through the third book, [10]to give the hero his final commands and to inspire him for the finalstruggle. [11] Then the poet realized that he could at the same timeproduce a powerful artistic effect upon the reader if he accomplishedthis by means of a vision of Rome's great heroes presented in review byAnchises from the mount of revelations, for this was an age in which Romewas growing proud of her history. But to do this he must have a _mythos_which assumed that souls lived before their earthly existence. A Homericlimbo of departed souls did not suffice (though Vergil also availedhimself of that in order to recall the friends of the early books). Withthis in view he builds his home of the dead out of what Servius callsmuch _sapientia_, filling in details here and there even from thelegendary lower-world personages so that the reader may meet somefamiliar faces. However, the setting is not to be taken literally, for ofcourse neither he nor anyone else actually believed that prenatal spiritsbore the attributes and garments of their future existence. Nor is thepoet concerned about the eschatology which had to be assumed for thesetting; but his judgments on life, though afforded an opportunity tofind expression through the characters of the scene, are not allowed tobe circumscribed by them; they are his own deepest convictions. 

[Footnote 8: No one would attempt to infer Stephen Phillips' eschatologyfrom the setting of his _Christ in Hades_. ]

[Footnote 9: Vergil indeed was careful to warn the reader (VI, 893) thatthe portal of unreal dreams refers the imagery of the sixth book tofiction, and Servius reiterates the warning. On the employment of mythsby Epicureans see chapter VIII, above. ]

[Footnote 10: See Heinze, _Epische Technik_, pp. 82 ff. ]

[Footnote 11: This Vergil indicates repeatedly: _Aen_. V, 737; VI, 718, 806-7, 890-2. ]

It has frequently been said that Vergil's philosophical system isconfused and that his judgments on providence are inconsistent, that infact he seems not to have thought his problems through. This is of coursetrue so far as it is true of all the students of philosophy of his day. Indeed we must admit that with the very inadequate psychology of thattime no reasonable solution of the then central problem of determinismcould be found. But there is no reason for supposing that the poet didnot have a complete mastery of what the best teachers of his day had tooffer. 

Vergil's Epicureanism, however, served him chiefly as a workinghypothesis for scientific purposes. With its ethical and religiousimplications he had not concerned himself; and so it was not permittedin his later days to interfere with a deep respect for the essentials ofreligion. Similarly, the profoundest students of science today, menwho in all their experiments act implicitly and undeviatingly on thehypotheses of atomism and determinism in the world of research, areusually the last to deny the validity of the basic religious tenets. Inhis knowledge of religious rites Vergil reveals an exactness that seemsto point to very careful observances in his childhood home. They havebecome second nature as it were, and go as deep as the filial devotionwhich so constantly brings the word _pietas_ to his pen. 

But his religion is more than a matter of rites and ceremonies. It has, to a degree very unusual for a Roman, associated itself with morality andespecially with social morality. The culprits of his Tartarus are notmerely the legendary offenders against exacting deities:

 Hic quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat, Pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti, Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis Nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est. 

The virtues that win a place in Elysium indicate the same fusion ofreligion with humanitarian sympathies:

 Hic manus ob patriam pugnando vulnera passi, Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artis, Quique sui memores aliquos fecere merendo: Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta. 

His Elysium is far removed from Homer's limbo; truly did he deserve hisplace among those

 Phoebo digna locuti. 

Before he had completed his work the poet set out for Greece to visit theplaces which he had described and which in his fastidious zeal he seemsto have thought in need of the same careful examination that he hadaccorded his Italian scenery. Three years he still thought requisite forthe completion of his epic. But at Megara he fell ill, and being carriedback in Augustus' company to Brundisium he died there, in 19 B. C. At theage of fifty-one. Before his death he gave instructions that his epicshould be burned and that his executors, his life-long friends Varius andTucca, should suppress whatever of his manuscripts he had himself failedto publish. In order to save the Aeneid, however, Augustus interposedthe supreme authority of the state to annul that clause of the will. Theminor works were probably left unpublished for some time. Indeed, thereis no convincing proof that such works as the Ciris, the Aetna, and theCatalepton were circulated in the Augustan age. 

The ashes were carried to his home at Naples and buried beneath atombstone bearing the simple epitaph written by some friend who knew thepoet's simplicity of heart:

 Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces. 

His tomb[12] was on the roadside outside the city, as was usual--Donatussays on the highway to Puteoli, nearly two miles from the gates. Recentexamination of the region has shown that by some cataclysm of the middleages not mentioned in any record, the road and the tomb have subsided, and now the quiet waters of the golden bay flow many fathoms over them. 

[Footnote 12: Günther, _Pausilypon_, p. 201]

INDEX

AcestesAeneas_Aeneid_, the_Aetna_, theAlexandrian poetryAlfenus VarusAllegoryAncestry of VergilAnimismAnnius CimberAntiquarian lore in the _Aeneid_Antony, MarkAntony, Lucius, at PerugiaApollodorus, the rhetoricianApollonius of RhodesArchias, the poetAsianists, theAtticists, the_Auctor ad Herennium_Augustus, cf. Octavius. Avernus, Lake

Birt's edition of the _Catalepton_Brutus, M. Junius_Bucolics_, the, see _Eclogues_. Burial-place of Vergil

Caecilius of CaleacteCallimachusCalvus, C. LiciniusCapuaCassius, Longinus_Catalepton_Catullus, C. ValeriusCelts, theChild, of the fourth _Eclogue_Cicero, M. TulliusCinna, C. Helvius_Ciris_, theCisalpine GaulCivil War, theClassicismCleopatra and DidoClodiaConfiscation of Vergil's lands_Copa_, theCornificius, the poetCremona_Culex_, theCumaeCytheris (Lycoris)

DaphnisDeath of VergilDiction, purity ofDidoDiehl, _Vitae Vergilianae__Dirae_, theDonatus, the _Vita_ of

_Eclogues_, the; No. I No. II No. IV No. V No. VI No. VIII No. IX No. XEducation of Vergil"Emperor Worship"EnniusEpic, an early effort atEpicurean philosophyEpidiusEpigrams of Vergil see _Catalepton_. EpylliaEthics in the _Aeneid_EtruscansEvictions by the triumvirsEvolution

Fate, in the _Aeneid_Fowler, W. W. , Studies ofFreedmenFundanius

Gallus, Cornelius"Garden, " the, near Naples_Georgics_, theGolden Age, the"Grand Style, " theGreeks, in the _Aeneid_

HadesHerculaneumHomerHoraceImperial Cult, theJulius CaesarLaw, the study ofLiterary theory

Lucretius_Ludus Troiae_Lycoris (Cytheris)Lydia, theLysias, as model of style

Maecenas, C. Cilnius the literary circle ofMagia, Vergil's motherMantuaMaro, meaning ofMartial, on the _Culex_MaterialismMeleager of GadaraMelissusMessalla, M. ValeriusMessianic prophecyMetrical techniqueMilanMountain scenery in the _Eclogues_

NaplesNationalism in the _Aeneid_Nature, observation of"New poetry, " the _neoteroi_Nicolaus Damascenus

Octavius, or Octavianus see Augustus. Octavius MusaOracles, the SibyllineOrientals at NaplesOvid

Partheniusparody, Vergil's in _Catalepton_, XPasiphaë, the myth ofPastoral elegyPastoral poetry"Pathetic fallacy, " thePatriotism in the _Aeneid_Peace of BrundisiumPerusine War, thePharsalia, the battle ofPhilippi, the battle ofPhilodemusPhilosophic studyPiso, Calpurnius"Plain style" thePlatoPlotius Tucca, Politics of the Epicurean groupPollio, C. AsiniusPompeiiPompey, the GreatPorciaPortraits of VergilPosilipo_Priapea_, the threeProbus, the _Vita_ ofPropertiusPurity of diction_Purpureus pannus_

Quintilius VarusRand, _Young Virgil's Poetry_Realism in the _Eclogues_ in the _Aeneid__Res Romanae_ of VergilRhetoricRomantic poetryRomanticismScholiasts, on VergilScyllaServiusSiroSkutsch, _Aus Vergils Frühzeit_SorrentoSpenser's _Gnat_StoicismSyrians at NaplesTheocritusThucydides, as a model of styleTibullusTityrusTucca, see PlotiusTurnusValerius CatoValerius Messalla, see MessallaValgiusVarius RufusVarus, see Alfenus Varus, and Quintilius VarusVentidius BassusVenus GenetrixVergil, see Table of ContentsVessereau, on the _Aetna_