in his mind when writing it the Greek idea of initiation into mysteries
preparatory to a new life. An actual initiation was, of course, out of
the question; on the other hand a _catabasis_, a descent into Hades, was
part of the epic inheritance he derived from Homer, and this, like the
funeral games in the fifth book, he might use with an earnestness of
purpose wanting in Homer, to work in with the great theme of his poem,
not merely as an artistic effort. The purpose here was to make of Aeneas
a new man, to regenerate him; to prepare him by mystic enlightenment for
the toil, peril, and triumph that await him in the accomplishment of his
divine mission. We must not look too closely into the process; it is a
strange melange of popular and philosophic ideas and scenery, made at
once intelligible and magnificent by the wonderful resources of the
poet; but we may be sure that it has the same general meaning as the
visions of Dante long afterwards. As Mr. Tozer has said, Dante's
conversion and ultimate salvation were the primary object of his journey
through the three realms of the spiritual world.[898] In this sense it
can be called an initiation, an ordeal, a sacrament.
So much has been written about this wonderful book that I do not need
to dwell upon it here. I will content myself with pointing out very
briefly a fact which struck me when I last read it. The ordeal of
preparation is not complete till the very end of the book, when the
shade of Anchises has shown his son all the great things to come, the
due accomplishment of which depends on his sense of duty, his _pietas_.
Up to that moment Aeneas is always thinking and speaking of the past,
while in the last six books he is always looking ahead, absorbed in the
work each hour placed before him, and in the prospect of the glory of
Rome and Italy. The poet had contrived that his hero should himself
narrate the story of the sack of Troy and his subsequent wanderings, and
narrate them to the very person who would have made it impossible for
him ever again to look forward on the path of duty. Surely this is
significant of a moral as well as an artistic purpose; the passionate
love of the queen urges her to keep his mind fixed on the past, to
engage him in the story of events that concerned himself and not his
mission (i. 748):
necnon et vario noctem sermone trahebat
infelix Dido, longumque bibebat amorem
multa super Priamo rogitans, super Hectore multa, etc.
After the shade of Creusa had told him of his destiny, which she was not
to share, the past was still in his mind, and he seems to have forgotten
the warning; he calls himself an exile (iii. 10):
litora cum patriae lacrimans portusque relinquo
et campos ubi Troia fuit. Feror exsul in altum--
I find an exception after the meeting with Andromache, when he thinks of
the future for a moment, but even then half-heartedly as it seems to me,
with a very distinct reluctance to face the dangers to come, and with a
touching envy of those who could "stay at home at ease" (iii. 493
foll.). His want of faith in the future is again shown in Book v., in
the passage quoted just now; and even in Book vi. he is at first
purposely depicted as "slack," as having his attention caught by what is
for the moment before him, or with the figures of old friends and
enemies whom he meets, until the last awakening revelation of Anchises.
Thus no sooner has he landed in Italy than he is attracted by the
pictures in the temple of Apollo and incurs a rebuke from the priestess
(vi. 37 foll.):
non hoc ista sibi tempus spectacula poscit;
nunc grege de intacto septem mactare iuvencos
praestiterit, etc.;
so also a little farther on she has to warn him again (50 foll.) at the
entrance to the cave:
"cessas in vota precesque,
Tros" ait "Aenea, cessas?"
It may be fancy in me to see even in his prayer which follows a leaning
to think of Troy and his past troubles (56 foll.). But I cannot but
believe that in this book he is meant to take a last farewell of all who
have shared his past fortunes, have helped him or injured him; he meets
Palinurus, Dido, Tydeus, Deiphobus, and the rest, and while meditating
over these he has once more to be hurried by his guide (538):
sed comes admonuit breviterque adfata Sibylla est:
nox ruit, Aenea, nos flendo ducimus horas.
When Anchises appears the whole tone changes, and his famous words seem
to me to show conclusively that hesitation and want of fixed,
undeviating purpose had been so far his son's chief failing (806):
et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis,
aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra?
The father's vision and prophecy are of the _future_ and the great deeds
of men to come, and henceforward Aeneas makes no allusion to the past
and the figures that peopled it, abandons talk and lamentations,
"virtutem extendit factis." At the outset of Book vii. we feel the ship
moving at once; three lines suffice for the fresh start; Circe is passed
unheeded. "Maior rerum mihi nascitur ordo," says the poet in line 43;
"maius opus moveo;" for the real subject of the poem is at last reached,
and a heroic character by heroic deeds is to lay the foundation of the
eternal dominion of Rome.
A very few words shall suffice about the Aeneas of the later books. Let
us freely allow that he is not strongly characterised; that for us
moderns the interest centres rather in Turnus, who is heroic as an
individual, but not as a pioneer of civilisation divinely led; that
there is no real heroine, for feminine passion would be here out of
place and un-Roman, and the courtship of Lavinia is undertaken, so to
speak, for political reasons. The role of Aeneas, as the agent of
Jupiter in conquest and civilisation, would appeal to a Roman rather
than to a modern, and it was reserved for the modern critic to complain
of a lack of individual interest in him. So, too, it is in Jewish
history; we feel with Esau more than with Jacob, and with David more
than with Moses, who is none the less the grandest typical Israelite in
the Old Testament. And, indeed, Virgil's theme here is less the
development of a character or the portraiture of a hero than the
idealisation of the people of the Italy which he loved so well, who
needed only a divinely guided leader and civiliser to enter upon the
glorious career that was in store for them.
I cannot escape the belief, as I read again through these books, that
Virgil did intend to depict in Aeneas his ideal of that Roman character
to which the leading writers of his day ascribed the greatness of their
race. His _pietas_ is now confirmed and enlarged, it has become a sense
of duty to the will of the gods as well as to his father, his son, and
his people, and this sense of duty never leaves him, either in his
general course of action or in the detail of sacrifice and propitiation.
His courage and steadfastness never fail him; he looks ever forward,
confident in divine protection; the shield he carries is adorned--a
wonderful stroke of poetic genius--with scenes of the future, and not of
the past (viii. 729 foll.):
talia per clipeum Volcani, dona parentis,
miratur rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet
attollens umero famamque et fata nepotum.
He is never in these books to be found wanting in swiftness and
vigilance; when he cheers his comrades it is no longer in a half-hearted
way, but as at the beginning of the eleventh book, with the utmost
vigour and confidence, "Arma parate, animis et spe praesumite bellum"
(xi. 18).
His _humanitas_ again is here more obvious than in his earlier career,
and it is plainly meant to be contrasted with the heroic savagery of
Mezentius and Turnus. So keenly did the poet feel this development in
his hero's character, that in his descriptions of the death of Lausus
and the burial of Pallas--noble and beautiful youths whom he loved in
imagination as he loved in reality all young things--his tenderness is
so touching that even now we can hardly read them without tears. And not
only is the hero heroic and humane, but he is a just man and keeps
faith; when, in the twelfth book, the Rutulians break the treaty, and
his own men have joined in the unjust combat (xii. 311):
at pius Aeneas dextram tendebat inermem
nudato capite atque suos clamore vocabat:
"quo ruitis? quove ista repens discordia surgit?
o cohibete iras; ictum iam foedus et omnes
compositae leges: mihi ius concurrere soli."
He claims for himself alone, under the guiding hand of providence, the
right to deal with Turnus, the enemy of humanity and righteousness. And
we may note that when it came to that last struggle, though conquering
by divine aid, he was ready to spare the life of the conquered till he
saw the spoils of the young Pallas upon him.
The character of Aeneas, then, though not painted in such strong light
as we moderns might expect or desire, is _intentionally_ developed into
a heroic type in the course of the story--a type which every Roman would
recognise as his own natural ideal. And this growth is the direct result
of religious influence. It is partly the result of the hero's own
natural _pietas_, innate within him from the first, as it was in the
breast of every noble Roman; partly the result of a gradually enlarged
recognition of the will of God, and partly of the strengthening and
almost sacramental process of the journey to Hades, of the revelation
there made of the mysteries of life and death, and of the great future
which Jupiter and the Fates have reserved for the Roman people. In these
three influences Virgil has summed up all the best religious factors of
his day: the instinct of the Roman for religious observance, with all
its natural effect on conduct; the elevating Stoic doctrine which
brought man into immediate relation with the universal; and, lastly,
the tendency to mysticism, Orphic or Pythagorean, which tells of a
yearning in the soul of man to hope for a life beyond this, and to make
of this life a meet preparation for that other.
Only one word more. We can hardly doubt the truth of the story that the
poet died earnestly entreating that this greatest work of his life
should perish with him, and this may aptly remind us that though I have
been treating the Aeneid as a poem of religion and morals, yet, after
all, Virgil was a poet rather than a preacher, and thought of his
Aeneid, not as a sermon, but as a work of art. Had he thought of it as a
sermon he could hardly have wished to deprive the Roman world of it. The
true poet is never a preacher except in so far as he is a poet. If the
Greeks thought of their poets as teachers, says the late Prof. Jebb,
"this was simply a recognition of poetry as the highest influence,
intellectual and spiritual, that they knew." "It was not merely a
recreation of their leisure, but a power pervading and moulding their
whole existence." Surely this is also true of Virgil, and of the best at
least of his Roman readers. No one can read the sixth Aeneid, the
greatest effort of his genius, without feeling that poetry was all in
all to him; that learning, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the
whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it
as poetry and poetry only.[899]
NOTES TO LECTURE XVIII
[869] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 371.
[870] Sainte-Beuve, _Etude sur Virgile_, p. 68.
[871] Horace, _Epode_ 16, where, however, he is not
quite so much in earnest as in _Odes_ iii. 6. Sallust,
prefaces to Jugurtha and Catiline: these do not ring
quite true.
[872] _Georg._ iv. 511 foll.
[873] _Georg._ iii. 440 foll. The famous lines (498
foll.) about the horse smitten with pestilence will
occur to every one.
[874] _Aen._ vi. 309.
[875] _Op. cit._ p. 231. He cites _Georg._ i. 107 and
187 foll.
[876] Sellar, _Virgil_, p. 232.
[877] _Georg._ iv. 221 foll.
[878] _Georg._ ii. 493.
[879] Prof. Hardie recently asked me an explanation of
the double altar that we meet with more than once in
Virgil in connection with funeral rites: _e.g._, _Ecl._
5. 66; _Aen._ iii. 305; v. 77 foll. Servius tries to
explain this, but clearly did not understand it. Of
course I could offer no satisfactory solution. Yet we
are both certain that there is a satisfactory one if we
could only get at it.
[880] Much has been written about the part of the Fates
in the _Aeneid_ and their relation to Jupiter. See
Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 286 foll.; Glover,
_Studies in Virgil_, 202 and 277 foll. I may be allowed
to refer also to my _Social Life at Rome in the Age of
Cicero_, p. 342 foll.
[881] _Aen._ i. 257 foll., vi. 756 foll., viii. 615
foll.
[882] _Suggestions preliminary to a Study of the
Aeneid_, p. 36.
[883] It is not likely to strike us unless we read the
whole _Aeneid_ through, without distracting our minds
with other reading, and this few of us do. I did it some
ten years ago; before that the development of character
had not dawned on me fully. I later on found it shortly
but clearly set forth in Heinze's _Vergils epische
Technik_, p. 266 foll.; and this caused me to read the
poem through once more, with the result that I became
confirmed in my view, and read a paper on the subject
to the Oxford Philological Society, which I have in part
embodied in this lecture.
[884] This is dwelt on in _Social Life at Rome in the
Age of Cicero_, p. 124 foll.
[885] _De Republica_, vi. 15.
[886] It may be as well to note here that the actual
representation of God in the _Aeneid_ is its weakest
point. It was an epic poem, and could not dispense with
the Homeric machinery: hence Jupiter is practically the
representative of the Stoic all-pervading deity, with
the Fates behind him. But it is not unlikely that Virgil
may thus have actually helped to make the way clear for
a nobler monotheistic idea by damaging Jupiter in the
course of this treatment; see _Social Life at Rome in
the Age of Cicero_, p. 341 foll.
[887] On the Homeric Aeneas there are some good remarks
in Boissier's _Nouvelles Promenades
archaeologiques_ (_Horace et Virgile_), p. 130
foll. Of all the Homeric heroes he seems to come
nearest, though but slightly sketched, to the Roman
ideal of heroism.
[888] Heinze, _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 17.
[889] I should be disposed to consider this passage as
decisive of the point, but that it immediately follows
upon the doubtful lines 567-588, in which Aeneas is
tempted in his mad fury to slay Helen; and if those
lines are not Virgil's, we have not sufficient
explanation of the rebuke which Venus here administers
to her son. On the other hand, if they were really
Virgil's, and omitted (as Servius declares) by the
original editors Tucca and Varius, we should have a
convincing proof that the poet meant his hero, in these
terrible scenes, to come so short of the true Roman
heroic type as to be capable of slaying a woman in cold
blood, and while a suppliant at an altar of the gods.
Into this much-disputed question I must not go farther,
except to note that while Heinze is absolutely confident
that Virgil never wrote these lines, the editor of the
new Oxford text of Virgil is equally certain that he
did. My opinion is of no value on such a point; but I am
disposed to agree with Mr. Hirtzel that "versus valde
Vergilianos, ab optimis codicibus omissos, iniuria
obleverunt Tucca et Varius." They are certainly in
keeping with the picture of Aeneas' _impotentia_ which
is generally suggested in Book ii. If it should be
argued that this _impotentia_, _i.e._ want of
self-control, is only put into the mouth of Aeneas in
order to heighten the effect of his stirring narrative,
it will be well to remember the remonstrances of Venus,
which make such a hypothesis impossible.
[890] _Op. cit._ p. 231.
[891] _Vergils epische Technik_, p. 113 foll.
[892] The original story was, that unable to escape from
an enforced marriage with Iarbas, she killed herself to
mark her unflinching faithfulness to her first husband
Sicharbas. Servius quotes Varro as stating that it was
not Dido, but Anna who committed suicide for love of
Aeneas (on _Aen._ iv. 682); and as Varro died before the
Aeneid was begun, this may be taken as proving that
Virgil's version of the love-story was not his own
invention. But it is quite possible that Servius here
only means that Varro's version differed in this point
from that which the poet soon afterwards adopted; it may
be that the story in the poem is thus practically his
own.
[893] _Op. cit._ p. 116.
[894] _Ancient Lives of Vergil_, Clarendon Press, 1879.
[895] The critics have, I think, been weaker in dealing
with the fifth book than with any of the others. Prof.
Tyrrell is too violent in his contempt for it to admit
of quotation here. Heinze has some good and acute
remarks on Virgil's motive in placing the book where it
is, but seems to me to miss the real importance of it
(_op. cit._ 140 foll.). Even Boissier, whose delightful
account of the scenery of Eryx should be read by every
one who would appreciate this book (_op. cit._ p. 232),
goes so far as to say that it is the one book with which
we feel we might easily dispense so far as the story is
concerned.
[896] _Roman Festivals_, p. 307.
[897] _Op. cit._ p. 270.
[898] _Commentary on Dante's Divina Commedia_, pp. 615
foll. I am indebted for this reference to Stewart's
_Myths of Plato_, p. 367.
[899] Nettleship remarked most truly that there is no
better way of appreciating the heroic Aeneas of these
last books than by studying carefully the early part of
the eleventh.
LECTURE XIX
THE AUGUSTAN REVIVAL
It is a long descent from the inspiring idealism of Virgil to the cool,
tactical attempt of Augustus to revive the outward forms of the old
religion. It seems strange that two men so different in character and
upbringing should have been working in the same years in the same
direction, yet on planes so far apart. How far the two were directly
connected in their work we cannot know for certain. It is said that the
subject of the Aeneid was suggested to Virgil by Augustus, and it is
quite possible that this may be true; but it by no means follows from
this that the inspiration of the poem came from any other source but
Virgil's own thought and feeling. We also know that Augustus from the
first appreciated the Aeneid, and that he saved it for all time; but it
is by no means clear that it inspired him in his efforts towards moral
and religious regeneration. Perhaps the truth is that both were moved by
the wave of mingled depression and hope that swept over Italy for some
years after the death of Julius, and that each used his experience in
his own way and according to his opportunities. They had at least this
in common, that they utilised the past to encourage the present age, and
that by filling old forms and names with new meaning they set men's
minds upon thinking of the future.[900]
Yet the revival of the State religion by Augustus is at once the most
remarkable event in the history of the Roman religion, and one almost
unique in religious history. I have repeatedly spoken of that State
religion as hypnotised or paralysed, meaning that the belief in the
efficacy of the old cults had passed away among the educated classes,
that the mongrel city populace had long been accustomed to scoff at the
old deities, and that the outward practice of religion had been allowed
to decay. To us, then, it may seem almost impossible that the practice,
and to some extent also the belief, should be capable of resuscitation
at the will of a single individual, even if that individual represented
the best interests and the collective wisdom of the State. For it is
impossible to deny that this resuscitation was real; that both _pax
deorum_ and _ius divinum_ became once more terms of force and meaning.
Beset as it was by at least three formidable enemies, which tended to
destroy it even while they fed on it, like parasites in the animal or
vegetable world feeding on their hosts,--the rationalising philosophy of
syncretism, the worship of the Caesars, and the new Oriental cults,--the
old religion continued to exist for at least three centuries in outward
form, and to some extent in popular belief.
We must remember the tenacious conservatism of the Roman mind: the
emotional stimulus of the age of depression and despair which preceded
this revival: and the conscientious care with which the successors of
Augustus, Tiberius in particular, carried out his religious policy.[901]
Then as we become more familiar with the Corpus of inscriptions and the
writings of the early Christian fathers, we begin to appreciate the fact
that the natural and inherited religion of a people cannot altogether
die, and that to describe this old Roman religion as _dead_ is to use
too strong a word. The votive inscriptions of the Empire show us
overwhelming proof of surviving belief in the great deities of the olden
time, and of the care taken of their temples. Antoninus Pius is honoured
"ob insignem erga caerimonias publicas curam et religionem."[902] Marcus
Aurelius himself did not hesitate in times of public distress to put in
action the whole apparatus of the old religion.[903] Constantius in A.D.
329 was shown round the temples when he visited Rome for the first time,
and in spite of his Christianity took a curious interest in them.[904]
That the private worship, too, went on into the fourth century we know
from the Theodosian code, where in the interest of Christianity the
worship of Lares Penates and Genius is strictly forbidden.[905] Again,
the constant ridicule with which the Christian writers speak of the
_minutiae_ of the heathen worship makes it quite plain that they knew it
as actually existing, and not merely from books like those of Varro.
They do not so much attack the Oriental religions of their time as the
genuine old Roman cults; more especially is this the case with St.
Augustine, from whose _de Civitate Dei_ we have learnt so much about the
latter. The very necessity under which the leaders of Christianity
found themselves of suiting their own religious character, and in some
ways even their own ceremonies, to the habits and prejudices of the
pagans, tells the same story. But the question how far Latin
Christianity was indebted to the religion of the Romans must be
postponed to my last lecture; I have said enough to indicate in which
direction we must go for evidence that the work of Augustus was not in
vain, that it gave fresh stimulus to a plant that still had some life in
it.
If, then, the Augustan revival was not a mere sham, but had its measure
of real success, how are we to account for this? I think the explanation
is not really difficult, if we bring to bear upon the problem what we
have learnt from the beginning about the religious experience of the
Romans. Let us note that Augustus troubled himself little about the
later political developments of religion, which we have lately been
examining,--about pontifices, augurs, and Sibylline books; these
institutions, which had been so much used in the republican period for
political and party purposes, it was rather his interest to keep in the
background. But in one way or another he must have grasped the
fundamental idea of the old Roman worship, that the prosperity and the
fertility of man, and of his flocks and herds and crops on the farm, and
the prosperity and fertility of the citizen within the city itself,
equally depended on the dutiful attention (_pietas_) paid to the divine
beings who had taken up their abode in farm or city.[906] The best
expression of this idea in words is _pax deorum_,--the right relation
between man and the various manifestations of the Power,--and the
machinery by which it was secured was the _ius divinum_.[907] We shall
not be far wrong if we say that it was Augustus' aim to re-establish the
_pax_ by means of the _ius_; but if we wished to explain the matter to
some one who has not been trained in these technical terms, it would be
better to say that he appealed to a deeply-rooted idea in the popular
mind,--the idea that unless the divine inhabitants were properly and
continually propitiated, they would not do their part in supporting the
human inhabitants in all their doings and interests. This popular
conviction he deliberately determined to use as his chief political
lever.