FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.
I.
The motives and purpose influencing Virgil to undertake the composition of
the Aeneid are to be sought partly in his own literary position, partly in
the state of public feeling at the time when he commenced his task, and
partly in the direction given to his genius by the personal influence of
Augustus. As the author of the Georgics he had established his position as
the foremost poetic artist of his time. He had achieved a great success in
a great and serious undertaking. He had entered into competition with
Greek poets of acknowledged reputation, and had surpassed them in their
own province. He had accomplished all that could be accomplished by him as
the poet of the peaceful charm of country life. But while in his two
earlier works he limits himself to that field assigned to him by
Horace,—that over which the ‘gaudentes rure Camenae’ presided,—the
stirring of a larger ambition is observable in both poems:—
Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae:
and again:—
Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora(453).
He had yet to find a fuller expression for his sympathy with his age,
which had deepened with the deepening significance of the times, and for
that interest in the contemplation of human life which becomes the
dominant influence in all great poets whose faculty ripens with advancing
years. He might still aspire to be the Homer, as he had proved himself to
be the Theocritus and the Hesiod of his country. The rudeness of the work
of Ennius, the limited and temporary scope of the works of Varius—his only
competitor in epic song,—left that place still unappropriated. Virgil’s
whole previous career prepared him to be the author of a poem of sustained
elevation and elaborate workmanship. The composition of the Georgics had
trained his faculty of continuous exposition and of massing together a
great variety of details towards a common end. It had given him a perfect
mastery over the only vehicle suitable to the dignity of epic poetry. He
had indeed still to put forth untried capacities—the faculties of dealing
with the passions and movement of human life as he had dealt with the
sentiment and movement of Nature, of expressing thought and feeling
dramatically and oratorically, and of imparting living interest to the
actions and fortunes of imaginary personages. But he was now in the
maturity of his powers. He had long lived with the single purpose of
perfecting himself in art and knowledge. He had no other ambition but to
produce some great work, which should perpetuate his own fame, and be a
monument of his country’s greatness.
The completion of the Georgics and the first conception of the Aeneid
coincided in point of time with the event which not only established a
sense of security in the room of the long strain of alarm and anxiety and
a sense of national unity in the room of internecine strife in the Roman
world, but which, to those looking back upon it after nineteen centuries,
appears to be one of the most critical turning-points in all history. The
enthusiasm of the moment found expression by the voice of Horace:—
Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus.
But Virgil represents more truly the deeper tendencies of his age than the
poet who has most faithfully painted its social aspects. He looks beyond
the temporary triumph and sense of relief, and sees in the victory of
Actium the culminating point of all the past history of Rome and the
starting point of a greater future. There had been no time since the final
defeat of Hannibal so calculated to re-awaken the sense of national life,
of the mission to subdue and govern the world assigned to Rome, and of the
divine guardianship of which she was the object. As the joy of a great
success had found a representative voice in Ennius in the age when the
State, relieved from all overwhelming danger, started on its career of
foreign conquest, so it found as deep and true a voice in Virgil at the
time when the relief, if not from as imminent a danger, yet certainly from
a much longer strain of anxiety, left Rome free to consolidate her many
conquests into a vast and orderly Empire.
In both the Eclogues and Georgics it was seen that Virgil allows his
genius to be in some measure directed by others in the choice of his
subjects, while he follows his own judgment in his mode of treating them.
In the earlier poems he acknowledges the direction given to him both by
Varus and by Pollio,—
Non iniussa cano—
Accipe iussis
Carmina coepta tuis,—
while at the same time he excuses himself from directly celebrating their
actions. In the Georgics he describes his task as being commanded by
Maecenas—‘tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa.’ The desire of Augustus,
whether openly expressed or not, to commemorate his success and to add
lustre to his rule by associating them with the noblest art of his age,
must have acted with more imperious urgency on the will of Virgil than the
wishes of any of his earlier patrons. His patriotic and personal feeling
to the saviour of the State and his own benefactor must have made the task
imposed on him a service of love as well as of obligation. But in
undertaking this task he desired to make it subservient to the purpose of
producing a work which should emulate the greatest poetical works of the
Greeks, and which should, at the same time, be a true symbol of Rome at
the zenith of her fortunes.
Virgil had now found in his own age a motive for the composition of that
epic poem which it had been his boyish ambition to attempt,—
Cum canerem reges et proelia.
He could appeal as Ennius, or even as Homer had done, to hearers animated
by the same feeling which moved himself. The two great conditions of a
work of art which should gain the ear of the world immediately, and which
should interest it permanently, were prepared for him in the enthusiasm of
the moment, and in the enduring interest attaching to the career of Rome.
His highly-trained faculty, already proved and exercised in other works,
was a guarantee for the artistic execution of any design which he should
undertake. But two questions remained for him to solve,—what form should
his epic poem assume? should he follow absolutely the precedent of Homer,
or of Ennius, or endeavour to surpass the contemporary panegyrists like
Varius by a direct celebration of the events of his age? And if he adopted
the Homeric type, what subject should he adopt so as to impart the
interest of personal fortunes and human character to a poem the inspiring
motive of which was the national idea?
The problem which Virgil set before himself was really one altogether new
in literature. The Alexandrian Age had endeavoured to revive an interest
in the heroic adventure of early or mythical times. It had recognised the
principle that this distant background was essential to a poem of heroic
action, and that events of contemporary or recent history were not capable
of epic treatment. But it had not discerned the necessary supplement to
that principle, that if such a poem, on a large scale, is to gain a
permanent place in literature, it must bear some immediate relation to the
age in which it is written, and be associated with some ethical and
religious truths or some political cause of vital importance to the world.
The epic poet of a cultivated age can maintain his place as a great artist
only by being something more than an artist. He must feel more strongly
than others, and give expression to the deepest tendencies of his own
time. His subject must be charged with the force of the present, and not
be mere material for the exercise of his imitative faculty. Virgil might,
merely as an artist, have easily surpassed the Jason of Varro, or the
Thebaid of Statius; but no technical skill in form, diction, and rhythm
could have given to his treatment of such subjects the immediate
attraction or the enduring spell which belongs to the Aeneid.
Both Ennius and Naevius had set the example of connecting a continuous
narrative of the events of their own time with the mythical glories and
the traditional history of Rome. And the Introduction to the third Georgic
indicates that some idea of this kind at one time hovered before the
imagination of Virgil. But while moved by the same patriotic impulses as
these older poets, Virgil must have felt as strongly as Horace did that
they were examples to be avoided in the choice of form and mode of
treatment. He and Horace acknowledged the Greeks alone as their masters in
art. He aspires not only to surpass Ennius and Naevius in the office they
fulfilled, but to enter into rivalry with Homer,—to perform for the Romans
of the Augustan Age a work analogous to that which Homer performed for the
Greeks of his age. To do this, it was necessary to select some single
heroic action from the cycle of mythical events, and to connect that with
the whole story of Rome and Italy and with the events of the Augustan Age.
The action had in some way to illustrate or symbolise the thoughts,
memories, and hopes with which public feeling was identified at the time
when the poem was written. Thus the original motive of the Virgilian epic
was essentially different from that of the Homeric poems. The Iliad and
the Odyssey have their origin in the pure epic impulse. The germ of the
poems is the story; their purpose is to satisfy the curiosity felt in
human action and character. The ‘wrath of Achilles,’ the ‘return of
Odysseus,’ are, as they profess to be, the primary sources of interest in
the poems founded on them; the representative character of the poems, like
the representative character of Shakspeare’s historical dramas, is
accidental and undesigned. The germ of the Aeneid, on the other hand, is
to be sought in the national idea and sentiment, in the imperial position
of Rome, in her marvellous destiny, and in its culmination in the Augustan
Age. The actions and sufferings of the characters that play their part in
the poem were to be only secondary objects of interest; the primary object
was to be found in the race to whose future career these actions and
sufferings were the appointed means. The real key-note to the poem is not
the ‘Arma virumque’ with which it opens, but the ‘Tantae molis erat
Romanam condere gentem(454)’ with which the exordium closes. The choice
and conduct of the action were the mechanical difficulties to be overcome
by the poet, not the inspiring motives of his genius. This is the main
cause of the comparative tameness of the Aeneid in point of human
interest. Actors and action did not spring out of the spontaneous movement
of the imagination, but were chosen by a refined calculation to fulfil the
end which Virgil had in view. What Aeneas and his followers want in
personal interest, is supposed to accrue to them as instruments in the
hands of destiny. A new type of epic poetry is thus realised. The Iliad
and the Odyssey are essentially poems of personal, the Aeneid is the epic
of national fortunes.
II.
Had Virgil’s sole object been to write a national epic which should
satisfy popular sentiment, we can imagine several reasons why the tale of
Romulus should have been chosen as its subject in preference to that of
Aeneas. Though the traditional account of the founder of the city owes
some of its features to Greek invention, yet it has a much more _naïve_
and indigenous character than that of the Trojan settlement in Latium. It
was more firmly rooted in the popular mind. It was still celebrated, as we
learn from Dionysius, in national hymns. It had been commemorated in a
famous work of art, the bronze she-wolf still extant, at a time antecedent
to the origin of Roman literature. It formed the chief subject of the
first book of the Annals of Ennius, which, as dealing with the mythical
portion of his theme, seems to have had more of an epic character than the
later books. It was also a subject which by its relation to famous
localities and memorials of the past,—such as the oldest city-wall, the
Ruminal fig-tree, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the Palatine and Aventine
hills,—and with the religious and social organisation of the State,
admitted easily of being connected with the present time. It might have
been so treated as to magnify the glory of the Emperor, who desired to be
regarded as the second founder of the city, and is said to have debated
whether he should not assume the title of Romulus, before deciding on
taking that of Augustus. A poet of bolder and more original invention, and
one more capable of sympathising with the purely martial characteristics
of his hero, might have been attracted by this story of indigenous growth
rather than by the exotic legend on which Virgil has bestowed such
enduring life.
That legend seems, at first sight, to fail in the elements both of
national and human interest. It was mainly of Greek invention. It seems to
have been received by the Romans at a later stage in their development
than that in which religious or legendary beliefs strike deep root in the
popular imagination. It existed in vague and indistinct shape, and was
associated with no marked individuality of personages or incidents. It was
of composite growth, made up of many incongruous elements, the product
rather of antiquarian learning and reflexion than of creative imagination.
The Greek germ out of which the legend arose, and the acceptance of this
explanation of their origin by the Romans from the beginning of their
literary history, are clearly ascertained. But there is great uncertainty
as to the connecting link between these two stages in the development of
the legend. The continuance of the line of Aeneas after the destruction of
Troy is announced by the mouth of Poseidon in the twentieth Book of the
Iliad (307–308):—
Νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται(455).
If an historical character may be assigned to any passages in the Iliad,
it may be presumed that the author of these verses knew of a line of
princes ruling over some remnant of the Trojans, and claiming Aeneas as
their ancestor. But these verses do not imply any removal to a distant
settlement. The Cyclic poet, Arctinus, next spoke of Aeneas as retiring to
Mount Ida and founding a city there. The earliest traditions accordingly
point to the Troad as the scene of the rule of his descendants: other
traditions however, which must have been known to Virgil, brought him to
Thrace, to various places on the Aegean, and to Buthrotum in Epirus. The
origin of these traditions is believed to be the connexion of Aeneas with
the worship of Aphrodite, which was widely spread over the Mediterranean,
probably as a survival of early Phoenician settlements. This connexion in
worship is supposed to have arisen from a confusion between the Trojan
hero and the title Αἴνεας, denoting one of the attributes of the goddess.
But the writer who first gave the idea of a Trojan settlement in Italy is
said to have been Stesichorus, the lyrical poet of Himera in Sicily, who
flourished about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. One of the
representations in the Ilian table in the Capitoline Museum exhibits the
figures of Aeneas, of his son Ascanius, of the trumpeter Misenus, and of
Anchises carrying the sacred images, just as they are on the point of
embarking on board their ship. The following inscription is written under
these figures,—
Αἰνήας σὺν τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀπαίρων εἰς τὴν Ἑσπερίαν(456),—
and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Stesichorus is quoted as the authority for the
representation(457). The motive actuating Stesichorus was probably the
desire to connect the newly-discovered localities in Italy and Sicily with
the cycle of Homeric narrative. But Stesichorus apparently knew nothing of
a Trojan settlement in Latium; Siris in Oenotria seems to have been fixed
on by him as the place of refuge for the Palladium and the Penates of
Troy. It was after the destruction of Siris that the fancy of the Greeks
fixed on Lavinium, where there was a worship similar to that established
at Siris, as the ultimate resting-place of Aeneas. The first definite
statement connecting Rome with Troy was made by Cephalon of Gergis in the
Troad (about 350 B.C.), who ascribed the foundation of the city to Romus a
son of Aeneas. In the course of the next half century this appears to have
become the prevailing belief among the Greeks, whose attention was now
attracted by the growing ascendency of Rome in Italy. About the beginning
of the third century Timaeus, the Sicilian historian, is said to have
shaped the legend into the form adopted by Naevius(458).
It is obvious that there is a great gap in our knowledge of the stages in
the development of the legend between Stesichorus, a poet of the sixth
century, and Cephalon, an historian of the fourth. And the question
suggests itself whether, in the interval between them, the Romans
themselves had accepted any similar explanation of their origin. The early
connexion between Rome and Cumae renders it not impossible that the Romans
had formed some idea of their Trojan descent, before the wars of Pyrrhus
brought them into more intimate connexion with the Greeks. It was by the
Greek colonists of Cumae that the Isles of the Sirens, the Kingdom of the
Laestrygones, and the abode of Circe were localised near Sorrento, the
ancient town of Formiae, and the promontory of Circeii. It seems probable
that to them also may be ascribed the mythical connexion established
between the promontories of Caieta, Misenum, and Palinurum, in their own
immediate neighbourhood, with the names of the household or followers of
Aeneas. The mythical traditions which assign a Greek origin to various
important Latin towns, such as Tibur, Tusculum, Praeneste, and to the
earliest settlement on the Palatine Hill, probably owe their invention to
the same source. Alba Longa, as the chief city of the old Latin
confederacy, must have been an object of greater interest to the Cumaeans
than Tibur or Tusculum, and if we could be sure of the existence of the
belief in the Trojan settlement in Latium before the destruction of Alba,
we might infer with probability the great antiquity of the legend which
ascribed the foundation of that town to the son of Aeneas. This belief
might easily have passed to Rome; and Cephalon may have received it, in a
somewhat distorted form, from native sources. But it is impossible to take
any step in these conjectures without feeling the extreme uncertainty of
our ground. We really know nothing of the acceptance of this account of
their origin by the Romans before the time of the First Punic War; it is
not easily reconcileable with the indigenous belief which certainly struck
much deeper roots in the national history: the story as told by Cephalon
appears to exclude the connexion between Rome and Alba as an intermediate
link in that between Rome and Troy. It seems, on the whole, most probable
that the story on which the Aeneid is founded is not only a Greek
invention, but is an invention of a late and prosaic time, and was not
known to the Romans before the date of their wars with Pyrrhus(459).
But besides the foreign and prosaic origin of the story, there is great
vagueness and indistinctness in the incidents and personages connected
with it. Homer indeed has supplied a definite, though not a marked,
outline to the character of Aeneas; and Stesichorus, in shaping the family
group of Anchises, Aeneas, and Ascanius flying from Troy with their
household-gods, may have suggested to Virgil the leading characteristic of
his hero. But these were nearly all the elements in the legend derived
from primitive poetical sources. There was no individuality of character
attaching to any of the followers of Aeneas, nor any incident due to early
imaginative invention associated with the dim tradition of his wanderings.
The story, as finally cast into shape by Virgil, is one of composite
growth, made up of many heterogeneous elements,—some supplied by poetical
invention and the impressions of a primitive time, some the products of
prosaic rationalism and the antiquarian fancies of a literary age, some
suggested by Greek mythology and others by the ritual observances of Rome,
some directly borrowed from the Homeric poems, others derived from the
traditions of ancient Italy. It need hardly surprise us if out of such
indistinct and heterogeneous materials Virgil failed to shape a thoroughly
consistent and lifelike representation of human action and character.
But, on other grounds, the judgment of Virgil may be justified in the
choice of this legend, vague, composite, and unpoetical as it was, as most
adapted to his own genius and to the purpose of his epic poem. It was the
only subject, of national significance, connected with the Homeric cycle
of events. Not only the epic and dramatic poets of Greece, but the Roman
tragic poets had recognised the heroic legends of Greece as the legitimate
material for those forms of poetry which aimed at representing human
action and character with seriousness and dignity. The personages and
events connected with the Trojan War had especially been made familiar to
the Romans by the works of their early dramatic poets. The Romans
themselves had no mythical back-ground, rich in poetic associations, to
their own history. It was impossible for a poet of a literary age to
create this back-ground. But it was possible for him to give substance and
reality to the shadowy connexion, existing in legend and in the works of
older national writers, between the beginnings of Roman history and this
distant region of poetry and romance. Virgil’s imagination, as was seen in
the examination of the Georgics, was peculiarly susceptible of the
impressions produced by a remote antiquity and by old poetic associations.
If he was deficient in spontaneous invention, he possessed a remarkable
power of giving new life to the creations of earlier times. Next to the
invention of a new world of wonder and adventure,—a work most difficult of
accomplishment in a late stage of human development,—the most attractive
aim which an epic poet could set before himself was that of reviving,
under new conditions and with an immediate reference to the feelings of
his contemporaries, an image of the old Homeric life. The subject of the
wanderings and subsequent adventures of Aeneas enabled Virgil to tell
again, and from a new point of view, the old story of the fall of Troy, to
present a modern version of the sea-adventures of the Odyssey, and to
awaken the interest of a nation of soldiers in the martial passions of an
earlier and ruder age.
Although there is no evidence that the connexion of Rome with Troy had
sunk deeply into the popular mind before the time of Virgil, yet it had
been recognised in official acts of the State for more than two centuries.
So early as the First Punic War the Acarnanians had applied to the Romans
for assistance against the Aetolians, on the ground that their ancestors
alone among the Greeks had taken no part in the Trojan War. The Senate had
offered alliance and friendship to King Seleucus on condition of his
exempting the people of Ilium, as kinsmen of the Romans, from
tribute(460). T. Flamininus, in declaring all the Greeks free after the
conclusion of the Second Macedonian War, described himself as one of the
Aeneadae(461). In the Second Punic War, the prophet Marcius uses the word
Troiugena as an epithet of the Romans:—
Amnem Troiugena Cannam Romane fuge(462).
So early as the time of Timaeus, i.e. before the First Punic War, the
connexion of Aeneas with the worship of the Penates at Lavinium had been
recognised. His own worship also established itself in the religion of the
State by his identification with Jupiter Indiges, who seems to have had a
temple on the banks of the river Numicius. Many families among the Roman
aristocracy, as for instance the Cluentii, Sergii, Memmii(463), claimed to
be descended from the followers of Aeneas. From the time of Naevius this
account of the origin of the Romans had been the accepted belief in all
Latin literature. Ennius begins his annals from the date
Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo(464).
The poet Accius had written a tragedy called Aeneadae. The Roman annalists
started with the tradition as an accepted fact. Thus Livy in reference to
this belief uses the expression ‘it is sufficiently established.’ The
great antiquarian Varro wrote a treatise on the Trojan origin of Roman
families. Cicero in his Verrine orations (act. ii. 4. 33) speaks of the
relationship of the people of Segesta in Sicily, which claimed to be a
colony founded by Aeneas, with the Roman people. Even Lucretius, who
stands apart from the general traditional beliefs of his countrymen,
begins his poem with the words ‘Aeneadum genetrix.’ Virgil’s poem appealed
not to the popular taste, but to the national, religious, aristocratic,
and literary sympathies of the cultivated classes. The legend of Aeneas,
if less ancient and less popular, assigned a more august origin to the
Roman race than the tale of the birth of Romulus:—
Ab Iove principium generis, Iove Dardana pubes
Gaudet avo; rex ipse Iovis de gente suprema
Troius Aeneas, etc(465).
These considerations may have recommended this subject to Virgil, as the
most suitable symbol of the idea of Rome, from both a national and
religious point of view. But the circumstance which must have absolutely
determined his choice was the claim which the Julian gens made to be
directly descended from Iulus, Aeneas, and the goddess Venus. This claim
Virgil had already acknowledged in the line (Ecl. ix. 47),
Ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum,
and again (Georg. i. 28),
cingens materna tempora myrto(466).
Even Julius Caesar had shown the importance which he attached to it by
taking the words ‘Venus Victrix’ for his watchword at the battle of
Pharsalia. A greater tribute was paid to the qualities of Augustus, a more
august consecration was conferred on his rule, by representing that rule
as a prominent object in the counsels of Heaven a thousand years before
its actual establishment, than could have been bestowed on him by the most
detailed and ornate account of his actual successes. The personal, as
distinct from the national motive of the poem, is revealed in the
prophetic lines attributed to Jupiter,
Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo(467).
While the vagueness of the tradition and the absence of definite incident
and individual character associated with it were conditions unfavourable
to novelty and vividness of representation, yet they allowed to Virgil
great latitude in carrying out his purpose of giving body and substance to
all that unknown and shadowy past, which survived only in names, customs,
and ceremonies. He was not limited to any particular district or period.
His plan enabled him to embrace in the compass of his epic the dim
traditions connected with the ‘origins’ of the famous towns and tribes of
Central Italy and of several of the great Roman families; it enabled him
to imagine the primitive state of places which had a world-wide celebrity
in his own time; to invoke, as an element of poetic interest, the
veneration paid to the ancient rites of religion; and to cast an
idealising light on events, personages, families, or customs familiar to
his own age, by associating them with the sentiment of an immemorial past.
One great excellence of the Aeneid, as a representative poem, is the large
prospect of Roman and Italian life which it opens up before us. The vague
outlines of the story which he followed enabled Virgil to enlarge his
conception with an ampler content of local and national material, than if
he had been called upon to recast a more definite and more vital
tradition. The want of individuality in the personages of his story
justified him in exhibiting their character in accordance with his own
ideal; in conceiving of Aeneas as the type of antique piety combined with
modern humanity, and of Turnus as the type of the haughty and martial
spirit, animating the old Italian race.
Even the composite character of the legend and the heterogeneous elements
out of which it was composed, if unfavourable to unity of impression and
simplicity of execution, conduced to the poet’s purpose of concentrating
in one representation, of a Roman vastness of compass, whatever might
enhance and illustrate the greatness of Rome and of its ruler. The Rome of
the Augustan Age no longer exhibited the political and religious unity of
an old Italian republic; it was expanding its limits so as to embrace in a
much wider unity the various nations that had played their part in the
past history of the world. As the glory and wealth of Asia, Greece,
Carthage, etc. had all gone to swell the glory and wealth of Rome, so all
the traditions, historic memories, and literary art of the past were to be
made tributary to her national representative poem. The first great epic
poem of the ancient world is buoyant with the promise of the mighty life
which was to be; the last great epic is weighty with the accumulated
experience of all that had been. The stream of epic poetry shows no longer
the jubilant force and purity of waters—‘exercita cursu flumina’—which
rise in the high mountain-land separating barbarism from civilisation; it
moves more slowly and less clearly through more level and cultivated
districts; its volume is swollen and its weight increased by tributaries
which have never known the ‘bright speed(468)’ of its nobler sources.
III.
_Composite character of the Aeneid illustrated by an examination of the
poem._
These considerations lead to the conclusion that the legend of Aeneas was
better suited than any other which he could have selected for the two
objects which Virgil had before his mind in the composition of the Aeneid;
first, that of writing a poem representative and commemorative of Rome and
of his own epoch, in the spirit in which some of the great architectural
works of the Empire, such as the Column of Trajan, the Arches of Titus and
of Constantine, were erected; and, secondly, that of writing an imitative
epic of action, manners, and character which should afford to his
countrymen an interest analogous to that which the Greeks derived from the
Homeric poems. The knowledge necessary to enable him to fulfil the first
purpose was contained in such works as the ceremonial books of the various
Priestly Colleges, the ‘Origines’ of Cato, the antiquarian treatise of
Varro, and perhaps the ‘Annales’ and ‘Fasti(469)’ which preserved the
record of national and family traditions. In giving life to these dry
materials his mind was animated by the spectacle of Rome, and the thought
of her wide empire, her genius, character, and history; by the visible
survivals of ancient ceremonies and memorials of the past; by the sight of
the great natural features of the land, of old Italian towns of historic
renown, or, where they had disappeared, of the localities still marked by
their name:—
locus Ardea quondam
Dictus avis; et nunc magnum tenet Ardea nomen(470).
As poetic sources of inspiration for this part of his task Virgil had the
national epic poems of Naevius and Ennius; and of both of these he made
use: of the first, in his account of the storm which drives Aeneas to
Carthage and of his entertainment there by the Carthaginian Queen; of the
second, by his use of many half-lines and expressions which give an
antique and stately character to the description of incidents or the
expression of sentiment. For Virgil’s other purpose, his chief materials
were derived from his intimate familiarity with the two great Homeric
poems: but he availed himself also of incidents contained in the Homeric
Hymns, in the Cyclic poems, in the Greek Tragedies, as for instance the
lost Laocoon of Sophocles, and in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.
His own experience of life, and still more the insight which his own
nature afforded him into various moods of passion, affection, and
chivalrous emotion, enabled him to impart novelty and individuality to the
materials which he derived from these foreign and ancient sources.
A minute examination of the various books of the poem would bring out
clearly that these two objects, that of raising a monument to the glory of
Rome and of Augustus, and that of writing an imitative epic reproducing
some image of the manners and life of the heroic age, were present to the
mind of Virgil through his whole undertaking. It will be sufficient in
order to show this two-fold purpose to look at the first book, and at some
of the more prominent incidents in the later books.
In the opening lines of the poem—
Arma virumque ... multa quoque et bello passus—
we find, as in the Odyssey—
Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε ... πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν—
an announcement of a poem of heroic adventure, of vicissitudes and
suffering by sea and land, determined by the personal agency of some of
the old Olympian gods (‘vi superum’). The scope of the Aeneid as explained
in these lines is however wider than that of the Odyssey, as embracing the
warlike action of the Iliad as well as a tale of sea-adventure. But in the
statement of the motive of the poems a more essential difference between
the two epics is apparent. The wanderings of Odysseus have no other aim
than a safe return for himself and his companions. He acts from the
simplest and most elemental of human instincts and affections, the love of
life and of home,—
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.
Aeneas, like Odysseus, starts on his adventures after the capture of
Troy,—
Troiae qui primus ab oris—
ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν
but he starts, ‘fato profugus,’ on no accidental adventure, but on an
enterprise with far-reaching consequences, determined by a Divine purpose.
While actively engaged in the personal object of finding a safe settlement
for himself and his followers in Italy, he is at the same time a passive
instrument in the hands of Providence, laying the foundation, both secular
and religious, of the future government of the world:—
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae(471).
The difference in character of the two epics is perceptible in the very
sound of their opening lines. While the Latin moves with stateliness and
dignity and is weighty with the burden of the whole world’s history, the
Greek is fluent and buoyant with the spirit and life of the ‘novitas
florida mundi.’ The greatness of Aeneas is a kind of ‘imputed’ greatness;
he is important to the world as bearing the weight of the glory and
destiny of the future Romans—
Attolens humero famamque et fata nepotum.
Odysseus is great in the personal qualities of courage, steadfastness of
purpose and affection, loyalty to his comrades, versatility, ready
resource; but he bears with him only his own fortunes and those of the
companions of his adventure; he ends his career as he begins it, the chief
of a small island, which derives all its importance solely from its early
association with his fortunes.
The double purpose of the Aeneid, and its contrast in this respect with
the Homeric poems, is further seen in the statement of the motives
influencing the Divine beings by whose agency the action is advanced or
impeded. As in the opening paragraph Virgil had the opening lines of the
Odyssey in view, in the second, which announces the supernatural motive of
the poem—
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso—
he had in view the passage in the Iliad beginning with the line—
τίς τ’ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;
In the Iliad the supernatural cause of the action is the wrath of Apollo,
acting from the personal desire to avenge the wrong done to his priest
Chryses: in the Odyssey, it is the wrath of Poseidon acting from the
personal desire to avenge the suffering of his son whom Odysseus blinded:—
ἀλλὰ Ποσειδάων γαιήοχος ἀσκελὲς αἰεί
Κύκλωπος κεχόλωται, ὃν ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀλάωσεν(472).
The gods in both cases act from personal passion without moral purpose or
political object. So too the powers which befriend Odysseus act from
personal regard to him and acknowledgment of his wisdom and piety:—
ὃς περὶ μὲν νόον ἐστὶ βροτῶν, περὶ δ’ ἱρὰ θεοῖσιν
ἀθανάτοισιν ἔδωκε, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν(473).
In the Aeneid, Juno, by whose agency in hindering the settlement of Aeneas
in Italy the events of the poem are brought about, acts from two sets of
motives; the first bringing the action into connexion with one of the
great crises in the history of Rome, the second bringing it into connexion
with the Trojan traditions. Prominence is given to the first motive, in
the announcement of which the deadly struggle between Rome and Carthage,
‘when all men were in doubt under whose empire they should fall by land
and sea(474),’ is anticipated:—
Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni,
Karthago ...
hoc regnum dea gentibus esse,
Si _qua fata sinant_, iam tum tenditque fovetque.
Progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci
Audierat, Tyrias olim quae verteret arces;
_Hinc populum late regem belloque superbum_
Venturum excidio Libyae; sic volvere Parcas(475).
In two other passages of the Aeneid this great internecine contest for the
empire of the world, which left so deep an impression on the Roman memory,
is seen foreshadowing itself, viz. in the dying denunciation and prayer of
Dido,—
Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,—
and in the speech of Jupiter in the great council of the gods in the tenth
book—a passage imitated from Ennius:—
Adveniet iustum pugnae, ne arcessite, tempus,
Cum fera Karthago Romanis arcibus olim
Exitium magnum atque Alpes inmittet apertas(476).
But to this motive are added other motives, both political and
personal,—the memory of her former enmity to Troy arising out of her love
to Argos, of the slight offered to her beauty by the judgment of Paris,
and of the occasion given to her jealousy by the honour awarded to
Ganymede:—
manet alta mente repostum
Iudicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae,
Et genus invisum et rapti Ganymedis honores(477).
These two sets of motives bring out distinctly the two-fold character of
the action of the poem, its inner relation to the future fulfilment of the
Roman destiny, its more immediate dependence on the past events forming
the subject of the Homeric poems. The prominence in Virgil’s mind of the
Roman over the Greek influences, in which his epic had its origin, is
indicated by the position and weight of the line of cardinal significance—
Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem;
just as the dominant influence under which Lucretius wrote his poem is
indicated by the position and weight of the line—
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
In entering on the detailed narrative, which forms the main body of the
poem, Virgil at once attaches himself to Homer. The action, like the
action of the Odyssey, is taken up at that stage immediately preceding the
events of most critical interest, after which it advances steadily to the
final catastrophe. The slower movement of the story in the years between
the fall of Troy and the departure from Sicily is presupposed, and, like
the adventures of Odysseus before his departure from the Isle of Calypso,
the adventures of Aeneas are subsequently narrated by the principal actor
in them. The storm which drives the Trojan fleet to the Carthaginian coast
was an incident in the epic of Naevius; but the original suggestion and
the actual description of it are due to the account of the storm raised by
Poseidon in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Juno, in availing herself of
the instrumentality of Aeolus, bribes him by a promise similar to that
made to Sleep in the fourteenth book of the Iliad. The description of the
harbour in which the Trojan ships find refuge is imitated from that of the
harbour to which the Phaeacian ship brings Odysseus; and the success of
Aeneas in the chase is suggested by two passages in the Odyssey, ix. 154
_et seq._ and x. 104 _et seq._
The speech of Aeneas (198–207) again reminds us of the ultimate object of
all the vicissitudes and dangers which he encounters:—
Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum
Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt(478).
Immediately afterwards we come upon one of the three great passages of the
poem in which the action is prophetically advanced into the Augustan Age.
These three passages (i. 223–296, vi. 756–860, viii. 626–731), like the
greater episodes of the Georgics, draw attention directly to what is the
most vital and most permanent source of interest in the Aeneid. They
serve, along with the opening lines of the poem, better than any other
passages to bring out the relation both of dependence on the Homeric epic
and of contrast with it which characterise the Virgilian epic.
The passage before us, the interview between Jupiter and Venus, owes its
original suggestion to the scene in the first book of the Iliad in which
Thetis intercedes with Zeus, to avenge the wrong done to her son. The
object of this intercession is a purely personal one; the result of it is
the whole series of events which culminates in the death of Hector. The
object which Venus claims of Jupiter is the fulfilment of his promise that
a people should arise from the blood of Teucer—
Qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent(479);
the result of her prayer is that Jupiter reveals to her not only the
immediate future of Aeneas and the founding of Lavinium and of Alba, but
the birth of Romulus, the building of Rome, the ultimate triumph of the
house of Assaracus over Pthia, Mycenae, and Argos, the peaceful reign on
earth and the final acceptance into heaven of the greatest among the
descendants of Aeneas, who is there called, not by his later title of
Augustus, but by the earlier name which he inherited from his adoptive
father—
Iulius a magno demissum nomen Iulo(480).
In this passage we note (1) Virgil’s relation to the earlier poem of
Naevius, who had sketched the outline of the scene which is here filled
up; and also the reproduction of the diction of Ennius in the passage—
Despiciens mare velivolum terrasque iacentis
Litoraque et latos populos(481);
and in this—
Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat(482);
and (2) we note a reference to the closing of the gate of Janus in the
line—
Claudentur Belli portae;
and apparently to some symbolical representation in the art of the
Augustan Age in the words which follow—
Furor impius intus,
Saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus aenis
Post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento(483).
After this digression the action proceeds according to Homeric precedents.
Mercury is sent to Dido, as Hermes is sent to Calypso in the fifth book of
the Odyssey. Then follows the meeting of Venus with Aeneas and Anchises,
the picturesque and poetical features of which scene are suggested by a
passage in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, describing the meeting of the
goddess with Anchises. The Trojan heroes pass on to Carthage concealed in
a mist as Odysseus makes his way to the city of the Phaeacians. The
pictorial representation of the events of the Trojan war on the walls of
the temple of Juno is suggested partly by the pictorial art of the
Augustan Age, and partly by the song of the bard in the eighth book of the
Odyssey, celebrating the
νεῖκος Ὀδυσσῆος καὶ Πηλείδεω Ἀχιλῆος.
So too the later banquet in the palace of Dido is suggested partly by the
feast in the hall of Alcinous, partly by the magnificence of Roman
entertainments in the Augustan Age, such as those referred to in the lines
of Lucretius—
Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.
Finally, the device by which Venus substitutes Cupid for Ascanius is
borrowed from the Argonautics of Apollonius; the introduction of the
various suitors of Dido is suggested by the part which the suitors of
Penelope play in the Odyssey; and the request of Dido to Aeneas to recount
his past adventures owes its origin to the similar request made by
Alcinous to Odysseus.
It is in the first book that Virgil adheres most closely to his Greek
guides; yet even in it we observe many traces of modern invention, which
give a new character to the representation. The thought of Italy in the
immediate future—
Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt,
Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae;
Oenotri coluere viri; nunc fama, minores
Italiam dixisse ducis de nomine gentem(484)—
and the remoter vision of the ‘altae moenia Romae’ remind us that we are
contemplating no mere recast of a Greek legend, but a great national
monument of the race which during the longest period of history has played
the greatest part in human affairs. The old gods of Olympus appear on
earth once more, and now with all the attributes of Roman state, as
‘principalities and powers’ contending for the empire of the world, and as
instruments in the hands of destiny for the furthering of the great work
which was only fully accomplished by Augustus.
In the recital of the fall of Troy, which occupies the second book, Virgil
is said by Macrobius to have adhered almost verbally(485) to the work of a
Greek poet, Pisander, the author of a poetical history of the world from
the marriage of Jupiter and Juno down to the events contemporary with the
poet himself. There seem to have been three Greek poets of that name, and
the only one of them who was likely to have treated at any length of the
events of that single night recorded in the second Aeneid is said to have
lived after the time of Virgil. It seems impossible that any earlier poet
could have assigned so much space as that demanded by the statement of
Macrobius to the personal adventures of Aeneas. We are on surer ground in
recognising the debt which Virgil owed to the account of the wooden horse
in the Odyssey, to some of the lost plays of Sophocles, which told the
tale of the treachery of Sinon and of the tragic fate of Laocoon, and to
some of the lost Cyclic poems and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Stesichorus. The
vision of Hector to Aeneas reminds us of that of Patroclus to Achilles;
but in this resemblance we recognise also the difference between the poem
founded on personal and that founded on national fortunes. The care which
summons the shade of Patroclus to the couch of his friend is the care for
his own burial; the care which brings Hector back to earth is the care for
the salvation of the sacred relics of Troy in view of the great destiny
which awaited them. There is more of human pathos in the vision of
Patroclus; more of a stately majesty in that of Hector. And as in other
passages where Virgil wishes to produce this effect, we note that he
avails himself here of the language of Ennius,—
Hei mihi, qualis erat.
So too, near the end of the book, where the shade of Creusa gives to
Aeneas the first intimation of his settlement in a western land,—
Et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva
Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Thybris(486),—
the same antique associations are appealed to(487). So also in describing
the destruction of the palace of Priam, Virgil is said to have imitated
the description by Ennius of the destruction of Alba(488). And that
feeling of ancient state and majesty with which the memory of Troy is
invested in such lines as
Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominata per annos(489),
had been first expressed in the ‘Andromache’ of the older poet.
Among the sources which Virgil used in the third book were probably the
prose accounts of the late Greek historians, who rationalised the
traditions of the various settlements of Aeneas which grew out of his
association with the worship of Aphrodite. But the whole suggestion of
sea-adventure, and still more of the incidents arising out of the visit to
the land of the Cyclops, is due to the Odyssey, while the events connected
with the landing in Thrace and in Epirus owe their origin to the Hecuba
and Andromache of Euripides. But, on the other hand, the exact
geographical knowledge displayed in it imparts a thoroughly modern
character to the book; and one passage at least (as has been shown by a
writer in the Journal of Philology)—the description of the voyage round
the eastern and southern shores of Sicily—is so minutely accurate in
detail as to give clear indication of being drawn from the personal
experience of the author. Again, the frequent mention of Italy in the
book, the speech of Helenus which announces the old traditional omen of
the white sow, the direction as to the mode of performing religious
ceremonies which the Romans should observe in all future times,—
Hac casti maneant in religione nepotes,—(490)
and the trophy raised by Aeneas on the shores of Actium, help to remind us
of the modern meaning which Virgil desired to impart to his representation
of antique manners.
The fourth book, in which Virgil deserts the guidance of Homer for that of
the Alexandrine epic, is intended to give the most passionate human, as
distinct from the pervading national, interest to the poem. But the tragic
nature of the situation arises from the clashing between natural feeling
and the great considerations of State by which the divine actors in the
drama were influenced. The death of Dido gives moreover a poetical
justification for the deadly enmity which animated the struggle between
Rome and her most dangerous antagonist. The fifth book follows the old
tradition—as old at least as the time of Thucydides—which represented
Trojan settlements as established in Sicily. The account of the foundation
of Segesta by the followers of Aeneas, and the story of the burning of the
ships by the Trojan women, may have been told by Timaeus; and it was
natural to ascribe to her son the building of the famous temple of Venus
Erycina. But the greater part of the book is occupied with an account of
the funeral games in honour of Anchises, which, with modifications to suit
the changed locality, reproduce the games which Achilles celebrated in
honour of Patroclus. But the account of these games serves the purpose of
giving some individuality to three of the most shadowy personages in the
poem by establishing their connexion with three illustrious Roman
families, and to flatter Augustus by assigning an ancient origin to the
Ludus Troiae,—a kind of bloodless tournament of noble youths exhibited in
the early years of his reign,—and also, by the invention of a fabulous
ancestor, to add distinction to the provincial family of the Atii, which
was more truly ennobled by the great personal qualities of the Emperor’s
mother, Atia.
With the landing in Italy the narrative assumes greater independence. The
various localities introduced and the traditions connected with them, the
usages or ceremonies peculiar to Italy which admit of being referred to an
immemorial past, the mere Italian names of Latinus and Turnus, Mezentius
and Camilla, are able to evoke national and sometimes modern associations.
Thus the introduction of the Cumaean Sibyl into the narrative affords the
opportunity of reminding the Romans of the importance assigned to the
Sibylline prophecies in their national counsels; and the impressive
ceremony of the opening of the gates of war enables the poet to appeal to
the patriotic impulses of his own age, in the lines—
Sive Getis inferre manu lacrimabile bellum
Hyrcanisve Arabisve parant, seu tendere ad Indos
Auroramque sequi Parthosque reposcere signa(491).
But many of the warlike incidents in the later books—as for instance the
night foray of Nisus and Euryalus, the treacherous wounding of Aeneas, the
withdrawal by supernatural agency of Turnus from the battle, the death of
Pallas and the effect which that event has on Aeneas, and the final
conflict between Turnus and Aeneas—show that Virgil was still following in
the footsteps of his original guide. The passages, however, which bring
out most clearly both this relation of Virgil to Homer and his point of
departure from him are those which give an account of the descent into
hell and describe the shield of Aeneas. The sixth book of the Aeneid owes
its existence to the eleventh book of the Odyssey: but the shadowy
conceptions of the Homeric ‘Inferno,’ suggested by the impulses of natural
curiosity and the yearnings of human affection, are enlarged and made more
definite, on the one hand, by thoughts derived from Plato, and, on the
other, by the proudest memories of Roman history, from the legends of the
Alban kings to the warlike and peaceful triumphs of the Augustan Age. The
shield of Achilles presents to the imagination the varied spectacle of
human life—sowing and reaping, a city besieged, a marriage festival, etc.;
the shield of Aeneas presents the spectacle of the most momentous crises
in the annals of Rome, culminating in the great triumph of Augustus. We
note too in the latter passage the enhancement of patriotic sentiment by
the use of the language and representation of Ennius, as at lines 630–634,
and the lesson taught of the dependence of national welfare on the
observance of religious traditions and of the duties of life sanctioned by
religion, in the lines which describe the processions of the Salii and
Luperci, and which indicate the punishment awarded to the sin of rebellion
and disloyalty in the person of Catiline, and the recognition of civic
virtue, even when exercised in defence of a losing cause, in the position
assigned to Cato in the nether world—
Secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem(492).
The Iliad and the Odyssey are thus seen to be essentially epics of human
life; the Aeneid is essentially the epic of national glory. The Iliad
indeed is the noblest monument of the greatness, as it is of the genius,
of the Greeks. And the Aeneid is much more than a monument of national
glory. It is full of pathetic situations and stirring incidents which move
our human compassion or kindle our sympathies with heroic action. But if
we ask what are the most powerful sources of interest in the Greek and in
the Roman epic respectively, the answer will be that in the first these
spring immediately out of human life; in the second they spring out of the
national fortunes. And this distinction is generally recognisable in the
art, literature, and history of the two nations. This predominance of
national interest and the presence of a large element of living modern
interest in the treatment of an ancient legend separate the Aeneid still
further from the Alexandrine epic and its later Roman imitations. The
compliance with the conditions of epic poetry, as established by Homer and
confirmed by the great law-giver of Greek criticism, equally separates it
from the rude attempts of Ennius and Naevius, and from the poems which
treat of historical subjects of a limited and temporary significance, such
as the Pharsalia of Lucan and the Henriade of Voltaire. Though Virgil may
be the most imitative, he is at the same time one of the most original
poets of antiquity. We saw that he had produced a new type of didactic
poetry. By the meaning and unity which he has imparted to his Greek,
Roman, and Italian materials through the vivifying and harmonising agency
of permanent national sentiment and of the immediate feeling of the hour,
he may be said to have created a new type of epic poetry—to have produced
a work of genius representative of his country as well as a masterpiece of
art.