THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
I.
The Aeneid, like the Annals of Ennius, is a poem inspired by national
sentiment, and expressive of the idea of Rome. But the ‘Res Romana(493),’
the growth of which Ennius witnessed and celebrated, had become greatly
extended and had assumed a new form since the epic of the Republic was
written. Yet the sentiment of national glory was essentially the same in
the age of the elder Scipio and in the age of Augustus, though in the
first it may be described as still militant, in the second as triumphant.
In each time the Romans had a firm conviction of their superiority over
all other nations, and a firm trust in the great destiny which had
attended them since their origin, and still, as they believed, awaited
them in the future. The ground on which their national self-esteem rested
was their capacity for conquest and government; the result of that
capacity was only fully visible after the empire over the world was
established.
The pride of empire is thus the most prominent mode in which the national
sentiment asserts itself in the poetry of the Augustan Age. In that series
of Odes in which the art of Horace becomes the organ of the new government
this sentiment finds expression by the mouth of the old enemy of the Roman
race, the goddess Juno:—
Horrenda late nomen in ultimas
Extendat oras, qua medius liquor
Secernit Europen ab Afro,
Qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus.
* * * *
Quicunque mundi terminus obstitit,
Hunc tanget armis, visere gestiens
Qua parte debacchentur ignes,
Qua nebulae pluviique rores(494).
And while it animates even the effeminate tones of the elegiac poets to a
more manly sound, this pride of empire is the dominant mode of patriotic
enthusiasm in the Aeneid. Thus, in the very beginning of the poem, Virgil
describes the people destined to spring from the remnant of the Trojans as
populum late regem belloque superbum.
To them Jupiter himself promises empire without limit either in time or
place:—
His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono,
Imperium sine fine dedi(495).
In the same passage he sums up their greatness in the arts of war and
peace in the line
Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam(496).
The earliest oracle given to Aeneas in the course of his wanderings
contains the promise of universal dominion:—
Hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris,
Et nati natorum et qui nascentur ab illis(497).
The sacred images of the gods who are partners of his enterprise make a
similar announcement to him:—
Nos tumidum sub te permensi classibus aequor,
Idem venturos tollemus in astra nepotes,
Imperiumque urbi dabimus(498).
In the fourth book Jupiter, who appears rather as contemplating the future
course of affairs than as actively influencing it, speaks of Aeneas in
these words:—
Sed fore, qui gravidam imperiis belloque frementem
Italiam regeret, genus alto a sanguine Troiae
Proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem(499).
In the famous passage in the sixth book the mission of Rome is summed up,
in contrast to the artistic glories of Greece, in the lines—
Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento
(Hae tibi erunt artes), pacisque inponere morem,
Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos(500).
The oracle of Faunus thus announces to Latinus the great future which
awaited the race destined to arise from the union of the Trojans and
Italians:—
Externi venient generi, qui sanguine nostrum
Nomen in astra ferant, quorumque ab stirpe nepotes
Omnia sub pedibus, qua Sol utrumque recurrens
Aspicit Oceanum, vertique regique videbunt(501).
In the ninth book Virgil for once breaks through the impersonal reserve of
the epic singer to claim for Nisus and Euryalus an eternity of fame,—
Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum
Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit(502).
In several of these passages it is not merely the pride of conquest and
dominion which is expressed, but the higher and humaner belief that the
ultimate mission of Rome is to give law and peace to the world. Thus the
initiation of Iulus into war is accompanied by the declaration put into
the mouth of Apollo—
iure omnia bella
Gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident(503).
In this way Virgil softens and humanises the idea of the Imperial State,
representing her as not only the conqueror but the civiliser of the
ancient world, and the transmitter of that civilisation to the world of
the future. And while he invests the thought of ancient and powerful
sovereignty with imaginative associations, and describes acts of heroism
with the glow of martial enthusiasm, yet the crowning glory which he
ascribes to the Romans is the piety inherited from their Trojan ancestors.
The final appeasement of the rancour of Juno is secured by the declaration
of Jupiter—
Hinc genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget,
Supra homines, supra ire deos pietate videbis,
Nec gens ulla tuos aeque celebrabit honores(504).
The national idea of Rome was associated also with the thought of the
divine origin, the great antiquity, the unbroken tradition, and the
eternal duration of the State. Universal empire, uninterrupted continuity
of existence, were the claims of the ancient Imperial as of the modern
Ecclesiastical Rome. And this idea, by the strong hold which it had on the
minds first of the Romans themselves and afterwards of other nations, went
far to realise itself. The confidence of the Romans in themselves was
intimately connected with their belief in their origin. Ennius had
impressed on their minds the belief in the miraculous birth of their
founder and in his miraculous elevation after death, and in the protection
afforded by the ‘augustum augurium’ by which the building of their city
had been consecrated. Among no people did ancient customs and ceremonies,
of which in many cases the origin was altogether forgotten, survive with
such vitality. In no other people did the memory of their past history,
whether of triumph or disaster, exercise so potent an influence on the
present time. In no Republic have the pride of birth and the reverence
felt to ancestors been so powerful and prevailing sentiments: no State has
ever been more loyal to the memory of the men who at successive crises in
its history had served it or saved it from its enemies: and no great
secular power ever felt so strong an assurance of an unbroken ascendency
in the future, and of the dependence of the fate of the world on that
ascendency.
The Aeneid appealed to all these sentiments even with more power than the
epic of the Republic and than the various national histories in which
Roman literature was peculiarly rich. Virgil, while still leaving to his
countrymen the pride of their descent from Mars, made them feel the charm
of their relation to a more gracious divinity, and even the hereditary
claim which they had to regard themselves as special objects of care to
the Supreme Ruler of Heaven(505). The association of their destiny with
the fortunes of Aeneas enabled them to look back to a remoter and more
famous epoch of antiquity than the legends of their origin which had
satisfied the fancy of the older Romans. Various passages in the poem
enable Virgil to invest impressive ceremonies, existing in his own time,
with the associations of an immemorial past. The three great prophetic
passages in the first, sixth, and eighth books enable him to revive, as
Ennius had done, the thought of the great men and families of Rome, and of
the great events both of earlier and more recent history. The march of
Roman conquest during one hundred and fifty momentous years enabled the
younger poet to evoke greater, though in some respects less happy,
memories than those evoked by his predecessor. And the security of the
Empire established in his day justified him in looking forward to the
future with even a more assured confidence, though perhaps in a less
sanguine spirit.
The national sentiment manifesting itself in the pride of empire and
deeply rooted in the past, was combined with strong local attachments and
the attribution of a kind of sanctity to the great natural features of the
land or to spots associated with historic memories which had impressed
themselves on the hearts of successive generations. Virgil was, as we saw
in examining the Georgics, peculiarly susceptible of such impressions.
There is no passage in any ancient writer which makes us feel so vividly
the ‘religio loci’ which has for more than two thousand years invested the
very site of Rome as that in the eighth book of the Aeneid, in which
Evander conducts Aeneas over the ground destined to be occupied by the
temples and dwellings of Rome. The feeling which the sight of the
Capitoline hill and of the Tarpeian rock calls forth is one rather of
religious awe than of any more familiar sentiment. The feeling, on the
other hand, with which the Tiber is introduced—
Caeruleus Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis—
is one rather of proud affection than of religious veneration. The aspect
of the great city itself awed the imagination rather than called forth the
affections of her citizens. But these affections were given to the rivers
and streams, the lakes, and mountain-homes of Italy. Patriotism in the
Augustan Age was as much an Italian as a Roman sentiment. The military
greatness of Rome was even more identified with the discipline and courage
of the Marsian and Apulian(506) soldier than with that of the Latin
race(507). Her moral greatness is more often identified by the poets with
the virtues of the old Sabellian stock than with those of the ‘populus
Romanus Quiritium.’ While the Georgics celebrate the peaceful glory and
beauty of Italy, the Aeneid evokes the memory of its old warlike renown—
quibus Itala iam tum
Floruerit terra alma viris, quibus arserit armis(508).
The first omen(509) which meets the Trojans on approaching Italy marks it
out as a land ‘mighty in arms’ as well as ‘in the richness of its soil.’
The speech of Remulus in the ninth book identifies the ancient rural life
of Italy with the hardihood and warlike aptitude of the people, as the
Georgics identify it with their virtue and happiness:—
Durum ab stirpe genus natos ad flumina primum
Deferimus saevoque gelu duramus et undis;
Venatu invigilant pueri, silvasque fatigant;
Flectere ludus equos et spicula tendere cornu.
At patiens operum parvoque adsueta iuventus
Aut rastris terram domat, aut quatit oppida bello.
Omne aevum ferro teritur, versaque iuvencum
Terga fatigamus hasta; nec tarda senectus
Debilitat vires animi mutatque vigorem:
Canitiem galea premimus, semperque recentis
Comportare iuvat praedas et vivere rapto(510).
In the account of the gathering of the Italian clans in the seventh book,
and of the Etruscans and the Northern races in the tenth, the warlike
sentiment of the land is appealed to in association with the names of
ancient towns, mountain districts, lakes, and rivers:—
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
Iunonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit,
Quos, Amasene pater(511);
and again:—
Qui Tetricae horrentis rupes montemque Severum
Casperiamque colunt Forulosque et flumen Himellae;
Qui Tiberim Fabarimque bibunt, quos frigida misit
Nursia, et Hortinae classes populique Latini;
Quosque secans infaustum interluit Allia nomen(512);
and also:—
Qui saltus, Tiberine, tuos, sacrumque Numici
Litus arant, Rutulosque exercent vomere collis,
Circaeumque iugum, quis Iuppiter Anxurus arvis
Praesidet et viridi gaudens Feronia luco;
Qua Saturae iacet atra palus, gelidusque per imas
Quaerit iter vallis atque in mare conditur Ufens(513).
This union of patriotic sentiment with the love of Nature and with the
romantic associations of the past, Virgil has in common with the most
distinctively national of the poets of the present century, from whom in
the other characteristics of his art and genius he is widely removed.
The national sentiment to which Virgil and the other contemporary poets
give expression is thus seen to be the sentiment of the Italian race(514).
For two centuries the principal members of that race had looked to Rome as
their chief glory, rather than as their old rival and antagonist. The
thought of Rome as their head had become to the other Italian tribes their
basis of union with one another and the main ground of their self-esteem
in relation to other nations. To that self-esteem and sense of superiority
Virgil was fully alive. He is not altogether free from the narrowness of
national prejudice. He has not the largeness of soul which enables Homer,
while never losing his sense of the superiority of the Greeks over the
Trojans, yet to awaken feelings of admiration and of generous pity for
Hector and Sarpedon, for Priam and Andromache. Yet if Virgil has not this
largeness of soul he has the tenderness of human compassion:—
Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt(515).
He might have maintained a stronger sympathy for his hero, and have
gratified a sentiment still fresh in the minds of his countrymen, by
attributing to Dido the shameless licence as well as the dangerous
fascination of Cleopatra; or he might have painted the Carthaginians in
traditional colours of cruelty and treachery, in which Roman writers
represented the most formidable among the enemies of Rome. But Virgil’s
artistic sense or his humaner feeling saved him from this ungenerous
gratification of national prejudice. Yet while more just or tolerant than
other Roman writers to the Carthaginians, and especially to the memory of
their greatest man, he indicates something like antipathy to the Greeks.
The triumph of Rome over her Greek enemies is made prominent in the
announcement of her future glories:—
Veniet lustris labentibus aetas,
Cum domus Assaraci Phthiam clarasque Mycenas
Servitio premet ac victis dominabitur Argis(516);
and again:—
Eruet ille Argos Agamemnoniasque Mycenas,
Ipsumque Aeaciden, genus armipotentis Achilli(517).
The bitterness of national animosity is especially apparent in his
exhibition of the characters of Ulysses and Helen. The superiority of the
Greeks in the arts and sciences is admitted not without some touch of
scorn (‘credo equidem’) in contrast with the superiority of Rome in the
imperial arts of conquering and governing nations. It may appear strange
that the only race to which Virgil is unjust or ungenerous is the one to
which he himself, in common with all educated Romans, was most deeply
indebted. But it is to be remembered that there was a dramatic propriety
in the expression of this hostility in the mouth of Aeneas and of
Anchises. The championship of the cause of Troy demanded an attitude of
antagonism to her destroyer. The Greek tragedians had themselves set the
example of a degraded representation of two of the most admirable of
Homer’s creations; and Virgil’s mode of conceiving and delineating
character is much nearer to that of Euripides than to that of Homer. The
original error of Helen and the craft in dealing with his enemies, which
is one of many qualities in the versatile humanity of Odysseus, gave to
these later artists the germ, in accordance with which the whole character
was conceived. They did not adequately apprehend that the most interesting
types of nobleness and beauty of character as imagined by the greatest
artists are also the most complex, and the least capable of being squared
with abstract conceptions of vices or virtues. The full truth of Homer’s
delineations of character was apparently not recognised by the most
cultivated of his Roman readers. It is enough for Virgil that Ulysses is
‘fandi fictor,’ as it is for Horace that Achilles is ‘iracundus,
inexorabilis, acer:’ although the worldly wisdom of the last-named poet
makes him comprehend better Homer’s ideal of intelligent than his ideal of
emotional heroism:—
Rursus quid virtus et quid sapientia possit,
Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulixem(518), etc.
Juvenal exhibits the virulence of national animosity towards the Greeks of
his time, as well as a well-founded scorn of the moral baseness of
character exhibited by many of them. The contempt of Tacitus is shown for
their intellectual frivolity, combined with their assumption of
intellectual superiority (‘qui sua tantum mirantur(519)’) based on the
renown of their ancestors. The deference which Virgil and Horace might pay
to the genius of early Greece was not due to the shadow of that genius as
it existed in their own time. But the contemporary Greek _littérateurs_
were not likely to resign their claim of precedence in favour of their new
rivals. Neither Greek art(520) nor Greek criticism seems ever to have made
any cordial recognition of the literary genius of Italy. The light in
which Virgil represents the Greek character may thus perhaps owe something
to the wish to repay scorn with scorn.
II.
The confidence which the Romans felt in the continued existence of their
Empire and in their superiority over all other nations was closely
connected with their religious feeling and belief(521). Horace has
expressed the national faith in this connexion with Roman force and
conciseness in the single line,
Dis te minorem quod geris imperas(522).
And it was Virgil’s aim in the Aeneid to show that this edifice of Roman
Empire, of which the enterprise of Aeneas was the foundation, on which the
old Kings of Alba and of Rome and the successive generations of great men
under the Republic had successively laboured, and on which Augustus placed
the coping-stone, was no mere work of human hands, but had been designed
and built up by divine purpose and guidance. The Aeneid expresses the
religious as it does the national sentiment of Rome. The two modes of
sentiment were inseparable. The belief of the Romans in themselves was
another form of their absolute faith in the invisible Power which
protected them. This invisible Power was sometimes recognised by them
under the name of ‘Fortuna Urbis,’—the spiritual counterpart of the city
visible to their eyes. The recognition of this divinity was not only
compatible with, but involved the recognition of, many other divinities
associated with it in this protecting office. But to these numerous
divinities no very distinct personality was attached. It was the awe of an
ever-present invisible Power, manifesting itself by arbitrary signs,
exacting jealously certain definite observances, capable of being
alienated for a time by any deviation from these observances, and of being
again appeased by a right reading of and humble compliance with its will,
and working out its own purposes through the agency of the Roman arms and
the wisdom of Roman counsels, that was the moving power of Roman religion.
The Jove of the Capitol in early times, the living Emperor under the
Empire, were the visible representatives of this mysterious Power. But its
influence was acknowledged throughout all Roman history in the importance
attached to the great priestly offices, and especially to that of Pontifex
Maximus, which became inseparably united to the office of Emperor; in the
scrupulous regard paid to the auspices through which this Power was
believed to communicate its will; in the ominous interpretation put on all
appearances of departure from the ordinary course of Nature; and in the
reference to the Sibylline books in all questions of difficulty. This
impersonal Power is to the Romans both the object of awe and the source of
their confidence. They seem never to distrust the steadfastness of its
favour. They rather feel themselves its willing instruments, co-operating
with it, blindly sometimes and sometimes remissly, and for every failure
of intelligence or vigilance, punished by temporal calamities.
The word by which Virgil recognises the agency of this impersonal, or
perhaps we should rather say undefined, Power, is ‘Fatum,’ or more often
in the plural, ‘Fata.’ It is by the ‘Fates’ that the action is set in
motion and directed to its issue. The human and even the divine actors in
the story are instruments in their hands; some more, some less conscious
of the part they are performing. Even Jupiter is represented rather as
cognisant of the Fates than as their author. Sometimes indeed they are
spoken of as ‘Fata Iovis;’ and to the assurance given by him to Venus
‘manent immota tuorum Fata tibi,’ he adds the words ‘neque me sententia
vertit(523).’ But again, while his will is suspended in a great crisis of
the action, their operation is persistent and inevitable:—
Rex Iuppiter omnibus idem:
Fata viam invenient(524).
The original relation between this impersonal agency and the deliberate
purpose of Jupiter is left undefined. But there is no collision between
them. While the prayers of men are addressed to a conscious personal
being, ‘Iuppiter omnipotens,’ the sovereignty of an impersonal Power over
the fortunes of nations is acknowledged, as in the line—
Fortuna omnipotens et ineluctabile fatum(525).
Every reader of the Aeneid must feel the predominance of this idea in the
poem, and the constantly recurring and even monotonous expression of it.
In the first three books, for instance, the word ‘Fatum’ or ‘Fata’ occurs
more than forty times. Aeneas starts on his wanderings ‘fato profugus.’
Juno desires to secure the empire of the world to Carthage ‘Si qua fata
sinant.’ She struggles against the conviction of her powerlessness to
prevent the Trojan settlement in Italy, ‘Quippe vetor fatis.’ Aeneas
comforts his companions by the announcement of the peaceful settlements
awaiting them,—
sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt.
Venus consoles herself for the destruction of Troy by the thought of the
destiny awaiting Aeneas, ‘fatis contraria fata rependens.’ Jupiter
reassures her after the storm with the words ‘manent immota tuorum Fata
tibi;’ and he reveals to her one page in their secret volume,—‘fatorum
arcana movebo.’ Mercury is sent to prepare the reception of Aeneas in
Carthage,
ne fati nescia Dido
Finibus arceret.
Aeneas describes himself as starting from Troy ‘data fata secutus.’ A
hundred more instances might be given of the dominating influence of this
idea in the poem. It is the ‘common-place’ of the Virgilian epic. While it
adds impressiveness to the historical significance of the poem, it
detracts largely from the personal interest by the limits which it imposes
on the free agency of the divine and human actors playing their part in
it.
The same idea is often expressed by Tacitus, but it does not in him
dominate so absolutely over human will, nor is it asserted with the same
firmness of conviction. His conception of the regulating power over all
human, or at least over all national existence, seems to waver between
this idea of some unknown power steadily working out its purpose, of an
element in human affairs baffling all calculation—the παράλογος of
Thucydides and the ‘Fortuna saevo laeta negotio’ of Horace—and of the gods
generally as personal avengers of crime, and sometimes as the kind
protectors of the State. Thus in the Germania(526) the earliest foreboding
of the danger which threatened and ultimately overthrew the fabric of the
Empire is indicated in the words ‘urgentibus imperii fatis:’ in the
Agricola the result of the invasion of Britain under Claudius is summed up
in the words ‘domitae gentes, capti reges, et monstratus fatis
Vespasianus(527):’ in the Histories the grounds of confidence on the part
of the Vespasians in taking arms against the Vitellians are summed up in
the words ‘dux Mucianus et Vespasiani nomen ac nihil arduum fatis(528).’
But elsewhere he speaks of ‘ludibria rerum humanarum(529),’ in language
reminding us of Lucretius, and, in almost the very words of Horace, of
‘instabilis fortunae summaque et ima miscentis(530).’ Like Horace, he
seems to acknowledge the supremacy of chance or an ironical spirit over
individual fortunes, and, like Virgil, that of Fate over the national
destiny. But in the Annals, his latest work, he seems to incline more to
the belief in the personal agency of the gods, and especially in their
agency as the avengers of guilt. Thus he opens the passage of the deepest
tragic gloom in all his sombre record with the words, ‘Noctem sideribus
illustrem quasi convincendum ad scelus dii praebuere(531).’ So too he
speaks of appealing to the ‘avenging gods(532);’ and of the ‘fear of the
wrath of heaven(533).’ Occasionally indeed he speaks of ‘the kindness of
the gods(534),’ but more often of their wrath or their indifference. Thus
he attributes the ascendency of Sejanus not to any superior ability on his
own part, but to ‘the wrath of the gods against the Roman
commonwealth(535);’ and, in recounting a number of omens which followed on
the murder of Agrippina, he makes the sarcastic comment, ‘quae adeo sine
cura deum eveniebant, ut multos post annos Nero imperium et scelera
continuaverit(536).’ In a writer like Tacitus it is impossible to
distinguish with certainty between the pure expression of his convictions
and the rhetorical and poetical colouring of his style. Yet both the
frequency with which such passages recur, and the earnestness of their
tone even when they seem most ironical, leave no doubt that, like
Thucydides, he was not indifferent to these questions, although ‘perplexed
in the extreme’ by the apparent absence, or at least uncertainty, of any
steadfast moral order in the award of happiness and calamity to men.
The ‘Fatum’ or ‘Fata’ of Virgil can scarcely be said to act with the aim
of establishing right in the world, or of punishing wrong. Their action is
purely political, neither ethical, though its ultimate tendency is
beneficent, nor personal. Yet in the prominence which is given to this
determining element in national affairs Virgil is expressing the strongest
and most abiding belief of the Roman people, just as the Greek poets and
historians of the fifth century B.C., in the prominence they give to the
element of uncertainty in the world,—the irony in human affairs, or the
Nemesis of the gods excited against great prosperity even when not misused
or gained by crime,—expressed the dominant idea in the minds of their
contemporaries. Mr. Grote traces the origin of this last idea to the
experience of the rapid vicissitudes from one extreme of fortune to the
other, brought about by the great prosperity of the Greek states on the
one hand and their incessant wars and political feuds on the other. The
origin of the other idea is to be found in the almost unbroken success of
Rome in all her enterprises, from the burning of the city by the Gauls
till the full establishment of empire. There is no history in which chance
plays so small a part, and in which so little is episodical. The ‘good
fortune of the Roman people’ will be found to be explained either by the
traditional policy of never making a new enemy until they had well
disposed of the old, or by the magnanimity (as compared at least with the
policy of other States(537)) by which they converted the nations
successively conquered by them into fellow-citizens or obedient allies, or
by the indomitable resolution which never knew to yield to defeat. No
important event in their history is isolated; each serves as a link in the
chain which connects their past with their future. The unvarying result of
their national discipline and policy, and of the force accumulated through
centuries before they became corrupted by the gains of conquest, might
well appear to a race, gifted with little speculative capacity, to be
determined and accomplished by an Omnipotent Power behind them.
This idea determines the general conduct of the action in the Aeneid. The
actors in the story either oppose the irresistible tendency of things and
suffer defeat or perish in their resistance; or, with gradually increasing
knowledge, they co-operate with and become the instruments of this
tendency. And as it is by faith in the divine assistance and guidance that
the latter are able to act their part successfully, the religious motives
of the representation assume a prominence at least equal to that of its
national and political motives. Thus the object of all the hero’s
wanderings is not only to found a city, but to introduce a new worship
into Italy—‘inferretque deos Latio.’ When Hector appears to Aeneas in a
vision he commits into his care the sacred symbols and images of Troy with
the words
Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates,
Hos cape _fatorum comites_(538).
Aeneas is represented as starting on his enterprise
Cum sociis gnatoque, _Penatibus et magnis Dis_(539);
as his descendant is represented in the enterprise which is crowned with
the victory of Actium(540). Finally, in the treaty with Latinus, while the
secular and imperial power is left with the Italians, the religious
predominance is claimed for Aeneas,—
Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinus habeto,
Imperium sollemne socer(541).
The influence of the religious idea of the poem is seen also in the
leading characteristic of the hero—‘insignem pietate virum.’ His piety
appears in the faith which he has in his mission, and in the trust which
he has in divine guidance. Prayer is his first resource in all
emergencies; sacrifice and thanksgiving are the accompaniments of all his
escapes from danger and difficulty. This characteristic deprives the
representation of Aeneas of the interest springing from energetic resource
or spontaneous feeling. But as much as the character loses in human
interest, it gains in the impression produced of a fitting instrument to
carry out the purpose of a Power working secretly for a distant end.
The effect of the same idea is apparent in the way in which the action is
furthered by special revelations, visions, prophecies, omens, and the
like. These intimations of the future are, for the most part, altogether
of an unpoetical and unimaginative character. The omens by which the Fates
make their will known, such as the omen of the cakes and of the white sow
with her litter, are, like those that occur so often in the pages of Livy,
of an essentially prosaic type: not like those in Homer, striking sights
or sounds acting on the imagination with the force of divine warning.
Occasionally Virgil’s own invention, or perhaps the guidance of some Greek
predecessor, suggests signs of a less trivial significance—such as that of
the meteor or line of light marking out the way from the burning city to
Mount Ida—
Illam, summa super labentem culmina tecti,
Cernimus Idaea claram se condere silva,
Signantemque vias(542);
but for the most part the formal, superstitious, prosaic element in the
Roman religion—the same element which made their generals before some
decisive battle allow themselves to draw their auguries from the mode in
which chickens ate their food,—is present in the religious guidance of the
action. The Roman belief in the supernatural was arrested and stunted at a
primitive stage of religious development. So far from elevating the
thought and enlarging the imagination, that belief tended to repress all
speculation, lofty contemplation, and poetry. Even Virgil’s idealising art
fails to conceal the triviality of the media through which the invisible
Power made its will and purpose manifest.
The mythological machinery of the poem also, although borrowed from the
repertory of Homer, yet moves in obedience to this silent, impersonal,
uncapricious Power. Juno endeavours to strive against it, till forced to
confess her impotence. Venus by her intrigues serves to further its
purposes. Yet both these Olympian divinities are but puppets ‘in some
unknown Power’s employ,’ which makes for its own end alike through their
furtherance and antagonism. The gods who take part in the action are of
Greek invention, but the Power which even they are obliged to obey, if not
Roman in original conception, is yet essentially Roman in significance.
This thought of an unseen Power, working by means of omens and miracles on
the mind of the hero of the poem, with the distant aim of establishing
universal empire in the hands of a people, obedient to divine will and
observant of all religious ceremonies, may be said to be the theological
or speculative idea of the poem. It is the doctrine of predestination in
its hardest form. It is a thought much inferior both in intellectual
subtlety and in ethical value to that of the Fate of Greek tragedy in
conflict with human will. Yet there is a kind of material force and
greatness in Virgil’s conception, and a consistency not with ideal truth
but with visible facts. The ideal truth of Sophocles—the idea of final
purification and reconcilement of a noble human nature with the divine
nature—is not manifest in the world: it is only in harmony with the best
hopes and aspirations of men. Virgil’s idea was the shadow of the great
fact apparent in his age,—the vast, inevitable, omnipotent, unsympathetic
power of the Roman empire.
But there is another personal and humane religious element, not so
prominent and not so influential on the action, but pervading the poem
like an atmosphere, purifying it, and making it luminous with the light of
a higher region. This is the element of religious faith or hope, personal
to Virgil and yet catholic in its significance, and in harmony with the
convictions of religious men of all times. The rigid, formal, and narrow
conceptions of the Roman religion came into collision both with the belief
in gods of like passions with men, revealed in the art and poetry of the
Greeks, and with the development of ethical feeling and especially of the
sentiment of humanity fostered by Greek philosophy. Virgil’s temperament,
patriotic, imaginative, and humane, was in accord with all these modes of
religious conception. If national destiny and some portions of the destiny
of individuals are shaped by an inflexible power—
Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando(543),—
yet the personal agency of Beings, in immediate relation with man, who are
not only ‘mindful of the righteous and unrighteous(544),’ but who also
‘pios respectant,’ is devoutly acknowledged—
Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid
Usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti,
Praemia digna ferant(545).
Their relation to man is expressed by the same word, _pietas_, which
expresses man’s relation to them—
Iuppiter omnipotens, si nondum exosus ad unum
Troianos, si quid pietas antiqua labores
Respicit humanos(546).
They are, like the gods of Tacitus, avengers of wrong as well as rewarders
of righteousness: but their avenging wrath against the strong springs from
their mercy to the weak—
Di, si qua est caelo pietas, quae talia curet,
Persolvant grates dignas et praemia reddant
Debita, qui nati coram me cernere letum
Fecisti et patrios foedasti funere voltus(547).
This close personal relation between men and an invisible Being or Beings,
like to man in feelings and moral attributes, but infinitely greater in
power and knowledge, exists in the Aeneid side by side with the doctrine
of the omnipotence of Fate, crushing, if necessary, human wishes and human
happiness under its iron determinations. But in the final award of
happiness or misery after death, revealed in the sixth book, the agency of
Fate gives place to that of a moral dispensation awarding to men their
portions according to their actions. The way in which Virgil indicates his
belief in the spiritual life after death is analogous to, as well as
suggested by, the myths in the Gorgias and in the tenth book of the
Republic of Plato. While there is a certain vagueness and uncertainty in
his view of the condition in which the souls of ordinary men pass the
thousand years of purification before drinking of the waters of Lethe and
entering again on a mortal life, the class of sinners to whom eternal
punishment is awarded, and that of holy men who dwell for ever in Elysium,
are indicated with great definiteness and beauty. In the first class are
those whom the old Roman world regarded as impious or unnatural,—those who
have violated the primal sanctities of life, who have dealt treacherously
with a client or the master of their household, who have risen in
rebellion against their country, who have sacrificed their human
affections and their duty as citizens to their greed of grain—
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;
Quique ob adulterium caesi, quique arma secuti
Impia, nec veriti dominorum fallere dextras,
Inclusi poenam expectant....
* * * * *
Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem
Imposuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit:
Hic thalamum invasit natae vetitosque hymenaeos:
Ausi omnes immane nefas ausoque potiti(548).
In the other class are those who have died in battle for their native
land, who have lived pure and holy lives as priests or poets, who have
served mankind by great discoveries, or have left memorials of themselves
in good deeds done to their fellow-men—
Hic manus, ob patriam pugnando volnera passi,
Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat,
Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti,
Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,
Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo(549).
III.
The imperial and the religious ideas of Rome, as embodied in the Aeneid,
find their fullest realisation in the position assigned to Augustus. The
pride of empire, the loyalty to the State, the religious trust, which in
the age of Ennius attached themselves to the ‘Respublica Romana,’ found,
in the age of Virgil, a new centre of attraction in the person of the
Emperor. A poem, which should express the dominant idea and sentiment of
that age, could not fail to bring into prominence the change through which
the government not of Rome only but of the whole civilised world was then
passing. The relations of the great poets of the time to the men at the
head of affairs made them the fittest exponents of this new tendency. They
used their art with the view of giving to public sentiment a permanent
direction in favour of the new order of things. The political object of
glorifying the personal rule of Augustus and of surrounding it with the
halo of a divine sanction associated itself with the artistic, the
patriotic, and the religious objects of Virgil. And although the excess of
eulogy and some modes of its manifestation offend the modern, as they
would have offended a more ancient sentiment of personal dignity, there is
no reason to question the disinterested sincerity of Virgil’s panegyric.
The permanence of the change introduced by Augustus attests the fact that
his policy not only kindled the enthusiasm of the moment, but met the most
deeply-felt needs of the world. And though his personal qualities and the
great things accomplished by him do not touch the imagination or awaken
the sentiment of admiration in modern times, like those of his immediate
predecessor in power, yet he was pre-eminently the man suited to his age,
as an age of restoration and re-organisation, and he was pre-eminently a
Roman of the Romans. The great C. Julius, in his genius and qualities,
‘towers’ not only above his own nation but, ‘like Hannibal, above all
nations.’ The perfect success of Augustus was due to the fact not only
that he was the man wanted by his epoch, but that he was the complete
embodiment of the great practical talents and character of Rome. He not
only monopolised in his own person all the chief functions, but in his
administration he displayed all the best and most varied capacities of the
Roman magistracy. In his government and in his legislation he exercised
the influence formerly exercised by Censor and Chief of the Senate, by
Consul and Proconsul, by Praetor and Aedile. To the aptitudes for these
various duties he added those that fitted him at least to fill the place
of ‘Imperator’ at the head of the Roman armies, and to give new importance
and efficacy to the office of Pontifex Maximus. He possessed also in a
remarkable degree the personal qualities of industry, vigilance, practical
sagacity, authority, dignity, and urbanity, which are of most importance
in the government of men. If his character falls below both the ancient
and the modern ideal of heroism, it is thoroughly conformable to a Roman
ideal of practical power and usefulness. He is the representative man of
the brighter side of Roman imperialism, as Tiberius (till his final
retirement from Rome),—in his strength of body and mind, his military and
administrative capacity, his unrelieved application to business(550), his
unsympathetic impartiality, his suspicious and ruthless policy in
suppressing opposition, his callous indifference to suffering,—is of its
more sombre side. It is a great enhancement of the representative
character of Virgil’s national epic, that it is associated with the name
and acts of one who was not only the founder, but was the most typical
embodiment of the Roman empire.
Although the choice of the subject of the Aeneid was determined, in a
great measure, by its adaptability to the personal and political object of
Virgil, no attempt is made to exhibit either the character or the actions
of Aeneas as symbolical of those of Augustus. Still less are we to look
for any modern parallels to the other personages of the poem, such as
Turnus or Dido, Latinus or Lavinia, Drances or Achates. Yet the position
assigned to Aeneas, as a fatherly ruler over his people, their chief in
battle, their law-giver in peace, and their high-priest in all spiritual
relations, may have been intended as a kind of symbol of the new monarchy.
The Roman imagination acknowledged two ideals of a ruler of men,—the ideal
of a Romulus and that of a Numa. In Aeneas both are combined with the
characteristics of a new ideal which rather anticipated a future, than
reproduced any older type of character. Augustus too might be regarded as
at once the Romulus and the Numa of the new empire; and thus the parts
played by Aeneas, as chief in battle and legislator in peace(551), might
be regarded as a kind of foreshadowing of those which were afterwards
played by Augustus on the real stage of human affairs. But it would be no
compliment either to the intellectual power of Augustus or to the
discernment of Virgil, to suppose that the personal attributes of Aeneas
were intended to have any resemblance to the strong and self-reliant
character of the Emperor. The relation to Aeneas adds to the personal
glory of Augustus by the ancestral distinction thus conferred upon him,—a
distinction at all times highly prized among the Romans, and especially
prized by the Caesars as helping to reconcile a proud aristocracy to their
ascendency. In the immediate successors of Augustus, the obscurity of the
Octavii and Atii was forgotten in the combined lustre of the Julian and
Claudian families. And on one of those occasions, in which the sentiment
of family pride was most powerfully appealed to,—the funeral of Drusus,
son of Tiberius,—we read in Tacitus—‘funus imaginum pompa maxime inlustre
fuit, cum origo Iuliae gentis Aeneas omnesque Albanorum reges, et conditor
urbis Romulus, post Sabina nobilitas, Attus Clausus, ceteraeque Claudiorum
effigies, longo ordine spectarentur(552).’ In thus throwing the halo both
of a remote antiquity and of a divine ancestry around Augustus, Virgil
helped to recommend his rule to the sentiment of his countrymen.
In seeking to enhance the greatness of a living ruler by associating him
with the actions of a remote legendary ancestor, the panegyric of Virgil
does not transcend the limits which Pindar allows himself in evoking the
mythical glories of the past in honour of his patrons. But Virgil seeks to
establish a closer connexion between the past and the present, than that
established by Pindar. The connexion between the living man, who wins a
victory in the games, and his heroic ancestor, is adduced as a proof of
the inheritance by the descendant of the personal qualities which first
gave distinction to his race. But the connexion between Aeneas and
Augustus is the connexion between means and end. The actions of Aeneas are
not held up as a mere example which his descendant might emulate: they are
the first links in the long chain of events which reached from the siege
of Troy to the victory of Actium and the establishment of the empire. The
distant vision of the glory awaiting the greatest of his descendants is,
more than any immediate or personal end, the motive which animates both
the divine and human actors in the enterprise. It is after a vivid picture
of the martial and peaceful glories of the Augustan reign that the
stirring appeal is made—
Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis,
Aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra(553)?
The means through which the vision of this distant future is revealed, are
the voice of Jove himself in unfolding the volume of the fates to Venus,
that of the beatified shade of Anchises in exhibiting the spectacle of his
unborn descendants to Aeneas, and the art of Vulcan in framing the ‘fabric
of the shield surpassing all description.’
The glory attributed to Augustus in the shield of Aeneas is that of a
great warrior and conqueror, the champion, not, like C. Julius, of the
popular against the aristocratic party in the State, of the Provinces
against the Senate, but of the nation against its old enemies, the
monarchies of the East. He appears as celebrating a mighty triumph, and
dedicating three hundred temples to the gods of Italy in thankful
acknowledgment of his victory. The glory announced in the prophecy of
Jupiter is that of the establishment by Augustus of an Empire of Peace, as
the completion of his warlike triumph—
Aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis:
Cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus
Iura dabunt(554).
And in the revelation of Anchises, Augustus is spoken of as—
Augustus Caesar, Divi genus: aurea condet
Saecula qui rursus Latio, regnata per arva
Saturno quondam(555).
He is there proclaimed to be greater in the extent of his conquests and
civilising labours than Hercules and Bacchus. And, though less prominently
than in the Invocation to the Georgics, divine honours and the function of
answering prayer are promised to him by the mouth of Jupiter—
Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
Accipies secura: vocabitur hic quoque votis(556).
The personal figure of the Emperor is thus encompassed with the halo of
military glory, of beneficent action on the world, of a divine sanction,
and of an ultimate heritage of divine honours.
The Aeneid considered as a representative work of genius is thus seen to
be the expression or embodiment of an idea of powerful meaning for the age
in which the poem was written, for the centuries immediately succeeding
that age, and, through the action of historical associations, for all
times. As the great poem of Dante gained both immediate and permanent
attention by the human interest which it imparted to the spiritual idea on
which mediaeval Europe based its life; as the inspiration of Milton’s
great Epic was drawn from his passionate sympathy with the intensest form
of religious and political life in his age; so the quality of Virgil’s
genius which secured for him the most immediate and the most lasting
consideration was his sympathetic comprehension of the imperial idea of
Rome in its secular, religious, and personal significance. This idea he
has ennobled with the associations of a divine origin and of a divine
sanction; of a remote antiquity and an unbroken continuity of great deeds
and great men; of the pomp and pride of war, and of the majesty of
government: and he has softened and humanised the impression thus produced
by the thought of peace, law, and order given to the world. In his stately
diction we are reminded only of the power, glory, majesty, and civilising
influence with which the idea of Rome is encompassed. There is nothing to
obtrude the thought of the spirit, in which life, freedom, and
individuality were crushed out of the world. And this idea, of which
Virgil’s poem is the glorified representation, was one actually realised,
one which influenced the lives of generations of men, and which was an
important element in moulding the whole subsequent history of the world.
Yet the idea is one more adapted to be the inspiring influence of a great
historical work, like the national history of Livy, or ‘The Decline and
Fall of the Roman Empire,’ than of a great poem, which must satisfy the
human and moral sympathies of men as well as their sense of power.
Material greatness and civilisation, and the qualities of mind and
character through which these effects are produced, exercise a great spell
over the imagination and the masculine sympathies of the world. But the
highest art does more than this—it enlarges man’s sense of a spiritual
life, it purifies his notions of happiness, it deepens his conviction of a
righteous government of the world. Through the imagination it speaks to
the soul. The idea of imperial Rome is rather that of the enemy than of
the promoter of the spiritual life or of individual happiness: it
impresses on the mind the thought of a vast and orderly, but not of a
moral and humane government. The idea of the Roman Republic, as it shines
through the rude fragments of the Annals of Ennius in such utterances as
these—
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque(557),—
is suggestive of a nobler energy of character, of more abundant public and
private virtue, than the idea pervading and animating the polished verse
of the Aeneid. The thought of the Rome of Ennius is associated in our
minds with the free political life of the Forum and the Campus Martius,
and with the grave deliberations of the Senate, as well as with the
exercise of military force and administrative sovereignty. The idea of
Italy pervading the Georgics has everything to attract and nothing to
repel our sympathies: and thus notwithstanding the inferior opportunities
for awakening human interest which necessarily attach to a didactic when
compared with an epic poem, the charm exercised by that poem is more
unmixed and unchanging than that of the poem which evokes the proud
memories of the Capitol. In the Aeneid, Virgil is really the panegyrist of
despotism under the delusive disguise of paternal government. In so far as
there is any conflict between right and wrong in the Aeneid, the wrong
appears to be the ‘victrix causa’ ‘which pleases the gods.’ The religious
idea of the Fates is invested with none of the ethical mystery with which
the analogous idea in Greek poetry is invested. They act in a hard, plain,
arbitrary way, irrespective of right and wrong, regardless of personal
happiness or suffering. The actors in the poem who move our sympathies are
those who perish in blind resistance to, or blind compliance with, their
decrees—Dido, Pallas, Turnus, and Lausus. The opposition between natural
human feeling and the ‘divom inclementia’ is reverently accepted and
acquiesced in by Virgil in the person of his hero.
The conclusion at which we arrive as to the value of the Aeneid as an epic
poem representative of the Roman Empire, is that Virgil has given a true,
adequate, and noble expression to an idea which actually has exercised a
greater spell over the imagination and a greater influence over the daily
lives of men, than any other which owed its origin to their secular
interests: but that this idea, regarded from its political, religious, and
personal side, is one which does not touch the heart, or enlighten the
conscience: and this is an important drawback to the claim which the
Aeneid may have to the highest rank as a work of art.