Oriental rhetoricians and philosophers, historians, poets, actors, and
artists who drifted Romeward from the crumbling courts of Alexandria,
Antioch, and Pergamum. There they could find congenial surroundings while
discovering wealthy patrons in the numerous villas of the idle rich near
by, and thither they withdrew at vacation time if necessity called them
to Rome for more arduous tasks. Andronicus, the Syrian Epicurean, brought
to Rome by Sulla, made his home at nearby Cumae; Archias, Cicero's
client, also from Syria, spent much time at Naples, and the poet
Agathocles lived there; Parthenius of Nicaea, to whom the early Augustans
were deeply indebted, taught Vergil at Naples. Other Orientals like
Alexander, who wrote the history of Syria and the Jews, and Timagenes,
historian of the Diadochi, do not happen to be reported from Naples, but
we may safely assume that most of them spent whatever leisure time they
could there.
Puteoli too was still the seaport town of Rome as of all Central Italy,
and the Syrians were then the carriers of the Mediterranean trade.[8]
That is one reason why Apollo's oracles at Cumae and Hecate's necromatic
cave at Lake Avernus still prospered. When Vergil explored that region,
as the details of the sixth book show he must have done, he had occasion
to learn more than mere geographic details.
[Footnote 8: Frank, _An Economic History of Rome_, chap. xiv.]
That Vergil had Isaiah, chapter II, before his eyes when he wrote the
fourth _Eclogue_ is of course out of the question; there is not a single
close parallel of the kind that Vergil usually permits himself to borrow
from his sources; we cannot even be sure that he had seen any of the
Sibylline oracles, now found in the third book of the collection,
which contains so strange a syncretism of Mithraic, Greek, and Jewish
conceptions, but we can no longer doubt that he was in a general way
well informed and quite thoroughly permeated with such mystical and
apocalyptic sentiments as every Gadarene and any Greek from the Orient
might well know. It speaks well for his love of Rome that despite these
influences it was he who produced the most thoroughly nationalistic epic
ever written.
The first fruit of Vergil's studies in evolutionary science at Naples was
the _Aetna_, if indeed the poem be his. The problem of the authorship
has been patiently studied, and the arguments for authenticity concisely
summarized by Vessereau[9] make a strong case. The evidence is briefly
this. Servius attributed the poem to Vergil in his preface and again in
his commentary on _Aeneid_, III, 578. Donatus also seems to have done so,
though some of our manuscripts of his _Vita_ contain the phrase _de qua
ambigitur_. Again, the texts of the _Aetna_ which we have agree also in
this ascription. Internal evidence proves the poem to be a work of the
period between 54 and 44, which admirably suits Vergilian claims. Its
close dependence upon Lucretius gives the first date, its mention of the
"Medea" of the artist Timomachus as being overseas, a work which was
brought to Rome between 46 and 44, gives the second. Finally, the _Aetna_
is by a student of Epicurean philosophy largely influenced by Lucretius.
It would be difficult to make a stronger case short of a contemporaneous
attribution. Has not Vergil himself referred to the _Aetna_ in the
preface of his _Ciris_, where he thanks the Muses for their aid in an
abstruse poem (l. 93)?
Quare quae _cantus_ meditanti mittere _caecos_[10]
Magna mihi cupido tribuistis praemia divae.
What other poem could he have had in mind? The designation does not fit
the _Culex_, which is the only poem besides the _Aetna_ that could be in
question. It is best, therefore, to take the _Aetna_[11] into account in
studying Vergil's life, even though we reserve a place in our memories
for that stray phrase _de qua ambigitur_.
[Footnote 9: Vessereau, _Aetna_, xx ff.; Rand, _Harvard Studies_, XXX,
106, 155 ff. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Seneca
attributed the _Aetna_ to Vergil in _ad Lucilium_ 79, 5: The words
"Vergil's complete treatment" can hardly refer to the seven meager lines
found in the third book of the _Aeneid_.]
[Footnote 10: Lucretius is very fond of using the word _caecus_ with
reference to abstruse and obscure philosophical and scientific subjects.]
[Footnote 11: When Vergil wrote the _Georgics_, on a subject which the
poet of the _Aetna_ derides as trivial (264-74) he seems to apologize for
abandoning science, in favor of a meaner theme, _Georgics_ II, 483 ff. Is
not this a reference to the _Aetna_?]
The poet after an invocation to Apollo justifies himself for rejecting
the favorite themes of myth and fiction: the mysteries of nature are more
worthy of occupying the efforts of the mind. He has chosen one out of
very many that needs explanation. The true cause of volcanic eruption, he
says, is that air is driven into the pores of the earth, and when this
comes into contact with lava and flint which contain atoms of fire,
it creates the explosions that cause such destruction. After a second
invitation to the reader to appreciate the worth of such a theme he
tells the story of two brothers of Catania who, when other refugees from
Aetna's explosion rescued their worldly goods, risked their lives to save
their parents.
The poem is not a happy experiment. There is no lack of enthusiasm for
the subject, despite the fact that the science of that day was wholly
inadequate to the theme. But Vergil could hardly realize this, since both
Stoics and Epicureans had adopted the theory of the exploding winds.
The real trouble with the theme is its hopelessly prosaic ugliness.
Lucretius, by his imaginative power, had apparently deceived him into
thinking that any fragment of science might be treated poetically. In
his master the "flaring atom streams" had attained the sublimity of a
Platonic vision, and the very majestic sadness of his materialism carried
the young poet off his feet. But the mechanism of Aetna remained merely a
puzzle with little to inspire awe, and the theme contained inherently no
deep meaning for humanity--which, after all, the scientific problem must
possess to lend itself to poetic treatment. The poet indeed realized all
this before he had finished. He sought, with inadequate resources, to
stir an emotion of awe in describing the eruption, to argue the reader
into his own enthusiasm for a scientific subject, to prove the humanistic
worth of his problem by asserting its anti-religious value, and finally,
in a Turneresque obtrusion of human beings, to tell the story of the
Catanian brothers. But though the attempt does honor to his aesthetic
judgment the theme was incorrigible. Perhaps the recent eruptions of
Aetna--they are reported for the years 50 and 46 B.C.--had given the
theme a greater interest than it deserved. We may imagine how refugees
from Catania had flocked to Naples and told the tale of their suffering.
There is another element in the poem that is as significant as it is
prosaic, a spirit of carping at poetic custom which reminds the reader of
Philodemus' lectures. Philodemus, whether speaking of philosophy or music
or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has
soundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the
_Aetna_ has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbity
usually turns the reader away before he has reached the central
theme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the
_Georgics_--Lucretius also has a touch of it--but the _Aeneid_ has freed
itself completely.
The compensation to the reader lies not so much in episodical myths,
descriptions, and the story at the end, apologetically inserted on
Lucretius' theory of sweetened medicine, as rather in the poet's
contagious enthusiasm for his science, the thrill of discovery and the
sense of wonder (1. 251):
Divina est animi ac jucunda voluptas!
Men have wasted hours enough on trivialities (258):
Torquemur miseri in parvis, terimurque labore.
A worthier occupation is science (274):
Implendus sibi quisque bonis est artibus: illae
Sunt animi fruges, haec rerum est optima merces.
And science must be worthy of man's divine majesty (224):
Non oculis solum pecudum miranda tueri
More nec effusis in humum grave pascere corpus;
Nosse fidem rerum dubiasque exquirere causas,
Ingenium sacrare caputque attollere caelo,
Scire quot et quae sint magno fatalia mundo
Principia.
This may be prose, but it has not a little of the magnificence of the
Lucretian logic. The man who wrote this was at least a spiritual kinsman
of Vergil.
VI
EPIGRAM AND EPIC
The years of Vergil's sojourn in Naples were perhaps the most eventful
in Rome's long history, and we may be sure that nothing but a frail
constitution could have saved a man of his age for study through those
years. After the battle of Pharsalia in 48, Caesar, aside from the
lotus-months in Egypt, pacified the Eastern provinces, then in 46 subdued
the senatorial remnants in Africa, driving Cato to his death, and
in September of that year celebrated his fourfold triumph with a
magnificence hitherto undreamed. All Italy went to see the spectacle, and
doubtless Vergil too; for here it was, if we mistake not, that he first
resolved to write an epic of Rome. The year 45 saw the defeat of the
Pompeian remnants in Spain, and the first preparations for the great
Parthian expedition which, as all knew, was to inaugurate the new
Monarchy. Then came the sudden blow that struck Caesar down, the civil
war that elevated Antony and Octavian and brought Cicero to his death,
and finally the victory at Philippi which ended all hope of a republic.
Through all this turmoil the philosophic group of the "Garden" continued
its pursuit of science, commenting, as we shall see, upon passing events.
The _Aetna_--which seems to date from about 47-6--reveals the young
philosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotion
to his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth _Catalepton_ he
was not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainly
visible all through these brief poems, there was added the example
of Philodemus who wrote epigrams from time to time. Several of the
_Catalepton_ may belong to this period. The very first,[1] addressed to
Vergil's lifelong friend Plotius Tucca, is an amusing trifle in the very
vein of Philodemus. The fourth, like the first in elegiacs, is a gracious
tribute to a departing friend, Musa, perhaps his fellow-townsman Octavius
Musa.[2] It closes with a generous expression of unquestioning friendship
that asks for no return:
Quare illud satis est si te permittis amari
Nam contra ut sit amor mutuus, unde mihi?
[Footnote 1:
Dequa saepe tibi, venit? sed, Tucca, videre
Non licet. Occulitur limine clausa viri.
Dequa saepe tibi, non venit adhuc mihi; namque
Si occulitur, longe est tangere quod nequeas.
Venerit, audivi. Sed iam jnihi nuntius iste
Quid prodest? illi dicito cui rediit.]
[Footnote 2: See Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 82; Servius on _Ecl_. IX. 7; Berne
Scholia on _Ecl_. VIII. 6.]
That is the trait surely that accounts for Horace's outburst of
admiration.
Animae quales neque candidiores
Terra tulit.
The seventh is an epigram mildly twitting Varius for his insistence upon
pure diction. The crusade for purity of speech had been given a new
impetus a decade before by the Atticists, and we may here infer that
Varius, the quondam friend of Catullus, was considered the guardian of
that tradition. Vergil, despite his devotion to neat technique, may have
had his misgivings about rules that in the end endanger the freedom of
the poet. His early work ranged very widely in its experiments in style,
and Horace's _Ars Poetica_ written many years later shows that Vergil had
to the very end been criticized by the extremists for taking liberties
with the language. The epigram begins as though it were an erotic poem in
the style of Philodemus. Then, having used the Greek word _pothos_, he
checks himself as though dreading a frown from Varius, and substitutes
the Latin word _puer_,
Scilicet hoc fraude, Vari dulcissime, dicam:
"Dispeream, nisi me perdidit iste pothos."
Sin autem praecepta vetant me dicere, sane
Non dicam, sed: "me perdidit iste puer."
For the comprehension of the personal allusions in the sixth and twelfth
epigrams, we have as yet discovered no clue, and as they are trifles of
no poetic value we may disregard them.
The fourteenth is, however, of very great interest. It purports to be a
vow spoken before Venus' shrine at Sorrento pledging gifts of devotion in
return for aid in composing the story of Trojan Aeneas.
Si mihi susceptum fuerit decurrere munus,
O Paphon, o sedes quae colis Idalias,
Troius Aeneas Romana per oppida digno
Iam tandem ut tecum carmine vectus eat:
Non ego ture modo aut picta tua templa tabella
Ornabo et puris serta feram manibus--
Corniger hos aries humilis et maxima taurus
Victima sacrato sparget honore focos
Marmoreusque tibi aut mille coloribus ales
In morem picta stabit Amor pharetra.
Adsis o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo
Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat.
The poem has hitherto been assigned to a period twenty years later. But
surely this youthful ferment of hope and anxiety does not represent the
composure of a man who has already published the _Georgics_. The eager
offering of flowers and a many-hued statue of Cupid reminds one rather of
the youth who in the _Ciris_ begged for inspiration with hands full of
lilies and hyacinths.
However, we are not entirely left to conjecture. There is indubitable
evidence that Vergil began an epic at this time, some fifteen years
before he published the _Georgics_. It seems clear also that the epic was
an _Aeneid_, with Julius Caesar in the background, and that parts of the
early epic were finally merged into the great work of his maturity. The
question is of such importance to the study of Vergil's developing art
that we may be justified in going fully into the evidence[3]. As it
happens we are fortunate in having several references to this early
effort. The ninth _Catalepton_, written in 42, mentions the poet's
ambition to write a national poem worthy of a place among the great
classics of Greece (l.62):
Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales.
The sixth _Eclogue_ begins with an allusion to it:
Prima Syracusio dignata est ludere versu
Nostra, nec erubuit silvas habitare Thalia.
Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit et admonuit, pastorem Tityre pinguis
Pascere oportet oves, deductum dicere carmen.
[Footnote 3: Cf. _Classical Quarterly_, 1920, 156.]
This may be paraphrased: "My first song--the _Culex_--was a pastoral
strain. When later I essayed to sing of kings and battles, Phoebus
warned me to return to my shepherd song." On this passage Servius
has the comment: significat aut Aeneidem aut gesta regum Albanorum.
Donatus finally in his _Vita_ says explicitly: mox cum res Romanas
inchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transit. The poem, therefore,
was on the stocks before the _Bucolics_. We may surmise that the death
of Caesar, whose deeds seem to have brought the idea of such a poem to
Vergil's mind, caused him to lay the work aside.
Returning to the fourteenth _Catalepton_, we find what seems to be a
definite key to the date and circumstances of its writing. The closing
lines are:
Adsis, o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo
Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat.
It was on September 26 in 46 B.C., that Julius Caesar so strikingly
called attention to his claims of descent from Venus and Aeneas by
dedicating a temple to Venus Genetrix, the mother of the Julian gens. It
was on that day that Caesar "called Venus from heaven" to dwell in her
new temple.[4]
[Footnote 4: Cassius Dio, 43, 22; Appian, II. 102. There is independent
proof that _Catalepton_ XIV is earlier than the _Georgics_. In _Georgics_
II, 146, Vergil repeats the phrase _maxima taurus victima_, but the
phrase must have had its origin in the _Catalepton_, since here _maxima_
balances _humilis_. In the _Georgics_ the phrase is merely a verbal
reminiscence, for there is nothing in the context there to explain
_maxima_. On the order of composition of the Aeneid, see M.M. Crump, _The
Growth of the Aeneid_]
Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic of
Aeneas? Vergil was then living at Naples, and we can picture the poet
fevered with the new impulse, sailing away from his lectures across the
fair bay for a day's brooding. Could one find a more fitting place than
Venus's shrine at Sorrento for the invocation of the _Aeneid_?
How far this first attempt proceeded we shall probably not know. Vergil's
own words would imply that his early effort centered about Aeneas' wars
in Italy; the sixth _Eclogue_,
Cum canerem reges et proelia,
is rather explicit on this point. Furthermore, the erroneous reference of
Calaeno's omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicate
that this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third,
for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgotten
it if it had already been written.
It is, however, in reading the first and fifth books that I think we
may profit most by keeping in mind the fact that the poet had begun the
_Aeneid_ before Caesar's death. In Book I, 286 ff., occurs a passage
which Servius referred to Julius Caesar. It reads:
Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo.
Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum,
Accipies secura; uocabitur his quoque uotis.[5]
[Footnote 5: The following lines (291-6) refer to the succeeding reign
of Augustus as the poet is careful to indicate in the words _tum
positis-bellis_.]
Very few modern editors have dared accept Servius' judgment here, and
yet if we may think of these lines as adapted from (say) an original
dedication to Julius Caesar written about 45 B.C., the difficulties of
the commentators will vanish. The facts that Vergil seems to have in mind
are these: in September 46 B.C., Julius Caesar, after returning from
Thapsus, celebrated his four great triumphs over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and
Africa, displaying loads of booty such as had never before been seen at
Rome. He then gave an extended series of athletic games, of the kind
described in Vergil's fifth book, including a restoration of the ancient
_ludus Troiae_. When these were over he dedicated the temple of Venus
Genetrix, thereby publicly announcing his descent from Venus, and
presently proclaimed his own superhuman rank more explicitly by placing a
statue of himself among the gods on the Capitoline (Dio, XLIII, 14-22).
Are not the phrases, _imperium Oceano_ and _spoliis Orientis onustum_
a direct reference to this triumph which, of course, Vergil saw? And did
not these dedications inspire the prophecy _uocabitur hic quoque uotis?_
Be that as it may, it is difficult to refuse credence to Servius in this
case, for Vergil here (I, 267-274 and 283) accepts Julius Caesar's claim
of descent from Iulus, whereas in the sixth book, in speaking of the
descent of the royal Roman line, he derives it, as was regularly done in
Augustus' day, from Silvius the son of Aeneas and Lavinia (VI, 763 ff.).
We must notice also that in the _Aeneid_ as in the _Georgics_ Augustus is
regularly called 'Augustus Caesar' or 'Caesar,' whereas in the only other
references to Julius in the _Aeneid_ the poet explicitly points to him by
saying 'Caesar et omnis _Iuli_ progenies' (VI, 789).
Servius, therefore, seems to be correct in regarding Julius as the
subject of the passage in the first book, and it follows that the passage
contains memories of the year 46 B.C., whether or not the lines were, as
I suggest, first written soon after Caesar's triumph.
The fifth book also, despite the fact that its beginning and end show a
late hand, contains much that can be best brought into connection with
Vergil's earlier years. It is, for instance, easier to comprehend the
poet's references to Memmius, Catiline, and Cluentius in the forties than
twenty years later.
Vergil's strange comparison of Messalla to the _superbus Eryx_ in
_Catalepton_ IX, written in 42 B.C.,[6] is also readily explained if we
may assume that he has recently studied the Eryx myth in preparation for
the contest of Book V (11. 392-420). The poet's enthusiasm for the _ludus
Troiae is well understood as a description of what he saw at Caesar's
re-introduction of the spectacle in 46. At Caesar's games Octavian, then
sixteen years of age, must have led one of the troops:[7] in the fifth
book Atys the ancestor of Octavian's maternal line led one column by the
side of Iulus:
Alter Atys, genus unde Atii duxere Latini (1. 568).
[Footnote 6: See Chapter VIII.]
[Footnote 7: The brief account of Nicolaus of Damascus (9) mentions that
Octavius had charge of the Greek plays at the triumphal games.]
Then, too, marks of youth pervade the substance of the book. The
questionable witticisms might perhaps be attributed to an attempt to
relieve the strain, but there is an unusual amount of Homeric imitation,
and inartistic allusion to contemporaries which, as in the youthful
_Bucolics_, destroys the dramatic illusion. Thus, Vergil not only dwells
upon the ancestry of the Memmii, Sergii, and Cluentii, but insists upon
reminding the reader of Catiline's conspiracy in the _Sergestus, furens
animi_, who dashes upon the rock in his mad eagerness to win, and
obtrudes etymology in the phrase _segnem Menoeten_ (1. 173). One is
tempted to suspect that the whole narrative of the boat-race is filled
with pragmatic allusions. If the characters of his epic must be connected
with well-known Roman families, it is at least interesting that the
connections are indicated in the fifth book and not in the passages where
the names first meet the reader. Does it not appear that the body of the
book was composed long before the rest, and then left at the poet's death
not quite furbished to the fastidious taste of a later day?
Finally, I would suggest that the strange and still unexplained[8] omen
of Acestes' burning arrow in 11. 520 ff. probably refers to some event of
importance to Segesta in the same year, 46 B.C. We are told by the author
of the _Bellum Africanum_ that Caesar mustered his troops for the African
campaign at Lilybaeum in the winter of 47. We are not told that while
there he ascended the mountain, offered sacrifices to Venus Erycina, and
ordered his statue to be placed in her temple, or that he gave favors to
the people of Segesta who had the care of that temple. But he probably
did something of that kind, for as he had already vowed his temple to
Venus Genetrix he could hardly have remained eight days at Lilybaeum so
near the shrine of Aeneas' Venus without some act of filial devotion. If
Vergil wrote any part of the fifth book in or soon after 46 this would
seem to be the solution of the obscure passage in question.
[Footnote 8: See however DeWitt, _The Arrow of Acestes, Am. Jour. Phil_.
1920, 369.]
It is of importance then in the study of the _Aeneid_ to keep in mind
the fact that the plot was probably shaped and many episodes blocked out
while Vergil was young and Julius Caesar still the dominant figure in
Rome. Many scenes besides those in the fifth book may find a new meaning
in this suggestion. Does it not explain why so many traits in Dido's
character irresistibly suggest Cleopatra,[9] why half the lines of the
fourth book are reminiscent of Caesar's dallying in Egypt in 47? Do
not the protracted battle scenes of the last book--otherwise so
un-Vergilian--remind one of Caesar's never-ending campaigns against foes
springing up in all quarters, and of the fact that Vergil had himself
recently had a share in the struggle? The young Octavius, also, whose
boyhood is so sympathetically sketched by Nicolaus (5-9)--a leader among
his companions always, but ever devoted and generous--seems to peer
through the portrait of Ascanius.[10] Vergil's memories of the boy at
school, the recipient of the _Culex_, the leader of the Trojan troop at
Caesar's games, the lad of sixteen sitting for a day in the forum as
_praefectus urbi_, seem very recent in the pages of the epic.
[Footnote 9: Nettleship, _Ancient Lives of Virgil_, 104; Warde Fowler,
_Religious Experience of the Roman People_, p. 415.]
[Footnote 10: See Warde Fowler, _The Death of Turnus_, pp. 87-92, on the
character of Ascanius.]