_Catalepton_ is proof that Vergil was at Naples when he heard of the
dangers to his father's property in the North. It is doubtful whether
Vergil ever again saw Mantua after leaving it for Cremona in his early
boyhood. The property, of course, belonged not to him but to his father,
who, as the brief poem indicates, had remained there with his family. The
pastoral scenery seldom, except in the ninth _Eclogue_, pretends to be
Mantuan. Even where, as in the first, the poem is intended to convey
a personal expression of gratitude for Vergil's exemption from harsh
evictions, the poet is very careful not to obtrude a picture of himself
or his own circumstances. Tityrus is an old man, and a slave in a typical
shepherd's country, such as could be seen every day in the mountains near
Naples. And there were as many evictions near Naples as in the North.
Indeed it is the Neapolitan country--as picturesque as any in Italy--that
constantly comes to the reader's mind. We are told by Seneca that
thousands of sheep fed upon the rough mountains behind Stabiae, and
the clothier's hall and numerous fulleries of Pompeii remind us that
wool-growing was an important industry of that region. Vergil's excursion
to Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay. Behind
Naples along the ridge of Posilipo,[2] below which Vergil was later
buried, in the mountains about Camaldoli, and behind Puteoli all the
way to Avernus--a country which the poet had roamed with observant
eyes--there could have been nothing but shepherd country. Here, then,
are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in the
_Eclogues_.
[Footnote 2: The picturesque road from Naples to Puteoli clung to the
edge of the rocky promontory of Posilipo, finally piercing the outermost
rock by means of a tunnel now misnamed the "grotto di Sejano." Most of
the road is now under twenty feet of water: See Günther, _Pausilypon_. To
see the splendid ridge as Vergil saw it from the road one must now row
the length of it from Naples to Nésida, sketching in an abundance of
ilexes and goats in place of the villas that now cover it.]
And here, too, were doubtless as many melodious shepherds as ever
Theocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people as
the Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical than
those of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except for
an occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting--by an
allegorical turn invented before Vergil--there is no serious confusion
in the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of Vergil's
_Eclogues_. But by failing to make this simple assumption--naturally due
any and every poet--readers of Vergil have needlessly marred the effect
of some of his finest passages.
The fifth _Eclogue_, written probably in 41 B.C., is a very melodious
Daphnis-song that has always been a favorite with poets. It has been and
may be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron god
of singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil's
love of symbolism, suspected that a more personal interest led him to
compose this elegy. The death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar is still
thought by some to be the real subject of the poem, while a few have
accepted another ancient conjecture that Vergil here wrote of his
brother. The person mourned must, however, have been of more importance
than Vergil's brother. On the other hand, certain details in the
poem--the sorrow of the mother, for instance--preclude the conjecture
that it was Caesar, unless the poet is here confusing his details more
than we need assume in any other eclogue.
It is indeed difficult to escape the very old persuasion that a sorrow
so sympathetically expressed must be more than a mere Theocritan
reminiscence. If we could find some poet--for Daphnis must be that--near
to Vergil himself, who met an unhappy death in those days, a poet, too,
who died in such circumstances during the civil strife that general
expression of grief had to be hidden behind a symbolic veil, would not
the poem thereby gain a theme worthy of its grace? I think we have such
a poet in Cornificius, the dear friend of Catullus, to whom in fact
Catullus addressed what seem to be his last verses.[3] Like so many of
the new poets, Cornificius had espoused Caesar's cause, but at the end
was induced by Cicero to support Brutus against the triumvirs. After
Philippi Cornificius kept up the hopeless struggle in Africa for several
months until finally he was defeated and put to death. If he be Vergil's
Daphnis we have an explanation of why his identity escaped the notice of
curious scholars. Tactful silence became quite necessary at a time when
almost every household at Rome was rent by divided sympathies, and yet
brotherhood in art could hardly be entirely stifled. From the point of
view of the masters of Rome, Cornificius had met a just doom as a rebel.
If his poet friends mourned for him it must have been in some such guise
as this.
[Footnote 3: Catullus, 38.]
In this instance the circumstantial evidence is rather strong, for we are
told by a commentator that Valgius, an early friend of Vergil's,
wrote elegies to the memory of a "Codrus," identified by some as
Cornificius:[4]
Codrusque ille canit quali tu voce canebas,
Atque solet numeros dicere Cinna tuos.
[Footnote 4: _Scholia Veronensia_, Ecl. VII, 22. The evidence is
presented in _Classical Review_, 1920, p. 49.]
That "shepherd" at least is an actual person, a friend of Cinna, and
a member of the neoteric group; that indeed it is Cornificius is
exceedingly probable. The poet-patriot seems then, not to have been
forgotten by his friends.
All too little is known about this friend of Catullus and Cinna, but what
is known excites a keen interest. Though he was younger than Cicero by
nearly a generation, the great orator[5] did him no little deference as
a representative of the Atticistic group. In verse writing he was of
Catullus' school, composing at least one epyllion, besides lyric verse.
According to Macrobius, Vergil paid him the compliment of imitating him,
and he in turn is cited by the scholiasts as authority for an opinion of
Vergil's. If the Daphnis-song is an elegy written at his death--and it
would be difficult to find a more fitting subject--the poem, undoubtedly
one of the most charming of Vergil's _Eclogues_, was composed in 41 B.C.
It were a pity if Vergil's prayer for the poet should after all not come
true:
Semper honos, nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.
[Footnote 5: See Cicero's letter to him: _Ad Fam_. XII, 17, 2.]
The tenth _Eclogue_, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associations
of pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus' Daphnis to our own
"Lycidas" and "Adonais," has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmosphere
that should not be disturbed by biographical details. However, we must
intrude. Vergil's associations with Gallus, as has been intimated, were
those, apparently, of Neapolitan school days and of poetry. The sixth
_Eclogue_ delicately implies that the departure of Gallus from the circle
had made a very deep impression upon his teacher and fellow students.
What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empire
for a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each! This
brilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was very
nearly Vergil's age. A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career,
he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy's enduring
admiration. Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric to
philosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullan
romances, as a matter of course. It was Cytheris, the fickle actress--if
the scholiasts are right--who opened his eyes to the fact that there were
themes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales;
and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his months
of service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Roman
self-pity, this first poet of the _poitrinaire_ school. His subsequent
career was meteoric. Octavian, fascinated by a brilliancy that hid a
lack of Roman steadiness, placed him in charge of the stupendous task
of organizing Egypt, a work that would tax the powers of a Caesar. The
romantic poet lost his head. Wine-inspired orations that delighted his
guests, portrait busts of himself in every town, grotesque catalogues of
campaigns against unheard-of negro tribes inscribed even on the venerable
pyramids did not accord with the traditions of Rome. Octavian cut his
career short, and in deep chagrin Gallus committed suicide.
The tenth _Eclogue_[6] gives Vergil's impressions upon reading one of the
elegies of Gallus which had apparently been written at some lonely army
post in Greece after the news of Cytheris' desertion. In his elegy the
poet had, it would seem, bemoaned the lot that had drawn him to the East
away from his beloved.
"Would that he might have been a simple shepherd like the Greeks about
his tent, for their loves remained true!" And this is of course the very
theme which Vergil dramatizes in pastoral form.
[Footnote 6: This is the interpretation of Leo, _Hermes_, 1902, p. 15.]
We, like Vergil, realize that Gallus invented a new genre in literature.
He had daringly brought the grief of wounded love out of the realm of
fiction--where classic tradition had insisted upon keeping it--into the
immediate and personal song. The hint for this procedure had, of course,
come from Catullus, but it was Gallus whom succeeding elegists all
accredited with the discovery. Vergil at once felt the compelling force
of this adventuresome experiment. He gave it immediate recognition in his
_Eclogues_, and Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid became his followers.
The poems of Gallus, if the Arcadian setting is real, were probably
written soon after Philippi. Vergil's _Eclogue_ of recognition may have
been composed not much later, for we have a right to assume that Vergil
would have had one of the first copies of Gallus' poems. If this be true,
the first and last few lines were fitted on later, when the whole book
was published, to adapt the poem for its honorable position at the close
of the volume.
XI
THE EVICTIONS
The first and ninth _Eclogues_, and only these, concern the confiscations
of land at Cremona and Mantua which threatened to deprive Vergil's father
of his estates and consequently the poet of his income. There seems to be
no way of deciding which is the earlier. Ancient commentators, following
the order of precedence, interpreted the ninth as an indication of a
second eviction, but there seems to be no sound reason for agreeing with
them, since they are entirely too literal in their inferences. Conington
sanely decides that only one eviction took place, and he places the ninth
before the first in order of time. He may be right. The two poems at any
rate belong to the early months of 41.
The obsequious scholiasts of the Empire have nowhere so thoroughly
exposed their own mode of thought as in their interpretations of these
two _Eclogues_. Knowing and caring little for the actual course of
events, having no comprehension of the institutions of an earlier day,
concerned only with extracting what is to them a dramatic story from
the _Eclogues_, they put all the historical characters into impossible
situations. The one thing of which they feel comfortably sure is that
every _Eclogue_ that mentions Pollio, Gallus and Alfenus Varus must have
been a "bread and butter" poem written in gratitude for value received.
Of the close literary associations of the time they seem to be unaware.
To suit such purposes Pollio[1] is at times made governor of Cisalpine
Gaul, and at times placed on the commission to colonize Cremona, Alfenus
is made Pollio's "successor" in a province that does not exist, and
Gallus is also made a colonial commissioner. If, however, we examine
these statements in the light of facts provided by independent sources we
shall find that the whole structure based upon the subjective inferences
of the scholiasts falls to the ground.
[Footnote 1: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, pp. 51 ff.]
We must first follow Pollio's career through this period. When the
triumvirate was formed in 43, Pollio was made Antony's _legatus_ in
Cisalpine Gaul and promised the consulship for the year 40.[2] After
Philippi, however, in the autumn of 42, Cisalpine Gaul was declared
a part of Italy and, therefore, fell out of Pollio's control.[3]
Nevertheless, he was not deprived of a command for the year remaining
before his consulship (41 B.C.), but was permitted to withdraw to the
upper end of the Adriatic with his army of seven legions.[4] His duty was
doubtless to guard the low Venetian coast against the remnants of the
republican forces still on the high seas, and, if he had time, to subdue
the Illyrian tribes friendly to the republican cause.[5] During this
year, in which Octavian had to besiege Lucius Antony at Perusia, Pollio,
a legatus of Mark Antony, was naturally not on good terms with Octavian,
and could hardly have used any influence in behalf of Vergil or any one
else. After the Perusine war he joined Antony at Brundisium in the spring
of 40, and acted as his spokesman at the conference which led to the
momentous treaty of peace. We may, therefore, safely conclude that Pollio
was neither governor nor colonial commissioner in Cisalpine Gaul when
Cremona and Mantua were disturbed, nor could he have been on such terms
with Octavian as to use his influence in behalf of Vergil. The eighth and
fourth _Eclogues_ which do honor to him, seem to have nothing whatever
to do with material favors. They doubtless owe their origin to Pollio's
position as a poet, and Pollio's interest in young men of letters.
[Footnote 2: Appian, IV. 2 and V. 22.]
[Footnote 3: Appian, V. 3 and V. 22.]
[Footnote 4: Velleius Paterculus, II. 76.2; Macrobius, _Sat_. I. XI. 22]
[Footnote 5: A task which he performed in 39.]
With regard to Alfenus and Gallus, the scholiasts remained somewhat
nearer the truth, for they had at hand a speech of Callus criticizing the
former for his behavior at Mantua. By quoting the precise words of this
speech Servius[6] has provided us with a solid criterion for accepting
what is consistent in the statements of Vergil's earlier biographers and
eliminating some conjectures. The passage reads: "When ordered to leave
unoccupied a district of three miles outside the city, you included
within the district eight hundred paces of water which lies about the
walls." The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner on
the colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' error
of making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor[7] after
Cisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus had
in any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else. In fact it
reveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land.
Vergil,[8] of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in his
ninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy to
Mantua:
Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis ...
And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man of
literary ambitions.[9] But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear to
his plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius'
supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet[10] seems
to rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth _Eclogue_ was
obsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, Quintilius
Varus has a better claim to that poem.
[Footnote 6: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii in
Alfenum. Cf. Kroll, in _Rhein. Museum_ 1909, 52.]
[Footnote 7: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. VI. 6.]
[Footnote 8: Vergil, _Eclogue_ IX, 26-29.]
[Footnote 9: See _Suffenus and Alfenus, Classical Quarterly_, 1920, p.
160.]
[Footnote 10: On _Eclogue_. VI. 6.]
The quotation from the speech of Gallus also lends support to a statement
in Servius that Gallus had been assigned to the duty of exacting moneys
from cities which escaped confiscation.[11] For this we are duly
grateful. It indicates how Alfenus and Gallus came into conflict since
the latter's financial sphere would naturally be invaded if the former
seized exempted territory for the extension of his new colony of Cremona.
In such conditions we can realize that Gallus was, as a matter of course,
interested in saving Mantua from confiscation, and that in this effort
he may well have appealed to Octavian in Vergil's behalf. In fact his
interpretation of the three-mile exemption might actually have saved
Vergil's properties, which seem to have lain about that distance from the
city.[12]
[Footnote 11: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. VI. 64.]
[Footnote 12: Vita Probiana, _milia passuum_ XXX is usually changed to
III on the basis of Donatus: _a Mantua non procul_.]
Again, however, there is little reason for the supposition that Vergil's
_Eclogues_ in honor of Gallus have any reference whatever to this affair.
The sixth followed the death of Siro, and the tenth seems to precede the
days of colonial disturbances, if it has reference to Gallus as a soldier
in Greece. If the sixth _Eclogue_ refers to Siro, as Servius holds, then
Vergil and Gallus had long been literary associates before the first and
ninth were written.
The student of Vergil who has once compared the statements of the
scholiasts with the historical facts at these few points, where they
run parallel, will have little patience with the petty gossip which was
elicited from the _Eclogues_. The story of Vergil's tiff with a soldier,
for example, is apparently an inference from Menalcas' experience in
_Eclogue_ IX. 15; but "Menalcas" appears in four other _Eclogues_ where
he cannot be Vergil. The poet indeed was at Naples, as the eighth
_Catalepton_ proves. The estate in danger is not his, but that of his
father, who presumably was the only man legally competent of action in
case of eviction. Vergil's poem, to be sure, is a plea for Mantua, but it
is clearly a plea for the whole town and not for his father alone. The
landmark of the low hills and the beeches up to which the property was
saved (IX.8) seems to be the limits of Mantua's boundaries, not of
Vergil's estates on the low river-plains. We need not then concern
ourselves in a Vergilian biography with the tale that Arrius or Clodius
or Claudius or Milienus Toro chased the poet into a coal-bin or ducked
him into the river.[13] The shepherds of the poem are typical characters
made to pass through the typical experiences of times of distress.
[Footnote 13: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, p. 58.]
The first _Eclogue, Tityre tu_, is even more general than the ninth in
its application. Though, of course, it is meant to convey the poet's
thanks to Octavian for a favorable decree, it speaks for all the poor
peasants who have been saved. The aged slave, Tityrus, does not
represent Vergil's circumstances, but rather those of the servile
shepherd-tenants,[14] so numerous in Italy at this time. Such men, though
renters, could not legally own property, since they were slaves. But in
practice they were allowed and even encouraged to accumulate possessions
in the hope that they might some day buy their freedom, and with freedom
would naturally come citizenship and the full ownership of their
accumulations. Many of the poor peasants scattered through Italy were
_coloni_ of this type and they doubtless suffered severely in the
evictions. Tityrus is here pictured as going to the city to ask for his
liberty, which would in turn ensure the right of ownership. Such is the
allegory, simple and logical. It is only the old habit of confusing
Tityrus with Vergil which has obscured the meaning of the poem. However,
the real purpose of the poem lies in the second part where the poet
expresses his sympathy for the luckless ones that are being driven from
their homes; and that this represents a cry of the whole of Italy and
not alone of his home town is evident from the fact that he sets the
characters in typical shepherd country,[15] not in Mantuan scenery as in
the ninth. The plaint of Meliboeus for those who must leave their homes
to barbarians and migrate to Africa and Britain to begin life again is
so poignant that one wonders in what mood Octavian read it. "En quo
discordia cives produxit miseros!" was not very flattering to him.
[Footnote 14: See Leo, _Hermes_, 1903, p. 1 ff., questioned by Stampini,
_Le Bucoliche_,'3 1905, p. 93.]
[Footnote 15: Capua and Nuceria were two of the cities near Naples where
Vergil could see the work of eviction near at hand.]
The very deep sympathy of Vergil for the poor exiles rings also through
the _Dirae_, a very surprising poem which he wrote at this same time,
but on second thought suppressed. It has the bitterness of the first
_Eclogue_ without its grace and tactful beginning. The triumvirs were in
no mood to read a book of lamentations. "Honey on the rim" was Lucretius'
wise precept, and it was doubtless a prudent impulse that substituted
the _Eclogue_ for the "Curses." The former probably accomplished little
enough, the latter would not even have been read.
The _Dirae_ takes the form of a "cursing roundel," a form once employed
by Callimachus, who may have inherited it from the East. It calls down
heaven's wrath upon the confiscated lands in language as bitter as ever
Mt. Ebal heard: fire and flood over the crops, blight upon the fruit, and
pestilence upon the heartless barbarians who drive peaceful peasants into
exile.
The setting is once more that of the country about Naples, of the
Campanian hills and the sea coast, not that of Mantua.[16] It is
doubtless the miserable poor of Capua and Nuceria that Vergil
particularly has in mind. The singers are two slave-shepherds departing
from the lands of a master who has been dispossessed. The poem is
pervaded by a strong note of pity for the lovers of peace,--"pii cives,"
shall we say the "pacifists,"--who had been punished for refusing to
enlist in a civil war. A sympathy for them must have been deep in the
gentle philosopher of the garden:
O male deuoti, praetorum crimina, agelli![17]
Tuque inimica pii semper discordia ciuis.
Exsul ego indemnatus egens mea rura reliqui,
Miles ut accipiat funesti praemia belli.
Hinc ego de tumulo mea rura nouissima uisam,
Hinc ibo in siluas: obstabunt iam mihi colles,
Obstabunt montes, campos audire licebit.[18]
[Footnote 16: It is just possible that "Lycurgus" (l. 8) who is spoken of
as the author of the mischief is meant for Alfenus Varus, who boasted of
his knowledge of law. Horace lampoons him as _Alfenus vafer_.]
[Footnote 17:
Ye fields accursed for our statesmen's sins,
O Discord ever foe to men of peace,
In want, an exile, uncondemned, I yield
My lands, to pay the wages of a hell-born war.
Ere I go hence, one last look towards my fields,
Then to the woods I turn to close you out
From view, but ye shall hear my curses still.]
[Footnote 18: The _Lydia_ which comes in the MS. attached to the _Dirae_
is not Vergil's. Nor can it be the famous poem of that name written by
Valerius Cato, despite the opinion of Lindsay, _Class. Review_, 1918, p.
62. It is too slight and ineffectual to be identified with that work.
The poem abounds with conceits that a neurotic and sentimental pupil of
Propertius--not too well practiced in verse writing--would be likely to
cull from his master.]
For Vergil there was henceforth no joy in war or the fruits of war. His
devotion to Julius Caesar had been unquestioned, and Octavian, when he
proved himself a worthy successor and established peace, inherited that
devotion. But for the patriots who had fought the losing battle he had
only a heart full of pity.
Ne pueri ne tanta animis adsuescite bella,
Neu patriae validos in viscera vertite viris;
Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo,
Projice tela manu, sanguis meus!
XII
POLLIO
We come finally to the two _Eclogues_ addressed to Asinius Pollio. This
remarkable man was only six years older than Vergil, but he was just old
enough to become a member of Caesar's staff, an experience that matured
men quickly. To Vergil he seemed to be a link with the last great
generation of the Republic. That Catullus had mentioned him gracefully
in a poem, and Cinna had written him a _propempticon_, that Caesar had
spoken to him on the fateful night at the Rubicon, and that he had been
one of Cicero's correspondents, placed him on a very high pedestal in
the eyes of the studious poet still groping his way. It may well be that
Gallus was the tie that connected Pollio and Vergil, for we find in a
letter of Pollio's to Cicero that the former while campaigning in Spain
was in the habit of exchanging literary chitchat with Gallus. That was in
the spring of 43, at the very time doubtless when Pollio--as young men
then did--spent his leisure moments between battles in writing tragedies.
Vergil in his eighth Eclogue, perhaps with over-generous praise, compares
these plays with those of Sophocles.