the second book. The old folktale of how the "wooden horse," left on the
shore by the Greeks, was recklessly dragged to the citadel by the Trojans
satisfied the unquestioning Homer. Vergil does not take the improbable
on faith. Sinon is compelled to be entirely convincing. In his speech he
uses every art of persuasion: he awakens in turn curiosity, surprise,
pity, admiration, sympathy, and faith. The passage is as curiously
wrought as any episode of Catullus or the _Ciris_. It is not, as has been
held, a result of rhetorical studies alone; it reveals rather a native
good sense tempered with a neoteric interest in psychology and a neoteric
exactness in formal composition. And yet the passage exhibits a great
advance upon the geometric formality of the _Ciris_. The incident is not
treated episodically as it might have been in Vergil's early work. The
pattern is not whimsically intricate but is shaped by an understanding
mind. While its art is as studied and conscious as that of the _Ciris_,
it has the directness and integrity of Homeric narrative. Yet Vergil
has not forgotten the startling effects that Catullus would attain by
compressing a long tale into a suggestive phrase, if only a memory of the
tale could be assumed. The story of Priam's death on the citadel is told
in all its tragic horror till the climax is reached. Then suddenly with
astonishing force the mind is flung through and beyond the memories of
the awful mutilation by the amazingly condensed phrase:
jacet ingens litore truncus
avulsumque umeris caput et sine nomine corpus.
There Vergil has given only the last line of a suppressed tragedy which
the reader is compelled to visualize for himself.
Neoteric, too, is the accurate observation and the patience with details
displayed by the author of the _Aeneid_. In his youth Vergil had, to be
sure, avoided the extremes of photographic realism illustrated by the
very curious _Moretum_, but he had nevertheless, in works like the
_Copa_, the _Dirae_, and the eighth _Eclogue_, practiced the craft of the
miniaturist whenever he found the minutiae aesthetically significant. To
realize the precision of his strokes even then one has but to recall the
couplet of the _Copa_ which in an instant sets one upon the dusty road of
an Italian July midday:
Nunc cantu crebro rumpunt arbusta cicadae
nunc varia in gelida sede lacerta latet.
Throughout the _Aeneid,_ the patches of landscape, the retreats for
storm-tossed ships, the carved temple-doors, the groups of accoutred
warriors marching past, and many a gruesome battle scene, are reminders
of this early technique.
What degrees of conscientious workmanship went into these results, we are
just now learning. Carcopino,[2] who, with a copy of Vergil in hand, has
carefully surveyed the Latin coast from the Tiber mouth, past the site of
Lavinium down to Ardea, is convinced that the poet traced every manoeuvre
and every sally on the actual ground which he chose for his theatre of
action in the last six books. It still seems possible to recognize the
deep valley of the ambuscade and the plain where Camilla deployed her
cavalry. Furthermore, there can be little doubt that for the sake of a
heroic-age setting Vergil studied the remains and records of most ancient
Rome. There were still in existence in various Latin towns sixth-century
temples laden with antique arms and armor deposited as votive offerings,
terracotta statues of gods and heroes, and even documents stored for
safe-keeping. In the expansion of Rome over the Campus Martius unmarked
tombs with their antique furniture were often disclosed. It is apparent
from his works that Vergil examined such material, just as he delved into
Varro's antiquities and Cato's "origins" for ancient lore. His remarks
on Praeneste and Antemnae, his knowledge of ancient coin symbols, of the
early rites of the Hercules cult, show the results of these early habits
of work. It must always be noticed, however, that in his mature art he is
master of his vast hoard of material. There is never, as in the _Culex_
and _Ciris_, a display of irrelevant facts, a yielding to the temptation
of being excursive and episodic. Wherever the work had received the final
touch, the composition shows a flawless unity.
[Footnote 2: Carcopino, _Virgile et les origines d'Ostie_.]
The poet's response to personal experience reveals itself nowhere more
than in the political aspect of the _Aeneid_ a fact that is the more
remarkable because Vergil lived so long in Epicurean circles where an
interest in politics was studiously suppressed.
What makes the poem the first of national epics is, however, not a
devotion to Rome's historical claims to primacy in Italy. The narrow
imperialism of the urban aristocracy finds no support in him. Not the
city of Rome but Italy is the _patria_ of the _Aeneid_, and Italy as a
civilizing and peace-bringing force, not as the exploiting conqueror.
Here we recognize a spirit akin to Julius Caesar. Vergil's hero Aeneas,
is not a Latin but a Trojan. That fact is, of course, due to the
exigencies of tradition, but that Aeneas receives his aid from the Greek
Evander and from the numerous Etruscan cities north of the Tiber while
most of the Latins join Turnus, the enemy, cannot be attributed to
tradition. In fact, Livy, who gives the more usual Roman version, says
nothing of the Greeks, but joins Latinus and the Latian aborigines to
Aeneas while he musters the Etruscans under the Rutulian, Turnus. The
explanation for Vergil's striking departure from the usual patriotic
version of the legend is rather involved and need not be examined here.
But we may at any rate remark his wish to recognize the many races that
had been amalgamated by the state, to refuse his approval of a narrow
urban patriotism, and to give his assent to a view of Rome's place
and mission upon which Julius Caesar had always acted in extending
citizenship to peoples of all races, in scattering Roman colonies
throughout the empire, and in setting the provinces on the road to a
full participation in imperial privileges and duties. With such a policy
Vergil, schooled at Cremona, Milan, and Naples, could hardly fail to
sympathize.
It has been inferred from the position of authority which Aeneas assumes
that Vergil favored a strong monarchial form of government and intended
Aeneas to be, as it were, a prototype of Augustus. The inference is
doubtless over-hasty. Vergil had a lively historical sense and in his
hero seems only to have attempted a picture of a primitive king of the
heroic age. Indeed Aeneas is perhaps more of an autocrat than are
the Homeric kings, but that is because the Trojans are pictured as a
migrating group, torn root and branch from their land and government, and
following a semi-divine leader whose directions they have deliberately
chosen to obey. In his references to Roman history, in the pageant of
heroes of the sixth book, as well as in the historical scenes of the
shield, no monarchial tendencies appear. Brutus the tyrannicide, Pompey
and Cato, the irreconcilable foes of Caesar, Vergil's youthful hero,
receive their meed of praise in the _Aeneid_, though there were many who
held it treason in that day to mention rebels with respect.
It is indeed a very striking fact that Vergil, who was the first of Roman
writers to attribute divine honors to the youthful Octavian, refrains
entirely from doing so in the _Aeneid_ at a time when the rest of Rome
hesitated at no form of laudation. Julius Caesar is still recognized as
more than human,
vocabitur hic quoque votis,
but Augustus is not. The contrast is significant. The language of the
very young man at Naples had, of course, been colored by Oriental
forms of expression that were in part unconsciously imbibed from the
conversations of the Garden. These were phrases too which Julius Caesar
in the last two years of his life encouraged; for he had learned from
Alexander's experience that the shortest cut through constitutional
obstructions to supreme power lay by way of the doctrine of divine
royalty. In fact, the Senate was forced to recognize the doctrine before
Caesar's death, and after his death consistently voted public sacrifices
at his grave. Vergil was, therefore, following a high authority in the
case of Caesar, and was drawing the logical inference in the case of
Octavian when he wrote the first _Eclogue_ and the prooemium of the
_Georgics_. This makes it all the more remarkable that while his
admiration for Augustus increased with the years, he ceased to give any
countenance to the growing cult of "emperor worship." That the restraint
was not simply in obedience to a governmental policy seems clear,
for Horace, who in his youthful work had shown his distrust of the
government, had now learned to make very liberal use of celestial
appellatives.
Augustus, then, is not in any way identified with the semi-divine Aeneas.
Vergil does not even place him at a post of special honor on the mount
of revelations, but rather in the midst of a long line of remarkable
_principes_. With dignity and sanity he lays the stress upon the great
events of the Republic and upon its heroes. We may, therefore, justly
conclude that when he wrote the epic he advocated a constitution of the
type proposed by Cicero, in which the _princeps_ should be a true leader
in the state but in a constitutional republic.
It is the great past, illustrated by the pageant of heroes and the
prophetic pictures of Aeneas's shield, that kindles the poet's
imagination. His sympathies are generous enough to include every race
within the empire and every leader who had shared in Rome's making,
from the divine founder, Romulus, and the tyrannicide, Brutus, to the
republican martyrs, Cato and Pompey, as well as the restorers of peace,
Caesar and Augustus. He has no false patriotism that blinds him to Rome's
shortcomings. He frankly admits with regret her failures in arts and
sciences with a modesty that permits of no reference to his own saving
work. What Rome has done and can do supremely well he also knows: she can
rule with justice, banish violence with law, and displace war by peace.
After the years of civil wars which he had lived through in agony of
spirit, it is not strange that such a mission seemed to him supreme. And
that is why the last words of Anchises to Aeneas are:
Hae tibi erunt artes: pacisque imponere morem
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
The tragedy of Dido reveals better perhaps than any other portion of
the _Aeneid_ how sensitively the poet reflected Rome's life and
thought rather than those of his Greek literary sources. And yet the
irrepressible Servius was so reckless as to say that the whole book had
been "transferred" from Apollonius. Fortunately we have in this case the
alleged source, and can meet the scholiast with a sweeping denial. Both
authors portray the love of a woman, and there the similarity ends.
Apollonius is wholly dependent upon a literal Cupid and his shafts.
Vergil, to be sure, is so far obedient to Greek convention as to play
with the motive--Cupid came to the banquet in the form of Ascanius--but
only after it was really no longer needed. The psychology of passion's
progress in the first book is convincingly expressed for the first time in
any literature. Aeneas first receives a full account of Dido's deeds of
courage and presently beholds her as she sits upon her throne,
directing the work of city building, judging and ruling as lawgiver
and administrator, and finally proclaiming mercy for his shipwrecked
companions. For her part she, we discover as he does, had long known
his story, and in her admiration for his people had chosen the deeds of
Trojan heroes for representation upon the temple doors: Sunt lacrimae
rerum. The poet simply and naturally leads hero and heroine through
the experience of admiration, generous sympathy, and gratitude to
an inevitable affection, which at the night's banquet, through a
soul-stirring tale told with dignity and heard in rapture, could only
ripen into a very human passion.
The vital difference between Vergil's treatment of the theme and
Apollonius' may be traced to the difference between the Roman and the
Greek family. Into Italy as into Greece had come, many centuries before,
hordes of Indo-European migrants from the Danubian region who had carried
into the South the wholesome family customs of the North, the very
customs indeed out of which the transalpine literature of medieval
chivalry later blossomed.
In Greece those social customs--still recognizable in Homer and the early
mythology--had in the sixth century been overwhelmed by a back-flow of
Aegean society, when the northern aristocracy was compelled to surrender
to the native element which constituted the backbone of the democracy.
With the re-emergence of the Aegean society, in which woman was relegated
to a menial position, the possibility of a genuine romantic literature
naturally came to an end.
At Rome there was no such cataclysm during the centuries of the Republic.
Here the old stock though somewhat mixed with Etruscans, survived. The
ancient aristocracy retained its dominant position in the state and
society, and its mores even penetrated downward. They were not stifled
by new southern customs welling up from below, at least not until the
plebeian element won the support of the founders of the empire, and
finally overwhelmed the nobility. At Rome during the Republic there was
no question of social inequality between the sexes, for though in law the
patriarchal clan-system, imposed by the exigencies of a migrating group,
made the father of the family responsible for civil order, no inferences
were drawn to the detriment of the mother's position in the household.
Nepos once aptly remarked: "Many things are considered entirely proper
here which the Greeks hold to be indelicate. No Roman ever hesitates to
take his wife with him to a social dinner. In fact, our women invariably
have the seat of honor at temples and large gatherings. In such matters
we differ wholly from the Greeks."
Indeed the very persistence of a nobility was in itself a favorable
factor in establishing a better position for women. Not only did the
accumulation of wealth in the household and the persistence of
courtly manners demand respect for the _domina_ of the villa, but the
transference of noble blood and of a goodly inheritance of name and land
through the mother's hand were matters of vital importance. The nobility
of the senate moreover long controlled the foreign policy of the empire,
and as the empire grew the men were called away to foreign parts on
missions and legations. At such times, the lady in an important household
was mistress of large affairs. It has been pointed out as a significant
fact that the father of the Gracchi was engaged for long years in
ambassadorial and military duties. The training of the lads consequently
fell to the share of Cornelia, a fact which may in some measure account
for the humanitarian interests of those two brilliant reformers. The
responsibilities that fell upon the shoulders of such women must have
stimulated their keenest powers and thus won for them the high esteem
which, in this case, we know the sons accorded their mother. One does
not soon forget the scene (Cicero, _Ad Att_. XV, II) at which Brutus and
Cassius together with their wives, Porcia and Tertia, and Servilia, the
mother of Brutus, discussed momentous decisions with Cicero. When Brutus
stood wavering, Cicero avoiding the issue, and Cassius as usual losing
his temper, it was Servilia who offered the only feasible solution,
and it was her program which they adopted. Is it surprising that Greek
historians like Plutarch could never quite comprehend the part in Roman
politics played by women like Clodia, Porcia and Terentia? In sheer
despair he usually resorts to the hypotheses of some personal intrigue
for an explanation of their powerful influence.
It is in truth very likely that had Roman literature been permitted to
run its own natural course, without being overwhelmed, as was the Italian
literature of the renaissance, it would have progressed much farther on
the road to Romanticism. Apollonius was far more a restraining influence
in this respect than an inspiration. As it is, Vergil's first and fourth
books are as unthinkable in Greek dress as is the sixth. They constitute
a very conspicuous landmark in the history of literature.
Vergil does not wholly escape the powerful conventions of his Greek
predecessors: in his fourth book, for instance, there are suggestions of
the melodramatic "maiden's lament" so dear to the music hall gallery of
Alexandria. But Vergil, apparently to his own surprise, permits his Roman
understanding of life to prevail, and transcends his first intentions
as soon as he has felt the grip of the character he is portraying. Dido
quickly emerges from the role of a temptress designed as a last snare to
trap the hero, and becomes a woman who reveals human laws paramount even
to divine ordinance. Once realizing this the poet sacrifices even his
hero and wrecks his original plot to be true to his insight into human
nature. The confession of Aeneas, as he departs, that in heeding heaven's
command he has blasphemed against love--_polluto amore_--how strange a
thought for the _pius Aeneas_! That sentiment was not Greek, it was a new
flash of intuition of the very quality of purest Romance.
The _Aeneid_ is also a remarkably religious poem to have come from one
who had devoted so many enthusiastic years to a materialistic philosophy.
Indeed it is usual to assume that the poet had abandoned his philosophy
and turned to Stoicism before his death. But there is after all no
legitimate ground for this supposition. The _Aeneid_ has, of course, none
of the scientific fanaticism that mars the _Aetna_, and the poet has
grown mellow and tolerant with years, but that he was still convinced of
the general soundness of the Epicurean hypotheses seems certain. Many
puzzles of the _Aeneid_ are at least best explained by that view. The
repetition of his creed in the first _Aeneid_ ought to warn us that
his enthusiasm for the study of _Rerum natura_ did not die. Indeed the
_Aeneid_ is full of Epicurean phrases and notions. The atoms of fire are
struck out of the flint (VI, 6), the atoms of light are emitted from the
sun (VII, 527, and VIII, 23), early men were born _duro robore_ and lived
like those described in the fifth book of Lucretius (VIII, 320), and
Conington finds almost two hundred reminiscences of Lucretius in the
_Aeneid_, the proportion increasing rather than decreasing in the later
books.[3]
[Footnote 3: Servius, VI, 264, makes the explicit statement: ex majore
parte, Sironem, id est, magistrum Epicureum sequitur.]
It is, however, in the interpretation of the word _fatum_ and the role
played by the gods[4] that the test of Vergil's philosophy is usually
applied. The modern equivalent of _fatum_ is, as Guyau[5] has said,
_determinism_. Determinism was accepted by both schools but with a
difference. To the Stoic, _fatum_ is a synonym of Providence whose
popular name is Zeus. The Epicurean also accepts _fatum_ as governing the
universe, but it is not teleological, and Zeus is not identified with it
but is, like man, subordinated to it. Again, the Stoic is consistently
fatalistic. Even man's moral obligations, which are admitted, imply no
real freedom in the shaping of results, for though man has the choice
between pursuing his end voluntarily (which is virtue) or kicking against
the pricks (which is vice), the sum total of his accomplishments is not
altered by his choice: _ducunt volentern fata, nolentem trahunt_. On the
other hand, Vergil's master, while he affirms the causal nexus for the
governance of the universe:
nec sanctum numen _fati protollere fines_
posse neque adversus naturae foedera niti
[Footnote 4: The passages have been analyzed and discussed frequently.
See especially Heinze, _Vergils Epische Technik_, 290 ff., who interprets
Zeus as fate; Matthaei, _Class. Quart_. 1917, pp. 11-26, who denies the
identity; Drachmann, Guderne kos Vergil, 1887; MacInnis, _Class. Rev_.
1910, p. 160, and Warde Fowler, _Aeneas at the Site of Rome_, pp. 122 fF.
For a fuller statement of this question see _Am. Jour_. Phil. 1920.]
[Footnote 5: _Morale d'Epicure_, p. 72.]
(Lucr. V, 309), posits a spontaneous initiative in the soul-atoms of man:
quod _fati foedera rumpat_
ex infinite _ne causam causa sequatur_.
(Lucr. II, 254). If then Vergil were a Stoic his Jupiter should be
omnipotent and omniscient and the embodiment of _fatum_, and his human
characters must be represented as devoid of independent power; but such
ideas are not found in the _Aeneid_.
Jupiter is indeed called "omnipotens" at times, but so are Juno and
Apollo, which shows that the term must be used in a relative sense. In a
few cases he can grant very great powers as when he tells Venus: Imperium
sine fine dedi (I, 278). But very providence he never seems to be. He
draws (sortitur) the lots of fate (III, 375), he does not assign them at
will, and he unrolls the book of fate and announces what he finds (I,
261). He is powerless to grant Cybele's prayer that the ships may escape
decay:
Cui tanta deo permissa potestas? (IX, 97.)
He cannot decide the battle between the warriors until he weighs their
fates (XII, 725), and in the council of the gods he confesses explicitly
his non-interference with the laws of causality:
Sua cuique exorsa laborem
Fortunamque ferent. Rex Jupiter omnibus idem.
Fata viam invenient. (X, 112.)
And here the scholiast naïvely remarks:
Videtur his ostendisse aliud esse fata, aliud Jovem.[6]
[Footnote 6: Serv. _ad loc_. MacInnis, _Class. Rev_. 1910, p. 172, cites
several other passages to the point in refutation of Heinze.]
Again, contrary to the Stoic creed, the poet conceives of his human
characters as capable of initiating action and even of thwarting fate.
Aeneas in the second book rushes into battle on an impulse; he could
forget his fates and remain in Sicily if he chose (V, 700). He might also
remain in Carthage, and explains fully why he does not; and Dido, if left
_nescla fati_, might thwart the fates (I, 299), and finally does, slaying
herself before her time[7] (IV, 696). The Stoic hypothesis seems to break
down completely in such passages.
[Footnote 7: See Matthaei, _Class. Quart_. 1917, p. 19.]
Can we assume an Epicurean creed with better success? At least in so far
as it places the _foedera naturae_ above the gods and attributes some
freedom of will and action to men, for as we have seen in both of
these matters Vergil agrees with Lucretius. But there is one apparent
difficulty in that Vergil, contrary to his teacher's usual practice,
permits the interference of the gods in human action. The difficulty is,
however, only apparent, if, as Vergil does, we conceive of these gods
simply as heroic and super-human characters in the drama, accepted from
an heroic age in order to keep the ancient atmosphere in which Aeneas had
lived in men's imagination ever since Homer first spoke of him. As such
characters they have the power of initiative and the right to interfere
in action that Epicurus attributes to men, and in so far as they are
of heroic stature their actions may be the more effective. Thus far an
Epicurean might well go, and must go in an epic of the heroic age. This
is, of course, not the same as saying that Vergil adopted the gods
in imitation of Homer or that he needed Olympic machinery because he
supposed it a necessary part of the epic technique. Surely Vergil was
gifted with as much critical acumen as Lucan. But he had to accept these
creatures as subsidiary characters the moment he chose Aeneas as his
hero, for Aeneas was the son of Venus who dwelt with the celestials at
least a part of the time. Her presence in turn involved Juno and Jupiter
and the rest of her daily associates. Furthermore, since the tale was of
the heroic age of long ago, the characters must naturally behave as the
characters of that day were wont to do, and there were old books like
Homer and Hesiod from which every schoolboy had become familiar with
their behavior. If the poet wished to make a plausible tale of that
period he could no more undertake to modernize his characters than could
Tennyson in his _Idylls_. The would-be gods are in the tale not to
reveal Vergil's philosophy--they do not--but to orient the reader in the
atmosphere in which Aeneas had always been conceived as moving. They
perform the same function as the heroic accoutrements and architecture
for a correct description of which Vergil visited ancient temples and
studied Cato.