Vergil Part 5

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: Nettles.h.i.+p, _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.]

It would be futile to attempt to pick out definite lines and claim that these were parts of the youthful poem. Indeed the artistry of most of the verses discussed is, as any reader will notice, more on the plane of the later work than of the _Ciris_, written about 47-3 B.C. It is safe to say that Vergil did not in his youth write the sonorous lines of _Aen_. I, 285-290, just as they now stand. But as we may learn from the _Ciris_, which Vergil attempted to suppress, no poet has more successfully retouched lines written in youth and fitted them into mature work without leaving a trace of the process.

Critics have always expressed their admiration for the comprehensive scope of the _Aeneid_, its depth of learning, its finished artistry, and its wide range of observation. The substantial character of the poem is not a mystery to us when we consider how long its theme lay in the poet's mind.

VII

EPICUREAN POLITICS

Caesar fell on the Ides of March, 44. The peaceful philosophic community at Herculaneum "seeking wisdom in daily intercourse" must have felt the shock as of an earthquake, despite Epicurean scorn for political ambition. Caesar had been friendly to the school; his father-in-law, Piso, had been Philodemus' life-long friend and patron, and, if we may believe Cicero, even at times a boon companion. Several of Caesar's nearest friends were Epicureans of the Neapolitan bay. Their future depended wholly upon Caesar. Dolabella was Antony's colleague in that year's consuls.h.i.+p, while Hirtius and Pansa had been chosen consuls for the following year by Caesar. To add to the shock, the liberators had been led by a recent convert to the school, Ca.s.sius.

The community as a whole was Caesarian, a fact explained not wholly by Piso's relations to Philodemus and the friendly att.i.tude of so many followers of Caesar, but also by the consideration that the leading spirits were Transpadanes: Vergil, Varius and Quintilius, at least. But at Rome the political struggle soon turned itself into a contest to decide not whether Caesar's regime should be honored and continued in the family--Octavius seemed at first too young to be a decisive factor--but whether Antony would be able to make himself Caesar's successor. When in July Brutus and Ca.s.sius were out-manoeuvered by Antony, and Cicero fled helplessly from Rome, it was Piso who stepped into the breach, not to support Brutus and Ca.s.sius, but to check the usurpation of Antony. This gave Cicero a program. In September he entered the lists against Antony; in December he accepted the support of Octavian who had with astonis.h.i.+ng daring for a youth of eighteen collected a strong army of Caesar's veterans and placed himself at the service of Cicero and the Senate in their warfare against Antony. Spring found the new consuls, Hirtius and Pansa, both Caesarians, with the aid of Octavian, Caesar's heir, besieging Antony at the bidding of the Senate in the defence of Decimus Brutus, one of Caesar's murderers! Such was Cicero's skill in generals.h.i.+p. Of course Caesarians were not wholly pleased with this turn of events. Cicero's success would mean not only the elimination of Antony--to which they did not object--but also the recall of Brutus and Ca.s.sius, and the consequent elimination of themselves from political influence. Piso accordingly began to waver. While a.s.suring the Senate of his continued support in their efforts to render Antony harmless, he refused to follow Cicero's leaders.h.i.+p in attempting the complete restoration of Brutus' party. Cicero's _Philippics_ dwell with no little concern upon this phase of the question.

We would expect the Garden group, friendly to the memory of Caesar, to adopt the same point of view as Piso and for the same reasons. They could hardly have sympathized with the murderers of Caesar. On the other hand, they had no reason for supporting the usurpations of Antony, and seem to have enjoyed Cicero's _Philippics_ in so far as these attacked Antony.

Extreme measures were, however, not agreeable to Epicureans, who in general had nothing but condemnation for civil war. However, Octavian's strong stand could only have pleased them: Caesar's grand-nephew and heir would naturally be to them a sympathetic figure.

A fragment of Philodemus, recently deciphered,[1] reveals the teacher adopting in his lectures the very point of view which we have already found in Piso. The fragment is brief and mutilated, but so much is clear: Philodemus criticizes the party of Cicero for carrying the attack upon Antony to such extremes that through fear of the liberators a reaction in favor of Antony might set in. We find this position reflected even in Vergil. He never speaks harshly of the liberators, to be sure; in fact his indirect reference to Brutus in the _Aeneid_ is remarkably sympathetic for an Augustan poet, but we have two epigrams of his attacking partizans of Antony in terms that remind us of pa.s.sages in Cicero's _Philippics_. It would almost appear that Vergil now drew his themes for lampoons from Cicero's unforgettable phrases,[2] as Catullus had done some fifteen years before. How thoroughly Vergil disliked Antony may be seen in the familiar line in the _Aeneid_ which Servius recognized as an allusion to that usurper (_Aen_. VI. 622):

Fixit leges pretio atque refixit.

[Footnote 1: _Hermes_, 1918, p. 382.]

[Footnote 2: Three other epigrams, VI, XII, XIII, have been a.s.sumed by some critics to be direct attacks upon Antony, but the key to them has been lost and certainty is no longer attainable.]

If Servius is correct, we have here again a reminder of those stormy years. This, too, is a dagger drawn from Cicero's armory. Again and again the orator in the _Philippics_ charges Antony with having used Caesar's seal ring for lucrative forgeries in state doc.u.ments. It is interesting to find that Vergil's school friend, Varius, in his poem on Caesar's death, called _De Morte_[3] first put Cicero's charges into effective verse:

Vendidit hic Latium populis agrosque Quiritum Eripuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit.

[Footnote 3: Some recent critics have suggested that the poem may have been a general discussion of the fear of death, but Varius is constantly referred to as an epic poet (Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 43; _Carm_. I. 6 and Porphyrio _ad loc_). His poem was written before Vergil's eighth _Eclogue_ which we place in 41 B.C. (Macrobius, _Sat_. VI. 2. 20) and probably before the ninth (see I.36).]

The reference here, too, must have been to Antony. The circle was clearly in harmony in their political views.

The two creatures of Antony attacked by Cicero and Vergil alike are Ventidius and Annius Cimber. The epigram on the former takes the form of a parody of Catullus' "Phasellus ille," a poem which Vergil had good reason to remember, since Catullus' yacht had been towed up the Mincio past Vergil's home when he was a lad of about thirteen. Indeed we hope he was out fis.h.i.+ng that day and shared his catch with the home-returning travelers. Parodies are usually not works of artistic importance, and this for all its epigrammatic neatness is no exception to the rule. But it is not without interest to catch the poet at play for a moment, and learn his opinion on a political character of some importance.

Ventidius had had a checkered career. After captivity, possibly slavery and manumission, Caesar had found him keeping a line of post horses and pack mules for hire on the great Aemilian way, and had drafted him into his transport service during the Gallic War. He suddenly became an important man, and of course Caesar let him, as he let other chiefs of departments, profit by war contracts. It was the only way he could hold men of great ability on very small official salaries. Vergil had doubtless heard of the meteoric rise of this _mulio_ even when he was at school, for the post-road for Caesar's great trains of supplies led through Cremona. After the war Caesar rewarded Ventidius further by letting him stand for magistracies and become a senator--which of course shocked the n.o.bility. Muleteers in the Senate! The man changed his cognomen to be sure, called himself Sabinus on the election posters, but Vergil remembered what name he bore at Cremona. Caesar finally designated him for the judge's bench, as praetor, and this high office he entered in 43. He at once attached himself to Antony, who used him as an agent to buy the service of Caesarian veterans for his army. It was this that stirred Cicero's ire, and Cicero did not hesitate to expose the man's career. Vergil's lampoon is interesting then not only in its connections with Catullus and the poet's own boyhood memories, but for its reminiscences of Cicero's speeches and the revelation of his own sympathies in the partizan struggle. The poem of Catullus and Vergil's parody must be read side by side to reveal the purport of Vergil's epigram.

Phaselus ille, quem videtis, hospites, Ait fuisse navium celerrimus, Neque ullius natantis impetum trabis Nequisse praeterire, sive palmulis Opus foret volare sive linteo.

Et hoc negat minacis Adriatici Negare litus insulasve Cycladas Rhodumque n.o.bilem horridamque Thraciam Propontida trucemve Pontic.u.m sinum, Ubi iste post phaselus antea fuit Comata silva: nam Cytorio in iugo Loquente saepe sibilum edidit coma.

Amastri Pontica et Cytore buxifer, Tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima Ait phaselus: ultima ex origine Tuo stetisse dicit in cac.u.mine, Tuo imbuisse palmulas in aequore, Et inde tot per inpotentia freta Erum tulisse, laeva sive dextera Vocaret aura, sive utrumque Iuppiter Simul secundus incidisset in pedem; Neque ulla vota litoralibus deis Sibi esse facta, c.u.m veniret a mari Novissimo hunc ad usque limpidum lac.u.m.

Sed haec prius fuere; nunc recondita Senet quiete seque dedicat tibi, Gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris.

Vergil's parody,[4] which subst.i.tutes the mule-team plodding through the Gallic mire for Catullus' graceful yacht speeding home from Asia, follows the original phraseology with amusing fidelity:

Sabinus ille, quem videtis, hospites Ait fuisse mulio celerrimus, Neque ullius volantis impetum cisi Nequisse praeterire, sive Mantuam Opus foret volare sive Brixiam.

Et hoc negat Tryphonis aemuli domum Negare n.o.bilem insulamve Caeruli, Ubi iste post Sabinus, ante Quinctio Bidente dicit attodisse forcipe Comata colla, ne Cytorio iugo Premente dura volnus ederet iuba.

Cremona frigida et lutosa Gallia, Tibi haec fuisse et esse cognitissima Ait Sabinus: ultima ex origine Tua stetisse (dicit) in voragine, Tua in palude deposisse sarcinas Et inde tot per orbitosa milia Iugum tulisse, laeva sive dextera Strigare mula sive utrumque coeperat

Neque ulla vota semitalibus deis Sibi esse facta praeter hoc novissimum, Paterna lora proximumque pectinem.

Sed haec prius fuere: mine eburnea Sedetque sede seque dedicat tibi, Gemelle Castor et gemelle Castoris.

[Footnote 4: See _Cla.s.sical Philology_, 1920, p. 114.]

The other epigram referred to (_Catalefton II_) also attacks a creature of Antony's, Annius Cimber, a despised rhetorician who had been helped to high political office by Antony. Again Cicero's _Philippics_ (XI. 14) serve as our best guide for the background.

Corinthiorum amator iste verborum, Iste iste rhetor, namque quatenus totus Thucydides, Britannus, Attice febris!

Tau Gallic.u.m min et sphin ut male illisit, Ita omnia ista verba miscuit fratri.

It might be paraphrased: "a maniac for archaic words, a rhetor indeed, he is as much and as little a Thucydides as he is a British prince, the bane of Attic style! It was a dose of archaic words and Celtic brogue, I fancy, that he concocted for his brother."

There seem to be three points of attack. Cimber, to judge from Cicero's invective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and of trying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pa.s.s as a descendant of some unfortunate barbarian prince. Since his brogue was Celtic (_tau Gallic.u.m_) he could readily make a plausible story of being British.

Vergil seems to imply that the brogue as well as the name Cimber had been a.s.sumed to hide his Asiatic parentage. The second point seems to be that Cimber, though a teacher of rhetoric, was so ignorant of Greek, that while proclaiming himself an Atticist, he used non-Attic forms and vaunted Thucydides instead of Lysias as the model of the simple style.

Finally, it was rumored, and Cicero affects to believe the tale, that Cimber was not without guilt in the death of his brother. Vergil is, of course, not greatly concerned in deriding Atticism itself: to this school Vergil must have felt less aversion than to Antony's flowery style; it is the perversion of the doctrine that amuses the poet.

Taken in conjunction with other hints, these two poems show us where the poet's sympathies lay during those years of terror. There may well have been a number of similar epigrams directed at Antony himself, but if so they would of course have been destroyed during the reign of the triumvirate. Antony's vindictiveness knew no bounds, as Rome learned when Cicero was murdered.

VIII

LAST DAYS AT THE GARDEN

Vergil's dedication of the _Ciris_ to Valerius Messalla was, as the poem itself reveals, written several years after the main body of the poem.

The most probable date is 43 B.C., when the young n.o.bleman, then only about twenty-one, went with Cicero's blessing[1] to join Brutus and Ca.s.sius in their fight for the Republic. Messalla had then, besides making himself an adept at philosophy--at Naples perhaps, since Vergil knew him--and stealing away student hours at Athens for Greek verse writing, gained no little renown by taking a lawsuit against the most learned lawyer of the day, Servius Sulpicius. Cicero's letter of commendation, which we still have, is unusually laudatory.

[Footnote 1: Cicero, _Ad Brutum_, I, 15.]

The dedication of the _Ciris_ reveals Vergil still eager to win his place as a rival of Lucretius. We may paraphrase it thus:

"Having tried in vain for the favor of the populace, I am now in the 'Garden' seeking a theme worthy of philosophy, though I have spent many years to other purpose. Now I have dared to ascend the mountain of wisdom where but few have ventured. Yet I must complete these verses that I have begun so that the Muses may cease to entice me further. Oh, if only wisdom, the mistress of the four sages of old, would lead me to her tower whence I might from afar view the errors of men; I should not then honor one so great with a theme so trifling, but I should weave a marvelous fabric like Athena's pictured robe ... a great poem on Nature, and into its texture I should weave your name. But for that my powers are still too frail. I can only offer these verses on which I have spent many hours of my early school-days, a vow long promised and now fulfilled."

It is apparent that the student still throbs with a desire to become a poet of philosophy, and that he is willing to appease the muses of lighter song only because they insist on returning. But there is another poem addressed to Messalla that is equally full of personal interest.

Messalla, as we know from Plutarch's _Brutus,_ drawn partly from the young man's diary, joined Ca.s.sius in Asia, and did noteworthy service in helping his general win the Eastern provinces from the Euxine to Syria for the Republican cause. Later at Philippi he led the cavalry charge which broke through the triumvirate line and captured Octavius' camp.

That was the famous first battle of Philippi, prematurely reported in Italy as a decisive victory for the Republican cause. Three weeks later the forces clashed again and the triumvirs won a complete victory.

Messalla, who had been chosen commander by the defeated remnant, recognized the hopelessness of his position and surrendered to the victors.