The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 30

The first sight of land from the sea is vividly brought before the eye in such pa.s.sages as these-

Quarto terra die primum se attollere tandem Visa, aperire procul montis, ac volvere fumum(616).

Iamque rubescebat stellis Aurora fugatis, c.u.m procul obscuros collis humilemque videmus Italiam(617).

Crebresc.u.n.t optatae aurae, portusque patescit Iam propior, templumque apparet in arce Minervae(618).

The disappearance of the sh.o.r.es left behind, and the opening up of new scenes in the rapid onward voyage, leave on the mind a fresh feeling of novelty and life in such pa.s.sages as-

Protinus aerias Phaeac.u.m abscondimus arces, Litoraque Epiri legimus, portuque subimus Chaonio, et celsam Buthroti accedimus urbem(619);

and in this in which the historic a.s.sociations of famous cities are evoked-

Apparet Camarina procul, campique Geloi, Immanisque Gela, fluvii cognomine dicta.

Arduus inde Acragas ostentat maxima longe Moenia, magnanimum quondam generator equorum(620), etc.

These and similar pa.s.sages-such as that describing the moon-light sail past the enchanted sh.o.r.es of Circe-remind us of the great change which had come over the world between the age of the Odyssey and that of the Aeneid.

The one poem is pervaded by the eager curiosity of the youthful prime of the world, attracting the most daring and energetic spirits to the discovery and peopling of new lands; the other by that more languid curiosity, awakened by the a.s.sociations of the past,-by the longing for some change to break the routine of a too easy life,-and by the refined enjoyment of beauty, urging men to encounter some danger and more discomfort for the sake of visiting scenes famous in history, rich in natural charms, or in works of art, the inheritance from more creative times.

In his scenes of battle, Virgil is as inferior to the poet of the Iliad as he is to the poet of the Odyssey in those of sea adventure. In the details of single fights, in the account of the wounds inflicted on one another by the combatants, in the enumeration of the obscurer warriors who fall before the champions of either side-

his addit Amastrum Hippotaden, sequiturque inc.u.mbens eminus hasta Tereaque Harpalyc.u.mque et Demophoonta Chromimque(621),

he follows closely in the footsteps of Homer. He is, however, more sparing of these details, so as to avoid the monotony of Homer's battle-fields and single combats. The Iliad was originally addressed to a people of warriors-

??s?? ??a ?e??

?? ?e?t?t?? ?d??e ?a? ?? ???a? t???pe?e??

???a????? p??????, ?f?a f???es?a ??ast??(622).

And although through the mouth of the wisest of his heroes, Homer expresses some sense of weariness of the

'war and broils, which make Life one perpetual fight'-

a??a te f???p?d?? p??eta? ????? a????p??s?-

yet all accepted this life as their destiny; and those who first listened to the song of the poet would feel no satiety in the details of battle and records of martial prowess, glorifying perhaps the reputed ancestors of those chiefs whom they themselves followed to the field or to the storming of cities. To Virgil's readers, the record of such a time as that described in the Iliad would come like echoes from an alien world. In so far as the Romans of the Augustan Age had any vital pa.s.sion corresponding to the interest with which Homer's Greeks must have witnessed in imagination the spectacle of wounds and death in battle, it was in the basest form which the l.u.s.t of blood has ever a.s.sumed among civilised men,-the pa.s.sion for the gladiatorial shows. It is clear that Virgil himself, though he can feel and inspire the fire of battle at some critical moment-

ingeminant hastis et Troes et ipse Fulmineus Mnestheus(623);

though he can express a Roman contempt for death,-

Est hic, est animus lucis contemptor(624),

and can sympathise with the energetic daring of his Italian heroes and heroine,-Turnus, Lausus, Pallas(625), and Camilla,-yet shares the sentiment with which his hero looks forward to peace as the crown of his labours, and regards the wars which he was compelled to wage as a hated task imposed on him by the Fates-

Nos alias hinc ad lacrimas, eadem horrida bella, Fata vocant(626).

Yet even in the incidents of his battle-pieces Virgil does not follow Homer slavishly. The warlike action of the poem is not a mere succession of single combats, or a confused _melee_ of battle, surging 'this way and that,' between the rampart that guards the s.h.i.+ps and the walls of the city. It is said that the greatest soldier of modern times, in the enforced leisure of his last years, condescended to express a criticism, not indeed a favourable one, on Virgil's skill as a tactician; and it is an element of novelty in the representation of the Aeneid that it suggests at least some image of the combined operations of modern warfare. But it is in the play which Virgil gives to the other human emotions of his personages, tempering and counteracting the blind rage of battle, that the poet of a more advanced era most conspicuously appears. The ancient world at its best, whether we judge of it from the representations of its poets, or the recorded acts of its greatest men and most powerful and enlightened States, did not rise to that height of chivalrous generosity which scorns to take an enemy at a disadvantage, or to wipe away the memory of defeat or disaster by a cruel revenge. Achilles in his treatment of Hector, Caesar in his treatment of Vercingetorix, the Spartans in dealing with Plataeae, the Syracusans with the remnant of the defeated Athenians, the Athenians themselves with the helpless defenders of Melos, the Romans with the Samnites who spared their lives at the Caudine Forks,-all alike fall below the standard of n.o.bleness which men of temper inferior to that of the great men and nations of antiquity often reached in mediaeval times.

Those who appear to come nearest this standard in ancient times,-who could at least honour courage in an enemy or refuse to press too heavily upon him in his defeat,-are the Carthaginian Hannibal and his not unworthy conqueror. Virgil cannot be said, in this respect, to rise altogether superior to the spirit of the old Greek and Roman world. In the Aeneid it is thought no shame, but rather a glory, for soldiers to slay defenceless or wounded men in battle or in the dim confusion of a night foray. Yet the sentiments of his warriors engaged in battle are more tempered with humanity than those of the heroes of the Iliad. There is no word of throwing the bodies of the slain to dogs and vultures. There is no such deadly struggle over the bodies of Lausus or Pallas as over that of Patroclus. Turnus and Aeneas alike act on the principle expressed in the request of the dying champion of Italy,-

Ulterius ne tende odiis(627).

Not only is the warlike pa.s.sion less cruel in the Aeneid, but the feeling of the sanct.i.ty which invests the dead is stronger. The only pa.s.sage in the Aeneid which might have exposed Virgil to the reproach of Lucretius, as forgetting in the supposed interests of religion the certain claims of humanity, is that in which Aeneas, following the example of Achilles, sets aside the captive youths for immolation to the Manes of Pallas.

But the chief source of interest in the Virgilian battle-pieces is the pathetic sympathy awakened for the untimely death of some of the n.o.bler personages of the story. The tender compa.s.sion called forth by the blight which fell in his own time upon the earliest of the 'breves et infaustos populi Romani amores(628),' and reappeared again in the deaths of Drusus and Germanicus-that compa.s.sion which dictates the words

si qua fata aspera rumpas Tu Marcellus eris(629),

appears in his description of the fates of Pallas and Lausus, of Euryalus and Camilla. The reverence for the purest of human affections which s.h.i.+nes through the lines

Transiit et parmam mucro levia arma minacis, Et tunicam, molli mater quam neverat auro(630),

and

At vero, ut voltum vidit morientis et ora, Ora modis Anchisiades pallentia miris, Ingemuit miserans graviter dextramque tetendit, Et mentem patriae subiit pietatis imago(631),

may be discerned also in some of the minor incidents of the poem, as in these lines-

Vos etiam, gemini, Rutulis cecidistis in arvis, Daucia, Laride Thymberque, simillima proles, Indiscreta suis gratusque parentibus error(632).

The emotions awakened by the deaths of Mezentius and of Turnus are of a sterner character. So too the poet's compa.s.sion for the heroine of his later books, Camilla, falling by the hand of an ign.o.ble antagonist, is mixed with a sense of scornful satisfaction at the retribution which immediately followed-

Extemplo teli stridorem aurasque sonantis Audiit una Arruns haesitque in corpore ferrum.

Illum expirantem socii atque extrema gementem Obliti ignoto camporum in pulvere linquunt; Opis ad aetherium pinnis aufertur Olympum(633).

Virgil's susceptibility to local a.s.sociations and to impressions of a remote antiquity must also be taken into account as supplying materials and stimulus to his inventive faculty. No poet so often appeals to the imaginative interest attaching to the earlier condition of places or things of old renown or famous in the later history of the world. Thus the building of Carthage, the first view of the Tiber-

Hunc inter fluvio Tiberinus amoeno Verticibus rapidis et multa flavus harena In mare prorumpit(634)-

the gathering of the Italian races from 'mountainous Praeneste, from the tilled lands around Gabii, from the banks of the cool Anio, and the rivulets sparkling among the Hernican hills,'-the contrast between the primitive pastoral aspect of the Tarpeian Rock and the Capitol, of the site of the Forum and the Carinae, and the familiar spectacle of outward magnificence which they presented in the Augustan Age,-are brought before the mind with a more stimulating power than the experiences of storm or battle through which the hero of the poem is conducted. The local a.s.sociations of Mount Eryx, of the lake of Avernus, of the fountain Albunea, of the valley of Amsanctus, of the Arician grove, of the site of Ardea, are evoked with impressive effect. The names of the promontories Palinurum, Misenum, and Caieta are invested with an interest derived from their connexion with the imaginary incidents and personages of the poem.

The ritual observances and the legend connected with the Ara Maxima suggest the description of ceremonies and the narrative of events in the earlier half of Book viii.; and the custom-so ancient that its original meaning was forgotten-of opening the gateway of Ja.n.u.s Quirinus on the rare occasions when a state of war arose out of a state of unbroken peace, is traced back to a time antecedent to the existence either of Rome or Alba-

Mos erat Hesperio in Latio, quem protinus urbes Albanae coluere sacrum, nunc maxima rerum Roma colit, etc.

Ipse Quirinali trabea cinctuque Gabino Insignis reserat stridentia limina Consul; Ipse vocat pugnas, sequitur tum cetera p.u.b.es, Aereaque adsensu conspirant cornua rauco(635).

Perhaps the most original and not the least impressive of those personages whom Virgil introduces into his composite representation-the Sibyl-is conceived under the strong sense of the mystery and sanct.i.ty which invested the oracles of the Sibylline books.

The personal and national susceptibilities of Virgil's imagination and the circ.u.mstances of the age in which he lived are thus seen largely to modify that representation of life and manners of which the main outlines are suggested by the Homeric poems, and of which many of the details are derived from the Cyclic poems, from the Greek tragedies founded on the events which followed on the death of Hector, and from the Italian traditions and aetiological myths which Cato had preserved in his 'Origines,' and Varro and other writers in their works on antiquities.

Virgil's power as an epic poet does not consist in original invention of incident or action, but in combining diverse elements into a h.o.m.ogeneous whole, and in imparting poetic life to old materials, many of them not originally conceived in a poetic spirit. The interest which he thus imparts to his narrative is different from, and inferior to, that attaching to the original representation in the Homeric poems. Had Virgil's representation been as faithfully drawn from the life as that of Homer, it still would have been less interesting, from the fact that ancient Romans are less interesting in their individuality than the Greeks of the great ages of Greek life, and from the fact also that the manners of an advanced age do not affect the imagination in the way in which those of a nation's youth affect it. Not only was Virgil's own genius much less creative than that of Homer, his materials possessed much less plasticity.

There is no need of any act of reconstructive criticism to enable us to feel the immediate power of the Iliad and the Odyssey. To do justice to the power of the Aeneid we must endeavour to realise in imagination the state of mind of those who received the poem in all the novelty of its first impression,-at once 'rich with the spoils of time,' and 'pregnant with celestial fire.'

IV.

The most important element in the Aeneid, regarded as a poem of heroic action, remains still to be considered, viz. the conception and delineation of individual character. The greatest of epic poets in ancient times was also endowed with the most versatile dramatic faculty. And this faculty was displayed not only in the conception of a great variety of n.o.ble types of character, but also in the modes in which these conceptions were embodied. The Greek language is greatly superior to the Latin in its adaptability to natural dialogue. In this respect Cicero's inferiority to Plato is as marked as Virgil's inferiority to Homer. The language of Homer and the language of Plato are equally fitted for the expression of the greatest thoughts and feelings, and for the common intercourse of men with one another. Neither that of Virgil nor of Cicero adapts itself easily to the lively play of emotion or to the rapid interchange of thought. The characters of Homer, like the characters of Shakspeare, reveal themselves in their complete individuality, as they act and re-act on one another in many changing moods of pa.s.sion and affection. The personages of Virgil are revealed by the poet, partly in his account of what they do, and partly through the medium of set speeches expressive of some particular att.i.tude of mind. Virgil's imagination is the imagination of the orator rather than of the dramatist. It is not a complete and complex man, liable to various moods, and standing in various relations to other men, but it is some powerful movement of the ???? in man, that the oratorical imagination is best fitted to express. Milton also, like Virgil, reveals the characters of his personages with the imaginative power of an orator rather than with that of a dramatist. But he possesses another resource in the a.n.a.lytical power with which he makes his chief personage reveal his inmost nature and most secret motives in truthful communing with himself. It is through the soliloquies in the 'Paradise Lost' that we can best realise the whole conception of Satan, in his ruined magnificence, and in his lost but not forgotten capacity of happiness and n.o.bleness. The soliloquies of these personages perform for the epic poet the part performed by the elaborate introspection and discussion of motives in modern prose fiction. Homer also avails himself frequently of the soliloquy, as he does of natural dialogue and more formal oratory. In the Aeneid the chief personage is often introduced, like the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey,