The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 12

Tua, Caesar, aetas Fruges et agris rettulit uberes(279).

All Virgil's early a.s.sociations and sympathies would lead him to identify himself with this object and with the interests and happiness of such representatives of the old rural life of Italy as might still be found, or might arise again under a secure administration. In proposing to himself some serious aim for the exercise of his poetic gift, it was natural that he should have fixed on that of representing this life in such a way as to create an aspiration for it, and to secure for it the sympathy of the world. The language in which he speaks of the poem as a task imposed on him by Maecenas need not be taken literally: but it is no detraction from Virgil's originality to suppose that he, like Horace, was encouraged by the minister to devote his genius to a purpose which would appeal equally to the sympathies of the statesman and of the poet. The testimony of Virgil's biographer on this subject, which may probably be traced to the original testimony of Melissus, the freedman of Maecenas, is neither to be disregarded nor unduly pressed, any more than the language in which Virgil himself makes acknowledgment of his indebtedness. It is impossible to say what chance seed of casual conversation may have been the original germ of what ultimately became so large and goodly a creation. If, in the composition of the Georgics, Virgil employed his art as an instrument of government, we cannot doubt that he did so not only because he recognised in the subject of the poem one suited to his own genius, but because his past life and early a.s.sociations brought home to him the desolation caused in the rural districts by the Civil Wars, the moral worth of that old cla.s.s of husbandmen who had suffered from them, and the public loss arising from the diminution in their number and influence. To idealise the life of that cla.s.s by describing, with realistic fidelity and in the language of purest poetry, the annual round of labour in which it was pa.s.sed; to suggest the ever-present charm arising from the intimate contact with the manifold processes and aspects of Nature into which man is brought in this life of labour; to contrast the simplicity and sanct.i.ty of such life with the luxury and lawless pa.s.sions of the great world; and to a.s.sociate this ideal with the varied beauty of Italy and the historic memories of Rome, were objects worthy of one who aspired to fulfil the office of a national poet. It is no detraction from the originality of his idea to suppose that some such suggestion as that attributed to Maecenas gave the original impulse to the poem. Not only the art, genius, and learning, but the religious faith and feeling, the moral and national sympathies, which give to it its peculiar meaning and value, are all the poet's own. His strong feeling for his subject was as little capable of being communicated from without, as the genius with which he adorns it(280).

With such feelings as those which were moving the imagination of Virgil, a modern poet might have shaped his subject into the form of a poetic idyl, in which the joys and sorrows of men and women living during this national crisis might have been represented in union with the varied aspects of the scenery and the chief modes of rural industry in Italy. Such a form of art would have enabled the poet to add the interest of individual character and action to his abstract delineation of the 'acer rusticus' or the 'duri agrestes' engaged in a hard struggle with the forces of Nature. And one or two pa.s.sages, containing some sketch drawn directly from peasant life, as for instance i. 291296,

Et quidam seros hiberni ad luminis ignes, etc.,

and iv. 125146,

Namque sub Oebaliae memini me turribus arcis, etc.,

make us regret that the conditions of his art, as conceived by him, did not encourage him to blend something more of idyllic representation with the didactic and descriptive treatment of his subject. But the idyl which treats the incidents of human life in the form either of a continuous poem or of a tale in prose was unknown to the early art of Greece; and Roman imagination was incapable of inventing a perfectly new mould into which to cast its poetic fancies and feelings. Nor is it probable that a poem so truly representative of Italy in all its aspects could have been produced in the form of an idyl, of which the interest would have been concentrated on some family or group of personages.

II.

There was only one form of literary art known to the Greeks or Romans of the Augustan Age which was at all suitable for the treatment on a large scale of such a subject as that which now filled the mind of Virgil. Next after the epic poem of heroic action, the didactic epos was regarded at Rome as the most serious and elaborate form of poetic art. It was more suited than any other form to the Roman mind. It is the only form in which the genius of Rome has produced master-pieces superior not only to anything of the kind produced by Greece but to all similar attempts in modern times. As Roman invention, stimulated by the practical sense of utility, by the pa.s.sion for vast and ma.s.sive undertakings, and by the strong perception of order and unity of design, devised a new kind of architecture for the ordinary wants of life, so in accordance with the national bent to reduce all things to rule, to impose the will of a master on obedient subjects, to use the constructive and artistic faculties for some practical end, if it did not create, it gave ampler compa.s.s, more solid and ma.s.sive workmanship, and the a.s.sociations of great ideas to that form of poetic art which had been the most meagre and unsubstantial of all those invented by the genius of Greece.

Moreover, a new form, or rather a form of more ample capacity, was required to embody the new poetical feelings and experience which now moved the Roman and Italian mind. If less interest was felt at Rome in following the course of individual destiny, the interest felt in contemplating the outward aspect and secret movement of Nature was now stronger than it had been in the great ages of Greek literature. Though the vivid enjoyment of the outward world had unconsciously shaped the tales of the early Greek mythology, and though this enjoyment had entered directly, as a subordinate element, into the epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry of Greece, and, more prominently, into the later poetry of Alexandria, and although the phenomena and laws of Nature had aroused the speculative curiosity of the early Greek philosophers, no poet before Lucretius had treated of Nature, in the immensity of her range, in the primal elements and living forces of her const.i.tution, and, at the same time, in her manifold aspects of beneficence and beauty, and of destructive energy, as the subject of a great poem. The forms adopted by the great masters of Greek poetry,-the epic, lyric, and dramatic writers,-whose essential business it was to represent the actions and pa.s.sions of men, were inapplicable to the treatment of this new subject of man's environment. Lucretius accordingly had to take the outline of his form from the early physiological writers, whom the Greeks scarcely ranked among their poets at all, and who, though animated by the speculative pa.s.sion to penetrate to the secret of Nature, were not specially interested in her aspects of beauty or power, or in her relation to the life of man. If he cannot claim the t.i.tle of an inventor in art, yet by adding volume and majesty to the rudimentary type of these early writers, he gave to the ancient world the unique specimen of a great philosophical poem.

So too Virgil, penetrated with the feeling of Nature in her relation to human wants and enjoyment, and desirous to give an adequate expression to this feeling, could derive no guidance from the n.o.bler genius of Greece.

To find a suitable vehicle, he had to turn to the earliest and latest periods of her literature. The didactic, as distinct from the philosophic or contemplative poem, was the invention of a time prior to the existence of prose composition. It seems to have arisen out of the impulse to convey instruction and advice on the management of life generally, and especially on the best means of securing a livelihood from the cultivation of the soil. The use of the language of poetry for a purpose essentially practical and prosaic was justified, in that primitive time, not only by the absence of any other organ of literary expression, but also by the fact that, in such a time, all literary effort was the result of animated feeling, and that the most common aspects of Nature, such as the changes of the seasons or of night and day, and what seem now the most familiar occupations of life, were apprehended by the lively mind of the Greek with a fresh sense of wonder, which use deadens in eras of more advanced civilisation. But while this sense of wonder imparts a poetical colouring to the language of early didactic poetry, and while sufficient harmony was secured for it by the training of the ear during centuries of epic song, the form and structure of this kind of art was, as compared with the other forms of Greek poetry, essentially rudimentary. The sole specimen which has reached our times appears in the form of a personal address, treating of a number of subjects not closely connected with one another, interspersed with various episodes, and producing the impression of a connected whole solely through the vivid personality of the writer.

Didactic poetry was absolutely rejected in the maturity of Greek genius, after the rise of a prose literature had marked off clearly the separate provinces of prose and poetry, and after Greek taste had become more exacting in its demand of unity of impression and symmetry of form in every work of art. It was revived again in the Alexandrian epoch, when the creative impulse was lost, and life and its interests had become tamer, while at the same time knowledge had greatly increased, and a kind of literary dilettanteism was one of the chief elements in refined enjoyment.

By the Alexandrine writers the irregular and desultory treatment of Hesiod was abandoned. The didactic poem was treated by them as one of the recognised branches of poetical art. It still retained the general character of a personal address, which accident may have first suggested to Hesiod, and which either his example or their own taste had imposed on the early philosophic poets. The Alexandrine type of poem differed from that of Hesiod by professing to convey systematic instruction on some definite branch of knowledge, instead of offering practical directions on the best method of carrying on some occupation, combined with a medley of precepts, moral, religious, and ceremonial. The change may be compared to that which the Roman satire underwent, from the inartistic medley of Ennius and Lucilius to the systematic treatment of some special subject in the satire of Persius and Juvenal. The primary aim of such writers as Aratus and Nicander was not to communicate ideas capable of affecting the imagination, but to satisfy intellectual curiosity by communicating interesting information. So soon as this information ceased to be interesting, the value of their work was gone. Thus although accident has handed down several specimens of the Alexandrine type of didactic poetry, their chief literary use is to enable us, by contrast, better to appreciate the genius which, by interfusing with the materials used by them other elements deeply affecting the heart, the imagination, and the moral sympathies, has given the world, instead of the temporary gift of a little useful information, the ?t?a ?? ?e? which it possesses in the Georgics.

In that poem Virgil combines something of the spirit of the older or primitive type of didactic poetry with the systematic treatment of their subject employed by the Alexandrine Metaphrastae. He retains the old form of a personal address, not only in the dedication of the poem to Maecenas, but in the manner in which he inculcates his precepts on the husbandman, or indicates what he himself would do in particular circ.u.mstances(281).

Yet he bears more resemblance to the poets of Alexandria in his systematic treatment and arrangement of his materials. He aims, like them, at communicating a large body of unfamiliar knowledge, as well as conveying practical precepts founded on experience. By combining these two aims, but much more by making the aims of conveying precept and instruction altogether subsidiary to that of moving the imagination and the affections, Virgil, if he has not created a new type of didactic poetry, has at least produced almost the only specimen of it which the world cares to read. He is apparently conscious of the difficulty of imparting to a poem of this type a continuous poetical charm; as Lucretius, with more reason, is conscious of the difficulty of securing a sustained poetical interest for his argumentative processes and his investigations into the first principles of things. Virgil's difficulty is to maintain his subject on the level of poetical feeling, while at the same time adhering to the necessities of practical instruction. And this difficulty attaches to every kind of didactic poetry. He had to a.s.sociate with a poetic charm, not only the fair results of the husbandman's labour, the 'heavy harvests and the Ma.s.sic juice of the vine,' but the processes and mechanical appliances through which these fair results were obtained. Although his idea of his art did not demand an exhaustive treatment of all the operations of rural industry, such as was demanded of the prose writers on the subject, yet it did demand that, in making his selection, he should regard the importance of each topic in connexion with the work of the farm as well as its adaptation to poetic treatment. It cannot be denied that this necessary infusion of prosaic matter deprives even the most perfect specimen of didactic poetry of that purity of imaginative interest which pervades the masterpieces of epic, lyrical, and dramatic genius: but it is, on the other hand, a great triumph of art to have redeemed so much as Virgil has done from the homely realities of life into the more sacred ground of poetry, and that without sacrifice either of the truth of fact or of the dignity and sobriety of expression.

III.

While the t.i.tle 'Georgica' reminds us that the form of the poem, like the form of the 'Bucolica' and the 'Aeneis,' was derived from the Greeks, the subject of which it treats was one of peculiarly national interest. As the Aeneid may be said to be inspired by the idea of Rome and her destiny, and as the practical purpose of that poem was to confirm the faith of the Romans in their Empire and in the ruler in whom that Empire was vested, so the Georgics may be said to be inspired by the idea of Italy; and the true aim of the poem was to revive and extend the love of the land, and to restore the fading ideal of a life of virtue and happiness, pa.s.sed in the labours of a country life. But while much of the materials and of the workmanship of the Aeneid is originally due to Greek invention, the general substance of the Georgics and the most essentially poetical pa.s.sages are of native origin.

The chief modes of rural industry treated in the various books are those which flourished in Italy,-the tillage of the land for various crops, the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the breeding and rearing of cattle, sheep, and horses, and the tending of bees. It is noticed by Servius that the agricultural precepts of the poem apply only to Italy and not to other lands: 'Sane agriculturae huius praecepta non ad omnes pertinent terras, sed ad solum situm Italiae.' The frequent references to the products of other lands serve to suggest by contrast the superiority of Italy in those which are the special subject of the poem and which are most essential to human well-being. Cato also is represented by Cicero(282) as resting the charm of a country life in the contemplation of the same operations of Nature as those indicated in the opening lines of the Georgics:-

Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram Vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vites Conveniat(283),-

The number of Roman writers who treated in prose of this subject, both before and after Virgil, testifies further to the strong national interest attaching to it. Among these writers, Varro, the immediate predecessor of Virgil, a.s.sociates the subject directly with the pride which the Romans felt in their country. He introduces the speakers in his Dialogue as holding their conversation in the Temple of Tellus, and examining a map or painting of Italy on the wall. One of the speakers addresses the others in these words, 'You who have travelled over many lands, have you ever seen any more richly cultivated than Italy? I, indeed, have never seen any so richly cultivated.' He especially characterises the excellence of its corn-crops, its vines, olives, and fruit-trees: 'What spelt shall I compare to the Campanian? what wheat to the Apulian? what wine to the Falernian? what oil to that of Venafrum? is not Italy planted with trees, so that the whole of it seems an orchard(284)?' Other authors, Virgil himself among them(285), and Columella in the Introduction to his treatise(286), testify to the pride which the Italians took in their breed of horses and herds of cattle. And though the Italian bees and their product were not so famous in poetry as the bees of Hymettus and 'the honey of Hybla,' yet Horace speaks of the country near Tarentum as one 'where the honey yields not to the honey of Hymettus;' and in another Ode, in which he contrasts his own moderate estate with the resources of richer men, he mentions Calabrian honey along with the wine of Formiae and the fleeces of Gallic pastures among the chief sources of wealth:-

Quanquam nec Calabrae mella ferunt apes Nec Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora Languescit mihi, nec pinguia Gallicis Cresc.u.n.t vellera pascuis(287).

This branch of his subject moreover enables Virgil to celebrate the floral beauties of Italy, and to exhibit on a small scale a picture of a community at once warlike, politic, and industrious, such as had been realised on the soil of Italy, and especially in the old Roman Commonwealth, more completely than among any other people.

The subject was moreover intimately a.s.sociated with the national history.

Several of the early legends, such as those of Cincinnatus, and, in more historical times, of Atilius Regulus and Curius Dentatus, attest the prominence which agriculture enjoyed among the pursuits of the foremost men in the Republic. The surnames of many n.o.ble families, patrician and plebeian, such as the Lentuli, Stolones, Bubulci, Pisones, Dolabellae, and the name of the great Fabian Gens, are connected etymologically with agricultural occupations, products, or implements, and afford evidence of a time when the men who filled the great offices of the State lived on their own lands(288), and were known for the success with which they improved their farms. The pa.s.sion to possess and subdue the land was, in the early history of the Republic, the main motive power both of the political and military history of Rome. Even down to the establishment of the Empire there was no question which more divided the two great parties in the State than that of the Agrarian laws. And though, after the conquest of Italy, Roman wars were fought for dominion rather than for new territory, yet the hope of owning land, if not on Italian yet on some foreign soil, which he should hold by his sword as well as cultivate by his plough, supported the Roman soldier, even under the Empire, through the long years of his service. The Roman 'colonies,' the origin of so many famous European cities, were settlements of 'Coloni' or cultivators of the soil.

Thus in the selection of his subject Virgil appealed to old national a.s.sociations and living tastes in a way in which no Greek poet could have done in choosing any mode of practical industry for poetic treatment. Even the details of direct instruction would attract a Roman reader by reminding him of labours which he may often have watched and perhaps have shared. Though Virgil found new sources of attraction by references to Greek mythology and science, and though he availed himself of the diction of Greek poets much inferior to himself in their perception of beauty and their power over language, yet his materials are mainly drawn either from personal observation, or from Italian writers who had put on record the results of what they had seen and done. There is a thoroughly Roman character in the technical execution of the poem, in the command over details, in the power of orderly arrangement with a view to convenience rather than logical symmetry, and in the combined sobriety and dignity of the workmanship. But it is in the longer episodes, in which the deeper meaning of the poem is most brought out, that the intimate connexion between the various topics treated in it and the national character and fortunes becomes most apparent. There is indeed one marked exception to the maintenance of this unity of impression. The long episode in Book iv, from line 315 to 558, has no national significance. And this is an undoubted blot on the artistic perfection of the work. This episode not only adds nothing to its representative character, but it suggests fancies and a.s.sociations utterly alien from the Italy of the Augustan Age. The s.p.a.ce given to such a theme is opposed to the truer taste of the poet, expressed in such lines as these-

Non hic te carmine ficto Atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo.

and

Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes, Omnia iam volgata(289).

But it is not the judgement of the poet, but the despotic will of the Emperor, that is responsible for this imperfection. The fourth Book originally ended with an episode which afforded scope for the expression of personal feeling, for awakening an interest in that land which was now of vast importance to the State, and which affected the imagination of cultivated Romans as it does that of cultivated men in modern times(290), and for ill.u.s.trating the national greatness and the recent history of Rome. In the first edition the mention of Egypt at line 287 had led Virgil to celebrate the administration of that province under his early friend Cornelius Gallus. When Gallus fell into disgrace and was forced to commit suicide in 26 B.C., Virgil was required to re-edit the poem with a new concluding episode(291). The subject treated in the earlier edition of the poem would have enabled Virgil to give renewed expression to his admiration and affection for the Gallus of the Eclogues, to tell the tale of the downfall of Cleopatra, and to magnify the greatness of Rome in the conquest and government of her provinces. The episode as it now stands is a finished piece of metrical execution; it ill.u.s.trates the attraction which the Greek mythological stories had for educated Romans; it is expressed in those tones of tender pathos of which Virgil was a master; but it is at the same time a standing proof of the malign influence which the Imperial despotism already exercised on the spontaneous inspiration of genius, as well as on all sincere expression of feeling.

IV.

If the idea of the poem and of the national interests a.s.sociated with it arose in Virgil's mind during his life in Rome, it was in his retirement in Campania that he prepared himself for and executed his task. Like the Aeneid it was a work of slow growth, the result of careful study and meditation. Besides the great change of the concluding episode, there are some slight indications that the poem was retouched in later editions; and perhaps a very few lines added to the original work may have been either left finally unadjusted to their proper place, or may have been transposed in the copying of the ma.n.u.script(292). Although regard for his art was a more prominent consideration in the mind of Virgil than of Lucretius, yet he did not, any more than his predecessor, wish to separate the office of a teacher from that of a poet. How far the experience of his early years in the farm in the district of Andes or of his later residence on his land near Nola may have contributed to his knowledge of his subject, we have no means of knowing; but probably the delicacy of his health as well as his devotion to study may have limited his experience to the observation of the labours of others. But the power of vividly realising and enjoying the familiar sights and work of the farm,-the life which he gives to the notices of seed-time and harvest, of the growth of trees and ripening of fruits, of the habits of flocks, herds, and bees, etc.,-the deep love for his subject in all its details-

Singula dum capti circ.u.mvectamur amore(293)-

were gifts which could not come from any study of books. The poetry of manhood is, more often perhaps than we know, the conscious reproduction of the unconscious impressions of early years, received in a susceptible and retentive mind. Virgil, in common with all great poets, retained through life the 'child's heart within the man's.' Through this geniality of nature he was able-

angustis hunc addere rebus honorem(294)-

to glorify trite and familiar things by the light reflected from the healthy memories and the idealising fancies of boyhood and early youth.

But while his feeling is all his own,-the happy survival probably of the childhood and youth pa.s.sed in his home in the district of Andes,-he largely avails himself of the observation, the thought, and the language of earlier writers, both Greek and Roman. His poem is eminently a work of learning as well as of native feeling. He combines in its varied and firm texture the homely wisdom embodied in the precepts and proverbs of Italian peasants ('veterum praecepta'),-the quaint and oracular dicta of Hesiod,-the scientific knowledge and mythological lore of Alexandrine writers,-the philosophic and imaginative conceptions of Lucretius,-with the knowledge of natural history contained in the treatises of Aristotle and Theophrastus, and the systematic practical directions of the old prose writers on rural economy, such as the Carthaginian Mago(295), whose work had been translated into Latin,-Democritus and Xenophon among Greek prose writers,-Cato, the two Sasernae, Licinius Stolo, Tremellius, and Varro among Latin authors. The purely practical precepts of the Georgics were apparently selected and condensed from these writers(296). But no literary inspiration or ideas were likely to have come from any of these last-named authors, unless the Invocation in the first Book may have been suggested by the example of Varro, who begins his treatise with an invocation to the XII Di consentes. The proverbial sayings or rustic songs embodying the traditional peasant lore, such as the 'Quid vesper serus vehit?' and the 'hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra, Camille, metes(297),' which add an antique and homely charm to the poem, may have become known to Virgil from the book of the Sasernae, who are quoted by Varro as authorities for many of the old charms used by the primitive husbandmen, such as 'Terra pestem teneto, salus hic maneto,' which is to be repeated 'ter novies.' Servius notes that the words 'sulco attritus splendescere vomer' recall an old saying of Cato, 'Vir bonus est, mi fili, colendi peritus, cuius ferramenta splendent(298).' The notices of ceremonial observances, such as the account of the Ambarvalia, and the enumeration of things that might lawfully be done on holy days(299), were probably derived from the pontifical books and the sacred books of the other priestly colleges, of which Virgil made large use also in the Aeneid. In all the writers on practical farming, from Cato to Varro, he found that strong appreciation of the supreme worth of rural industry and that strong interest in its processes and results which justified him in identifying his subject with the thought of the national life.

Among the sources of literary inspiration from which Virgil drew in the Georgics, the oldest, and not the least abundant, was the 'Works and Days'

of Hesiod. Yet a comparison of the two poems shows immediately that the Georgics do not, either in form or substance, stand in that close relation to their prototype, in which the Eclogues on the one hand, and the Aeneid on the other, stand to the idyls of Theocritus and to the epic poems of Homer. The immediate influence of Hesiod is most apparent in the first Book of the Georgics, in which the subject is treated in connexion with theological ideas; while in the second Book and in the later Books, in which the philosophical conception of Nature, though in subordination to the conception of a supreme Spiritual power, becomes more prominent, the spirit of Hesiod gives place to the spirit of Lucretius. There is, however, a real affinity between the primitive piety of the old Boeotian bard and the att.i.tude in which Virgil contemplated the world, though the faith of Virgil has become more rational under the speculative teaching and enquiry which had taken the place of earlier modes of thought among the Greeks. Virgil is ever seeking to produce a poetical reconcilement between primitive tradition and more enlightened views both of moral and physical truth. Thus he introduces the old fable of the creation of the present race of men in immediate juxtaposition with the a.s.sertion of the 'laws and eternal conditions imposed by Nature on certain places.' He accepts the belief in a Golden Age and in the blight which fell on the world under the dispensation of Jove; but he regards this blight as sent, not in anger, but as a discipline and incentive to exertion. He describes the natural progress of the various arts of life under this stimulus, but still leaves room for divine intervention in the more important discoveries:-

Prima Ceres ferro mortalis vertere terram Inst.i.tuit(300).

Again, the teleological view of Nature, which appears in the Georgics in antagonism to the teaching of Lucretius, in such pa.s.sages as i. 231-

Idcirco certis dimensum partibus...o...b..m, etc.,

and i. 351-

Atque haec ut certis possemus discere signis-

is in the spirit of Hesiod, though in advance of his conception of Zeus, who appears in him not as a beneficent Providence, but rather as a jealous task-master. So too the constant inculcation of prayer and ceremonial observances-

Umida solst.i.tia atque hiemes orate serenas, Agricolae- Votisque vocaveris imbrem- In primis venerare deos, atque annua magnae Sacra refer Cereri(301)-

the specification of lucky and unlucky days, the reference to the old Greek fables of Coeus, Iapetus, and Typhoeus, are, though not directly imitated from Hesiod, yet conceived in his spirit.