The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 18

c.u.m nix alta iacet, glaciem c.u.m flumina trudunt(370).

Perhaps none of the minor episodes recurs to the mind so often with so keen a feeling of delight as the pa.s.sage at IV. 125 to 148, beginning 'Namque sub Oebaliae,' etc. Virgil here introduces himself in his own person, and draws a picture of one whom he had known, and who had interested him as actually realising that life of labour and of happiness in the results of his labour, which in the body of the poem is held up as an abstract ideal. The scene of this vivid reminiscence,-the district

Qua niger umectat flaventia culta Galaesus(371),-

seems to have had peculiar attraction both for Virgil and Horace. It is there-

umbrosi subter pineta Galaesi-

that Propertius pictures to himself Virgil meditating his Aeneid and still conning over his earlier Eclogues-

Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin harundinibus.

It is to 'that nook of earth' that Horace looks, if the unkind Fates forbid his residence at his favourite Tibur, for a resting-place for his 'age to wear away in.' But it is not only to the local charm that attention is drawn, and to the beauty of plant, flower, and fruit, created by the labour of love which the old Cilician gardener-some survivor probably from the Eastern wars of Pompey-bestowed on his neglected spot of ground. Here also the true moral of the poem is pointed, that in the life of rural industry there is a deep source of happiness altogether independent of wealth, and which wealth cannot buy:-

Regum aequabat opes animis, seraque revertens Nocte domum dapibus mensas onerabat inemptis(372).

A more prominent place is a.s.sumed by the two episodes with which the third and fourth Books close. In the first of these, which extends from line 478 to 566, and which describes a great outbreak of cattle-plague among the Noric Alps and the district round the Timavus,-a locality which seems to have had a special attraction to Virgil's imagination(373),-he aims at painting a rival picture to that of the plague at Athens with which the poem of Lucretius ends. It would be unfair to compare the unfinished piece of the older poet, overcrowded as it is with detail and technical phraseology, with an elaborate specimen of Virgil's descriptive power, exercised on a kind of subject in which the speculative genius of the one poet gave him no advantage over the careful and truthful art of the other.

Yet, as has been already pointed out(374), there are here and there strokes of imaginative power in the larger sketch, and marks of insight into human n.o.bleness, roughly indeed expressed, as at 12436-

Qui fuerant autem praesto, contagibus ibant Atque labore, pudor quem tum cogebat obire Blandaque la.s.sorum vox mixta voce querellae.

Optimus hoc leti genus ergo quisque subibat(375)-

in which the sincerity of the older master still a.s.serts itself. There is great beauty however of pastoral scene, of pathos and human sympathy, of ethical contrast between the simple wants of the lower animals and the artificial luxury of human life, in Virgil's description. In the lines 520522 one of those scenes in which he most delighted is brought before the imagination:-

Non umbrae altorum nemorum, non mollia possunt Prata movere animum, non qui per saxa volutus Purior electro campum pet.i.t amnis(376).

The last element in the picture suggests at once the 'Saxosas inter decurrunt flumina valles' of the Eclogues, and the lines earlier in the book-

Saltibus in vacuis pasc.u.n.t et plena secundum Flumina.

And the whole feeling of the pa.s.sage is in harmony with that in Lucretius, ii. 361:-

Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis Oblectare animum, sumptamque avertere curam(377).

And in thorough harmony both with the pathos and the ethical feeling in Lucretius are the following:-

it tristis arator, Maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvenc.u.m(378):

and

Quid labor aut benefacta iuvant? quid vomere terras Invertisse gravis? atqui non Ma.s.sica Bacchi Munera, non illis epulae nocuere repostae: Frondibus et victu pasc.u.n.tur simplicis herbae, Pocula sunt fontes liquidi atque exercita cursu Flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura salubris(379).

If the s.p.a.ce a.s.signed to the different episodes is to be regarded as the measure of their importance, the long episode at the end of the fourth Book, from line 315 to 558, would have to be regarded as of nearly equal value to all the others put together. And yet, notwithstanding the metrical beauty of the pa.s.sage, it must be difficult for any one who is penetrated by the pervading sentiment of the Georgics to reach this point in the poem without a strong feeling of regret that the jealousy of Augustus had interfered with its original conclusion. As a Greek fable, composed after some Alexandrine model, mainly concerned with the fortunes of Orpheus and Eurydice,-for the shepherd Aristaeus, the

cultor nemorum cui pinguia Ceae Ter centum nivei tondent dumeta iuvenci(380),

really plays altogether a secondary part in the episode,-it has little to do with rural life, and nothing at all to do with Italy. Its professed object is to give a fabulous explanation of an impossible phenomenon, though one apparently accepted both by Mago and Democritus. To enrich this episode with a beauty not its own, Virgil has robbed his Aeneid-on the composition of which he must have been well advanced when he was called on, after the death of Gallus in 26 B.C., to provide a subst.i.tute for the pa.s.sage written in his honour-of some beautiful lines which are more in keeping with the larger representation and profounder feeling of the epic poem, than with the transient interest attaching to this recast of a well-known story. Even regarded simply as an epyllion or epic idyl, it may be questioned whether the Pastor Aristaeus is of an interest equal to that of the epic idyl of Catullus, 'Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,'

etc. There is this coincidence between the poems, that they each contain one story or idyllic representation within another, and in each case it is to the secondary representation that the most pathetic and pa.s.sionate interest belongs.

Opinions may differ as to whether the pa.s.sion of Ariadne or the sorrow of Orpheus is represented with most skill. There seems this difference between the two, that in the one we feel we are reading a fable, that the situation is altogether remote from experience, that it is one suited for a picture or a poem of fancy. The beautiful picture of Ariadne, on the other hand, appears like one drawn from the life, and her pa.s.sionate complaint is like that of a living woman. But still more undoubted is the superiority of Catullus in pictorial or statuesque reproduction seen in that part of his poem in which the original subject, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, is described. Catullus, above all other Latin poets, except perhaps Ovid, can bring a picture from human life or from outward nature before the inward eye; and this power is, much more than Virgil's power of suggesting deep and delicate shades of feeling, appropriate to the more limited compa.s.s of the idyl. It is no disparagement to Virgil to say that in this kind of art he is inferior to Catullus. Catullus, though a true Italian in temperament, largely endowed with and freely using the biting raillery-'Italum acetum'-which ancient writers ascribe to the race, had in his genius, more than any Roman writer, the disinterested delight in art, irrespective of any personal a.s.sociations, characteristic of the Greek imagination. Virgil's art, on the other hand, produces its deepest impressions only when his heart is moved. Even in the Eclogues this is for the most part true. Something must touch his personal sympathies, his moral or religious nature, or his national feeling, before he is roused to his highest creative effort.

In the three cardinal pa.s.sages which remain to be considered, in the composition of which the deeper elements of Virgil's nature were powerfully moved, the impression which the changing state of the national fortunes produced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these (i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from its eastern boundary to its furthest limits in Europe,-the agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging into the abyss,-is described and symbolised in the concluding lines of the Book:-

Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum; Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius...o...b..: Ut c.u.m carceribus sese effudere quadrigae, Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas(381).

This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the great national crime which Rome was still atoning,-the murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which, from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as a sign of compa.s.sion for his fate and of abhorrence of the crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which accompanied or preceded that event,-some of them violations of natural law, such as those which occur in the narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending over the Roman arms,-

pecudesque locutae, Infandum- Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant(382):-

others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among the spirits of the dead,-

Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris Visa sub obscurum noctis(383);

others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways of bird and beast,-

Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres Signa dabant- Et altae Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes(384);

others manifesting themselves through great commotion in the kingdom of Nature,-earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods,-

'The noise of battle hurtling in the air,'

lightnings in a clear sky, and the blaze of comets portending doom. These all succeed one another in Virgil's verse according to no principle of logical connexion, but as they might be successively announced to the awe-struck citizens of Rome. The whole pa.s.sage is pervaded by that strong sense of awe before an invisible Power-the 'religio dira'-by which the Roman imagination was possessed in times of great national calamity. The issue of all these portents appeared in the second great battle in which Roman blood fattened the Macedonian plains. Then by a fine touch of imagination, and looking far forward into the future, the poet reminds us of the contrast, indicated in other pa.s.sages of the poem, between the peaceful and beneficent industry of the husbandman and the cruel devastation of war:-

Scilicet et tempus veniet, c.u.m finibus illis Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro, Exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila, Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanis, Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris(385).

Next follows the prayer to the national G.o.ds of Italy to preserve the life of him who could alone raise the world out of the sin and ruin into which it had fallen, and alone restore their ancient glory to the fields, which now lay waste from the want of men to till them:-

Non ullus aratro Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis, Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem(386).

In the second of the great episodes this sorrow for the past and foreboding for the future has entirely cleared away. The feeling now expressed is one of pride and exultation in Italy, as a land of rich crops and fruits, of vines and olives, a land famous for its herds and flocks and breed of horses, for its genial climate, for the beauty of the seas washing its coasts, for its great lakes and rivers, its ancient cities and other mighty works of men; famous too for its hardy, energetic, and warlike races,-

Haec genus acre virum Marsos p.u.b.emque Sabellam, Adsuetumque malo Ligurem Volscosque verutos Extulit(387),-

for its great men and families who had fought for it in old times, and for one greater still, who was then in the furthest East defending Rome against her enemies,-

Haec Decios magnosque Camillos, Scipiadas duros bello, et te, maxime Caesar, Qui nunc extremis Asiae iam victor in oris Imbellem avertis Romanis arcibus Indum(388).

This pa.s.sage, introduced as a counter-picture to the description of the rank luxuriance of Nature in the vast forests and jungles of the East, concentrates in itself the deepest meaning and inspiration of the poem.

The glory of Italy is declared to be the motive for the revival of this ancient theme-

_Tibi_ res antiquae laudis et artis Ingredior(389).

As Varro represents his speakers as looking on the great picture of Italy in the Temple of Tellus while they discuss the various ways of tilling and improving the soil, so Virgil in the midst of his didactic precepts holds up this ideal picture of the land to the love and admiration of his countrymen. By a few powerful strokes he combines the characteristic features and the great memories of Italian towns in lines which recur to every traveller as he pa.s.ses through Italy,-

Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem, Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros(390).

No expression of patriotic sentiment in any language is more pure and n.o.ble than this. It is a tribute of just pride and affection to the land which, from its beauty, its history, its great services to man, is felt to be worthy of the deep devotion with which Virgil commends it to the heart and imagination of the world.