The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 20

Qualem saepe cava montis convalle solemus Despicere(413), etc.,

and again the opening scene of the poem, at i. 43,

Vere novo gelidus canis c.u.m montibus umor Liquitur, et Zephyro putris se glaeba resolvit(414),

familiar to Roman readers. And while the 'caeli indulgentia'

characteristic of the Italian climate is felt as a pervading genial presence through the various books of the poem, the sudden and violent vicissitudes to which that climate is especially liable form part of the varied and impressive spectacle presented to us. The pa.s.sage i. 316321,

Saepe ego c.u.m flavis ... stipulasque volantis,

records a calamity to which the labours of the Italian husbandman were peculiarly exposed. In the description of the storm of rain, immediately following, the words 'collectae ex alto nubes' remind us, like the description of a similar storm in Lucretius (vi. 256261), that Virgil, as Lucretius may have done, must often have watched such a tempest gathering over the sea that washes the Campanian sh.o.r.es. The inundation of the Po is described among the omens accompanying the death of Caesar, in lines which may have been suggested by some scene actually witnessed by the poet, and which with vivid exactness represent for all times the destructive forces put forth by the great river that drains the vast mountain-ranges of Northern Italy:-

Proluit insano contorquens vertice silvas Fluviorum rex Erida.n.u.s, camposque per omnes c.u.m stabulis armenta tulit(415).

And while the general representation of Nature, in the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local a.s.sociations. In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him through personal a.s.sociation, but for all which appeal to his sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to a celebration of the varied beauties of the land; and the names of c.l.i.tumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled with 'the rich Virgilian rustic measure(416).' In the body of the poem also we find many local references to the northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the rapid flood of the Po; the starwort, out of which wreaths are made to adorn the altars of the G.o.ds, is gathered by shepherds by the winding banks of the Mella (a river in Northern Italy mentioned also by Catullus); the meadow-land which unfortunate Mantua lost is adduced as a type of the best kind of pasture, and the land in the neighbourhood of Capua and the region skirting Mount Vesuvius as that most suitable for corn-crops. We read also of the rose-beds of Paestum,-of the olives clothing the sides of the Samnian Taburnus,-of the woodland pastures of Sila,-of those by the banks of the Silarus, on Alburnus green with ilexes, and by the dry torrent-bed of the Tanager,-and of the yellow cornfields through which the dark Galaesus flows. The Aeneid affords further testimony of the interest which Virgil awakens in the region which forms the distant environment of Rome. But the sentiment of the Georgics is a sentiment of peace inspired by the land, quite different from that inspired by the Imperial City, and from the memories of war and conquest with which the neighbourhood of Rome is a.s.sociated. And though the aspect which Nature generally presents in the poem is that of her n.o.bler mood, yet that air of indolent repose which characterises her presence in the Eclogues is not altogether absent from the severer poem. The sense of rest after toil-'molles sub arbore somni,'-the quiet contemplation of wide and peaceful landscapes,-'latis otia fundis,'-relieve the strain of strenuous labour which is enforced as the indispensable condition of realising the glory of the land.

5. The religious and ethical thought of the poem is also in accordance with what was happiest and best in the old Italian faith and life. The poetical belief in many protecting agencies-

Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri(417)-

watching over the labours of the husbandman, and present at his simple festival and ceremonies, is in accordance with the genial character of the rustic Paganism of Italy and with the attributes of the great G.o.ds of the land, Faunus and Saturnus. Human life appeared to Hesiod as well as to Virgil to be in immediate dependence on the G.o.ds. But the graver aspect of Virgil's faith is purer and happier than that of Hesiod; as the trust in a just and beneficent father is purer and happier than the fear of a jealous task-master. But on the other hand, the faith of Virgil is less n.o.ble than that of Aeschylus and of Sophocles. It is more of a pa.s.sive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to the impulses of an aesthetic emotion, than that union of natural piety with insight into the mystery of life which no great poets, Pagan or Christian (unless it may be Dante), exhibit in equal measure with the two great Athenian dramatists. In the religious spirit of Virgil, which accepts and does not question, which finds its resource in prayer rather than in reverent contemplation and searching out of the ways of G.o.d, we may recognise a true note of his nationality,-a submissive att.i.tude in presence of the Invisible Power, derived from the race whose custom it was to veil the head in sacrifice and in approaching the images of their G.o.ds(418).

6. Equally true to the national character is the ethical ideal upheld in the Georgics. The negative elements in that ideal were seen to be exemption from the violent pa.s.sions and pleasures of the world. And in these negative elements the ideal of the Georgics coincides with that of Lucretius. But, on the positive side, Virgil's ideal implies the active performance of duties to the family and to the State. One has only to remember the low esteem in which women were held and the indifference to family ties in the palmiest days of Athenian civilisation, or to recall the ideal State of Plato's imagination, to perceive how true to Italian, and how remote from Greek sentiment, are the pictures presented in such pa.s.sages as these-

Interea dulces pendent circ.u.m oscula nati; Casta pudicitiam servat domus-

and this-

Interea longum cantu solata laborem Arguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas(419).

Friendship among men, and even the social friendliness which makes life more pleasant and manners more humane, were ranked among the virtues by Greek philosophy; and the first is treated by Aristotle, not only as a single virtue, but as the condition under which all virtue can best be realised: but natural affection is regarded as a mere instinct, and the duties of family life do not fall under any of those conditions with which ethical philosophy concerns itself. On the other hand, the legendary history of the early Republic, and many great examples, in the midst of the corruption of the later Republic and of the Empire, prove that the ideal of domestic virtue and affection among the Romans was no mere pa.s.sing fancy or dream of an age of primitive innocence, but was in harmony with the national conscience throughout the whole course of their history.

In devotion to the good of the State no superiority can be claimed for the Romans over the Athenians of the times of Cleisthenes, Themistocles, and Pericles. And while each people, in its best days, was equally ready to serve the Republic in war and by the performance of public duties, and while the Roman perhaps more than the Athenian regarded the labour of his hands as a service due from him(420), the Athenian freely gave the higher energy of his genius to make the life of his fellow-citizens brighter and n.o.bler. And it is the peculiar glory of the Athenians of the fifth century B.C.,-the glory claimed for them in one of the speeches attributed to their great Statesman by their great Historian,-that they combined this devotion to the common good with a high development of all personal excellence. But in Athens this union of national and individual energy and virtue was of very brief duration. On the other hand, the lasting greatness of the Roman Commonwealth was purchased by the sacrifice of the energies and accomplishments which add to the grace and enjoyment of individual existence. The greatness and permanence of the race, not the varied development of the individual, was the object aimed at and attained in the vigorous prime of the Roman Republic(421).

If this aspect of national life is not directly brought before us by Virgil in the Georgics, it is brought into strong light in the representation of his mimic commonwealth-the

Mores et studia et populos et proelia(422)

of the community of bees. It scarcely needs the reminder of

ipsae regem parvosque _Quirites_ Sufficiunt(423)

to convince us that, in this representation of an industrious and warlike community, earnest in labour from the love of the objects on which it was bestowed and from pride in its results-

Tantus amor florum et generandi gloria mellis(424),-

resolute and unconquerable in battle, sacrificing life rather than abandoning the post of duty, inspired with more than Oriental devotion to their head, Virgil was teaching a lesson applicable to the Roman Commonwealth under its new government. While labour is shown to be a condition of individual happiness, or at least contentment, it is not in individual happiness, but in the permanent greatness of the community that its ultimate recompense is to be sought. Though the individual life may be short and meagre in its attractions, and generation after generation may spend itself in an unceasing round of toil,

At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus et avi numerantur avorum(425).

The training and discipline for the attainment of these virtues are to be sought in plain and frugal living, in hardy pastime as well as hardy industry(426), in obedience to parents and reverent worship of the G.o.ds-

Illic saltus et l.u.s.tra ferarum, Et patiens operum exiguoque adsueta iuventus, Sacra deum sanctique patres(427),-

and in abstinence from the luxurious indulgence, the anxious business, and the enervating pleasures of a corrupt civilisation(428). While the grace and beauty of the poem arise out of the feeling of the life of Nature, the dignity and sanct.i.ty with which the subject is invested are due to the sense of the intimate connexion between the cultivation of the land and the moral and religious life of the Italian race.

7. The poem may be called a representative work of genius in respect also of its artistic execution. It is the finest work of Italian art, made perfect by the long education of Greek studies. More than any work in Latin literature the Georgics approach to the symmetry of form, the harmony of proportion, the unity of design and tone, characteristic of the purest art of Greece. But it is not in any sense a copy formed after any Greek pattern. It was seen that out of the more rudimentary attempts of Greek literature in this particular form of poetry Virgil created a new and n.o.bler type, which never has been, and probably never will be, improved on. The execution of the poem is characterised by the genial susceptibility and enthusiasm of the Italian temperament, by the firm structure of all Roman work and the practical moderation and dignity of the Roman mind, and by a kind of meditative and pensive grace peculiar to the poet himself. The thought of the poem is not separable from the sentiment pervading it. And in this respect there is a marked difference between the genius of Virgil and of Lucretius. However much the speculative activity of Lucretius is charged with feeling, yet the thought stands out, clearly defined, through the atmosphere surrounding it. The melancholy of Lucretius, though it was the result partly of disposition,-the reaction perhaps of a strongly pa.s.sionate temperament,-and partly of his relation to his age, was yet a state of mind for which he could a.s.sign definite grounds. That of Virgil was probably also in a great measure the result of temperament; but it seems to be a mood habitual to one who meditated much inwardly on the misery of the world, who was moved by compa.s.sion for all sights of sorrow or suffering(429), and was yet unable to shape this sense of 'the burthen of the mystery' into articulate thought. The atmosphere of the poem has become one with its substance. The fusion of meditation and feeling derived from the individual genius of the poet imparts a distinctively original charm to the style of the Georgics.

The style is thus, in a great degree, Virgil's own, and owes little to the borrowed beauties of Greek expression. Though the language of the Alexandrine poets is sometimes reproduced, yet the beauty of those transferred pa.s.sages arises from the grace given to them, not from that borrowed from them. The same may be said of the use sometimes made of the quaint diction of Hesiod. In one or two striking pa.s.sages, such as that

Ecce supercilio clivosi tramitis, etc.,

Virgil has adopted the language of the Iliad(430); and though it is impossible to improve on that, yet there is no slavish imitation of it; only a new picture is painted, recalling, by some vivid touches, a former piece by the great master. If detraction is to be made from the originality of expression in the Georgics, the debt due by Virgil was incurred to his own countryman. In adopting modes of expression from Lucretius, Virgil brings down the bold creativeness of his original to a tone more suited to the habitual sobriety of the Italian imagination. He often fixes into the form of some general thought what appears in Lucretius as a living movement or individualised action. And this tendency to abstract rather than concrete representation is in accordance with the Roman mould of mind. We notice also how much more sparingly he uses such compound words as 'navigerum,' 'silvifragis,' etc., by which the earlier poets endeavoured to force the harder metal of the Latin language into the flexibility of Greek speech. Virgil felt that these innovations were unsuited to the genius of the Latin tongue, and endeavoured to enlarge its capacities by novel constructions and by using old words with a new application rather than by novel formations of words. But this gain was perhaps more than compensated by the loss which the language suffered in idiomatic purity and clearness.

In rhythmical movement the poem exhibits the highest perfection of which Latin verse is capable. Of Homer's verse it has been happily said that it has 'a tranquil deep strength, reminding us of his own line,

?? ??a?a??e?ta? a??????? ??ea????(431).

The movement of Virgil's verse reminds us rather of his own river-

qui per saxa volutus Purior electro campum pet.i.t(432).

Occasionally we catch the sound of some more rapid rush and impetuous fall, as in the hurry and agitation and culminating grandeur of these lines-

Continuo, ventis surgentibus, aut freta ponti Incipiunt agitata tumescere, et aridus altis Montibus audiri fragor, aut resonantia longe Litora misceri et nemorum increbrescere murmur(433);-

but generally the stream flows on, neither in rapid torrent nor with abrupt transitions, but 'with a tranquil deep strength,' fed by pure and abounding sources of affection, of contemplation, of moral and religious feeling, of delight from eye and ear, from memory and old poetic a.s.sociation.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE ROMAN EPIC BEFORE THE TIME OF VIRGIL.

The distinction between what is called the primitive and the literary epic has become one of the commonplaces of criticism. The two kinds of narrative poem belong to totally different epochs in civilisation; they are also the products of very different national temperaments and faculties. It is somewhat remarkable that those literatures which are richest in literary epics-the ancient Latin, the modern Italian, and the English-are those which possess few or no native poems either of the type realised in the Nibelungen-Lied, the Song of Roland, and poems of that cla.s.s, or of the type realised in the Iliad and Odyssey; nor is there, in connexion with the earlier traditions of the Italian or the English race, that cycle of heroic adventure and personages in which such poems have their origin. The composition of the Aeneid and of the Paradise Lost implies powers of combination, of arranging great ma.s.ses of materials, of concentration of the mind on a single object, more a.n.a.logous to those which produced the vast historical work of Livy and 'The Decline and Fall'

of Gibbon, than to the spontaneity, the _navete_, the rapidity of conception and utterance, and that immediate sympathy between poet and people, to which we owe the continuous poems developed out of some germ of popular ballad or national legend. It was the peculiar glory of Greece, that in the earlier stage of her literary development she manifested not only a perfection of expression and of art, but a maturity of intelligence, a true insight into the meaning of life, a n.o.bility of imagination in union with a clearness and sanity of judgment, which the most advanced eras of other literatures scarcely equal. Thus the two great Greek epics are unique in character, and, while they have, in the highest degree, the excellences of each cla.s.s, they can properly be ranked under neither. While exhibiting, better than any other writings, man and the outward world in 'the first intention,'-man in the energy and buoyancy of the national youth, and Nature in the vividness of impression which she makes on the mind and sense in their most healthy activity,-they are at the same time masterpieces of art and great monuments of the national mind. The Greek imagination with no appearance of effort produced works of such compa.s.s and harmonious proportion as only long years of labour and reflection in collecting and combining materials in accordance with a predetermined purpose produced in other literatures.

We are not called upon to consider here the conditions out of which the earlier type of epic poetry is developed, or to enquire why the Latin race failed to create at least some inartistic legendary poem of sufficient length to be ranked in that form of literature. Perhaps no answer could be given to the question excepting that the Latin race had not sufficient creative force to produce such a work,-which is simply another way of stating the fact that it did not produce epic poems. The Romans were from a very early period interested in their past history and traditions. They seem to have shaped, either out of real incidents in their national and family history, or out of their chief national characteristics, stories of strong human interest(434), which only want the 'vates sacer' to be converted into poems. Every great family seems to have had its own traditions, glorifying the exploits and preserving the memory of ill.u.s.trious ancestors; and whatever may have been the case in regard to the legendary stories connected with the fortunes of the State, some of these traditions were undoubtedly expressed in rude Saturnian verse, and chanted at family gatherings and at funeral banquets. The memory of these ancestral lays-if we may apply that word to them-survived till the time of Cicero, Horace, and apparently even of Tacitus(435), though no actual trace of them appears to have existed even in the age of the elder Cato.

But the influence of these rude germs of poetry-if they exercised any influence on Latin literature at all-was confined to the structure of Roman history. An enquiry into the origin and growth of Roman epic poetry need not concern itself with them.

Neither is it necessary here to go back into the vexed and probably insoluble question of the genesis of the Homeric poems. That these stand in most intimate relation with the Virgilian epic is a patent fact; and the nature of this intimate relation will be examined in some of the subsequent chapters. But they first began to act on the Roman imagination and art many centuries after they a.s.sumed their present form. The Romans accepted them as they did the lyrical and dramatic poetry of Greece, and were absolutely unconcerned with the questions as to their origin which interest modern curiosity. For the adequate understanding of the form and substance of the Roman epic as it was shaped by its greatest master, a competent knowledge of the Iliad and Odyssey must be presupposed; but it is unnecessary in a work on Latin literature to discuss the origin and character of the epic poetry of the Greeks on the same scale on which their idyllic and didactic poetry has been discussed in previous chapters.

But just as historical composition, regarded as a branch of art, though originating in the imitation of Greek models, has a.s.sumed in the works of Livy and Tacitus a distinctively Roman type, in conformity with certain characteristics of the race and with the weight of new matter which it has to embody, so, too, the type of epic poetry realised by Virgil has acquired a distinctive character as a vehicle of Roman sentiment and material. To appreciate the native, as distinct from the foreign element in the mould in which Virgil's representation is cast, it is necessary to attend to certain instincts and tendencies which were calculated strongly to affect any form of narrative poetry amongst the Romans, and also to take a rapid survey of the history of their narrative poetry from the beginning of their literature to the Augustan Age.