The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 21

In the first place, the strong national sentiment of Rome was a feeling which could not fail to be appealed to in any works which aimed at securing both general and permanent interest. The heroic story of Greece was indeed able for a time to attract general attention at Rome from the novelty of the dramatic representations in which it was introduced. But even Roman tragedy, to judge from the testimony of Cicero and others, seems to have owed more of its popularity to the grave spirit by which it was animated and the Roman strength of will exhibited in its personages, than to the legitimate sources of interest in a drama, viz. the play of human motives and the vicissitudes of human fortunes. But to sustain the interest of a long narrative, as distinct from a dramatic poem, it was necessary to act on some deep and general feeling. Not only did the hearers require to be thus moved to attention, but the poet himself could only thus be inspired and sustained in the unfamiliar task of literary composition. Now, looking to other manifestations of Roman energy, we see that whatever force was not employed on present necessities, was given, not as among the Greeks to ideal creation, but to the commemoration of events of public importance, and to the transmission of the lessons as well as of the history of the pa.s.sing time. The connexion between the past and the future was maintained by monuments of different kinds, by public inscriptions, written annals, fasts, or festivals recording some momentous experience in the history of the State. All that we know and can still see of Roman work suggests the thought of a people who had an instinctive consciousness of a long destiny; who built, acted, and wrote with a view to a distant future. A national history was the legitimate expression of this impulse; but before the language was developed into a form suited for a continuous work in prose, it was natural that the tendency to realise the past and hand down the memory of the present should find an outlet for itself in various forms of narrative poetry.

Again, the Romans had a strong personal feeling of admiration for their great men. They were animated by that generous pa.s.sion to which, in modern times, the term hero-worship has been applied. And corresponding with this feeling on the part of his countrymen, there was in the object of it a strong love of glory, a strong pa.s.sion to perpetuate his name. Through the whole course of Roman history we recognise this motive acting powerfully on the men most eminent in war, politics, and literature, and on no one more powerfully than on the Emperor Augustus. The memory of the great men of Rome and of their actions was kept alive by monuments, statues, coins, waxen images preserved in the atrium of the family house, by the poems sung and speeches delivered among funeral ceremonies, by inscriptions on tombs (such as that still read on the tomb of Scipio Barbatus), by family names (such as that of Africa.n.u.s) derived from great exploits, and, under the Empire, by the great triumphal arches and columns which still excite the admiration of travellers. The Roman pa.s.sion for glory received its highest gratification in the triumph which celebrated great military exploits. The culmination of the tendency to glorify actual living men, or men recently dead, is witnessed in the deification of the Emperors. With the development of literature we find, as we should expect, this tendency of the imagination allying itself with poetry, from the time when Ennius devoted one work to the celebration of Scipio down to the panegyrists of Augustus, Messala, or Agrippa(436) under the early Empire. A new direction and a new motive were thus given to narrative poetry-a direction and motive which had no inconsiderable influence in determining Virgil to the choice of the subject of the Aeneid.

Another characteristic of the race was likely to impress itself on the form and execution of their narrative poetry, viz. their love of works of large compa.s.s and ma.s.sive structure. Vastness of design and solid workmanship are as distinctive properties of Roman art, as harmony of proportion and beauty of form are of the works of Greek imagination. To compose a literary work which should be representative of the genius of Rome, it was necessary that the author should be not only imbued with Roman sentiment and ideas, but also endowed with the Roman capacity for patient and persevering industry. Concentration of purpose on works conceived and executed on a great scale, with a view both to immediate and permanent results, was an essentially Roman quality. The Romans built their aqueducts and baths for the commonest needs of life, and constructed their roads and encampments, in such a way as to astonish the world after the lapse of nearly two thousand years. With similar energy and persistence of purpose they built up their greatest literary works. This characteristic favoured the growth among them of a type of epic poetry as distinct from that of Greece as the Coliseum was from the Parthenon.

If Roman epic poetry was not to be a mere imitation of the Greek epic, we should accordingly expect that it should exhibit some or all of these characteristics,-that it should seek that source of interest which secures permanent attention to a long narrative poem in national sentiment; that it should strive to restore the memory of the past history and traditions of the State and at the same time to give expression to the ideas of the present time; that it should magnify the greatness of eminent living men or of those who had served their country before them; and that it should be conceived on a large scale, and be executed perhaps with rude, but certainly with strong and ma.s.sive workmanship. The first original narrative poem in Latin literature-the Punic War of Naevius-treated of a subject of living interest, and at the same time glorified the mythical past of Rome; and, while rude in design and execution, it was conceived and executed on a scale of large dimensions. The example was thus given of a Roman epic based on a legendary foundation, but mainly built out of the materials of contemporary history. We can imagine that, at the time when this poem was composed, a more vivid interest would be felt in the fict.i.tious connexion between Rome and Troy from the fact that it was in the First Punic War that this connexion appears first to have been generally recognised. The legend had not as in Virgil's time the prestige of two centuries, but it had the force of novelty to recommend it for poetic purposes. At the same time the great struggle between Rome and Carthage, on which the attention of the world was fixed at the time when Naevius wrote, must have given a peculiar meaning to the early relations between the two imperial States, as they were first represented in his poem.

The poem of Naevius gave the germinative idea and some of the materials to the first and fourth Books of the Aeneid; it established also the principle of combining in one work a remote mythical past with a subject of strong contemporary interest. At the same time it gave the example, followed by the Roman national epic, before the time of Virgil, of taking the main subject of the poem from the sphere of actual history. This confusion between the provinces of poetry and prose had been avoided by the instinct of Greek taste. Among the large number of Greek epic writers from the age of Homer to that of Nonnus, we hear of only one or two who treated of actual historical events. The general neglect of those poems which in ancient and modern times have treated of historical events and characters in the forms of epic poetry shows that the Greek instinct in this, as in all other questions of art, was unerringly right. The choice and treatment of such a subject are equally fatal to the truth and completeness of historical representation and to the ideality and unity of a work of art. Though the objection does not equally apply to dramatic art, yet the modern instinct, which selects for that mode of representation subjects remote from our own times, confirms the judgment in accordance with which the Athenians fined their tragic poet for reminding them of a too recent sorrow.

The Roman writers recognised the a.n.a.logy between epic and historic narrative,-and the way in which they apprehended the alliance between them was as injurious to the truthfulness of their history as to the symmetry of their early poetry,-but they did not before the time of Virgil recognise the artistic distinction between them. The Roman epic and Roman history originated in the same feeling and impulse-the sentiment of national glory, the desire to perpetuate the great actions and the career of conquest, which were the const.i.tuent elements of that glory. The impulse both of poets and historians was to build up a commemorative monument; not, as among the Greeks, to present the spectacle of human life in its most animated, varied, and n.o.ble movements. To a Roman historian and to a Roman poet the character and the fate of individuals derived their chief interest from their bearing on the glory and fortune of the State. In the Greek epic, on the other hand, the interest in Achilles and Hector is much more vivid than that felt in the success of the Greek or Trojan cause. In Herodotus the interest felt in the most important historical crisis through which the world has ever pa.s.sed is inseparably blended with that felt in a great number of individual men, among the enemies of Greece, no less than among Greeks themselves. In the History of Livy we do not expect to find truthful delineation or sagacious a.n.a.lysis of the characters of the leading men of Rome; still less do we expect to find impartial and sympathetic delineation of the enemies of Rome; but we seek in his pages the image of the nation's life in its onward career of conquest and internal change, as pride and affection shaped it on the tables of the national memory. The idea of Rome, as the one object of supreme interest to G.o.ds and men, in the past, present, and future, imparts the unity of sentiment, tone, and purpose which is characteristic of the type of Roman epic poetry and of Roman history.

Naevius in selecting for his epic poem the subject of the First Punic War, and in connecting that war with the events which were supposed to connect the Roman State immediately with a divine origin and destiny, was the first Roman who was moved to write by this powerful impulse. But the man who first gave full expression to the national idea and feeling, who first made Rome conscious of herself, and who was the true founder of her literature, was Ennius. The t.i.tle which he gave to his epic-Annales-perhaps the most prosaic t.i.tle ever given to a work of genius, indicates the character of his work and his mode of treatment. The inspiration under which it was written is more truly indicated by the other name-Romais-by which, according to the testimony of an ancient grammarian(437), it was sometimes known. He took for his subject the whole career of Rome, from its mythical beginning in the events which followed the Trojan war onward to the latest events in his own day. The work was recognised as a great epic poem, and at the same time fulfilled the part of a contemporary chronicle. It was a true instinct of genius to feel that the only material suitable for a Roman epic was to be sought in the idea of the whole national life. That alone could supply the essential source of epic inspiration, the sympathy between the poet and those to whom his poem is addressed, by which the epic poet receives from, as well as gives back to, his audience. But on the other hand, while he has the true poetic impulse,-the 'vivida vis' and the strong conceptions of a poet,-he came too soon to acquire the tact and delicacy of conception and execution equally essential to the creation of works destined for immortality. The subject was too vast to be treated within the compa.s.s of a poem, which demands to be read as a whole, and to be contemplated as one continuous mental creation. The treatment of a long series of actions in chronological order is incompatible with artistic effect; the treatment of contemporary history is incompatible with the ideality of imaginative representation. The workmanship of the poem, as exhibited in many fragments, is powerful, but at the same time rude and unequal. Yet Ennius was a true representative writer. He appealed powerfully to the national sentiment; he revived the mythical and historic fame of the past; he perpetuated the memory and interpreted the meaning of his own time; he enhanced the glory of the great men and the great families of Rome; and he produced a work of colossal proportions and ma.s.sive execution. Till his place was taken by a successor who united the fervour of a national poet to the perfect workmanship of an artist, he was justly regarded as the truest representative in literature of Roman character, sentiment, and ideas.

Other narrative and historical poems were known by the name of 'Annales;'

one in three Books, written by Accius, the tragic poet; another written by A. Furius of Antium, which extended to a greater length, as Macrobius (ii.

1. 34(438)) quotes from the tenth and the eleventh Books lines appropriated by Virgil,-one of many proofs of the manner in which the genius of Virgil, acting upon great reading, absorbed the thoughts and diction of his predecessors. The most important of the historical poems which continued the mistake of treating recent history in the form of a metrical chronicle appears to have been the Istrian War of Hostius, the grandfather of the Cynthia of Propertius, and alluded to by him in the line,

Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo.

This poem was written early in the first century B.C., in three Books, and took up the treatment of Roman history where the Annals of Ennius ended.

In the earlier part of the Ciceronian Age, the decay of public spirit, and the strong tendency which had set in of advancing individual claims above the interest of the State, and of looking to individual leaders rather than to established inst.i.tutions, gave a new direction to narrative verse.

The pa.s.sion for personal glory became the princ.i.p.al motive of those poems which treated of recent or contemporary history. Eminent families and individuals secured for themselves the services of poets, native or Greek.

Even before this time, Accius, as we learn from Cicero(439), was closely a.s.sociated with D. Brutus, and it seems not unlikely that the choice of the subject of one of his tragedies,-Brutus,-was made as a compliment to his friend and patron. The Luculli and Metelli retained the services of Archias, as their panegyrist,-a fact referred to by Cicero in one of his letters to Atticus, not without a slight touch of jealousy(440). Pompey was served in the same way by Theophanes of Mitylene. The patronage of the great to men of letters was thus by no means so disinterested as our first impressions might lead us to suppose. Cicero himself with his extraordinary literary activity wrote in his youth a poem on his townsman Marius, and failing to find any other Greek or Roman to undertake the task, composed a poem in three Books on his own Consulship(441), with a result not fortunate to his reputation either for modesty or good taste.

In a letter to his brother Quintus, we find him encouraging him to the composition of a poem on the Invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar. The pa.s.sage is worth attending to as indicating the materials out of which those poems which aimed at celebrating contemporary events were framed:-'What strange scenes, what opportunities for describing things and places, what customs, tribes, battles. What a theme too you have in your general himself(442)!' This pa.s.sage may be compared with two pa.s.sages in Horace, showing that the same kind of thing was expected from a poetical panegyrist under Augustus. The first of these is from Sat. ii. 1, lines 11 etc., where Trebatius advises Horace,

Caesaris invicti res dicere-

to which advice the poet answers,

Cupidum, pater optime, vires Deficiunt: neque enim quivis horrentia pilis Agmina, nec fracta pereuntes cuspide Gallos, Aut labentis equo describat vulnera Parthi(443).

The other pa.s.sage from Horace (Epistles, ii. 1. 250) has a closer resemblance to the pa.s.sage in Cicero:-

Nec sermones ego mallem Repentes per humum quam res componere gestas, Terrarumque situs et flumina dicere, et arces Montibus impositas, et barbara regna, tuisque Auspiciis totum confecta duella per orbem(444), etc.

Horace expresses his contempt for this style of poem in other pa.s.sages of his Satires, as (ii. 5. 41),

seu pingui tentus omaso Furius hibernas cana nive conspuet Alpes(445);

and also (Sat. i. 10. 3637),

Turgidus Alpinus jugulat dum Memnona, dumque Defingit Rheni luteum caput(446).

The most prolific writer of epics in the latter half of the Ciceronian Age was Varro Atacinus, the first Transalpine Gaul who appears in Roman literature; the same who is mentioned by Horace as having made an unsuccessful attempt to revive the satire of Lucilius:-

Hoc erat, experto frustra Varrone Atacino(447), etc.

He had served under Julius Caesar in Gaul, and wrote a poem on the war against the Sequani in the traditional form. He also opened up to his countrymen that vein of epic poetry which had been wrought by the Alexandrians. The most famous poem of this kind in the literature of the Republic was the Jason of Varro, imitated probably from the Argonautics of Apollonius. Propertius speaks of this poem in a pa.s.sage where he cla.s.ses Varro also among the writers of amatory poetry before his own time, such as Catullus, Cinna, Gallus, and Virgil in his Eclogues:-

Haec quoque perfecto ludebat Iasone Varro, Varro Leucadiae maxima flamma suae(448).

He is thus as a writer of epic poems, on the one side, of the native school of Ennius and the Annalists; on the other, he is the originator of that other type of Roman epic which appears under the Empire in the Thebaid and Achilleid of Statius and the Argonautics of Valerius Flaccus.

The two great poets of the later Ciceronian era introduced a great change into Roman poetry,-the practice of careful composition. They are the first artistic poets of Rome. The rapidity of composition which characterised all the earlier writers was, in the rude state of the language at that time, incompatible with high accomplishment. We read of Cicero writing five hundred hexameters in a night, and of his brother Quintus writing four tragedies in sixteen days. The true sense of artistic finish first appeared in Lucretius, and to a greater degree in Catullus, and the younger men of the Ciceronian Age, Licinius Calvus, Helvius Cinna, etc.

The contempt with which the younger school regarded the old fashion of composition appears in Catullus' references-neither delicate nor complimentary-to the 'Annales Volusi,' the ponderous annalistic epic of his countryman (conterraneus) Ta.n.u.sius Geminus(449). But in this younger school, poetry separated itself entirely from the national life, or dealt with it only in the form of personal epigrams on the popular leaders and their partisans. The dignity of the hexameter was reserved by them for didactic or philosophic poetry and short epic idyls treating of the heroic legends of Greece. Didactic poetry, directing the attention to contemplation instead of action, established itself as a successful rival to the old historical epic, in the province of serious literature.

The latter, however, still found representatives in the following generation. Thus Anser, the panegyrist of Antony, is familiarly known, owing to one of the few satiric allusions which have been attributed to Virgil:-

Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores(450).

Varius, with whom he is by implication contrasted in those lines, is characterised by Horace as 'Maeonii carminis ales,' at a time when Virgil was only famous as the poet of rural life. He was the author of a poem on the death of Julius Caesar. We hear also of other specimens of the contemporary epic produced in the Augustan Age, one by Cornelius Severus treating of the Sicilian Wars, one by Rabirius treating of the Battle of Actium, and one by Pedo Albinova.n.u.s treating of the voyage of Germanicus 'per oceanum septentrionalem(451).'

We find Horace repeatedly excusing himself with self-disparaging irony, while exhorting younger poets to the task of directly celebrating the wars of Augustus,-e.g. Epist. i. 3. 7:-

Quis sibi res gestas Augusti scribere sumit?

Bella quis et paces longum diffundit in aevum(452)?

Horace does indeed celebrate some of the military as well as the peaceful successes of the Augustan Age, in the only form in which contemporary or recent events admit of being poetically treated, viz. lyrical poetry. But considering how eager Augustus was to have his wars celebrated in verse and how strong in him was the national pa.s.sion for glory, and considering that Virgil and Horace were pre-eminently the favourite poets of the time and the special friends both of the Emperor himself and his minister, it is remarkable how they both avoid or defer the task which he wished to impose on them. This reluctance arose from no inadequate appreciation of his services to the world, but from their high appreciation of what was due to their art. Virgil had been similarly importuned in earlier times by Pollio and Varus, and had gracefully waived the claim made on him by pleading the fitness of his own muse only for the lighter themes of pastoral poetry. He seems to have hesitated long as to the form which the celebration of the glories of the Augustan Age should take. How he solved the problem, how he sought to combine in a work of Greek art the inspiration of the national epic with the personal celebration of Augustus, will be treated of in the following chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.

I.

The motives and purpose influencing Virgil to undertake the composition of the Aeneid are to be sought partly in his own literary position, partly in the state of public feeling at the time when he commenced his task, and partly in the direction given to his genius by the personal influence of Augustus. As the author of the Georgics he had established his position as the foremost poetic artist of his time. He had achieved a great success in a great and serious undertaking. He had entered into compet.i.tion with Greek poets of acknowledged reputation, and had surpa.s.sed them in their own province. He had accomplished all that could be accomplished by him as the poet of the peaceful charm of country life. But while in his two earlier works he limits himself to that field a.s.signed to him by Horace,-that over which the 'gaudentes rure Camenae' presided,-the stirring of a larger ambition is observable in both poems:-

Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae:

and again:-

Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora(453).

He had yet to find a fuller expression for his sympathy with his age, which had deepened with the deepening significance of the times, and for that interest in the contemplation of human life which becomes the dominant influence in all great poets whose faculty ripens with advancing years. He might still aspire to be the Homer, as he had proved himself to be the Theocritus and the Hesiod of his country. The rudeness of the work of Ennius, the limited and temporary scope of the works of Varius-his only compet.i.tor in epic song,-left that place still unappropriated. Virgil's whole previous career prepared him to be the author of a poem of sustained elevation and elaborate workmanship. The composition of the Georgics had trained his faculty of continuous exposition and of ma.s.sing together a great variety of details towards a common end. It had given him a perfect mastery over the only vehicle suitable to the dignity of epic poetry. He had indeed still to put forth untried capacities-the faculties of dealing with the pa.s.sions and movement of human life as he had dealt with the sentiment and movement of Nature, of expressing thought and feeling dramatically and oratorically, and of imparting living interest to the actions and fortunes of imaginary personages. But he was now in the maturity of his powers. He had long lived with the single purpose of perfecting himself in art and knowledge. He had no other ambition but to produce some great work, which should perpetuate his own fame, and be a monument of his country's greatness.

The completion of the Georgics and the first conception of the Aeneid coincided in point of time with the event which not only established a sense of security in the room of the long strain of alarm and anxiety and a sense of national unity in the room of internecine strife in the Roman world, but which, to those looking back upon it after nineteen centuries, appears to be one of the most critical turning-points in all history. The enthusiasm of the moment found expression by the voice of Horace:-

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus.