The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 26

In the first three books, for instance, the word 'Fatum' or 'Fata' occurs more than forty times. Aeneas starts on his wanderings 'fato profugus.'

Juno desires to secure the empire of the world to Carthage 'Si qua fata sinant.' She struggles against the conviction of her powerlessness to prevent the Trojan settlement in Italy, 'Quippe vetor fatis.' Aeneas comforts his companions by the announcement of the peaceful settlements awaiting them,-

sedes ubi fata quietas Ostendunt.

Venus consoles herself for the destruction of Troy by the thought of the destiny awaiting Aeneas, 'fatis contraria fata rependens.' Jupiter rea.s.sures her after the storm with the words 'manent immota tuorum Fata tibi;' and he reveals to her one page in their secret volume,-'fatorum arcana movebo.' Mercury is sent to prepare the reception of Aeneas in Carthage,

ne fati nescia Dido Finibus arceret.

Aeneas describes himself as starting from Troy 'data fata secutus.' A hundred more instances might be given of the dominating influence of this idea in the poem. It is the 'common-place' of the Virgilian epic. While it adds impressiveness to the historical significance of the poem, it detracts largely from the personal interest by the limits which it imposes on the free agency of the divine and human actors playing their part in it.

The same idea is often expressed by Tacitus, but it does not in him dominate so absolutely over human will, nor is it a.s.serted with the same firmness of conviction. His conception of the regulating power over all human, or at least over all national existence, seems to waver between this idea of some unknown power steadily working out its purpose, of an element in human affairs baffling all calculation-the pa??????? of Thucydides and the 'Fortuna saevo laeta negotio' of Horace-and of the G.o.ds generally as personal avengers of crime, and sometimes as the kind protectors of the State. Thus in the Germania(526) the earliest foreboding of the danger which threatened and ultimately overthrew the fabric of the Empire is indicated in the words 'urgentibus imperii fatis:' in the Agricola the result of the invasion of Britain under Claudius is summed up in the words 'domitae gentes, capti reges, et monstratus fatis Vespasia.n.u.s(527):' in the Histories the grounds of confidence on the part of the Vespasians in taking arms against the Vitellians are summed up in the words 'dux Mucia.n.u.s et Vespasiani nomen ac nihil arduum fatis(528).'

But elsewhere he speaks of 'ludibria rerum humanarum(529),' in language reminding us of Lucretius, and, in almost the very words of Horace, of 'instabilis fortunae summaque et ima miscentis(530).' Like Horace, he seems to acknowledge the supremacy of chance or an ironical spirit over individual fortunes, and, like Virgil, that of Fate over the national destiny. But in the Annals, his latest work, he seems to incline more to the belief in the personal agency of the G.o.ds, and especially in their agency as the avengers of guilt. Thus he opens the pa.s.sage of the deepest tragic gloom in all his sombre record with the words, 'Noctem sideribus ill.u.s.trem quasi convincendum ad scelus dii praebuere(531).' So too he speaks of appealing to the 'avenging G.o.ds(532);' and of the 'fear of the wrath of heaven(533).' Occasionally indeed he speaks of 'the kindness of the G.o.ds(534),' but more often of their wrath or their indifference. Thus he attributes the ascendency of Seja.n.u.s not to any superior ability on his own part, but to 'the wrath of the G.o.ds against the Roman commonwealth(535);' and, in recounting a number of omens which followed on the murder of Agrippina, he makes the sarcastic comment, 'quae adeo sine cura deum eveniebant, ut multos post annos Nero imperium et scelera continuaverit(536).' In a writer like Tacitus it is impossible to distinguish with certainty between the pure expression of his convictions and the rhetorical and poetical colouring of his style. Yet both the frequency with which such pa.s.sages recur, and the earnestness of their tone even when they seem most ironical, leave no doubt that, like Thucydides, he was not indifferent to these questions, although 'perplexed in the extreme' by the apparent absence, or at least uncertainty, of any steadfast moral order in the award of happiness and calamity to men.

The 'Fatum' or 'Fata' of Virgil can scarcely be said to act with the aim of establishing right in the world, or of punishing wrong. Their action is purely political, neither ethical, though its ultimate tendency is beneficent, nor personal. Yet in the prominence which is given to this determining element in national affairs Virgil is expressing the strongest and most abiding belief of the Roman people, just as the Greek poets and historians of the fifth century B.C., in the prominence they give to the element of uncertainty in the world,-the irony in human affairs, or the Nemesis of the G.o.ds excited against great prosperity even when not misused or gained by crime,-expressed the dominant idea in the minds of their contemporaries. Mr. Grote traces the origin of this last idea to the experience of the rapid vicissitudes from one extreme of fortune to the other, brought about by the great prosperity of the Greek states on the one hand and their incessant wars and political feuds on the other. The origin of the other idea is to be found in the almost unbroken success of Rome in all her enterprises, from the burning of the city by the Gauls till the full establishment of empire. There is no history in which chance plays so small a part, and in which so little is episodical. The 'good fortune of the Roman people' will be found to be explained either by the traditional policy of never making a new enemy until they had well disposed of the old, or by the magnanimity (as compared at least with the policy of other States(537)) by which they converted the nations successively conquered by them into fellow-citizens or obedient allies, or by the indomitable resolution which never knew to yield to defeat. No important event in their history is isolated; each serves as a link in the chain which connects their past with their future. The unvarying result of their national discipline and policy, and of the force acc.u.mulated through centuries before they became corrupted by the gains of conquest, might well appear to a race, gifted with little speculative capacity, to be determined and accomplished by an Omnipotent Power behind them.

This idea determines the general conduct of the action in the Aeneid. The actors in the story either oppose the irresistible tendency of things and suffer defeat or perish in their resistance; or, with gradually increasing knowledge, they co-operate with and become the instruments of this tendency. And as it is by faith in the divine a.s.sistance and guidance that the latter are able to act their part successfully, the religious motives of the representation a.s.sume a prominence at least equal to that of its national and political motives. Thus the object of all the hero's wanderings is not only to found a city, but to introduce a new worship into Italy-'inferretque deos Latio.' When Hector appears to Aeneas in a vision he commits into his care the sacred symbols and images of Troy with the words

Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates, Hos cape _fatorum comites_(538).

Aeneas is represented as starting on his enterprise

c.u.m sociis gnatoque, _Penatibus et magnis Dis_(539);

as his descendant is represented in the enterprise which is crowned with the victory of Actium(540). Finally, in the treaty with Latinus, while the secular and imperial power is left with the Italians, the religious predominance is claimed for Aeneas,-

Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinus habeto, Imperium sollemne socer(541).

The influence of the religious idea of the poem is seen also in the leading characteristic of the hero-'insignem pietate virum.' His piety appears in the faith which he has in his mission, and in the trust which he has in divine guidance. Prayer is his first resource in all emergencies; sacrifice and thanksgiving are the accompaniments of all his escapes from danger and difficulty. This characteristic deprives the representation of Aeneas of the interest springing from energetic resource or spontaneous feeling. But as much as the character loses in human interest, it gains in the impression produced of a fitting instrument to carry out the purpose of a Power working secretly for a distant end.

The effect of the same idea is apparent in the way in which the action is furthered by special revelations, visions, prophecies, omens, and the like. These intimations of the future are, for the most part, altogether of an unpoetical and unimaginative character. The omens by which the Fates make their will known, such as the omen of the cakes and of the white sow with her litter, are, like those that occur so often in the pages of Livy, of an essentially prosaic type: not like those in Homer, striking sights or sounds acting on the imagination with the force of divine warning.

Occasionally Virgil's own invention, or perhaps the guidance of some Greek predecessor, suggests signs of a less trivial significance-such as that of the meteor or line of light marking out the way from the burning city to Mount Ida-

Illam, summa super labentem culmina tecti, Cernimus Idaea claram se condere silva, Signantemque vias(542);

but for the most part the formal, superst.i.tious, prosaic element in the Roman religion-the same element which made their generals before some decisive battle allow themselves to draw their auguries from the mode in which chickens ate their food,-is present in the religious guidance of the action. The Roman belief in the supernatural was arrested and stunted at a primitive stage of religious development. So far from elevating the thought and enlarging the imagination, that belief tended to repress all speculation, lofty contemplation, and poetry. Even Virgil's idealising art fails to conceal the triviality of the media through which the invisible Power made its will and purpose manifest.

The mythological machinery of the poem also, although borrowed from the repertory of Homer, yet moves in obedience to this silent, impersonal, uncapricious Power. Juno endeavours to strive against it, till forced to confess her impotence. Venus by her intrigues serves to further its purposes. Yet both these Olympian divinities are but puppets 'in some unknown Power's employ,' which makes for its own end alike through their furtherance and antagonism. The G.o.ds who take part in the action are of Greek invention, but the Power which even they are obliged to obey, if not Roman in original conception, is yet essentially Roman in significance.

This thought of an unseen Power, working by means of omens and miracles on the mind of the hero of the poem, with the distant aim of establishing universal empire in the hands of a people, obedient to divine will and observant of all religious ceremonies, may be said to be the theological or speculative idea of the poem. It is the doctrine of predestination in its hardest form. It is a thought much inferior both in intellectual subtlety and in ethical value to that of the Fate of Greek tragedy in conflict with human will. Yet there is a kind of material force and greatness in Virgil's conception, and a consistency not with ideal truth but with visible facts. The ideal truth of Sophocles-the idea of final purification and reconcilement of a n.o.ble human nature with the divine nature-is not manifest in the world: it is only in harmony with the best hopes and aspirations of men. Virgil's idea was the shadow of the great fact apparent in his age,-the vast, inevitable, omnipotent, unsympathetic power of the Roman empire.

But there is another personal and humane religious element, not so prominent and not so influential on the action, but pervading the poem like an atmosphere, purifying it, and making it luminous with the light of a higher region. This is the element of religious faith or hope, personal to Virgil and yet catholic in its significance, and in harmony with the convictions of religious men of all times. The rigid, formal, and narrow conceptions of the Roman religion came into collision both with the belief in G.o.ds of like pa.s.sions with men, revealed in the art and poetry of the Greeks, and with the development of ethical feeling and especially of the sentiment of humanity fostered by Greek philosophy. Virgil's temperament, patriotic, imaginative, and humane, was in accord with all these modes of religious conception. If national destiny and some portions of the destiny of individuals are shaped by an inflexible power-

Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando(543),-

yet the personal agency of Beings, in immediate relation with man, who are not only 'mindful of the righteous and unrighteous(544),' but who also 'pios respectant,' is devoutly acknowledged-

Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid Usquam iust.i.tia est et mens sibi conscia recti, Praemia digna ferant(545).

Their relation to man is expressed by the same word, _pietas_, which expresses man's relation to them-

Iuppiter omnipotens, si nondum exosus ad unum Troianos, si quid pietas antiqua labores Respicit humanos(546).

They are, like the G.o.ds of Tacitus, avengers of wrong as well as rewarders of righteousness: but their avenging wrath against the strong springs from their mercy to the weak-

Di, si qua est caelo pietas, quae talia curet, Persolvant grates dignas et praemia reddant Debita, qui nati coram me cernere letum Fecisti et patrios foedasti funere voltus(547).

This close personal relation between men and an invisible Being or Beings, like to man in feelings and moral attributes, but infinitely greater in power and knowledge, exists in the Aeneid side by side with the doctrine of the omnipotence of Fate, crushing, if necessary, human wishes and human happiness under its iron determinations. But in the final award of happiness or misery after death, revealed in the sixth book, the agency of Fate gives place to that of a moral dispensation awarding to men their portions according to their actions. The way in which Virgil indicates his belief in the spiritual life after death is a.n.a.logous to, as well as suggested by, the myths in the Gorgias and in the tenth book of the Republic of Plato. While there is a certain vagueness and uncertainty in his view of the condition in which the souls of ordinary men pa.s.s the thousand years of purification before drinking of the waters of Lethe and entering again on a mortal life, the cla.s.s of sinners to whom eternal punishment is awarded, and that of holy men who dwell for ever in Elysium, are indicated with great definiteness and beauty. In the first cla.s.s are those whom the old Roman world regarded as impious or unnatural,-those who have violated the primal sanct.i.ties of life, who have dealt treacherously with a client or the master of their household, who have risen in rebellion against their country, who have sacrificed their human affections and their duty as citizens to their greed of grain-

Hic, quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat, Pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti; Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis, Nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est; Quique ob adulterium caesi, quique arma secuti Impia, nec veriti dominorum fallere dextras, Inclusi poenam expectant....

Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem Imposuit: fixit leges pretio atque refixit: Hic thalamum invasit natae vet.i.tosque hymenaeos: Ausi omnes immane nefas ausoque pot.i.ti(548).

In the other cla.s.s are those who have died in battle for their native land, who have lived pure and holy lives as priests or poets, who have served mankind by great discoveries, or have left memorials of themselves in good deeds done to their fellow-men-

Hic ma.n.u.s, ob patriam pugnando volnera pa.s.si, Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes, Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo(549).

III.

The imperial and the religious ideas of Rome, as embodied in the Aeneid, find their fullest realisation in the position a.s.signed to Augustus. The pride of empire, the loyalty to the State, the religious trust, which in the age of Ennius attached themselves to the 'Respublica Romana,' found, in the age of Virgil, a new centre of attraction in the person of the Emperor. A poem, which should express the dominant idea and sentiment of that age, could not fail to bring into prominence the change through which the government not of Rome only but of the whole civilised world was then pa.s.sing. The relations of the great poets of the time to the men at the head of affairs made them the fittest exponents of this new tendency. They used their art with the view of giving to public sentiment a permanent direction in favour of the new order of things. The political object of glorifying the personal rule of Augustus and of surrounding it with the halo of a divine sanction a.s.sociated itself with the artistic, the patriotic, and the religious objects of Virgil. And although the excess of eulogy and some modes of its manifestation offend the modern, as they would have offended a more ancient sentiment of personal dignity, there is no reason to question the disinterested sincerity of Virgil's panegyric.

The permanence of the change introduced by Augustus attests the fact that his policy not only kindled the enthusiasm of the moment, but met the most deeply-felt needs of the world. And though his personal qualities and the great things accomplished by him do not touch the imagination or awaken the sentiment of admiration in modern times, like those of his immediate predecessor in power, yet he was pre-eminently the man suited to his age, as an age of restoration and re-organisation, and he was pre-eminently a Roman of the Romans. The great C. Julius, in his genius and qualities, 'towers' not only above his own nation but, 'like Hannibal, above all nations.' The perfect success of Augustus was due to the fact not only that he was the man wanted by his epoch, but that he was the complete embodiment of the great practical talents and character of Rome. He not only monopolised in his own person all the chief functions, but in his administration he displayed all the best and most varied capacities of the Roman magistracy. In his government and in his legislation he exercised the influence formerly exercised by Censor and Chief of the Senate, by Consul and Proconsul, by Praetor and Aedile. To the apt.i.tudes for these various duties he added those that fitted him at least to fill the place of 'Imperator' at the head of the Roman armies, and to give new importance and efficacy to the office of Pontifex Maximus. He possessed also in a remarkable degree the personal qualities of industry, vigilance, practical sagacity, authority, dignity, and urbanity, which are of most importance in the government of men. If his character falls below both the ancient and the modern ideal of heroism, it is thoroughly conformable to a Roman ideal of practical power and usefulness. He is the representative man of the brighter side of Roman imperialism, as Tiberius (till his final retirement from Rome),-in his strength of body and mind, his military and administrative capacity, his unrelieved application to business(550), his unsympathetic impartiality, his suspicious and ruthless policy in suppressing opposition, his callous indifference to suffering,-is of its more sombre side. It is a great enhancement of the representative character of Virgil's national epic, that it is a.s.sociated with the name and acts of one who was not only the founder, but was the most typical embodiment of the Roman empire.

Although the choice of the subject of the Aeneid was determined, in a great measure, by its adaptability to the personal and political object of Virgil, no attempt is made to exhibit either the character or the actions of Aeneas as symbolical of those of Augustus. Still less are we to look for any modern parallels to the other personages of the poem, such as Turnus or Dido, Latinus or Lavinia, Drances or Achates. Yet the position a.s.signed to Aeneas, as a fatherly ruler over his people, their chief in battle, their law-giver in peace, and their high-priest in all spiritual relations, may have been intended as a kind of symbol of the new monarchy.

The Roman imagination acknowledged two ideals of a ruler of men,-the ideal of a Romulus and that of a Numa. In Aeneas both are combined with the characteristics of a new ideal which rather antic.i.p.ated a future, than reproduced any older type of character. Augustus too might be regarded as at once the Romulus and the Numa of the new empire; and thus the parts played by Aeneas, as chief in battle and legislator in peace(551), might be regarded as a kind of foreshadowing of those which were afterwards played by Augustus on the real stage of human affairs. But it would be no compliment either to the intellectual power of Augustus or to the discernment of Virgil, to suppose that the personal attributes of Aeneas were intended to have any resemblance to the strong and self-reliant character of the Emperor. The relation to Aeneas adds to the personal glory of Augustus by the ancestral distinction thus conferred upon him,-a distinction at all times highly prized among the Romans, and especially prized by the Caesars as helping to reconcile a proud aristocracy to their ascendency. In the immediate successors of Augustus, the obscurity of the Octavii and Atii was forgotten in the combined l.u.s.tre of the Julian and Claudian families. And on one of those occasions, in which the sentiment of family pride was most powerfully appealed to,-the funeral of Drusus, son of Tiberius,-we read in Tacitus-'funus imaginum pompa maxime inl.u.s.tre fuit, c.u.m origo Iuliae gentis Aeneas omnesque Albanorum reges, et conditor urbis Romulus, post Sabina n.o.bilitas, Attus Clausus, ceteraeque Claudiorum effigies, longo ordine spectarentur(552).' In thus throwing the halo both of a remote antiquity and of a divine ancestry around Augustus, Virgil helped to recommend his rule to the sentiment of his countrymen.

In seeking to enhance the greatness of a living ruler by a.s.sociating him with the actions of a remote legendary ancestor, the panegyric of Virgil does not transcend the limits which Pindar allows himself in evoking the mythical glories of the past in honour of his patrons. But Virgil seeks to establish a closer connexion between the past and the present, than that established by Pindar. The connexion between the living man, who wins a victory in the games, and his heroic ancestor, is adduced as a proof of the inheritance by the descendant of the personal qualities which first gave distinction to his race. But the connexion between Aeneas and Augustus is the connexion between means and end. The actions of Aeneas are not held up as a mere example which his descendant might emulate: they are the first links in the long chain of events which reached from the siege of Troy to the victory of Actium and the establishment of the empire. The distant vision of the glory awaiting the greatest of his descendants is, more than any immediate or personal end, the motive which animates both the divine and human actors in the enterprise. It is after a vivid picture of the martial and peaceful glories of the Augustan reign that the stirring appeal is made-

Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis, Aut metus Ausonia prohibet consistere terra(553)?

The means through which the vision of this distant future is revealed, are the voice of Jove himself in unfolding the volume of the fates to Venus, that of the beatified shade of Anchises in exhibiting the spectacle of his unborn descendants to Aeneas, and the art of Vulcan in framing the 'fabric of the shield surpa.s.sing all description.'

The glory attributed to Augustus in the shield of Aeneas is that of a great warrior and conqueror, the champion, not, like C. Julius, of the popular against the aristocratic party in the State, of the Provinces against the Senate, but of the nation against its old enemies, the monarchies of the East. He appears as celebrating a mighty triumph, and dedicating three hundred temples to the G.o.ds of Italy in thankful acknowledgment of his victory. The glory announced in the prophecy of Jupiter is that of the establishment by Augustus of an Empire of Peace, as the completion of his warlike triumph-

Aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis: Cana Fides et Vesta, Remo c.u.m fratre Quirinus Iura dabunt(554).

And in the revelation of Anchises, Augustus is spoken of as-

Augustus Caesar, Divi genus: aurea condet Saecula qui rursus Latio, regnata per arva Saturno quondam(555).

He is there proclaimed to be greater in the extent of his conquests and civilising labours than Hercules and Bacchus. And, though less prominently than in the Invocation to the Georgics, divine honours and the function of answering prayer are promised to him by the mouth of Jupiter-

Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum, Accipies secura: vocabitur hic quoque votis(556).

The personal figure of the Emperor is thus encompa.s.sed with the halo of military glory, of beneficent action on the world, of a divine sanction, and of an ultimate heritage of divine honours.

The Aeneid considered as a representative work of genius is thus seen to be the expression or embodiment of an idea of powerful meaning for the age in which the poem was written, for the centuries immediately succeeding that age, and, through the action of historical a.s.sociations, for all times. As the great poem of Dante gained both immediate and permanent attention by the human interest which it imparted to the spiritual idea on which mediaeval Europe based its life; as the inspiration of Milton's great Epic was drawn from his pa.s.sionate sympathy with the intensest form of religious and political life in his age; so the quality of Virgil's genius which secured for him the most immediate and the most lasting consideration was his sympathetic comprehension of the imperial idea of Rome in its secular, religious, and personal significance. This idea he has enn.o.bled with the a.s.sociations of a divine origin and of a divine sanction; of a remote antiquity and an unbroken continuity of great deeds and great men; of the pomp and pride of war, and of the majesty of government: and he has softened and humanised the impression thus produced by the thought of peace, law, and order given to the world. In his stately diction we are reminded only of the power, glory, majesty, and civilising influence with which the idea of Rome is encompa.s.sed. There is nothing to obtrude the thought of the spirit, in which life, freedom, and individuality were crushed out of the world. And this idea, of which Virgil's poem is the glorified representation, was one actually realised, one which influenced the lives of generations of men, and which was an important element in moulding the whole subsequent history of the world.