The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 3

But with the final establishment of his reputation his fastidiousness suffered more from the pedantry and importunities of admirers and imitators:-

O imitatores, servum pecus, ut mihi saepe Bilem, saepe ioc.u.m vestri movere tumultus(83).

Even the 'mitis sapientia' of Virgil has condescended to immortalise the names of Bavius and Maevius, as Pope has immortalised the heroes of the Dunciad. The often quoted line of Horace,-

Scribimus indocti doctique poemata pa.s.sim(84),

marks the beginning of that 'cacoethes scribendi' which continued to prevail till the days of Juvenal as a symptom of the 'strenua inertia' of life under the Empire.

VI.

The almost exclusive devotion to poetry on the part of the meanest as well as the greatest writers of the Augustan Age seems to demand some explanation. The natural genius of Rome was more adapted to oratory, history, and didactic exposition than to any of the great forms of poetry.

In the previous generation prose literature had reached the highest degree of perfection. The style of Cicero is one of the most admirable and effective vehicles for the varied purposes of pa.s.sionate invective or persuasive oratory, of familiar correspondence, and of popularising the results of ethical, political, and religious reflection. In Caesar and Sall.u.s.t the record of great events in the national life had at last found a power of clear, terse, and chastened diction, superior as a vehicle of simple narrative to the style of the two great historians of later times, if not so rich and varied in colouring and in poetical and reflective suggestion. Of the prose literature of the Augustan Age we possess only one great monument, the extant parts of 'the colossal master-work of Livy;' and that was the product of the later and least brilliant period of this epoch.

The cause of the sudden and permanent decline of Roman oratory was the extinction of political life. Public speech could no longer be, as it had been for nearly two centuries, a great power in the commonwealth. Under the vigilant and judicious administration of Augustus there was not scope even for that kind of oratory which flourished under his successors, and became a very formidable weapon in the hands of the 'delatores,'-that, namely, which is employed in the prosecution and defence of men charged with grave offences against the State. Neither was there scope or inclination for philosophical or historical composition. Such freedom of enquiry as Cicero allowed himself in his treatises De Legibus and De Republica would scarcely have been tolerated under the monarchy; and the world was in no mood for any severe strain of thought or any questioning of the first principles of things. The new era desired ease, an escape from care and the perplexities of thought, as well as peace and material well-being. The spirit of the age was announced in the pastoral strain, which celebrated its commencement in the apotheosis of Julius Caesar, 'amat bonus otia Daphnis.' Nor would it have been possible for any one to have composed or at least to have published a candid history of the times; and it may have been the discovery of this impossibility that induced Asinius Pollio to leave his work unfinished. It would indeed have been a gain for all time had a Roman Thucydides recorded the 'movement in the State' from the Consulship of Metellus till the battle of Actium with the accuracy and impartiality, the graphic condensation, the sober dignity, the sensitive perception of the varying phases of pa.s.sion and character in states and individuals, the philosophical discernment of great political principles destined to act in the same way 'so long as the nature of man remains the same,' and the deep tragic pathos which make, even at the present day, the record of 'the twenty-seven years' war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians' the most vividly interesting and permanently instructive historical work which the world possesses. But even had the genius of Rome been capable of producing a Thucydides, the circ.u.mstances of the time would have reduced him to silence. Tacitus regards the establishment of the Empire as equally fatal to the genius of the historian, as it was to the genius of the orator:-'Postquam bellatum apud Actium atque omnem potentiam ad unum conferri pacis interfuit, magna illa ingenia cessere. Simul veritas pluribus modis infracta, primum inscitia rei publicae ut alienae, mox libidine a.s.sentandi(85).'

On the other hand, many circ.u.mstances contributed to give a great stimulus to poetical literature in its most trivial and transitory as well as its n.o.blest and most enduring manifestations. It is remarked by a recent French writer(86), that poetry is the last form of literature to wither under a despotism. But it suffers from it most irretrievably in the end.

The poetic imagination is able to deceive itself by turning away from what is painful and repulsive in the world, and by appearing to extract the element of good, of vivid life, or impressive grandeur out of things evil and fatal in their ultimate effects. Thus it is able to glorify the pomp and state of imperialism, just as it is able to glorify the charm to the senses or the attraction to the social nature afforded by the life of pa.s.sion and pleasure. But, in the long run, the decay in the higher energies arising either from the loss of liberty or the loss of self-control is more fatal to the n.o.bler forms of art and poetry than to any other products of intelligence.

Again, the mechanical difficulties of the art had been to a great extent overcome, in the previous age. The discovery of the new and rich ore of the Latin language, revealed and wrought into shapes of ma.s.sive beauty and delicate grace by Lucretius and Catullus, awakened and kept alive in the great writers of this age the desire to perfect the work commenced by their predecessors, and to develope all the majesty, beauty, and harmony of which their native speech was capable. The education in grammar, rhetoric, and Greek literature, which in the later years of the Republic had trained men for the contests of public life, prepared them to recognise and appreciate the perfection of style and of rhythm which was now for the first time attained. But the attainment of this perfection was a stumbling block to writers of an inferior order, and to all the poets who came afterwards. The Augustan poets left to their successors, what they had not themselves received, the fatal legacy of an established poetical diction. The resources of the language for the highest purposes of poetry seem to have been exhausted by the supreme effort of this epoch.

The golden perfection of the Augustan style gave place to the forced rhetoric and the sensational extravagance of the Neronian age and to the soberer but tamer imitations of the Flavian era.

In its inner inspiration, as well as its outward expression, the Augustan poetry was the maturest development of the national mind. The inspiring influences of Latin poetry were the idea of Rome, the appreciation of Greek art, the genial Italian life. We have seen how the first establishment of the Empire gave to the national idea a temporary importance and prominence which it had not had since Ennius first awoke his countrymen to the consciousness of their destiny. It was only in the Augustan Age, or during the few years preceding it, that the taste of the Romans was sufficiently educated to appreciate the perfect art of the Greeks. The whole of Italy was now for the first time united in one nation. A new generation had been born and grown to manhood since the Social War. The pride in Rome and the love of the whole land might now be felt by all men born between the Alps and the Straits of Sicily. The districts far removed from the capital, 'by the sounding Aufidus' or 'the slow-winding Mincius,' still kept alive the traditions of a severer morality and the habits of a simpler and happier life(87). They were still able to nourish the susceptible mind of childhood with poetic fancies(88).

In the following generation the idea of the empire was one no longer of inspiring novelty, but rather of a dull oppression. The taste for Greek literature had lost its freshness and quickening power. The natural enjoyment of life, the susceptibility to beauty in art and nature, the love of simplicity, were no longer possible to minds enervated and hearts deadened by the unrelieved monotony of luxurious living.

CHAPTER II.

VIRGIL'S PLACE IN ROMAN LITERATURE.

Virgil is the earliest in time and much the most important in rank among the extant poets of the Augustan Age. It is only in comparatively recent times that any question has arisen as to the high position due to him among the great poets of all ages. His pre-eminence not only above all those of his own country, but above all other poets with the exception of Homer, was unquestioned in the ancient Roman world. His countrymen claimed for him a rank on a level with, sometimes even above, that of the great father of European literature. And this estimate of his genius became traditional, and was confirmed by the general voice of modern criticism.

For eighteen centuries, wherever any germ of literary taste survived in Europe, his poems were the princ.i.p.al medium through which the heroic age of Greece as well as the ancient life of Rome and Italy was apprehended.

No writer has, on the whole, entered so largely and profoundly into the education of three out of the four chief representatives of European culture-the Italians, the French, and the English-at various stages of their intellectual development. The history of the progress of taste might be largely ill.u.s.trated by reference to the place which the works of Virgil have held, in the teaching of youth and among the refined pleasures of manhood, between the age of Dante and the early part of the present century.

Since that time, however, an undoubted reaction has set in against the prestige once enjoyed by Latin poetry. And from this reaction Virgil has been the chief sufferer. The peculiar gifts, social and intellectual, of Horace have continued to secure for him many friends in every country and in every generation. The spirit of Lucretius is perhaps more in unison with the spirit of the present than with that of any previous age, owing to changes both in imaginative feeling and in speculative curiosity and belief through which the world is now pa.s.sing. The sincerity and unstudied grace of Catullus are immediately recognised by all who read his works.

But in regard to Virgil, if former centuries a.s.signed him too high a place, the criticism of the present century, in Germany at least, and for a certain time in England, has been much less favourable. French criticism has indeed remained undeviatingly loyal, and regards him as the poet, not of Rome only, but of all those nations which are the direct inheritors of the Latin civilisation(89). And in England, at the present time, the estimate of his genius, expressed both by writers of acknowledged reputation and in the current criticism of the day, is much more favourable than it was some thirty years ago.

It would be neither desirable nor possible to enter on a critical examination of the value of a writer, who has been so much admired through so long a time, without taking some account of the prestige attaching to his name. It may be of use therefore to bring together some of the more familiar evidences of his reputation and influence in former times, to show the existence of a temporary reaction of opinion and to a.s.sign causes for it, and to indicate the grounds on which his pre-eminence as the culminating point in Latin literature and his high position among the poets of the world appear to rest.

I.

It was as a great epic poet, the poet of national glory and heroic action, that he was most esteemed in former times. The Aeneid may not have been regarded as more perfect in execution than the Eclogues and Georgics, but it was regarded as a work of higher inspiration. The criticism which Virgil by implication applies to his earlier works, in the use of such expressions as 'ludere quae vellem,' 'carmina qui lusi pastorum,' 'in tenui labor(90),' etc., as compared with the high ambition with which he first indicates his purpose of composing an epic poem in celebration of the glory of Augustus-

Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim Tollere humo, victorque virum volitare per ora(91)-

coincides with the view which the ancients took of the relative value of the poetry of external nature and of heroic action. The contemporaries and successors of Virgil did not share in the sense of some failure in the treatment of his subject which is attributed to Virgil himself; and hence they ranked him as the equal of Homer in the largest and most important province of poetry. And as this comparison was the source of excessive honour in the past, it has been the cause of the depreciation to which he has been exposed in the present century.

The great reputation enjoyed by the Aeneid dates from the first appearance of the poem. The earliest indication of the admiration which it was destined to excite appears in the tones of expectation and enthusiasm with which Propertius predicts the appearance of a work greater than the Iliad:-

Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii: Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade(92).

The immediate effect produced by the poem may be traced in the frequent allusions to the story of Aeneas in the fourth book of the Odes of Horace.

The continuance of this influence is unmistakeable in Ovid, and there are also many traces of Virgilian expression in the prose style of Livy(93).

The author of the dialogue 'De Oratoribus' testifies to the favour which the poet enjoyed, even before the publication of his epic, both with the Emperor and with the whole people, who 'on hearing some of his verses recited in the theatre rose in a body and greeted him, as he happened to be present at the spectacle, with the same marks of respect which they showed to the Emperor himself(94).' He would thus appear, even in his lifetime, to have thoroughly 'touched the national fibre(95),' and to have gained that place in the admiration of his countrymen which he never afterwards lost. By the poets who came after him his memory was cherished with the veneration men feel for a great master, united to the affection which they feel for a departed friend. Lucan indeed rather enters into rivalry with him than follows in his footsteps; nor can there be any surer way of learning to appreciate the peculiar greatness of Virgil's manner than by reading pa.s.sages of the Aeneid alongside of pa.s.sages of the Pharsalia. The new poets under the Flavian dynasty, Valerius Flaccus, Silius Italicus, and Statius, though they failed to apprehend the secret of its success, made the Aeneid their model, in the arrangement of their materials, in their diction, and in the structure of their verse. Statius, in bidding farewell to his Thebaid, uses these words of acknowledgement:-

Vive, precor, nec tu divinam Aeneida tempta, Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora(96);

and Silius, having occasion to mention Mantua, celebrates it as-

Mantua, Musarum domus, atque ad sidera cantu Evecta Aonio, et Smyrnaeis aemula plectris(97).

Martial, among many other tributes of admiration(98) scattered over his poems, says of Virgil that he could have surpa.s.sed Horace in lyric, Varius in tragic poetry, had he chosen to enter into rivalry with them(99). The younger Pliny(100), speaking of the number of books, statues, and busts possessed by Silius, adds these words: 'of Virgil princ.i.p.ally whose birthday he kept with more solemnity than his own, especially at Naples, where he used to visit his monument as if it were a temple.' But the greatest proof of Virgil's influence on the later literature of Rome is seen in many traces of imitation of his style in the language of the historian Tacitus, the one great literary genius born under the Empire. So great a master of expression would not have incurred this debt except to one whom he regarded as ent.i.tled above all others to stamp the speech of Rome with an imperial impress. In Juvenal there are many references and allusions to familiar pa.s.sages in the Aeneid(101): and it appears from him that the works of Virgil and Horace had in his time become what they have since continued to be, the common school-books of all who obtained a liberal education. It is one of the hardships of the schoolmaster's life, described in his seventh Satire, to have to listen by lamplight to the 'crambe repet.i.ta' of the daily lesson,-

Quum totus decolor esset Flaccus et haereret nigro fuligo Maroni(102).

After the end of the first century A.D., even the imitative poets of Rome become rare; but the pre-eminence still enjoyed by Virgil is attested by the number of commentaries written on his works, the most famous of them being the still extant commentary of Servius, belonging to the latter part of the fourth century. The fortune of Virgil has in this respect been similar to that of his great countryman Dante. From the time of his death till the extinction of ancient cla.s.sical culture, there was a regular succession of rhetoricians and grammarians who lectured and wrote treatises on his various poems. Among those who preceded Servius, the most famous names are those of Asconius Pedia.n.u.s, Annaeus Cornutus, the friend of Persius, and Valerius Probus, in the first century A.D. These commentators supplied materials to Suetonius for the life on which that of Aelius Donatus, which is still extant, is founded. The frequent quotations from Virgil in the desultory criticism of Aulus Gellius and the systematic discussions in the Saturnalia of Macrobius attest the minute study of his poems in the interval between the second and the fifth centuries. Similar testimony to his continued influence is afforded by the early Christian writers, especially by Augustine. And though there may be traced in them a struggle between the pleasure which they derived from his poetry and the alienation of their sympathies owing to his paganism, yet it is probable that the favour shown to him and to Cicero during the first strong reaction from everything a.s.sociated with the beauty of the older religion, was due as much to the pure and humane spirit of their teaching as to the fascination of their style: nor perhaps was this teaching inoperative in moulding the thought and giving form to the religious imagination of the Latin Church. The number and excellence of the MSS. of Virgil, the most famous of which date from the fourth and fifth centuries, confirm the impression of the continued favour which his works enjoyed before and subsequently to the overthrow of the Roman rule in the West. Wherever learning flourished during the darkest period of this later time, the poems of Virgil were held in special esteem. Thus we read in connexion with the literary studies of Bede: 'Virgil cast over him the same spell which he cast over Dante: verses from the Aeneid break his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple ventures on the track of the great master in a little eclogue descriptive of the approach of spring(103).' His works were taught in the Church schools: and the feeling with which he was regarded by the more tolerant minds of the mediaeval Church appears in a ma.s.s sung in honour of St. Paul at the end of the fifteenth century:-

Ad Maronis mausoleum Ductus fudit super eum Piae rorem lacrimae; Quem te inquit reddidissem Si te vivum invenissem Poetarum maxime(104)!

The traditional veneration attaching to his name, among the cla.s.ses too ignorant to know anything of his works, survived during the middle ages in the fancies which ascribed to him the powers of a magician or beneficent genius, appearing in many forms and at various times and places widely separated from one another.

With the first revival of learning and letters in different countries, the old pre-eminence of Virgil again a.s.serts itself. In England 'the earliest cla.s.sical revival' (to quote again the words of Mr. Green) 'restored Cicero and Virgil to the list of monastic studies, and left its stamp on the pedantic style, the profuse cla.s.sical quotations of writers like William of Malmesbury or John of Salisbury.' One of the earliest works in Scottish literature is the translation of the Aeneid by Gawain Douglas. It is characteristic of the rudimentary state of learning at the time when this translation appeared that the Sibyl is represented as a nun, who directs Aeneas to tell his beads(105). But the greatest testimony to the persistence of Virgil's fame and influence in the western world is the homage which the genius of Dante pays to the shade of his great countryman. 'May the long zeal avail me and the great love that made me search thy volume. Thou art my master and my author. Thou art he from whom I took the good style that did me honour(106).' The feeling with which Dante gives himself up to the guidance of Virgil through all the mystery of the lower realms is like that under which Ennius evokes the shade of Homer from the 'halls of Acheron' to interpret to him the secrets of creation. Dante combines the reverence for a great master, which seems to be more natural to the genius of Italy than to that of other nations, with a high self-confidence and a bold and original invention. Lucretius expresses a similar enthusiasm for Homer, Ennius, Empedocles, and Epicurus; and by Virgil the same feeling is, though not directly expressed, yet profoundly felt towards Homer and Lucretius. And in all these cases the admiration of their predecessors is an incentive, not to imitative reproduction, but to new creation. It was as the poet of 'that Italy for which Camilla the virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus and Nisus died of wounds' that the poet of mediaeval Florence paid homage to the ancient poet of Mantua. The admiration of Dante, like that of Tacitus, is the more corroborative of the spell exercised over the Italian mind by the art and style of Virgil from the difference in the type of genius and character which these poets severally represent. The influence of Virgil was exercised, with a power more over-mastering and injurious to their originality, upon the later poets and scholars of Italy with whom the Renaissance begins. The progress of modern poetry was for a long time accompanied-and it would be difficult to say whether it was thereby more obstructed or advanced-by a new undergrowth of Latin poetry, for the higher forms of which Virgil served as the princ.i.p.al model. Petrarch attached more importance to his epic poem of 'Africa,' written in imitation of the rhythm and style of the Aeneid, than to his Sonnets. The influence of Virgil on the later Renaissance in Italy is abundantly proved in the works of poets, scholars, and men of letters in that age. Ninety editions of his works are said to have been published before the year 1500(107). From Italy this influence pa.s.sed to France and England, and was felt, not by scholars and critics only, but by the great poets and essayists, the orators and statesmen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was discussed as an open question whether the Iliad or the Aeneid was the greater epic poem: and it was then necessary for the admirers of the Greek rather than of the Latin poet to a.s.sume an apologetic tone(108). Scaliger ranked Virgil above Homer and Theocritus.

His prestige was greatest during the century of French ascendency in modern literature, that, namely, between the age of Milton and that of Lessing. The chief critical law-giver in that century was Voltaire, and no great critic has ever expressed a livelier admiration of any poem than he has of the Aeneid. It is to him we owe the saying, 'Homere a fait Virgile, dit-on; si cela est, c'est sans doute son plus bel ouvrage(109).' He claims elsewhere for the second, fourth, and sixth books of the Aeneid a great superiority over the works of all Greek poets(110). He says also that the Aeneid is the finest monument remaining from antiquity. As Spenser was called the 'poet's poet,' so Virgil might be called the orator's poet. Even by a rhetorician of the second century the question was discussed whether Virgil 'was more a poet or an orator(111).' Bossuet is said to have known his works by heart(112). In the great era of English oratory, no author seems to have been so familiarly known or was so often quoted. We read in a recent sketch of the life of Burke(113), 'Most writers have constantly beside them some favourite cla.s.sical author, from whom they endeavour to take their prevailing tone.... Burke, according to Butler, always had a ragged Delphin Virgil not far from his elbow.' A vestige of the attraction which his words had for an older school of English politicians may be traced in the survival of Virgilian quotation in some of the parliamentary warfare of recent times. The important place which Virgil has filled in the teaching of our public schools-the great nurses of our cla.s.sic statesmen-has perhaps not been without some influence in shaping our national history(114). It would be no exaggeration to say that the poems of Virgil, and especially the Aeneid, have contributed more than any other works of art in modern times, not only to stamp the impression of ancient Rome on the imagination, but to educate the sensibility to generous emotion as well as to literary beauty.

There is probably no author, even at the present day, of whom some knowledge may be with more certainty a.s.sumed among cultivated people of every nation.

II.

This unbroken ascendency of eighteen centuries, which might almost be described in the words applied by Lucretius to the ascendency of Homer-

Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus Sceptra pot.i.tus(115)-

is as great a fortune as that which has fallen to the lot of any writer.