The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 9

Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these-'t.i.tyre dum redeo' and 'Huc ades O Galatea'-are purely Theocritean. Two others-

Vare tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua n.o.bis,

and

Daphni quid antiquos signorum suspicis ortus(218)-

indicate the new path which Virgil's art was striking out for itself.

There is certainly more real substance in this poem than in most of the earlier Eclogues. Lycidas and Moeris speak about what interests them personally. The scene of the poem is apparently the road between Virgil's farm and Mantua. There seem to be no conventional and inconsistent features introduced from the scenery of Sicily or Arcadia, unless it be the 'aequor' of line 57-

Et nunc omne tibi stratum silet aequor(219).

But may not that be either the lake, formed by the overflow of the river, some distance above Mantua, or even the great level plain, with its long gra.s.s and corn-fields and trees, hushed in the stillness of the late afternoon?

The sixth Eclogue was written probably about the same time and at the same place, the villa of Siron, in which Virgil had taken refuge with his family. It is inscribed with the name of Varus, who is said to have been a fellow-student of Virgil under the tuition of Siron. But, with the exception of the dedicatory lines, there is no reference to the circ.u.mstances of the time. Though abounding with rich pastoral ill.u.s.trations, the poem is rather a mythological and semi-philosophical idyl than a pure pastoral poem. It consists mainly of a song of Silenus, in which an account is given of the creation of the world in accordance with the Lucretian philosophy; and, in connexion with this theme (as is done also by Ovid in his Metamorphoses), some of the oldest mythological traditions, such as the tale of Pyrrha and Deucalion, the reign of Saturn on earth, the theft and punishment of Prometheus, etc., are introduced.

The opening lines-Namque canebat uti-are imitated from the song of Orpheus in the first book of the Argonautics(220), but they bear unmistakable traces also of the study of Lucretius. There seems no trace of the language of Theocritus in the poem.

Three points of interest may be noted in this song: (1) Virgil here, as in Georgic ii. 475, etc., regards the revelation of physical knowledge as a fitting theme for poetic treatment. So in the first Aeneid, the 'Song of Iopas' is said to be about 'the wandering moon and the toils of the sun; the origin of man and beast, water and fire,' etc. The revelation of the secrets of Nature seems to float before the imagination of Virgil as the highest consummation of his poetic faculty. (2) We note here how, as afterwards in the Georgics, he accepts the philosophical ideas of creation, side by side with the supernatural tales of mythology. He seems to regard such tales as those here introduced as part of the religious traditions of the human race, and as a link which connects man with the G.o.ds. In the Georgics we find also the same effort to reconcile, or at least to combine, the conceptions of science with mythological fancies. In this effort we recognise the influence of other Alexandrine poets rather than of Theocritus. (3) The introduction of Gallus in the midst of the mythological figures of the poem, and the account of the honour paid to him by the Muses and of the office a.s.signed to him by Linus, are characteristic of the art of the Eclogues, which is not so much allegorical as composite. It brings together in the same representation facts, personages, and places from actual life and the figures and scenes of a kind of fairy-land. In the tenth Eclogue Gallus is thus identified with the Daphnis of Sicilian song, and is represented as the object of care to the Naiads and Pan and Apollo. While Pollio is the patron whose protection and encouragement Virgil most cordially acknowledges in his earlier poems, Gallus is the man among his contemporaries who has most powerfully touched his imagination and gained his affections.

The Eclogue composed next in order of time is the 'Pollio.' It was written in the consulship of Pollio, B.C. 40, immediately after the reconciliation between Antony and Octavia.n.u.s effected by the treaty of Brundisium, and gives expression to that vague hope of a new era of peace and prosperity which recurs so often in the poetry of this age. In consequence of the interpretation given to it in a later age, this poem has acquired an importance connected with Virgil's religious belief second only to the importance of the sixth Aeneid. Early Christian writers, perceiving a parallel between expressions and ideas in this poem and those in the Messianic prophecies, believed that Virgil was here the unconscious vehicle of Divine inspiration, and that he prophesies of the new era which was to begin with the birth of Christ. And though, as Conington and others have pointed out, the picture of the Golden Age given in the poem is drawn immediately from Cla.s.sical and not from Hebrew sources, yet there is no parallel in Cla.s.sical poetry to that which is the leading idea of the poem, the coincidence of the commencement of this new era with the birth of a child whom a marvellous career awaited.

The poem begins with an invocation to the Sicilian Muses and with the declaration that, though the strain is still pastoral, yet it is to be in a higher mood, and worthy of the Consul to whom it is addressed. Then follows the announcement of the birth of a new era. The world after pa.s.sing through a cycle of ages, each presided over by a special deity, had reached the last of the cycle, presided over by Apollo, and was about to return back to the Golden or Saturnian Age of peace and innocence, into which the human race was originally born. A new race of men was to spring from heaven. The first-born of this new stock was destined hereafter to be a partaker of the life of the G.o.ds and to 'rule over a world in peace with the virtues of his father.' Then follow the rural and pastoral images of the Golden Age, like those given in the first Georgic in the description of the early world before the reign of Jove. The full glory of the age should not be reached till this child should attain the maturity of manhood. In the meantime some traces of 'man's original sin' ('priscae vestigia fraudis') should still urge him to brave the dangers of the sea, to surround his cities with walls, and to plough the earth into furrows.

There should be a second expedition of the Argonauts, and a new Achilles should be sent against another Troy. The romantic adventures of the heroic age were to precede the rest, innocence, and spontaneous abundance of the age of Saturn. Next the child is called upon to prepare himself for the 'magni honores'-the great offices of state which awaited him; and the poet prays that his own life and inspiration may be prolonged so far as to enable him to celebrate his career.

There seem to be no traces of imitation of Theocritus in this poem. The rhythm which in the other Eclogues reproduces the Theocritean cadences is in this more stately and uniform, recalling those of Catullus in his longest poem. The substance of the poem is quite unlike anything in the Sicilian idyl. Though this substance does not stand out in the clear light of reality, but is partially revealed through a haze of pastoral images and legendary a.s.sociations, yet it is not altogether unmeaning. The antic.i.p.ation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the world; and this antic.i.p.ation-the state of men's minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem was written-probably contributed to the acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world(221).

Two questions which have been much discussed in connexion with this poem remain to be noticed; (1) who is the child born in the consulship of Pollio of whom this marvellous career is predicted? (2) is it at all probable that Virgil, directly or indirectly, had any knowledge of the Messianic prophecies or ideas?

In answer to the first we may put aside at once the supposition that the prediction is made of the child who was born in that year to Octavia.n.u.s and Scribonia. The words 'nascenti puero' are altogether inapplicable to the notorious and unfortunate Julia, who was the child of that marriage.

If Virgil was sanguine enough to predict the s.e.x of the child, we can hardly imagine him allowing the words to stand after his prediction had been falsified. We may equally dismiss the supposition that the child spoken of was the offspring of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Not to mention other considerations adverse to this supposition(222), it would have been impossible for Virgil, the devoted partisan of Caesar, to pay this special compliment to Antony, even after he became so closely connected with his rival. There remains a third supposition, that the child spoken of is the son of Pollio, Asinius Gallus, who plays an important part in the reign of Tiberius. This last interpretation is supported by the authority of Asconius, who professed to have heard it from Asinius Gallus himself. The objection to this interpretation is that Virgil was not likely to a.s.sign to the child of one who, as compared with Octavia.n.u.s and Antony, was only a secondary personage in public affairs, the position of 'future ruler of the world' and the function of being 'the regenerator of his age.' Still less could a poem bearing this meaning have been allowed to retain its place among Virgil's works after the ascendency of Augustus became undisputed. Further, the line

Cara deum suboles, magnum Iovis incrementum

(whatever may be its exact meaning(223)) appears an extreme exaggeration when specially applied to the actual son of a mortal father and mother.

These difficulties have led some interpreters to suppose that the child spoken of is an ideal or imaginary representative of the future race. But if we look more closely at the poem, we find that the child is not really spoken of as the future regenerator of the age; he is merely the first-born of the new race, which was to be nearer to the G.o.ds both in origin and in actual communion with them. Again, the words

Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus...o...b..m(224)

would not convey the same idea in the year 40 B.C. as they would ten or twenty years later. At the time when the poem was written the consulship was still the highest recognised position in the State. The Consuls for the year, nominally at least, wielded the whole power of the Empire. The words 'reget orbem' remain as a token that the Republic was not yet entirely extinct. The child is called upon to prepare himself for the great offices of State in the hope that he should in time hold the high place which was now held by his father. The words 'patriis virtutibus'

imply that he is no ideal being, but the actual son of a well-known father. Virgil takes occasion in this poem to commemorate the attainment of the highest office by his patron, to celebrate the birth of the son born in the year of his consulship, and at the same time to express, by mystical and obscure allusions, the trust that the peace of Brundisium was the inauguration of that new era for which the hearts of men all over the world were longing.

In turning to the second question, discussed in connexion with this Eclogue, the great amount and recondite character of Virgil's learning, especially of that derived from Alexandrine sources, must be kept in view.

Macrobius testifies to this in several places. Thus he writes, 'for this poet was learned with not only a minute conscientiousness, but even with a kind of reserve and mystery, so that he introduced into his works much knowledge the sources of which are difficult to discover(225).' In another place he speaks of those things, 'what he had introduced from the most recondite learning of the Greeks(226).' And again he says, 'this story Virgil has dug out from the most recondite Greek literature(227).' It is indeed most improbable that Virgil had a direct knowledge of the Septuagint. If he had this knowledge it would have shown itself by other allusions in other parts of his works. But it is quite possible that, through other channels of Alexandrine learning, the ideas and the language of Hebrew prophecy may have become indirectly known to him. One channel by which this may have reached him would be the new Sibylline prophecies, manufactured in the East and probably reflecting Jewish as well as other Oriental ideas, which poured into Rome after the old Sibylline books had perished in the burning of the Capitol during the first Civil War.

Still, admitting these possibilities, we are not called upon to go beyond cla.s.sical sources for the general substance and idea of this poem. It has more in common with the myth in the Politicus of Plato than with the Prophecies of Isaiah. The state of the world at the time when the poem was written produced the longing for an era of restoration and a return to a lost ideal of innocence and happiness, and the wish became father to the thought.

There still remain the eighth and tenth Eclogues to be examined. The first, like the fourth, is a.s.sociated with the name of Pollio, the second with that of Gallus. The date of the eighth is fixed to 39 B.C. by the victory of Pollio in Illyria and by his subsequent triumph over the Parthini. The words

Accipe iussis Carmina coepta tuis(228)

testify to the personal influence under which Virgil wrote these poems.

The t.i.tle of 'Pharmaceutria,' by which the poem is known, indicates that Virgil professes to reproduce, in an Italian form, that pa.s.sionate tale of city life which forms the object of the second idyl of Theocritus. But while the subject and burden of the second of the two songs contained in this Eclogue are suggested by that idyl, the poem is very far from being a mere imitative reproduction of it.

Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesiboeus, meet in the early dawn-

c.u.m ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba(229),

(one of those touches of truthful description which reappear in the account of the pastoral occupations in Georgic iii). They each sing of incidents which may have been taken from actual life, or may have formed the subject of popular songs traditional among the peasantry of the district. In the first of these songs Damon gives vent to his despair in consequence of the marriage of his old love Nysa with his rival Mopsus.

Though the shepherds who sing together bear the Greek names of Damon and Alphesiboeus, though they speak of Rhodope and Tmaros and Maenalus, of Orpheus and Arion, though expressions and lines are close translations, and one a mistranslation, from the Greek (p??ta d' ??a??a ?????t? being rendered 'omnia vel medium fiant mare'), and though the mode by which the lover determines to end his sorrows,

Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas Deferar(230),

is more appropriate to a shepherd inhabiting the rocks overhanging the Sicilian seas than to one dwelling in the plain of Mantua, yet both this song and the accompanying one sung by Alphesiboeus approach more nearly to the impersonal and dramatic representation of the Greek idyl than any of those already examined. The lines of most exquisite grace and tenderness in the poem,-lines which have been p.r.o.nounced the finest in Virgil and the finest in Latin literature by Voltaire and Macaulay(231),-

Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala, Dux ego vester eram, vidi c.u.m matre legentem: Alter ab undecimo tum me iam acceperat annus, Iam fragiles poteram ab terra contingere ramos: Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error(232)-

are indeed close imitations of lines of similar beauty from the song of the Cyclops to Galatea:-

???s??? ?? ????a te???, ???a, ????a p??t??

???e? ?? s?? at?? ?????s' ?a??????a f???a ?? ??e?? d???as?a?, ??? d' ?d?? ??e??e???

pa?sas?a? d' ?s?d?? t? ?a? ?ste??? ??d' ?t? p? ???

?? t??? d??aa? t??' d' ?? ??e?, ?? ? ??' ??d??(233).

But they are so varied as to suggest a picture of ease and abundance among the orchards and rich cultivated land of Italy, instead of the free life and natural beauties of the Sicilian mountains. The descriptive touches suggesting the picture of the innocent romance of boyhood are also all Virgil's own.

The song of Alphesiboeus represents a wife endeavouring to recall her truant, though still faithful, Daphnis from the city to his home. Though some of the ill.u.s.trations in this song also are Greek, yet it contains several natural references to rustic superst.i.tions which were probably common to Greek and Italian peasants; and the fine simile at line 85 (of which the first hint is to be found in Lucretius(234)) suggests purely Italian a.s.sociations. The final incident in the poem, 'Hylax in limine latrat' (though the name given to the dog is Greek), is a touch of natural life, such as does not often occur in the Eclogues. On the whole, Virgil seems here to have struck on a vein which it may be regretted that he did not work more thoroughly. If, as has been suggested by Mr. Symonds, in his account and translations of popular Tuscan poems, any of the Eclogues of Virgil are founded on primitive love-songs current among the peasantry of Italy, the songs of Damon and Alphesiboeus are those which we should fix on as being the artistic development of these native germs.

The tenth Eclogue was the last in order of composition, probably an after-thought written immediately before the final publication, or perhaps before the second edition, of the nine other poems. In this poem Virgil abandons the more realistic path on which he had entered in the eighth, and returns again to the vague fancies of the old pastoral lament for Daphnis, as it is sung in the first idyl of Theocritus. Nothing can be more remote from actual fact than the representation of Gallus-the active and ambitious soldier and man of affairs, at that time engaged in the defence of the coasts of Italy-dying among the mountains of Arcadia, in consequence of his desertion by Lycoris (a dancing-girl, and former mistress of Antony, whose real name was Cytheris), and wept for by the rocks and pine-woods of Maenalus and Lycaeus. Yet none of the poems is more rich in beauty, and grace, and happy turns of phrase. As the idealised expression of unfortunate love, this poem is of the same cla.s.s as the second, and as the song of Damon in the eighth. That vein of modern romantic sentiment, already noticed in the second, the longing to escape from the ways of civilised life to the wild and lonely places of Nature, and to follow in imagination 'the homely, slighted shepherd's trade,'

meets us also in the lines,

Atque utinam ex vobis unus vestrique fuissem Aut custos gregis aut maturae vinitor uvae(235),-

and again in these,

Certum est in silvis, inter spelaea ferarum Malle pati, tenerisque meos incidere amores Arboribus(236).

II.

_Relation of the Eclogues to the Greek Pastoral._

The review of the Eclogues in the order of their composition shows that the early art of Virgil, like the lyrical art of Horace, begins in imitation, and, after attaining command over the form, rhythm, and diction of the type of poetry which it reproduces, gradually a.s.sumes greater independence in the choice of subject and the mode of treatment. The susceptibility of Virgil's mind to the grace and musical sweetness of Theocritus gave the first impulse to the composition of the Eclogues; but this susceptibility was itself the result of a natural sympathy with the sentiment and motives of the Greek idyl, especially with the love of Nature and the pa.s.sion of love. He found this province of art unappropriated. He revealed a new vein of Greek feeling unwrought by any of his countrymen. He gave another life to the beings, natural and supernatural, of ancient pastoral song, and awoke in his native land the sound of a strain hitherto unheard by Italian ears. The form of the Greek idyl, whether in dialogue or monologue, suited his genius, as a vehicle for the lighter fancies of youth, and for half-revealing, half-concealing the pleasures and pains personal to himself, better than the forms of lyrical and elegiac poetry adopted by Catullus and his compeers. In the opening lines of the sixth Eclogue,

Prima Syracosio dignata est ludere versu Nostra, neque erubuit silvas habitare Thalia(237),