Chapter VI (1)

STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE POEM, IN RELATION TO THE POEM OF
LUCRETIUS.

I.

The influence, direct and indirect, exercised by Lucretius on the thought, composition, and even the diction of the Georgics was perhaps stronger than that ever exercised, before or since, by one great poet on the work of another. This influence is of the kind which is oftener seen in the history of philosophy than of literature. It was partly one of sympathy, partly of antagonism. Virgil’s conception of Nature has its immediate origin in the thought of Lucretius; his religious convictions and national sentiment derive new strength by reaction from the attitude of his predecessor. This powerful attraction and repulsion were alike due to the fact that Lucretius was the first not only to reveal a new power, beauty, and source of wonder in the world, but also to communicate to poetry a speculative impulse, opening up, with a more impassioned appeal than philosophy can do, the great questions underlying human life,—such as the truth of all religious tradition, the position of man in the Universe, and the attitude of mind and course of conduct demanded by that position.

Nor was it a poetical and speculative impulse only that Virgil received from his predecessor. A new didactic poem, dealing largely with the same subject-matter as that treated by Lucretius,—such as the earth, the heavens, the great elemental forces, the growth of plants, the habits of animals, and the like—contemplating, among other objects, that of determining the relation of man to the sphere in which he is placed, and seeking to invest the ordinary processes of Nature with an ideal charm,—could not help assuming a somewhat similar mould to that which had been originally cast for the philosophic thought and realistic observation of the older poet.

Again, in regard to the technical execution of his work, rhythm and expression, Virgil inherited the new wealth introduced into Latin literature by Lucretius. Lucretius had given to the Latin Hexameter a stronger and more unimpeded flow, a more sonorous and musical intonation than it had before his time. He stamped the force of his mind on new modes of vivid expression and of rhythmical cadence, which, though they might be modified, could not be set aside in any future representation of the ‘species ratioque,’ the outward spectacle and the moving principle of Nature.

Many circumstances conduced to bring Virgil, more powerfully than any other Latin poet, under the spell of Lucretius. As is remarked by Mr. Munro(307), when the poem of his predecessor first appeared Virgil was at, or near, the age which is most immediately impressed and moulded by a contemporary work of genius. The enthusiasm for philosophy, expressed in the short poem written immediately before he began to study under Siron, implies that he had been already attracted by the subject of which Lucretius was the only worthy(308) Latin exponent; and his studies under that teacher must have prepared his mind to receive the higher instruction of the ‘De Rerum Natura.’ The song of Silenus in the sixth Eclogue and many expressions and cadences in other poems of the series attest the poetical, if not the speculative, impression thus produced. But the clearest testimony of Virgil’s recognition of the influence of his predecessor is found in that passage of the Georgics in which he speaks of himself most from his heart,—

Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.,—(II. 475.)

and in which he declares his first wish to be that the Muses should reveal to him the secrets of Nature; but, if this were denied him, he next prays that ‘the love of the woods and running streams in the valleys’ might be his portion. He may not have meant the lines

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.,—(II. 490.)

to be taken as a description of the individual Lucretius, or those containing the other picture, placed by its side,

Fortunatas et ille, deos qui novit agrestis,
Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores, etc.,—(II. 493.)

as a description of himself. Such direct personal references are not in keeping with the allusive style in which he writes of himself and others. He seems rather in these passages to set forth two ideal states of mind, that of philosophic contemplation, on the one hand, that of the pure love of Nature and conformity with the simple beliefs of country-people, on the other, as equally capable of raising men above the vulgar passions and pleasures of the world. But it is evident that he thought of Lucretius as the poet who had held up the one ideal to the imagination and the severer mood of his countrymen, and of himself as holding up the other to their poetical feeling and their human affections.

He would thus seem to have looked on Lucretius with something of that veneration with which Lucretius regards Epicurus, Empedocles, and Ennius, and with which Dante long after regarded Virgil himself. The two greatest among the Roman poets had many feelings in common,—the love of Nature, the love of study, especially the study of ancient poetry and of science, a natural shrinking from the pomp and luxury of city-life and from the schemes of worldly ambition, an abhorrence of the crimes and violence of civil war. They felt the charm of the same kind of outward scenes,—of rivers flowing through green pastures, of meadow and woodland, of rich corn-fields and vineyards. They had the same strong sympathy with the life of animals associated with man’s labour, the same fellow-feeling with the pain and the happiness of which human affection is the source. The numerous passages in which phrases or cadences, thought or imagery in the Georgics recall phrases or representation in the earlier poem(309), leave no doubt that Virgil found in Lucretius a heart and spirit with which his own largely receptive nature could in many ways sympathise, as well as that he recognised in him a guide whom he could follow in imagination ‘among the lonely heights of Parnassus(310).’

Yet, on the other hand, it is quite true that both the character and genius of Virgil are essentially of a different type from those of Lucretius.—They are both thoroughly original representatives of different elements in the Roman and Italian character.—So far as he represents the mind and temper of Rome, Lucretius represents the old order which had passed away. Though scarcely anything is known of the circumstances of his life, yet his _gentile_ name (as is shown by Mr. Munro), his relation of equality to Memmius, the stamp of his powerful personality impressed on his poem, point to the conclusion that he was one of the old Roman aristocracy, born into a time when many of its members had begun to retire in disgust from active interest in the Republic, which they were no longer able to govern. It was, as has been already remarked(311), to this class among the Romans, almost exclusively, that the taste for literature was confined in the last age of the Republic; and it was among men of this class, such as the Luculli and Hortensius, and the Velleius and Torquatus of Cicero’s Dialogues, that the Epicurean philosophy found its chief adherents. The poem of Lucretius shows all the courage and energy, the power of command, the sense of superiority and the direct simplicity of manner emanating from it, which are the inheritance of a great governing class. He is the one man of true genius for poetry whom that class gave to Rome. His lofty pathos and tenderness of feeling are the graces of his own nature, refined and purified by the most humanising studies. His profound melancholy is a mood natural to one who looks on the passing away of a great order of things, political, social, and religious, in the midst of scenes of turbulence and violence, and takes refuge from an alien world in the contemplation of another order of things, infinitely more majestic than either the old social state which was shaken and tottering to its fall, or the new which was yet ‘powerless to be born.’

There could scarcely be any greater contrast, in social relations and the dispositions arising out of them, between any two men, than between the representative of the old governing families of the Republic, and the humbly-born native of the Cisalpine province,—delicate in health, modest and self-distrustful, yet endowed with a deep consciousness of genius and a resolution to follow that guidance only,—entering on manhood and beginning his career as poet contemporaneously with the events which determined the ascendency of the new order of things, and identified with it through his personal relations to the leading men of the new Empire,—a poet who derived from his birth and early nurture ‘the spirit of the ages of Faith(312),’—one too who had been happy in his early home-affections and in the friendships of his manhood, and who was able to dedicate his mature years to his art under conditions of the greatest personal and national security. In considering the influence of the ideas of Lucretius on the mind of Virgil, we must accordingly make large allowance for the medium of alien sympathies, personal, social, and political, through which they were refracted. We must take into consideration also the wide difference between the philosophic poet and the pure poetic artist. The feeling of Virgil towards philosophy was apparently one of aspiration rather than of possession. He shows no interest in the processes of enquiry,—in tracing the operation of great laws in manifold phenomena,—in investigating one obscure subject after another, with the confident assurance that every discovery is a step towards the light and the ultimate revelation of the whole mystery. Virgil recognises the source of his own strength in the words

Flumina _amem_ silvasque.

It is the power of love which quickens his intuition and enables him to perceive the tenderness and beauty revealed in the living movement of Nature. He receives and applies the complete ideas of Lucretius, but he does not follow them with the eagerness of their author through the various phases of their development. Certain results of a philosophic system affect his imagination, but he does not seem to feel how these results necessarily exclude other conclusions which he will not abandon. Hence arises his prevailing eclecticism,—the existence of popular beliefs side by side in his mind with the tenets of Epicureans, Stoics, and Platonists,—of some conclusions of the Lucretian science along with the opposing doctrines expressed in the poetry of Alexandria. Even in the arrangement of his materials and the grouping of his landscapes, some chance association or rhythmical cadence seems to guide his hand, more often than the perception of the orderly connexion of phenomena with one another.

II.

The idea which Lucretius revealed to the world in fuller majesty and life than any previous poet or philosopher, was the idea of Nature, apprehended, not as an abstract conception, but as a power omnipresent, creative, and regulative throughout the great spheres of earth, sky, and sea, and the innumerable varieties of individual existence. The meaning conveyed by the Greek word φύσις, as employed by Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, etc., is powerless to move the imagination or enlarge the sense of beauty, when compared with the illimitable content of ‘Natura daedala rerum’ as conceived by the Latin poet. Nature is to him the one power absolutely supreme and independent in the Universe, too vast and too manifold to be subject to any will but her own,—

Libera continuo dominis privata superbis.

Her independent existence is incompatible with that of the multitude of beings, of limited power and intelligence, which the old mythologies established as lords over the world and man. The gods, abiding in a state of blessed ease and indifference, are themselves dependent on a power infinitely transcending their own. But in what relation does man stand to this power? He too is within her sphere, altogether subject to her, but no special object of her regard. He exists only through compliance with and resignation to her conditions. And these conditions are on the whole unfavourable to him. He can gain only a scanty subsistence by a continual struggle with reluctant and rebellious forces in the earth; and even after all his toil and care, causes over which he has no control, such as the inclemency of the skies and incalculable vicissitudes of heat and cold, frustrate his endeavours.

Quod superest arvi _tamen id natura sua vi_
_Sentibus obducat_, ni _vis humana resistat_
Vitai causa valido consueta bidenti
_Ingemere et terram pressis proscindere aratris_.
Si non fecundas _vertentes_ vomere glebas
_Terraique solum subigentes_ cimus ad ortus,
_Sponte sua nequeant liquidas_ existere in auras.
Et tamen interdum _magno quaesita labore_
Cum iam per terras frondent atque omnia florent,
Ant nimiis torret fervoribus aetherius sol
Aut subiti perimunt imbris gelidaeque pruinae,
Flabraque ventorum violento turbine vexant(313).

How deeply the thought expressed in these lines—the thought of the hard struggle which man is forced to carry on with an unsympathetic Power—sank into the mind of Virgil, is evident from the various passages in the Georgics in which the phraseology as well as the idea expressed by Lucretius is reproduced. These lines in which the struggle between the ‘vis humana’ impersonated in the husbandman, and the resistance offered by Nature to his energetic labours, is vividly described, suggest whatever there is of speculative thought in the Georgics. And though it would be misleading to speak of that poem as, in any sense, a philosophical poem, yet, as in all other great works of genius, some theory of life—of man’s relation to his circumstances and of his place, either in a spiritual or natural dispensation—pervades and gives its highest meaning to the didactic exposition.

Lucretius further regards this state of things, so far from being remediable by man, as necessarily becoming worse. Each new generation of husbandmen and vinedressers finds its burden heavier:—

Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator
Crebrius, incassum manuum cecidisse labores(314), etc.

The earth which, under the genial influence of sun and rain, produced fair crops without the labour of the ploughman and vinedresser(315), can now scarcely produce its fruits in sufficient quantity, though the strength of men and oxen is worn out by labouring on it(316). The cause of this decay in productiveness he attributes to the waste or dissipation of the elemental matter of our world, which has become much greater and more rapid than the supply of new materials. ‘In the long warfare waged from infinite time’—

Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum—

the destructive forces are gaining the superiority over the restorative forces of Nature; and this process is hastening on the advent of that ‘single day’ which will overwhelm in ruin the whole framework of earth, sea, and sky(317).

What then under these irremediable conditions is it best for man to do? Lucretius has no other answer to give him than to study the laws of Nature, so as to understand his position, and thus to limit his wants and reconcile himself to what he cannot alter. Yet in other passages of the poem, which Virgil also remembered(318), he did recognise the fact that human skill and the knowledge acquired by observation had done much to enrich and beautify the earth:—

Inde aliam atque aliam culturam dulcis agelli
Temptabant, fructusque feros mansuescere terram
Cernebant indulgendo blandeque colendo(319).

But he seems to have no idea of further progress. Though he contemplates with imaginative sympathy the trials of the ‘grandis arator’ and the ‘vetulae vitis sator,’ he has no guidance to offer them. The lessons taught by Lucretius are not those of active energy, applicable to every condition of life, but the lessons of a resigned quietism and a contemplative energy, adapted only to men of leisure, enjoying ample resources for the gratification of their intellectual tastes.

That this opinion of the decay in the natural productiveness of the earth made a strong impression on the Roman mind may be inferred from the fact that Columella opens his treatise by arguing against it. And that the idea of the struggle with Nature was one familiar to the prose writers on such subjects appears from an expression in the first book of the same writer: ‘that the land ought to be weaker than the husbandman, since he has to struggle with it.’ Cicero too puts into Cato’s mouth(320) the sentiment that the earth, if rightly dealt with, never refuses the ‘imperium’ of man. And this too is Virgil’s doctrine: and it was to give that guidance which Lucretius, though he discerned the evil, did not supply, that the didactic directions of the Georgics were given.

The Lucretian idea of Nature, both in its philosophical and poetical significance, runs through the Georgics; but it is modified by other considerations, and it is rather latent than prominent in the poetry and in the practical teaching of the poem. The mind of Virgil is not possessed, as the mind of Lucretius was possessed, by the thought of the immensity of her sphere and the universality of her presence. He sees her presence in the familiar scenes and objects around him. The idea adds variety, grace, and liveliness to his description of every detail of rural industry. A sense of the ministering agency of Nature is a more pervading element in his poetry than that of her power and majesty. Objects are still regarded by him as separate and individual. The conceptions of Nature which created mythology contend in his mind with the half-apprehended conceptions of universal law and of the interdependence of phenomena on one another. Thus the poetical element in his descriptions of the life of plants and trees, or of the forces of flood and storm, does not spring from such deep sources in the imagination as the same element in the descriptions of the older poet. But neither is it limited to the perception of the ‘outward shows’ of things which gratify the eye, or the sounds which delight the ear. Even in the Eclogues the intuition into Nature is deeper than that. The study of Lucretius has enriched the Georgics with the most pervading charm of the poem—the sense of a secret, unceasing, tranquil power (like that ascribed by Wordsworth to May—

Thy help is with the weed that creeps
Along the barest ground, etc.),

communicating to outward things the grace and tenderness of human sentiment, the variety and vivacity of human energy.

But the Lucretian conception of Nature in its relation to human wants has been greatly modified by the religious tendency of Virgil’s thought, his respect for traditional opinion, his sense of man’s dependence on a higher Spiritual Power. Nature he regards as no more independent in her sphere than man is in his. The laws and conditions imposed on her have been appointed with reference to the relation in which she stands to man. Where these conditions are unfavourable, they have been appointed to quicken man’s faculties and force him into the ways of industry. Lucretius dwells on the fact that two-thirds of our globe are unsuited for human habitation, as disproving the opinion of a Divine creation of the world for the benefit of man(321): Virgil dwells on the fact that two temperate regions have been assigned to weak mortals as a proof of Divine beneficence(322). Virgil also accepts the idea that the earth once was more productive than it is(323), but he accepts it in the spirit of Hesiod rather than of Lucretius. In the Golden Age, under Saturn, the earth bore all things spontaneously. It was Jove—or Providence—who imposed on man, and continues to impose on him, the necessity of labouring for his subsistence; and this he did, not, as Hesiod believed, in anger at the deceit of Prometheus, but as a discipline and incentive to exertion. The poetical references to the Saturnian Age and the subsequent reign of Jove need not imply a literal belief in the fables of mythology, any more than the allusion at Georg. i. 62 to the fable of Pyrrha and Deucalion implies the literal acceptance of the explanation there given of the existence of the present race of men. But as that allusion seems meant to convey the belief in a Divine creative act, so the former allusion seems to convey a belief in a Divine moral dispensation. The idea of Providential guidance, of a Supreme Father, wielding the forces of Nature, shaping the destinies of man, acting for the most part by regular processes in order that man may learn to understand his ways(324), but making his personal agency more manifest from time to time, as after the death of Caesar, by signs and wonders interrupting the order of Nature, supersedes or largely modifies the conception of natural law. The other powers of the Greek Olympus and of the Roman Pantheon are no longer, as the former are in the Iliad, at war with one another, but all work in harmony with the Supreme Will. Like the fables just referred to, the names of these deities seem to be introduced symbolically, to signify the different modes of activity of the one Supreme Spiritual Power, and the different forms under which he is to be reverenced.

The speculative idea of the Georgics is thus rather a theological than a philosophical idea. The ultimate fact which Virgil endeavours to set forth and justify is the relation of man to Nature, under a Divine dispensation. He too, as well as Lucretius, recognises the tendency of all things to degenerate; but this tendency he attributes, not to natural loss of force, but to the fiat of Omnipotence—

sic omnia fatis
In peius ruere.

He too recognises the liability to failure and loss from causes over which man has no direct control,—the violence of storms, the inclemency of seasons, etc.,—as well as from others which he is able to provide against by constant vigilance. What resource has he against these untoward conditions? First he is bound to watch the signs of impending change which Providence has appointed, so as to leave as little as possible at the mercy of the elements. Next he has the resource of prayer, and the power of propitiating Heaven by customary rites and sacrifices, and by a life of piety and innocence. The ethical precepts of the poem, as is said by a distinguished French writer, may be summed up in the medieval maxim, ‘Laborare est orare(325).’

To inculcate the necessity of a constant struggle with the reluctant forces of Nature, and to show how this struggle may be successfully conducted by incessant labour, vigilance, propitiation of the Supreme Will by prayer and piety, thus appears to be the main ethical teaching of the Georgics. And this statement of Virgil’s aim is not inconsistent with the interpretation of his meaning, first suggested by Mr. Merivale, and accepted and admirably illustrated by Conington. But the phrase ‘glorification of labour’ suggests modern rather than ancient associations. Labour is not glorified as an end in itself; it is inculcated as a duty, as the condition appointed by Providence for attaining the peace, abundance, happiness, and worth of the life of the fields. As of old

Τῆς ἀρετῆς ἱδρῶτα θεοὶ προπάροιθεν ἔθηκαν,

so now they make the sweat of man’s brow the means through which the ‘divini gloria ruris’ can be realised. By the labour spent in drawing into actual existence the glory and beauty of the land man best fulfils his duty and secures his happiness. There is no truer source for him of material and moral good, of simple pleasures, of contemplative delight. Yet if we wish rightly to appreciate the purely didactic parts of the poem, it is impossible, as has been fully shown by Conington in his General Introduction to the Georgics, to overrate the stress which Virgil puts on the ceaseless industry, foresight, vigilance, and actual force(326) which must be put forth by the husbandman, as the condition of success in the struggle in which he is engaged. The very style of the Georgics bears the impress of this predominant idea. It is this idea which seems to give Roman strength to the workmanship of the poem; as it is the sense of the rich and tender life of Nature which gives to it the softness of Italian sentiment, so marvellously blended with that Roman strength. The imperial tone of conquest and command and civilising influence makes itself heard in such lines as these:—

Exercetque frequens tellurem atque imperat arvis.
Tum denique dura
Exerce imperia et ramos compesce fluentes.
In quascumque voces artes haud tarda sequentur(327).

This idea of the need of a struggle with Nature, latent under all the special precepts of the Georgics, is thus seen to arise out of the philosophical thought of Lucretius. But the lesson inculcated by Virgil is directly opposite to that state of quietism and pure contemplation in which Lucretius finds the ideal of human life. Virgil’s teaching is that best adapted to the strenuous temperament of his countrymen and to the general condition of men in all times. And it will be found that this idea of a hard struggle, ordained by Supreme Power, against adverse circumstances, in which man receives Divine guidance by prayer and patient interpretation of the will of Heaven, and through which he attains to a state of final rest, runs through the Aeneid as well as the Georgics. Virgil reaches a practical result opposed to that which Lucretius reaches, by subordinating the Lucretian conception of man’s relation to Nature to the Platonic belief in the supremacy of a Spiritual Will and in the moral dispensation under which man is placed. It is this belief which appears to underlie Virgil’s acceptance of the religious traditions of antiquity, which might have been expected to have received, for all educated minds, their death-blow at the hands of Lucretius.

The science of Lucretius, as distinct from his philosophy of Nature and human life, is also partly accepted by Virgil, and partly rejected in favour of the tenets of an opposite school. In such passages as i. 89–90,

Seu pluris calor ille vias et caeca relaxat
Spiramenta, novas veniat qua sucus in herbas(328), etc.,

i. 415–423,

Haud equidem credo, etc.,

iii. 242,

Omne adeo genus in terris hominumque ferarumque, etc.,

we recognise the Lucretian explanation of the constitution of the earth, of the material elements of the mind, of the physical influence of love. Other passages again, such as i. 247, etc.,

Illic ut perhibent aut intempesta silet nox,

and iv. 219–227,

His quidam signis, etc.,

are in harmony with the Stoical doctrines and in direct opposition to the Epicurean science. Some of these apparent inconsistencies of opinion may be explained on the supposition that Virgil changed his allegiance from one school to another during the composition of the Georgics. But probably the truer explanation is that he was

Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri(329),

and that he accepted certain results of science which impressed his imagination, without caring for their consistency with others which he equally accepts. There is a constant tendency in him to allow his belief in the miraculous to interfere with his belief in natural law; as for instance in the account he gives of the birth of bees (iv. 200), and again of their spontaneous generation from the blood of slain bullocks (iv. 285). He has not the firm faith in natural agency which Lucretius had. Phenomena are still regarded by him as isolated, not interdependent. The ordinary course of Nature he supposes to be interrupted by marvels and portents. The signs of coming things are represented, not as Lucretius would have represented them, as natural antecedents or concomitants of the things portended, but as arbitrary indications appointed for the guidance of man.

III.

For the technical execution of his poem Virgil could gain little help from his Greek models. The mass of materials which he had to reduce to order was much larger and more miscellaneous than the special topics selected for their art by the Alexandrians. The subject treated in the Georgics would have afforded scope for several poems treated on the principle on which Aratus and Nicander treated their subjects; and not only was the mass of materials larger and more varied, but the whole purpose of the Georgics was more complex. Virgil’s artistic aim was not only to combine into one work the topics which he treats successively in the four books of the Georgics, but to interweave with them the poetry of personal and national feeling, of speculative ideas, of ethical and religious teaching, of science, of the living world of Nature. In Lucretius, on the other hand, he found an example of the systematic treatment of a vaster range of topics,—a range so vast, indeed, that the principal topics of Virgil’s art enter as subsidiary elements into one part of his representation. Lucretius too had shown how to combine with the systematic exposition of his abstract theme a strong personal interest and a strong ethical purpose. He had shown how, out of the treatment of this abstract theme, opportunities naturally arose for uttering the poetry and pathos of human life, and for delineating in all its beauty and majesty the outward face and revealing the inner secret of Nature. He thus supplied the general plan which Virgil might follow, with modifications suited to his narrower range of subject and his more purely didactic office. We see how Virgil adopts this plan, modified to suit his own ideas, in the personal dedication; in the Invocation and short introduction to his various books; in his manner of arranging, connecting, and illustrating the successive stages of his exposition; and, lastly, in the use which he makes of episodes, chiefly at the end of various books, with the view of enabling his readers to feel the intimate connexion of his subject with the most valued interests of life,—with religion and morality, with family affection, with peace, prosperity, and national greatness.

The first parallel to be noticed, in the comparison between the two poems, is in the personal address. Maecenas stands in the same relation to the Georgics as Memmius does to the ‘De Rerum Natura.’ But as Memmius in the body of the poem is often merged in the ideal philosophical student, so Virgil, after the lines of compliment at the opening of his various books, for the most part directs his instructions to some imaginary husbandman. In the tones in which Memmius and Maecenas are respectively addressed there may be an equal sincerity of feeling. But a difference in the relation in which the poets stand to those whom they address makes itself felt in the contrast between such lines as these,

Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiae,

and

O decus, O famae merito pars maxima nostrae(330).

In the one case we recognise the man, born into the equal relations of an aristocratic Republic, who knows of no social superior in the world, and is attracted to him whom he honours by his dedication solely by the charm of friendship. In the other case, though the affection may not be less sincere, there is the unmistakeable note of deference to a social superior.

The difference between the position which the two poets occupied and of the times in which they lived is still more manifest in the selection of the person whom they each fix on as the object of their reverential homage. Though the poem of Lucretius is inscribed to Memmius, it is really dedicated to the glory of Epicurus. His image presides over the massive temple raised to the Power of Nature. He is the great benefactor of the world, exalted by his service to mankind, not only above all living men, but above those whom the popular religion had in early times elevated to the rank of gods—

deus ille fuit, deus, inclyte Memmi.

In every book of the poem his praises are repeated in language of enthusiastic devotion. In the poem of Virgil the living Caesar occupies the place of a tutelary deity—

In medio mihi Caesar erit, templumque tenebit.

He is ranked above all living men, and above the great men of the past by whom Rome had been saved from her enemies: he is addressed as the immediate object of care to the native gods of Italy, and as destined after death to rank among the ruling powers of Heaven. Something is said in his honour in every book of the poem. The lines near the end,

Caesar dum magnus ad altum
Fulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentis
Per populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olympo(331),

seem intended to leave the thought of his actual greatness as the abiding impression on the mind of the reader; as the concluding lines of the Invocation seem intended to make his presence felt as that of its inspiring deity. While we cannot doubt that the admiration expressed by Lucretius is the sincere and generous tribute of genius acknowledging a great debt and unconsciously exaggerating the nobleness of its benefactor, it is impossible to determine how far Virgil’s language is the expression of sincere conviction, and how far it is dictated by the necessities of his position.

But it is in their invocations of a Superior Power to aid them in their task that we recognise the strongest contrast between the philosophic poet, who, while denying all supernatural agency, is yet carried away by his imagination to attribute consciousness, will, and passion to the great creative Power of Nature,—the source of all life, joy, beauty, and art,—and the ‘pius vates,’ influenced by the religious sense of man’s dependence on a Spiritual Power, deeply feeling the poetical charm of the old mythology, and striving to effect some reconcilement between the fading traditions of Polytheism and the more philosophical conceptions prevalent in his time. Lucretius for the moment adopts the symbolism of ancient mythology, and probably the actual figures of pictorial art (which elsewhere he speaks of as a great source of human delusion), to impart visible presence, colour, and passion to his thought; but he leaves no doubt on the reader’s mind that his representation is merely symbolical. Virgil, on the other hand, appears in the opening lines of the Georgics to attribute a distinct personality to the beings of that composite Polytheism which had gradually grown up out of the union of Greek art and Roman religion, but which it is difficult to comprehend as having any real hold over the minds of men who had received any tincture of Greek philosophy. In the divine office which he assigns to Caesar he adopts the latest addition to this eclectic Pantheon; and this new divinity he introduces in the midst of the old gods, just as he fancifully introduces Gallus in the Eclogues amid the choir of Apollo and the Muses.

But in the Eclogues there is no feeling of doubt in our minds that the representation is purely fanciful. The strain in the Georgics is altogether too serious; the juxtaposition of Caesar with the gods of Olympus and the protecting deities of the husbandman is too carefully meditated to admit of our supposing the lines from ‘Tuque adeo’ to ‘adsuesce vocari’ to be intended to be taken as a mere play of fancy. We cannot think of Lucretius, perhaps not even of Cicero, reading Virgil’s Invocation, and especially the concluding lines of it, without a certain feeling of scorn. We cannot help asking how far could the pupil of Siron, the student of Epicurus and Lucretius, the enlightened associate of Maecenas, Augustus, Pollio, Horace, etc., attach any serious meaning to the words of this Invocation. How far was he simply complying with an established convention of literature? how far using these mythological representations as symbolism? how far was he identifying himself in imagination with the beliefs of his ideal husbandman?

To answer these questions we must endeavour to realise the very composite character which the Pagan religion, the accumulation of many beliefs from the earliest and rudest fancies of primitive times to the studied representations of Greek art and the later symbolical explanations of philosophical schools, presented to men living in the Augustan Age. In this Invocation and in the body of the poem we can trace three or four distinct veins of belief, existing together, without producing any sense of inconsistency, and combining into a certain unity for the purpose of artistic representation.

Religion in the Augustan Age presented a different aspect to the dwellers in the town and in the country; to the refined classes whose tastes were formed by Greek art and poetry, and to men of the old school,—senators like Cotta or antiquarians like Varro,—who sought to conform to the ancient Roman traditions; to students of philosophy, who either, like the Epicureans, denied all Divine agency, or like the Stoics, resolved the many divinities of the popular belief into one Divine agency under many forms. The peculiarity of Virgil’s mind is that his belief, at least as expressed in his poetry, was a kind of syncretism composed out of all these modes of thought and belief. Like Horace and Tibullus, he sympathises in imagination with that rustic piety which expressed the natural thankfulness of the human heart for protection afforded to the flocks and the fruits of the field, by festivals and ceremonial observances like the Palilia and Ambarvalia, by sacrifice of a kid to Faunus, or offerings of flowers and fruit to the Penates. The feelings connected with this vein of belief as they are represented in the poetry of the Augustan Age,—

Faune nympharum fugientum amator, etc.,—

and again in Tibullus,

Di patrii, purgamus agros, purgamus agrestes, etc.,—

of a happy and generally of a genial and festive character, and not altogether devoid of such elements of simple piety as find expression in the

Caelo supinas si tuleris manus, etc.,

of Horace. Poetical sympathy with the beliefs and picturesque ceremonies of the peasants among whom they lived enhanced the real enjoyment derived from their country life by men of refined feeling like Horace and Tibullus. But Virgil’s feeling in regard to the religious trust and observances of the country people appears to be stronger than mere poetical sympathy. He sees in them a class of men more immediately dependent than others on the protection of some unseen Power, and thus forced, as it were, into more immediate relation with that Power. The modes in which they endeavoured to gain the favour of that Power or to express their thankfulness for its protection were probably among the influences which had moulded his own early belief and character in his Mantuan farm. In the prayer

Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri(332),

as in the later exclamation,

Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes(333),

he is identifying himself in imagination with a living mode of popular belief, and one to which he may have been attracted by his early associations as well as by poetical sympathy.

But the Invocation recognises the creations of Greek art along with the ruder and simpler objects of Italian worship. The ‘Fauni Dryadesque puellae’ assume to Virgil’s fancy the forms of Greek art and poetry. The legend of Neptune producing the horse by the stroke of his trident suggests the attributes of Ποσειδῶν ἵππιος, not of the Italian Neptunus. It is not the Roman Minerva, but ἁ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθάνα, who is associated in poetry and legend with the olive,—

Φύτευμ’ ἀχείρωτον αὐτόποιον
γλαυκᾶς παιδοτρόφου φύλλον ἐλαίας.

He calls upon Pan to leave his native groves and the woodland pastures of Lycaeus, just as Horace describes him as passing nimbly from his Arcadian haunt to the Sabine Lucretilis. These gods, nymphs, and satyrs of an alien belief were now to Romans as to Greeks the recognised materials which art and song had to shape into new forms. In the vigorous prime of Greek poetry, so late even as the age of Sophocles and Herodotus, there was a real belief in the personal existence and active agency of these supernatural beings. This real belief first gave birth to, and was afterwards merged in, the representations of art. Art, which owed its birth to religious sentiment, superseded it. But after a time and under new conditions the strong admiration for the beauty or significance of the objects represented in art produces a strong wish to revive the belief in their reality; and in minds peculiarly susceptible of such influences the wish tends to fulfil itself.

Probably Virgil himself would not have cared to probe too deeply the state of half-belief in which his heart and mind realised the bright existence and kindly influence of beings consecrated to him by the most cherished associations of living art and the poetry of the past. Even Lucretius, while sternly rejecting all belief in their existence as absolutely incompatible with truth, feels from time to time attracted by their poetical charm. Horace, we can see, from the absence of anything in his Satires, or Epistles, implying a real belief in the gods of mythology, keeps his literary belief apart from his true convictions. In the case of Virgil, it is not possible, at all events for a modern reader, distinctly to separate them. The power of the old mythology over the fancy and the weakness of scientific thought in ancient times to overthrow that power is nowhere more visible than in his poetry.

But there was another mode of Greek influence acting on the educated minds of Rome, stronger than that of the ancient mythology. That influence was the religious speculations of the various philosophical schools(334). There was, on the one hand, the Epicurean acceptance of an infinite number of gods dwelling in the ‘Intermundia,’ enjoying a state of supreme calm, apart from all concern with this world or the labours and pursuits of men. They might be objects of pure contemplation, and pious reverence to the human spirit; but they were capable neither of being propitiated nor made angry by anything that men could do. The Stoic doctrine, on the other hand, recognised the incessant agency and forethought of a Supreme Spiritual Power over human life. It accepted the stories and beings of the traditional religion, but explained them away. The various deities worshipped by the people are the various manifestations and functions of this one Supreme Spiritual Power, whether called by the name of Zeus, or by the abstract name of Providence (πρόνοια). This is the Power addressed in the famous hymn of Cleanthes, and that appealed to in the familiar τοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμέν of Aratus. It is part of Virgil’s eclecticism to combine the science of Epicurus with the theology of the more spiritual schools. The Supreme Spiritual Power in the Georgics is generally spoken of under the title of ‘Pater.’ It is noticeable that the word Iuppiter is used either with a purely physical signification, as in

Iuppiter umidus austris—
Et iam maturis metuendus Iuppiter uvis—

or as in the phrases ‘sub Iove,’ ‘ante Iovem,’ in reference to the stories of the ancient mythology. Even in this Invocation, the object of which seems to be to assign function and personality to the gods of Olympus and of Italy, the influence of the Stoic theology was recognised in ancient times in the identification of the sun and moon—‘clarissima mundi lumina’—with Liber and Ceres(335). The rhythm of the lines 5–7 can leave no doubt whatever as to this identification, notwithstanding the appeal to Varro’s example, who distinguishes the various deities whom he invokes. It is characteristic of Virgil’s art to introduce such a variation in any passage which he imitates, and also to suggest a thought which he does not distinctly develope. In the lines 95–96,

neque illum
Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo(336),

he reproduces a thought which Callimachus had expressed in his hymn to Artemis(337)—

Οὓς δὲ κεν εὐμειδής τε καὶ ἴλαος αὐγάσσηαι
κείνοις εὖ μὲν ἄρουρα φέρει στάχυν(338).

The ‘flava Ceres’ of Virgil’s description seems to call up before our mind a picture of the harvest-moon looking down on the corn-fields of the prosperous husbandman.

The national religion of Rome was something distinct both from the rustic Paganism of Italy, and from that aesthetic amalgamation of Greek and Roman beliefs and that semi-philosophical rationalism which art and literature made familiar to the Romans of the Augustan Age. The great symbol of that national religion was the Temple of Jove on the Capitol(339).

That religion was based on the idea that the wide empire and eternal duration of Rome had been appointed by Divine decree. As distinguished from the national religion of Greece, which expressed itself in new and varied forms of art, Roman religion was one which adhered to ancient rites and expressed itself in the pomp of outward ceremonial and other impressive symbols. It acted on the imagination through the sense of vastness, pomp, stateliness, and solemnity; that of Greece through the sense of life, joy, beauty, and harmony animating its ceremonial and embodying itself in its symbols. The objects of Roman worship were almost innumerable. In addition to the greater divinities which it shared with the Greek worship, and besides the various native divinities common to it with the religion of other Italian races, Roman religion had erected temples to various abstract qualities, such as Peace, Faith, Concord, and the like. This tendency to multiply their deities, to deify mere abstractions, and to recognise a distinct deity as presiding over every common act and process of life, weakened or destroyed the sense of the personality of the gods, and thus indirectly promoted that advance to Monotheism which philosophy had made in a different direction. While the Greeks conceived of each local god or hero as a distinct person, endowed with his own human qualities and his own visible shape, and thus naturally adapted for the representations of dramatic poetry or plastic art, the Romans worshipped rather one Divine impersonal power with many attributes and functions. The need which the popular imagination feels of some personal embodiment of the idea of Godhead probably explains the readiness with which, in the dissolution of older faiths, the worship of the Emperor became the chief symbol of the national faith.

So far as the conceptions of the national religion of Rome, which have a powerful influence on the action of the Aeneid, enter into this Invocation, it is in the recognition of the divinity of Caesar. But here he is associated with the rural gods, who listen to the prayers of the husbandman, rather than, as elsewhere both in Horace and Virgil, with the majesty of the Roman State. The passage probably, as is suggested by Ribbeck, owes its origin to the decree of the Senate in 36 B.C.,—after the naval victory gained by Agrippa over Sextus Pompeius,—by which the worship of Caesar, ‘inter municipales deos,’ was established. There is probably no passage in Virgil, scarcely any in Latin poetry, which must strike the modern reader as so unreal as this, or so untrue to the actual convictions of educated men. There is none in which the language of adulation appears so palpably, or in which the love of mythological allusion, as one of the conventional ornaments of poetry, appears to exercise so unfortunate an influence on the truthful feeling of the poet. It seems strange that a man of the commanding understanding of Augustus should have derived any pleasure from the supposition that he might become the son-in-law of Tethys, from the statement that the glowing Scorpion was already beginning to make room for him in the sky, or from the appeal made to him to resist the ambition of supplanting Pluto as the future ruler of Tartarus. In contrast with this state of feeling we learn to respect the masculine sense and dignity with which Tiberius disclaims the attribution of divine honours: ‘I, Conscript Fathers, call you to witness and desire posterity to remember, that I am but a mortal, and am performing human duties, and consider it enough if I fill the foremost place(340).’ But though it is not possible that the lines from ‘Tuque adeo’ to ‘adsuesce vocari’ should ever appear natural to us, or that we should ever read them without some feeling that they are unworthy of the manliness of a great poet, we may yet recognise some symbolical meaning in them beyond the mere expression of overstrained eulogy. In such expressions as

Auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem(341),

Virgil associates the idea of the power of Caesar with the main subject of his poem; and probably, as is pointed out by Ribbeck, he suggests the thought of the dependence of Rome and Italy for subsistence on the vigilance of their ruler(342). In the mention of Tethys there is a reference to recent naval successes; and in the ‘tibi serviat ultima Thule’ there may be an allusion to the contemplated expedition to Britain, and certainly, as in so many other passages of the poetry of the age, there is a recognition of the wide empire of Rome. In the lines

Anne novum tardis, etc.,

we recognise the idea which connected the apotheosis of Julius Caesar with the appearance of the ‘Iulium Sidus’ (see Ecl. ix); while the lines

Nam te nec sperant Tartara regem, etc.,

read in connexion with those at the end of Book I,

Hunc saltem everso iuvenem succurrere saeclo
Ne prohibete, etc.,

are evidently prompted by the conviction that the well-being and security of the world are dependent on a single life.

In this apparent acceptance of new and old modes of belief,—in this neopaganism of art,—it is difficult to say how far we are to recognise the representations of fiction, conscious that it is fiction, as in the mythological art of the Renaissance, or how far we are in the presence of a temporary revival of a faith which satisfied a simpler time, in inconsistent conjunction with incompatible modes of modern thought. Probably not even the poets themselves, and least of all Virgil, could have given an explanation of their real state of mind. The dreams of an older faith were still haunting them, though its substance was gone. The traditions of the Greek mythology survived, endowed with what, in the absence of any new creed, might seem immortal life, in the pages of poets, and in the paintings and other works of art which afforded a refined pleasure to educated men. The national faith of Italy and Rome still kept the outward show of life in many visible symbols, and still retained a hold over the mass of the people. The herds and flocks were still believed to flourish under the kindly protection of Pales and Faunus. The festive pleasures of country life at the harvest-home or the vintage season were enjoyed on old religious holidays, and formed part of ceremonies handed down from immemorial antiquity. The pomp and ceremonial of what was peculiarly the Roman worship still met the eye on all great occasions within the walls of the city:—

Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxima taurus
Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,
Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos(343).

The magnificent temples of deities blending the attributes of native Italian gods with those of the gods of Olympus seemed to preside over the tumult and active business of the Forum; and the majesty of the Capitoline Jove was still recognised as the manifestation of the stability and power of the State. But the Roman imagination was at the same time beginning to be impressed by a new symbol of Divine agency, which was felt in all national concerns. The ideal majesty of Jove was merging, as an object of veneration, in the actual majesty of Caesar, regarded as the vicegerent of the Supreme Power. All these phases of religious belief, Greek and Italian, old and new, some appealing to the popular, some to the educated mind, meet in the poetry of the Augustan Age, and nowhere in more close conjunction than in this Invocation. They appear in still stranger connexion with the later results of science and philosophic thought. It is impossible to find any principle of reconcilement in accordance with which their proper place in the reasonable intelligence of the age may be assigned to each. They came together in Virgil as a composite result of the union of his literary and philosophic tastes with his religious feeling and national sympathies. So far as we can attach any truth of meaning to this Invocation, we must look upon it as a symbolical expression of Divine agency and superintendence in all the various fields of natural production.