Chapter IX: Form and Subject of the Aeneid

I.

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

Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae:

and again:—

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

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

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

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus.

But Virgil represents more truly the deeper tendencies of his age than the poet who has most faithfully painted its social aspects. He looks beyond the temporary triumph and sense of relief, and sees in the victory of Actium the culminating point of all the past history of Rome and the starting point of a greater future. There had been no time since the final defeat of Hannibal so calculated to re-awaken the sense of national life, of the mission to subdue and govern the world assigned to Rome, and of the divine guardianship of which she was the object. As the joy of a great success had found a representative voice in Ennius in the age when the State, relieved from all overwhelming danger, started on its career of foreign conquest, so it found as deep and true a voice in Virgil at the time when the relief, if not from as imminent a danger, yet certainly from a much longer strain of anxiety, left Rome free to consolidate her many conquests into a vast and orderly Empire.

In both the Eclogues and Georgics it was seen that Virgil allows his genius to be in some measure directed by others in the choice of his subjects, while he follows his own judgment in his mode of treating them. In the earlier poems he acknowledges the direction given to him both by Varus and by Pollio,—

Non iniussa cano—
Accipe iussis
Carmina coepta tuis,—

while at the same time he excuses himself from directly celebrating their actions. In the Georgics he describes his task as being commanded by Maecenas—‘tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa.’ The desire of Augustus, whether openly expressed or not, to commemorate his success and to add lustre to his rule by associating them with the noblest art of his age, must have acted with more imperious urgency on the will of Virgil than the wishes of any of his earlier patrons. His patriotic and personal feeling to the saviour of the State and his own benefactor must have made the task imposed on him a service of love as well as of obligation. But in undertaking this task he desired to make it subservient to the purpose of producing a work which should emulate the greatest poetical works of the Greeks, and which should, at the same time, be a true symbol of Rome at the zenith of her fortunes.

Virgil had now found in his own age a motive for the composition of that epic poem which it had been his boyish ambition to attempt,—

Cum canerem reges et proelia.

He could appeal as Ennius, or even as Homer had done, to hearers animated by the same feeling which moved himself. The two great conditions of a work of art which should gain the ear of the world immediately, and which should interest it permanently, were prepared for him in the enthusiasm of the moment, and in the enduring interest attaching to the career of Rome. His highly-trained faculty, already proved and exercised in other works, was a guarantee for the artistic execution of any design which he should undertake. But two questions remained for him to solve,—what form should his epic poem assume? should he follow absolutely the precedent of Homer, or of Ennius, or endeavour to surpass the contemporary panegyrists like Varius by a direct celebration of the events of his age? And if he adopted the Homeric type, what subject should he adopt so as to impart the interest of personal fortunes and human character to a poem the inspiring motive of which was the national idea?

The problem which Virgil set before himself was really one altogether new in literature. The Alexandrian Age had endeavoured to revive an interest in the heroic adventure of early or mythical times. It had recognised the principle that this distant background was essential to a poem of heroic action, and that events of contemporary or recent history were not capable of epic treatment. But it had not discerned the necessary supplement to that principle, that if such a poem, on a large scale, is to gain a permanent place in literature, it must bear some immediate relation to the age in which it is written, and be associated with some ethical and religious truths or some political cause of vital importance to the world. The epic poet of a cultivated age can maintain his place as a great artist only by being something more than an artist. He must feel more strongly than others, and give expression to the deepest tendencies of his own time. His subject must be charged with the force of the present, and not be mere material for the exercise of his imitative faculty. Virgil might, merely as an artist, have easily surpassed the Jason of Varro, or the Thebaid of Statius; but no technical skill in form, diction, and rhythm could have given to his treatment of such subjects the immediate attraction or the enduring spell which belongs to the Aeneid.

Both Ennius and Naevius had set the example of connecting a continuous narrative of the events of their own time with the mythical glories and the traditional history of Rome. And the Introduction to the third Georgic indicates that some idea of this kind at one time hovered before the imagination of Virgil. But while moved by the same patriotic impulses as these older poets, Virgil must have felt as strongly as Horace did that they were examples to be avoided in the choice of form and mode of treatment. He and Horace acknowledged the Greeks alone as their masters in art. He aspires not only to surpass Ennius and Naevius in the office they fulfilled, but to enter into rivalry with Homer,—to perform for the Romans of the Augustan Age a work analogous to that which Homer performed for the Greeks of his age. To do this, it was necessary to select some single heroic action from the cycle of mythical events, and to connect that with the whole story of Rome and Italy and with the events of the Augustan Age. The action had in some way to illustrate or symbolise the thoughts, memories, and hopes with which public feeling was identified at the time when the poem was written. Thus the original motive of the Virgilian epic was essentially different from that of the Homeric poems. The Iliad and the Odyssey have their origin in the pure epic impulse. The germ of the poems is the story; their purpose is to satisfy the curiosity felt in human action and character. The ‘wrath of Achilles,’ the ‘return of Odysseus,’ are, as they profess to be, the primary sources of interest in the poems founded on them; the representative character of the poems, like the representative character of Shakspeare’s historical dramas, is accidental and undesigned. The germ of the Aeneid, on the other hand, is to be sought in the national idea and sentiment, in the imperial position of Rome, in her marvellous destiny, and in its culmination in the Augustan Age. The actions and sufferings of the characters that play their part in the poem were to be only secondary objects of interest; the primary object was to be found in the race to whose future career these actions and sufferings were the appointed means. The real key-note to the poem is not the ‘Arma virumque’ with which it opens, but the ‘Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem(454)’ with which the exordium closes. The choice and conduct of the action were the mechanical difficulties to be overcome by the poet, not the inspiring motives of his genius. This is the main cause of the comparative tameness of the Aeneid in point of human interest. Actors and action did not spring out of the spontaneous movement of the imagination, but were chosen by a refined calculation to fulfil the end which Virgil had in view. What Aeneas and his followers want in personal interest, is supposed to accrue to them as instruments in the hands of destiny. A new type of epic poetry is thus realised. The Iliad and the Odyssey are essentially poems of personal, the Aeneid is the epic of national fortunes.

II.

Had Virgil’s sole object been to write a national epic which should satisfy popular sentiment, we can imagine several reasons why the tale of Romulus should have been chosen as its subject in preference to that of Aeneas. Though the traditional account of the founder of the city owes some of its features to Greek invention, yet it has a much more _naïve_ and indigenous character than that of the Trojan settlement in Latium. It was more firmly rooted in the popular mind. It was still celebrated, as we learn from Dionysius, in national hymns. It had been commemorated in a famous work of art, the bronze she-wolf still extant, at a time antecedent to the origin of Roman literature. It formed the chief subject of the first book of the Annals of Ennius, which, as dealing with the mythical portion of his theme, seems to have had more of an epic character than the later books. It was also a subject which by its relation to famous localities and memorials of the past,—such as the oldest city-wall, the Ruminal fig-tree, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the Palatine and Aventine hills,—and with the religious and social organisation of the State, admitted easily of being connected with the present time. It might have been so treated as to magnify the glory of the Emperor, who desired to be regarded as the second founder of the city, and is said to have debated whether he should not assume the title of Romulus, before deciding on taking that of Augustus. A poet of bolder and more original invention, and one more capable of sympathising with the purely martial characteristics of his hero, might have been attracted by this story of indigenous growth rather than by the exotic legend on which Virgil has bestowed such enduring life.

That legend seems, at first sight, to fail in the elements both of national and human interest. It was mainly of Greek invention. It seems to have been received by the Romans at a later stage in their development than that in which religious or legendary beliefs strike deep root in the popular imagination. It existed in vague and indistinct shape, and was associated with no marked individuality of personages or incidents. It was of composite growth, made up of many incongruous elements, the product rather of antiquarian learning and reflexion than of creative imagination.

The Greek germ out of which the legend arose, and the acceptance of this explanation of their origin by the Romans from the beginning of their literary history, are clearly ascertained. But there is great uncertainty as to the connecting link between these two stages in the development of the legend. The continuance of the line of Aeneas after the destruction of Troy is announced by the mouth of Poseidon in the twentieth Book of the Iliad (307–308):—

Νῦν δὲ δὴ Αἰνείαο βίη Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παίδων παῖδες, τοί κεν μετόπισθε γένωνται(455).

If an historical character may be assigned to any passages in the Iliad, it may be presumed that the author of these verses knew of a line of princes ruling over some remnant of the Trojans, and claiming Aeneas as their ancestor. But these verses do not imply any removal to a distant settlement. The Cyclic poet, Arctinus, next spoke of Aeneas as retiring to Mount Ida and founding a city there. The earliest traditions accordingly point to the Troad as the scene of the rule of his descendants: other traditions however, which must have been known to Virgil, brought him to Thrace, to various places on the Aegean, and to Buthrotum in Epirus. The origin of these traditions is believed to be the connexion of Aeneas with the worship of Aphrodite, which was widely spread over the Mediterranean, probably as a survival of early Phoenician settlements. This connexion in worship is supposed to have arisen from a confusion between the Trojan hero and the title Αἴνεας, denoting one of the attributes of the goddess. But the writer who first gave the idea of a Trojan settlement in Italy is said to have been Stesichorus, the lyrical poet of Himera in Sicily, who flourished about the beginning of the sixth century B.C. One of the representations in the Ilian table in the Capitoline Museum exhibits the figures of Aeneas, of his son Ascanius, of the trumpeter Misenus, and of Anchises carrying the sacred images, just as they are on the point of embarking on board their ship. The following inscription is written under these figures,—

Αἰνήας σὺν τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀπαίρων εἰς τὴν Ἑσπερίαν(456),—

and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Stesichorus is quoted as the authority for the representation(457). The motive actuating Stesichorus was probably the desire to connect the newly-discovered localities in Italy and Sicily with the cycle of Homeric narrative. But Stesichorus apparently knew nothing of a Trojan settlement in Latium; Siris in Oenotria seems to have been fixed on by him as the place of refuge for the Palladium and the Penates of Troy. It was after the destruction of Siris that the fancy of the Greeks fixed on Lavinium, where there was a worship similar to that established at Siris, as the ultimate resting-place of Aeneas. The first definite statement connecting Rome with Troy was made by Cephalon of Gergis in the Troad (about 350 B.C.), who ascribed the foundation of the city to Romus a son of Aeneas. In the course of the next half century this appears to have become the prevailing belief among the Greeks, whose attention was now attracted by the growing ascendency of Rome in Italy. About the beginning of the third century Timaeus, the Sicilian historian, is said to have shaped the legend into the form adopted by Naevius(458).

It is obvious that there is a great gap in our knowledge of the stages in the development of the legend between Stesichorus, a poet of the sixth century, and Cephalon, an historian of the fourth. And the question suggests itself whether, in the interval between them, the Romans themselves had accepted any similar explanation of their origin. The early connexion between Rome and Cumae renders it not impossible that the Romans had formed some idea of their Trojan descent, before the wars of Pyrrhus brought them into more intimate connexion with the Greeks. It was by the Greek colonists of Cumae that the Isles of the Sirens, the Kingdom of the Laestrygones, and the abode of Circe were localised near Sorrento, the ancient town of Formiae, and the promontory of Circeii. It seems probable that to them also may be ascribed the mythical connexion established between the promontories of Caieta, Misenum, and Palinurum, in their own immediate neighbourhood, with the names of the household or followers of Aeneas. The mythical traditions which assign a Greek origin to various important Latin towns, such as Tibur, Tusculum, Praeneste, and to the earliest settlement on the Palatine Hill, probably owe their invention to the same source. Alba Longa, as the chief city of the old Latin confederacy, must have been an object of greater interest to the Cumaeans than Tibur or Tusculum, and if we could be sure of the existence of the belief in the Trojan settlement in Latium before the destruction of Alba, we might infer with probability the great antiquity of the legend which ascribed the foundation of that town to the son of Aeneas. This belief might easily have passed to Rome; and Cephalon may have received it, in a somewhat distorted form, from native sources. But it is impossible to take any step in these conjectures without feeling the extreme uncertainty of our ground. We really know nothing of the acceptance of this account of their origin by the Romans before the time of the First Punic War; it is not easily reconcileable with the indigenous belief which certainly struck much deeper roots in the national history: the story as told by Cephalon appears to exclude the connexion between Rome and Alba as an intermediate link in that between Rome and Troy. It seems, on the whole, most probable that the story on which the Aeneid is founded is not only a Greek invention, but is an invention of a late and prosaic time, and was not known to the Romans before the date of their wars with Pyrrhus(459).

But besides the foreign and prosaic origin of the story, there is great vagueness and indistinctness in the incidents and personages connected with it. Homer indeed has supplied a definite, though not a marked, outline to the character of Aeneas; and Stesichorus, in shaping the family group of Anchises, Aeneas, and Ascanius flying from Troy with their household-gods, may have suggested to Virgil the leading characteristic of his hero. But these were nearly all the elements in the legend derived from primitive poetical sources. There was no individuality of character attaching to any of the followers of Aeneas, nor any incident due to early imaginative invention associated with the dim tradition of his wanderings. The story, as finally cast into shape by Virgil, is one of composite growth, made up of many heterogeneous elements,—some supplied by poetical invention and the impressions of a primitive time, some the products of prosaic rationalism and the antiquarian fancies of a literary age, some suggested by Greek mythology and others by the ritual observances of Rome, some directly borrowed from the Homeric poems, others derived from the traditions of ancient Italy. It need hardly surprise us if out of such indistinct and heterogeneous materials Virgil failed to shape a thoroughly consistent and lifelike representation of human action and character.

But, on other grounds, the judgment of Virgil may be justified in the choice of this legend, vague, composite, and unpoetical as it was, as most adapted to his own genius and to the purpose of his epic poem. It was the only subject, of national significance, connected with the Homeric cycle of events. Not only the epic and dramatic poets of Greece, but the Roman tragic poets had recognised the heroic legends of Greece as the legitimate material for those forms of poetry which aimed at representing human action and character with seriousness and dignity. The personages and events connected with the Trojan War had especially been made familiar to the Romans by the works of their early dramatic poets. The Romans themselves had no mythical back-ground, rich in poetic associations, to their own history. It was impossible for a poet of a literary age to create this back-ground. But it was possible for him to give substance and reality to the shadowy connexion, existing in legend and in the works of older national writers, between the beginnings of Roman history and this distant region of poetry and romance. Virgil’s imagination, as was seen in the examination of the Georgics, was peculiarly susceptible of the impressions produced by a remote antiquity and by old poetic associations. If he was deficient in spontaneous invention, he possessed a remarkable power of giving new life to the creations of earlier times. Next to the invention of a new world of wonder and adventure,—a work most difficult of accomplishment in a late stage of human development,—the most attractive aim which an epic poet could set before himself was that of reviving, under new conditions and with an immediate reference to the feelings of his contemporaries, an image of the old Homeric life. The subject of the wanderings and subsequent adventures of Aeneas enabled Virgil to tell again, and from a new point of view, the old story of the fall of Troy, to present a modern version of the sea-adventures of the Odyssey, and to awaken the interest of a nation of soldiers in the martial passions of an earlier and ruder age.

Although there is no evidence that the connexion of Rome with Troy had sunk deeply into the popular mind before the time of Virgil, yet it had been recognised in official acts of the State for more than two centuries. So early as the First Punic War the Acarnanians had applied to the Romans for assistance against the Aetolians, on the ground that their ancestors alone among the Greeks had taken no part in the Trojan War. The Senate had offered alliance and friendship to King Seleucus on condition of his exempting the people of Ilium, as kinsmen of the Romans, from tribute(460). T. Flamininus, in declaring all the Greeks free after the conclusion of the Second Macedonian War, described himself as one of the Aeneadae(461). In the Second Punic War, the prophet Marcius uses the word Troiugena as an epithet of the Romans:—

Amnem Troiugena Cannam Romane fuge(462).

So early as the time of Timaeus, i.e. before the First Punic War, the connexion of Aeneas with the worship of the Penates at Lavinium had been recognised. His own worship also established itself in the religion of the State by his identification with Jupiter Indiges, who seems to have had a temple on the banks of the river Numicius. Many families among the Roman aristocracy, as for instance the Cluentii, Sergii, Memmii(463), claimed to be descended from the followers of Aeneas. From the time of Naevius this account of the origin of the Romans had been the accepted belief in all Latin literature. Ennius begins his annals from the date

Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo(464).

The poet Accius had written a tragedy called Aeneadae. The Roman annalists started with the tradition as an accepted fact. Thus Livy in reference to this belief uses the expression ‘it is sufficiently established.’ The great antiquarian Varro wrote a treatise on the Trojan origin of Roman families. Cicero in his Verrine orations (act. ii. 4. 33) speaks of the relationship of the people of Segesta in Sicily, which claimed to be a colony founded by Aeneas, with the Roman people. Even Lucretius, who stands apart from the general traditional beliefs of his countrymen, begins his poem with the words ‘Aeneadum genetrix.’ Virgil’s poem appealed not to the popular taste, but to the national, religious, aristocratic, and literary sympathies of the cultivated classes. The legend of Aeneas, if less ancient and less popular, assigned a more august origin to the Roman race than the tale of the birth of Romulus:—

Ab Iove principium generis, Iove Dardana pubes
Gaudet avo; rex ipse Iovis de gente suprema
Troius Aeneas, etc(465).

These considerations may have recommended this subject to Virgil, as the most suitable symbol of the idea of Rome, from both a national and religious point of view. But the circumstance which must have absolutely determined his choice was the claim which the Julian gens made to be directly descended from Iulus, Aeneas, and the goddess Venus. This claim Virgil had already acknowledged in the line (Ecl. ix. 47),

Ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum,

and again (Georg. i. 28),

cingens materna tempora myrto(466).

Even Julius Caesar had shown the importance which he attached to it by taking the words ‘Venus Victrix’ for his watchword at the battle of Pharsalia. A greater tribute was paid to the qualities of Augustus, a more august consecration was conferred on his rule, by representing that rule as a prominent object in the counsels of Heaven a thousand years before its actual establishment, than could have been bestowed on him by the most detailed and ornate account of his actual successes. The personal, as distinct from the national motive of the poem, is revealed in the prophetic lines attributed to Jupiter,

Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar,
Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris,
Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo(467).

While the vagueness of the tradition and the absence of definite incident and individual character associated with it were conditions unfavourable to novelty and vividness of representation, yet they allowed to Virgil great latitude in carrying out his purpose of giving body and substance to all that unknown and shadowy past, which survived only in names, customs, and ceremonies. He was not limited to any particular district or period. His plan enabled him to embrace in the compass of his epic the dim traditions connected with the ‘origins’ of the famous towns and tribes of Central Italy and of several of the great Roman families; it enabled him to imagine the primitive state of places which had a world-wide celebrity in his own time; to invoke, as an element of poetic interest, the veneration paid to the ancient rites of religion; and to cast an idealising light on events, personages, families, or customs familiar to his own age, by associating them with the sentiment of an immemorial past. One great excellence of the Aeneid, as a representative poem, is the large prospect of Roman and Italian life which it opens up before us. The vague outlines of the story which he followed enabled Virgil to enlarge his conception with an ampler content of local and national material, than if he had been called upon to recast a more definite and more vital tradition. The want of individuality in the personages of his story justified him in exhibiting their character in accordance with his own ideal; in conceiving of Aeneas as the type of antique piety combined with modern humanity, and of Turnus as the type of the haughty and martial spirit, animating the old Italian race.

Even the composite character of the legend and the heterogeneous elements out of which it was composed, if unfavourable to unity of impression and simplicity of execution, conduced to the poet’s purpose of concentrating in one representation, of a Roman vastness of compass, whatever might enhance and illustrate the greatness of Rome and of its ruler. The Rome of the Augustan Age no longer exhibited the political and religious unity of an old Italian republic; it was expanding its limits so as to embrace in a much wider unity the various nations that had played their part in the past history of the world. As the glory and wealth of Asia, Greece, Carthage, etc. had all gone to swell the glory and wealth of Rome, so all the traditions, historic memories, and literary art of the past were to be made tributary to her national representative poem. The first great epic poem of the ancient world is buoyant with the promise of the mighty life which was to be; the last great epic is weighty with the accumulated experience of all that had been. The stream of epic poetry shows no longer the jubilant force and purity of waters—‘exercita cursu flumina’—which rise in the high mountain-land separating barbarism from civilisation; it moves more slowly and less clearly through more level and cultivated districts; its volume is swollen and its weight increased by tributaries which have never known the ‘bright speed(468)’ of its nobler sources.

III.

_Composite character of the Aeneid illustrated by an examination of the
poem._

These considerations lead to the conclusion that the legend of Aeneas was better suited than any other which he could have selected for the two objects which Virgil had before his mind in the composition of the Aeneid; first, that of writing a poem representative and commemorative of Rome and of his own epoch, in the spirit in which some of the great architectural works of the Empire, such as the Column of Trajan, the Arches of Titus and of Constantine, were erected; and, secondly, that of writing an imitative epic of action, manners, and character which should afford to his countrymen an interest analogous to that which the Greeks derived from the Homeric poems. The knowledge necessary to enable him to fulfil the first purpose was contained in such works as the ceremonial books of the various Priestly Colleges, the ‘Origines’ of Cato, the antiquarian treatise of Varro, and perhaps the ‘Annales’ and ‘Fasti(469)’ which preserved the record of national and family traditions. In giving life to these dry materials his mind was animated by the spectacle of Rome, and the thought of her wide empire, her genius, character, and history; by the visible survivals of ancient ceremonies and memorials of the past; by the sight of the great natural features of the land, of old Italian towns of historic renown, or, where they had disappeared, of the localities still marked by their name:—

locus Ardea quondam
Dictus avis; et nunc magnum tenet Ardea nomen(470).

As poetic sources of inspiration for this part of his task Virgil had the national epic poems of Naevius and Ennius; and of both of these he made use: of the first, in his account of the storm which drives Aeneas to Carthage and of his entertainment there by the Carthaginian Queen; of the second, by his use of many half-lines and expressions which give an antique and stately character to the description of incidents or the expression of sentiment. For Virgil’s other purpose, his chief materials were derived from his intimate familiarity with the two great Homeric poems: but he availed himself also of incidents contained in the Homeric Hymns, in the Cyclic poems, in the Greek Tragedies, as for instance the lost Laocoon of Sophocles, and in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius. His own experience of life, and still more the insight which his own nature afforded him into various moods of passion, affection, and chivalrous emotion, enabled him to impart novelty and individuality to the materials which he derived from these foreign and ancient sources.

A minute examination of the various books of the poem would bring out clearly that these two objects, that of raising a monument to the glory of Rome and of Augustus, and that of writing an imitative epic reproducing some image of the manners and life of the heroic age, were present to the mind of Virgil through his whole undertaking. It will be sufficient in order to show this two-fold purpose to look at the first book, and at some of the more prominent incidents in the later books.

In the opening lines of the poem—

Arma virumque ... multa quoque et bello passus—

we find, as in the Odyssey—

Ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε ... πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν—

an announcement of a poem of heroic adventure, of vicissitudes and suffering by sea and land, determined by the personal agency of some of the old Olympian gods (‘vi superum’). The scope of the Aeneid as explained in these lines is however wider than that of the Odyssey, as embracing the warlike action of the Iliad as well as a tale of sea-adventure. But in the statement of the motive of the poems a more essential difference between the two epics is apparent. The wanderings of Odysseus have no other aim than a safe return for himself and his companions. He acts from the simplest and most elemental of human instincts and affections, the love of life and of home,—

ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων.

Aeneas, like Odysseus, starts on his adventures after the capture of Troy,—

Troiae qui primus ab oris—
ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσεν

but he starts, ‘fato profugus,’ on no accidental adventure, but on an enterprise with far-reaching consequences, determined by a Divine purpose. While actively engaged in the personal object of finding a safe settlement for himself and his followers in Italy, he is at the same time a passive instrument in the hands of Providence, laying the foundation, both secular and religious, of the future government of the world:—

Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum
Albanique patres atque altae moenia Romae(471).

The difference in character of the two epics is perceptible in the very sound of their opening lines. While the Latin moves with stateliness and dignity and is weighty with the burden of the whole world’s history, the Greek is fluent and buoyant with the spirit and life of the ‘novitas florida mundi.’ The greatness of Aeneas is a kind of ‘imputed’ greatness; he is important to the world as bearing the weight of the glory and destiny of the future Romans—

Attolens humero famamque et fata nepotum.

Odysseus is great in the personal qualities of courage, steadfastness of purpose and affection, loyalty to his comrades, versatility, ready resource; but he bears with him only his own fortunes and those of the companions of his adventure; he ends his career as he begins it, the chief of a small island, which derives all its importance solely from its early association with his fortunes.

The double purpose of the Aeneid, and its contrast in this respect with the Homeric poems, is further seen in the statement of the motives influencing the Divine beings by whose agency the action is advanced or impeded. As in the opening paragraph Virgil had the opening lines of the Odyssey in view, in the second, which announces the supernatural motive of the poem—

Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso—

he had in view the passage in the Iliad beginning with the line—

τίς τ’ ἄρ σφωε θεῶν ἔριδι ξυνέηκε μάχεσθαι;

In the Iliad the supernatural cause of the action is the wrath of Apollo, acting from the personal desire to avenge the wrong done to his priest Chryses: in the Odyssey, it is the wrath of Poseidon acting from the personal desire to avenge the suffering of his son whom Odysseus blinded:—

ἀλλὰ Ποσειδάων γαιήοχος ἀσκελὲς αἰεί
Κύκλωπος κεχόλωται, ὃν ὀφθαλμοῦ ἀλάωσεν(472).

The gods in both cases act from personal passion without moral purpose or political object. So too the powers which befriend Odysseus act from personal regard to him and acknowledgment of his wisdom and piety:—

ὃς περὶ μὲν νόον ἐστὶ βροτῶν, περὶ δ’ ἱρὰ θεοῖσιν
ἀθανάτοισιν ἔδωκε, τοὶ οὐρανὸν εὐρὺν ἔχουσιν(473).

In the Aeneid, Juno, by whose agency in hindering the settlement of Aeneas in Italy the events of the poem are brought about, acts from two sets of motives; the first bringing the action into connexion with one of the great crises in the history of Rome, the second bringing it into connexion with the Trojan traditions. Prominence is given to the first motive, in the announcement of which the deadly struggle between Rome and Carthage, ‘when all men were in doubt under whose empire they should fall by land and sea(474),’ is anticipated:—

Urbs antiqua fuit, Tyrii tenuere coloni,
Karthago ...
hoc regnum dea gentibus esse,
Si _qua fata sinant_, iam tum tenditque fovetque.
Progeniem sed enim Troiano a sanguine duci
Audierat, Tyrias olim quae verteret arces;
_Hinc populum late regem belloque superbum_
Venturum excidio Libyae; sic volvere Parcas(475).

In two other passages of the Aeneid this great internecine contest for the empire of the world, which left so deep an impression on the Roman memory, is seen foreshadowing itself, viz. in the dying denunciation and prayer of Dido,—

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,—

and in the speech of Jupiter in the great council of the gods in the tenth book—a passage imitated from Ennius:—

Adveniet iustum pugnae, ne arcessite, tempus,
Cum fera Karthago Romanis arcibus olim
Exitium magnum atque Alpes inmittet apertas(476).

But to this motive are added other motives, both political and personal,—the memory of her former enmity to Troy arising out of her love to Argos, of the slight offered to her beauty by the judgment of Paris, and of the occasion given to her jealousy by the honour awarded to Ganymede:—

manet alta mente repostum
Iudicium Paridis spretaeque iniuria formae,
Et genus invisum et rapti Ganymedis honores(477).

These two sets of motives bring out distinctly the two-fold character of the action of the poem, its inner relation to the future fulfilment of the Roman destiny, its more immediate dependence on the past events forming the subject of the Homeric poems. The prominence in Virgil’s mind of the Roman over the Greek influences, in which his epic had its origin, is indicated by the position and weight of the line of cardinal significance—

Tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem;

just as the dominant influence under which Lucretius wrote his poem is indicated by the position and weight of the line—

Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.

In entering on the detailed narrative, which forms the main body of the poem, Virgil at once attaches himself to Homer. The action, like the action of the Odyssey, is taken up at that stage immediately preceding the events of most critical interest, after which it advances steadily to the final catastrophe. The slower movement of the story in the years between the fall of Troy and the departure from Sicily is presupposed, and, like the adventures of Odysseus before his departure from the Isle of Calypso, the adventures of Aeneas are subsequently narrated by the principal actor in them. The storm which drives the Trojan fleet to the Carthaginian coast was an incident in the epic of Naevius; but the original suggestion and the actual description of it are due to the account of the storm raised by Poseidon in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Juno, in availing herself of the instrumentality of Aeolus, bribes him by a promise similar to that made to Sleep in the fourteenth book of the Iliad. The description of the harbour in which the Trojan ships find refuge is imitated from that of the harbour to which the Phaeacian ship brings Odysseus; and the success of Aeneas in the chase is suggested by two passages in the Odyssey, ix. 154 _et seq._ and x. 104 _et seq._

The speech of Aeneas (198–207) again reminds us of the ultimate object of all the vicissitudes and dangers which he encounters:—

Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum
Tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas
Ostendunt(478).

Immediately afterwards we come upon one of the three great passages of the poem in which the action is prophetically advanced into the Augustan Age. These three passages (i. 223–296, vi. 756–860, viii. 626–731), like the greater episodes of the Georgics, draw attention directly to what is the most vital and most permanent source of interest in the Aeneid. They serve, along with the opening lines of the poem, better than any other passages to bring out the relation both of dependence on the Homeric epic and of contrast with it which characterise the Virgilian epic.

The passage before us, the interview between Jupiter and Venus, owes its original suggestion to the scene in the first book of the Iliad in which Thetis intercedes with Zeus, to avenge the wrong done to her son. The object of this intercession is a purely personal one; the result of it is the whole series of events which culminates in the death of Hector. The object which Venus claims of Jupiter is the fulfilment of his promise that a people should arise from the blood of Teucer—

Qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent(479);

the result of her prayer is that Jupiter reveals to her not only the immediate future of Aeneas and the founding of Lavinium and of Alba, but the birth of Romulus, the building of Rome, the ultimate triumph of the house of Assaracus over Pthia, Mycenae, and Argos, the peaceful reign on earth and the final acceptance into heaven of the greatest among the descendants of Aeneas, who is there called, not by his later title of Augustus, but by the earlier name which he inherited from his adoptive father—

Iulius a magno demissum nomen Iulo(480).

In this passage we note (1) Virgil’s relation to the earlier poem of Naevius, who had sketched the outline of the scene which is here filled up; and also the reproduction of the diction of Ennius in the passage—

Despiciens mare velivolum terrasque iacentis
Litoraque et latos populos(481);

and in this—

Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat(482);

and (2) we note a reference to the closing of the gate of Janus in the line—

Claudentur Belli portae;

and apparently to some symbolical representation in the art of the Augustan Age in the words which follow—

Furor impius intus,
Saeva sedens super arma et centum vinctus aenis
Post tergum nodis, fremet horridus ore cruento(483).

After this digression the action proceeds according to Homeric precedents. Mercury is sent to Dido, as Hermes is sent to Calypso in the fifth book of the Odyssey. Then follows the meeting of Venus with Aeneas and Anchises, the picturesque and poetical features of which scene are suggested by a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, describing the meeting of the goddess with Anchises. The Trojan heroes pass on to Carthage concealed in a mist as Odysseus makes his way to the city of the Phaeacians. The pictorial representation of the events of the Trojan war on the walls of the temple of Juno is suggested partly by the pictorial art of the Augustan Age, and partly by the song of the bard in the eighth book of the Odyssey, celebrating the

νεῖκος Ὀδυσσῆος καὶ Πηλείδεω Ἀχιλῆος.

So too the later banquet in the palace of Dido is suggested partly by the feast in the hall of Alcinous, partly by the magnificence of Roman entertainments in the Augustan Age, such as those referred to in the lines of Lucretius—

Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes, etc.

Finally, the device by which Venus substitutes Cupid for Ascanius is borrowed from the Argonautics of Apollonius; the introduction of the various suitors of Dido is suggested by the part which the suitors of Penelope play in the Odyssey; and the request of Dido to Aeneas to recount his past adventures owes its origin to the similar request made by Alcinous to Odysseus.

It is in the first book that Virgil adheres most closely to his Greek guides; yet even in it we observe many traces of modern invention, which give a new character to the representation. The thought of Italy in the immediate future—

Est locus, Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt,
Terra antiqua, potens armis atque ubere glaebae;
Oenotri coluere viri; nunc fama, minores
Italiam dixisse ducis de nomine gentem(484)—

and the remoter vision of the ‘altae moenia Romae’ remind us that we are contemplating no mere recast of a Greek legend, but a great national monument of the race which during the longest period of history has played the greatest part in human affairs. The old gods of Olympus appear on earth once more, and now with all the attributes of Roman state, as ‘principalities and powers’ contending for the empire of the world, and as instruments in the hands of destiny for the furthering of the great work which was only fully accomplished by Augustus.

In the recital of the fall of Troy, which occupies the second book, Virgil is said by Macrobius to have adhered almost verbally(485) to the work of a Greek poet, Pisander, the author of a poetical history of the world from the marriage of Jupiter and Juno down to the events contemporary with the poet himself. There seem to have been three Greek poets of that name, and the only one of them who was likely to have treated at any length of the events of that single night recorded in the second Aeneid is said to have lived after the time of Virgil. It seems impossible that any earlier poet could have assigned so much space as that demanded by the statement of Macrobius to the personal adventures of Aeneas. We are on surer ground in recognising the debt which Virgil owed to the account of the wooden horse in the Odyssey, to some of the lost plays of Sophocles, which told the tale of the treachery of Sinon and of the tragic fate of Laocoon, and to some of the lost Cyclic poems and the Ἰλίου πέρσις of Stesichorus. The vision of Hector to Aeneas reminds us of that of Patroclus to Achilles; but in this resemblance we recognise also the difference between the poem founded on personal and that founded on national fortunes. The care which summons the shade of Patroclus to the couch of his friend is the care for his own burial; the care which brings Hector back to earth is the care for the salvation of the sacred relics of Troy in view of the great destiny which awaited them. There is more of human pathos in the vision of Patroclus; more of a stately majesty in that of Hector. And as in other passages where Virgil wishes to produce this effect, we note that he avails himself here of the language of Ennius,—

Hei mihi, qualis erat.

So too, near the end of the book, where the shade of Creusa gives to Aeneas the first intimation of his settlement in a western land,—

Et terram Hesperiam venies, ubi Lydius arva
Inter opima virum leni fluit agmine Thybris(486),—

the same antique associations are appealed to(487). So also in describing the destruction of the palace of Priam, Virgil is said to have imitated the description by Ennius of the destruction of Alba(488). And that feeling of ancient state and majesty with which the memory of Troy is invested in such lines as

Urbs antiqua ruit multos dominata per annos(489),

had been first expressed in the ‘Andromache’ of the older poet.

Among the sources which Virgil used in the third book were probably the prose accounts of the late Greek historians, who rationalised the traditions of the various settlements of Aeneas which grew out of his association with the worship of Aphrodite. But the whole suggestion of sea-adventure, and still more of the incidents arising out of the visit to the land of the Cyclops, is due to the Odyssey, while the events connected with the landing in Thrace and in Epirus owe their origin to the Hecuba and Andromache of Euripides. But, on the other hand, the exact geographical knowledge displayed in it imparts a thoroughly modern character to the book; and one passage at least (as has been shown by a writer in the Journal of Philology)—the description of the voyage round the eastern and southern shores of Sicily—is so minutely accurate in detail as to give clear indication of being drawn from the personal experience of the author. Again, the frequent mention of Italy in the book, the speech of Helenus which announces the old traditional omen of the white sow, the direction as to the mode of performing religious ceremonies which the Romans should observe in all future times,—

Hac casti maneant in religione nepotes,—(490)

and the trophy raised by Aeneas on the shores of Actium, help to remind us of the modern meaning which Virgil desired to impart to his representation of antique manners.

The fourth book, in which Virgil deserts the guidance of Homer for that of the Alexandrine epic, is intended to give the most passionate human, as distinct from the pervading national, interest to the poem. But the tragic nature of the situation arises from the clashing between natural feeling and the great considerations of State by which the divine actors in the drama were influenced. The death of Dido gives moreover a poetical justification for the deadly enmity which animated the struggle between Rome and her most dangerous antagonist. The fifth book follows the old tradition—as old at least as the time of Thucydides—which represented Trojan settlements as established in Sicily. The account of the foundation of Segesta by the followers of Aeneas, and the story of the burning of the ships by the Trojan women, may have been told by Timaeus; and it was natural to ascribe to her son the building of the famous temple of Venus Erycina. But the greater part of the book is occupied with an account of the funeral games in honour of Anchises, which, with modifications to suit the changed locality, reproduce the games which Achilles celebrated in honour of Patroclus. But the account of these games serves the purpose of giving some individuality to three of the most shadowy personages in the poem by establishing their connexion with three illustrious Roman families, and to flatter Augustus by assigning an ancient origin to the Ludus Troiae,—a kind of bloodless tournament of noble youths exhibited in the early years of his reign,—and also, by the invention of a fabulous ancestor, to add distinction to the provincial family of the Atii, which was more truly ennobled by the great personal qualities of the Emperor’s mother, Atia.

With the landing in Italy the narrative assumes greater independence. The various localities introduced and the traditions connected with them, the usages or ceremonies peculiar to Italy which admit of being referred to an immemorial past, the mere Italian names of Latinus and Turnus, Mezentius and Camilla, are able to evoke national and sometimes modern associations. Thus the introduction of the Cumaean Sibyl into the narrative affords the opportunity of reminding the Romans of the importance assigned to the Sibylline prophecies in their national counsels; and the impressive ceremony of the opening of the gates of war enables the poet to appeal to the patriotic impulses of his own age, in the lines—

Sive Getis inferre manu lacrimabile bellum
Hyrcanisve Arabisve parant, seu tendere ad Indos
Auroramque sequi Parthosque reposcere signa(491).

But many of the warlike incidents in the later books—as for instance the night foray of Nisus and Euryalus, the treacherous wounding of Aeneas, the withdrawal by supernatural agency of Turnus from the battle, the death of Pallas and the effect which that event has on Aeneas, and the final conflict between Turnus and Aeneas—show that Virgil was still following in the footsteps of his original guide. The passages, however, which bring out most clearly both this relation of Virgil to Homer and his point of departure from him are those which give an account of the descent into hell and describe the shield of Aeneas. The sixth book of the Aeneid owes its existence to the eleventh book of the Odyssey: but the shadowy conceptions of the Homeric ‘Inferno,’ suggested by the impulses of natural curiosity and the yearnings of human affection, are enlarged and made more definite, on the one hand, by thoughts derived from Plato, and, on the other, by the proudest memories of Roman history, from the legends of the Alban kings to the warlike and peaceful triumphs of the Augustan Age. The shield of Achilles presents to the imagination the varied spectacle of human life—sowing and reaping, a city besieged, a marriage festival, etc.; the shield of Aeneas presents the spectacle of the most momentous crises in the annals of Rome, culminating in the great triumph of Augustus. We note too in the latter passage the enhancement of patriotic sentiment by the use of the language and representation of Ennius, as at lines 630–634, and the lesson taught of the dependence of national welfare on the observance of religious traditions and of the duties of life sanctioned by religion, in the lines which describe the processions of the Salii and Luperci, and which indicate the punishment awarded to the sin of rebellion and disloyalty in the person of Catiline, and the recognition of civic virtue, even when exercised in defence of a losing cause, in the position assigned to Cato in the nether world—

Secretosque pios, his dantem iura Catonem(492).

The Iliad and the Odyssey are thus seen to be essentially epics of human life; the Aeneid is essentially the epic of national glory. The Iliad indeed is the noblest monument of the greatness, as it is of the genius, of the Greeks. And the Aeneid is much more than a monument of national glory. It is full of pathetic situations and stirring incidents which move our human compassion or kindle our sympathies with heroic action. But if we ask what are the most powerful sources of interest in the Greek and in the Roman epic respectively, the answer will be that in the first these spring immediately out of human life; in the second they spring out of the national fortunes. And this distinction is generally recognisable in the art, literature, and history of the two nations. This predominance of national interest and the presence of a large element of living modern interest in the treatment of an ancient legend separate the Aeneid still further from the Alexandrine epic and its later Roman imitations. The compliance with the conditions of epic poetry, as established by Homer and confirmed by the great law-giver of Greek criticism, equally separates it from the rude attempts of Ennius and Naevius, and from the poems which treat of historical subjects of a limited and temporary significance, such as the Pharsalia of Lucan and the Henriade of Voltaire. Though Virgil may be the most imitative, he is at the same time one of the most original poets of antiquity. We saw that he had produced a new type of didactic poetry. By the meaning and unity which he has imparted to his Greek, Roman, and Italian materials through the vivifying and harmonising agency of permanent national sentiment and of the immediate feeling of the hour, he may be said to have created a new type of epic poetry—to have produced a work of genius representative of his country as well as a masterpiece of art.