The Aeneid (2 page)
Full Roman citizenship had been gradually conceded over the centuries to individuals and communities, but in the years 91 to 87 B.C. those communities still excluded fought a successful civil war against Rome, which ended with the grant of full Roman citizenship to all Italians living south of the Po River. The territory north of the river continued to be a
provincia,
ruled by a proconsul from Rome, with an army. Full Roman citizenship was finally granted to the inhabitants of the area by Julius Caesar in 49 B.C., when Virgil was already a young man.
provincia,
ruled by a proconsul from Rome, with an army. Full Roman citizenship was finally granted to the inhabitants of the area by Julius Caesar in 49 B.C., when Virgil was already a young man.
Virgil was an Italian long before he became a Roman, and in the second book of the
Georgics
he follows a passage celebrating the riches of the East with a hymn of praise for the even greater riches of Italy:
Georgics
he follows a passage celebrating the riches of the East with a hymn of praise for the even greater riches of Italy:
But neither Media’s land most rich in forests,
The gorgeous Ganges or the gold-flecked Hermus
Could rival Italy . . . the land is full
Of teeming fruits and Bacchus’ Massic liquor.
Olives are everywhere and prosperous cattle . . .
And then the cities,
So many noble cities raised by our labors,
So many towns we’ve piled on precipices,
And rivers gliding under ancient walls . . .
Hail, mighty mother of fruits, Saturnian land
And mighty mother of men . . .
The same has bred a vigorous race of men,
Marsians, the Sabine stock, Ligurians
Inured to hardship, Volscians javelin-armed.(2.136-69, trans. L. P. Wilkinson, et seq.)
And in the
Aeneid,
Virgil’s poem about the origins of Rome, though his hero, Aeneas, and the Trojan invaders of Italy are to build the city from which Rome will eventually be founded, there is a constant and vibrant undertone of sympathy for and identification with the Italians, which becomes a major theme in the story of the Volscian warrior princess Camilla.
Aeneid,
Virgil’s poem about the origins of Rome, though his hero, Aeneas, and the Trojan invaders of Italy are to build the city from which Rome will eventually be founded, there is a constant and vibrant undertone of sympathy for and identification with the Italians, which becomes a major theme in the story of the Volscian warrior princess Camilla.
Biographical information about Virgil is scant and much of it unreliable, but we learn from Suetonius’ “Life” of the poet, written probably in the early years of the second century A.D., that Virgil “was tall . . . with a dark complexion and a rustic appearance” and that “he spoke very slowly and almost like an uneducated man.” Yet when he read his own poems, his delivery of them “was sweet and wonderfully effective” (pp. 467-73, trans. J. C. Rolfe, et seq.). And we learn from the same author that when he read to Augustus and his sister Octavia the second, fourth, and sixth books of the
Aeneid,
when he reached in the sixth book the lines about her son Marcellus, who had died young, she fainted, and it was difficult to revive her. We know too that Virgil and his father somehow escaped the fate of so many of the landowners in the area that Virgil refers to as Mantua—“but Mantua / Stands far too close for comfort to poor Cremona” (
Eclogues
9.28, trans. C. Day Lewis, et seq.)—confiscation of the land to reward the veterans of the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C. We know this mainly by inference from Virgil’s first poems, the
Eclogues,
published around 39 to 38 B.C.
THEAeneid,
when he reached in the sixth book the lines about her son Marcellus, who had died young, she fainted, and it was difficult to revive her. We know too that Virgil and his father somehow escaped the fate of so many of the landowners in the area that Virgil refers to as Mantua—“but Mantua / Stands far too close for comfort to poor Cremona” (
Eclogues
9.28, trans. C. Day Lewis, et seq.)—confiscation of the land to reward the veterans of the armies of Octavian and Mark Antony after the defeat of Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 B.C. We know this mainly by inference from Virgil’s first poems, the
Eclogues,
published around 39 to 38 B.C.
ECLOGUES
Like most Roman poems, the
Eclogues
(a word that means something like “Selections”) have a Greek model. In this case it is the poems of Theocritus, a resident of the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily who, writing in the Doric dialect of the western Greeks, invented a genre of poetry that used the Homeric hexameter for very un-Homeric themes: the singing contests, love affairs, and rivalries of shepherds and herdsmen who relieved the boredom of their lonely rural life by competing in song accompanied by pipes and pursuing their love affairs and rivalries far from the city and the farmlands, in the hills with their sheep, goats, and cattle. Their names, and the names of their lady loves—Lycidas, Daphnis, Amaryllis—have become famous through the long tradition of pastoral poetry that began with Theocritus, flourished in Virgil, and had a splendid rebirth in the Italian Renaissance and in Elizabethan England; Spenser’s
Shepheardes Calender
was published in 1579, and Milton’s
Lycidas
(written in 1637) is a masterpiece of the genre. It reached what might well be considered its end in the parodic performance of Marie An toinette, queen of France, and her court ladies playing the role, at the Petit Trianon palace, of simple milkmaids.
Eclogues
(a word that means something like “Selections”) have a Greek model. In this case it is the poems of Theocritus, a resident of the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily who, writing in the Doric dialect of the western Greeks, invented a genre of poetry that used the Homeric hexameter for very un-Homeric themes: the singing contests, love affairs, and rivalries of shepherds and herdsmen who relieved the boredom of their lonely rural life by competing in song accompanied by pipes and pursuing their love affairs and rivalries far from the city and the farmlands, in the hills with their sheep, goats, and cattle. Their names, and the names of their lady loves—Lycidas, Daphnis, Amaryllis—have become famous through the long tradition of pastoral poetry that began with Theocritus, flourished in Virgil, and had a splendid rebirth in the Italian Renaissance and in Elizabethan England; Spenser’s
Shepheardes Calender
was published in 1579, and Milton’s
Lycidas
(written in 1637) is a masterpiece of the genre. It reached what might well be considered its end in the parodic performance of Marie An toinette, queen of France, and her court ladies playing the role, at the Petit Trianon palace, of simple milkmaids.
Not all of Theocritus’ poems feature shepherds; one of them, for example, is a delightful dramatic sketch of two light-headed, gossipy housewives on their way to the festival of Adonis in Alexandria, and another is a hymn of praise to Ptolemy II, the ruler of Alexandria and Egypt. Similarly, one of Virgil’s ten
Eclogues,
the fourth, has nothing to do with shepherds; it prophesies the birth of a son who will bring back the Golden Age on earth. Many Christians, from Lactantius on, later took this to be a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but it seems clear that Virgil was referring to the expectation that Octavian’s sister, married to Mark Antony and pregnant by him, would bear a son, and that this would heal the growing breach between the two leaders. But the child turned out to be a daughter, and in any case, Cleopatra’s hold on Antony was permanent.
Eclogues,
the fourth, has nothing to do with shepherds; it prophesies the birth of a son who will bring back the Golden Age on earth. Many Christians, from Lactantius on, later took this to be a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but it seems clear that Virgil was referring to the expectation that Octavian’s sister, married to Mark Antony and pregnant by him, would bear a son, and that this would heal the growing breach between the two leaders. But the child turned out to be a daughter, and in any case, Cleopatra’s hold on Antony was permanent.
But Virgil differs from his model in one significant particular: he makes two of the
Eclogues
that are dialogues of shepherds, the first and ninth, reflect the sorrows and passions of the real world of 41 B.C.—the confiscation of land in the area north of the river Po, to reward the veterans of the armies of Octavian and Antony. The first
Eclogue
features Tityrus, who, as a result of a visit to Rome, has been granted, by a “young man”
1
whom he will always worship as a god, a favorable response to his plea: “‘Pasture your cattle, breed from your bulls, as you did of old’” (1.45). But the speaker, Meliboeus, must go on his sad way,
Eclogues
that are dialogues of shepherds, the first and ninth, reflect the sorrows and passions of the real world of 41 B.C.—the confiscation of land in the area north of the river Po, to reward the veterans of the armies of Octavian and Antony. The first
Eclogue
features Tityrus, who, as a result of a visit to Rome, has been granted, by a “young man”
1
whom he will always worship as a god, a favorable response to his plea: “‘Pasture your cattle, breed from your bulls, as you did of old’” (1.45). But the speaker, Meliboeus, must go on his sad way,
“To Scythia, bone-dry Africa, the chalky spate of the Oxus,
Even to Britain—that place cut off at the very world’s end . . .
To think of some godless soldier owning my well-farmed fallow,
A foreigner reaping these crops!”(1.64-71)
And in the ninth
Eclogue,
Moeris laments his eviction from his land, the day
Eclogue,
Moeris laments his eviction from his land, the day
“. . . that I should have lived to see an outsider
Take over my little farm—a thing I had never feared—
And tell me, ‘You’re dispossessed, you old tenants,
you’ve got to go.’ ”(9.2-4)
It seems clear from all this that somehow Virgil, or rather Virgil’s father, escaped the fate of Meliboeus and Moeris. Either his farm was exempt from confiscation or he was given another in exchange. The “young man” can only have been Octavian, and somehow Asinius Pollio, who is mentioned in
Eclogue
4, and who was a patron of poets and the arts, sensing the young Virgil’s talent, brought him to Octavian’s notice and secured his future education in the capital of the province, Mediolanum (Milan), at Rome, and later at Naples and at nearby Herculaneum, where his name appears on a burned papyrus as a student of Epicurean philosophy. At some point he was brought to the attention of Maecenas, who was Octavian’s friend and another benefactor of poets. We have from Virgil’s friend and fellow poet Horace an account of their meeting on the way to Brundisium (Brindisi) with Maecenas on his mission to Greece to negotiate with Antony in 37 B.C. In his fifth
Satire
of the first book, written in hexameter verse, Horace describes the journey from Rome with Maecenas; at Sinuessa they meet with another group, of which Virgil is part.
O qui complexus et gaudia,
“Oh what embraces and joy!” And later at Capua they stay for the night at an inn.
Lusum it Maecenas,
writes Horace, “Maecenas goes off to exercise,”
dormitum ego Vergiliusque,
“and Virgil and I to bed” (1.5.43, 48, trans. Knox).
Eclogue
4, and who was a patron of poets and the arts, sensing the young Virgil’s talent, brought him to Octavian’s notice and secured his future education in the capital of the province, Mediolanum (Milan), at Rome, and later at Naples and at nearby Herculaneum, where his name appears on a burned papyrus as a student of Epicurean philosophy. At some point he was brought to the attention of Maecenas, who was Octavian’s friend and another benefactor of poets. We have from Virgil’s friend and fellow poet Horace an account of their meeting on the way to Brundisium (Brindisi) with Maecenas on his mission to Greece to negotiate with Antony in 37 B.C. In his fifth
Satire
of the first book, written in hexameter verse, Horace describes the journey from Rome with Maecenas; at Sinuessa they meet with another group, of which Virgil is part.
O qui complexus et gaudia,
“Oh what embraces and joy!” And later at Capua they stay for the night at an inn.
Lusum it Maecenas,
writes Horace, “Maecenas goes off to exercise,”
dormitum ego Vergiliusque,
“and Virgil and I to bed” (1.5.43, 48, trans. Knox).
Virgil’s
Eclogues
were an immediate success and soon gained all the trappings of general approval—some of the dialogues of shepherds were performed in theaters, quotations and parodies abounded. But what made them a landmark in the history of Latin poetry were the music and elegance of the hexameter verse, the exquisite control of the rhythmic patterns.
Eclogues
were an immediate success and soon gained all the trappings of general approval—some of the dialogues of shepherds were performed in theaters, quotations and parodies abounded. But what made them a landmark in the history of Latin poetry were the music and elegance of the hexameter verse, the exquisite control of the rhythmic patterns.
The Latin hexameter, modeled on Homer’s, had been used by Latin poets ever since Quintus Ennius (239-169 B.C.) had adapted it to celebrate in his
Annales
the history of Rome from the founding by Aeneas down to his own day. Virgil knew and often used phrases of this poet; he also knew the great hexameter poem of his older contemporary, Lucretius, whose
De Rerum Natura
(
On the Nature of Things
) celebrated the Epicurean philosophy of which Virgil was a devotee: Virgil’s lines often show the influence of Lucretius’ poem. But only Virgil’s own poetic genius can explain the lightness, the dexterity, the rhythmic music of the
Eclogues,
and this is even truer of his next, and most perfect, poem, the
Georgics.
THEAnnales
the history of Rome from the founding by Aeneas down to his own day. Virgil knew and often used phrases of this poet; he also knew the great hexameter poem of his older contemporary, Lucretius, whose
De Rerum Natura
(
On the Nature of Things
) celebrated the Epicurean philosophy of which Virgil was a devotee: Virgil’s lines often show the influence of Lucretius’ poem. But only Virgil’s own poetic genius can explain the lightness, the dexterity, the rhythmic music of the
Eclogues,
and this is even truer of his next, and most perfect, poem, the
Georgics.
GEORGICS
This poem, of more than two thousand lines in four books, was first read to Octavian soon after the suicides of Antony and Cleopatra in 30 B.C., which made him sole ruler of the Roman world, at Atella near Naples by Maecenas and Virgil in 29 B.C. It is, like the
Eclogues,
modeled on a Greek poem, Hesiod’s
Works and Days,
but whereas Hesiod writes of farming from firsthand experience, Virgil has to draw on a prose work written on the subject, the
De Re Rustica
of Varro, which had been published in 37-36 B.C. Of Virgil’s four books the first is on field crops, the second on trees, the third on herds, and the fourth on bees. The only source of sweetness available to the ancient Western world was honey—hence the importance of bee-keeping. Virgil’s poem, with its devotion to the land, the crops, and the herds, fits admirably into the old Roman ideal: the Roman farmer is equally adapted to work on the land and to do the work of a soldier in the legion in time of war. The model was the legendary figure Cincinnatus, who in 458 B.C. was called from his farm and given dictatorial power; he rescued the state by defeating the Aequi and, after holding supreme power for sixteen days, resigned it and returned to his plow. But the
Georgics
is no more a real manual for the soldier turned farmer than the Augustan ideal of the Roman soldier-farmer was realistic; as a manual for farmers the
Georgics
has huge omissions and as a practical handbook would be as useless as Augustus’s program of re-creating the Roman farmer-soldier was impractical. Most of Italy was cultivated by slave labor on land owned by absentee landlords who lived in Rome. The
Georgics
is a work of art—as Dryden declared, “the best Poem by the best Poet”—on which Virgil worked for seven years; he compared his work on it to that of a mother bear licking her cubs into shape.
Eclogues,
modeled on a Greek poem, Hesiod’s
Works and Days,
but whereas Hesiod writes of farming from firsthand experience, Virgil has to draw on a prose work written on the subject, the
De Re Rustica
of Varro, which had been published in 37-36 B.C. Of Virgil’s four books the first is on field crops, the second on trees, the third on herds, and the fourth on bees. The only source of sweetness available to the ancient Western world was honey—hence the importance of bee-keeping. Virgil’s poem, with its devotion to the land, the crops, and the herds, fits admirably into the old Roman ideal: the Roman farmer is equally adapted to work on the land and to do the work of a soldier in the legion in time of war. The model was the legendary figure Cincinnatus, who in 458 B.C. was called from his farm and given dictatorial power; he rescued the state by defeating the Aequi and, after holding supreme power for sixteen days, resigned it and returned to his plow. But the
Georgics
is no more a real manual for the soldier turned farmer than the Augustan ideal of the Roman soldier-farmer was realistic; as a manual for farmers the
Georgics
has huge omissions and as a practical handbook would be as useless as Augustus’s program of re-creating the Roman farmer-soldier was impractical. Most of Italy was cultivated by slave labor on land owned by absentee landlords who lived in Rome. The
Georgics
is a work of art—as Dryden declared, “the best Poem by the best Poet”—on which Virgil worked for seven years; he compared his work on it to that of a mother bear licking her cubs into shape.
In the opening lines of the poem, addressed to Maecenas, he announces the subject of the four books:
What makes the corncrops glad, under which star
To turn the soil, Maecenas, and wed your vines
To elms, the care of cattle, keeping of flocks,
All the experience thrifty bees demand—
Such are the themes of my song.(1.1-5, trans. Wilkinson)
With an invocation of the country gods, Virgil proceeds to describe the farmer’s life of hard work as in his model, Hesiod. Later he writes about the weather signs that the farmer must recognize as prophecies of what is to come, sometimes evil, as he ends the book with memories of the recent civil wars, of Roman blood shed on the fields of Greece, and with a finale that is a prayer and a dark vision of the future:
Gods of our fathers, Heroes of our land . . .
Do not prevent at least this youthful prince
From saving a world in ruins . . .
For right and wrong change places; everywhere
So many wars, so many shapes of crime
Confront us; no due honor attends the plow.
The fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt . . .
. . . throughout the world
Impious War is raging.(1.498-511)
Book 2 is concerned with trees and vines, principally with the olive and the wine grape. There is much good advice here for the farmer, but the book is notable not only for the hymn of praise for Italy already quoted, but also for its praise of the happy life of the farmer as compared to that of the city dweller:
How lucky, if they know their happiness,
Are farmers, more than lucky, they for whom,
Far from the clash of arms, the earth herself,
Most fair in dealing, freely lavishes
An easy livelihood . . .
. . . Peace they have and a life of innocence
Rich in variety; they have for leisure
Their ample acres, caverns, living lakes,
. . . cattle low, and sleep is soft
Under a tree . . .(2.458-70)
Book 3 is concerned with the breeding and raising of farm animals: horses and cattle in the first part and sheep and goats in the later section. After an exordium in which Virgil promises to celebrate the victories of Octavian, a promise fulfilled in the
Aeneid,
he proceeds to his subject. His discussion of farm animals contains the famous lines that apply equally to the human animal:
Aeneid,
he proceeds to his subject. His discussion of farm animals contains the famous lines that apply equally to the human animal:
Life’s earliest years for wretched mortal creatures
Are best, and fly most quickly: soon come on
Diseases, suffering and gloomy age,
Till Death’s unpitying harshness carries them off.(3.66-68)
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