Chapter VI · Structure and Composition of the Poem, in Relation To the Poem of Lucretius. (continued 2)

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Opinions may differ as to whether the passion of Ariadne or the sorrow of Orpheus is represented with most skill. There seems this difference between the two, that in the one we feel we are reading a fable, that the situation is altogether remote from experience, that it is one suited for a picture or a poem of fancy. The beautiful picture of Ariadne, on the other hand, appears like one drawn from the life, and her passionate complaint is like that of a living woman. But still more undoubted is the superiority of Catullus in pictorial or statuesque reproduction seen in that part of his poem in which the original subject, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, is described. Catullus, above all other Latin poets, except perhaps Ovid, can bring a picture from human life or from outward nature before the inward eye; and this power is, much more than Virgil’s power of suggesting deep and delicate shades of feeling, appropriate to the more limited compass of the idyl. It is no disparagement to Virgil to say that in this kind of art he is inferior to Catullus. Catullus, though a true Italian in temperament, largely endowed with and freely using the biting raillery—‘Italum acetum’—which ancient writers ascribe to the race, had in his genius, more than any Roman writer, the disinterested delight in art, irrespective of any personal associations, characteristic of the Greek imagination. Virgil’s art, on the other hand, produces its deepest impressions only when his heart is moved. Even in the Eclogues this is for the most part true. Something must touch his personal sympathies, his moral or religious nature, or his national feeling, before he is roused to his highest creative effort.

In the three cardinal passages which remain to be considered, in the composition of which the deeper elements of Virgil’s nature were powerfully moved, the impression which the changing state of the national fortunes produced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these (i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from its eastern boundary to its [pg 253]furthest limits in Europe,—the agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging into the abyss,—is described and symbolised in the concluding lines of the Book:—

Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum;

Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes

Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe:

Ut cum carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,

Addunt in spatia, et frustra retinacula tendens

Fertur equis auriga, neque audit currus habenas381.

This state of alarm is shown to be connected with the great national crime which Rome was still atoning,—the murder of Julius Caesar. The episode arises immediately out of the enumeration of the signs of the weather, which, from their importance to the husbandman, are treated of at considerable length in the body of the poem. As the sun is the surest index of change in the physical, so is he said to be in the political atmosphere. The eclipse which occurred soon after the murder of Caesar is regarded as a sign of compassion for his fate and of abhorrence of the crime. Then follows an enumeration of other omens which accompanied or preceded that event,—some of them violations of natural law, such as those which occur in the narrative of Livy, when any great disaster was impending over the Roman arms,—

pecudesque locutae,

Infandum—

Et maestum inlacrimat templis ebur, aeraque sudant382:—

others arising out of a great sympathetic movement among the spirits of the dead,—

Vox quoque per lucos volgo exaudita silentis

Ingens, et simulacra modis pallentia miris

Visa sub obscurum noctis383;

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others showing themselves in ominous appearances of the sacrifices, or in strange disturbance of the familiar ways of bird and beast,—

Obscenaeque canes importunaeque volucres

Signa dabant—

Et altae

Per noctem resonare lupis ululantibus urbes384;

others manifesting themselves through great commotion in the kingdom of Nature,—earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, great floods,—

‘The noise of battle hurtling in the air,’

lightnings in a clear sky, and the blaze of comets portending doom. These all succeed one another in Virgil’s verse according to no principle of logical connexion, but as they might be successively announced to the awe-struck citizens of Rome. The whole passage is pervaded by that strong sense of awe before an invisible Power—the ‘religio dira’—by which the Roman imagination was possessed in times of great national calamity. The issue of all these portents appeared in the second great battle in which Roman blood fattened the Macedonian plains. Then by a fine touch of imagination, and looking far forward into the future, the poet reminds us of the contrast, indicated in other passages of the poem, between the peaceful and beneficent industry of the husbandman and the cruel devastation of war:—

Scilicet et tempus veniet, cum finibus illis

Agricola, incurvo terram molitus aratro,

Exesa inveniet scabra robigine pila,

Aut gravibus rastris galeas pulsabit inanis,

Grandiaque effossis mirabitur ossa sepulchris385.

Next follows the prayer to the national gods of Italy to preserve [pg 255]the life of him who could alone raise the world out of the sin and ruin into which it had fallen, and alone restore their ancient glory to the fields, which now lay waste from the want of men to till them:—

Non ullus aratro

Dignus honos, squalent abductis arva colonis,

Et curvae rigidum falces conflantur in ensem386.

In the second of the great episodes this sorrow for the past and foreboding for the future has entirely cleared away. The feeling now expressed is one of pride and exultation in Italy, as a land of rich crops and fruits, of vines and olives, a land famous for its herds and flocks and breed of horses, for its genial climate, for the beauty of the seas washing its coasts, for its great lakes and rivers, its ancient cities and other mighty works of men; famous too for its hardy, energetic, and warlike races,—

Haec genus acre virum Marsos pubemque Sabellam,

Adsuetumque malo Ligurem Volscosque verutos

Extulit387,—

for its great men and families who had fought for it in old times, and for one greater still, who was then in the furthest East defending Rome against her enemies,—

Haec Decios magnosque Camillos,

Scipiadas duros bello, et te, maxime Caesar,

Qui nunc extremis Asiae iam victor in oris

Imbellem avertis Romanis arcibus Indum388.

This passage, introduced as a counter-picture to the description of the rank luxuriance of Nature in the vast forests and jungles of the East, concentrates in itself the deepest meaning and [pg 256]inspiration of the poem. The glory of Italy is declared to be the motive for the revival of this ancient theme—

Tibi res antiquae laudis et artis

Ingredior389.

As Varro represents his speakers as looking on the great picture of Italy in the Temple of Tellus while they discuss the various ways of tilling and improving the soil, so Virgil in the midst of his didactic precepts holds up this ideal picture of the land to the love and admiration of his countrymen. By a few powerful strokes he combines the characteristic features and the great memories of Italian towns in lines which recur to every traveller as he passes through Italy,—

Adde tot egregias urbes operumque laborem,

Tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis,

Fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros390.

No expression of patriotic sentiment in any language is more pure and noble than this. It is a tribute of just pride and affection to the land which, from its beauty, its history, its great services to man, is felt to be worthy of the deep devotion with which Virgil commends it to the heart and imagination of the world.

In the last of the great episodes which remains to be considered, all the higher thoughts and feelings by which beauty, dignity, and moral grandeur are given to the subject are found concurring; and the presence of Lucretius is again felt as a pervading influence, though modified by Virgil’s own deepest convictions and sympathies. The charm of peaceful contemplation, of Nature in her serenest aspect and harmony with the human soul, of an ethical idea based on religious belief and national traditions, of a life of pure and tranquil happiness, remote from the clash of arms and the pride and passions of the [pg 257]world, is made present to us in a strain of continuous and modulated music, which neither Virgil himself nor any other poet has surpassed. Virgil creates a new ideal of happiness for the contemplation of his countrymen by combining the old realistic delight in the husbandman’s life with the imaginative longing for the peace and innocence of a Saturnian Age, and with that new delight in the living beauty of the world and in the charm of ancient memories which it was his especial office to communicate. This ideal is contrasted, as is the older poet’s ideal of ‘plain living and high thinking,’ with the pomp and magnificence of city life,—

Si non ingentem foribus domus alta superbis

Mane salutantum totis vomit aedibus undam—

Si non aurea sunt iuvenum simulacra per aedes

Lampadas igniferas manibus retinentia dextris391,—

and, as in the older poet also, with the distractions, the restless passions, and the crimes of ambition. Virgil, as in other passages, compresses into a few lines the thought which Lucretius with simpler art follows through all its detail of concrete reality. Thus the

Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum392

of Virgil is intended to recall and be explained by the more fully developed representation of the old cruelties of the times of Marius and Sulla, contained in the lines—

Sanguine civili rem conflant divitiasque

Conduplicant avidi, caedem caede accumulantes;

Crudeles gaudent in tristi funere fratris;

Et consanguineum mensas odere timentque393.

In their protest against the world both poets are entirely at [pg 258]one. But the ideal of Virgil’s imagination, on its positive side, is more on the ordinary human level than that of lonely contemplation in accordance with which Lucretius lived and wrote. The Virgilian ideal, like that of Lucretius, recognised a heart at peace and independent of Fortune as a greater source of happiness than any external good. But this peace the one poet sought for in a superiority to the common beliefs of men; the other rather in a more trusting acceptance of them. Some other elements in Virgil’s ideal Lucretius too would have ranked among the supreme sources of human happiness. The lines

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati,

Casta pudicitiam servat domus394,

beautiful as the thought and picture is, are not more true to human feeling, scarcely touch the heart and imagination so vividly, as the lines which suggested them—

Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor

Optima, nec dulces occurrent oscula nati

Praeripere395.

Other elements in Virgil’s ideal Lucretius would have sympathised with, as he did with all natural human pleasure; but the elements of social kindliness expressed in the lines—

Ipse dies agitat festos, etc.

could mix only as an occasional source of refreshment with his [pg 259]lonely contemplation. The great difference between the two men is that Virgil’s ordinary feelings and beliefs are in unison with the common ways of life; he has a more active sympathy with the toils and pleasures of simple men; and, above all, he regards it as the highest good for man, not to secure peace of mind for himself, but to be useful in supporting others, in contributing to the well-being of his country, of his family, even of the animals associated with his toil:—

hinc patriam parvosque Penates

Sustinet, hinc armenta boum meritosque iuvencos396.

This ideal Virgil seems to regard as one that might be attained by man, if he only could be taught how to appreciate it397; nay, that has been attained by him in happier times when the land was cultivated by free men, each holding his own plot of ground. This was the life of the old Italian yeomen, the life by which Etruria waxed strong and brave, the life to which Rome herself owed the beginning of her greatness398. It is the life which the national imagination, in its peaceful mood, and yearning to return into the ways of innocence and piety, discerned in that distant Golden Age, when all men lived in contentment and abundance under the rule of the old god, [pg 260]from whom the land received the well-loved name ‘Saturnia tellus399.’

Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,

Hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit

Scilicet, et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma,

Septemque una sibi muro circumdedit arces.

Ante etiam sceptrum Dictaei regis et ante

Impia quam caesis gens est epulata iuvencis,

Aureus hanc vitam in terris Saturnus agebat;

Necdum etiam audierant inflari classica, necdum

Impositos duris crepitare incudibus enses400.

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