III.

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[pg 215]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 voluptasSuavis amicitiae,andO decus, O famae merito pars maxima nostrae330.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[pg 216]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 altumFulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentisPer populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olympo331,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[pg 217]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[pg 218]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[pg 219]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 theCaelo 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 prayerDique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri332,as in the later exclamation,Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes333,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[pg 220]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 Ποσειδῶνἵππιος, not of the Italian Neptunus. It is not the Roman Minerva, butἁ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθάνα, who is associated in poetry and legend with the olive,—Φύτευμ’ ἀχείρωτον αὐτόποιονγλαυκᾶς 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 convic[pg 221]tions. 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 schools334. 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 familiarτοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμένof 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 inIuppiter 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,[pg 222]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 Ceres335. 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 illumFlava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo336,he reproduces a thought which Callimachus had expressed in his hymn to Artemis337—Οὓς δὲ κεν εὐμειδής τε καὶ ἴλαος αὐγάσσηαικείνοις εὖ μὲν ἄρουρα φέρει στάχυν338.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 Capitol339.[pg 223]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.[pg 224]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 36B.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 place340.’ 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[pg 225]beyond the mere expression of overstrained eulogy. In such expressions asAuctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem341,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 ruler342. 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 linesAnne 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 linesNam te nec sperant Tartara regem, etc.,read in connexion with those at the end of Book I,Hunc saltem everso iuvenem succurrere saecloNe 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[pg 226]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 taurusVictima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos343.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[pg 227]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.Virgil is much more sparing than Lucretius in the proems to his other books. In the second book there is a brief invocation to Liber, who is introduced, with rich pictorial colouring, as the special god of the vintage; and at lines 39–46 there is an appeal to Maecenas, which disclaims, perhaps not without some reference to the contrary practice of Lucretius, all intention to detain his hearer ‘through digressions from the main theme and long preambles.’ In the fourth there is again a brief appeal to Maecenas, a statement of the subject, an admission of its homely character,—‘In tenui labor,’—an expression of the hope that, even out of these materials, great glory may ensue if Apollo hears the poet’s prayer and no unpropitious powers impede the course of his song. The introduction to the third book is more extended, and more interesting from the light which it throws on the motives which determined Virgil to the choice of the subject of his epic poem. Here, too, as in the first and second books, there is an appeal to the tutelary deities of the herds and flocks, the Italian Pales, and the ‘Pastor ab Amphryso,’—the Apolloνόμιοςof Greek legend and rural worship. The associations of Greek poetry are also evoked in the reference to the woods and streams of Lycaeus, to the lowing herds of Cithaeron, to the dogs that range over Taygetus, and to the famous horses of the Argive plain. The choice of the subject is justified by the contrast suggested between its novelty—‘silvas saltusque sequamur Intactos’—and the hackneyed poems founded on mythological subjects which his immediate predecessors in[pg 228]poetry had written in imitation of their Alexandrine prototypes. But he indicates here, with a new application of the words of Ennius, the aspiration to compose a great national epic in celebration of the exploits of Caesar:—temptanda via est, qua me quoque possimTollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora344.Under the allegory of the games which he proposed to celebrate, and the marble temple which he proposed to raise on the banks of the Mincio, he associates the thought of his early home with his ambition to rival the great works of Greek genius (for this seems to be the meaning of the linesCuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi,Cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia cestu)345,—and to spread the fame of Caesar through distant ages. This invocation must have been written later than the crowning victory of Actium, but before the plan of the Aeneid had definitely assumed shape in the poet’s mind. From the allegorical representations of the designs in gold, ivory, and marble for the ornaments of the temple, and still more clearly from the direct statementMox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnasCaesaris346,it may be inferred that his first idea was to make the contemporaneous events the main subject of his epic, and to introduce the glories of the Trojan line as accessories. Under what influence he changed this purpose, making contemporary events subsidiary and the ancient legend the main argument of his poem, will be considered in the chapters devoted to the examination of the Aeneid.

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[pg 215]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 voluptasSuavis amicitiae,

Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas

Suavis amicitiae,

and

O decus, O famae merito pars maxima nostrae330.

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[pg 216]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 altumFulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentisPer populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olympo331,

Caesar dum magnus ad altum

Fulminat Euphraten bello, victorque volentis

Per populos dat iura, viamque adfectat Olympo331,

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[pg 217]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[pg 218]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[pg 219]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 tueri332,

as in the later exclamation,

Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes333,

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[pg 220]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 Ποσειδῶνἵππιος, not of the Italian Neptunus. It is not the Roman Minerva, butἁ γλαυκῶπις Ἀθάνα, who is associated in poetry and legend with the olive,—

Φύτευμ’ ἀχείρωτον αὐτόποιονγλαυκᾶς παιδοτρόφου φύλλον ἐλαίας.

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 convic[pg 221]tions. 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 schools334. 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 familiarτοῦ γὰρ καὶ γένος ἐσμένof 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—

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,[pg 222]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 Ceres335. 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 illumFlava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo336,

neque illum

Flava Ceres alto nequiquam spectat Olympo336,

he reproduces a thought which Callimachus had expressed in his hymn to Artemis337—

Οὓς δὲ κεν εὐμειδής τε καὶ ἴλαος αὐγάσσηαικείνοις εὖ μὲν ἄρουρα φέρει στάχυν338.

Οὓς δὲ κεν εὐμειδής τε καὶ ἴλαος αὐγάσσηαι

κείνοις εὖ μὲν ἄρουρα φέρει στάχυν338.

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 Capitol339.

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 36B.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 place340.’ 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[pg 225]beyond the mere expression of overstrained eulogy. In such expressions as

Auctorem frugum tempestatumque potentem341,

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 ruler342. 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 saecloNe prohibete, etc.,

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[pg 226]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 taurusVictima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos343.

Hinc albi, Clitumne, greges et maxima taurus

Victima, saepe tuo perfusi flumine sacro,

Romanos ad templa deum duxere triumphos343.

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[pg 227]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.

Virgil is much more sparing than Lucretius in the proems to his other books. In the second book there is a brief invocation to Liber, who is introduced, with rich pictorial colouring, as the special god of the vintage; and at lines 39–46 there is an appeal to Maecenas, which disclaims, perhaps not without some reference to the contrary practice of Lucretius, all intention to detain his hearer ‘through digressions from the main theme and long preambles.’ In the fourth there is again a brief appeal to Maecenas, a statement of the subject, an admission of its homely character,—‘In tenui labor,’—an expression of the hope that, even out of these materials, great glory may ensue if Apollo hears the poet’s prayer and no unpropitious powers impede the course of his song. The introduction to the third book is more extended, and more interesting from the light which it throws on the motives which determined Virgil to the choice of the subject of his epic poem. Here, too, as in the first and second books, there is an appeal to the tutelary deities of the herds and flocks, the Italian Pales, and the ‘Pastor ab Amphryso,’—the Apolloνόμιοςof Greek legend and rural worship. The associations of Greek poetry are also evoked in the reference to the woods and streams of Lycaeus, to the lowing herds of Cithaeron, to the dogs that range over Taygetus, and to the famous horses of the Argive plain. The choice of the subject is justified by the contrast suggested between its novelty—‘silvas saltusque sequamur Intactos’—and the hackneyed poems founded on mythological subjects which his immediate predecessors in[pg 228]poetry had written in imitation of their Alexandrine prototypes. But he indicates here, with a new application of the words of Ennius, the aspiration to compose a great national epic in celebration of the exploits of Caesar:—

temptanda via est, qua me quoque possimTollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora344.

temptanda via est, qua me quoque possim

Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora344.

Under the allegory of the games which he proposed to celebrate, and the marble temple which he proposed to raise on the banks of the Mincio, he associates the thought of his early home with his ambition to rival the great works of Greek genius (for this seems to be the meaning of the lines

Cuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi,Cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia cestu)345,—

Cuncta mihi, Alpheum linquens lucosque Molorchi,

Cursibus et crudo decernet Graecia cestu)345,—

and to spread the fame of Caesar through distant ages. This invocation must have been written later than the crowning victory of Actium, but before the plan of the Aeneid had definitely assumed shape in the poet’s mind. From the allegorical representations of the designs in gold, ivory, and marble for the ornaments of the temple, and still more clearly from the direct statement

Mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnasCaesaris346,

Mox tamen ardentis accingar dicere pugnas

Caesaris346,

it may be inferred that his first idea was to make the contemporaneous events the main subject of his epic, and to introduce the glories of the Trojan line as accessories. Under what influence he changed this purpose, making contemporary events subsidiary and the ancient legend the main argument of his poem, will be considered in the chapters devoted to the examination of the Aeneid.

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