by Virgil
Latin literature in the Augustan Age drew its representatives not only from a wider district than the preceding age, but also from a different social class. The men eminent as poets, orators, and historians in the last years of the Republic were for the most part members of the great Roman or Italian families. They were either themselves actively engaged in political life, or living in intimacy with those who were so engaged. Whatever tincture of letters was found in any other class was confined to freedmen or learned Greeks, such as Archias and Theophanes, attached to the houses of the nobility. The fortunes of the two great poets of the Augustan Age prove that no barrier of class-prejudice and no necessary inferiority of early education prevented free-born men of very humble origin from attaining the highest distinction, and living as the trusted friends of the foremost men in the State. Virgil and Horace were the sons of men who by the thrift and industry of a humble occupation had been able to buy small farms in their native district. Virgil’s father had not indeed, like the father of Horace, risen from a servile position. He is said to have begun life as a hired assistant to one Magius, who, according to one account, was a potter, according to another a ‘viator’ (or officer whose duty it was to summon prisoners before magistrates). He married the daughter of his master, being recommended to him, as is said by his biographer, by his industry (ob industriam). The name of Virgil’s mother was Magia Polla. His father is said to have increased his substance among other things by keeping bees (silvis coemendis et apibus curandis),—a fact which perhaps explains the importance given to this branch of rural industry in the Georgics. Virgil thus springs from that class whose condition he represents as the happiest allotted to man, and as affording the best field for the exercise of virtue and piety. He and Horace, after living in the most refined society of Rome, are entirely at one in their appreciation of the qualities of the old Italian husbandmen or small landowners,—a class long before their time reduced in numbers and influence, but still producing men of modest worth and strong common sense like the ‘abnormis sapiens’ of the Satires, and like those country neighbours whose lively talk and homely wisdom Horace contrasts with the fashionable folly of Rome; and true and virtuous women, such as may have suggested to the one poet the lines—
Quod si pudica mulier in partem iuvet
Domum atque dulces liberos,
Sabina qualis aut perusta solibus
Pernicis uxor Appuli,
and to the other—
Interea longum cantu solata laborem
Arguto coniunx percurrit pectine telas.
These poets themselves probably owe that stronger grain of character, their large share of the old Italian seriousness of spirit (gravitas), which distinguishes them from the other poets of their time, to the traditions of virtue which the men of this class had not yet unlearned. It is remarked by M. Sainte-Beuve how strong the attachment of such men usually is to their homes and lands, inherited from their fathers or acquired and enriched by their own industry. He characterises happily ‘cette médiocrité de fortune et de condition morale dans laquelle était né Virgile, médiocrité, ai-je dit, qui rend tout mieux senti et plus cher, parcequ’on y touche à chaque instant la limite, parcequ’on y a toujours présent le moment où l’on a acquis et celui où l’on peut tout perdre.’ The truest human feeling expressed in the Eclogues is the love which the old settlers had for their lands, and the sorrow which they felt when forced to quit them. The Georgics bear witness to the strong Italian passion for the soil, and the pride in the varied results of his skill which made a life of unceasing labour one of contentment and happiness to the husbandman.
As has happened in the case of other poets and men of poetic genius, tradition recorded some marvellous circumstances attending his birth, which were believed to have portended his future distinction. These stories may have originated early in his career from the promise of genius afforded by his childhood: or, like the mediaeval belief in his magical powers, they may be a kind of mythological reflection of the veneration and affection with which his memory was cherished. The character of these reported presages implies the impression produced by the gentleness and sweetness of his disposition, as well as by the rapid growth and development of his poetic faculty.
A more trustworthy indication of his early promise is afforded by the care with which he was educated. Like Horace, he was fortunate in having parents who, themselves of humble origin, considered him worthy of receiving the best instruction which the world could give; and, like Horace, he repaid their tender solicitude with affectionate gratitude. By his father’s care he was from boyhood dedicated to the high calling which he faithfully followed through all his life. At the age of twelve he was taken to Cremona, an old Latin colony; and, from the lines in one of his earliest authentic poems (the address to the villa of Siron)—
Tu nunc eris illi
Mantua quod fuerat, quodque Cremona prius—
implying a residence at Cremona, it seems probable that his father may have accompanied him thither, as Horace’s father accompanied him to Rome for the same purpose. On his sixteenth birth-day—the day on which, according to Donatus, Lucretius died—Virgil assumed the ‘toga virilis,’ and about the same time went to Milan, and continued there, engaged in study, till he removed to Rome in the year 53 B.C., when he was between sixteen and seventeen years of age. It was in this year of his life that he is said to have written the ‘Culex.’ There are many difficulties which prevent the belief that Virgil is the author of the poem which has come down to us under that name. But the consideration of these must be reserved for a later examination of the poem.
At Rome he studied rhetoric under Epidius, who was also the teacher of the young Octavianus. As the future Emperor made his first public appearance at the age of twelve, by delivering the funeral oration over his grandmother Julia, it may have happened that he and Virgil were pupils of Epidius at the same time, and were not unknown to each other even before the meeting of ten years later which decisively affected Virgil’s fortunes and determined his career. The time of his arrival at Rome was of critical importance in literature. The recent publication of the poem of Lucretius, the most important event in Latin literature since the appearance of the Annals of Ennius, must have stimulated the enthusiasm of the younger generation, among whom poetry and oratory were at that time conjointly cultivated. Mr. Munro has shown the influence exercised by this poem on the later style of Catullus, who collected and edited his own poems about the time when Virgil came to Rome, and died shortly afterwards. One or two of the minor poems among the Catalepton, attributed to Virgil with more probability than the Culex, are parodies or close imitations of the style of Catullus, and are written in a freer and more satiric spirit than anything published by him in later years. But it is a little remarkable that, while reproducing the language and cadences of both these poets in his first acknowledged work, Virgil never mentions the name either of Lucretius or Catullus. The poets mentioned by him with admiration in the Eclogues are his living contemporaries, Varius and Cinna, Pollio and Gallus. Is it on account of the Senatorian and anti-Caesarean sympathies of the older poets that the poets of the new era thus separate themselves abruptly from those of the previous epoch? If it was owing to the jealousy of the new régime that the two great Augustan poets, while paying a passing tribute to the impracticable virtue of Cato, never mention the greater name or allude to the fate of Cicero, there seems to have been nothing in the political action or expressed opinions of Lucretius to call for a similar reticence. If, on the other hand, the boldness of his attack on the strongholds of all religious belief had the effect of cutting him off for a time from personal sympathy, as similar opposition to received opinions had in modern times in the case of Spinosa and Shelley, it did not interfere with the immediate influence exercised by his genius on the thought and art of Virgil.
The most interesting of the minor poems among the Catalepton is one written at the time when the young poet entered on the study of philosophy under Siron the E
picurean. This poem expresses the joy felt by him in exchanging the empty pretension and dull pedantry of rhetorical and grammatical studies for the real enquiries of philosophy:—
Ite hinc, inanes rhetorum ampullae,
Inflata rore non Achaico verba,
Et vos, Stiloque, Tarquitique, Varroque,
Scholasticorum natio madens pingui,
Ite hinc, inanis cymbalon iuventutis.
* * * * *
Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus,
Magni petentes docta dicta Sironis,
Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura.
These lines are the earliest expression of that philosophical longing which haunted Virgil through all his life as a hope and aspiration, but never found its realisation in speculative result. The motive which he professes for entering on the study,
Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura,
is the same as that which acted on Lucretius—the wish to secure an ideal serenity of life. The same trust in the calming influence of the Epicurean philosophy appears in the
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, etc.
of the second Georgic. But in different ways, by the deep feeling of melancholy in the one, by the revolt and spiritual reaction in the other, Lucretius and Virgil both show that these tenets could not secure to ‘the passionate heart of the poet’ that calmness and serenity of spirit which they gave to men of the stamp of Atticus, Velleius, or Torquatus. The final lines of the poem express the lingering regret with which he bids a temporary farewell to the Muses. These few lines, more than any other poem attributed to Virgil, seem to bring him in his personal feelings nearer to us. There is a touch of the graciousness of his nature, recalling the cordial feeling of Catullus to all his young comrades, in the passing notice of those who had shared his studies:—
Iam valete, formosi.
At a time when the poetry of the younger generation was universally free and licentious in tone, the purity of Virgil’s nature reveals itself in the prayer to the Muses to revisit his writings ‘pudenter et raro,’ chastely and seldom. The whole poem is the sincere expression of the scholar and poet, even in youth idealising the austere charm of philosophy, while feeling in his heart the more powerful attraction of poetry. In the
Nam, fatebimur verum,
Dulces fuistis,
is the literal expression of that deep joy which afterwards moved him in uttering the lines—
Me vero primum dulces ante omnia Musae, etc.
and
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor;
and which sustained him stedfastly in the noble harmony of all his later life.
Of the next ten years of his career nothing is known with certainty; but the outbreak of the Civil War is likely to have interrupted his residence at Rome, and he is next heard of living in his native district and engaged in the composition of the Eclogues. He took no part in the war, nor ever served as a soldier; and he seems to have appeared only once in the other field of practical distinction open to a young Roman who had received so elaborate an education—that of forensic pleading. He is said to have wanted the readiness of speech and self-possession necessary for success in such a career; and he was thus fortunate in escaping all temptation to sacrifice his genius to the ambition of practical life, or to divide his allegiance, as Licinius Calvus did, between the claims of poetry and of oratory. His first literary impulse was to write an historical epic on the early Roman or Alban history, and to this impulse, he himself alludes in the lines of the sixth Eclogue,—
Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem
Vellit et admonuit.
He gave up the idea, feeling the unsuitable nature of the material for poetic treatment,—‘offensus materia,’ as the Life of Donatus expresses it; and he resolutely resisted the projects often urged upon him of giving a poetical account of contemporary events, in celebration of the glory of Pollio, Varus, or Caesar. But it is noticeable as a proof of the persistence with which his mind continued to dwell on ideas once projected, till they finally assumed appropriate shape, that in the Aeneid he really combines these two purposes of vivifying the ancient traditions of Rome and Alba, and of glorifying the great results of his own era. It is by this capacity of forecasting some great work, and dwelling on the idea till it clears itself of all alien matter and assimilates to itself the impressions and interests of a life-time, that the vastest and most enduring monuments of genius are produced.
In the year of the battle of Philippi, Virgil was living in his native district, engaged in the composition of his pastoral poems. Of his mode of life, taste, and feelings about this time we perceive only that he continued to be a student of the Alexandrine literature, that he had, by natural gift and assiduous culture, brought the technical part of his art—the diction and rhythm of poetry—to the highest perfection hitherto attained, that he enjoyed the favour and patronage of the Governor of the province, Asinius Pollio, and that he was united by strong ties of affection and warm admiration to Cornelius Gallus, who, while still in early youth, had obtained high distinction in poetry and a prominent position in public life. There are in the Eclogues notices of other poets of the district, whose friendship he enjoyed or whose jealousy he excited. The Mopsus of the fifth is said to be the didactic poet, Aemilius Macer. The mention of Bavius and Maevius, the ‘iurgia Codri,’ and the allusion in a later poem to Anser the panegyrist of Antony, are the nearest approaches to anything like resentment or personal satire that Virgil has shown. It may be that in the lines where Amaryllis and Galatea and other personages of the poems are introduced he refers to some personal experiences; but as compared with all the poets of this era, Virgil either observed a great reticence, or enjoyed an exceptional immunity from the passions of youth. The whole tone of the earlier poems, and numerous expressions in all of them, such as ‘tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra,’ are suggestive of a somewhat indolent enjoyment of the charm of books, of poetry, and of the softer beauties of Nature.
The following year was the turning-point in his career, and gave a more definite aim to his genius and sympathies. In that year his own fortunes became involved in the affairs which were determining the fate of the world. The Triumvirs, in assigning grants of land to their soldiers, had confiscated the territory of Cremona, which had shown sympathy with the Senatorian cause, and when this proved insufficient, an addition was made from the adjoining Mantuan territory, in which the farm of Virgil’s father was situated. The Commissioners appointed to distribute the land were Pollio, Varus, and Gallus, all friendly to Virgil, and by their advice he went to Rome, and obtained the restitution of his land by personal application to Octavianus. On his return to his native district he found that Varus had succeeded Pollio as Governor of the province. He appears to have been unfriendly to the Mantuans, and was either unable or unwilling to protect Virgil, who was forced at the imminent peril of his life to escape, by swimming the river, from the violence of the soldier who had entered on the possession of the land. Two of the Eclogues, the first and the ninth, are written in connexion with these events. Though he still adheres to an indirect and allusive treatment of his subject, these poems possess the interest of being based on real experience. They give expression to the sense of disorder, insecurity, and distress, which we learn from other sources accompanied these forced divisions and alienations of land. The first expresses also the gratitude of the poet to ‘the god-like youth’ to whom he owed the exceptional indulgence of being, though only for a short time, reinstated in the possession of his land. It is characteristic either of some weakness in Virgil’s nature, or of a great depression among the peaceful inhabitants of Italy, that he had no thought of resisting violence by violence, that he does not even express resentment against the intruder, but only a feeling of wonder that any man could be capable of such wickedness. To most readers the vehemence with which the author of the ‘Dirae,’ under similar circumstances, curses the land and its new owners, appears, if less sweet and
musical, more natural than this mild submission to superior force expressed by Virgil. But in these personal experiences that strong sympathy with the national fortunes, which henceforward animates his poetry, originates. Virgil may thus in a sense be numbered among the poets who ‘are cradled into poetry by wrong.’
After this second forcible expulsion from his old home, he took refuge, along with his family, in a small country-house which had belonged to his old teacher Siron. The poem numbered X. in the Catalepta,
Villula quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle,
Verum illi domino tu quoque divitiae,
was written at this time. It expresses anxiety and distress about the state of his native district, to which, as in Eclogue i., he applies the word patria, and affectionate solicitude for those along with him, ‘those with me whom I have ever loved,’ and especially for his father. His own experience at this time may have suggested to him the feelings which he afterwards reproduced in describing the flight of Aeneas from the ruins of Troy.
He seems never after this time to have returned to his native district. The liberality of Octavianus compensated him for his loss, nor was the even tenor of his life henceforward broken by any new dangers or hardships. Through the gift of friends and patrons he acquired a fortune, which at his death amounted to 10,000,000 sesterces (about £90,000); he possessed a house on the Esquiline near the gardens of Maecenas, a villa at Naples, and a country-house near Nola in Campania; and he seems to have lived from time to time in Sicily and the South of Italy.