$ 1] APOTHEOSIS OF JULIUS CAESAR 137 down from ancient times, that under this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and proclaims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable' that the poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of July, which for the first time was celebrated with religious rites in the year 42 B. C., when the name of the month Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained ever since. The lines 25-26, Nulla neque amnem Libavit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam2, are supposed to refer to a belief which had become traditional in the time of Suetonius, that the horses which had been consecrated after crossing the Rubicon had refused to feed immediately before the death of their master'. In the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in those which mark out the divine office which he was destined to fulfil after death,— Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis Agricolae facient, damnabis tu quoque votis", as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,— allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the husbandman and vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the honour due to him as their tutelary god in heaven. And these allusions help us to understand the votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari' of the invocation in the first Georgic. Nothing illustrates more clearly the unreal conceptions of the pastoral allegory than a comparison of the language in the 1 See Conington's Introduction to this Eclogue. 2 No beast either tasted the river or touched a blade of grass.' 3 Compare M. Benoist's note on the passage. * 'Proximis diebus equorum greges, quos in traiciendo Rubicone flumine consecrarat ac vagos et sine custode dimiserat, comperit pertinacissime pabulo abstinere ubertimque flere.' Sueton. lib. i. c. 81. 'As to Bacchus and to Ceres so to thee shall the husbandmen annually make their vows; thou too wilt call on them for their fulfilment.' 6The star beneath which the harvest-fields should be glad in their corn-crops, and the grapes should gather a richer colour on the sunny hillsides.' 'Lament for Daphnis,' with the strong Roman realism of the lines at the end of the first Georgic, in which the omens portending the death of Caesar are described. Nor can anything show more clearly the want of individuality with which Virgil uses the names of the Theocritean shepherds than the fact that while the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living husbandman whose fortunes were secured by the protecting star of Caesar, Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes 1. The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this protecting influence are foreshadowed in the lines 58-61— Ergo alacris . . . amat bonus otia Daphnis; and the earliest reference to the divine honours assigned in life and death to the later representatives of the name of Caesar, is heard in the jubilant shout of wild mountains, rocks, and groves to the poet Deus, deus ille, Menalca. Although the treatment of the subject may be vague and conventional, yet this poem possesses the interest of being Virgil's earliest effort, directed to a subject of living and national interest; and many of the lines in the poem are unsurpassed for grace and sweetness of musical cadence by anything in Latin poetry. There is no allusion to contemporary events by which the date of the seventh can be determined; but the absence of such allusion and the 'purely Theocritean 2' character of the poem suggest the inference that it is a specimen of Virgil's earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated under a whispering ilex; they engage in a friendly contest of song, which is listened to also by the poet himself, who here calls himself Meliboeus. 1 Graft your pears, Daphnis: your fruits will be plucked by those who come after you.' 2 Kennedy. §1] CONVENTIONAL STYLE OF THE EARLY POEMS 139 They assert in alternate strains their claims to poetic honours, offer prayers and vows to Diana as the goddess of the chase and to Priapus as the god of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat from the heat of summer and of cheerfulness by the winter fire, and connect the story of their loves with the varying aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of trees sacred to different deities or native to different localities. Though the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan: Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam Mincius, eque sacra resonant examina quercu1. Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon :— Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin. These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over the woes of Daphnis,' may be assigned to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage of human affairs. No sound of the storms that raged outside his happy ground' disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavianus, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil seems to care only for the truth of feeling 1 'Here the green Mincio fringes its bank with delicate reeds, and swarms of bees are buzzing from the sacred oak.' 2 This I remember, and that Thyrsis was beaten in the contest: from that time Corydon is all in all with us.' with which Tityrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem. Tityrus is at once the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it. He is advanced in years2, and at the same time a poet lying indolently in the shade, and making the woods ring with the sounds of 'beautiful Amaryllis, like the young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery apparently combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan district— Quamvis lapis omnia nudus Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco*, with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae 5, A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year indicated by the 'shade of the spreading beech' in the first line, and that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81°. The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains: Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit? Barbarus has segetes? En quo discordia civis Virgil's feeling for the movement of his age, which henceforth becomes one of the main sources of his inspiration, has its origin 1 Cf. 2 Ergo tua rura manebunt Ille meas errare boves Multa meis exiret victima saeptis. Candidior postquam tondenti barba cadebat Fortunate senex. 3 See Kennedy's note on the passage. Though all your land is choked with barren stones or covered with marsh and sedge.'-P. 5 And larger shadows are falling from the lofty mountains.' 6 M. Benoist. 7'Shall some unfeeling soldier become the master of these fields, so carefully tilled, some rude stranger own these harvest-fields? see to what misery fellow-countrymen have been brought by civil strife!' in the effect which these events had on his personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened within him by the sorrows of his native district. The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same year, and in form imitated from the seventh Idyl-the famous Thalysia-of Theocritus, repeats the tale of dejection and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Mantuan district,- Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat 1, and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger which Virgil encountered from the violence of the centurion who claimed possession of his land. The speakers in the dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of Menalcas,- the pastoral poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers spread over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees,-and Lycidas, who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a poet : Me quoque dicunt Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis. Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores 2. After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the situation of Virgil's farms qua se subducere colles incipiunt Moeris sings the opening lines of certain other pastoral poems, some his own, some the songs of Menalcas. Two of these 1 'Now in defeat and sadness, since all things are the sport of chance.' "Me too the shepherds call a bard, but I give no ear to them; for as yet my strain seems far inferior to that of Varius and of Cinna, and to be as the cackling of a goose among tuneful swans.' Compare the lines which Theocritus applies to Lycidas Καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν Μοισᾶν καπυρὸν στόμα, κἠμὲ λέγοντι Theoc. vii. 37-41. |