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 cur 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 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 § 3] INVOCATION OF RURAL DEITIES 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.,— are 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 tueri1, as in the later exclamation, Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes 2, 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 1 'Gods or Goddesses whose task it is to watch over the fields.' 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 Пoσeidoviños, not of the Italian Neptunus. It is not the Roman Minerva, but & γλαυκώπις Αθάνα, who is associated in poetry and legend with the olive, 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 § 3] PHILOSOPHICAL SYMBOLISM 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 schools. 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 (póvota). This is the Power addressed in the famous hymn of Cleanthes, and that appealed to in the familiar Toù yàp kaì yévos éσμév of 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 or as in the phrases 'sub Iove,' 'ante Iovem,' in reference to the stories of the ancient mythology. Even in this Invocation, Compare the first book of Cicero's De Natura Deorum. |