So early as the time of Timaeus, i.e. before the First Punic War, the connexion of Aeneas with the worship of the Penates at Lavinium had been recognised. His own worship also established itself in the religion of the State by his identification with Jupiter Indiges, who seems to have had a temple on the banks of the river Numicius. Many families among the Roman aristocracy, as for instance the Cluentii, Sergii, Memmii2, claimed to be descended from the followers of Aeneas. From the time of Naevius this account of the origin of the Romans had been the accepted belief in all Latin literature. Ennius begins his annals from the date Quum veter occubuit Priamus sub Marte Pelasgo3. The poet Accius had written a tragedy called Aeneadae. The Roman annalists started with the tradition as an accepted fact. Thus Livy in reference to this belief uses the expression 'it is sufficiently established.' The great antiquarian Varro wrote a treatise on the Trojan origin of Roman families. Cicero in his Verrine orations (act. ii. 4. 33) speaks of the relationship of the people of Segesta in Sicily, which claimed to be a colony founded by Aeneas, with the Roman people. Even Lucretius, who stands apart from the general traditional beliefs of his countrymen, begins his poem with the words 'Aeneadum genetrix.' Virgil's poem appealed not to the popular taste, but to the national, religious, aristocratic, and literary sympathies of the cultivated classes. The legend of Aeneas, if less ancient and less popular, assigned a more august origin to the Roman race than the tale of the birth of Romulus : Ab Iove principium generis, Iove Dardana pubes 1 Livy, xxv. 12. When old Priam fell beneath the Pelasgian host.' 2 Aen. v. 117-123. From Jove is the origin of our race in Jove, as their fore-father, the Dardan youth exults; our king himself the Trojan Aeneas is of the high lineage of Jove.' Aen. vii. 219-221. These considerations may have recommended this subject to Virgil, as the most suitable symbol of the idea of Rome, from both a national and religious point of view. But the circumstance which must have absolutely determined his choice was the claim which the Julian gens made to be directly descended from Iulus, Aeneas, and the goddess Venus. This claim Virgil had already acknowledged in the line (Ecl. ix. 47), Ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum, and again (Georg. i. 28), cingens materna tempora myrto 1. Even Julius Caesar had shown the importance which he attached to it by taking the words 'Venus Victrix' for his watchword at the battle of Pharsalia. A greater tribute was paid to the qualities of Augustus, a more august consecration was conferred on his rule, by representing that rule as a prominent object in the counsels of Heaven a thousand years before its actual establishment, than could have been bestowed on him by the most detailed and ornate account of his actual successes. The personal, as distinct from the national motive of the poem, is revealed in the prophetic lines attributed to Jupiter, Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar, Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, While the vagueness of the tradition and the absence of definite incident and individual character associated with it were conditions unfavourable to novelty and vividness of representation, yet they allowed to Virgil great latitude in carrying out his purpose of giving body and substance to all that unknown and shadowy past, which survived only in names, customs, and cere 1 'Lo the star of Caesar sprung from Dione hath advanced '-' wreathing his brows with the myrtle sacred to his mother.' Cf. Sic fatus velat materna tempora myrto. Aen. v. 72. 2There shall be born of an illustrious line a Trojan Caesar, destined to make ocean the boundary of his empire, the stars the boundary of his fame, Julius, a name handed down from mighty Iulus.' Aen. i. 286-288. $ 2] COMPOSITE CHARACTER OF THE LEGEND 309 monies. He was not limited to any particular district or period. His plan enabled him to embrace in the compass of his epic the dim traditions connected with the origins' of the famous towns and tribes of Central Italy and of several of the great Roman families; it enabled him to imagine the primitive state of places which had a world-wide celebrity in his own time; to invoke, as an element of poetic interest, the veneration paid to the ancient rites of religion; and to cast an idealising light on events, personages, families, or customs familiar to his own age, by associating them with the sentiment of an immemorial past. One great excellence of the Aeneid, as a representative poem, is the large prospect of Roman and Italian life which it opens up before us. The vague outlines of the story which he followed enabled Virgil to enlarge his conception with an ampler content of local and national material, than if he had been called upon to recast a more definite and more vital tradition. The want of individuality in the personages of his story justified him in exhibiting their character in accordance with his own ideal; in conceiving of Aeneas as the type of antique piety combined with modern humanity, and of Turnus as the type of the haughty and martial spirit animating the old Italian race. Even the composite character of the legend and the heterogeneous elements out of which it was composed, if unfavourable to unity of impression and simplicity of execution, conduced to the poet's purpose of concentrating in one representation, of a Roman vastness of compass, whatever might enhance and illustrate the greatness of Rome and of its ruler. The Rome of the Augustan Age no longer exhibited the political and religious unity of an old Italian republic; it was expanding its limits so as to embrace in a much wider unity the various nations that had played their part in the past history of the world. As the glory and wealth of Asia, Greece, Carthage, etc. had all gone to swell the glory and wealth of Rome, so all the traditions, historic memories, and literary art of the past were to be made tributary to her national representative poem. The first great epic poem of the ancient world is buoyant with the promise of the mighty life which was to be; the last great epic is weighty with the accumulated experience of all that had been. The stream of epic poetry shows no longer the jubilant force and purity of waters-'exercita cursu flumina'-which rise in the high mountain-land separating barbarism from civilisation; it moves more slowly and less clearly through more level and cultivated districts; its volume is swollen and its weight increased by tributaries which have never known the 'bright speed" of its nobler sources. III. Composite character of the Aeneid illustrated by an examination of the poem. These considerations lead to the conclusion that the legend of Aeneas was better suited than any other which he could have selected for the two objects which Virgil had before his mind in the composition of the Aeneid; first, that of writing a poem representative and commemorative of Rome and of his own epoch, in the spirit in which some of the great architectural works of the Empire, such as the Column of Trajan, the Arches of Titus and of Constantine, were erected; and, secondly, that of writing an imitative epic of action, manners, and character which should afford to his countrymen an interest analogous to that which the Greeks derived from the Homeric poems. The knowledge necessary to enable him to fulfil the first purpose was contained in such works as the ceremonial books of the various Priestly Colleges, the 'Origines' of Cato, the antiquarian treatise of Varro, and perhaps the 'Annales' and 'Fasti 2' which preserved the record of national and family traditions. In giving life to these dry materials his mind was animated by 1 'Oxus forgetting the bright speed he had 2 Cf. Hor. Od. iii. 17. 2-4 :— Sohrab and Rustum. Quando et priores hinc Lamias ferunt Per memores genus omne fastos, etc. the spectacle of Rome, and the thought of her wide empire, her genius, character, and history; by the visible survivals of ancient ceremonies and memorials of the past; by the sight of the great natural features of the land, of old Italian towns of historic renown, or, where they had disappeared, of the localities still marked by their name:— locus Ardea quondam Dictus avis; et nunc magnum tenet Ardea nomen1. As poetic sources of inspiration for this part of his task Virgil had the national epic poems of Naevius and Ennius; and of both of these he made use of the first, in his account of the storm which drives Aeneas to Carthage and of his entertainment there by the Carthaginian Queen; of the second, by his use of many half-lines and expressions which give an antique and stately character to the description of incidents or the expression of sentiment. For Virgil's other purpose, his chief materials were derived from his intimate familiarity with the two great Homeric poems: but he availed himself also of incidents contained in the Homeric Hymns, in the Cyclic poems, in the Greek Tragedies, as for instance the lost Laocoon of Sophocles, and in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius. His own experience of life, and still more the insight which his own. nature afforded him into various moods of passion, affection, and chivalrous emotion, enabled him to impart novelty and individuality to the materials which he derived from these foreign and ancient sources. A minute examination of the various books of the poem would bring out clearly that these two objects, that of raising a monument to the glory of Rome and of Augustus, and that of writing an imitative epic reproducing some image of the manners and life of the heroic age, were present to the mind of Virgil through his whole undertaking. It will be sufficient in order to show this two-fold purpose to look at the first book, and at some of the more prominent incidents in the later books. The place was called Ardea long ago by our fathers; and now Ardea, a name of might, haunts the spot.' |