And in the revelation of Anchises, Augustus is spoken of as Augustus Caesar, Divi genus: aurea condet He is there proclaimed to be greater in the extent of his conquests and civilising labours than Hercules and Bacchus. And, though less prominently than in the Invocation to the Georgics, divine honours and the function of answering prayer are promised to him by the mouth of Jupiter Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum, The personal figure of the Emperor is thus encompassed with the halo of military glory, of beneficent action on the world, of a divine sanction, and of an ultimate heritage of divine honours. The Aeneid considered as a representative work of genius is thus seen to be the expression or embodiment of an idea of powerful meaning for the age in which the poem was written, for the centuries immediately succeeding that age, and, through the action of historical associations, for all times. As the great poem of Dante gained both immediate and permanent attention by the human interest which it imparted to the spiritual idea on which mediaeval Europe based its life; as the inspiration of Milton's great Epic was drawn from his passionate sympathy with the intensest form of religious and political life in his age; so the quality of Virgil's genius which secured for him the most immediate and the most lasting consideration was his sympathetic comprehension of the imperial idea of Rome in its secular, religious, and personal significance. This idea he has ennobled with the associations of a divine origin and of a divine sanction; of a remote antiquity and an unbroken con 1 Augustus Caesar, of descent from a god: who shall establish again the golden age of Latium over fields where Saturn once reigned.' vi. 793-5. 2Him hereafter, laden with the spoils of the East, thou shalt welcome in heaven and feel no fear longer; he too will be invoked with prayers." i. 289-90. § 3] CIVILISING INFLUENCE OF ROME 353 tinuity of great deeds and great men; of the pomp and pride of war, and of the majesty of government: and he has softened and humanised the impression thus produced by the thought of peace, law, and order given to the world. In his stately diction we are reminded only of the power, glory, majesty, and civilising influence with which the idea of Rome is encompassed. There is nothing to obtrude the thought of the spirit, in which life, freedom, and individuality were crushed out of the world. And this idea, of which Virgil's poem is the glorified representation, was one actually realised, one which influenced the lives of generations of men, and which was an important element in moulding the whole subsequent history of the world. Yet the idea is one more adapted to be the inspiring influence of a great historical work, like the national history of Livy, or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' than of a great poem, which must satisfy the human and moral sympathies of men as well as their sense of power. Material greatness and civilisation, and the qualities of mind and character through which these effects are produced, exercise a great spell over the imagination and the masculine sympathies of the world. But the highest art does more than this-it enlarges man's sense of a spiritual life, it purifies his notions of happiness, it deepens his conviction of a righteous government of the world. Through the imagination it speaks to the soul. The idea of imperial Rome is rather that of the enemy than of the promoter of the spiritual life or of individual happiness it impresses on the mind the thought of a vast and orderly, but not of a moral and humane government. The idea of the Roman Republic, as it shines through the rude fragments of the Annals of Ennius in such utterances as these : Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque1,— is suggestive of a nobler energy of character, of more abundant public and private virtue, than the idea pervading and animating 1 'By the manners of the olden time and its men the Roman State stands firm.' the polished verse of the Aeneid. The thought of the Rome of Ennius is associated in our minds with the free political life of the Forum and the Campus Martius, and with the grave deliberations of the Senate, as well as with the exercise of military force and administrative sovereignty. The idea of Italy pervading the Georgics has everything to attract and nothing to repel our sympathies: and thus notwithstanding the inferior opportunities for awakening human interest which necessarily attach to a didactic when compared with an epic poem, the charm exercised by that poem is more unmixed and unchanging than that of the poem which evokes the proud memories of the Capitol. In the Aeneid, Virgil is really the panegyrist of despotism under the delusive disguise of paternal government In so far as there is any conflict between right and wrong in the Aeneid, the wrong appears to be the 'victrix causa' which pleases the gods.' The religious idea of the Fates is invested with none of the ethical mystery with which the analogous idea in Greek poetry is invested. They act in a hard, plain, arbitrary way, irrespective of right and wrong, regardless of personal happiness or suffering. The actors in the poem who move our sympathies are those who perish in blind resistance to, or blind compliance with, their decreesDido, Pallas, Turnus, and Lausus. The opposition between natural human feeling and the 'divom inclementia' is reverently accepted and acquiesced in by Virgil in the person of his hero. The conclusion at which we arrive as to the value of the Aeneid as an epic poem representative of the Roman Empire, is that Virgil has given a true, adequate, and noble expression to an idea which actually has exercised a greater spell over the imagination and a greater influence over the daily lives of men, than any other which owed its origin to their secular interests: but that this idea, regarded from its political, religious, and personal side, is one which does not touch the heart, or enlighten the conscience: and this is an important drawback to the claim which the Aeneid may have to the highest rank as a work of art. CHAPTER XI. THE AENEID AS AN EPIC POEM OF HUMAN LIFE. I. THE national, religious, and political ideas which form the central interest of the poem have been considered in the previous chapter. We have seen how Virgil was moved by an impulse similar to that which acted on Ennius in a ruder age, and in what way he strove to express the meaning which the idea of Rome has for all times, and to find an adequate symbol of the dominant sentiment of his own time, It remains to consider how far the poem sustains by its command over our sympathies the interest thus established in its favour; and to ascertain what value the Aeneid, as a poem of action, unfolding a spectacle of human life, manners, character, and passion, possessed for the Romans and still possesses for ourselves. The action of the poem, apart from its bearing on the destinies of the world, has a grandeur and dignity of its own. It is enacted on a great theatre, developes itself by incidents. giving free play to the highest modes of human energy, and passion, and through the agency of personages already renowned in legend and poetry. In that mythical age which the poet recalls to life no spectacle could be imagined more deserving to fix the attention of the world than the fall of Troy, the building of Carthage, and the first rude settlement on the hills of Rome. Whatever else may be said of the personages of the story, they are conceived of as playing no common part in human affairs. In following their fortunes we breathe the air of that high poetic region which forms the undetermined. border-land between mythology and history. We look back on the ruined state of the greatest city of legendary times, and we mark the first beginnings of the two Imperial cities which in historical times disputed the empire of the world. The poem evokes the associations, ancient and recent, attaching to the various scenes through which the action passes,-Troy, Carthage, Sicily, the shores of Latium, the Tiber, and the hills on which Rome was built. The vagueness of the time in which the action is laid enables the poet to connect together, in a most critical position of human affairs, the fortunes of the chief powers of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The spheres of man's activity in which the action moves-war and sea-adventure in search of undiscovered lands-give the fullest scope to energetic representation. In his conception of the voyage of Aeneas and of a great war determining the issue of his enterprise, Virgil followed the greatest epic examples, and found a subject to which he could impart the interest of adventurous incident and heroic achievement. In his conception of the part played in the action by the passion of love, he introduced a more familiar and modern phase of life which the examples of the Greek tragedians and of the Alexandrine epic had proved to be capable of idealising treatment. The actors moreover who play their part in these critical events are not 'common or mean.' The crisis is conceived of as one so momentous, from the issues involved in it, as to call forth the passions and the energies of the old Olympian Powers. But even the human personages of the story appear with a prestige of glory and sanctity, and yet are sufficiently unfamiliar to excite new expectations. Aeneas, as the son of a mightier goddess', is distinguished in the Iliad by the honours of a higher lineage than Achilles. He is brave in war, the comrade of Hector, a hero deemed worthy to encounter Achilles himself as well as Diomede in battle. He is especially dear to the gods, and is marked out by prophecy as destined to bear, and transmit to his descendants, the rule over the remnant of the Trojans. To Anchises attaches the sanctity of one enjoying a closer communion with the immortals, of one at once 1 Il. xx. 105. |