Defessi aspicimus: quae caussa indigna serenos And how pure appears the love of country still moving the august shade in the world below, in the lines which follow Ille nihil, nec me quaerentem vana moratur, Sed graviter gemitus imo de pectore ducens, 'Heu fuge, nate dea, teque his,' ait, 'eripe flammis: Under the influence of the same feelings of affection and reverence, Andromache is introduced bringing annual offerings to the empty tomb and altars consecrated to the Manes of her first husband Sollemnis cum forte dapes, et tristia dona Ante urbem in luco falsi Simoentis ad undam, Similar honours are paid by Dido to the spirit of Sychaeus 1 'O light of the Dardan land, most trusted hope of the Trojans, why hast thou tarried so long? from what shores, Hector, dost thou, the object of much longing, come? how, after many deaths of thy kinsmen, after manifold shocks to the city and to those who dwell within it, do we, in our utter weariness, behold thee? what cruel cause hath marred thy calm aspect, or why do I behold these wounds?' ii. 281-6. 2He makes no reply, nor detains me by answer to my idle questions, but with a deep groan from the bottom of his breast, "Ah fly," he says, "Goddess-born, and wrest thyself away from these flames: the enemy holds the walls; Troy falls in ruins from its lofty summit; enough has been granted to my country and to Priam; could Pergama have been defended by any single hand even by this it should have been defended. Troy commits to thee her sacred emblems and household Gods: take them as companions of thy destinies, seek a fortress for them, which thou shalt raise of mighty size after thy wide wanderings over the deep are over."? 3 At a time when Andromache, in a grove in front of the city by the stream of Simoeis-not the true Simoeis-happened to be bringing the yearly offering of food, a melancholy gift to the dead, and to be calling his Manes to the tomb of Hector-the empty mound of green turf which she had hallowed with the two altars, which gave food for her tears.' iii. 301-5 § 2] SPIRITUAL LIFE AFTER DEATH Praeterea fuit in tectis de marmore templum 373 The long account of the 'Games' in Book V., which, from a Roman point of view, might be regarded as a needless excrescence on the poem, is justified by the consideration that they are celebrated in honour of the Manes of Anchises. The whole of the Sixth Book-the master-piece of Virgil's creative invention-is inspired by the feeling of the greater spiritual life which awaits man beyond the grave. The conceptions and composition of that Book entitle Virgil to take his place with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Plato among the four great religious teachers,--the 'pii vates' who, in transmitting, have illumined the spiritual intuitions of antiquity. The sense of devout awe is the chief mark of distinction between the 'Inferno' of Virgil and that of Homer, the conception of which is due to the suggestive force of natural curiosity and natural affection. The dead do not appear to Virgil merely as the shadowy inhabitants of an unsubstantial world,―vekov ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα,—but as partakers in a more august and righteous dispensation than that under which mortals live. The spirit of Virgil is on this subject more in harmony with that of Aeschylus than of Homer, but his thoughts of the dead are happier and of a less austere majesty than those expressed in the Choëphoroe. The whole humanising and moralising influence of Greek philosophy, and especially of the Platonic teaching, combines in Virgil's representation with the primitive fancies of early times and the popular beliefs and practices transmitted from those times to his own age. But just as he fails to form a consistent conception of the action of the powers of Heaven out of the various beliefs, primitive, artistic, national, and philosophical, which he endeavours to reconcile, so he has failed to produce a consistent picture of the spiritual life out of the various popular, 1 Besides there was within the palace a marble chapel in memory of her former lord, which she cherished with marvellous reverence, wreathing it with snow-white fillets and festal leaves.' iv. 457-9. mystical, and philosophical modes of thought which he strove to combine into a single representation. Perhaps if he had lived longer and been able to carry further the 'potiora studia' on which he was engaged simultaneously with the composition of the Aeneid, he might have effected a more specious reconcilement of what now appear irreconcileable factors of belief. Or, perhaps, in the thought which induces him to dismiss Aeneas and the Sibyl by the gate through which falsa ad caelum mittunt insomnia Manes1 we may recognise a trace, not certainly of Epicurean unbelief, but of that sad and subtle irony with which the spirit of man inwardly acknowledges that it is baffled in its highest quest. The august spectacle which is unfolded before Aeneas,-that, too, like the vision of Er the son of Armenius, is but a μûðos,— a symbol of a state of being, which the human imagination, illuminated by conscience and affection, shadows forth as an object of hope, but which it cannot grasp as a reality. In the grandeur of moral belief which inspires Virgil's shadowy representation, in his recognition of the everlasting distinction between a life of righteousness and of unrighteousness, of purity and of impurity, he but reproduces the profoundest ethical intuitions of Plato. But in the indication of that trust in a final reunion which has comforted innumerable human hearts the Roman poet is moved by the tender affection of his own nature, and follows the light of his own intuition. Ancient commentators have drawn attention to the large place which the account of religious ceremonies occupies in the Aeneid, and to the exact acquaintance which Virgil shows with the minutiae of Pontifical and Augural lore. It is in keeping with the character of Aeneas as the hero of a religious epic, that 1 'The Manes send unreal dreams to the world above.' 2 Where her former husband Sychaeus sympathises with all her sorrows and loves her with a love equal to her own.' the commencement and completion of every enterprise are accompanied with sacrifices and other ceremonial observances. M. Gaston Boissier 1, following Macrobius, has pointed out the special propriety of the offerings made to different gods, of the peculiar use of such epithets as 'eximios' applied to the bulls selected for sacrifice, of the ritual application of the words. 'porricio' and 'porrigo,' and of the words addressed to Aeneas. by the River-Nymphs 3,-'Aenea, vigila,'—which would recall to Roman ears those with which the commander of the Roman armies, on the outbreak of war, shook the shields and sacred symbols of Mars. Other passages would remind the readers of Virgil of the ceremonial observances with which they were familiar, as for instance that in which Helenus prescribes to Aeneas the peculiarly Roman practice of veiling the head in worship and sacrifice Quin, ubi transmissae steterint trans aequora classes, Et positis aris iam vota in litore solves, There are traces also of a worship, which from its wider diffusion, and its late survival, seems to belong to a remoter antiquity than the peculiar ceremonial of Rome,-as in the prayer offered to the god of Soracte Summe deum, sancti custos Soractis, Apollo, 1 Cp. 'Un Poëte Théologien,' in the Revue des Deux Mondes. 2 Cf. Aen. v. 236: viii. 273 Vobis laetus ego hoc candentem in litore taurum Quare agite, O iuvenes! tantarum in munere laudum 3 Created out of his ships. Nay when thy fleet, after crossing the seas, shall have come to anchor, and, after raising altars, thou shalt pay thy vows upon the shore, then veil thy head with a purple robe, lest, while the consecrated fires are burning in the worship of the Gods, the face of some enemy may meet thee, and con found the omens.' iii. 403-7. Defessi aspicimus: quae caussa indigna serenos And how pure appears the love of country still moving the august shade in the world below, in the lines which follow Ille nihil, nec me quaerentem vana moratur, 'Heu fuge, nate dea, teque his,' ait, 'eripe flammis: Under the influence of the same feelings of affection and reverence, Andromache is introduced bringing annual offerings to the empty tomb and altars consecrated to the Manes of her first husband Sollemnis cum forte dapes, et tristia dona Ante urbem in luco falsi Simoentis ad undam, Similar honours are paid by Dido to the spirit of Sychaeus 1 'O light of the Dardan land, most trusted hope of the Trojans, why hast thou tarried so long? from what shores, Hector, dost thou, the object of much longing, come? how, after many deaths of thy kinsmen, after manifold shocks to the city and to those who dwell within it, do we, in our utter weariness, behold thee? what cruel cause hath marred thy calm aspect, or why do I behold these wounds?' ii. 281-6. 2 He makes no reply, nor detains me by answer to my idle questions, but with a deep groan from the bottom of his breast, "Ah fly," he says, "Goddess-born, and wrest thyself away from these flames: the enemy holds the walls; Troy falls in ruins from its lofty summit; enough has been granted to my country and to Priam; could Pergama have been defended by any single hand even by this it should have been defended. Troy commits to thee her sacred emblems and household Gods: take them as companions of thy destinies, seek a fortress for them, which thou shalt raise of mighty size after thy wide wanderings over the deep are over."? 3At a time when Andromache, in a grove in front of the city by the stream of Simoeis-not the true Simoeis-happened to be bringing the yearly offering of food, a melancholy gift to the dead, and to be calling his Manes to the tomb of Hector-the empty mound of green turf which she had hallowed with the two altars, which gave food for her tears.' iii. 301-5. |