AENEID 311 Books I to III Partly in the Original and partly in the English ARVARD COLLEGE SEP 13 1923 LIBRARY Constantins found THE preparation of this edition of Aeneid I-III was the last of Mr. C. E. Freeman's many services to the Clarendon Press: the commentary and the section on metre in the Introduction are his work. Mr. H. C. Doherty, Assistant Master at Radley College, has given valuable help in revising the notes for press, and in reading the proofs: the book owes much to his suggestions. Special thanks are also due to Mr. James Rhoades for permission to use his admirable verse translation. C. B. INTRODUCTION I. THE LIFE AND TIMES OF VIRGIL. THE life of Virgil, who was born in 70 B.C. and died in 19 B.C., coincided almost exactly with the last great internal struggle at Rome, which was to put an end to the Republic and establish the constitutional monarchy of the Julian house. Ten years before his birth the first threat of tyranny had passed away with the death of Sulla, and from 80-60 B. C. the true issue was obscured by a series of smaller struggles between the democratic and aristocratic parties, manoeuvring, as it were, for position. But in 60 B. C. the great figure of Julius Caesar became predominant, and from that time till Virgil's death the political stage was held by Julius himself and his nephew Octavian. For ten years Caesar was absent in Gaul, extending and establishing the north-western provinces of the Empire, and consolidating a military power greater even than that of Marius and Sulla. When he returned, the conflict with the Republicans began at once and did not last long: the decisive victory was already won at Pharsalus in 48. B. C., though Caesar with characteristic thoroughness spent three more years in subduing all opposition in the provinces. When he returned to Rome after the victory at Munda in Spain in 45 B.C., he was unquestioned master of the situation, and set about the work of pacification and consolidation. It might well have seemed that the constitution of Rome was already changed and a new era begun. But the murder of Caesar on the Ides of March 43 B. C. gave new life to the loyal Republicans, and for a while they offered a successful resistance to M. Antonius, who at first assumed the lead, and then to the young Octavian, who after a show of opposition soon joined him. The battle of Philippi in 42 B. C. put an end to Republican hopes, and Sextus Pompeius, who held out at sea with the last remnant, was finally defeated in 36 B. C. Meanwhile there was a new breach: Antony had retired into the East, and leagued himself with Cleopatra in Egypt, and there arose a real danger of a split into an Eastern and a Western empire. Cautiously, by diplomacy and treaties, Octavian kept this threat at bay and finally, when his position was secure and his power strengthened, he met Antony at the naval battle of Actium 31 B. C. and completely defeated him. At last the struggle of thirty years was over, and Augustus, as he was soon after called-was left in undisputed supremacy and could turn to the work of establishing the new constitution, settling the provinces in peace, and inaugurating a new epoch in the history of Rome. A boy brought up at Rome during those early years could hardly have escaped from the atmosphere of political struggle and the more terrible dread of civil war. If he were of a poetic turn of mind and a peaceful disposition, he could only have prayed, as Lucretius did, that Mars might be soothed to lay aside his arms for a while and sleep. But Virgil's boyhood was passed far enough away from Rome for the echo of the struggle to be dimmed, and the circumstances of his parentage and life gave other and permanent directions to his thoughts. He was born, so his biographer tells us, at the small village of Andes, near Mantua. His father was the hired servant of one Magius, a travelling merchant, but his industry had enabled him to acquire a little property, on which he kept bees, and ultimately to marry his master's daughter. (Can her name Magia have had something to do with the subsequent legends of Virgil's power as a magician ?) His earliest years were thus spent in country occupations and among country sights and sounds, but his father was ambitious for him and sent him to school at Cremona : there on his fifteenth birthday he took the toga virilis, and legend says that it was the day on which Lucretius died. Thence he went to Milan and to Naples, where so much of his later life was spent. All this is remote enough from politics and even if, as some modern writers have supposed, Virgil early made the acquaintance of the young Octavius, brought on a visit by Caesar to the neighbourhood of Mantua, he does not seem to have been touched as yet by the interest of public affairs. He progressed rapidly in his studies and early showed a liking for philosophy. Certain poems have come down to us as the work of his youth, and in those which can be accepted as genuine we may recognize something of his later powers and a certain playfulness which died away in after years. Coming at last to Rome Virgil soon made the acquaintance of men of letters and persons on the fringe of politics. The school of poetry then prevalent was under the influence of the late Greek literature of Alexandria; its ideal was style and polish, its themes mostly romantic or didactic, but in practice it was marred by pedantry and affectation. Of this school there were strong adherents among Virgil's new friends in C. Asinius Pollio and C. Cornelius Gallus, who had modelled himself on the Alexandrian poet Euphorion, and may have been the author of a short and pedantic poem in the epic manner called the Ciris, which has come down to us as Virgil's own. The influence of the Alexandrine school gave Virgil for ever his sense of form and largely determined the setting of his poetry, but he seems from the first to have preserved himself instinctively from its excesses and its dullnesses. Meanwhile the political storm had burst, and though Virgil, then in his early twenties', and probably not yet at Rome, may have been untouched by the contest of Julius Caesar with the Republicans, the second outburst, after Caesar's murder, affected him directly. Octavian, after the victory of Philippi in 42 B. C., settled many of his veterans in the northern provinces of Italy, and for this purpose ejected existing |