the peaceful successes of the Augustan Age, in the only form in which contemporary or recent events admit of being poetically treated, viz. lyrical poetry. But considering how eager Augustus was to have his wars celebrated in verse and how strong in him was the national passion for glory, and considering that Virgil and Horace were pre-eminently the favourite poets of the time and the special friends both of the Emperor himself and his minister, it is remarkable how they both avoid or defer the task which he wished to impose on them. This reluctance arose from no inadequate appreciation of his services to the world, but from their high appreciation of what was due to their art. Virgil had been similarly importuned in earlier times by Pollio and Varus, and had gracefully waived the claim made on him by pleading the fitness of his own muse only for the lighter themes of pastoral poetry. He seems to have hesitated long as to the form which the celebration of the glories of the Augustan Age should take. How he solved the problem, how he sought to combine in a work of Greek art the inspiration of the national epic with the personal celebration of Augustus, will be treated of in the following chapter.

CHAPTER IX.

FORM AND SUBJECT OF THE AENEID.

I.

THE motives and purpose influencing Virgil to undertake the composition of the Aeneid are to be sought partly in his own. literary position, partly in the state of public feeling at the time when he commenced his task, and partly in the direction given to his genius by the personal influence of Augustus. As the author of the Georgics he had established his position as the foremost poetic artist of his time. He had achieved a great success in a great and serious undertaking. He had entered into competition with Greek poets of acknowledged reputation, and had surpassed them in their own province. He had accomplished all that could be accomplished by him as the poet of the peaceful charm of country life. But while in his two earlier works he limits himself to that field assigned to him by Horace, that over which the 'gaudentes rure Camenae' presided, the stirring of a larger ambition is observable in both poems:

Si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae :

and again :—

Temptanda via est qua me quoque possim
Tollere humo victorque virum volitare per ora'.

He had yet to find a fuller expression for his sympathy with his age, which had deepened with the deepening significance of the

1 'If our song be of the woods, let the woods be worthy of a consul.' 'I must essay a way by which I too may be able to rise above the ground, and to speed triumphant through the mouths of men.'

times, and for that interest in the contemplation of human life which becomes the dominant influence in all great poets whose faculty ripens with advancing years. He might still aspire to be the Homer, as he had proved himself to be the Theocritus and the Hesiod of his country. The rudeness of the work of Ennius, the limited and temporary scope of the works of Varius, -his only competitor in epic song,-left that place still unappropriated. Virgil's whole previous career prepared him to be the author of a poem of sustained elevation and elaborate workmanship. The composition of the Georgics had trained his faculty of continuous exposition and of massing together a great variety of details towards a common end. It had given him a perfect mastery over the only vehicle suitable to the dignity of epic poetry. He had indeed still to put forth untried capacities, -the faculties of dealing with the passions and movement of human life as he had dealt with the sentiment and movement of Nature, of expressing thought and feeling dramatically and oratorically, and of imparting living interest to the actions and fortunes of imaginary personages. But he was now in the maturity of his powers. He had long lived with the single purpose of perfecting himself in art and knowledge. He had no other ambition but to produce some great work, which should perpetuate his own fame, and be a monument of his country's greatness.

The completion of the Georgics and the first conception of the Aeneid coincided in point of time with the event which not only established a sense of security in the room of the long strain of alarm and anxiety and a sense of national unity in the room of internecine strife in the Roman world, but which, to those looking back upon it after nineteen centuries, appears to be one of the most critical turning-points in all history. The enthusiasm of the moment found expression by the voice of Horace :

Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero
Pulsanda tellus.

But Virgil represents more truly the deeper tendencies of his

VIRGIL'S MOTIVES FOR WRITING AN EPIC

§ 1] 297 age than the poet who has most faithfully painted its social aspects. He looks beyond the temporary triumph and sense of relief, and sees in the victory of Actium the culminating point of all the past history of Rome and the starting point of a greater future. There had been no time since the final defeat of Hannibal so calculated to re-awaken the sense of national life, of the mission to subdue and govern the world assigned to Rome, and of the divine guardianship of which she was the object. As the joy of a great success had found a representative voice in Ennius in the age when the State, relieved from all overwhelming danger, started on its career of foreign conquest, so it found as deep and true a voice in Virgil at the time when the relief, if not from as imminent a danger, yet certainly from a much longer strain of anxiety, left Rome free to consolidate her many conquests into a vast and orderly Empire.

In both the Eclogues and Georgics it was seen that Virgil allows his genius to be in some measure directed by others in the choice of his subjects, while he follows his own judgment in his mode of treating them. In the earlier poems he acknowledges the direction given to him both by Varus and by Pollio,

while at the same time he excuses himself from directly celebrating their actions. In the Georgics he describes his task as being commanded by Maecenas- tua, Maecenas, haud mollia iussa.' The desire of Augustus, whether openly expressed or not, to commemorate his success and to add lustre to his rule by associating them with the noblest art of his age, must have acted with more imperious urgency on the will of Virgil than the wishes of any of his earlier patrons. His patriotic and personal feeling to the saviour of the State and his own benefactor must have made the task imposed on him a service of love as well as of obligation. But in undertaking this task he desired to make it subservient to the purpose of producing a work which should emulate the greatest poetical works of the

Greeks, and which should, at the same time, be a true symbol of Rome at the zenith of her fortunes.

Virgil had now found in his own age a motive for the composition of that epic poem which it had been his boyish ambition to attempt,

Cum canerem reges et proelia.

He could appeal as Ennius, or even as Homer had done, to hearers animated by the same feeling which moved himself. The two great conditions of a work of art which should gain the ear of the world immediately, and which should interest it permanently, were prepared for him in the enthusiasm of the moment, and in the enduring interest attaching to the career of Rome. His highly-trained faculty, already proved and exercised in other works, was a guarantee for the artistic execution of any design which he should undertake. But two questions remained for him to solve,-what form should his epic poem assume? should he follow absolutely the precedent of Homer, or of Ennius, or endeavour to surpass the contemporary panegyrists like Varius by a direct celebration of the events of his age? And if he adopted the Homeric type, what subject should he adopt so as to impart the interest of personal fortunes and human character to a poem the inspiring motive of which was the national idea?

The problem which Virgil set before himself was really one altogether new in literature. The Alexandrian Age had endeavoured to revive an interest in the heroic adventure of early or mythical times. It had recognised the principle that this distant background was essential to a poem of heroic action, and that events of contemporary or recent history were not capable of epic treatment. But it had not discerned the necessary supplement to that principle, that if such a poem, on a large scale, is to gain a permanent place in literature, it must bear some immediate relation to the age in which it is written, and be associated with some ethical and religious truths or some political cause of vital importance to the world. The epic poet