CHAPTER X. THE AENEID AS THE EPIC OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. I. Various Modes of National Sentiment expressed in THE Aeneid, like the Annals of Ennius, is a poem inspired by national sentiment, and expressive of the idea of Rome. But the 'Res Romana1,' the growth of which Ennius witnessed and celebrated, had become greatly extended and had assumed a new form since the epic of the Republic was written. Yet the sentiment of national glory was essentially the same in the age of the elder Scipio and in the age of Augustus, though in the first it may be described as still militant, in the second as triumphant. In each time the Romans had a firm conviction of their superiority over all other nations, and a firm trust in the great destiny which had attended them since their origin, and still, as they believed, awaited them in the future. The ground on which their national self-esteem rested was their capacity for conquest and government; the result of that capacity was only fully visible after the empire over the world was established. The pride of empire is thus the most prominent mode in which the national sentiment asserts itself in the poetry of the Augustan Age. In that series of Odes in which the 1 Audire est operae pretium procedere recte art of Horace becomes the organ of the new government this sentiment finds expression by the mouth of the old enemy of the Roman race, the goddess Juno :— And while it animates even the effeminate tones of the elegiac poets to a more manly sound, this pride of empire is the dominant mode of patriotic enthusiasm in the Aeneid. Thus, in the very beginning of the poem, Virgil describes the people destined to spring from the remnant of the Trojans as populum late regem belloque superbum. To them Jupiter himself promises empire without limit either in time or place :-/ His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono, Imperium sine fine dedi1. In the same passage he sums up their greatness in the arts of war and peace in the line Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam 2. The earliest oracle given to Aeneas in the course of his wanderings contains the promise of universal dominion : Hic domus Aeneae cunctis dominabitur oris, The sacred images of the gods who are partners of his enterprise make a similar announcement to him :— Nos tumidum sub te permensi classibus aequor, Idem venturos tollemus in astra nepotes, In the fourth book Jupiter, who appears rather as contem 1 i. 278-9. 2 i. 282. iii. 97-8. 4 iii. 157-9. plating the future course of affairs than as actively influencing it, speaks of Aeneas in these words : Sed fore, qui gravidam imperiis belloque frementem Proderet, ac totum sub leges mitteret orbem1. In the famous passage in the sixth book the mission of Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento The oracle of Faunus thus announces to Latinus the great future which awaited the race destined to arise from the union of the Trojans and Italians :— Externi venient generi, qui sanguine nostrum Nomen in astra ferant, quorumque ab stirpe nepotes In the ninth book Virgil for once breaks through the impersonal reserve of the epic singer to claim for Nisus and Euryalus an eternity of fame,— Dum domus Aeneae Capitoli immobile saxum Accolet imperiumque pater Romanus habebit *. In several of these passages it is not merely the pride of conquest and dominion which is expressed, but the higher and humaner belief that the ultimate mission of Rome is to give law and peace to the world. Thus the initiation of Iulus into war is accompanied by the declaration put into the mouth of Apollo iure omnia bella Gente sub Assaraci fato ventura resident 5. In this way Virgil softens and humanises the idea of the Imperial State, representing her as not only the conqueror but the civiliser of the ancient world, and the 3 vii. 98-101. 2 vi. 852-4. 1 iv. 229-31. 5 ix. 642-3. * ix. 448-9. transmitter of that civilisation to the world of the future. And while he invests the thought of ancient and powerful sovereignty with imaginative associations, and describes acts of heroism with the glow of martial enthusiasm, yet the crowning glory which he ascribes to the Romans is the piety inherited from their Trojan ancestors. The final appeasement of the rancour of Juno is secured by the declaration of Jupiter— Hinc genus Ausonio mixtum quod sanguine surget, The national idea of Rome was associated also with the thought of the divine origin, the great antiquity, the unbroken tradition, and the eternal duration of the State. Universal empire, uninterrupted continuity of existence, were the claims of the ancient Imperial as of the modern Ecclesiastical Rome. And this idea, by the strong hold which it had on the minds first of the Romans themselves and afterwards of other nations, went far to realise itself. The confidence of the Romans in themselves was intimately connected with their belief in their origin. Ennius had impressed on their minds the belief in the miraculous birth of their founder and in his miraculous elevation after death, and in the protection afforded by the ‘augustum augurium ' by which the building of their city had been consecrated. Among no people did ancient customs and ceremonies, of which in many cases the origin was altogether forgotten, survive with such vitality. In no other people did the memory of their past history, whether of triumph or disaster, exercise so potent an influence on the present time. In no Republic has the pride of birth and the reverence felt to ancestors been so powerful and prevailing a sentiment: no State has ever been more loyal to the memory of the men who at successive crises in its history had served it or saved it from its enemies and no great secular power ever felt so strong an assurance of an unbroken ascendency in the future, 1 xii. 838-40. and of the dependence of the fate of the world on that ascendency. The Aeneid appealed to all these sentiments even with more power than the epic of the Republic and than the various national histories in which Roman literature was peculiarly rich. Virgil, while still leaving to his countrymen the pride of their descent from Mars, made them feel the charm of their relation to a more gracious divinity, and even the hereditary claim which they had to regard themselves as special objects of care to the Supreme Ruler of Heaven1. The association of their destiny with the fortunes of Aeneas enabled them to look back to a remoter and more famous epoch of antiquity than the legends of their origin which had satisfied the fancy of the older Romans. Various passages in the poem enable Virgil to invest impressive ceremonies, existing in his own time, with the associations of an immemorial past. The three great prophetic passages in the first, sixth, and eighth books enable him to revive, as Ennius had done, the thought of the great men and families of Rome, and of the great events both of earlier and more recent history. The march of Roman conquest during one hundred and fifty momentous years enabled the younger poet to evoke greater, though in some respects less happy, memories than those evoked by his predecessor. And the security of the Empire established in his day justified him in looking forward to the future with even a more assured confidence, though perhaps in a less sanguine spirit. The national sentiment manifesting itself in the pride of empire and deeply rooted in the past, was combined with strong local attachments and the attribution of a kind of sanctity to the great natural features of the land or to spots associated with historic memories which had impressed themselves on the hearts of successive generations. Virgil was, as we saw in examining the Georgics, peculiarly susceptible of such impressions. There is no passage in any ancient writer which makes us feel so vividly the 1 vii. 219, etc. |