religio loci' which has for more than two thousand years invested the very site of Rome than that in the eighth book of the Aeneid, in which Evander conducts Aeneas over the ground destined to be occupied by the temples and dwellings of Rome. The feeling which the sight of the Capitoline hill and of the Tarpeian rock calls forth is one rather of religious awe than of any more familiar sentiment. The feeling, on the other hand, with which the Tiber is introduced Caeruleus Thybris, caelo gratissimus amnis is one rather of proud affection than of religious veneration. The aspect of the great city itself awed the imagination rather than called forth the affections of her citizens. But these affections were given to the rivers and streams, the lakes, and mountain-homes of Italy. Patriotism in the Augustan Age was as much an Italian as a Roman sentiment. The military greatness of Rome was even more identified with the discipline and courage of the Marsian and Apulian1 soldier than with that of the Latin race 2. Her moral greatness is more often identified by the poets with the virtues of the old Sabellian stock than with those of the 'populus Romanus Quiritium.' While the Georgics celebrate the peaceful glory and beauty of Italy, the Aeneid evokes the memory of its old warlike renown quibus Itala iam tum Floruerit terra alma viris, quibus arserit armis 3. 4 The first omen which meets the Trojans on approaching Italy marks it out as a land 'potens armis' as well as 'ubere glaebae.' The speech of Remulus in the ninth book identifies the ancient rural life of Italy with the hardihood 1 Hor. Od. iii. 5. 9. 2 The Latin name seems rather associated with the thought of the other great distinguishing characteristic of the Romans, their capacity for law. Cf. Hor. Od. iv. 14. 7, Quem legis expertes Latinae,' etc. Virgil may intend to indicate this peaceful attribute of the Latins, in contradistinction to the warlike energy of the other Italian races, in the line (vii. 204), Sponte sua veterisque dei se more tenentem. 3 Aen. vii. 643-4. 4 Aen. iii. 539-Bellum, O terra hospita, portas. and warlike aptitude of the people, as the Georgics identify it with their virtue and happiness :— Durum ab stirpe genus natos ad flumina primum In the account of the gathering of the Italian clans in the seventh book, and of the Etruscans and the Northern races in the tenth, the warlike sentiment of the land is appealed to in association with the names of ancient towns, mountain districts, lakes, and rivers : Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae and again : and also : Qui Tetricae horrentis rupes montemque Severum Qui saltus, Tiberine, tuos, sacrumque Numici Qua Saturae iacet atra palus, gelidusque per imas This union of patriotic sentiment with the love of Nature and with the romantic associations of the past Virgil has in common with the most distinctively national of the poets of the present century, from whom in the other characteristics of his art and genius he is widely removed. 1 ix. 603-613. 2 vii. 682-5. 8 vii. 713-7. 4 vii. 797-802. The national sentiment to which Virgil and the other contemporary poets give expression is thus seen to be the sentiment of the Italian race1. For two centuries the principal members of that race had looked to Rome as their chief glory, rather than as their old rival and antagonist. The thought of Rome as their head had become to the other Italian tribes their basis of union with one another and the main ground of their self-esteem in relation to other nations. To that self-esteem and sense of superiority Virgil was fully alive. He is not altogether free from the narrowness of national prejudice. He has not the largeness of soul which enables Homer, while never losing his sense of the superiority of the Greeks over the Trojans, yet to awaken feelings of admiration and of pity unmixed with contempt for Hector and Sarpedon, for Priam and Andromache. Yet if Virgil has not this largeness of soul he has the tenderness of human compassion: Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt. He might have maintained a stronger sympathy for his hero, and have gratified a sentiment still fresh in the minds of his countrymen, by attributing to Dido the shameless licence as well as the dangerous fascination of Cleopatra; or he might have painted the Carthaginians in traditional colours of cruelty and treachery, in which Roman writers represented the most formidable among the enemies of Rome. But Virgil's artistic sense or his humaner feeling saved him from this ungenerous gratification of national prejudice. Yet while more just or tolerant than other Roman writers to the Carthaginians, and 1 This view of Virgil's pride in the qualities of the Italians is not incompatible with the fact to which Mr. Nettleship has drawn attention (Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid, pp. 13 et seq.), that Virgil represents their earlier condition as one of turbulent barbarism. Virgil seems to have regarded the savage virtue of his race,' although requiring to be tamed by contact with a higher civilization, as the incrementum' out of which the martial virtue and discipline of the later Italians was formed: Sit Romana potens Itala virtute propago. especially to the memory of their greatest man, he indicates something like antipathy to the Greeks. The triumph of Rome over her Greek enemies is made prominent in the announcement of her future glories : Veniet lustris labentibus aetas, Cum domus Assaraci Phthiam clarasque Mycenas and again : Euet ille Argos Agamemnoniasque Mycenas, The bitterness of national animosity is especially apparent in his exhibition of the characters of Ulysses and Helen. The superiority of the Greeks in the arts and sciences is admitted not without some feeling of scorn ('credo equidem') in contrast with the superiority of Rome in the imperial arts of conquering and governing nations. It may appear strange that the only race to which Virgil is unjust or ungenerous is the one to which he himself, in common with all educated Romans, was most deeply indebted. But it is to be remembered that there was a dramatic propriety in the expression of this hostility in the mouth of Aeneas and of Anchises. The championship of the cause of Troy demanded an attitude of antagonism to her destroyer. The Greek tragedians had themselves set the example of a degraded representation of two of the most admirable of Homer's creations; and Virgil's mode of conceiving and delineating character is much nearer to that of Euripides than to that of Homer. The original error of Helen and the craft in dealing with his enemies which is one of many qualities in the versatile humanity of Odysseus gave to these later artists the germ, in accordance with which the whole character was conceived. They did not adequately apprehend that the most interesting types of nobleness and beauty of character as imagined by the greatest artists are also the most complex, and the least capable of being squared with abstract conceptions of vices or virtues. The full truth 2 vi. 839-40. 1 Aen. i. 283-5. of Homer's delineations of character was apparently not recognised by the most cultivated of his Roman readers. It is enough for Virgil that Ulysses is 'fandi fictor,' as it is for Horace that Achilles is 'iracundus, inexorabilis, acer' although the worldly wisdom of the last-named poet makes him comprehend better Homer's ideal of intelligent than his ideal of emotional heroism : Rursus quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit, Juvenal exhibits the virulence of national animosity towards the Greeks of his time, as well as a well-founded scorn of the moral baseness of character exhibited by many of them. The contempt of Tacitus is shown for their intellectual frivolity, combined with their assumption of intellectual superiority ('qui sua tantum admirantur 2') based on the renown of their ancestors. The deference which Virgil and Horace might pay to the genius of early Greece was not due to the shadow of that genius as it existed in their own time. But the contemporary Greek littérateurs were not likely to resign their claim of precedence in favour of their new rivals. Neither Greek art nor Greek criticism seems ever to have made any cordial recognition of the literary genius of Italy. The light in which Virgil represents the Greek character may thus perhaps owe something to the wish to repay scorn with scorn. II. Influence of the Religious Idea of Rome on the action of the poem. The confidence which the Romans felt in the continued existence of their Empire and in their superiority over all 3 It is remarked by Helbig, in his Campanische Wandmalerei,' that among the many paintings found at Pompeii dealing with mythological and similar subjects, only one is founded on the incidents of the Aeneid. |