so small a part, and in which so little is episodical. The ' good fortune of the Roman people' will be found to be explained either by the traditional policy of never making a new enemy until they had well disposed of the old, or by the magnanimity (as compared at least with the policy of other States1) by which they converted the nations successively conquered by them into fellow-citizens or obedient allies, or by the indomitable resolution which never knew to yield to defeat. No important event in their history is isolated; each serves as a link in the chain which connects their past with their future. The unvarying result of their national discipline and policy, and of the force accumulated through centuries before they became corrupted by the gains of conquest, might well appear to a race, gifted with little speculative capacity, to be determined and accomplished by an Omnipotent Power behind them. This idea determines the general conduct of the action in the Aeneid. The actors in the story either oppose the irresistible tendency of things and suffer defeat or perish in their resistance; or, with gradually increasing knowledge, they co-operate with nd become the instruments of this tendency. And as it is by faith in the divine assistance and guidance that the latter are able to act their part successfully, the religious motives of the representation assume a prominence at least equal to that of its national and political motives. Thus the object of all the hero's wanderings is not only to found a city, but to introduce a new worship into Italy-'inferretque deos Latio.' When Hector appears to Aeneas in a vision he commits into his care the sacred symbols and images of Troy with the words Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates, Hos cape fatorum comites. Aeneas is represented as starting on his enterprise Cum sociis gnatoque Penatibus et magnis Dis; as his descendant is represented in the enterprise which Cf. Tac. Ann. xi. 24: ‘Quid aliud exitio Lacedaemoniis et Atheniensibus fuit, quamquam armis pollerent, nisi quod victos pro alienigenis arcebant?' etc. VOL. I. Ꮓ is crowned with the victory of Actium1. Finally, in the treaty with Latinus, while the secular and imperial power is left with the Italians, the religious predominance is claimed for Aeneas, Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinus habeto, The influence of the religious idea of the poem is seen also in the leading characteristic of the hero-'insignem pietate virum.' His piety appears in the faith which he has in his mission, and in the trust which he has in divine guidance. Prayer is his first resource in all emergencies; sacrifice and thanksgiving are the accompaniments of all his escapes from danger and difficulty. This characteristic deprives the representation of Aeneas of the interest springing from energetic resource or spontaneous feeling. But as much as the character loses in human interest, it gains in the impression produced of a fitting instrument to carry out the purpose of a Power working secretly for a distant end. The effect of the same idea is apparent in the way in which the action is furthered by special revelations, visions, prophecies, omens and the like. These intimations of the future are, for the most part, altogether of an unpoetical and unimaginative character. The omens by which the Fates make their will known, such as the omen of the cakes and of the white-sow with her litter, are, like those that occur so often in the pages of Livy, of an essentially prosaic type: not like those in Homer, striking sights or sounds acting on the imagination with the force of divine warning. Occasionally Virgil's own invention, or perhaps the guidance of some Greek predecessor, suggests signs of a less trivial significance-such as that of the meteor or line of light marking out the way from the burning city to Mount Ida Illam, summa super labentem culmina tecti, 1 Aen. viii. 679. 2 Aen. xii 192-3. Aen. ii. 695-7 but for the most part the formal, superstitious, prosaic element in the Roman religion-the same element which made their generals before some decisive battle allow themselves to draw their auguries from the mode in which chickens ate their food,-is present in the religious guidance of the action. The Roman belief in the supernatural was arrested and stunted at a primitive stage of religious development. So far from elevating the thought and enlarging the imagination, that belief tended to repress all speculation, lofty contemplation, and poetry. Even Virgil's idealising art fails to conceal the triviality of the media through which the invisible Power made its will and purpose manifest. The mythological machinery of the poem also, although borrowed from the repertory of Homer, yet moves in obedience to this silent, impersonal, uncapricious Power. Juno endeavours to strive against it, till forced to confess her impotence. Venus by her intrigues serves to further its purposes. Yet both these Olympian divinities are but puppets 'in some unknown Power's employ,' which makes for its own end alike through their furtherance and antagonism. The gods who take part in the action are of Greek invention, but the Power which even they are obliged to obey, if not Roman in original conception, is yet essentially Roman in significance. This thought of an unseen Power, working by means of omens and miracles on the mind of the hero of the poem, with the distant aim of establishing universal empire in the hands of a people, obedient to divine will and observant of all religious ceremonies, may be said to be the theological or speculative idea of the poem. It is the doctrine of predestination in its hardest form. It is a thought much inferior both in intellectual subtlety and in ethical value to that of the Fate of Greek tragedy in conflict with human will. Yet there is a kind of material force and greatness in Virgil's conception, and a consistency not with ideal truth but with visible facts. The ideal truth of Sophocles-the idea of final purification and reconcilement of a noble human nature with the divine nature-is not manifest in the world: it is only in harmony with the best hopes and aspirations of men. Virgil's idea was the shadow of the great fact apparent in his age,—the vast, inevitable, omnipotent, unsympathetic power of the Roman empire. But there is another personal and humane religious element, not so prominent and not so influential on the action, but pervading the poem like an atmosphere, purifying it, and making it luminous with the light of a higher region. This is the element of religious faith or hope, personal to Virgil and yet catholic in its significance, and in harmony with the convictions of religious men of all times. The rigid, formal, and narrow conceptions of the Roman religion came into collision both with the belief in gods of like passions with men, revealed in the art and poetry of the Greeks, and with the development of ethical feeling and especially of the sentiment of humanity fostered by Greek philosophy. Virgil's temperament, patriotic, imaginative, and humane, was in accord with all these modes of religious conception. If national destiny and some portions of the destiny of individuals are shaped by an inflexible power Desine fata deum flecti sperare precando, yet the personal agency of Beings, in immediate relation with man, who are not only 'memores fandi atque nefandi1,' but who also 'pios respectant,' is devoutly acknowledged— Di tibi, si qua pios respectant numina, si quid Usquam iustitia est et mens sibi conscia recti, Praemia digna ferant 2. Their relation to man is expressed by the same word, pietas, which expresses man's relation to them Iuppiter omnipotens, si nondum exosus ad unum Respicit humanos 3. They are, like the gods of Tacitus, avengers of wrong 1 i. 543. 2 i. 603. 3 v. 687-9. as well as rewarders of righteousness: but their avenging wrath against the strong springs from their mercy to the weak Di, si qua est caelo pietas, quae talia curet, This close personal relation between men and an invisible Being or Beings, like to man in feelings and moral attributes, but infinitely greater in power and knowledge, exists in the Aeneid side by side with the doctrine of the omnipotence of Fate, crushing, if necessary, human wishes and human happiness under its iron determinations. But in the final award of happiness or misery after death, revealed in the sixth book, the agency of Fate gives place to that of a moral dispensation awarding to men their portions according to their actions. The way in which Virgil indicates his belief in the spiritual life after death is analogous to, as well as suggested by, the myths in the Gorgias and in the tenth book of the Republic of Plato. While there is a certain vagueness and uncertainty in his view of the condition in which the souls of ordinary men pass the thousand years of purification before drinking of the waters of Lethe and entering again on a mortal life, the class of sinners to whom eternal punishment is awarded, and that of holy men who dwell for ever in Elysium, are indicated with great definiteness and beauty. In the first class are those whom the old Roman world regarded as impious or unnatural,-those who have violated the primal sanctities of life, who have dealt treacherously with a client or the master of their household, who have risen in rebellion against their country, who have sacrificed their human affections and their duty as citizens to their greed of gain Hic, quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat, Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis, Nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est; 1 ii. 535-7. |