Vendidit hic auro patriam, dominumque potentem Hic thalamum invasit natae vetitosque hymenaeos: In the other class are those who have died in battle for their native land, who have lived pure and holy lives as priests or poets, who have served mankind by great discoveries, or have left memorials of themselves in good deeds done to their fellow-men Hic manus, ob patriam pugnando volnera passi, III. Place which Virgil assigns to Augustus in the Aeneid. The imperial and the religious ideas of Rome, as embodied in the Aeneid, find their fullest realisation in the position assigned to Augustus. The pride of empire, the loyalty to the State, the religious trust, which in the age of Ennius attached themselves to the 'Respublica Romana,' found, in the age of Virgil, a new centre of attraction in the person of the Emperor. A poem, which should express the dominant idea and sentiment of that age, could not fail to bring into prominence the change through which the government not of Rome only but of the whole civilised world was then passing. The relations of the great poets of the time to the men at the head of affairs made them the fittest exponents of this new tendency. They used their art with the view of giving to public sentiment a permanent direction in favour of the new order of things. 1 vi. 608-14, 621-4. 2 vi. 660-4. The political object of glorifying the personal rule of Augustus and of surrounding it with the halo of a divine sanction associated itself with the artistic, the patriotic, and the religious objects of Virgil. And although the excess of eulogy and some modes of its manifestation offend the modern, as they would have offended a more ancient sentiment of personal dignity, there is no reason to question the disinterested sincerity of Virgil's panegyric. The permanence of the change introduced by Augustus attests the fact that his policy not only kindled the enthusiasm of the moment, but met the most deeply-felt needs of the world. And though his personal qualities and the great things accomplished by him do not touch the imagination or awaken the sentiment of admiration in modern times, like those of his immediate predecessor in power, yet he was pre-eminently the man suited to his age, as an age of restoration and re-organisation, and he was pre-eminently a Roman of the Romans. The great C. Julius, in his genius and qualities, 'towers' not only above his own nation but, like Hannibal, above all nations.' The perfect success of Augustus was due to the fact not only that he was the man wanted by his epoch, but that he was the complete embodiment of the great practical talents and character of Rome. He not only monopolised in his own person all the chief functions, but in his administration he displayed all the best and most varied capacities of the Roman magistracy. In his government and in his legislation he fulfilled the duties formerly assigned to Censor and Chief of the Senate, to Consul and Proconsul, to Praetor and Aedile. To the aptitudes for these various duties he added those that fitted him at least to fill the place of 'Imperator' at the head of the Roman armies, and to give new importance and efficacy to the office of Pontifex Maximus. He possessed also in a remarkable degree the personal qualities of industry, vigilance, practical sagacity, authority, dignity, and urbanity, which are of most importance in the government of men. If his character falls below both the ancient and the modern ideal of heroism, it is thoroughly conformable to a Roman ideal of practical power and usefulness. He is the representative man of the brighter side of Roman imperialism, as Tiberius (till his final retirement from Rome),-in his strength of body and mind, his military and administrative capacity, his unrelieved application to business 1, his unsympathetic impartiality, his suspicious and ruthless policy in suppressing opposition, his callous indifference to suffering,-is of its more sombre side. It is a great enhancement of the representative character of Virgil's national epic, that it is associated with the name and acts of one who was not only the founder, but was the most typical embodiment of the Roman empire. Although the choice of the subject of the Aeneid was determined, in a great measure, by its adaptability to the personal and political object of Virgil, no attempt is made to exhibit either the character or the actions of Aeneas as symbolical of those of Augustus. Still less are we to look for any modern parallels to the other personages of the poem, such as Turnus or Dido, Latinus or Lavinia, Drances or Achates. Yet the position assigned to Aeneas, as a fatherly ruler over his people, their chief in battle, their law-giver in peace, and their high-priest in all spiritual relations, may have been intended as a kind of symbol of the new monarchy. The Roman imagination acknowledged two ideals of a ruler of men,—the ideal of a Romulus and that of a Numa. In Aeneas both are combined with the characteristics of a new ideal which rather anticipated a future, than reproduced any older type of character. Augustus too might be regarded as at once the Romulus and the Numa of the new empire; and thus the parts played by Aeneas, as chief in battle and legislator in peace2, might be regarded as a kind of foreshadowing of 1 Cf. At Tiberius, nihil intermissa rerum cura, negotia pro solatiis accipiens. Tac. Ann. iv. 13. those which were afterwards played by Augustus on the real stage of human affairs. But it would be no compliment either to the intellectual power of Augustus or to the discernment of Virgil, to suppose that the personal attributes of Aeneas were intended to have any resemblance to the strong and self-reliant character of the Emperor. The relation to Aeneas adds to the personal glory of Augustus by the ancestral distinction thus conferred upon him, a distinction at all times highly prized among the Romans, and especially prized by the Caesars as helping to reconcile a proud aristocracy to their ascendency. In the immediate successors of Augustus, the obscurity of the Octavii and Atii was forgotten in the combined lustre of the Julian and Claudian families. And on one of those occasions, in which the sentiment of family pride was most powerfully appealed to,-the funeral of Drusus, son of Tiberius,—we read in Tacitus '-'funus imaginum maxime inlustre fuit, cum origo Iuliae gentis Aeneas omnesque Albanorum reges, et conditor urbis Romulus, post Sabina nobilitas, Attus Clausus, ceteraeque Claudiorum effigies, longo ordine spectarentur.' In thus throwing the halo both of a remote antiquity and of a divine ancestry around Augustus, Virgil helped to recommend his rule to the sentiment of his countrymen. In seeking to enhance the greatness of a living ruler by associating him with the actions of a remote legendary ancestor, the panegyric of Virgil does not transcend the limits which Pindar allows himself in evoking the mythical glories of the past in honour of his patrons. But Virgil seeks to establish a closer connexion between the past and the present, than that established by Pindar. The connexion between the living man, who wins a victory in the games, and his heroic ancestor, is adduced as a proof of the inheritance by the descendant of the personal qualities which first gave distinction to his race. But the connexion between Aeneas and Augustus is the connexion 1 Ann. iv. 9. between means and end. The actions of Aeneas are not held up as a mere example which his descendant might emulate they are the first links in the long chain of events which reached from the siege of Troy to the victory of Actium and the establishment of the empire. The distant vision of the glory awaiting the greatest of his descendants is, more than any immediate or personal end, the motive which animates both the divine and human actors in the enterprise. It is after a vivid picture of the martial and peaceful glories of the Augustan reign that the stirring appeal is made Et dubitamus adhuc virtutem extendere factis, The means through which the vision of this distant future is revealed, are the voice of Jove himself in unfolding the volume of the fates to Venus, that of the beatified shade of Anchises in exhibiting the spectacle of his unborn descendants to Aeneas, and the art of Vulcan in framing the 'clipei non enarrabile textum.' The glory attributed to Augustus in the shield of Aeneas is that of a great warrior and conqueror, the champion, not, like his uncle, of the popular against the aristocratic party in the State, of the Provinces against the Senate, but of the nation against its old enemies, the monarchies of the East. He appears as celebrating a mighty triumph, and dedicating three hundred temples to the gods of Italy in thankful acknowledgment of his victory. The glory announced in the prophecy of Jupiter is that of the establishment by Augustus of an Empire of Peace, as the completion of his warlike triumph Aspera tum positis mitescent saecula bellis : Cana Fides et Vesta, Remo cum fratre Quirinus Iura dabunt 2. And in the revelation of Anchises, Augustus is spoken of as Augustus Caesar, Divi genus: aurea condet 1 vi. 807-8. 2 i. 291-3. 3 vi. 793-4. |