through a haze of pastoral images and legendary associations, yet it is not altogether unmeaning. The anticipation of a new era was widely spread and vividly felt over the world; and this anticipation-the state of men's minds at and subsequent to the time when this poem was writtenprobably contributed to the acceptance of the great political and spiritual changes which awaited the world1. Two questions which have been much discussed in connexion with this poem remain to be noticed: (1) who is the child born in the consulship of Pollio of whom this marvellous career is predicted? (2) is it at all probable that Virgil, directly or indirectly, had any knowledge of the Messianic prophecies or ideas? In answer to the first we may put aside at once the supposition that the prediction is made of the child who was born in that year to Octavianus and Scribonia. The words 'nascenti puero' are altogether inapplicable to the notorious and unfortunate Julia, who was the child of that marriage. Even if we supposed that Virgil was sanguine enough to predict the sex of the child, we cannot imagine him allowing the words to stand after his prediction had been falsified. We may equally dismiss the supposition that the child spoken of was the offspring of the marriage of Antony and Octavia. Not to mention other considerations adverse to this supposition 2, it would have been impossible for Virgil, the devoted partisan of Caesar, to pay this special compliment to Antony, even after he became so closely connected with his rival. There 1 Compare Gaston Boissier, La Religion Romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins : 'Il y a pourtant un côté par lequel la quatrième églogue peut être rattaché a l'histoire du Christianisme; elle nous revèle un certain état des âmes qui n'a pas éte inutile à ses rapides progrès. C'etait une opinion accréditée alors que le monde épuisé touchait à une grande crise, et qu'une revolution se préparait qui lui rendrait la jeunesse. . . . Il regnait alors partout un sorte de fermentation, d'attente inquiète et d'esperance sans limite. Toutes les créatures soupirent," dit Saint Paul, “et sont dans le travail de l'enfantement." Le principal intérêt des vers de Virgile est de nous garder quelque souvenir de cette disposition des âmes.' 66 2 Any child born of this marriage in the year 40 в.C. must have owed its birth, not to Antony, but to Marcellus, the former husband of Octavia. remains a third supposition, that the child spoken of is the son of Pollio, Asinius Gallus, who plays an important part in the reign of Tiberius. This last interpretation is supported by the authority of Asconius, who professed to have heard it from Asinius Gallus himself. The objection to this interpretation is that Virgil was not likely to assign to the child of one who, as compared with Octavianus and Antony, was only a secondary personage in public affairs, the position of 'future ruler of the world' and the function of being 'the regenerator of his age.' Still less could a poem bearing this meaning have been allowed to retain its place among Virgil's works after the ascendency of Augustus became undisputed. Further, the line Cara deum suboles, magnum Iovis incrementum (whatever may be its exact meaning 1) appears an extreme exaggeration when specially applied to the actual son of a mortal father and mother. These difficulties have led some interpreters to suppose that the child spoken of is an ideal or imaginary representative of the future race. But if we look more closely at the poem, we find that the child is not really spoken of as the future regenerator of the age; he is merely the first-born of the new race, which was to be nearer to the gods both in origin and in actual communion with them. Again, the words Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem would not convey the same idea in the year 40 B. C. as they would ten or twenty years later. At the time when the poem was written the consulship was still the highest recognised position in the State. The Consuls for the year, nominally at least, wielded the whole power of the Empire. The words 'reget orbem' remain as a token that the 1 The application of the words 'magnum Iovis incrementum' by the author of the Ciris (398) to Castor and Pollux suggests a doubt as to Mr. Munro's interpretation of the words, accepted by Dr. Kennedy; though at the same time there is nothing improbable in the supposition that Virgil gave a meaning to the words which was misunderstood by his imitator. Republic was not yet entirely extinct. The child is called upon to prepare himself for the great offices of State in the hope that he should in time hold the high place which was now held by his father. The words 'patriis virtutibus' imply that he is no ideal being, but the actual son of a well-known father. Virgil takes occasion in this poem to commemorate the attainment of the highest office by his patron, to celebrate the birth of the son born in the year of his consulship, and at the same time to express, by mystical and obscure allusions, the trust that the peace of Brundisium was the inauguration of that new era for which the hearts of men all over the world were longing. In turning to the second question, discussed in connexion with this Eclogue, the great amount and recondite character of Virgil's learning, especially of that derived from Alexandrine sources, must be kept in view. Macrobius testifies to this in several places. Thus he writes, 'fuit enim hic poeta, ut scrupulose et anxie, ita dissimulanter et clanculo doctus, ut multa transtulerit quae, unde translata sint, difficile sit cognitu1.' In another place he speaks of those things, 'quae a penitissima Graecorum doctrina transtulisset?.' And again he says, 'de Graecorum penitissimis literis hanc historiam eruit Maro3. It is indeed most improbable that Virgil had a direct knowledge of the Septuagint. If he had this knowledge it would have shown itself by other allusions in other parts of his works. But it is quite possible that, through other channels of Alexandrine learning, the ideas and the language of Hebrew prophecy may have become indirectly known to him. One channel by which this may have reached him would be the new Sibylline prophecies, manufactured in the East and probably reflecting Jewish as well as other Oriental ideas, which poured into Rome after the old Sibylline books had perished in the burning of the Capitol during the first Civil War. Still, admitting these possibilities, we are not called upon to go beyond classical sources for the general substance and 2 Ib. 22. 1 Sat. v. 18. 3 Ib. 19. 1 idea of this poem. It has more in common with the myth in the Politicus of Plato than with the Prophecies of Isaiah. The state of the world at the time when the poem was written produced the longing for an era of restoration and a return to a lost ideal of innocence and happiness, and the wish became father to the thought. There still remain the eighth and tenth Eclogues to be examined. The first, like the fourth, is associated with the name of Pollio, the second with that of Gallus. The date of the eighth is fixed to 39 B. C. by the victory of Pollio in Illyria and his subsequent triumph over the Parthini. The words Carmina coepta tuis Accipe iussis testify to the personal influence under which Virgil wrote these poems. The title of Pharmaceutria,' by which the poem is known, indicates that Virgil professes to reproduce, in an Italian form, that passionate tale of city life which forms the subject of the second Idyl of Theocritus. But while the subject and burden of the second of the two songs contained in this Eclogue are suggested by that Idyl, the poem is very far from being a mere imitative reproduction of it. Two shepherds, Damon and Alphesiboeus, meet in the early dawn Cum ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba, (one of those touches of truthful description which reappear in the account of the pastoral occupations in Georgic iii). They each sing of incidents which may have been taken from actual life, or may have formed the subject of popular songs traditional among the peasantry of the district. In the first of these songs Damon gives vent to his despair in consequence of the marriage of his old love Nysa with his rival Mopsus. Though the shepherds who sing together bear the Greek names of Damon and Alphesiboeus, though they speak of Rhodope and Tmaros and Maenalus, of Orpheus and Arion, though expressions and lines are close translations, and one a mistranslation, from the Greek (Távτα δ ̓ ἔναλλα γένοιντο being rendered omnia vel medium fiant mare'), and though the mode by which the lover determines to end his sorrows, Praeceps aerii specula de montis in undas Deferar, is more appropriate to a shepherd inhabiting the rocks overhanging the Sicilian seas than to one dwelling in the plain of Mantua, yet both this song and the accompanying one sung by Alphesiboeus approach more nearly to the impersonal and dramatic representation of the Greek idyl than any of those already examined. The lines of most exquisite grace and tenderness in the poem,-lines which have been pronounced the finest in Virgil and the finest in Latin literature by Voltaire and Macaulay ',' Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala, are indeed close imitations of lines of similar beauty from the song of the Cyclops to Galatea :— ἠράσθην μὲν ἔγωγα τεοὺς κόρα, ἁνίκα πρᾶτον παύσασθαι δ ̓ ἐσιδών τυ καὶ ὕστερον οὐδ ̓ ἔτι πᾳ νῦν But they are so varied as to suggest a picture of ease and abundance among the orchards and rich cultivated land of Italy, instead of the free life and natural beauties of Sicilian mountains. The descriptive touches suggesting the picture of the innocent romance of boyhood are also all Virgil's own. 1 'But I think that the finest lines in the Latin language are those five which begin Saepibus in nostris parvam te roscida mala. I cannot tell you how they struck me. I was amused to find that Voltaire pronounces that passage to be the finest in Virgil.' Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, vol. i. pp. 371, 372. |