CONTENTS. 14 20 21 FOURTH PERIOD.-The Aeneid. The story of Aeneas as treated by the Greeks. Latin elements embodied in it. The story as handled by Roman writers before Vergil. The story as handled by Vergil, compared with the versions of Livy and Dionysius. Aeneas in Latium. Difficulties which Vergil had to con- tend with. His treatment of the tradition. 45 VERGIL. I. INTRODUCTORY. THE poetry of Vergil may be roughly said to sum up and represent the poetical tendencies and traditions of the Greco-Roman world. Though an Italian, and therefore not free from the defects entailed by his literary surroundings, Vergil was able, by his wonderful power of style, to produce work which marks the climax of a particular kind of poetry, which completes and embodies in itself much that preceding poets had been striving after, and which gave the law to succeeding generations of writers. Often as it was imitated, his style was never equalled in its own kind, still less was it ever superseded; it dominated all subsequent Latin poetry and exercised a powerful influence even upon Latin prose. It may therefore not be inappropriate to notice one or two of the main characteristics of that classical poetry of which Vergil is a representative. Modern poetry appeals, or professes to appeal, to a large circle of readers. The poetry of the Greeks and Romans, on the other hand, spoke to and represented the feelings of a comparatively small audience. The great poets of Hellas were, so far as we know, citizens of small communities whose life was based upon the institution of slavery, and in which, consequently, riches and well-being were the acknowledged property of a few. Slavery, or the system which allows one human being to possess another as property, was accepted as a natural arrangement by the ancient world of Greece and Rome, which took comparatively 7 little account of national life, and still less of human life as a whole. The city communities of antiquity consisted of two well-defined sections, a free and a slave population, of which the latter was naturally, in most cases, the more numerous. To the alleviation of the miseries which necessarily arose from such a state of things the ancients, on the whole, gave neither thought nor effort. And though it was possible and indeed often happened that a slave might rise by virtue of his merits or accomplishments into the order of free men, it still remains true that literature, and the class of interests which literature represents, were the property of the free, that is, of the few. It may be said, indeed, and with truth, that from its very nature literature can only appeal to and be enjoyed by a minority. But, while this may be admitted, it still remains true that the character of a literature is always profoundly modified by the circumstances of the society in which it is born. The effects of the limitation which I have attempted to indicate are visible in the poetry of the Greeks and Romans, which, while it often surpasses modern poetry in har、mony, clearness, grandeur of conception, and beauty of form, falls behind it in depth, insight, sympathy, and soul-searching power. The sorrow and joy of a great poet are commensurate with that of the world which he knows. The greatness of modern events, the wide range of their effects, the deep human interests touched upon or awakened, of all this the best modern poetry is the record and the reflection. But the Greek or Roman world would have had no ear for the tones of world-embracing passion which sound in the verse of Goethe or of Shelley. Simplicity and clearness characterize the epic, tragedy, and lyric of the Greeks. Their epic is the celebration of heroic exploit, suffering, and endurance: their 、 tragedies, in which primitive moral problems are presented in a dramatic form, are in great part studies from a dying mythology; their lyric is the passionate expression of the simpler feelings. But the range of |