summate skill, who could find no help in his Iliad. Virgil had to hold firmly together the sympathies of Romans and Italians. Someone may ask, where was the difficulty? Surely they were by his time united in feeling. No; if that had really been so, Augustus' policy would have been superfluous. Italy is not a country that lends itself easily to unification, as Italians know well at the present day; and only twenty years before Virgil was born, the peoples of central Italy had been engaged in deadly strife with Rome, and had forced her to treat them as her equals. The Italian policy of Augustus was in truth a new one, and I have no doubt whatever that in this episode Virgil believed himself to be aiding it. Thus the poet might not too plainly treat his Italians as the enemies of the Roman spirit and empire, nor on the other hand might he engage the sympathy of his reader too absolutely for Aeneas and the invaders : "dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis Let us see how he surmounts the difficulty, and achieves the feat of keeping Rome and her solemn destiny in our minds while he shows us the bloom and vigour of Italy in a series of splendid pictures.1 1 The difficulty was increased by the fact that Italy was practically new ground for an epic poet. Interest in Italy and the Italians must be roused here the old epic ground is left behind, and the gathering of the clans is an old episode in a new setting. On this point see Boissier, "Promenades Archæologiques," second series, p. 261 ff. First, the sixth book, and especially the prophetic close of it, has left the reader in full conviction of the religious destiny of Aeneas and Rome, and this definite impression cannot possibly be obliterated by any amount of Italian heroism in the rest of the poem.1 Again, in this seventh book, before the pageant opens, it is made plain that this is a bad war, stirred up by the ever unscrupulous Juno-Hera (of whom more directly) through an offensive and grisly agent, the Fury Allecto: hence and "saevit amor ferri et scelerata insania belli:" "ilicet infandum cuncti contra omina bellum And when in the following lines Latinus is forced to give way with a deep sigh for rest, this sigh is accompanied by a fierce curse on the head of Turnus: "te Turne nefas, te triste manebit supplicium, votisque deos venerabere seris." A Roman of Augustus' day would think of other bad wars and another reckless leader, Antony. Yet the Italian spirit is skilfully safeguarded, as we shall see as we follow the pageant. Cities, rivers, local deities, and many local touches and legends, combine to delight the Italian municipalis, who will be reminded of the Homeric catalogue he read in 1 The keynote is sounded strongly again just before the pageant begins : "Mos erat Hesperio in Latio, quem pro tinus urbes Albanae coluere sacrum, nunc maxima rerum Roma colit. ." (601 ff.). his youth, and feel that here "nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade." The poet does all he can to secure variety, as I hope to show, to make this city or that, with its surrounding region, stand out clearly in the picture, and take the right colouring for the delectation of its descendants. Then how splendid and martial is the tone throughout, how perfect the consummation in the figures of Turnus and Camilla, the hero and heroine of these last books! It is with the perfection of his artistic resources that Virgil solves his greatest difficulty. At this point I will turn for a moment to the parallel episode in the poem of Silius Italicus. Silius was not a great poet, but one might fancy that he had a good opportunity in the gathering of Italian contingents to repel Hannibal. Unluckily there were too many of them, and the conscientious verse-maker, modelling his work on Homer's catalogue rather than on Virgil's pageant, overdoes his detail, bewilders and wearies. his reader, without arousing any keen sense of national exultation.1 His flashlight is a feeble one; the endless procession passes, and we grow stupid and weary. We cannot see the wood for the trees: towns, rivers, mountains, gods and temples, soldiers and their armour, pass before us without making us the least enthusiastic, and I think that even the Italian of the early empire could hardly have been moved to emotion. Almost the only bit of genuine 1 Boissier remarked on the same fault in Flaubert's Salammbo (of the Carthaginian contingents): "Nouvelles Promenades Archæologiques," p. 321. poetry I can find is the allusion to Cicero when Arpinum is reached: 66 ille super Gangen, super exauditus et Indos, And after all this is but a momentary reminiscence of the prophetic end of the sixth Aeneid. Milton, in the first book of Paradise Lost, follows the Virgilian, not the Homeric, method. The heathen gods and devils whom he marshals against the hosts of Jehovah are carefully chosen, limited in number, marked by characteristics familiar to his Puritan readers, and poetically distinct and attractive, e.g.: "Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured In amorous ditties all a summer's day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood It is most interesting to notice that Milton had much the same difficulty to face as Virgil, and that he dealt with it victoriously in the very same way. He had to engage the interest, nay, the emotion, of his reader, in these gods and devils, as Virgil had to enlist the admiration of the Roman reader for the wrong side in the strife. Each poet achieves his object in his own way, but the method is in the main the same: the secret is in the skilful selection of detail, and in the high dignity and poetic beauty of the language used. In one respect Milton surpassed his model. Virgil ended his pageant most happily with the resplendent figures of Turnus and Camilla; Milton closes his very quietly among classical allusions, then pauses for a moment to begin again. His own imagination has been kindled, and he has kindled ours, by the pictures of these magnificent fiends, Moloch, Chemosh, Dagon, and the rest, and he cannot halt as yet. With the words, All these and more came flocking," he braces himself for a new effort, and launches into the full diapason of overwhelming organ sound. We fairly forget that these are the hosts of the Devil fighting against the will of God, as we almost forget, at the close of the seventh Aeneid, that Rome and Aeneas were in the hands of Fate for the good of mankind. But I will return to this subject for a moment when we have finished our task. Before I end this introductory note, I wish to draw attention to an observation made by Dr. Henry in his "Aeneidea," when about to deal with Virgil's pageant. I have the greatest reverence for Dr. Henry as a critic, for he is always interesting and instructive even where, as in this case (so it seems to me) he is manifestly in the wrong; and I have followed his comments carefully, as will be seen throughAeneidea," vol. ii., p. 591 ff. 1 66 |