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in Gaul. Pollio was himself distinguished as a poet, and not less as a scholar, orator, and historian. Under his patronage the second, third, and fifth Eclogues had already been written, when the literary labors and the peaceful life of the poet were suddenly interrupted. The veteran legions of Octavian, on returning from Philippi, demanded the allotments of land which had been promised them as a reward for their services in the civil war. They were authorized to take possession of eighteen Italian cities, with the district of country pertaining to each. The cities allotted in this manner were those which had espoused the side of Brutus. For this the unhappy occupants of the adjacent country were forced to give up their hereditary estates to the rapacious soldiery. As the lands of Cremona, which was one of the condemned cities, were not sufficient to satisfy the legionaries to whom they had been assigned, they took violent possession also of a part of the country belonging to the neighboring city of Mantua. Virgil, whose farm was in this district and was thus endangered, had recourse at first to Pollio, and for a time was secure under his protection. But when that commander, in B.C. 41, marched with his troops to the aid of L. Antonius in the Perusian war, Virgil was compelled to seek relief in person from Octavian, later the Emperor Augustus, and for this purpose visited Rome. It was the kind reception given him by the future emperor on this occasion which inspired the grateful and glowing eulogy contained in the first Eclogue, written in the summer of B.C. 41.

After the close of the Perusian war, the Mantuan country was again disturbed by the demands of the veterans, and the poet in vain attempted, though at the risk of his life, to maintain his rights against the centurion Arrius. Fleeing again for succor to Octavian, he was reinstated in the possession of his farm, though not without long and anxious delay. During this period of delay and depressing uncertainty, in the autumn of B.C. 41, he wrote the ninth Eclogue, in which he bewails his unhappy lot. But on obtaining at length the object of his petition, his joy and gratitude found utterance in the beautiful hymn called the fourth Eclogue, in

which he hails the auspicious times just dawning on the world, initiated by the consulship of his friend and patron Pollio in

B.C. 40.

Though the material of the Eclogues, or Bucolics, as they are sometimes called, is taken largely from Theocritus and to some extent from other Greek poets, yet Virgil has given to most of them something of a national character by associating this foreign material with circumstances and personages pertaining to his own time and country. In the first and ninth Eclogues, for example, he describes with deep feeling, in the dialogues of the shepherds, the social miseries attending the wars of the triumvirate, and in the fourth he dwells with delight on the anticipated return of peace and blessedness under the reign of Octavian. In the first, again, he finds, or rather makes for himself, the opportunity of expressing his grateful love and admiration of the youthful ruler, while in the fifth he commemorates, under the name of Daphnis, the greatness and the untimely death of the deified Julius Caesar. Finally, in the sixth and tenth, in the midst of myths and fancies derived from his Grecian masters, he has immortalized the name of his friend Cornelius Gallus.

Though open to some criticisms, the Eclogues are among the most graceful and beautiful of all idyllic poems, and they possess a charm which fascinates the reader more and more with every perusal.

These poems established the reputation of the poet, and at once gained for him ardent friends and admirers among the most powerful and the most cultivated of the Romans. Among these, besides his early and faithful friend Pollio, were Octavian, Maecenas, Varius, Horace, and Propertius. These and all other educated Romans of the day regarded Virgil as already superior in many respects to any poet that had yet appeared. His excellence lay most of all in the exquisite finish and harmony of his hexameters. The hexameter verse had been introduced into the Latin language, at the close of the second Punic war, by the soldier and poet Ennius. But though distinguished by originality, strength, and

vigor, the poetry of Ennius was harsh and rugged to a degree which rendered it to the more cultivated tastes of later generations almost intolerable. Nor by the poets who succeeded Ennius had any such improvement been made in the composition of Latin verse as to admit of any comparison between them and their Greek models. It was reserved for two great poets of Rome, two congenial spirits, filled with the most lively admiration of each other, laboring side by side, both striving earnestly for the same objectit was reserved for Virgil and Horace to elevate the national poetry to a character worthy of Rome, to develop all the resources of their noble language, and to make it flow in both heroic and lyric verse with all the grace and dignity that had hitherto been characteristic of the Greek alone.

After the publication of the Eclogues, Virgil appears to have passed the remainder of his life chiefly at Naples. His feeble health was probably the occasion of this.

It was here that he composed the Georgics, a didactic poem in four books, in which he endeavors to recall the Italians to their primitive but long-neglected pursuit of agriculture. In point of versification this is the most finished of the works of the poet, and, indeed, as Addison remarks, it may be regarded as in this respect the most perfect of all poems. In the first book he treats of the management of fields, in the second of trees, in the third of horses and cattle, and in the fourth of bees. He has gathered into this poem all the experience of the ancient Italians on these subjects, and he has contrived to make them attractive by associating them with wonderful beauty of diction and imagery, and with charming variety of illustration.

Having devoted seven years, from B.C. 37, to the writing of this work, and conscious that his poetic labors must be ended by an early death, he now entered upon a long-cherished plan of composing an epic in the Homeric style, which should at once commemorate the glory of Rome and of Augustus, and win back the Romans, if possible, to the religious virtues of their progenitors. He chose for his theme the fortunes of Aeneas, the traditional

founder of the Julian family; he therefore called this work, which he divided into twelve books, the Aeneid. He had already been employed eleven years upon his task, and had not yet put to it the finishing hand, when he was overtaken by his last sickness. He made a voyage to Greece, with the intention of visiting Attica and Asia. On arriving at Athens he met Augustus, who happened to be at that time returning from Asia Minor to Italy. Virgil was easily persuaded by his friend and patron to return with him immediately to Rome, but he was destined never again to see the capital city. His malady had continually increased during the voyage, and a few days after landing at Brundisium he expired. His death occurred in B.C. 19. His remains were conveyed from Brundisium to Naples, and buried on the hill of Posilippo, in the tomb still preserved and revered as the tomb of Virgil.'

There are no authentic portrait busts of Virgil. Outside of literary sources, our only knowledge of the personal appearance of the poet is derived from miniatures of some existing manuscripts, notably the Codex Romanus, and from two mosaics. One of these mosaics was discovered at Trier in 1884. The other, a representation of which forms the Frontispiece of this book, was found at Susa in Tunis, in 1896. It is about three feet square. In the center sits the poet, clothed in a white toga having a blue border. His feet rest upon a footstool. He holds a partly open scroll on which are the words : —

'Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso,
Quidve . . . ' 2

This is sufficient to identify the poet. On one side stands Clio, the muse of history, reading from a roll; on the other is Melpomene, muse of tragedy, identified as such by the tragic mask which she holds. The mosaic dates probably from the first century A.D.

The literary history of Virgil during the Middle Ages affords a most interesting study. His fame as a poet was never dimin

1 See The Bookman, April, 1897, p. 104; and School Review, 1898, pp. 598 sqq. 2 Aeneid I, 8, 9.

ished. The fourth Eclogue was misinterpreted, and was believed to be a prophecy of the approaching birth of Christ. This, together with other influences, led to the medieval conception of Virgil as a great magician. Many fantastical legends were woven about his name. It was believed that Virgil's name was derived from virga, a magic wand.' Thus, in time this came to be spelled Virgilius, from which the current English form of the name is descended. As early as the second century the custom prevailed of inquiring into future events by opening at random a volume of the poet's works. These chance oracles were cailed Sortes Vergilianae.

It is said that Virgil, a short time before his death, desired to burn the manuscript of the Aeneid, because of the imperfect state in which it would necessarily be left. But being dissuaded from this purpose by his friends Tucca and Varius, he directed them by his will to strike out all the verses that were incomplete, but to add nothing. It does not appear, however, that anything was erased by them, while many passages betray a lack of finish that undoubtedly would have been changed and corrected had the poet lived to make a revision of the whole work.

Thus the Aeneid, like some of the grandest sculptures of Michael Angelo, was left unfinished, and with some parts, perhaps, in the rough. But our interest is even enhanced in the works of both of these great Italian masters by the very fact that these unfinished parts show us the hand, as it were, still holding the chisel, and in the act of creation.

Virgil was an imitator. He borrowed without stint from Homer, from Apollonius, from the Greek tragedies; in short, he laid under contribution all the earlier poets both of Greece and of Rome. Nothing beautiful in them, nothing fitted to his purpose, escaped his search. But he so appropriated to himself, and assimilated to his own modes of thought their ideas, images, and forms of expression, that they come before us in the Aeneid in all the freshness and individuality of new creations. The Aeneid stands nearly in the same relation to all preëxisting literature as does

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