The History of Roman Literature / From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius

by Charles Thomas Cruttwell

"Smit with the love of ancient song,"

a susceptibility to literary excellence never equalled, [47] and a spirit responsive to the faintest echo of the music of the ages. [48] The very faculties that bar his entrance into the circle of creative minds enable him to stand first among those epic poets who own a literary rather than an original inspiration. For in truth epic poetry is a name for two widely different classes of composition. The first comprehends those early legends and ballads which arise in a nation's vigorous youth, and embody the most cherished traditions of its gods and heroes and the long series of their wars and loves. Strictly native in its origin, such poetry is the spontaneous expression of a people's political and religious life. It may exist in scattered fragments bound together only by unity of sentiment and poetic inspiration: or it may be welded into a whole by the genius of some heroic bard. But it can only arise in that early period of a nation's history when political combination is as yet imperfect, and scientific knowledge has not begun to mark off the domain of historic fact from the cloudland of fancy and legend. Of this class are the Homeric poems, the Nibelungen Lied, the Norse ballads, the Edda, the Kalewâla, the legends of Arthur, and the poem of the Cid: all these, whatever their differences, have this in common, that they sprang at a remote period out of the earliest traditions of the several peoples, and neither did nor could have originated in a state of advanced civilization. It is far otherwise with the other sort of epics. These are composed amid the complex influences of a highly developed political life. They are the fruit of conscious thought reflecting on the story before it and seeking to unfold its results according to the systematic rules of art. The stage has been reached which discerns fact from fable; the myths which to an earlier age seemed the highest embodiment of truth, are now mere graceful ornaments, or at most faint images of hidden realities. The state has asserted its dominion over man's activity; science, sacred and profane, has given its stores to enrich his mind; philosophy has led him to meditate on his place in the system of things. To write an enduring epic a poet must not merely recount heroic deeds, but must weave into the recital all the tangled threads which bind together the grave and varied interests of civilized man.

It is the glory of Virgil that alone with Dante and Milton he has achieved this; that he stands forth as the expression of an epoch, of a nation. That obedience to sovereign law, [49] which is the chief burden of the Aeneid, stands out among the diverse elements of Roman life as specially prominent, just as faith in the Church's doctrine is the burden of Mediaevalism as expressed in Dante, and as justification of God's dealings, as given in Scripture, forms the lesson of Paradise Lost, making it the best poetical representative of Protestant thought. None of Virgil's predecessors understood the conditions under which epic greatness was possible. His successors, in spite of his example, understood them still less. It has been said that no events are of themselves unsuited for epic treatment, simply because they are modern or historical. [50] This may be true; and yet, where is the poet that has succeeded in them? The early Roman poets were patriotic men; they chose for subjects the annals of Rome, which they celebrated in noble though unskilled verse. Naevius. Ennius, Accius, Hostius, Bibaculus, and Varius before Virgil, Lucan and Silius after him, treated national subjects, some of great antiquity, some almost contemporaneous. But they failed, as Voltaire failed, because historical events are not by themselves the natural subjects of heroic verse. Tasso chose a theme where history and romance were so blended as to admit of successful epic treatment; but such conditions are rare. Few would hesitate to prefer the histories of Herodotus and Livy to any poetical account whatever of the Persian and Punic wars; and in such preference they would be guided by a true principle, for the domain of history borders on and overlaps, but does not coincide with, that of poetry.

The perception of this truth has led many, epic poets to err in the opposite extreme. They have left the region of truth altogether, and confined themselves to pure fancy or legend. This error is less serious than the first; for not only are legendary subjects well adapted for epic treatment, but they may be made the natural vehicle of deep or noble thought. The Orlando Furioso and the Faery Queen are examples of this. But more often the poet either uses his subject as a means for exhibiting his learning or style, as Statius, Cinna, and the Alexandrines; or loses sight of the deeper meaning altogether, and merely reproduces the beauty of the ancient myths without reference to their ideal truth, as was done by Ovid, and recently by Mr. Morris, with brilliant success, in his Earthly Paradise. This poem, like the Metamorphoses, does not claim to be a national epic, but both, by their vivid realization of a mythology which can never lose its charm, hold a legitimate place among the offshoots of epic song.

Virgil has overcome the difficulties and joined the best results of both these imperfect forms. By adopting the legend of Aeneas, which, since the Punic wars, had established itself as one of the firmest national beliefs, [51] he was enabled without sacrificing reality to employ the resources of Homeric art; by tracing directly to that legend the glorious development of Roman life and Roman dominion, he has become the poet of his nation's history, and through it, of the whole ancient world.

The elements which enter into the plan of the Aeneid are so numerous as to have caused very different conceptions of its scope and meaning. Some have regarded it as the sequel and counterpart of the Iliad, in which Troy triumphs over her ancient foe, and Greece acknowledges the divine Nemesis. That this conception was present to the poet is clear from many passages in which he reminds Greece that she is under Rome's dominion, and contrasts the heroes or achievements of the two nations. [52] But it is by no means sufficient to explain the whole poem, and indeed is in contradiction to its inner spirit. For in the eleventh Aeneid [53] Diomed declares that after Troy was taken he desires to have no more war with the Trojan race; and in harmony with this thought Virgil conceives of the two nations under Rome's supremacy as working together by law, art, and science, to advance the human race. [54] Roman talent has made her own all that Greek genius created, and fate has willed that neither race should be complete without the other. The germs of this fine thought are found in the historian Polybius, who dwelt on the grandeur of such a joint influence, and perhaps through his intercourse with the Scipionic circle, gave the idea currency. It is therefore rather the final reconciliation than the continued antagonism that the Aeneid celebrates, though of course national pride dwells on the striking change of relations that time had brought.

Another view of the Aeneid makes it centre in Augustus. Aeneas then becomes a type of the emperor, whose calm calculating courage was equalled by his piety to the gods, and care for public morals. Turnus represents Antony, whose turbulent vehemence (violentia) [55] mixed with generosity and real valour, makes us lament, while we accept his fate. Dido is the Egyptian queen whose arts fell harmless on Augustus's cold reserve, and whose resolve to die eluded his vigilance. Drances, [56] the brilliant orator whose hand was slow to wield the sword, is a study from Cicero; and so the other less important characters have historical prototypes. But there is even less to be said for this view than for the other. It is altogether too narrow, and cannot be made to correspond with, the facts of history, nor do the characters on a close inspection resemble their supposed originals. [57] Beyond doubt the stirring scenes Virgil had as a young man witnessed, suggested points which he has embodied in the story, but the Greek maxim that "poetry deals with universal truth," [58] must have been rightly understood by him to exclude all such dressing-up of historical facts.

There remains the view to which many critics have lent their support, that the Aeneid celebrates the triumph of law and civilization over the savage instincts of man; and that because Rome had proved the most complete civilizing power, therefore it is to her greatness that everything in the poem conspires. This view has the merit of being in every way worthy of Virgil. No loftier conception could guide his verse through the long labyrinth of legend, history, religious and antiquarian lore, in which for ten years of patient study his muse sought inspiration. Still it seems somewhat too philosophical to have been by itself his animating principle. It is true, patriotism had enlarged its basis; the city of Rome was already the world, [59] and the growth of Rome was the growth of human progress. Hence the muse, while celebrating the imperial state, transcends in thought the limits of space and time, and swells, as it were, the great hymn of humanity. But this represents rather the utmost reach of the poet's flight after he has thrown himself into the empyrean than the original definitely conceived goal on which he fixed his mind. We should supplement this view by another held by Macrobius and many Latin critics, and of which Mr. Nettleship, in a recent admirable pamphlet [60] recognises the justice, viz. that the Aeneid was written with a religious object, and must be regarded mainly as a religious poem. Its burning patriotism glows with a religious light. Its hero is "religious" (pius), not "beautiful" or "brave." [61] At the sacrifice even of poetical effect his religious dependence on the gods is brought into prominence. The action of the whole poem hinges on the Divine will, which, is not as in Homer, a mere counterpart of the human, far less is represented as in conflict with resistless destiny, but, cognizant of fate and in perfect union with it, as overruling all lower impulses, divine or human, towards the realization of the appointed end. This Divine Power is Jupiter, whom in the Aeneid he calls by this name as a concession to conventional beliefs, but in the Georgics prefers to leave nameless, symbolised under the title Father. [62] Jupiter is not the Author, but he is the Interpreter and Champion of Destiny (Fata), which lies buried in the realm of the unknown, except so far as the father of the gods pleases to reveal it. [63] Deities of sufficient power or resource may defer but cannot prevent its accomplishment. Juno is represented doing this—the idea is of course from Homer. But Jupiter does not desire to change destiny, even if he could, though he feels compassion at its decrees (e.g. at the death of Turnus). The power of the Divine fiat to overrule human equity is shown by the death of Turnus who has right, and of Dido who has the lesser wrong, on her side. Thus punishment is severed from desert, and loses its higher meaning; the instinct of justice is lost in the assertion of divine power; and while in details the religion of the Aeneid is often pure and noble, its ultimate conceptions of the relation of the human and divine are certainly no advance on those of Homer. The verdict of one who reads the poem from this point of view will surely be that of Sellar, who denies that it enlightens the human conscience. Every form of the doctrine that might is right, however skilfully veiled, as it is in the Aeneid by a thousand beautiful intermediaries, must be classed among the crude and uncreative theories which mark an only half-reflecting people. But when we pass from the philosophy of religion to the particular manifestation of it as a national worship, we find Virgil at his greatest, and worthy to hold the position he held with later ages as the most authoritative expounder of the Roman ritual and creed. [64] He shared the palm of learning with Varro, and sympathy inclined towards the poet rather than the antiquarian. The Aeneid is literally filled with memorials of the old religion. The glory of Aeneas is to have brought with him the Trojan gods, and through perils of every kind to have guarded his faith in them, and scrupulously preserved their worship. It is not the Trojan race as such that the Romans could look back to with pride as ancestors; they are the bis capti Phryges, who are but heaven-sent instruments for consecrating the Latin race to the mission for which it is prepared. "Occidit" says Juno, "occideritque sinas cum nomine Troja:" [65] and Aeneas states the object of his proposal in these words—

"Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinas habeto." [66]

This then being the lofty origin, the immemorial antiquity of the national faith, the moral is easily drawn, that Rome must never cease to observe it. The rites to import which into the favoured land cost heaven itself so fierce a struggle, which have raised that land to be the head of all the earth, must not be neglected now that their promise has been fulfilled. Each ceremony embodies some glorious reminiscence; each minute technicality enshrines some special national blessing.