Studies in the Poetry of Italy, Part I. Roman

by Frank Justus Miller

3. PUBLIUS VERGILIUS MARO

We turn from Ennius to Vergil as from prophecy to fulfilment. A hundred years separated the death of the one from the birth of the other, and nearly a century and a half stood between their maturer works, a period covering almost the whole range of republican literature. During this time many hands had been at work importing literary treasures from Greece, gleaning from native Italian sources the riches of ancient folk-lore, customs, traditions, and annals; many minds had pondered over the problems of life and human destiny, evolving and compiling treasures of philosophy. And the combined labors of all these had so enlarged, polished, and enriched the Latin speech, their common instrument, that, in the single generation embracing the Augustan age, that finished product was reached which we call the golden age of the language and its literature, and to the standard of which we refer all Latinity of earlier or later date.

During this period of development the "inspired" Accius, the immediate successor of Ennius, had given to the world those works which won for him the name of the greatest Roman tragic poet; Lucilius, the father of Roman satire, had left his strong imprint upon his country's life and language; Varro's tremendous diligence had stored up, among much other treasure, material upon agriculture and Roman history and antiquities; Lucretius had written his great didactic poem upon the Epicurean philosophy; Catullus, an older contemporary of Vergil, had finished his brief literary as well as earthly career before Vergil had well begun to write; and lastly, Cicero, Cæsar, and Sallust had wrought in their strong, polished prose for the further perfecting of the Latin speech.

With such a birthright was Vergil born; in such a school and from such masters did he gain the equipment for his literary career, which was destined to make him the most brilliant representative of the most brilliant period in Roman literature.

His origin was certainly humble enough to hide him from fate. He was born (B. C. 70) the son of a potter, or as some say a farmer, in an obscure little village near Mantua, in northern Italy, and received his early education in the not far away towns of Cremona and Mediolanum. Thence he went to Rome for his higher education, where he acquired the usual accomplishments of the Roman youth. His studies fitted him for the profession of the advocate, but not so his nature. His one appearance at the bar taught him his utter unfitness for that pursuit, for his natural shyness on that occasion quite overcame him. As Ovid tells us of his own experience, the Muses wooed him irresistibly away from the practical pursuits of the "wordy forum," and claimed him for their own. Nature had marked him for a poet. We are told that he was framed on large and generous lines, tall, with the genuine Italian swarthiness of hue, simple and gentle, almost rustic in appearance, with face so suggestive of the purity of character within that the Neapolitans, among whom he loved most to make his home, called him Parthenias, "the maiden-like one." Even after he had attained fame, his natural shyness was so great that the popular notice which he attracted upon the streets was a torture to him, from which he always took refuge, as Donatus says, "into the nearest house," as from a hostile mob.

The steps which led our poet from obscurity to fame we cannot trace in detail. Local circumstances and his marked poetic ability brought him early under the influence and patronage of Asinius Pollio, soldier, statesman, and littérateur; he was admitted also to the select circle of Mæcenas, to which he himself was privileged later to introduce his friend Horace; and Mæcenas in turn introduced both these poets, so unlike and yet so firmly knit together in the bonds of friendship, to the Emperor Augustus.

Vergil's own works, aside from certain minor poems attributed to him, were three in number: the Eclogues, Georgics, and the Æneid, all composed in the dactylic hexameter. His book of Eclogues was written during the period from 43 to 39 B. C., and consists of ten bucolic or pastoral poems after the style of the Sicilian Greek poet Theocritus. These poems, while somewhat artificial in style, are full of genuine feeling for nature, and contain many valuable references to the poet himself and his contemporaries. The Georgics are, as their name implies, a series of treatises in four books upon farming. The first book is devoted to the tilling of the soil, the second to the cultivation of the vine and fruit trees, the third to the breeding of cattle, and the fourth to the care of bees. The whole shows a minute and first-hand knowledge of the subjects treated which only long and loving personal observation could have given. The composition of this book occupied the seven years from 37 to 30 B. C. The work was done chiefly at Naples, where he seems to have passed the most of the remainder of his life. His third and greatest work was his epic poem in twelve books called the Æneid, because it relates the story of the Trojan prince Æneas and his followers.

This poem, whose merits are so evident to us, and whose faults are so slight in comparison, never in fact received the finishing touches from the author. Having spent eleven years upon the work, Vergil made a journey to Greece, intending to continue his travels to Asia also. But in Athens he met his friend Augustus, who easily persuaded him to return in his train to Italy. It was but coming home to die. Always of frail health, the poet's final sickness seized him on the homeward voyage, and increased so rapidly that he died shortly after landing at Brundisium, B. C. 19. His remains were buried in his beloved Naples, where still is proudly pointed out, upon the side of Posilippo hill, the so-called "tomb of Vergil." A further evidence of the pride which the modern Neapolitans feel in their great adopted fellow-townsman is to be seen in the beautiful memorial shrine of white marble which to-day stands to the poet's (and the city's) honor in the Villa Nazionale, the famous seaside park of Naples.

Vergil, conscious of the incomplete condition of the Æneid, left instructions to Varius and Tucca, his literary executors, to destroy all his unpublished manuscript; but this great loss to the world was prevented by the interference of the emperor, who directed Varius to revise and publish the Æneid, which was accordingly done, probably in the year 17 B. C.