At the request of Augustus, Virgil began, in 29 B. C., the composition of his greatest work, the Æneid, in which he tells of the mythical origin of the Roman race and of the greatness and glory of the Rome that was to arise and reach its height under the leadership of the Julian family, which claimed direct descent from Æneas. The Æneid. As early as the sixth century B. C. the Sicilian poet Stesichorus had sung of the coming of Æneas to Italy. Nævius and Ennius had connected Æneas with the origin of Rome, and had fixed some of the details of the story. Upon the foundations thus prepared for him Virgil erected the splendid structure of his poem. In the Eclogues he had followed, closely for the most part, in the footsteps of Theocritus; the Works and Days of Hesiod had served as the prototype of the Georgics, though here Virgil was so far from slavish imitation that his work surpasses the Works and Days in every respect. In the Æneid the imitation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey is constantly evident, and certain passages are clearly derived from Euripides, Sophocles, and Apollonius of Rhodes; but the Æneid is by no means a mere imitation. In some respects it is far inferior to the Homeric poems. It lacks their simplicity, their rapidity of movement, and their fresh joyousness; it can not be compared with them in narrative power or brilliancy of imagery. In these qualities Homer is unapproachable. But as a national epic, as the expression in prophetic form of the national greatness and of the poet’s deep-seated passion for his country’s glory the Æneid had no prototype, as it has had no successor. Virgil is not Homer; he is reflective, filled with the deep thoughts that centuries of speculation had implanted in the serious minds of his age; and his great poem is more than a mere narrative. In execution the Æneid is uneven. At times it is polished to the highest degree, at other times it falls to a level hardly, if at all, above mediocrity; some passages breathe a poetic fervor unsurpassed, while others might almost as well be written in prose. So conscious was Virgil himself of the unevenness and imperfections of his work that he wished it to be burned after his death, and could hardly be persuaded to leave its fate in the hands of his friends. His death came before he had perfected the poem, and its most perfect parts show what he wished it all to be and what it might have become had his life been spared. Even though it lacks the master’s final revision, it remains the greatest poem of Roman times and one of the greatest poems of all ages.
The Æneid was to be for the Romans what the Iliad and the Odyssey together were for the Greeks. The first six books are modelled chiefly on the Odyssey. Imitation of Homer. As the Odyssey tells of the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus before he reaches his home, so these books of the Æneid tell of the adventures of Æneas on his voyage from Troy to Italy, and more than one passage shows how constantly the Odyssey was in the poet’s mind. The last six books tell of the struggles of Æneas and his followers against the warriors who opposed their settlement in Italy; and here the combats described in the Iliad are imitated, sometimes even in details. In the final struggle Æneas is a second Achilles, and the brave but unfortunate Turnus is an Italian Hector.
In the first book, after a brief introduction, the poem begins in the midst of the story. The fleet of Æneas is off the coast of Sicily, when Juno causes the wind-god, Æolus, to rouse a storm. The Trojan vessels are driven on the rocks, and the sea is stirred to its lowest depths. Then Neptune, angered that his waters are thus tossed about without his consent, rebukes Æolus, and puts the waves to rest:
He said, and ere his words were done,
Allays the surge, brings back the sun:
Triton and swift Cymothoë drag
The ships from off the pointed crag:
He, trident-armed, each dull weight heaves,
Through the vast shoals a passage cleaves,
Makes smooth the ruffled wave, and rides