The thoughts thus borrowed from the great heroic poems of Greece, Virgil interwove with that ingenuity which distinguishes the Augustan school by means of the double character in which he represented his hero. The narrative of his perils by sea and land were enriched by the marvellous incidents of the Odyssey; his wars which occupy the latter books had their prototype in the Iliad. Greek tragedy, also, which depicted so frequently the subsequent fortunes of the Greek chieftains,[[575]]—the numerous translations which had employed the genius of Ennius, Attius, and Pacuvius—were a rich mine of poetic wealth. The second book, which is almost too crowded with a rapid succession of pathetic incidents, derived its interesting details—the untimely fate of Astyanax, the loss of Creusa, the story of Sinon, the legend of the wooden horse, the death of the aged Priam, the subsequent fortunes of Helen—from two Cyclic poems, the Sack of Troy and the little Iliad of Arctinus. For the legend of Laocoon he was indebted to the Alexandrian poet, Euphorion. The class of Cyclic poems entitled the νοστοι suggested much of the third book, especially the stories of Pyrrhus, Helenus, and Andromache. The fourth drew its fairy enchantments partly from Homer’s Calypso, partly from the love adventures of Jason, Medea, and Hypsypile in the Argonautica of the Alexandrian poet, Apollonius Rhodius, which had been introduced to the Romans by the translation of Varro.
The sixth is suggested by the eleventh book of the Odyssey and the descent of Theseus in search of Pirithous in the Hesiodic poems. But notwithstanding the force and originality—the vivid word-painting which adorns this book—it is far inferior to the conceptions which Greek genius formed of the unseen world. In the Æneid the legends of the world of spirits seem but vulgar marvels and popular illusions. Tartarus and Elysium are too palpable and material to be believed; their distinctness dispels the enchantment which they were intended to produce; it is daylight instead of dim shadow. We miss the outlines, which seem gigantic from their dim and shadowy nature, the appalling grandeur to which no one since Æschylus ever attained, except the great Italian poet who has never since been equalled.
To this rich store of Greek learning Italy contributed her native legends. The adventures of Æneas in Italy—the prophecy, of which the fulfilment was discovered by Iulus—the pregnant white sow—the story of the Sibyl—the sylph-like Camilla—were native lays amalgamated with the Greek legend of Troy. Macrobius,[[576]] in three elaborate chapters, has shown that Virgil was deeply indebted to the old Latin poets. In the first he quotes more than seventy parallel turns of expression from Ennius, Pacuvius, Attius, Nævius, Lucilius, Lucretius, Catullus, and Varius, consisting of whole or half lines. In the second he enumerates twenty-six longer passages, which Virgil has imitated from the poems of Ennius, Attius, Lucretius, and Varius, amongst which are portions of “The Praises of Rural Life,” and of “The Pestilence.”[[577]] In the third he mentions a few (amongst them, for example, the well-known description of the horse[[578]]) which were taken by Virgil from the old Roman poets, having been first adopted by them from the Homeric poems. The following passages are a few of these examples of what would in modern times be considered plagiarisms, but which the ancients admitted without reluctance:—
Qui cœlum versat stellis fulgentibus aptum.
Ennius.
Axem humero torquet stellis fulgentibus aptum.
V. Æn. vi. 797.
Est locus Hesperiam quam mortales perhibebant.
Est locus Hesperiam Graii cognomine dicunt.
Æn. i. 530.