Hae tibi erunt artes: pacisque imponere morem
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
The tragedy of Dido reveals better perhaps than any other portion of the Aeneid how sensitively the poet reflected Rome's life and thought rather than those of his Greek literary sources. And yet the irrepressible Servius was so reckless as to say that the whole book had been "transferred" from Apollonius. Fortunately we have in this case the alleged source, and can meet the scholiast with a sweeping denial. Both authors portray the love of a woman, and there the similarity ends. Apollonius is wholly dependent upon a literal Cupid and his shafts. Vergil, to be sure, is so far obedient to Greek convention as to play with the motive—Cupid came to the banquet in the form of Ascanius—but only after it was really no longer needed. The psychology of passion's progress in the first book is convincingly expressed for the first time in any literature. Aeneas first receives a full account of Dido's deeds of courage and presently beholds her as she sits upon her throne, directing the work of city building, judging and ruling as lawgiver and administrator, and finally proclaiming mercy for his shipwrecked companions. For her part she, we discover as he does, had long known his story, and in her admiration for his people had chosen the deeds of Trojan heroes for representation upon the temple doors: Sunt lacrimae rerum. The poet simply and naturally leads hero and heroine through the experience of admiration, generous sympathy, and gratitude to an inevitable affection, which at the night's banquet, through a soul-stirring tale told with dignity and heard in rapture, could only ripen into a very human passion.
The vital difference between Vergil's treatment of the theme and Apollonius' may be traced to the difference between the Roman and the Greek family. Into Italy as into Greece had come, many centuries before, hordes of Indo-European migrants from the Danubian region who had carried into the South the wholesome family customs of the North, the very customs indeed out of which the transalpine literature of medieval chivalry later blossomed.
In Greece those social customs—still recognizable in Homer and the early mythology—had in the sixth century been overwhelmed by a back-flow of Aegean society, when the northern aristocracy was compelled to surrender to the native element which constituted the backbone of the democracy. With the re-emergence of the Aegean society, in which woman was relegated to a menial position, the possibility of a genuine romantic literature naturally came to an end.
At Rome there was no such cataclysm during the centuries of the Republic. Here the old stock though somewhat mixed with Etruscans, survived. The ancient aristocracy retained its dominant position in the state and society, and its mores even penetrated downward. They were not stifled by new southern customs welling up from below, at least not until the plebeian element won the support of the founders of the empire, and finally overwhelmed the nobility. At Rome during the Republic there was no question of social inequality between the sexes, for though in law the patriarchal clan-system, imposed by the exigencies of a migrating group, made the father of the family responsible for civil order, no inferences were drawn to the detriment of the mother's position in the household. Nepos once aptly remarked: "Many things are considered entirely proper here which the Greeks hold to be indelicate. No Roman ever hesitates to take his wife with him to a social dinner. In fact, our women invariably have the seat of honor at temples and large gatherings. In such matters we differ wholly from the Greeks."
Indeed the very persistence of a nobility was in itself a favorable factor in establishing a better position for women. Not only did the accumulation of wealth in the household and the persistence of courtly manners demand respect for the domina of the villa, but the transference of noble blood and of a goodly inheritance of name and land through the mother's hand were matters of vital importance. The nobility of the senate moreover long controlled the foreign policy of the empire, and as the empire grew the men were called away to foreign parts on missions and legations. At such times, the lady in an important household was mistress of large affairs. It has been pointed out as a significant fact that the father of the Gracchi was engaged for long years in ambassadorial and military duties. The training of the lads consequently fell to the share of Cornelia, a fact which may in some measure account for the humanitarian interests of those two brilliant reformers. The responsibilities that fell upon the shoulders of such women must have stimulated their keenest powers and thus won for them the high esteem which, in this case, we know the sons accorded their mother. One does not soon forget the scene (Cicero, Ad Att. XV, II) at which Brutus and Cassius together with their wives, Porcia and Tertia, and Servilia, the mother of Brutus, discussed momentous decisions with Cicero. When Brutus stood wavering, Cicero avoiding the issue, and Cassius as usual losing his temper, it was Servilia who offered the only feasible solution, and it was her program which they adopted. Is it surprising that Greek historians like Plutarch could never quite comprehend the part in Roman politics played by women like Clodia, Porcia and Terentia? In sheer despair he usually resorts to the hypotheses of some personal intrigue for an explanation of their powerful influence.
It is in truth very likely that had Roman literature been permitted to run its own natural course, without being overwhelmed, as was the Italian literature of the renaissance, it would have progressed much farther on the road to Romanticism. Apollonius was far more a restraining influence in this respect than an inspiration. As it is, Vergil's first and fourth books are as unthinkable in Greek dress as is the sixth. They constitute a very conspicuous landmark in the history of literature.
Vergil does not wholly escape the powerful conventions of his Greek predecessors: in his fourth book, for instance, there are suggestions of the melodramatic "maiden's lament" so dear to the music hall gallery of Alexandria. But Vergil, apparently to his own surprise, permits his Roman understanding of life to prevail, and transcends his first intentions as soon as he has felt the grip of the character he is portraying. Dido quickly emerges from the role of a temptress designed as a last snare to trap the hero, and becomes a woman who reveals human laws paramount even to divine ordinance. Once realizing this the poet sacrifices even his hero and wrecks his original plot to be true to his insight into human nature. The confession of Aeneas, as he departs, that in heeding heaven's command he has blasphemed against love—polluto amore—how strange a thought for the pius Aeneas! That sentiment was not Greek, it was a new flash of intuition of the very quality of purest Romance.
The Aeneid is also a remarkably religious poem to have come from one who had devoted so many enthusiastic years to a materialistic philosophy. Indeed it is usual to assume that the poet had abandoned his philosophy and turned to Stoicism before his death. But there is after all no legitimate ground for this supposition. The Aeneid has, of course, none of the scientific fanaticism that mars the Aetna, and the poet has grown mellow and tolerant with years, but that he was still convinced of the general soundness of the Epicurean hypotheses seems certain. Many puzzles of the Aeneid are at least best explained by that view. The repetition of his creed in the first Aeneid ought to warn us that his enthusiasm for the study of Rerum natura did not die. Indeed the Aeneid is full of Epicurean phrases and notions. The atoms of fire are struck out of the flint (VI, 6), the atoms of light are emitted from the sun (VII, 527, and VIII, 23), early men were born duro robore and lived like those described in the fifth book of Lucretius (VIII, 320), and Conington finds almost two hundred reminiscences of Lucretius in the Aeneid, the proportion increasing rather than decreasing in the later books.[3]
[Footnote 3: Servius, VI, 264, makes the explicit statement: ex majore parte, Sironem, id est, magistrum Epicureum sequitur.]