“Green spaces, folded in with trees,
A paradise of pleasaunces;
Around the champaign mantles bright
The fulness of purpureal light;
Another sun and stars they know,
That shine like ours, but shine below.”
There are assembled the illustrious dead—warriors who have died for their country; priests of unstained life; bards who have never perverted their powers; all who have been benefactors of mankind,—
“A goodly brotherhood, bedight
With coronals of virgin white.”
Shadows as they are, all the items of their happiness are material. The games of the palæstra, the song of the bard, the care of ghostly horses and ghostly chariots, form the interests of this world of spirits;—the interests of earth, without earth’s substantial realities. The poet found his imagination fail him, as it fails us all, when he tries to paint the details of an incorporeal existence.
Among these happy spirits the hero finds his father Anchises. He recognises and addresses him. Anchises had expected the visit, and receives him with such tears of joy as spirits may shed. But when Æneas strives to embrace him, the conditions of this spiritual world forbid it:—
“Thrice strove the son his sire to clasp;
Thrice the vain phantom mocked his grasp:
No vision of the drowsy night,
No airy current, half so light.”
The occupation of Anchises in these regions is much more philosophical than that which is assigned to the other shades. He is contemplating the unborn rulers of the Rome that is to be; the spirits, as yet incorporeal, which are soon to receive a new body, and so go forth into upper air. Deep in a forest lies the river Lethe, and a countless multitude of forms are seen thronging its banks, to drink of the water of forgetfulness. Oblivious of all their past lives, they will thus take their place once more, in changed bodies, among the inhabitants of earth. The poet’s adaptation of the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration is none of the clearest; but he signifies that, after the lapse of a thousand years in a kind of Purgatory below, these spirits are again summoned to play their part, in new bodies, upon earth. Anchises can read their destinies; and he points out to his son the shadowy forms, like the kings in ‘Macbeth,’ that are to be the kings and consuls of the great Roman, nation. First, those who shall reign in Alba—Silvius, that shall be born to Æneas in his new home, Capys, and Numitor; young Romulus, son of the war-god (he wears already the two-crested helmet in right of his birth), who shall transplant the sceptre to the seven-hilled city, and the kings that shall succeed him there. He shows him, too, those who shall make the future great names of the Republic—Brutus, the Decii, Camillus, Fabius, and the Scipios. But the centre of the picture is reserved for one great house:—
“Turn hither now your ranging eye:
Behold a glorious family,
Your sons and sons of Rome:
Lo! Cæsar there and all his seed,
lulus’ progeny, decreed
To pass ’neath heaven’s high dome.
This, this is he, so oft the theme
Of your prophetic fancy’s dream,
Augustus Cæsar, god by birth;
Restorer of the age of gold
In lands where Saturn ruled of old:
O’er Ind and Garamant extreme
Shall stretch his reign, that spans the earth.
Look to that land which lies afar
Beyond the path of sun or star,
Where Atlas on his shoulder rears
The burden of the incumbent spheres.
Egypt e’en now and Caspia hear
The muttered voice of many a seer,
And Nile’s seven mouths, disturbed with fear,
Their coming conqueror know.”
The future glories of Rome are described in a grand and well-known passage, to the majestic rhythm of which no English translator seems able to do full justice. The poet contrasts the warlike genius of his countrymen with the softer accomplishments of their rivals:—
“Others with softer hand may mould the brass,
Or wake to warmer life the marble mass;
Plead at the bar with more prevailing force,
Or trace more justly heaven’s revolving course:
Roman! be thine the sovereign arts of sway,
To ride, and make the subject world obey;
Give peace its laws; respect the prostrate foe;
Abase the lofty, and exalt the low.”
—Symmons.[36]