Virgil

by W. Lucas Collins

“Two shepherd-youths, the story runs, one day
Came on the cave where old Silenus lay;
Filled to the skin, as was his wont to be,
With last night’s wine, and sound asleep was he;
The garland from his head had fallen aside,
And his round bottle hanging near they spied.
Now was their time—both had been cheated long
By the sly god with promise of a song;
They tied him fast—fit bonds his garland made—
And lo! a fair accomplice comes to aid:
Loveliest of Naiad-nymphs, and merriest too,
Æglè[5] did what they scarce had dared to do;
Just as the god unclosed his sleepy eyes,
She daubed his face with blood of mulberries.
He saw their joke, and laughed—’Now loose me, lad!
Enough—you’ve caught me—tying is too bad.
A song you want?—Here goes. For Æglè, mind,
I warrant me I’ll pay her out in kind.’
So he began. The listening Fauns drew near,
The beasts beat time, the stout oaks danced to hear.
So joys Parnassus when Apollo sings—
So through the dancing hills the lyre of Orpheus rings.”

Silenus’s strain is a poetical lecture on natural philosophy. He is as didactic in his waking soberness as some of his disciples are in their cups. He describes how the world sprang from the four original elements, and narrates the old fables of the cosmogonists—the Deluge of Deucalion, the new race of men who sprang from the stones which he and Pyrrha cast behind them, the golden reign of Saturn, the theft of fire by Prometheus, and a long series of other legends, with which he charms his listeners until the falling shadows warn them to count their flocks, and the evening-star comes out, as the poet phrases it, “over the unwilling heights of Olympus”—loath yet to lose the fascinating strain.

Besides this Pastoral addressed to Varus, there are three inscribed to other friends: one to Cornelius Gallus, and two to Caius Asinius Pollio, who was among the most eminent men of his day alike as a statesman, an orator, and a man of letters, and at that time held the high office of consul at Rome. He had been the friend of the great Julius, as he was afterwards of his nephew Octavianus (Augustus), and was probably the person who preserved or restored to the poet his country estate. The fourth in order of these poems, commonly known as the “Pollio,” is the most celebrated of the whole series, and has given rise to a great amount of speculation. Its exact date is known from the record of Pollio’s consulship—40 before the Christian era. Its subject is the expected birth of a Child, in whom the golden age of innocence and happiness should be restored, and who was to be the moral regenerator of the world. The date of the poem itself, approaching so closely the great Birth at Bethlehem—the reference to the prophecy of the Cumæan Sibyl, long supposed to be a voice from heathendom predictive of the Jewish Messiah—and the remarkable coincidence of the metaphorical terms employed by the poet with the prophetical language of the Old Testament, have led many to the pious belief that the Roman poet did but put into shape those vague expectations of a Great Deliverer which were current in his day, and which were to have a higher fulfilment than he knew. The “Pollio” may be familiar to many English readers who are unacquainted with the original through Pope’s fine imitation of it in his poem of “The Messiah,” first published anonymously in the ‘Spectator.’[6] But as the Latin Eclogue itself is short, it may be well to attempt a translation of it here, before remarking further upon its meaning.

“Muses of Sicily, lift me for once
To higher flight; our humble tamarisk groves
Delight not all; and though the fields and woods
Still bound my song, give me the skill to make
Fit music for a Roman consul’s ear.
“Comes the Last Age, of which the Sibyl sang—
A new-born cycle of the rolling years;
Justice returns to earth, the rule returns
Of good King Saturn;—lo! from the high heavens
Comes a new seed of men. Lucina chaste,
Speed the fair infant’s birth, with whom shall end
Our age of iron, and the golden prime
Of earth return; thine own Apollo’s reign
In him begins anew. This glorious age
Inaugurates, O Pollio, with thee;
Thy consulship shall date the happy months;
Under thine auspices the Child shall purge
Our guilt-stains out, and free the land from dread.
He with the gods and heroes like the gods
Shall hold familiar converse, and shall rule
With his great father’s spirit the peaceful world.
For thee, O Child, the earth untilled shall pour
Her early gifts,—the winding ivy’s wreath,
Smiling acanthus, and all flowers that blow.
She-goats undriven shall bring full udders home,
The herds no longer fear the lion’s spring;
The ground beneath shall cradle thee in flowers,
The venomed snake shall die, the poisonous herb
Perish from out thy path, and leave the almond there.
“But when with growing years the Child shall learn
The old heroic glories of his race,
And know what Honour means: then shall the plains
Glow with the yellow harvest silently,
The grape hang blushing from the tangled brier,
And the rough oak drip honey like a dew.
Yet shall some evil leaven of the old strain
Lurk still unpurged; still men shall tempt the deep
With restless oar, gird cities with new walls,
And cleave the soil with ploughshares; yet again
Another Argo bear her hero-crew,
Another Tiphys steer: still wars shall be,
A new Achilles for a second Troy.
“So, when the years shall seal thy manhood’s strength,
The busy merchant shall forsake the seas—
Barter there shall not need; the soil shall bear
For all men’s use all products of all climes.
The glebe shall need no harrow, nor the vine
The searching knife, the oxen bear no yoke;
The wool no longer shall be schooled to lie,
Dyed in false hues; but, colouring as he feeds,
The ram himself in the rich pasture-lands
Shall wear a fleece now purple and now gold,
And the lambs grow in scarlet. So the Fates
Who know not change have bid their spindles run,
And weave for this blest age the web of doom.
“Come, claim thine honours, for the time draws nigh,
Babe of immortal race, the wondrous seed of Jove!
Lo, at thy coming how the starry spheres
Are moved to trembling, and the earth below,
And widespread seas, and the blue vault of heaven!
How all things joy to greet the rising Age!
If but my span of life be stretched to see
Thy birth, and breath remain to sing thy praise,
Not Thracian Orpheus should o’ermatch my strain,
Nor Linus,—though each parent helped the son,
Phœbus Apollo and the Muse of Song:
Though in Arcadia Pan my rival stood,
His own Arcadia should pronounce for me.
How soon, fair infant, shall thy first smile greet
Thy happy mother, when the slow months crown
The heart-sick hopes that waited for thy birth?
Smile then, O Babe! so shall she smile on thee;
The child on whom no parent’s smile hath beamed,
No god shall entertain, nor goddess love.”

It would be out of place here to discuss the various conjectures of the learned as to who the Child was, to whose birth the poet thus looks forward. Whether it was a son of the Consul Pollio himself, who died in his infancy; or the expected offspring of Augustus’s marriage with Scribonia, which was, after all, a daughter—Julia—whose profligate life and unhappy death were a sad contradiction of Virgil’s anticipations; or a child of Octavia, sister of Augustus;—which of these it was, or whether it was any one of them, neither ancient nor modern commentators have been able to decide. “It is not certain,” says Mr. Conington, “that the child ever was born; it is certain that, if born, he did not become the regenerator of his time.” It is possible, too, that the whole form of the poem may be strictly imaginary—that the child had been born already, long ago, and that it was no other than Octavianus Cæsar—and that Virgil does but use here the licence of poetry to express his hopes of a golden age that might follow the peace of Brundusium. And as to how far this very remarkable poem may or may not be regarded as one of what Archbishop Trench has called “the unconscious prophecies of heathendom,” would be to open a field of inquiry of the highest interest indeed, but far too wide for these pages. Yet it cannot be entirely passed over.

The Sibylline oracles, to which Virgil alludes in his opening lines, whatever their original form, were so garbled and interpolated, both in Christian and pre-Christian times, that it is impossible now to know what they did or did not contain. But they were recognised, in the early Church—by the Emperor Constantine, who is said to have attributed his own conversion in great part to their study, and by St. Augustine, amongst others—as containing distinct prophecies of the Messiah. The recognition of the Roman Sibyl or Sibyls as bearing their testimony to the truth of Christianity is still familiar to us in the ancient hymn, “Dies Iræ,”—so often translated—

“Teste David cum Sibylla;”

and in an old Latin mystery-play of the eleventh century, when the witnesses are summoned to give evidence as to the Nativity, there appear among them, in company with the Hebrew prophets, Virgil and the Sibyl, who both join in a general “Benedicamus Domino” at the end. St. Augustine quotes twenty-seven Latin verses (which, however, seem very fragmentary and unconnected) as actual utterances of the Sibyl of Erythræ, which contain prophecies, more or less clear, of the great Advent. The original, he says, was in Greek, and the initial letters of each verse formed a sentence, “Jesus Christ the Son of God the Saviour.”[7] Whatever truth there may be in any special predictions of this nature as existing in the heathen world, it is at least certain that there prevailed very largely, about the date of the Christian era, a vague expectation of some personal advent which should in some way regenerate society.

The new “cycle of centuries,” which the poet supposes to begin with the birth of the Child, refers to the doctrine held by Plato and his disciples (possibly of Etruscan origin) of an “Annus Magnus,” or Great Year. It was believed that there were certain recurring periods at long intervals, in which the history of the world repeated itself.[8] A curious story in illustration of this belief is told by Plutarch in his life of Sulla.

“While the horizon was clear and cloudless, there was heard suddenly the sound of a trumpet, shrill, prolonged, and as it were wailing, so that all men were startled and awed by its loudness. The Etruscan soothsayers declared that it foreboded the coming of a new generation and the revolution of the world. For that there were eight generations of man in all, differing from each other in habits and ways of life, and each had its allotted space of time, when heaven brought round again the recurrence of the Great Year, and that when the end of one and the rise of another was at hand, some wondrous sign appeared in earth or heaven.”—Plutarch, Sulla, c. 7.