Flumina, nec somnos abrumpit cura salubris[379].
If the space assigned to the different episodes is to be regarded as the measure of their importance, the long episode at the end of the fourth Book, from line 315 to 558, would have to be regarded as of nearly equal value to all the others put together. And yet, notwithstanding the metrical beauty of the passage, it must be difficult for any one who is penetrated by the pervading sentiment of the Georgics to reach this point in the poem without a strong feeling of regret that the jealousy of Augustus had interfered with its original conclusion. As a Greek fable, composed after some Alexandrine model, mainly concerned with the fortunes of Orpheus and Eurydice,—for the shepherd Aristaeus, the
cultor nemorum cui pinguia Ceae
Ter centum nivei tondent dumeta iuvenci[380],
really plays altogether a secondary part in the episode,—it has little to do with rural life, and nothing at all to do with Italy. Its professed object is to give a fabulous explanation of an impossible phenomenon, though one apparently accepted both by Mago and Democritus. To enrich this episode with a beauty not its own, Virgil has robbed his Aeneid—on the composition of which he must have been well advanced when he was called on, after the death of Gallus in 26 B.C., to provide a substitute for the passage written in his honour—of some beautiful lines which are more in keeping with the larger representation and profounder feeling of the epic poem, than with the transient interest attaching to this recast of a well-known story. Even regarded simply as an epyllion or epic idyl, it may be questioned whether the Pastor Aristaeus is of an interest equal to that of the epic idyl of Catullus, ‘Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,’ etc. There is this coincidence between the poems, that they each contain one story or idyllic representation within another, and in each case it is to the secondary representation that the most pathetic and passionate interest belongs.
Opinions may differ as to whether the passion of Ariadne or the sorrow of Orpheus is represented with most skill. There seems this difference between the two, that in the one we feel we are reading a fable, that the situation is altogether remote from experience, that it is one suited for a picture or a poem of fancy. The beautiful picture of Ariadne, on the other hand, appears like one drawn from the life, and her passionate complaint is like that of a living woman. But still more undoubted is the superiority of Catullus in pictorial or statuesque reproduction seen in that part of his poem in which the original subject, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, is described. Catullus, above all other Latin poets, except perhaps Ovid, can bring a picture from human life or from outward nature before the inward eye; and this power is, much more than Virgil’s power of suggesting deep and delicate shades of feeling, appropriate to the more limited compass of the idyl. It is no disparagement to Virgil to say that in this kind of art he is inferior to Catullus. Catullus, though a true Italian in temperament, largely endowed with and freely using the biting raillery—‘Italum acetum’—which ancient writers ascribe to the race, had in his genius, more than any Roman writer, the disinterested delight in art, irrespective of any personal associations, characteristic of the Greek imagination. Virgil’s art, on the other hand, produces its deepest impressions only when his heart is moved. Even in the Eclogues this is for the most part true. Something must touch his personal sympathies, his moral or religious nature, or his national feeling, before he is roused to his highest creative effort.
In the three cardinal passages which remain to be considered, in the composition of which the deeper elements of Virgil’s nature were powerfully moved, the impression which the changing state of the national fortunes produced upon him is vividly stamped. The first of these (i. 464 to the end) was written in the years of uncertainty and alarm preceding the outbreak of the last of the great Civil Wars. The unsettlement all over the Empire, from its eastern boundary to its [pg 253]furthest limits in Europe,—the agitation and impetuous sweep of the river before plunging into the abyss,—is described and symbolised in the concluding lines of the Book:—
Hinc movet Euphrates, illinc Germania bellum;
Vicinae ruptis inter se legibus urbes
Arma ferunt; saevit toto Mars impius orbe: