The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil

by W. Y. Sellar

Cum stabulis armenta tulit[415].

And while the general representation of Nature, in the freshness or serene glory of her beauty and in her destructive energy, is true to that aspect which she presents in Italian scenery, the characteristic features and products of particular localities in the various regions of Italy are recalled to memory with truthful effect. The love of Nature in Lucretius appears apart from local associations. In Horace this feeling seems to link itself to places dear to him from the memories of childhood, or from the personal experience of later years. In Virgil the feeling is both general as in Lucretius, and combined with attachment to or interest in particular places as in Horace. But Virgil is able to feel enthusiasm not only for places dear to him through personal association, but for all which appeal to his sentiment of national pride. As was seen in the last chapter, the episode, which perhaps more than any other brings out the inspiring thought of the poem, is devoted to a celebration of the varied beauties of the land; and the names of Clitumnus, of Larius, and Benacus are still dearer to the world because they are for ever intermingled with ‘the rich Virgilian rustic measure[416].’ In the body of the poem also we find many local references to the northern, central, and southern regions of Italy. The light bark, hollowed out of the alder, is launched on the rapid flood of the [pg 272]Po; the starwort, out of which wreaths are made to adorn the altars of the gods, is gathered by shepherds by the winding banks of the Mella (a river in Northern Italy mentioned also by Catullus); the meadow-land which unfortunate Mantua lost is adduced as a type of the best kind of pasture, and the land in the neighbourhood of Capua and the region skirting Mount Vesuvius as that most suitable for corn-crops. We read also of the rose-beds of Paestum,—of the olives clothing the sides of the Samnian Taburnus,—of the woodland pastures of Sila,—of those by the banks of the Silarus, on Alburnus green with ilexes, and by the dry torrent-bed of the Tanager,—and of the yellow cornfields through which the dark Galaesus flows. The Aeneid affords further testimony of the interest which Virgil awakens in the region which forms the distant environment of Rome. But the sentiment of the Georgics is a sentiment of peace inspired by the land, quite different from that inspired by the Imperial City, and from the memories of war and conquest with which the neighbourhood of Rome is associated. And though the aspect which Nature generally presents in the poem is that of her nobler mood, yet that air of indolent repose which characterises her presence in the Eclogues is not altogether absent from the severer poem. The sense of rest after toil—‘molles sub arbore somni,’—the quiet contemplation of wide and peaceful landscapes,—‘latis otia fundis,’—relieve the strain of strenuous labour which is enforced as the indispensable condition of realising the glory of the land.

5. The religious and ethical thought of the poem is also in accordance with what was happiest and best in the old Italian faith and life. The poetical belief in many protecting agencies—

Dique deaeque omnes studium quibus arva tueri[417]—

watching over the labours of the husbandman, and present at his simple festival and ceremonies, is in accordance with the genial character of the rustic Paganism of Italy and with the [pg 273]attributes of the great gods of the land, Faunus and Saturnus. Human life appeared to Hesiod as well as to Virgil to be in immediate dependence on the gods. But the graver aspect of Virgil’s faith is purer and happier than that of Hesiod; as the trust in a just and beneficent father is purer and happier than the fear of a jealous task-master. But on the other hand, the faith of Virgil is less noble than that of Aeschylus and of Sophocles. It is more of a passive yielding to the longing of the human heart and to the impulses of an aesthetic emotion, than that union of natural piety with insight into the mystery of life which no great poets, Pagan or Christian (unless it may be Dante), exhibit in equal measure with the two great Athenian dramatists. In the religious spirit of Virgil, which accepts and does not question, which finds its resource in prayer rather than in reverent contemplation and searching out of the ways of God, we may recognise a true note of his nationality,—a submissive attitude in presence of the Invisible Power, derived from the race whose custom it was to veil the head in sacrifice and in approaching the images of their gods[418].

6. Equally true to the national character is the ethical ideal upheld in the Georgics. The negative elements in that ideal were seen to be exemption from the violent passions and pleasures of the world. And in these negative elements the ideal of the Georgics coincides with that of Lucretius. But, on the positive side, Virgil’s ideal implies the active performance of duties to the family and to the State. One has only to remember the low esteem in which women were held and the indifference to family ties in the palmiest days of Athenian civili[pg 274]sation, or to recall the ideal State of Plato’s imagination, to perceive how true to Italian, and how remote from Greek sentiment, are the pictures presented in such passages as these—

Interea dulces pendent circum oscula nati;

Casta pudicitiam servat domus—

and this—

Interea longum cantu solata laborem