ne fati nescia Dido
Finibus arceret.
Aeneas describes himself as starting from Troy ‘data fata secutus.’ A hundred more instances might be given of the dominating influence of this idea in the poem. It is the ‘common-place’ of the Virgilian epic. While it adds impressiveness to the historical significance of the poem, it detracts largely from the personal interest by the limits which it imposes on the [pg 339]free agency of the divine and human actors playing their part in it.
The same idea is often expressed by Tacitus, but it does not in him dominate so absolutely over human will, nor is it asserted with the same firmness of conviction. His conception of the regulating power over all human, or at least over all national existence, seems to waver between this idea of some unknown power steadily working out its purpose, of an element in human affairs baffling all calculation—the παράλογος of Thucydides and the ‘Fortuna saevo laeta negotio’ of Horace—and of the gods generally as personal avengers of crime, and sometimes as the kind protectors of the State. Thus in the Germania[526] the earliest foreboding of the danger which threatened and ultimately overthrew the fabric of the Empire is indicated in the words ‘urgentibus imperii fatis:’ in the Agricola the result of the invasion of Britain under Claudius is summed up in the words ‘domitae gentes, capti reges, et monstratus fatis Vespasianus[527]:’ in the Histories the grounds of confidence on the part of the Vespasians in taking arms against the Vitellians are summed up in the words ‘dux Mucianus et Vespasiani nomen ac nihil arduum fatis[528].’ But elsewhere he speaks of ‘ludibria rerum humanarum[529],’ in language reminding us of Lucretius, and, in almost the very words of Horace, of ‘instabilis fortunae summaque et ima miscentis[530].’ Like Horace, he seems to acknowledge the supremacy of chance or an ironical spirit over individual fortunes, and, like Virgil, that of Fate over the national destiny. But in the Annals, his latest work, he seems to [pg 340]incline more to the belief in the personal agency of the gods, and especially in their agency as the avengers of guilt. Thus he opens the passage of the deepest tragic gloom in all his sombre record with the words, ‘Noctem sideribus illustrem quasi convincendum ad scelus dii praebuere[531].’ So too he speaks of appealing to the ‘avenging gods[532];’ and of the ‘fear of the wrath of heaven[533].’ Occasionally indeed he speaks of ‘the kindness of the gods[534],’ but more often of their wrath or their indifference. Thus he attributes the ascendency of Sejanus not to any superior ability on his own part, but to ‘the wrath of the gods against the Roman commonwealth[535];’ and, in recounting a number of omens which followed on the murder of Agrippina, he makes the sarcastic comment, ‘quae adeo sine cura deum eveniebant, ut multos post annos Nero imperium et scelera continuaverit[536].’ In a writer like Tacitus it is impossible to distinguish with certainty between the pure expression of his convictions and the rhetorical and poetical colouring of his style. Yet both the frequency with which such passages recur, and the earnestness of their tone even when they seem most ironical, leave no doubt that, like Thucydides, he was not indifferent to these questions, although ‘perplexed in the extreme’ by the apparent absence, or at least uncertainty, of any steadfast moral order in the award of happiness and calamity to men.
The ‘Fatum’ or ‘Fata’ of Virgil can scarcely be said to act with the aim of establishing right in the world, or of punishing wrong. Their action is purely political, neither ethical, though its ultimate tendency is beneficent, nor personal. Yet in the prominence which is given to this determining element in national affairs Virgil is expressing the strongest and most abiding belief of the Roman people, just as the Greek poets and historians of the fifth century B.C., in the prominence they [pg 341]give to the element of uncertainty in the world,—the irony in human affairs, or the Nemesis of the gods excited against great prosperity even when not misused or gained by crime,—expressed the dominant idea in the minds of their contemporaries. Mr. Grote traces the origin of this last idea to the experience of the rapid vicissitudes from one extreme of fortune to the other, brought about by the great prosperity of the Greek states on the one hand and their incessant wars and political feuds on the other. The origin of the other idea is to be found in the almost unbroken success of Rome in all her enterprises, from the burning of the city by the Gauls till the full establishment of empire. There is no history in which chance plays so small a part, and in which so little is episodical. The ‘good fortune of the Roman people’ will be found to be explained either by the traditional policy of never making a new enemy until they had well disposed of the old, or by the magnanimity (as compared at least with the policy of other States[537]) by which they converted the nations successively conquered by them into fellow-citizens or obedient allies, or by the indomitable resolution which never knew to yield to defeat. No important event in their history is isolated; each serves as a link in the chain which connects their past with their future. The unvarying result of their national discipline and policy, and of the force accumulated through centuries before they became corrupted by the gains of conquest, might well appear to a race, gifted with little speculative capacity, to be determined and accomplished by an Omnipotent Power behind them.
This idea determines the general conduct of the action in the Aeneid. The actors in the story either oppose the irresistible tendency of things and suffer defeat or perish in their resistance; or, with gradually increasing knowledge, they co-operate with and become the instruments of this tendency. And as it is by faith in the divine assistance and guidance that [pg 342]the latter are able to act their part successfully, the religious motives of the representation assume a prominence at least equal to that of its national and political motives. Thus the object of all the hero’s wanderings is not only to found a city, but to introduce a new worship into Italy—‘inferretque deos Latio.’ When Hector appears to Aeneas in a vision he commits into his care the sacred symbols and images of Troy with the words
Sacra suosque tibi commendat Troia Penates,
Hos cape fatorum comites[538].
Aeneas is represented as starting on his enterprise
Cum sociis gnatoque, Penatibus et magnis Dis[539];