Ipse vocat pugnas, sequitur tum cetera pubes,
Aereaque adsensu conspirant cornua rauco[635].
Perhaps the most original and not the least impressive of those personages whom Virgil introduces into his composite representation—the Sibyl—is conceived under the strong sense [pg 394]of the mystery and sanctity which invested the oracles of the Sibylline books.
The personal and national susceptibilities of Virgil’s imagination and the circumstances of the age in which he lived are thus seen largely to modify that representation of life and manners of which the main outlines are suggested by the Homeric poems, and of which many of the details are derived from the Cyclic poems, from the Greek tragedies founded on the events which followed on the death of Hector, and from the Italian traditions and aetiological myths which Cato had preserved in his ‘Origines,’ and Varro and other writers in their works on antiquities. Virgil’s power as an epic poet does not consist in original invention of incident or action, but in combining diverse elements into a homogeneous whole, and in imparting poetic life to old materials, many of them not originally conceived in a poetic spirit. The interest which he thus imparts to his narrative is different from, and inferior to, that attaching to the original representation in the Homeric poems. Had Virgil’s representation been as faithfully drawn from the life as that of Homer, it still would have been less interesting, from the fact that ancient Romans are less interesting in their individuality than the Greeks of the great ages of Greek life, and from the fact also that the manners of an advanced age do not affect the imagination in the way in which those of a nation’s youth affect it. Not only was Virgil’s own genius much less creative than that of Homer, his materials possessed much less plasticity. There is no need of any act of reconstructive criticism to enable us to feel the immediate power of the Iliad and the Odyssey. To do justice to the power of the Aeneid we must endeavour to realise in imagination the state of mind of those who received the poem in all the novelty of its first impression,—at once ‘rich with the spoils of time,’ and ‘pregnant with celestial fire.’
IV.
The most important element in the Aeneid, regarded as a poem of heroic action, remains still to be considered, viz. the conception and delineation of individual character. The greatest of epic poets in ancient times was also endowed with the most versatile dramatic faculty. And this faculty was displayed not only in the conception of a great variety of noble types of character, but also in the modes in which these conceptions were embodied. The Greek language is greatly superior to the Latin in its adaptability to natural dialogue. In this respect Cicero’s inferiority to Plato is as marked as Virgil’s inferiority to Homer. The language of Homer and the language of Plato are equally fitted for the expression of the greatest thoughts and feelings, and for the common intercourse of men with one another. Neither that of Virgil nor of Cicero adapts itself easily to the lively play of emotion or to the rapid interchange of thought. The characters of Homer, like the characters of Shakspeare, reveal themselves in their complete individuality, as they act and re-act on one another in many changing moods of passion and affection. The personages of Virgil are revealed by the poet, partly in his account of what they do, and partly through the medium of set speeches expressive of some particular attitude of mind. Virgil’s imagination is the imagination of the orator rather than of the dramatist. It is not a complete and complex man, liable to various moods, and standing in various relations to other men, but it is some powerful movement of the θυμός in man, that the oratorical imagination is best fitted to express. Milton also, like Virgil, reveals the characters of his personages with the imaginative power of an orator rather than with that of a dramatist. But he possesses another resource in the analytical power with which he makes his chief personage reveal his inmost nature and most secret motives in truthful communing with himself. It is through the soliloquies in the ‘Paradise Lost’ that we can best realise the whole conception of Satan, in his ruined mag[pg 396]nificence, and in his lost but not forgotten capacity of happiness and nobleness. The soliloquies of these personages perform for the epic poet the part performed by the elaborate introspection and discussion of motives in modern prose fiction. Homer also avails himself frequently of the soliloquy, as he does of natural dialogue and more formal oratory. In the Aeneid the chief personage is often introduced, like the heroes of the Iliad and Odyssey,
‘This way and that dividing the swift mind;’
but the process generally ends in the adoption, without any weighing of conflicting duties or probabilities, of the obvious course indicated by some supernatural sign. The soliloquies of Dido are to be regarded rather as passionate outbursts of prayer to some unknown avenging power than as communings with her own heart. The single soliloquy, if it may be called such, which brings the speaker nearer to us in knowledge and sympathy, is the proud and stately address in which Mezentius seems to make the horse, which had borne him victorious through every former war, a partaker of his sorrow and his forebodings—
Rhaebe, diu, res si qua diu mortalibus ulla est,