and Silius, having occasion to mention Mantua, celebrates it as—
Mantua, Musarum domus, atque ad sidera cantu
Evecta Aonio, et Smyrnaeis aemula plectris[97].
Martial, among many other tributes of admiration[98] scattered over his poems, says of Virgil that he could have surpassed Horace in lyric, Varius in tragic poetry, had he chosen to enter into rivalry with them[99]. The younger Pliny[100], speaking of the number of books, statues, and busts possessed by Silius, adds these words: ‘of Virgil principally whose birthday he kept with more solemnity than his own, especially at Naples, where he used to visit his monument as if it were a temple.’ But the greatest proof of Virgil’s influence on the later literature of Rome is seen in many traces of imitation of his style in the language of the historian Tacitus, the one great literary genius born under the Empire. So great a master of expression would not have incurred this debt except to one whom he regarded as entitled above all others to stamp the speech of Rome with an imperial impress. In Juvenal there are many references and allusions to familiar passages in the Aeneid[101]: and it appears from him that the works of Virgil and Horace had in his time become what they have since continued to be, the common school-books of all who obtained a liberal education. It is one of the hardships of the schoolmaster’s life, described in his seventh Satire, to have to listen by lamplight to the ‘crambe repetita’ of the daily lesson,—
Quum totus decolor esset
Flaccus et haereret nigro fuligo Maroni[102].
After the end of the first century A.D., even the imitative poets of Rome become rare; but the pre-eminence still enjoyed by [pg 64]Virgil is attested by the number of commentaries written on his works, the most famous of them being the still extant commentary of Servius, belonging to the latter part of the fourth century. The fortune of Virgil has in this respect been similar to that of his great countryman Dante. From the time of his death till the extinction of ancient classical culture, there was a regular succession of rhetoricians and grammarians who lectured and wrote treatises on his various poems. Among those who preceded Servius, the most famous names are those of Asconius Pedianus, Annaeus Cornutus, the friend of Persius, and Valerius Probus, in the first century A.D. These commentators supplied materials to Suetonius for the life on which that of Aelius Donatus, which is still extant, is founded. The frequent quotations from Virgil in the desultory criticism of Aulus Gellius and the systematic discussions in the Saturnalia of Macrobius attest the minute study of his poems in the interval between the second and the fifth centuries. Similar testimony to his continued influence is afforded by the early Christian writers, especially by Augustine. And though there may be traced in them a struggle between the pleasure which they derived from his poetry and the alienation of their sympathies owing to his paganism, yet it is probable that the favour shown to him and to Cicero during the first strong reaction from everything associated with the beauty of the older religion, was due as much to the pure and humane spirit of their teaching as to the fascination of their style: nor perhaps was this teaching inoperative in moulding the thought and giving form to the religious imagination of the Latin Church. The number and excellence of the MSS. of Virgil, the most famous of which date from the fourth and fifth centuries, confirm the impression of the continued favour which his works enjoyed before and subsequently to the overthrow of the Roman rule in the West. Wherever learning flourished during the darkest period of this later time, the poems of Virgil were held in special esteem. Thus we read in connexion with the literary studies of Bede: ‘Virgil cast over him the same spell [pg 65]which he cast over Dante: verses from the Aeneid break his narratives of martyrdoms, and the disciple ventures on the track of the great master in a little eclogue descriptive of the approach of spring[103].’ His works were taught in the Church schools: and the feeling with which he was regarded by the more tolerant minds of the mediaeval Church appears in a mass sung in honour of St. Paul at the end of the fifteenth century:—
Ad Maronis mausoleum
Ductus fudit super eum
Piae rorem lacrimae;