The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil

by W. Y. Sellar

The Georgics and those parts of the Aeneid which are specially ethical and didactic, as that part of Book VI. from line 264 to 751, throw most light on Virgil’s spiritual nature and on his convictions on the questions of most vital interest to man. But in these parts of his works Virgil has not revealed himself with such distinctness and consistency as Lucretius has done in his great philosophical poem. The personality of Lucretius was simpler and more forcible: the passion to utter his strong convictions prevailed in him over all considerations of art. The colouring of his own heart and spirit, of his enthusiasm or melancholy, appears in Virgil rather as a pervading and subtly interpenetrating influence, than as the direct indication of his true self. His artistic taste enforced on him reserve in expressing what was personal to himself; his nature was apparently more open to varied influences of books and men than that of Lucretius; he was endowed with the many-sided susceptibility of a poet, rather than with the simpler, more energetic, but narrower consistency of a philosophical partisan. Equally with Lucretius he throws his whole heart and being into the treatment of his subject; but in Lucretius the two streams of what is personal to himself and what is inherent in his subject are still distinguishable. In Virgil the imaginative sentiment of the poet and the strong tender heart of the man seem to be inseparably united. It would be impossible to distinguish them by analysis,—to abstract from the bloom of his poetry the delicate sweetness which may have pervaded his performance of the common duties and his share in the common intercourse of life.

Of the contemporary poets and critics whose works are extant, much the most important witness of the impression produced by Virgil on those with whom he lived is the poet Horace. And he is an admirable witness, from the clearness of [pg 97]his judgment, the calmness of his temperament, and the intimate terms of friendship on which he lived with the older poet. Unlike Virgil, who from reasons of health, or natural inclination, or devotion to his art had chosen

Secretum iter et fallentis semita vitae[143],

and cherished few, but close, intimacies, Horace lived in the world, enjoyed all that was illustrious, brilliant or genial, in the society of his time, and while still constant to the attachments of his earlier years, continued through all his life to form new friendships with younger men who gave promise of distinction. His Odes and Epistles are addressed to a great variety of men, to those of highest social or political position, such as Agrippa, Pollio, Munatius Plancus, Sallustius Crispus, Lollius, etc.; to old comrades of his youth or brother poets, such as Pompeius Grosphus, Septimius, Aristius Fuscus, Tibullus; to the men of a younger generation, such as Iulus Antonius, Julius Florus, and the younger Lollius: and to all of them he applies language of discriminating, but not of excessive appreciation. To the men of eminence in the State he uses expressions of courteous and delicate compliment, never of flattery or exaggeration. His old comrades and intimate associates he greets with hearty friendliness or genial irony: to younger men, without assuming the airs of a Mentor, he addresses words of sympathetic encouragement or paternal advice. But among all those whom he addresses there are only two—unless from one or two words implying strong attachment, we add one more to the number, Aelius Lamia—in connexion with whom he uses the language of warm and admiring affection. These are Maecenas and Virgil. Whatever may have been the date or circumstances connected with the composition of the third Ode of Book I., the simple words ‘animae dimidium meae’ establish the futility [pg 98]of the notion, that the subject of this Ode is not the poet but only the same merchant or physician whom Horace in the twelfth Ode of Book IV. invites, in his most Epicurean style, to sacrifice for a time his pursuit of wealth to the more seasonable claims of the wine of Cales.

Two short Lives of Virgil written in prose have reached our time, one originally prefixed to the Commentary by Valerius Probus, a grammarian of the first century A.D., the other, much longer and more important, prefixed to that of Donatus. There is also a Life in hexameter verse, written by a grammarian named Phocas, about one half of which is devoted to an account of the marvellous portents that were alleged to have accompanied the birth of the poet. The Life of Donatus was in the later MSS. of Virgil so much corrupted by the intermixture of mediaeval fictions, that it is only in recent times that modern criticism has successfully removed the interpolations, and restored the original Life based on that of Suetonius[144]. What then were the materials available to Suetonius? The earliest source of his information was a work referred to by Quintilian (x. 3. 8), written by the older contemporary and life-long friend of Virgil, the poet Varius, entitled ‘De ingenio moribusque Vergilii.’ Aulus Gellius (xvii. 10) speaks of the ‘memorials which the friends and intimates of Virgil have left of his genius and character.’ Among those who contributed to the knowledge of his habits, etc., the name of C. Melissus, a freedman of Maecenas, is quoted as an authority for a statement that ‘in ordinary speech he was very slow and almost like an uneducated man’—a trait which calls to mind what is recorded of Addison. Melissus could not fail to be an authority as to the relations of Virgil to Maecenas, and it is probably on his evidence that the statement rests of the direction given to the poet’s genius in the choice of the subject of the Georgics.

A still more important work was that of the grammarian Asconius Pedianus, born at the commencement of our era, who wrote ‘Contra obtrectatores Vergilii.’ These ‘maligners,’ beginning with those whose names have been condemned to everlasting fame, as Bavius and Maevius, had assailed the art of Virgil by flippant parodies, or had traduced his character by imputations, which, though they might have called for no remark if made against any other poet of the time, were believed by those who had the best means of knowing the truth to be incompatible with the finer nature of Virgil. In regard to one of these charges Asconius was able to procure the evidence of an emphatic denial from the only surviving person who could have known anything about the matter[145].

The certainty that the biographical notices of Virgil and the accounts transmitted of his personal characteristics can be traced to contemporary sources and to information derived from contemporaries, gives to the main statements of Donatus a value which does not attach to the meagre notice of Lucretius preserved in the writings of Jerome. On the other hand, while it is believed by his English Editor that the actual features of Lucretius have been transmitted, engraved on a gem, no reliance can be placed on the authenticity either of the busts, such as that shown in the Capitoline Museum, or of the portraits prefixed to various MSS., and all different from one another, which profess to transmit the likeness of Virgil.

II.

The testimony of inscriptions, of the earliest MSS., and of the Greek rendering of the word, has led to the general adoption in recent times of the name P. Vergilius Maro, as that by which the poet should be known[146]. Yet it is an unnecessary disturbance of old associations to change the abbreviation so [pg 100]long established in all European literature into the unfamiliar Vergil. He was born on the 15th of October in the year 70 B.C., the first consulate of Pompey and Crassus. The Romans attached a peculiar sacredness to their own birth-days and to those of their friends; and the birth-day of Virgil continued long after his death to be regarded with the sanctity of a day of festival[147]. The year of his birth is the first year of that decade in which many of the men most eminent in the Augustan era were born. Virgil was a little younger than Pollio and Varius; a little older than Gallus, Agrippa, Horace, and Augustus, and perhaps Maecenas. All of these men obtained high distinction, and took their place as leaders of their age in action or literature in early youth. The distinction of Virgil was acquired at a somewhat later period of life than that of any of his illustrious contemporaries.