Vergil Part 12

Videtur his ostendisse aliud esse fata, aliud Jovem.[6]

[Footnote 6: Serv. _ad loc_. MacInnis, _Cla.s.s. Rev_. 1910, p. 172, cites several other pa.s.sages to the point in refutation of Heinze.]

Again, contrary to the Stoic creed, the poet conceives of his human characters as capable of initiating action and even of thwarting fate.

Aeneas in the second book rushes into battle on an impulse; he could forget his fates and remain in Sicily if he chose (V, 700). He might also remain in Carthage, and explains fully why he does not; and Dido, if left _nescla fati_, might thwart the fates (I, 299), and finally does, slaying herself before her time[7] (IV, 696). The Stoic hypothesis seems to break down completely in such pa.s.sages.

[Footnote 7: See Matthaei, _Cla.s.s. Quart_. 1917, p. 19.]

Can we a.s.sume an Epicurean creed with better success? At least in so far as it places the _foedera naturae_ above the G.o.ds and attributes some freedom of will and action to men, for as we have seen in both of these matters Vergil agrees with Lucretius. But there is one apparent difficulty in that Vergil, contrary to his teacher's usual practice, permits the interference of the G.o.ds in human action. The difficulty is, however, only apparent, if, as Vergil does, we conceive of these G.o.ds simply as heroic and super-human characters in the drama, accepted from an heroic age in order to keep the ancient atmosphere in which Aeneas had lived in men's imagination ever since Homer first spoke of him. As such characters they have the power of initiative and the right to interfere in action that Epicurus attributes to men, and in so far as they are of heroic stature their actions may be the more effective. Thus far an Epicurean might well go, and must go in an epic of the heroic age. This is, of course, not the same as saying that Vergil adopted the G.o.ds in imitation of Homer or that he needed Olympic machinery because he supposed it a necessary part of the epic technique. Surely Vergil was gifted with as much critical ac.u.men as Lucan. But he had to accept these creatures as subsidiary characters the moment he chose Aeneas as his hero, for Aeneas was the son of Venus who dwelt with the celestials at least a part of the time. Her presence in turn involved Juno and Jupiter and the rest of her daily a.s.sociates. Furthermore, since the tale was of the heroic age of long ago, the characters must naturally behave as the characters of that day were wont to do, and there were old books like Homer and Hesiod from which every schoolboy had become familiar with their behavior. If the poet wished to make a plausible tale of that period he could no more undertake to modernize his characters than could Tennyson in his _Idylls_. The would-be G.o.ds are in the tale not to reveal Vergil's philosophy--they do not--but to orient the reader in the atmosphere in which Aeneas had always been conceived as moving. They perform the same function as the heroic accoutrements and architecture for a correct description of which Vergil visited ancient temples and studied Cato.

Had he chosen a contemporary hero or one less blessed with celestial relatives there is no reason to suppose that he would have employed the super-human personages at all. If this be true it is as uncritical to search for the poet's own conception of divinity in these personages as it would be to infer his taste in furniture from the straw cot which he chooses to give his hero at Evander's hovel. In the epic of primitive Rome the claims of art took precedence over personal creed, and so they would with any true poet; and if any critic were prosaic enough to object, Vergil might have answered with Livy: Datur haec venia antiquitati ut miscendo humana divinis primordia urbium augustiora faciat, and if the inconsistency with his philosophy were stressed he could refer to Lucretius' proemium. It is clear then that while the conceptions of destiny and free-will found in the _Aeneid_ are at variance with Stoic creed at every point, they fit readily into the Epicurean scheme of things as soon as we grant what any Epicurean poet would readily have granted that the celestials might be employed as characters of the drama if in general subordinated to the same laws of causality and of freedom as were human beings.

What then are we to say of the Stoic coloring of the sixth book? In the first place, it is not actually Stoic. It is a syncretism of mystical beliefs, developed by Orphic and Apocalyptic poets and mystics from Pythagoras and Plato to a group of h.e.l.lenistic writers, popularized by the later less logical Stoic philosophers like Posidonius, and gaining in Vergil's day a wide acceptance among those who were growing impatient of the exacting metaphysical processes of thought. Indeed Vergil contributed something toward foisting these beliefs upon early Christianity, though they were no more essential to it than to Stoicism.

Be that as it may, this mystical setting was here adopted because the poet needed for his own purposes[8] a vision of incorporated souls of Roman heroes, a thing which neither Epicurean nor orthodox Stoic creed could provide. So he created this _mythos_ as Plato for his own purpose created a vision of Er.[9] The dramatic purpose of the _descensus_ was of course to complete for Aeneas the progressive revelation of his mission, so skilfully developed by careful stages all through the third book,[10]

to give the hero his final commands and to inspire him for the final struggle.[11] Then the poet realized that he could at the same time produce a powerful artistic effect upon the reader if he accomplished this by means of a vision of Rome's great heroes presented in review by Anchises from the mount of revelations, for this was an age in which Rome was growing proud of her history. But to do this he must have a _mythos_ which a.s.sumed that souls lived before their earthly existence. A Homeric limbo of departed souls did not suffice (though Vergil also availed himself of that in order to recall the friends of the early books). With this in view he builds his home of the dead out of what Servius calls much _sapientia_, filling in details here and there even from the legendary lower-world personages so that the reader may meet some familiar faces. However, the setting is not to be taken literally, for of course neither he nor anyone else actually believed that prenatal spirits bore the attributes and garments of their future existence. Nor is the poet concerned about the eschatology which had to be a.s.sumed for the setting; but his judgments on life, though afforded an opportunity to find expression through the characters of the scene, are not allowed to be circ.u.mscribed by them; they are his own deepest convictions.

[Footnote 8: No one would attempt to infer Stephen Phillips' eschatology from the setting of his _Christ in Hades_.]

[Footnote 9: Vergil indeed was careful to warn the reader (VI, 893) that the portal of unreal dreams refers the imagery of the sixth book to fiction, and Servius reiterates the warning. On the employment of myths by Epicureans see chapter VIII, above.]

[Footnote 10: See Heinze, _Epische Technik_, pp. 82 ff.]

[Footnote 11: This Vergil indicates repeatedly: _Aen_. V, 737; VI, 718, 806-7, 890-2.]

It has frequently been said that Vergil's philosophical system is confused and that his judgments on providence are inconsistent, that in fact he seems not to have thought his problems through. This is of course true so far as it is true of all the students of philosophy of his day.

Indeed we must admit that with the very inadequate psychology of that time no reasonable solution of the then central problem of determinism could be found. But there is no reason for supposing that the poet did not have a complete mastery of what the best teachers of his day had to offer.

Vergil's Epicureanism, however, served him chiefly as a working hypothesis for scientific purposes. With its ethical and religious implications he had not concerned himself; and so it was not permitted in his later days to interfere with a deep respect for the essentials of religion. Similarly, the profoundest students of science today, men who in all their experiments act implicitly and undeviatingly on the hypotheses of atomism and determinism in the world of research, are usually the last to deny the validity of the basic religious tenets. In his knowledge of religious rites Vergil reveals an exactness that seems to point to very careful observances in his childhood home. They have become second nature as it were, and go as deep as the filial devotion which so constantly brings the word _pietas_ to his pen.

But his religion is more than a matter of rites and ceremonies. It has, to a degree very unusual for a Roman, a.s.sociated itself with morality and especially with social morality. The culprits of his Tartarus are not merely the legendary offenders against exacting deities:

Hic quibus invisi fratres, dum vita manebat, Pulsatusve parens et fraus innexa clienti, Aut qui divitiis soli incubuere repertis Nec partem posuere suis, quae maxima turba est.

The virtues that win a place in Elysium indicate the same fusion of religion with humanitarian sympathies:

Hic ma.n.u.s ob patriam pugnando vulnera pa.s.si, Quique sacerdotes casti, dum vita manebat, Quique pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti, Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artis, Quique sui memores aliquos fecere merendo: Omnibus his nivea cinguntur tempora vitta.

His Elysium is far removed from Homer's limbo; truly did he deserve his place among those

Phoebo digna locuti.

Before he had completed his work the poet set out for Greece to visit the places which he had described and which in his fastidious zeal he seems to have thought in need of the same careful examination that he had accorded his Italian scenery. Three years he still thought requisite for the completion of his epic. But at Megara he fell ill, and being carried back in Augustus' company to Brundisium he died there, in 19 B.C. at the age of fifty-one. Before his death he gave instructions that his epic should be burned and that his executors, his life-long friends Varius and Tucca, should suppress whatever of his ma.n.u.scripts he had himself failed to publish. In order to save the Aeneid, however, Augustus interposed the supreme authority of the state to annul that clause of the will. The minor works were probably left unpublished for some time. Indeed, there is no convincing proof that such works as the Ciris, the Aetna, and the Catalepton were circulated in the Augustan age.

The ashes were carried to his home at Naples and buried beneath a tombstone bearing the simple epitaph written by some friend who knew the poet's simplicity of heart:

Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua rura duces.

His tomb[12] was on the roadside outside the city, as was usual--Donatus says on the highway to Puteoli, nearly two miles from the gates. Recent examination of the region has shown that by some cataclysm of the middle ages not mentioned in any record, the road and the tomb have subsided, and now the quiet waters of the golden bay flow many fathoms over them.

[Footnote 12: Gunther, _Pausilypon_, p. 201]