The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 32

Multa viri virtus animo, multusque recursat Gentis honos; haerent infixi pectore voltus Verbaque, nec placidam membris dat cura quietem(657).

No weakness, no unwomanly ferocity mingles with the reproaches which she utters on first awakening to the betrayal of her trust. A feeling of magnanimous scorn makes her rise in rebellion against the plea that her desertion was the result of divine interposition-

Scilicet is Superis labor est! ea cura quietos Sollicitat(658);

and a lofty pathos animates her trust in a righteous retribution, the knowledge of which will comfort her among the dead-

Spero equidem mediis, si quid pia numina possunt, Supplicia hausurum scopulis et nomine Dido Saepe vocaturum. Sequar atris ignibus absens, Et, c.u.m frigida mors anima seduxerit artus, Omnibus umbra locis adero:-dabis, improbe, poenas: Audiam, et haec Manes veniet mihi fama sub imos(659).

The awe inspired by supernatural portents, by restless visions in the night, by the memory of ancient prophecies, by the voice of her former husband summoning her from the chapel consecrated to his Manes, confirms her in her resolution to die. Her pa.s.sion goes on deepening in alternations of indignation and recurring tenderness. It reaches its sublimest elevation in the prayer for vengeance, answered long afterwards in the alarm and desolation inflicted upon Italy by the greatest of the sons of Carthage-

Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor, Qui face Dardanios ferroque sequare colonos, Nunc, olim, quocunque dabunt se tempore vires(660).

In her last moments she finds consolation in the great memories of her life-

Urbem praeclaram statui: mea moenia vidi: Ulta virum, poenas inimico a fratre recepi: Felix, heu! nimium felix, si litora tantum Nunquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae(661).

Her latest prayer is that, even though no outward retribution overtake her betrayer, yet the bitterness of his own heart may be her avenger-

moriemur inultae, Sed moriamur, ait: sic, sic iuvat ire sub umbras.

Hauriat hunc oculis ignem crudelis ab alto Darda.n.u.s, et sec.u.m nostrae ferat omina mortis(662).

Once more she appears among the Shades, and maintains her lofty bearing there as in the world above. No sympathy with his hero makes the poet here forget what was due to her. She listens in scornful silence to the tearful protestations of her 'false friend(663),' and pa.s.ses on without any sign of forgiveness or reconciliation-

Tandem corripuit sese atque inimica refugit In nemus umbriferum, coniunx ubi pristinus illi Respondet curis aequatque Sychaeus amorem(664).

V.

That the pa.s.sion of Dido is powerfully conceived and delineated, that it satisfies modern feeling more legitimately than the representation of the unhallowed impulses of Phaedra, or of the cruel and treacherous rancour of Medea, will scarcely be questioned. Yet perhaps it is doing no injustice to the genius of Virgil to say that his power in dealing with human life consists generally in conceiving some state of feeling, some pathetic or pa.s.sionate situation, rather than in the creation and sustained development of living characters. How the great impersonations of poetry and prose fiction, which are more real to our imaginations than the personages of history or those whom we know in life, come into being, is a question which probably their authors themselves could not answer. Though reflexion on human nature and deliberate intention to exemplify some law of life may precede the creative act which gives them being, and though continued reflexion may be needed to sustain them in a consistent course, yet no mere a.n.a.lytic insight into the springs of action can explain the process by which a great artist works. The beings of his imagination seem to acquire an existence independent of the experience and of the deliberate intentions of their author, and to inform this experience and mould these intentions as much as they are informed and moulded by them.

Virgil's imagination in the creation of Dido seems to be possessed in this way. She grows more and more real as her pa.s.sion deepens. Virgil's intention in this representation may have been to show the tragic infatuation of a woman's love-

furens quid femina possit:

but his sympathetic insight into this pa.s.sion-an insight already shown in the Eclogues-stimulates the forces of his imagination to a n.o.bler as well as a more vital creation than in any other of his impersonations. Dido ranks for all times as one of the great heroines of poetry. So long as she appears on the scene the interest in the exhibition of her nature overpowers all other interests. But this is not the case with Virgil's other personages. We are more interested in what they say and in what happens to them than in what they are. In other words, it is by his oratorical and descriptive, rather than by his dramatic faculty, that he secures the attention of his readers. As oratory was one of the most important powers in ancient life, so it became a prominent element in ancient epic and dramatic poetry,-in Homer, Ennius, and Virgil, as well as in Sophocles, Euripides, and the Roman tragedians. The oratory of the Aeneid shows nothing of the speculative power-of the application of great ideas to life-which gives the profoundest value not only to many speeches in Sophocles, but also to some of those in the Iliad, and notably to such as proceed from the mouth of Odysseus. It cannot equal the vivid naturalness of the speeches of Nestor, nor the impa.s.sioned grandeur of those of Achilles. Neither is it characterised by the subtle psychological a.n.a.lysis which is the most interesting quality in the rhetoric of Euripides. On the other hand, it is not disfigured by the forensic special pleading and word-fencing which is an occasional flaw in the dramatic art of Sophocles, and a pervading mannerism in that of the younger poet. The impression of grave political deliberation is left on the mind by some of the fragments of Ennius more effectually than by anything uttered in the councils of G.o.ds or men in the Aeneid. But it is in the greatest of modern epics that the full force of intellect and feeling animating grave councils of state is most grandly idealised. The speeches in Virgil, though they want the intellectual power and the majestic largeness of utterance of those in Milton, are, like his, stately and dignified in expression; they are disfigured by no rhetorical artifice of fine-spun argument or exaggerated emphasis; they are rapid with the vehemence of scorn and indignation, fervid with martial pride and enthusiasm, or, occasionally, weighty with the power of controlled emotion. They have the ring of Roman oratory, as it is heard in the animated declamation of Livy, and sometimes seem to antic.i.p.ate the reserved force and 'imperial brevity'

of Tacitus. They give a true voice to 'the high, magnanimous Roman mood,'

and to the fervour of spirit with which that mood was a.s.sociated. And this effect is sometimes increased by the use which the polished poet of the Augustan Age makes of the grave, ardent, but unformed utterances-'rudes et inconditae voces'-of the epic and tragic poets of the Republic.

The descriptive faculty of Virgil is quite unlike that of Homer, but yet it has great excellences of its own. In the Iliad and Odyssey man appears 'vigorous and elastic such as poetry saw him first, such as poetry would ever see him(665);' and the outward world is described in the clear forms and the animated movement which impress themselves immediately on the sense and mind of men thus happily organised. Virgil too presents to us the varied spectacle of human life and of the outward world under many impressive aspects. But these aspects of things do not affect the mind with the immediate impulse which the natural man receives from them, and of which he retains the vivid picture in his mind. As in his pastoral poems and in the Georgics Virgil seems to abstract from the general aspect of things the characteristic sentiment which Nature inspires in particular places and at particular times, and to see the scene which he describes under the influence of that sentiment, so in the Aeneid various human 'situations' are conceived under the influence of some sense of awe or wonder, of beauty or pathos, of local or antique a.s.sociation; and the whole description is so presented as to bring this central interest into prominent relief. The thought of the whole situation, not the sequence of events in time or causal connexion, is what determines the grouping and subordination of details.

Thus in the description of the storm in Book i., the dominant feeling by the light of which the circ.u.mstances are to be realised is that of sudden and overwhelming power in the elements and of man's impotence to contend against them. In the description of the harbour in which the s.h.i.+ps of Aeneas find refuge we feel the sense of calm and peace after storm and danger. In the interview between Venus and her son the impression left on the mind is that of a mysterious supernatural grace enhancing the charm of human beauty, such as is produced by the pictorial representations of religious art. We seem to look on the rising towers and dwellings of Carthage with that joyful sense of wonder and novelty with which the thought of the beginning of great enterprises, or of the discovery of unknown lands, and the first view of ancient and famous cities, such as Rome or Venice, appeal to the imagination. In the second Book the effect of the whole representation is enhanced by the sentiment of awe and mystery with which night, and darkness, and the intermittent flashes of light which break the darkness, impress the mind. Thus as a prelude to the terrible and tragical scenes afterwards represented, the apparition of Hector comes before Aeneas in the deepest stillness of the night-

Tempus erat quo prima quies mortalibus aegris Incipit(666).

Then follow the confused sights and sounds of battle, like those of the ???t?a??a in the seventh Book of Thucydides and of that in the Vitellian war of Tacitus,-the spectacle revealed by the light of the burning city-

Sigaea igni freta lata relucent(667);

the vivid gleams in which the death of Priam, the cowering figure of Helen, the majestic forms of the Olympian G.o.ds taking part in the work of destruction, are for a moment disclosed out of the surrounding darkness, the alarm and bewilderment of the escape from the house of Anchises and of the vain attempt of Aeneas to recover the lost Creusa-

Horror ubique, animos simul ipsa silentia terrent(668).

The third Book is pervaded by the feeling of the sea,-not as in the Odyssey of its buoyant and inexhaustible life, nor yet of the dread which it inspired in the earliest mariners,-but in that more modern mood in which it unfolds to the traveller the animated spectacle of islands and coasts famous for their beauty or their historic and legendary a.s.sociations. In the fifth Book, as is pointed out by Chateaubriand, the effect of the limitless and monotonous prospect of the open sea in producing a sense of weariness and melancholy, such as that expressed in 'The Lotus-eaters'-

'but evermore Most weary seem'd the sea, weary the oar, Weary the wandering fields of barren foam,'

is profoundly felt in the pa.s.sage-

At procul in sola secretae Troades acta Amissum Anchisen flebant cunctaeque profundum Pontum adspectabant flentes; 'heu tot vada fessis Et tantum superesse maris,' vox omnibus una(669).

It was seen how the sense of supernatural awe adds to the tragic grandeur of the despair and death of Dido, as in the lines, which bear some trace of a vivid pa.s.sage in Ennius-

agit ipse furentem In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra(670).

Thus too the mind is prepared for the spectacle revealed in the Descent into h.e.l.l by the awful sublimity of the Invocation-

Di quibus imperium est animarum umbraeque silentes(671).

The description of the funeral rites of Pallas produces that complex impression of sadness and solemnity mixed with proud memories and thoughts of the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war which affects men in the present day, when witnessing the spectacle of the funeral of some great soldier who has died full of years and honour-

Post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon It lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora.

Hastam alii galeamque ferunt, nam cetera Turnus Victor habet. Tum moesta phalanx Teucrique sequuntur Tyrrhenique omnes et versis Arcades armis(672).

In the employment of ill.u.s.trative imagery Virgil is much more sparing than Homer. The varied forces of Nature and of animal life supplied materials to the Greek poet by which to enhance the poetical sense of the situation which he describes; and all these forces are apprehended by him with a vivid feeling of wonder, and presented to the imagination with a truthful observation of outward signs, and with a sympathetic insight into their innermost nature. Virgil is not only more sparing in the use of these figures; he is also tamer and less inventive in their application. In those drawn from the life of wild animals he, for the most part, reproduces the Homeric imagery, though we note as one touch of realism in them that the wolf, familiar to Italy, frequently takes the place of the lion, which was probably still an object of terror in Western Asia at the time when Homer lived. Another cla.s.s of images reproduced from Homer is that of those in which a mortal is compared to an immortal, as at i. 498-

Qualis in Eurotae ripis, aut per iuga Cynthi, Exercet Diana choros, etc.,

though in this some variations are introduced from a simile in Apollonius.

Another pa.s.sage of the same kind is immediately derived from the Alexandrine poet-

Qualis, ubi hibernam Lyciam Xanthique fluenta(673), etc.

There is, however, another cla.s.s of 'similes' used by Virgil in his epic, after the example of the Alexandrines, which can scarcely be said to fulfil the function of a poetical a.n.a.logy, but merely to give a realistic outward symbol of some movement of the mind or pa.s.sions, without any imaginative enhancement of the situation. Such, for instance, is the comparison at vii. 377, etc. of the mind of Amata to a top whipped by boys round an empty court,-a comparison suggested by a pa.s.sage in Callimachus(674); and that again at viii. 22, etc. of the variations of purpose in the mind of Aeneas, produced by the surging sea of cares besetting him, to the variations of light reflected from the water in a copper cauldron,-a comparison directly imitated from Apollonius (iii. 754, etc.). There are others again of what may be called a somewhat conventional cast, which acquire individuality from the colour of local a.s.sociations, such as the introduction (at xii. 715) of two bulls battling together (as they are also described in the Georgics)-

ingenti Sila, summove Taburno;

the comparison (at xii. 701 etc.) of Aeneas, towering in all his warlike power, to Athos or Eryx-

aut ipse, coruscis c.u.m fremit ilicibus, quantus, gaudetque nivali Vertice se attollens, pater Appenninus ad auras(675);

and that at ix. 680, etc., in which the two sons of Alcanor are likened to two tall oaks growing-

Sive Padi ripis Athesim seu propter amoenum(676).

But there are other comparisons in Virgil indicative of more original invention, observation, and reflexion, which serve the true purpose of imaginative a.n.a.logies, viz. that of exalting the peculiar sentiment with which the poet desires the situation he is describing to be regarded. In the perception of these a.n.a.logies it is not merely intellectual curiosity that is gratified by the apprehension of the t??t? ??e??? in the phenomena; but the imagination is enlarged by the recognition of a.n.a.logous forces operating in different spheres, which separately are capable of producing a vivid and n.o.ble emotion. As an instance of this perception of the a.n.a.logy between great forces in different spheres, the one of human, the other of natural activity, we may take the comparison of the Italian host advancing in orderly march after its tumultuous gathering from many quarters, to the movement of mighty rivers when their component waters have found their appointed bed-