The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 40

254 'Then he tells in song how Gallus as he strayed by the streams of Permessus was led by one of the sisters to the Aonian mount.'

'All those strains, which when attuned by Phoebus, Eurotas heard, enraptured, and bade his laurels learn by heart, he sings.'

255 Compare for this use of _mollis_ in the sense of 'impressible'

Cicero's description of his brother Quintus (Ep. ad Att. i. 17): 'Nam, quanta sit in Quinto fratre meo comitas, quanta iucunditas, quam mollis animus et ad accipiendam et ad deponendam iniuriam, nihil attinet me ad te, qui ea nosti, scribere.'

256 'Fundit humo facilem victum _iustissima_ tellus.'

257 'There all alone he used to fling wildly to the mountains and the woods these unpremeditated words in unavailing longing.'

258 'He, his snow-white side reposing on the tender hyacinth,-'

259 'We leave the dear fields'-'Therefore you will still keep your fields, large enough for your desires'-'He allowed my herds to wander at their will, even as you see'-'Ah! the hope of all my flock, which she had just borne, she left on the bare flint pavement'-'Go on, my she-goats, once a happy flock, go on.'

260 This is the tone of the whole of the first Elegy of Tibullus, e.g.

Ipse seram teneras maturo tempore vites Rusticus et facili grandia poma manu.

Nec tamen interdum pudeat tenuisse bidentem, etc.

261 'You are but a clown, Corydon, Alexis cares not for gifts.'

262 'As if this could heal my madness.'

263 'Ah! may the rough ice not cut thy tender feet.'

264 'Shall I see you from afar hang from some bushy rock.'

'Here green Mincio forms a fringe of soft reeds along his bank.'

265 'I shall not yield in song either to Thracian Orpheus or to Linus, though he be aided by his mother, he by his father, Orpheus by Calliope, Linus by the fair Apollo. Even Pan, should he strive with me with all Arcadia as umpire, even Pan would say that he was vanquished, with Arcadia as umpire.'

266 'On this side, with its old familiar murmur, the hedge, your neighbour's boundary, on all the sweets of whose willow blossom the bees of Hybla have fed, will often gently woo you to sleep; on that from the foot of a high rock the song of the woodman will rise to the air; nor meanwhile will your darlings, the hoa.r.s.e wood-pigeons, cease to coo, nor the turtle-dove to moan from the high elm-tree.'

267 Poems by Matthew Arnold. Memorial Verses:-

'He found us when the age had bound Our souls in its benumbing round,' etc.

268 'Such charm is in thy song for us, O G.o.dlike poet, as is to weary men the charm of deep sleep on the gra.s.s, as, in summer heat, it is to quench one's thirst in a sparkling brook of fresh water.'

269 'What gifts shall I render to you, what gifts in recompense of such a strain: for neither the whisper of the coming south wind gives me such joy, nor the sound of sh.o.r.es beaten on by the wave, nor of rivers hurrying down through rocky glens.'

270 Coleridge's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 411.

271 Life and Letters, vol. i. p. 371.

272 From the similarity between the lines in Hor. Sat. i. 1. 114,

Ut c.u.m carceribus missos,

and those at the end of Georg. i. 512,

Ut c.u.m carceribus sese effudere quadrigae,

it has been argued that Georgic i, at all events, must have appeared before the first Book of the Satires. Ribbeck supposes that the lines of the Georgics may have been seen or heard by Horace before the appearance of the poem, and imitated by him. But is it likely that Horace would have appropriated an image from an _unpublished_ poem? Is it not as probable that Virgil was the imitator here, as in other pa.s.sages where he uses the language of contemporaries, e.g. of Varius, Ecl. viii. 88?

273 Compare the contrast drawn by him between Ennius and the contemporary 'Cantores Euphorionis,' Tusc. Disp. iii. 19.

274 Cf. also W. F. Teuffel's History of Roman Literature, chap. i. note 1.

275 'You sing the lore of the old poet of Ascra, of the field on which the corn, the hill on which the grape grows.' iii. 32. 7778.

276 'The city which is called Rome, O Meliboeus, I thought, in my folly, was like this city of ours.'

277 'For safe the herds range field and fen, Full-headed stand the shocks of grain.'

278 'Now each man basking on his slopes Weds to the widowed trees the vine.'

279 'Thy era, Caesar, which doth bless Our plains anew with fruitfulness.' Martin.

280 Compare Merivale's History of the Romans under the Empire, chap.

xli. 'The tradition that Maecenas himself suggested the composition of the Georgics may be accepted, not in the literal sense which has generally been attached to it, as a means of reviving the art of husbandry and the cultivation of the devastated soil of Italy; but rather to recommend the principles of the ancient Romans, their love of home, of labour, of piety, and order; to magnify their domestic happiness and greatness, to make men proud of their country on better grounds than the mere glory of its arms and the extent of its conquests. It would be absurd to suppose that Virgil's verses induced any Roman to put his hand to the plough, or to take from his bailiff the management of his own estates; but they served undoubtedly to revive some of the simple tastes and sentiments of the olden time, and perpetuated, amidst the vices and corruptions of the Empire, a pure stream of sober and innocent enjoyments, of which, as we journey onward, we shall rejoice to catch at least occasional glimpses.'

281 E.g.

Aus_im_ vel tenui vitem committere sulco;

and again,

Neve _tibi_ ad solem vergant vineta cadentem, etc.

282 De Senectute, xv. xvi.

283 'What makes the cornfields glad, beneath what constellation, Maecenas, is right to turn up the soil, and wed the vine to the elms,'-

284 De Re Rustica, i. 2.

285 Georg. ii. 145, etc.; Aen. iii. 537.

286 'Nec dubium quin, ut ait Varro, ceteras pecudes bos honore superare debeat, praesertim autem in Italia, quae ab hoc nuncupationem traxisse creditur, quod olim Graeci tauros ?ta???? vocabant.'

287 'Although neither Calabrian bees produce honey for me, nor does my wine grow mellow in a Formian jar, nor fleeces grow rich in Gallic pastures.' Compare too

Ego apis Matinae More modoque, etc.

The importance of honey as a source of wealth is referred to by Mommsen in his History of Rome, book v. chap. xi. 'A small bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme-garden, not larger than an acre, in the neighbourhood of Falerii, honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces (100_l._).'

288 'Illis enim temporibus proceres civitatis in agris morabantur.'

Columella.