The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil Part 8

There are more imitations of the Greek in this and in the next poem than in any of the other Eclogues(191). The scenery of the piece, in so far as it is at all definite, combines the mountains and the sea-landscape of Sicily with Italian woods and vineyards. Corydon seems to combine the features of an Italian vinedresser with the conventional character of a Sicilian shepherd. The line

Aspice aratra iugo referunt suspensa iuvenci(192)

applies rather to an Italian scene than to the pastoral district of Sicily; and this reference to ploughing seems inconsistent with the description of the fierce midsummer heat, and with the introduction of the 'fessi messores' in the opening lines of the poem. These inconsistencies show how little thought Virgil had for the objective consistency of his representation. The poem however, in many places, gives powerful expression to the feelings of a despairing lover. There are here, as in the Gallus, besides that vein of feeling which the Latin poet shares with Theocritus, some traces of that 'wayward modern mood' of longing to escape from the world and to return to some vague ideal of Nature, and to sacrifice all the gains of civilisation in exchange for the homeliest dwelling shared with the object of affection:-

O tantum libeat mec.u.m tibi sordida rura Atque humiles habitare casas, et figere cervos(193);

and again,

Habitarunt di quoque silvas Dardaniusque Paris. Pallas quas condidit arces Ipsa colat, n.o.bis placeant ante omnia silvae(194).

The third Eclogue, which is in dialogue, and reproduces two features of the Greek idyl, the natural banter of the shepherds and the more artificial contest in song, is still more imitative and composite in character. It shows several close imitations, especially of the fourth, fifth, and eighth Idyls of Theocritus(195). In this poem only Virgil, whose muse even in the Eclogues is almost always serious or plaintive, endeavours to reproduce the playfulness and vivacity of his original. Both in the bantering dialogue and in the more formal contest of the shepherds, the subjects introduced are for the most part of a conventional pastoral character, but with these topics are combined occasional references to the tastes and circ.u.mstances of the poet himself. Thus in lines 4042,

In medio duo signa ... curvus arator haberet,

allusion is made to the astronomical studies of which Virgil made fuller use in the Georgics. In the line

Pollio amat nostram quamvis est rustica Musam,

and again,

Pollio et ipse facit nova carmina(196),

he makes acknowledgment of the favour and pays honour to the poetical tastes of his earliest patron, whom he celebrates also in the fourth and eighth Eclogues. The line

Qui Bavium non odit amet tua carmina, Maevi(197)

has condemned to everlasting notoriety the unfortunate pair, who have served modern satirists as types of spiteful critics and ineffectual authors. At lines 1011 there is, as in Eclogue ii., an apparent blending of the occupations of the Italian vinedresser with those of the Sicilian shepherd. In the contest of song there is no sustained connexion of thought, as indeed there is not in similar contests in Theocritus. These contests are supposed to reproduce the utterances of improvisatori, of whom the second speaker is called to say something, either in continuation of or in contrast to the thought of the first. The shepherds in these strains seek to glorify their own prowess, boast of their successes in love, or call attention to some picturesque aspect of their rustic life.

The fifth Eclogue is also in dialogue. It brings before us a friendly interchange of song between two pastoral poets, Mopsus and Menalcas.

Servius mentions that Menalcas (here, as in the ninth Eclogue) stands for Virgil himself, while Mopsus stands for his friend Aemilius Macer of Verona. Mopsus laments the cruel death of Daphnis, the legendary shepherd of Sicilian song, and Menalcas celebrates his apotheosis. Various accounts were given in antiquity of the meaning which was to be attached to this poem. One account was that Virgil here expressed his sorrow for the death of his brother Flaccus(198). Though the time of his death may have coincided with that of the composition of this poem, the language of the lament and of the song celebrating the ascent of Daphnis to heaven is quite unlike the expression of a private or personal sorrow. There seems no reason to doubt another explanation which has come down from ancient times, that under this pastoral allegory Virgil laments the death and proclaims the apotheosis of Julius Caesar. It is probable(199) that the poem was composed for his birthday, the 4th of July, which for the first time was celebrated with religious rites in the year 42 B.C., when the name of the month Quintilis was changed into that which it has retained ever since. The lines 2526,

Nulla neque amnem Libavit quadrupes nec graminis attigit herbam(200),

are supposed(201) to refer to a belief which had become traditional in the time of Suetonius, that the horses which had been consecrated after crossing the Rubicon had refused to feed immediately before the death of their master(202). In the lines expressing the sorrow for his loss, and in those which mark out the divine office which he was destined to fulfil after death,-

Ut Baccho Cererique, tibi sic vota quotannis Agricolae facient, d.a.m.nabis tu quoque votis(203),-

as in the lines of the ninth, referring to the Julium Sidus,-

Astrum quo segetes gauderent frugibus, et quo Duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem(204),-

allusion is made to the encouragement Caesar gave to the husbandman and vine-planter in his lifetime, and to the honour due to him as their tutelary G.o.d in heaven. And these allusions help us to understand the 'votis iam nunc adsuesce vocari' of the invocation in the first Georgic.

Nothing ill.u.s.trates more clearly the unreal conceptions of the pastoral allegory than a comparison of the language in the 'Lament for Daphnis,'

with the strong Roman realism of the lines at the end of the first Georgic, in which the omens portending the death of Caesar are described.

Nor can anything show more clearly the want of individuality with which Virgil uses the names of the Theocritean shepherds than the fact that while the Daphnis of the fifth Eclogue represents the departed and deified soldier and statesman, the Daphnis of the ninth is a living husbandman whose fortunes were secured by the protecting star of Caesar,-

Insere, Daphni, piros, carpent tua poma nepotes(205).

The peace and tranquillity restored to the land under this protecting influence are foreshadowed in the lines 5861-

Ergo alacris ... amat bonus otia Daphnis;

and the earliest reference to the divine honours a.s.signed in life and death to the later representatives of the name of Caesar, is heard in the jubilant shout of wild mountains, rocks, and groves to the poet-

Deus, deus ille, Menalca.

Although the treatment of the subject may be vague and conventional, yet this poem possesses the interest of being Virgil's earliest effort, directed to a subject of living and national interest; and many of the lines in the poem are unsurpa.s.sed for grace and sweetness of musical cadence by anything in Latin poetry.

There is no allusion to contemporary events by which the date of the seventh can be determined; but the absence of such allusion and the 'purely Theocritean(206)' character of the poem suggest the inference that it is a specimen of Virgil's earlier manner. Two shepherds, Corydon and Thyrsis, are introduced as joining Daphnis, who is seated under a whispering ilex; they engage in a friendly contest of song, which is listened to also by the poet himself, who here calls himself Meliboeus.

They a.s.sert in alternate strains their claims to poetic honours, offer prayers and vows to Diana as the G.o.ddess of the chase and to Priapus as the G.o.d of gardens, draw rival pictures of cool retreat from the heat of summer and of cheerfulness by the winter fire, and connect the story of their loves with the varying aspect of the seasons, and with the beauty of trees sacred to different deities or native to different localities.

Though the shepherds are Arcadian, the scenery is Mantuan:-

Hic viridis tenera praetexit harundine ripam Mincius, eque sacra resonant examina quercu(207).

Meliboeus decides the contest in favour of Corydon:-

Haec memini, et victum frustra contendere Thyrsin.

Ex illo Corydon Corydon est tempore n.o.bis(208).

These poems, in which the conventional shepherds of pastoral poetry sing of their loves, their flocks and herds, of the beauty of the seasons and of outward nature, in tones caught from Theocritus, or revive and give a new meaning to the old Sicilian dirge over 'the woes of Daphnis,' may be a.s.signed to the eventful year in which the forces of the Republic finally shattered themselves against the forces of the new Empire. There is a strange contrast between these peaceful and somewhat unreal strains of Virgil and the drama which was at the same time enacted on the real stage of human affairs. No sound of the 'storms that raged outside his happy ground' disturbs the security with which Virgil cultivates his art. But the following year brought the trouble and unhappiness of the times home to the peaceful dwellers around Mantua, and to Virgil among the rest. Of the misery caused by the confiscations and allotments of land to the soldiers of Octavia.n.u.s, the first Eclogue is a lasting record. Yet even in this poem, based as it is on genuine feeling and a real experience, Virgil seems to care only for the truth of feeling with which t.i.tyrus and Meliboeus express themselves, without regard for consistency in the conception of the situation, the scenery, or the personages of the poem.

t.i.tyrus is at once the slave who goes to Rome to purchase his freedom, and the owner of the land and of the flocks and herds belonging to it(209). He is advanced in years(210), and at the same time a poet lying indolently in the shade, and making the woods ring with the sounds of 'beautiful Amaryllis(211),' like the young shepherds in Theocritus. The scenery apparently combines some actual features of the farm in the Mantuan district-

Quamvis lapis omnia nudus Limosoque palus obducat pascua iunco(212),

with the ideal mountain-land of pastoral song-

Maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae(213).

A further inconsistency has been suggested between the time of year indicated by the 'shade of the spreading beech' in the first line, and that indicated by the ripe chestnuts at line 81(214). The truth of the poem consists in the expression of the feelings of love which the old possessors entertained for their homes, and the sense of dismay caused by this barbarous irruption on their ancient domains:-

Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit?

Barbarus has segetes? En quo discordia civis Produxit miseros(215)!

Virgil's feeling for the movement of his age, which henceforth becomes one of the main sources of his inspiration, has its origin in the effect which these events had on his personal fortunes, and in the sympathy awakened within him by the sorrows of his native district.

The ninth Eclogue, written most probably in the same year, and in form imitated from the seventh Idyl-the famous Thalysia-of Theocritus, repeats the tale of dejection and alarm among the old inhabitants of the Mantuan district,-

Nunc victi, tristes, quoniam fors omnia versat(216),-

and touches allusively on the story of the personal danger which Virgil encountered from the violence of the centurion who claimed possession of his land. The speakers in the dialogue are Moeris, a shepherd of Menalcas,-the pastoral poet, who sings of the nymphs, of the wild flowers spread over the ground, and of the brooks shaded with trees,-and Lycidas, who, like the Lycidas of the Thalysia, is also a poet:-

Me quoque dic.u.n.t Vatem pastores, sed non ego credulus illis.

Nam neque adhuc Vario videor nec dicere Cinna Digna, sed argutos inter strepere anser olores(217).

After the account of the fray, given by Moeris, and the comments of Lycidas, in which he introduces the lines referred to in the previous chapter, as having all the signs of being a real description of the situation of Virgil's farms-

qua se subducere colles incipiunt-