list of immortals to Tennyson, who shows not only by his glorious tribute,1 "Light among the vanished ages; star that gildest yet this phantom shore,' but also by his countless Virgilian echoes and references, that he is "the most Virgilian of modern poets." 2 It is with good reason, then, that Professor Mac Mechan3 has said: "Beginning the Aeneid is like setting out upon a broad and beaten highway, along which countless feet have passed in the course of nineteen centuries. It is a spiritual highway, winding through every age and every clime." Perennial Aeneid. 23. Not ephemeral are books like this; they put us in touch with the culture of former ages. Their roots have run down deep into humanity, and to tear them value of the out would be impossible. Thus it is that the words of Virgil come to us charged with the emotions of the centuries past, and these emotions cluster as thick about them as about the trumpet calls of Isaiah or the soft music of the Twenty-third Psalm. "The Aeneid," says Woodberry, "shows that characteristic of greatness in literature which lies in its being a watershed of time; it looks back to antiquity in all that clothes it with the past of imagination, character and event, and forward to Christian times in all that clothes it with emotion, sentiment and finality to the heart." 24. There are, of course, some obvious defects in the 1 To Virgil. Written at the request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of Virgil's death. See page lx. 2 See Classical Echoes in Tennyson, by W. P. Mustard (The Macmillan Co., 1904). 3 Professor of English Literature in Dalhousie College, Halifax. The extract is from a published lecture on Virgil. 4 Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, New York. See his Great Writers, p. 136 (McClure Co., N.Y., 1907). The Aeneid the first of its class. Aeneid. The spell of Homer is too strong at times, and Virgil, with the Iliad and Odyssey before him, made the Aeneid too lengthy and brought in too many scenes of battle and bloodshed. The hero is not, first and foremost, a warrior, and it is a mistake that in certain passages Virgil has given him too strong a resemblance to Achilles, when we know that in essentials he is more like Virgil himself. But Homer was the only model worthy of Virgil, and we, realizing the solidarity of classical literature and the sense of continuity running through it all, are sometimes surprised to find how original and independent, for all his indebtedness to Homer, Virgil can be. We no longer regard the Iliad and the Aeneid as epics of the same type. The world of the Augustan age was not the same world as in the old Homeric days, and we have learnt that the later epic is as truly representative of an age of culture and art, of wealth and imperial power, as the earlier is the product of an age of artlessness, simplicity, and open-eyed wonder. 25. As a truly national work, the Aeneid draws upon all the best stores in the previous literature of Rome,1 and it is The Aeneid in a somewhat similar way that the later epic draws upon Homer. The Homeric poems were familiar to all Romans who could boast of any education whatever. They had become absorbed in its relation to earlier literature. 1 Notably the epics, especially the Annales of Ennius (239-169 B.C.) and the Punic War of Naevius (240–202 B.C.). The Annales of Ennius was a poetic chronicle of historical incidents from the earliest days of the city to the poet's own time. The work was regarded with veneration by all Romans, and the Aeneid is saturated with its influence. Naevius, in his epic, had handled the mythical history of both Rome and Carthage, and thus provided Virgil with some of the material used in the first four books. The tragedies of Pacuvius (219–129 B.C.) and Accius (170 to about 90 B.C.) had also no little influence on Virgil. into the intellectual life of Rome, just as much of Hebrew literature has been absorbed into ours. Not only, therefore, are these epics bound to show their influence in the Aeneid, but that influence must logically be paramount. Virgil had already become the Theocritus1 and the Hesiod 2 of Rome; now that he was entering upon the epic field he must strive to become the Homer of Rome as well. Virgil's absorption of 26. But to become another Homer, it was necessary to do far more than simply transfer Homeric verses to his pages. Suetonius tells us that some critics of Virgil reproached him for taking too freely from the Homer. Greek. The poet retorted by declaring that if they would try to do what he had done, they would find it easier to take the club from Hercules than a verse from Homer. And there is no doubt that Virgil himself and almost all of his contemporaries regarded his reproductions of Homer much as we look upon Landor's echoes of Roman classics or Matthew Arnold's copies from Greek tragedy." The thoughts please because they are appropriate, and if we know the original, we read the imitation with all the greater satisfaction. It is thus that Voltaire very justly remarked on one occasion that "if Homer is the creator of Virgil, Virgil is certainly the finest of his works." 27. The Aeneid is such a comprehensive work that it may be approached by many avenues and studied from many points of view. It is a storehouse of the literaComprehensiveness of ture of the past; it is a compendium of Roman the Aeneid. antiquities and Roman customs; it is an epitome of Roman history; it is a eulogy of Roman imperialism; it 2 In the Georgics. 1 In the Eclogues. 8 Facilius esse Herculi clavam quam Homero versum subripere. 4 Walter Savage Landor (1775-1864). knowledge of Latin literature. His works reveal a remarkable 5 E.g. his tragedy of Merope. is a splendid paean of Roman patriotism. A recent writer1 finds its 'grandest phase' in the fact that "it is a meditation upon life," and it certainly is the loftiest expression ever heard of Roman spirituality. It is the striking contrast between the deeply religious Virgil and the irreligious atmosphere in which he lived that we should recognize, if we are to appreciate this great poet as he deserves. The note of spirituality. 28. This spiritual note is heard above all others in the Eclogues, as in the Pollio poem, a beautiful dream of a golden age, when "a little child shall lead" the world into righteousness and peace. It is heard again in the Georgics, where ora et labora, "work and pray," is the constant theme. And again we find it echoing through the long Aeneid. In the First Book, the hero resigns himself to fate and the will of the gods; in the Second, the mist is taken from his eyes, and he sees the gods themselves uprooting Troy; in the Third, he wanders to and fro, seeking guidance from above; in the Fourth, he forgets for a brief space his high mission, but responds at once to the divine call, sinking self and sentiment when duty demands the sacrifice; in the Fifth, he engages in the most pious of devotional acts, the sacrifices and games in honor of a dead father; in the Sixth, he essays to pierce the veil which hides the unseen world, and wins that revelation of life immortal which has enthralled the fancy of the greatest Christian poets of mediaeval and modern times. In the light of that revelation, Aeneas, throughout the second half of the Aeneid, calmly pursues his divinely ordered way, working out the destiny of his race and country with all the serene confidence inspired by perfect faith in a divine 1 Woodberry, Great Writers, p. 140. blessing. Herein we see embodied the soul of Rome her. self, as she is revealed in her majestic development. The sixth 29. But it is in the Sixth, and central, Book of the twelve that Virgil breathes his highest spiritual aspirations. This life of human effort, of vain longing, of love unsatisfied - has it no fruition, no fulfilment in the world beyond? Is Lucretius right when he leads us down to the gloom of the grave, and leaves us to an immortal death? This is the question with which the poet grapples in this wonderful book, and in the answer we have (next to Plato's Phaedo) the noblest spiritual utterance of pagan thought. For out of all that the legends, traditions, poetry, mysteries, religion, and philosophy of Greece and Rome could teach, Virgil has gathered up the noblest elements and made one supreme effort to catch a vision of the world beyond the grave. 30. The Aeneid is an epic in twelve books, the first half dealing with the hero's wanderings from his old home in The story of Troy, and the second half with his wars, inthe Aeneid. curred in making a new home for his people. The poem thus becomes at once an Odyssey and an Iliad. The story opens, in true epic fashion, not with the beginning of the hero's wanderings, but in the seventh year after the fall of Troy. The subject is briefly stated, Book I. and then we have "a view of the supernatural machinery by which it is to be worked out." While sailing from Sicily, the Trojans encounter a storm raised by Aeolus (god of the winds) at the request of Juno, who, in her hatred of the Trojan race, would gladly destroy its last remnants and so prevent the founding of Rome. The Trojans are wrecked off the African coast, where Aeneas, son of Venus and Anchises, is hospitably received by Queen Dido, who is |