Chapter 4

Again, I would suggest that it was at Naples that Vergil may most readily have come upon the "messianic" ideas that occur in the fourth _Eclogue_, for despite all the objections that have been raised against using that word, conceptions are found there which were not yet naturalized in the Occident. The child in question is thought of as a Soter whose _deeds_ the poet hopes to sing (l. 54), and furthermore lines 7 and 50 contain unmistakably the Oriental idea of _naturam parturire_, as Suetonius phrases it (_Aug_. 94). Quite apart from the likelihood that the Gadarene may have gossiped at table about the messianic hopes of the Hebrews, which of course he knew, it is not conceivable that he never betrayed any knowledge of, or interest in, the prophetic ideas with which his native country teemed. Meleager, also a Gadarene, preserved memories of the people of his birthplace in his poems, and Caecilius of Caleacte, who seems to have been in Italy at about this time, was not beyond quoting Moses in his rhetorical works.[7]

[Footnote 7: It is generally assumed that his book was the source for the quotation in _Pseudo-Longinus_.]

Furthermore, Naples was the natural resort of all those Greek and Oriental rhetoricians and philosophers, historians, poets, actors, and artists who drifted Romeward from the crumbling courts of Alexandria, Antioch, and Pergamum. There they could find congenial surroundings while discovering wealthy patrons in the numerous villas of the idle rich near by, and thither they withdrew at vacation time if necessity called them to Rome for more arduous tasks. Andronicus, the Syrian Epicurean, brought to Rome by Sulla, made his home at nearby Cumae; Archias, Cicero's client, also from Syria, spent much time at Naples, and the poet Agathocles lived there; Parthenius of Nicaea, to whom the early Augustans were deeply indebted, taught Vergil at Naples. Other Orientals like Alexander, who wrote the history of Syria and the Jews, and Timagenes, historian of the Diadochi, do not happen to be reported from Naples, but we may safely assume that most of them spent whatever leisure time they could there.

Puteoli too was still the seaport town of Rome as of all Central Italy, and the Syrians were then the carriers of the Mediterranean trade.[8] That is one reason why Apollo's oracles at Cumae and Hecate's necromatic cave at Lake Avernus still prospered. When Vergil explored that region, as the details of the sixth book show he must have done, he had occasion to learn more than mere geographic details.

[Footnote 8: Frank, _An Economic History of Rome_, chap. xiv.]

That Vergil had Isaiah, chapter II, before his eyes when he wrote the fourth _Eclogue_ is of course out of the question; there is not a single close parallel of the kind that Vergil usually permits himself to borrow from his sources; we cannot even be sure that he had seen any of the Sibylline oracles, now found in the third book of the collection, which contains so strange a syncretism of Mithraic, Greek, and Jewish conceptions, but we can no longer doubt that he was in a general way well informed and quite thoroughly permeated with such mystical and apocalyptic sentiments as every Gadarene and any Greek from the Orient might well know. It speaks well for his love of Rome that despite these influences it was he who produced the most thoroughly nationalistic epic ever written.

The first fruit of Vergil's studies in evolutionary science at Naples was the _Aetna_, if indeed the poem be his. The problem of the authorship has been patiently studied, and the arguments for authenticity concisely summarized by Vessereau[9] make a strong case. The evidence is briefly this. Servius attributed the poem to Vergil in his preface and again in his commentary on _Aeneid_, III, 578. Donatus also seems to have done so, though some of our manuscripts of his _Vita_ contain the phrase _de qua ambigitur_. Again, the texts of the _Aetna_ which we have agree also in this ascription. Internal evidence proves the poem to be a work of the period between 54 and 44, which admirably suits Vergilian claims. Its close dependence upon Lucretius gives the first date, its mention of the "Medea" of the artist Timomachus as being overseas, a work which was brought to Rome between 46 and 44, gives the second. Finally, the _Aetna_ is by a student of Epicurean philosophy largely influenced by Lucretius. It would be difficult to make a stronger case short of a contemporaneous attribution. Has not Vergil himself referred to the _Aetna_ in the preface of his _Ciris_, where he thanks the Muses for their aid in an abstruse poem (l. 93)?

Quare quae _cantus_ meditanti mittere _caecos_[10] Magna mihi cupido tribuistis praemia divae.

What other poem could he have had in mind? The designation does not fit the _Culex_, which is the only poem besides the _Aetna_ that could be in question. It is best, therefore, to take the _Aetna_[11] into account in studying Vergil's life, even though we reserve a place in our memories for that stray phrase _de qua ambigitur_.

[Footnote 9: Vessereau, _Aetna_, xx ff.; Rand, _Harvard Studies_, XXX, 106, 155 ff. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Seneca attributed the _Aetna_ to Vergil in _ad Lucilium_ 79, 5: The words "Vergil's complete treatment" can hardly refer to the seven meager lines found in the third book of the _Aeneid_.]

[Footnote 10: Lucretius is very fond of using the word _caecus_ with reference to abstruse and obscure philosophical and scientific subjects.]

[Footnote 11: When Vergil wrote the _Georgics_, on a subject which the poet of the _Aetna_ derides as trivial (264-74) he seems to apologize for abandoning science, in favor of a meaner theme, _Georgics_ II, 483 ff. Is not this a reference to the _Aetna_?]

The poet after an invocation to Apollo justifies himself for rejecting the favorite themes of myth and fiction: the mysteries of nature are more worthy of occupying the efforts of the mind. He has chosen one out of very many that needs explanation. The true cause of volcanic eruption, he says, is that air is driven into the pores of the earth, and when this comes into contact with lava and flint which contain atoms of fire, it creates the explosions that cause such destruction. After a second invitation to the reader to appreciate the worth of such a theme he tells the story of two brothers of Catania who, when other refugees from Aetna's explosion rescued their worldly goods, risked their lives to save their parents.

The poem is not a happy experiment. There is no lack of enthusiasm for the subject, despite the fact that the science of that day was wholly inadequate to the theme. But Vergil could hardly realize this, since both Stoics and Epicureans had adopted the theory of the exploding winds. The real trouble with the theme is its hopelessly prosaic ugliness. Lucretius, by his imaginative power, had apparently deceived him into thinking that any fragment of science might be treated poetically. In his master the "flaring atom streams" had attained the sublimity of a Platonic vision, and the very majestic sadness of his materialism carried the young poet off his feet. But the mechanism of Aetna remained merely a puzzle with little to inspire awe, and the theme contained inherently no deep meaning for humanity--which, after all, the scientific problem must possess to lend itself to poetic treatment. The poet indeed realized all this before he had finished. He sought, with inadequate resources, to stir an emotion of awe in describing the eruption, to argue the reader into his own enthusiasm for a scientific subject, to prove the humanistic worth of his problem by asserting its anti-religious value, and finally, in a Turneresque obtrusion of human beings, to tell the story of the Catanian brothers. But though the attempt does honor to his aesthetic judgment the theme was incorrigible. Perhaps the recent eruptions of Aetna--they are reported for the years 50 and 46 B.C.--had given the theme a greater interest than it deserved. We may imagine how refugees from Catania had flocked to Naples and told the tale of their suffering.

There is another element in the poem that is as significant as it is prosaic, a spirit of carping at poetic custom which reminds the reader of Philodemus' lectures. Philodemus, whether speaking of philosophy or music or poetry, always begins in the negative. He is not happy until he has soundly trounced his predecessors and opponents. The author of the _Aetna_ has learned all too well this scholastic method, and his acerbity usually turns the reader away before he has reached the central theme. There is of course just a little of this tone left in the _Georgics_--Lucretius also has a touch of it--but the _Aeneid_ has freed itself completely.

The compensation to the reader lies not so much in episodical myths, descriptions, and the story at the end, apologetically inserted on Lucretius' theory of sweetened medicine, as rather in the poet's contagious enthusiasm for his science, the thrill of discovery and the sense of wonder (1. 251):

Divina est animi ac jucunda voluptas!

Men have wasted hours enough on trivialities (258):

Torquemur miseri in parvis, terimurque labore.

A worthier occupation is science (274):

Implendus sibi quisque bonis est artibus: illae Sunt animi fruges, haec rerum est optima merces.

And science must be worthy of man's divine majesty (224):

Non oculis solum pecudum miranda tueri More nec effusis in humum grave pascere corpus; Nosse fidem rerum dubiasque exquirere causas, Ingenium sacrare caputque attollere caelo, Scire quot et quae sint magno fatalia mundo Principia.

This may be prose, but it has not a little of the magnificence of the Lucretian logic. The man who wrote this was at least a spiritual kinsman of Vergil.

VI

EPIGRAM AND EPIC

The years of Vergil's sojourn in Naples were perhaps the most eventful in Rome's long history, and we may be sure that nothing but a frail constitution could have saved a man of his age for study through those years. After the battle of Pharsalia in 48, Caesar, aside from the lotus-months in Egypt, pacified the Eastern provinces, then in 46 subdued the senatorial remnants in Africa, driving Cato to his death, and in September of that year celebrated his fourfold triumph with a magnificence hitherto undreamed. All Italy went to see the spectacle, and doubtless Vergil too; for here it was, if we mistake not, that he first resolved to write an epic of Rome. The year 45 saw the defeat of the Pompeian remnants in Spain, and the first preparations for the great Parthian expedition which, as all knew, was to inaugurate the new Monarchy. Then came the sudden blow that struck Caesar down, the civil war that elevated Antony and Octavian and brought Cicero to his death, and finally the victory at Philippi which ended all hope of a republic. Through all this turmoil the philosophic group of the "Garden" continued its pursuit of science, commenting, as we shall see, upon passing events.

The _Aetna_--which seems to date from about 47-6--reveals the young philosopher, if it is Vergil, in a serious mood of single-minded devotion to his new pursuit. But as may be inferred from the fifth _Catalepton_ he was not sure of not backsliding. To the influence of Catullus, plainly visible all through these brief poems, there was added the example of Philodemus who wrote epigrams from time to time. Several of the _Catalepton_ may belong to this period. The very first,[1] addressed to Vergil's lifelong friend Plotius Tucca, is an amusing trifle in the very vein of Philodemus. The fourth, like the first in elegiacs, is a gracious tribute to a departing friend, Musa, perhaps his fellow-townsman Octavius Musa.[2] It closes with a generous expression of unquestioning friendship that asks for no return:

Quare illud satis est si te permittis amari Nam contra ut sit amor mutuus, unde mihi?

[Footnote 1: Dequa saepe tibi, venit? sed, Tucca, videre Non licet. Occulitur limine clausa viri. Dequa saepe tibi, non venit adhuc mihi; namque Si occulitur, longe est tangere quod nequeas. Venerit, audivi. Sed iam jnihi nuntius iste Quid prodest? illi dicito cui rediit.]

[Footnote 2: See Horace, _Sat_. I. 10, 82; Servius on _Ecl_. IX. 7; Berne Scholia on _Ecl_. VIII. 6.]

That is the trait surely that accounts for Horace's outburst of admiration.

Animae quales neque candidiores Terra tulit.

The seventh is an epigram mildly twitting Varius for his insistence upon pure diction. The crusade for purity of speech had been given a new impetus a decade before by the Atticists, and we may here infer that Varius, the quondam friend of Catullus, was considered the guardian of that tradition. Vergil, despite his devotion to neat technique, may have had his misgivings about rules that in the end endanger the freedom of the poet. His early work ranged very widely in its experiments in style, and Horace's _Ars Poetica_ written many years later shows that Vergil had to the very end been criticized by the extremists for taking liberties with the language. The epigram begins as though it were an erotic poem in the style of Philodemus. Then, having used the Greek word _pothos_, he checks himself as though dreading a frown from Varius, and substitutes the Latin word _puer_,

Scilicet hoc fraude, Vari dulcissime, dicam: "Dispeream, nisi me perdidit iste pothos." Sin autem praecepta vetant me dicere, sane Non dicam, sed: "me perdidit iste puer."

For the comprehension of the personal allusions in the sixth and twelfth epigrams, we have as yet discovered no clue, and as they are trifles of no poetic value we may disregard them.

The fourteenth is, however, of very great interest. It purports to be a vow spoken before Venus' shrine at Sorrento pledging gifts of devotion in return for aid in composing the story of Trojan Aeneas.

Si mihi susceptum fuerit decurrere munus, O Paphon, o sedes quae colis Idalias, Troius Aeneas Romana per oppida digno Iam tandem ut tecum carmine vectus eat: Non ego ture modo aut picta tua templa tabella Ornabo et puris serta feram manibus-- Corniger hos aries humilis et maxima taurus Victima sacrato sparget honore focos Marmoreusque tibi aut mille coloribus ales In morem picta stabit Amor pharetra. Adsis o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat.

The poem has hitherto been assigned to a period twenty years later. But surely this youthful ferment of hope and anxiety does not represent the composure of a man who has already published the _Georgics_. The eager offering of flowers and a many-hued statue of Cupid reminds one rather of the youth who in the _Ciris_ begged for inspiration with hands full of lilies and hyacinths.

However, we are not entirely left to conjecture. There is indubitable evidence that Vergil began an epic at this time, some fifteen years before he published the _Georgics_. It seems clear also that the epic was an _Aeneid_, with Julius Caesar in the background, and that parts of the early epic were finally merged into the great work of his maturity. The question is of such importance to the study of Vergil's developing art that we may be justified in going fully into the evidence[3]. As it happens we are fortunate in having several references to this early effort. The ninth _Catalepton_, written in 42, mentions the poet's ambition to write a national poem worthy of a place among the great classics of Greece (l.62):

Si patrio Graios carmine adire sales.

The sixth _Eclogue_ begins with an allusion to it:

Prima Syracusio dignata est ludere versu Nostra, nec erubuit silvas habitare Thalia. Cum canerem reges et proelia, Cynthius aurem Vellit et admonuit, pastorem Tityre pinguis Pascere oportet oves, deductum dicere carmen.

[Footnote 3: Cf. _Classical Quarterly_, 1920, 156.]

This may be paraphrased: "My first song--the _Culex_--was a pastoral strain. When later I essayed to sing of kings and battles, Phoebus warned me to return to my shepherd song." On this passage Servius has the comment: significat aut Aeneidem aut gesta regum Albanorum. Donatus finally in his _Vita_ says explicitly: mox cum res Romanas inchoasset, offensus materia, ad Bucolica transit. The poem, therefore, was on the stocks before the _Bucolics_. We may surmise that the death of Caesar, whose deeds seem to have brought the idea of such a poem to Vergil's mind, caused him to lay the work aside.

Returning to the fourteenth _Catalepton_, we find what seems to be a definite key to the date and circumstances of its writing. The closing lines are:

Adsis, o Cytherea: tuos te Caesar Olympo Et Surrentini litoris ara vocat.

It was on September 26 in 46 B.C., that Julius Caesar so strikingly called attention to his claims of descent from Venus and Aeneas by dedicating a temple to Venus Genetrix, the mother of the Julian gens. It was on that day that Caesar "called Venus from heaven" to dwell in her new temple.[4]

[Footnote 4: Cassius Dio, 43, 22; Appian, II. 102. There is independent proof that _Catalepton_ XIV is earlier than the _Georgics_. In _Georgics_ II, 146, Vergil repeats the phrase _maxima taurus victima_, but the phrase must have had its origin in the _Catalepton_, since here _maxima_ balances _humilis_. In the _Georgics_ the phrase is merely a verbal reminiscence, for there is nothing in the context there to explain _maxima_. On the order of composition of the Aeneid, see M.M. Crump, _The Growth of the Aeneid_]

Was not this the act that prompted the happy idea of writing the epic of Aeneas? Vergil was then living at Naples, and we can picture the poet fevered with the new impulse, sailing away from his lectures across the fair bay for a day's brooding. Could one find a more fitting place than Venus's shrine at Sorrento for the invocation of the _Aeneid_?

How far this first attempt proceeded we shall probably not know. Vergil's own words would imply that his early effort centered about Aeneas' wars in Italy; the sixth _Eclogue_,

Cum canerem reges et proelia,

is rather explicit on this point. Furthermore, the erroneous reference of Calaeno's omen to Anchises in the seventh book (l. 122) would indicate that this part at least was written before the harpy-scene of the third, for the latter is so extensive that the poet could hardly have forgotten it if it had already been written.

It is, however, in reading the first and fifth books that I think we may profit most by keeping in mind the fact that the poet had begun the _Aeneid_ before Caesar's death. In Book I, 286 ff., occurs a passage which Servius referred to Julius Caesar. It reads:

Nascetur pulchra Troianus origine Caesar, Imperium Oceano, famam qui terminet astris, Iulius, a magno demissum nomen Iulo. Hunc tu olim caelo, spoliis Orientis onustum, Accipies secura; uocabitur his quoque uotis.[5]

[Footnote 5: The following lines (291-6) refer to the succeeding reign of Augustus as the poet is careful to indicate in the words _tum positis-bellis_.]

Very few modern editors have dared accept Servius' judgment here, and yet if we may think of these lines as adapted from (say) an original dedication to Julius Caesar written about 45 B.C., the difficulties of the commentators will vanish. The facts that Vergil seems to have in mind are these: in September 46 B.C., Julius Caesar, after returning from Thapsus, celebrated his four great triumphs over Gaul, Egypt, Pontus, and Africa, displaying loads of booty such as had never before been seen at Rome. He then gave an extended series of athletic games, of the kind described in Vergil's fifth book, including a restoration of the ancient _ludus Troiae_. When these were over he dedicated the temple of Venus Genetrix, thereby publicly announcing his descent from Venus, and presently proclaimed his own superhuman rank more explicitly by placing a statue of himself among the gods on the Capitoline (Dio, XLIII, 14-22). Are not the phrases, _imperium Oceano_ and _spoliis Orientis onustum_ a direct reference to this triumph which, of course, Vergil saw? And did not these dedications inspire the prophecy _uocabitur hic quoque uotis?_ Be that as it may, it is difficult to refuse credence to Servius in this case, for Vergil here (I, 267-274 and 283) accepts Julius Caesar's claim of descent from Iulus, whereas in the sixth book, in speaking of the descent of the royal Roman line, he derives it, as was regularly done in Augustus' day, from Silvius the son of Aeneas and Lavinia (VI, 763 ff.). We must notice also that in the _Aeneid_ as in the _Georgics_ Augustus is regularly called 'Augustus Caesar' or 'Caesar,' whereas in the only other references to Julius in the _Aeneid_ the poet explicitly points to him by saying 'Caesar et omnis _Iuli_ progenies' (VI, 789).

Servius, therefore, seems to be correct in regarding Julius as the subject of the passage in the first book, and it follows that the passage contains memories of the year 46 B.C., whether or not the lines were, as I suggest, first written soon after Caesar's triumph.

The fifth book also, despite the fact that its beginning and end show a late hand, contains much that can be best brought into connection with Vergil's earlier years. It is, for instance, easier to comprehend the poet's references to Memmius, Catiline, and Cluentius in the forties than twenty years later.

Vergil's strange comparison of Messalla to the _superbus Eryx_ in _Catalepton_ IX, written in 42 B.C.,[6] is also readily explained if we may assume that he has recently studied the Eryx myth in preparation for the contest of Book V (11. 392-420). The poet's enthusiasm for the _ludus Troiae is well understood as a description of what he saw at Caesar's re-introduction of the spectacle in 46. At Caesar's games Octavian, then sixteen years of age, must have led one of the troops:[7] in the fifth book Atys the ancestor of Octavian's maternal line led one column by the side of Iulus:

Alter Atys, genus unde Atii duxere Latini (1. 568).

[Footnote 6: See Chapter VIII.]

[Footnote 7: The brief account of Nicolaus of Damascus (9) mentions that Octavius had charge of the Greek plays at the triumphal games.]

Then, too, marks of youth pervade the substance of the book. The questionable witticisms might perhaps be attributed to an attempt to relieve the strain, but there is an unusual amount of Homeric imitation, and inartistic allusion to contemporaries which, as in the youthful _Bucolics_, destroys the dramatic illusion. Thus, Vergil not only dwells upon the ancestry of the Memmii, Sergii, and Cluentii, but insists upon reminding the reader of Catiline's conspiracy in the _Sergestus, furens animi_, who dashes upon the rock in his mad eagerness to win, and obtrudes etymology in the phrase _segnem Menoeten_ (1. 173). One is tempted to suspect that the whole narrative of the boat-race is filled with pragmatic allusions. If the characters of his epic must be connected with well-known Roman families, it is at least interesting that the connections are indicated in the fifth book and not in the passages where the names first meet the reader. Does it not appear that the body of the book was composed long before the rest, and then left at the poet's death not quite furbished to the fastidious taste of a later day?