Chapter 7

The eulogy of Messalla, written in 42 B.C., reveals Vergil already at work upon pastoral themes, to which, as he tells us, Messalla's Greek eclogues had called his attention. We may then at once reject the statement of the scholiasts that Vergil wrote the _Eclogues_ for the purpose of thanking Pollio, Alfenus, and Gallus for having saved his estates from confiscation. At least a full half of these poems had been written before there was any material cause for gratitude, and, as we shall see presently, these three men had in any case little to do with the matter. It will serve as a good antidote against the conjectures of the allegorizing school if we remember that these commentators of the Empire were for the most part Greek freedmen, themselves largely occupied in fawning upon their patrons. They apparently assumed that poets as a matter of course wrote what they did in order to please some patron--a questionable enough assumption regarding any Roman poetry composed before the Silver Age.

The second _Eclogue_ is a very early study which, in the theme of the gift-bringing, seems to be reminiscent of Messalla's work.[1] The third and seventh are also generally accepted as early experiments in the more realistic forms of amoebean pastoral. Since the fifth, which should be placed early in 41 B.C., actually cites the second and third, we have a _terminus ante quem_ for these two eclogues. To the early list the tenth should be added if it was addressed to Gallus while he was still doing military service in Greece, and with these we may place the sixth, discussed above.

[Footnote 1: See Chapter VIII.]

The lack of realistic local color in these pastorals has frequently been criticized, on the supposition that Vergil wrote them while at home in Mantua, and ought, therefore, to have given true pictures of Mantuan scenery and characters. His home country was and is a monotonous plain. The jutting crags with their athletic goats, the grottoes inviting melodious shepherds to neglect their flocks, the mountain glades and waterfalls of the _Eclogues_ can of course not be Mantuan. The Po Valley was thickly settled, and its deep black soil intensively cultivated. A few sheep were, of course, kept to provide wool, but these were herded by farmers' boys in the orchards. The lone she-goat, indispensable to every Italian household, was doubtless tethered by a leg on the roadside. There were herds of swine where the old oak forests had not yet been cut, but the swine-herd is usually not reckoned among songsters. Nor was any poetry to be expected from the cowboys who managed the cattle ranches at the foot hills of the Alps and the buffalo herds along the undrained lowlands. Is Vergil's scenery then nothing but literary reminiscence?

In point of fact the pastoral scenery in Vergil is Neapolitan. The eighth _Catalepton_ is proof that Vergil was at Naples when he heard of the dangers to his father's property in the North. It is doubtful whether Vergil ever again saw Mantua after leaving it for Cremona in his early boyhood. The property, of course, belonged not to him but to his father, who, as the brief poem indicates, had remained there with his family. The pastoral scenery seldom, except in the ninth _Eclogue_, pretends to be Mantuan. Even where, as in the first, the poem is intended to convey a personal expression of gratitude for Vergil's exemption from harsh evictions, the poet is very careful not to obtrude a picture of himself or his own circumstances. Tityrus is an old man, and a slave in a typical shepherd's country, such as could be seen every day in the mountains near Naples. And there were as many evictions near Naples as in the North. Indeed it is the Neapolitan country--as picturesque as any in Italy--that constantly comes to the reader's mind. We are told by Seneca that thousands of sheep fed upon the rough mountains behind Stabiae, and the clothier's hall and numerous fulleries of Pompeii remind us that wool-growing was an important industry of that region. Vergil's excursion to Sorrento was doubtless not the only visit across the bay. Behind Naples along the ridge of Posilipo,[2] below which Vergil was later buried, in the mountains about Camaldoli, and behind Puteoli all the way to Avernus--a country which the poet had roamed with observant eyes--there could have been nothing but shepherd country. Here, then, are the crags and waterfalls and grottoes that Vergil describes in the _Eclogues_.

[Footnote 2: The picturesque road from Naples to Puteoli clung to the edge of the rocky promontory of Posilipo, finally piercing the outermost rock by means of a tunnel now misnamed the "grotto di Sejano." Most of the road is now under twenty feet of water: See Günther, _Pausilypon_. To see the splendid ridge as Vergil saw it from the road one must now row the length of it from Naples to Nésida, sketching in an abundance of ilexes and goats in place of the villas that now cover it.]

And here, too, were doubtless as many melodious shepherds as ever Theocritus found in Sicily, for they were of the same race of people as the Sicilians. Why should the slopes of Lactarius be less musical than those of Aetna? Indeed the reasonable reader will find that, except for an occasional transference of actual persons into Arcadian setting--by an allegorical turn invented before Vergil--there is no serious confusion in the scenery or inconsistent treatment in the plots of Vergil's _Eclogues_. But by failing to make this simple assumption--naturally due any and every poet--readers of Vergil have needlessly marred the effect of some of his finest passages.

The fifth _Eclogue_, written probably in 41 B.C., is a very melodious Daphnis-song that has always been a favorite with poets. It has been and may be read with entire pleasure as an elegy to Daphnis, the patron god of singing shepherds. Those, however, who in Roman times knew Vergil's love of symbolism, suspected that a more personal interest led him to compose this elegy. The death and apotheosis of Julius Caesar is still thought by some to be the real subject of the poem, while a few have accepted another ancient conjecture that Vergil here wrote of his brother. The person mourned must, however, have been of more importance than Vergil's brother. On the other hand, certain details in the poem--the sorrow of the mother, for instance--preclude the conjecture that it was Caesar, unless the poet is here confusing his details more than we need assume in any other eclogue.

It is indeed difficult to escape the very old persuasion that a sorrow so sympathetically expressed must be more than a mere Theocritan reminiscence. If we could find some poet--for Daphnis must be that--near to Vergil himself, who met an unhappy death in those days, a poet, too, who died in such circumstances during the civil strife that general expression of grief had to be hidden behind a symbolic veil, would not the poem thereby gain a theme worthy of its grace? I think we have such a poet in Cornificius, the dear friend of Catullus, to whom in fact Catullus addressed what seem to be his last verses.[3] Like so many of the new poets, Cornificius had espoused Caesar's cause, but at the end was induced by Cicero to support Brutus against the triumvirs. After Philippi Cornificius kept up the hopeless struggle in Africa for several months until finally he was defeated and put to death. If he be Vergil's Daphnis we have an explanation of why his identity escaped the notice of curious scholars. Tactful silence became quite necessary at a time when almost every household at Rome was rent by divided sympathies, and yet brotherhood in art could hardly be entirely stifled. From the point of view of the masters of Rome, Cornificius had met a just doom as a rebel. If his poet friends mourned for him it must have been in some such guise as this.

[Footnote 3: Catullus, 38.]

In this instance the circumstantial evidence is rather strong, for we are told by a commentator that Valgius, an early friend of Vergil's, wrote elegies to the memory of a "Codrus," identified by some as Cornificius:[4]

Codrusque ille canit quali tu voce canebas, Atque solet numeros dicere Cinna tuos.

[Footnote 4: _Scholia Veronensia_, Ecl. VII, 22. The evidence is presented in _Classical Review_, 1920, p. 49.]

That "shepherd" at least is an actual person, a friend of Cinna, and a member of the neoteric group; that indeed it is Cornificius is exceedingly probable. The poet-patriot seems then, not to have been forgotten by his friends.

All too little is known about this friend of Catullus and Cinna, but what is known excites a keen interest. Though he was younger than Cicero by nearly a generation, the great orator[5] did him no little deference as a representative of the Atticistic group. In verse writing he was of Catullus' school, composing at least one epyllion, besides lyric verse. According to Macrobius, Vergil paid him the compliment of imitating him, and he in turn is cited by the scholiasts as authority for an opinion of Vergil's. If the Daphnis-song is an elegy written at his death--and it would be difficult to find a more fitting subject--the poem, undoubtedly one of the most charming of Vergil's _Eclogues_, was composed in 41 B.C. It were a pity if Vergil's prayer for the poet should after all not come true:

Semper honos, nomenque tuum laudesque manebunt.

[Footnote 5: See Cicero's letter to him: _Ad Fam_. XII, 17, 2.]

The tenth _Eclogue_, to Gallus, steeped in all the literary associations of pastoral elegies, from the time of Theocritus' Daphnis to our own "Lycidas" and "Adonais," has perhaps surrounded itself with an atmosphere that should not be disturbed by biographical details. However, we must intrude. Vergil's associations with Gallus, as has been intimated, were those, apparently, of Neapolitan school days and of poetry. The sixth _Eclogue_ delicately implies that the departure of Gallus from the circle had made a very deep impression upon his teacher and fellow students.

What would we not barter of all the sesquipedalian epics of the Empire for a few pages written by Cornelius Gallus, a thousand for each! This brilliant, hot-headed, over-grown boy, whom every one loved, was very nearly Vergil's age. A Celt, as one might conjecture from his career, he had met Octavius in the schoolroom, and won the boy's enduring admiration. Then, like Vergil, he seems to have turned from rhetoric to philosophy, from philosophy to poetry, and to poetry of the Catullan romances, as a matter of course. It was Cytheris, the fickle actress--if the scholiasts are right--who opened his eyes to the fact that there were themes for passionate poetry nearer home than the legendary love-tales; and when she forgot him, finding excitement elsewhere during his months of service with Octavian, he nursed his morbid grief in un-Roman self-pity, this first poet of the _poitrinaire_ school. His subsequent career was meteoric. Octavian, fascinated by a brilliancy that hid a lack of Roman steadiness, placed him in charge of the stupendous task of organizing Egypt, a work that would tax the powers of a Caesar. The romantic poet lost his head. Wine-inspired orations that delighted his guests, portrait busts of himself in every town, grotesque catalogues of campaigns against unheard-of negro tribes inscribed even on the venerable pyramids did not accord with the traditions of Rome. Octavian cut his career short, and in deep chagrin Gallus committed suicide.

The tenth _Eclogue_[6] gives Vergil's impressions upon reading one of the elegies of Gallus which had apparently been written at some lonely army post in Greece after the news of Cytheris' desertion. In his elegy the poet had, it would seem, bemoaned the lot that had drawn him to the East away from his beloved.

"Would that he might have been a simple shepherd like the Greeks about his tent, for their loves remained true!" And this is of course the very theme which Vergil dramatizes in pastoral form.

[Footnote 6: This is the interpretation of Leo, _Hermes_, 1902, p. 15.]

We, like Vergil, realize that Gallus invented a new genre in literature. He had daringly brought the grief of wounded love out of the realm of fiction--where classic tradition had insisted upon keeping it--into the immediate and personal song. The hint for this procedure had, of course, come from Catullus, but it was Gallus whom succeeding elegists all accredited with the discovery. Vergil at once felt the compelling force of this adventuresome experiment. He gave it immediate recognition in his _Eclogues_, and Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid became his followers.

The poems of Gallus, if the Arcadian setting is real, were probably written soon after Philippi. Vergil's _Eclogue_ of recognition may have been composed not much later, for we have a right to assume that Vergil would have had one of the first copies of Gallus' poems. If this be true, the first and last few lines were fitted on later, when the whole book was published, to adapt the poem for its honorable position at the close of the volume.

XI

THE EVICTIONS

The first and ninth _Eclogues_, and only these, concern the confiscations of land at Cremona and Mantua which threatened to deprive Vergil's father of his estates and consequently the poet of his income. There seems to be no way of deciding which is the earlier. Ancient commentators, following the order of precedence, interpreted the ninth as an indication of a second eviction, but there seems to be no sound reason for agreeing with them, since they are entirely too literal in their inferences. Conington sanely decides that only one eviction took place, and he places the ninth before the first in order of time. He may be right. The two poems at any rate belong to the early months of 41.

The obsequious scholiasts of the Empire have nowhere so thoroughly exposed their own mode of thought as in their interpretations of these two _Eclogues_. Knowing and caring little for the actual course of events, having no comprehension of the institutions of an earlier day, concerned only with extracting what is to them a dramatic story from the _Eclogues_, they put all the historical characters into impossible situations. The one thing of which they feel comfortably sure is that every _Eclogue_ that mentions Pollio, Gallus and Alfenus Varus must have been a "bread and butter" poem written in gratitude for value received. Of the close literary associations of the time they seem to be unaware. To suit such purposes Pollio[1] is at times made governor of Cisalpine Gaul, and at times placed on the commission to colonize Cremona, Alfenus is made Pollio's "successor" in a province that does not exist, and Gallus is also made a colonial commissioner. If, however, we examine these statements in the light of facts provided by independent sources we shall find that the whole structure based upon the subjective inferences of the scholiasts falls to the ground.

[Footnote 1: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, pp. 51 ff.]

We must first follow Pollio's career through this period. When the triumvirate was formed in 43, Pollio was made Antony's _legatus_ in Cisalpine Gaul and promised the consulship for the year 40.[2] After Philippi, however, in the autumn of 42, Cisalpine Gaul was declared a part of Italy and, therefore, fell out of Pollio's control.[3] Nevertheless, he was not deprived of a command for the year remaining before his consulship (41 B.C.), but was permitted to withdraw to the upper end of the Adriatic with his army of seven legions.[4] His duty was doubtless to guard the low Venetian coast against the remnants of the republican forces still on the high seas, and, if he had time, to subdue the Illyrian tribes friendly to the republican cause.[5] During this year, in which Octavian had to besiege Lucius Antony at Perusia, Pollio, a legatus of Mark Antony, was naturally not on good terms with Octavian, and could hardly have used any influence in behalf of Vergil or any one else. After the Perusine war he joined Antony at Brundisium in the spring of 40, and acted as his spokesman at the conference which led to the momentous treaty of peace. We may, therefore, safely conclude that Pollio was neither governor nor colonial commissioner in Cisalpine Gaul when Cremona and Mantua were disturbed, nor could he have been on such terms with Octavian as to use his influence in behalf of Vergil. The eighth and fourth _Eclogues_ which do honor to him, seem to have nothing whatever to do with material favors. They doubtless owe their origin to Pollio's position as a poet, and Pollio's interest in young men of letters.

[Footnote 2: Appian, IV. 2 and V. 22.]

[Footnote 3: Appian, V. 3 and V. 22.]

[Footnote 4: Velleius Paterculus, II. 76.2; Macrobius, _Sat_. I. XI. 22]

[Footnote 5: A task which he performed in 39.]

With regard to Alfenus and Gallus, the scholiasts remained somewhat nearer the truth, for they had at hand a speech of Callus criticizing the former for his behavior at Mantua. By quoting the precise words of this speech Servius[6] has provided us with a solid criterion for accepting what is consistent in the statements of Vergil's earlier biographers and eliminating some conjectures. The passage reads: "When ordered to leave unoccupied a district of three miles outside the city, you included within the district eight hundred paces of water which lies about the walls." The passage, of course, shows that Alfenus was a commissioner on the colonial board, as Servius says. It does not excuse Servius' error of making Alfenus Pollio's successor as provincial governor[7] after Cisalpine Gaul had become autonomous, nor does it imply that Alfenus had in any manner been generous to Vergil or to any one else. In fact it reveals Alfenus in the act of seizing an unreasonable amount of land. Vergil,[8] of course, recognizes Alfenus' position as commissioner in his ninth Eclogue where he promises him great glory if he will show mercy to Mantua:

Vare, tuum nomen, superet modo Mantua nobis ...

And Vergil's appeal to him was reasonable, since he, too, was a man of literary ambitions.[9] But there is no proof that Alfenus gave ear to his plea; at any rate the poet never mentions him again. Servius' supposition that Alfenus had been of service to the poet[10] seems to rest wholly on the mistaken idea that the sixth _Eclogue_ was obsequiously addressed to him. As we have seen, however, Quintilius Varus has a better claim to that poem.

[Footnote 6: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. IX. 10; ex oratione Cornelii in Alfenum. Cf. Kroll, in _Rhein. Museum_ 1909, 52.]

[Footnote 7: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. VI. 6.]

[Footnote 8: Vergil, _Eclogue_ IX, 26-29.]

[Footnote 9: See _Suffenus and Alfenus, Classical Quarterly_, 1920, p. 160.]

[Footnote 10: On _Eclogue_. VI. 6.]

The quotation from the speech of Gallus also lends support to a statement in Servius that Gallus had been assigned to the duty of exacting moneys from cities which escaped confiscation.[11] For this we are duly grateful. It indicates how Alfenus and Gallus came into conflict since the latter's financial sphere would naturally be invaded if the former seized exempted territory for the extension of his new colony of Cremona. In such conditions we can realize that Gallus was, as a matter of course, interested in saving Mantua from confiscation, and that in this effort he may well have appealed to Octavian in Vergil's behalf. In fact his interpretation of the three-mile exemption might actually have saved Vergil's properties, which seem to have lain about that distance from the city.[12]

[Footnote 11: Servius _Dan_. on _Ecl_. VI. 64.]

[Footnote 12: Vita Probiana, _milia passuum_ XXX is usually changed to III on the basis of Donatus: _a Mantua non procul_.]

Again, however, there is little reason for the supposition that Vergil's _Eclogues_ in honor of Gallus have any reference whatever to this affair. The sixth followed the death of Siro, and the tenth seems to precede the days of colonial disturbances, if it has reference to Gallus as a soldier in Greece. If the sixth _Eclogue_ refers to Siro, as Servius holds, then Vergil and Gallus had long been literary associates before the first and ninth were written.

The student of Vergil who has once compared the statements of the scholiasts with the historical facts at these few points, where they run parallel, will have little patience with the petty gossip which was elicited from the _Eclogues_. The story of Vergil's tiff with a soldier, for example, is apparently an inference from Menalcas' experience in _Eclogue_ IX. 15; but "Menalcas" appears in four other _Eclogues_ where he cannot be Vergil. The poet indeed was at Naples, as the eighth _Catalepton_ proves. The estate in danger is not his, but that of his father, who presumably was the only man legally competent of action in case of eviction. Vergil's poem, to be sure, is a plea for Mantua, but it is clearly a plea for the whole town and not for his father alone. The landmark of the low hills and the beeches up to which the property was saved (IX.8) seems to be the limits of Mantua's boundaries, not of Vergil's estates on the low river-plains. We need not then concern ourselves in a Vergilian biography with the tale that Arrius or Clodius or Claudius or Milienus Toro chased the poet into a coal-bin or ducked him into the river.[13] The shepherds of the poem are typical characters made to pass through the typical experiences of times of distress.

[Footnote 13: See Diehl, _Vitae Vergilianae_, p. 58.]

The first _Eclogue, Tityre tu_, is even more general than the ninth in its application. Though, of course, it is meant to convey the poet's thanks to Octavian for a favorable decree, it speaks for all the poor peasants who have been saved. The aged slave, Tityrus, does not represent Vergil's circumstances, but rather those of the servile shepherd-tenants,[14] so numerous in Italy at this time. Such men, though renters, could not legally own property, since they were slaves. But in practice they were allowed and even encouraged to accumulate possessions in the hope that they might some day buy their freedom, and with freedom would naturally come citizenship and the full ownership of their accumulations. Many of the poor peasants scattered through Italy were _coloni_ of this type and they doubtless suffered severely in the evictions. Tityrus is here pictured as going to the city to ask for his liberty, which would in turn ensure the right of ownership. Such is the allegory, simple and logical. It is only the old habit of confusing Tityrus with Vergil which has obscured the meaning of the poem. However, the real purpose of the poem lies in the second part where the poet expresses his sympathy for the luckless ones that are being driven from their homes; and that this represents a cry of the whole of Italy and not alone of his home town is evident from the fact that he sets the characters in typical shepherd country,[15] not in Mantuan scenery as in the ninth. The plaint of Meliboeus for those who must leave their homes to barbarians and migrate to Africa and Britain to begin life again is so poignant that one wonders in what mood Octavian read it. "En quo discordia cives produxit miseros!" was not very flattering to him.

[Footnote 14: See Leo, _Hermes_, 1903, p. 1 ff., questioned by Stampini, _Le Bucoliche_,'3 1905, p. 93.]

[Footnote 15: Capua and Nuceria were two of the cities near Naples where Vergil could see the work of eviction near at hand.]