The works of Virgil, rendered into English prose with introductions, running analysis and an index

Front matter

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Preface

This translation of Virgil is intended partly for the use of Students; and the original has therefore been faithfully rendered, and paraphrase altogether avoided. At the same time, the translators have endeavoured to adapt the book to the use of the English reader. Some amount of rhythm in the structure of the sentence has been generally maintained; and, where in the Latin the sound of the words is an echo to the sense, (as so frequently happens in Virgil,) an attempt has been made to produce the same result in English.

It is indeed no easy task, especially in translating so consummate a master of language as Virgil, to present a version at once literal, and also in any measure a reflection of the style of the original. The translators cannot hope that they have attained a high degree of success in a work of so much difficulty; but they trust that they have not altogether failed to convey, though in a literal translation, some faint idea of the many beauties of the language and style of Virgil.

Introduction to the Mneid

The JExfad .

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GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

No authentic life of Virgil has come down to us; and Virgil, unlike his friend Horace, is not his own biographer. But what we are told about Virgil's loss of his property near Mantua in the life written by the so-called Donatus is confirmed by the first and ninth Eclogues^ from which it appears that the poet was twice in danger of losing his paternal farm. In the same Eclogues we have descriptions of scenery, which, unlike those in the other Eclogues, appear to be real. Lycidas in the ninth Eclogue says :

Your country friends are told another tale, That fro vn the sloping mountain to the vale, And doddered oak, and all the banks along, Menalcas saved his fortune with a song —

which passage describes scenery that Keightley, (quoted by Conington), professes to recognise not far from Mantua. Again, the so-called Donatus tells us that Virgil learnt from Syro the Epicurean tenets, but that he afterwards preferred the opinions of the Academicians, and esteemed Plato above all other philosophers. Now in the first and second books of the Georgics Virgil seems to propound the Epicurean tenets ; in the fourth book of the Georgics and in the sixth book of the ^Eneid he seems to adopt the Pythagorean doctrines, which in many points were the same as those of Plato and his followers. It is said that Virgil at first intended to have published only nine Eclogues, for "unequal numbers please the god," and the nine Eclogues would have answered to the nine Muses, but he added a tenth Eclogue in honour of his dear friend the poet Gallus ; the fourth book of the Georgics also ended with the praises of the same Gallus ; but Gallus falling under the displeasure of Augustus was compelled to put himself to death; and Virgil substituted for the praises of Gallus the unoffending tale of Aristaeus. The story of the shepherd who lost his bees is very heautiful ; but perhaps the tribute to a friend and brother poet might have been more touching. In the concluding lines of the last book of the Georgics, the genuineness of which there seems no sufficient reason to doubt, Virgil speaks of his own life during the time that Augustus was in the east after the battle of Actium, as thus spent : '

While I at Naples pass my peaceful days, Affecting studies of less noisy praise.

V1R. I

VIRGIL.

This also agrees with the old life of the poet, in which we read that he directed that his bones should be taken to Naples, where he had lived so long and so happily. The same life gives a very pleasing account of the poet, mentioning his modest and retiring disposition, his singular freedom from vanity and jealousy, his patient and affectionate temper, his generous liberality, his temperate and frugal habits, his attachment to his friends, his dutiful conduct towards his parents, his learning, his care and fastidiousness in the composition of his verses, his taciturnity, his love of philosophical studies, his intimacy with Augustus and Maecenas; much of which may be illustrated from his poems, indirectly it is true, and yet in such a way as to make it probable that the ancient biographer has given in the main a true account of the poet's life and character. In agreement with this are the notices of Virgil by his friend Horace. We cannot help wishing Horace had told us more. Horace was five years younger than Virgil, and outlived him eleven years. An ode by Horace on the death of Virgil might have ranked among the most charming tributes to friendship and genius. Horace has mentioned Virgil nine times ; in six of these places the names of Varius and Virgil are united. There seems to be no certain reason to lead us to conclude that the Virgil in the Odes is a different person from the poet. In one ode Horace prays the gods to bring Virgil safe to the Attic shores, " faithfully guarding the half of my soul." Another ode contains an invitation to Virgil to dinner. The allusions in it to his friend's love of gain are probably only playful. The meeting of Virgil and Varius with Horace at Sinuessa gives occasion to a burst of enthusiasm in praise of friendship: "there is nothing," says Horace, "comparable to a pleasant friend; and never were there souls purer and more free from stain than the souls of my friends." From a passage in the same satire we learn that Virgil suffered from indigestion; this also is mentioned in the ancient life. It was the good Virgil and Varius that first told Maecenas what the character of Horace was ; thus to Virgil and Varius Horace owed the prosperity and happiness of his easy and joyous life. While to Varius Horace ascribes the vigorous and manly epic style, probably in allusion to the lost poem on Death, Virgil he speaks of as dear to the Muses of the country for his elegant and refined poetry, Virgil having at that time not yet written the ^Eneid, perhaps only the Eclogues. Virgil and Varius the poets are spoken of as dear to Augustus; they may have been then dead. In Horace's Art of Poetry the brother poets are mentioned as the highest authority of the age in which they lived, as Caecilius and Plautus were of a former age.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

The modest Virgil felt the hopes that genius inspires, when he says : New ways I must attempt my grovelling name To raise aloft, and wing my flight to fame.

He promises that the affection of Nisus and Euryalus shall not be forgotten so long as the Capitol shall remain unmoved and the Roman empire endure. But he could not have divined what undying fame was to attend his name through all generations, outliving the empire of Rome by many centuries. Propertius and Ovid speak of Virgil with the partial enthusiasm of national pride. We are told that Cascilius the grammarian lectured on Virgil in the poet's lifetime, as professors in Universities do at the present time ; that when he entered the theatre, the spectators rose to him as to Caesar; that though his modesty shrank from observation, the people, as he passed through the streets, spoke of him as the darling of Rome. Juvenal mentions the ^Eneid as recited with the Iliad, the glory of which it rivalled ; the learned ladies wearied their husbands and friends with discussions on Virgil; Horace and Virgil were even then used as school books. Among the many points of Roman life on which the writings of Martial throw light, none is clearer than that in those days Virgil was familiar to all literary men ; his birthday, the 15th of October, was kept as a holyday ; Virgil is ranked with Diana and Mercury. Pliny says that the poet Silius kept the birthday of Virgil more religiously than he did his own, and that he used to visit his sepulchre near Naples, as he would have visited the shrine of a god ; as Niebuhr so many hundred years after, though a very unfavourable critic of Virgil, yet says that he went to his tomb as a pilgrim, and that the laurel branches plucked at the poet's grave were dear to him as relics. The later poets of Rome laboured, though in vain, to equal the matchless rhythm of the Virgilian hexameter. Tacitus was evidently a most diligent student of Virgil; the brevity of the style of the poet, his careful selection of epithets, his inverted constructions, his variety of expression, his fondness for the dative case, his frequent use of what is called Zeugma, of the plural number, of the infinitive mood, his power of painting a scene with few touches, many of his favourite words and expressions, are imitated with great effect by the historian; poet and historian alike dwell on the power of fate; they both at times are exaggerated in their expressions ; they both fully understood the majesty of the Roman tongue and the greatness of the Roman empire ; there is in both of them a sad solemnity, and' a melancholy feeling of the misfortunes of man's uncertain life. At times Tacitus himself becomes a poet almost ; like Virgil, he uses adjectives

4 VIRGIL.

for adverbs ; he speaks of inanimate objects as having life. Quinctilian repeats what he was taught by Afer Domitius, that if Homer was first, Virgil was second, and nearer to the first than to the third. The same critic calls Virgil a lover of antiquity. Aulus Gellius is full of quotations from Virgil, on some of which he comments at great length after his gossipping manner. The desire to destroy Virgil's poems was regarded as one of the wildest extravagances of the madness of the emperor Caligula. Macrobius in his Saturnalia quotes many passages of the early Roman poets, which were borrowed by Virgil ; he is fond of drawing comparisons between the two great epic poets of antiquity, with as strong a preference for the earlier as, many ages after, Scaliger shewed for the later poet. Macrobius speaks of Virgil as introducing philosophy into many parts of his poems. It is probable that the life of Virgil ascribed to Donatus was written about this time. Servius too, about the same time, wrote a commentary on Virgil, deficient in judgment, but full of curious antiquarian lore, especially interesting in the elucidation of a poet, who displays, as Niebuhr says, a learning from which the historian can never glean too much. This Servius says that Virgil was skilled in medicine and in philosophy. As the Sibylline books were consulted for the indications of the divine will, so the poems of Virgil even in early times were opened at random to obtain directions from them. It is said that the emperor Alexander Severus was encouraged by lighting upon the passage in the sixth book of the ^Eneid which bids the Roman "rule mankind and make the world obey." Dryden says these " Sortes Virgilianae were condemned by St Austin and other casuists." Perhaps the most famous instance is that of the passage in the fourth book of the ^Eneid ; which it is said King Charles I. opened, and which runs as follows :

And when at length the cruel war shall cease, On hard conditions may he buy the peace; Nor let him then enjoy supreme command, But fall untimely by some hostile ha7id.

St Jerome and St Augustine speak of Virgil as a philosopher. Some of the fathers regarded the fourth Eclogue as a prophecy of the Messiah taken from the ancient writings of the Cumean Sibyl ; and it was said that St Paul coming to Naples wept over the ashes of the heathen poet, grieving that he came too late to convert him to the faith of Christ.

Gradually the poet of the days of Augustus was changed into a magician, sometimes capricious, but usually benevolent. As we have seen, some of the ancients regarded him as a famous mathematician and phy- |

GENERAL INTRODUCTION'.

sician ; his grandfather is called magus ; he is said to have studied astronomy and astrology. The word "vates" in Latin is ambiguous. The emperor Alexander Severus had his image in the shrine of his house, together with the statues of his household gods ; the women of Mantua worshipped at a tree sacred to their beloved poet, as at an altar, and in later days his name was joined in their praises with that of St Paul. In the middle ages 1 all that was extraordinary was regarded as strictly supernatural; and the imagination of the writers of these days added strange tales, which popular belief readily accepted. Virgil was born not at the close of the republic, but in the days of Remus, the son of Remus, the brother of Romulus ; enraged at a slight he received from a certain lady of Rome he put out all the fires in the houses of the city, which . could not be kindled again, till the great magician had received an apology ; he built a wonderful palace, so constructed that all that was whispered at Rome was heard there ; in it was a miraculous image of bronze, and a light that continued to burn long after the Roman empire had passed away; he made an orchard which rivalled Paradise, which no man could enter, wherein were all kinds of fruits ; he married the daughter of the Soldan of Babylon, who visited her husband, and was visited by him, travelling along a bridge of air; when he was taken once at Babylon by the enraged father, and condemned to be burnt together with his wife who refused to abandon him, he made all the barons of Babylon swim like frogs in the market-place of the city, which appeared to their imagination to be filled with the river, while he and his beautiful wife escaped to the land of the Franks along the bridge of air. Afterwards he founded the city of Naples on an Qgg, miraculously defeated the assaults of the emperor of Rome, made a wondrous serpent of bronze, which by instantaneous punishment convicted the perjurer of his guilt; at last, like Romulus, he disappeared amidst a tempest of wind, leaving behind him treasures protected by guards of bronze. These and other similar tales are told of Virgil with sundry variations. We find him in what we should now call strange company, for he is joined with Aristotle, Euclid, Hippocrates, Samson, David, Solomon, King Arthur. Apart from his fame as a magician, he had a place in the schools of the middle ages. St Augustine had recommended his works, and styled him the first and noblest of poets ; St Jerome, on the other hand, condemned the admi-

VIRGIL.

ration of Terence and Virgil. In agreement with this it appears that throughout the middle ages many of the abbots and teachers condemn him, while others quote him with praise. Copies of his works were kept in the monasteries; the Benedictine monks of Casino studied them; in the abbey of St Augustine at Canterbury were MSS. of his poems : yet, on the other hand, the study of the heathen poet is represented as antagonistic to that of the Psalms, and as even encouraged by the evil spirits of darkness. Considering the place Virgil held in the schools of the middle ages (for the favourable view of the"" poet was the predominant one) and the popular belief in his supernatural powers, it is not to be wondered at that Dante should have chosen him as his guide into the other world. In the days of Dante Greek was almost entirely unknown, and if it had been better known, and Dante had read Homer, yet the description of the dead in the Odyssey is vague and indefinite : and properly speaking there is no descent into the lower world at all. But Virgil, assisted by later and fuller legends and by the writings of the philosophers, far surpasses his master in this subject; his description of the regions of the dead is full of details ; in places it has the grotesque character, the exact measurements, and precise delineations, though in a much less degree, of the poem of the middle ages. The sixth book of the -#meid probably in part suggested the idea of the descent to Dante, which was afterwards filled out from other sources, and from the imaginations of a genius essentially different from that of his adopted guide. Again, Virgil was a familiar name. He was the predecessor of Dante in Italian poetry. He was his dear master, from whom he had taken that fine style which gave him his name. Both poets came from the northern part of Italy. The Ghibelline Dante might regard the Imperialist Virgil as so far connected with him. Still more would Dante be glad to place himself under the guidance of the poet, as that " famous sage," reckoned, as we have seen, with Aristotle and Plato, and as one who by his knowledge of magic and necromancy was acquainted with the secrets of the spiritual world.

Gradually and slowly did the opinion of Virgil, as a magician, give way : it is even said that the expedition of the French to Naples so late as the year 1494 spread the fame of Virgil as a great magician. But the first person who appears to have questioned the accuracy of the popular belief had been Petrarch : who said that the only fascination exercised by Virgil was that of his poetry. Long after, about the year 1630, Gabriel Naude wrote "an apology for the great men who have been accused of magic," and amongst them for Virgil. After this time the opinion seems to have died out. Other strange opinions were held. Tasso, who had

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

imbibed a love of allegory from the study of Plato, regarded the ^Eneid as a continued allegory, as he did his own poem. The hero -^Eneas represented sometimes the active, sometimes the contemplative life. Hardouin, a learned French Jesuit, maintained that almost all the writings that bear the names of Greek and Latin authors are spurious productions, written chiefly in the thirteenth century, excepting only some inscriptions. And yet he did admit the Eclogues and Georgics as genuine ; but he considered the yEneid to have been written by mediaeval monks. To the editions of Virgil we may apply his own words,

Which who would learn as soon might tell the sands Driven by the western winds on Libyan lands.

Heyne has given an account of these editions. Since the first edition at Rome in the year 1469 there has not, Heyne says, been a year in which there has not been at least one edition of Virgil. Servius' commentary was first edited in 147 1. N. Heinsius' edition of the poet appeared in 1676, "a noble edition," says Heyne, "from which at last a brighter light shone on Maro." The Delphin edition, by Charles de la Rue the Jesuit (Ruaeus), did perhaps more than any other single edition has done to advance the study of Virgil. Other names are well known in connection with Virgil, as those of Burmann, Martin, Maittaire, Baskerville, Heyne, Wagner, Forbiger, Keightley, Conington, and Gossrau, whose Latin commentary on the ^Eneid is remarkable for accurate, clear, and sensible criticism.

The influence of Virgil on modern poets has perhaps been greater than that of any other single poet of antiquity. We may mention a few instances out of very many. Garcilaso de la Vega imitated the Eclogues. The Aminta of Tasso owes much to the same source. The Bees of Rucellai follows the fourth book of the Georgics. Thomson, in his Seasons, has put into an English dress many of the passages of the Georgics. Many stanzas of Tasso's chief poem are little else than elegant, but often rather feeble translations of the yEneid. It is probable that Racine owed the exquisite grace of his style to the study of the Latin poet. Milton, though his genius was far more nearly related to the stern sublimity of the Hebrew prophets than to the refinement of the Roman bard, yet has not disdained to draw many beauties from particular passages of Virgil. The Lusiad of Camoens is much indebted to Virgil. The He7iriade is not without imitations from the poet, whose writings, together with the sermons of Massillon, are said to have been Voltaire's favourite companions.

If the influence of Virgil on other poets has been great, his influence

S VIRGIL.

on education has been far greater. There seems never to have been anytime since his poems were written, in which they have not been so used. In ancient Rome, in the middle ages, in the schools of the Jesuits, in those of Europe in the present day, nowhere more than among us Britons,

A race of men from all the world disjoined,

the study of Virgil has held and holds a prominent place. The union of Horace and Virgil, begun in their youth, has extended beyond the few years of their lives through many generations. A few scholars have no doubt preferred Catullus to Horace, and Lucretius to Virgil, esteeming the earlier poets as writers of a more free and original genius ; but the great majority of readers regard Virgil as the prince of Latin poets, while for Horace they have almost a personal affection. If the writings of these two friends had been lost, it is probable that Latin had never been made the basis of education in the schools of Europe. Virgil's exquisite taste, his brevity of diction, the matchless rhythm of his verse, his power of putting the right word in the right place, his very difficulties and obscurities, all unite in making his writings an excellent school book. What has been well said by Lord Lytton of Horace may be said almost, perhaps not quite so truly, of Virgil : " It is an era in the life of a schoolboy, when he first becomes acquainted with Horace." When the days of school are past men return with fondness to their favourite passages of Virgil. The cadence of his verse still haunts the ear. It has been said that men like Virgil better as they grow older. Few authors are more often alluded to. A happy quotation from and adaptation of Virgil have weight even in serious questions and in august assemblies. Criticism can point out innumerable faults in Virgil, but criticism is as powerless against the poet as the sword of the mortal hero against the immortal temper of the Vulcanian shield: and what Macrobius said so many years ago is still true : " Such is the glory of Maro, that no man's praise can increase it, no man's censure can diminish it."

INTRODUCTION TO THE ECLOGUES.

Virgil is the founder of the artificial school of pastoral poetry. And so, though he has taken very much from Theocritus, though he not only borrows from him the design of several of the Eclogues, but even translates many of his phrases literally, yet there is this one great difference between the two poets. Theocritus is a genuine writer of pastoral poetry ; his whole object is to describe poetically the characteristics of a shepherd's life, its simple joys and griefs, its coarseness, and humour, and childishness, and superstition. But of Virgil's Eclogues only a very few can be called pastoral in this literal sense ; and even these contain frequent allusions to the persons and events of Virgil's own age. Indeed, the dress of pastoral poetry is often used by Virgil, as it has been by so many imitators in later times, only to disguise his own personality, and to clothe in poetic allegory incidents in his own life, or circumstances of his own day.

If we examine the Eclogues one by one, we find that the first tells the story of an event in the life of Virgil. The triumvirs had made an assignment of lands in the north of Italy to their veterans, and the poet's farm near Mantua had been seized by one of the soldiers as his allotment. Virgil recovered his land by the influence of Octavianus (afterwards the emperor Augustus), and this Eclogue is mainly a tribute of gratitude to his patron. It has many points highly characteristic of the artificial style of the Eclogues, and of Virgil's disregard for consistency in the accessories of his pieces. Tityrus (Virgil) at one time looks to Octavianus as a divine guardian, to protect him in the possession of his land, at another as a master, from whom he begs for freedom from slavery. The scenery too, in this Eclogue as in several others, entirely wants uniformity; at one time it is Mantuan, at another Sicilian. In fact, the whole outline of the Eclogues is painted in a manner that is more or less conventional, and not drawn directly from nature.

The second and third Eclogues are closely imitated from Theocritus, and yet distinctly marked by the peculiar style of Virgil.

The subject of the fourth Eclogue has made it better known than all the rest, though it hardly stands first in intrinsic merit. It was written, as we learn from the poem itself, in the consulship of Pollio, B.C. 40, and about the time of the peace of Brundisium. The poet imagines that the cycle of the "great year" of the world is beginning anew, and the golden age returning. But the principal event celebrated in the poem is the birth of a wondrous child, who is to be king of the world in this age of peace. The language employed is very vague and indefinite, but it seems more probable that the child is to be the son of Octavianus (who had lately been married to Scribonia), rather than of Pollio, whose chief glory would appear to consist in the fact that the child is to be born in his consulship. But the Eclogue is best known on account of the resemblance of

IO VIRGIL.

its language in some passages to descriptions in the Hebrew prophets, especially Isaiah ; and from the idea that the Sibylline books contained predictions of a coming Messiah, also derived originally from the prophecies of the Old Testament. But the vague looking forward to a golden age in the future has been hardly less universal than the dream of it in the past ; and though the language used in describing the birth and career of the child, who is to be the universal king, is certainly sometimes striking, and though it is remarkable that the poem was written at a time so near the birth of Christ, yet there seems no sufficient reason to connect the legends employed by Virgil with the prophecies of the Old Testament. For the idea of the advent of a great and beneficent ruler of the world has been hardly less wide-spread than that of the coming of an age of peace ; so that, on the whole, it is perhaps going too far to attach much weight to the points of resemblance which have been mentioned.

The fifth Eclogue, which probably surpasses all the others in excellence, is modelled in its. plan on Theocritus, but much of its finest poetry may fairly claim to be original. There can be little doubt of the correctness of the old notion, which supposes the death and apotheosis of Daphnis, the ideal shepherd, to represent allegorically the assassination of Julius Caesar, and the honours paid to him after death. Several passages in this poem are imitated in Milton's Lycidas, in Spenser's Lament for Dido, and by other modern writers.

The immediate source whence Virgil derived the subject of the sixth Eclogue is doubtful ; but the introduction to the song of Silenus bears a general likeness to the story of the binding of Proteus by Menelaus, in the fourth book of the Odyssey, which Virgil has himself imitated in the fourth Georgia The Epicurean account of the creation of the world is evidently modelled on that given by Lucretius.

The plan of the seventh Eclogue is similar to that of the third.

The incidents of the eighth are mainly adapted from Theocritus, but the arrangement is different, and much of the poetry is apparently original. It is entitled "The Enchantress" (Pharmaceutria), from the subject of the second of the two songs.

The ninth tells of the difficulty experienced by Virgil (Menalcas) in regaining possession of his farm, and how his life was threatened by the soldier who had seized upon the land. Virgil, it seems, has gone to Rome a second time, to seek the protection of Augustus ; and his successful return is hoped for in the last line of the poem.

Virgil wrote his last Eclogue in honour of his friend Cornelius Gallus, whose love-complaint forms the subject and greater part of the poem. Nothing is known with any certainty as to the occasion on which this Eclogue was written. Its framework is borrowed from the first Idyll of Theocritus.

Though it is impossible to look upon Virgil as a writer of genuine pastoral poetry, yet the Eclogues abound in excellence, and in beauties of description and style. Virgil was in truth naturally unfitted to be a pastoral poet ; the flow of his hexameter in the Eclogues is hardly less heroic than in the vEneid; and he everywhere treats his subject with a certain dignity and grandeur, which is quite at variance with rustic