Complete Works of Virgil

by Virgil

  So too Virgil, penetrated with the feeling of Nature in her relation to human wants and enjoyment, and desirous to give an adequate expression to this feeling, could derive no guidance from the nobler genius of Greece. To find a suitable vehicle, he had to turn to the earliest and latest periods of her literature. The didactic, as distinct from the philosophic or contemplative poem, was the invention of a time prior to the existence of prose composition. It seems to have arisen out of the impulse to convey instruction and advice on the management of life generally, and especially on the best means of securing a livelihood from the cultivation of the soil. The use of the language of poetry for a purpose essentially practical and prosaic was justified, in that primitive time, not only by the absence of any other organ of literary expression, but also by the fact that, in such a time, all literary effort was the result of animated feeling, and that the most common aspects of Nature, such as the changes of the seasons or of night and day, and what seem now the most familiar occupations of life, were apprehended by the lively mind of the Greek with a fresh sense of wonder, which use deadens in eras of more advanced civilisation. But while this sense of wonder imparts a poetical colouring to the language of early didactic poetry, and while sufficient harmony was secured for it by the training of the ear during centuries of epic song, the form and structure of this kind of art was, as compared with the other forms of Greek poetry, essentially rudimentary. The sole specimen which has reached our times appears in the form of a personal address, treating of a number of subjects not closely connected with one another, interspersed with various episodes, and producing the impression of a connected whole solely through the vivid personality of the writer. Didactic poetry was absolutely rejected in the maturity of Greek genius, after the rise of a prose literature had marked off clearly the separate provinces of prose and poetry, and after Greek taste had become more exacting in its demand of unity of impression and symmetry of form in every work of art. It was revived again in the Alexandrian epoch, when the creative impulse was lost, and life and its interests had become tamer, while at the same time knowledge had greatly increased, and a kind of literary dilettanteism was one of the chief elements in refined enjoyment. By the Alexandrine writers the irregular and desultory treatment of Hesiod was abandoned. The didactic poem was treated by them as one of the recognised branches of poetical art. It still retained the general character of a personal address, which accident may have first suggested to Hesiod, and which either his example or their own taste had imposed on the early philosophic poets. The Alexandrine type of poem differed from that of Hesiod by professing to convey systematic instruction on some definite branch of knowledge, instead of offering practical directions on the best method of carrying on some occupation, combined with a medley of precepts, moral, religious, and ceremonial. The change may be compared to that which the Roman satire underwent, from the inartistic medley of Ennius and Lucilius to the systematic treatment of some special subject in the satire of Persius and Juvenal. The primary aim of such writers as Aratus and Nicander was not to communicate ideas capable of affecting the imagination, but to satisfy intellectual curiosity by communicating interesting information. So soon as this information ceased to be interesting, the value of their work was gone. Thus although accident has handed down several specimens of the Alexandrine type of didactic poetry, their chief literary use is to enable us, by contrast, better to appreciate the genius which, by interfusing with the materials used by them other elements deeply affecting the heart, the imagination, and the moral sympathies, has given the world, instead of the temporary gift of a little useful information, the ºÄƼ± µ¯ which it possesses in the Georgics.

  In that poem Virgil combines something of the spirit of the older or primitive type of didactic poetry with the systematic treatment of their subject employed by the Alexandrine Metaphrastae. He retains the old form of a personal address, not only in the dedication of the poem to Maecenas, but in the manner in which he inculcates his precepts on the husbandman, or indicates what he himself would do in particular circumstances. Yet he bears more resemblance to the poets of Alexandria in his systematic treatment and arrangement of his materials. He aims, like them, at communicating a large body of unfamiliar knowledge, as well as conveying practical precepts founded on experience. By combining these two aims, but much more by making the aims of conveying precept and instruction altogether subsidiary to that of moving the imagination and the affections, Virgil, if he has not created a new type of didactic poetry, has at least produced almost the only specimen of it which the world cares to read. He is apparently conscious of the difficulty of imparting to a poem of this type a continuous poetical charm; as Lucretius, with more reason, is conscious of the difficulty of securing a sustained poetical interest for his argumentative processes and his investigations into the first principles of things. Virgil’s difficulty is to maintain his subject on the level of poetical feeling, while at the same time adhering to the necessities of practical instruction. And this difficulty attaches to every kind of didactic poetry. He had to associate with a poetic charm, not only the fair results of the husbandman’s labour, the ‘heavy harvests and the Massic juice of the vine,’ but the processes and mechanical appliances through which these fair results were obtained. Although his idea of his art did not demand an exhaustive treatment of all the operations of rural industry, such as was demanded of the prose writers on the subject, yet it did demand that, in making his selection, he should regard the importance of each topic in connexion with the work of the farm as well as its adaptation to poetic treatment. It cannot be denied that this necessary infusion of prosaic matter deprives even the most perfect specimen of didactic poetry of that purity of imaginative interest which pervades the masterpieces of epic, lyrical, and dramatic genius: but it is, on the other hand, a great triumph of art to have redeemed so much as Virgil has done from the homely realities of life into the more sacred ground of poetry, and that without sacrifice either of the truth of fact or of the dignity and sobriety of expression.

  III.

  While the title ‘Georgica’ reminds us that the form of the poem, like the form of the ‘Bucolica’ and the ‘Aeneis,’ was derived from the Greeks, the subject of which it treats was one of peculiarly national interest. As the Aeneid may be said to be inspired by the idea of Rome and her destiny, and as the practical purpose of that poem was to confirm the faith of the Romans in their Empire and in the ruler in whom that Empire was vested, so the Georgics may be said to be inspired by the idea of Italy; and the true aim of the poem was to revive and extend the love of the land, and to restore the fading ideal of a life of virtue and happiness, passed in the labours of a country life. But while much of the materials and of the workmanship of the Aeneid is originally due to Greek invention, the general substance of the Georgics and the most essentially poetical passages are of native origin.

  The chief modes of rural industry treated in the various books are those which flourished in Italy,—the tillage of the land for various crops, the cultivation of the vine and the olive, the breeding and rearing of cattle, sheep, and horses, and the tending of bees. It is noticed by Servius that the agricultural precepts of the poem apply only to Italy and not to other lands: ‘Sane agriculturae huius praecepta non ad omnes pertinent terras, sed ad solum situm Italiae.’ The frequent references to the products of other lands serve to suggest by contrast the superiority of Italy in those which are the special subject of the poem and which are most essential to human well-being. Cato also is represented by Cicero as resting the charm of a country life in the contemplation of the same operations of Nature as those indicated in the opening lines of the Georgics:—

  Quid faciat laetas segetes, quo sidere terram

  Vertere, Maecenas, ulmisque adiungere vites

  Conveniat,—

  The number of Roman writers who treated in prose of this subject, both before and after Virgil, testifies further to the strong national interest attaching to it. Among these writers
, Varro, the immediate predecessor of Virgil, associates the subject directly with the pride which the Romans felt in their country. He introduces the speakers in his Dialogue as holding their conversation in the Temple of Tellus, and examining a map or painting of Italy on the wall. One of the speakers addresses the others in these words, ‘You who have travelled over many lands, have you ever seen any more richly cultivated than Italy? I, indeed, have never seen any so richly cultivated.’ He especially characterises the excellence of its corn-crops, its vines, olives, and fruit-trees: ‘What spelt shall I compare to the Campanian? what wheat to the Apulian? what wine to the Falernian? what oil to that of Venafrum? is not Italy planted with trees, so that the whole of it seems an orchard?’ Other authors, Virgil himself among them, and Columella in the Introduction to his treatise, testify to the pride which the Italians took in their breed of horses and herds of cattle. And though the Italian bees and their product were not so famous in poetry as the bees of Hymettus and ‘the honey of Hybla,’ yet Horace speaks of the country near Tarentum as one ‘where the honey yields not to the honey of Hymettus;’ and in another Ode, in which he contrasts his own moderate estate with the resources of richer men, he mentions Calabrian honey along with the wine of Formiae and the fleeces of Gallic pastures among the chief sources of wealth:—

  Quanquam nec Calabrae mella ferunt apes

  Nec Laestrygonia Bacchus in amphora

  Languescit mihi, nec pinguia Gallicis

  Crescunt vellera pascuis.

  This branch of his subject moreover enables Virgil to celebrate the floral beauties of Italy, and to exhibit on a small scale a picture of a community at once warlike, politic, and industrious, such as had been realised on the soil of Italy, and especially in the old Roman Commonwealth, more completely than among any other people.

  The subject was moreover intimately associated with the national history. Several of the early legends, such as those of Cincinnatus, and, in more historical times, of Atilius Regulus and Curius Dentatus, attest the prominence which agriculture enjoyed among the pursuits of the foremost men in the Republic. The surnames of many noble families, patrician and plebeian, such as the Lentuli, Stolones, Bubulci, Pisones, Dolabellae, and the name of the great Fabian Gens, are connected etymologically with agricultural occupations, products, or implements, and afford evidence of a time when the men who filled the great offices of the State lived on their own lands, and were known for the success with which they improved their farms. The passion to possess and subdue the land was, in the early history of the Republic, the main motive power both of the political and military history of Rome. Even down to the establishment of the Empire there was no question which more divided the two great parties in the State than that of the Agrarian laws. And though, after the conquest of Italy, Roman wars were fought for dominion rather than for new territory, yet the hope of owning land, if not on Italian yet on some foreign soil, which he should hold by his sword as well as cultivate by his plough, supported the Roman soldier, even under the Empire, through the long years of his service. The Roman ‘colonies,’ the origin of so many famous European cities, were settlements of ‘Coloni’ or cultivators of the soil.

  Thus in the selection of his subject Virgil appealed to old national associations and living tastes in a way in which no Greek poet could have done in choosing any mode of practical industry for poetic treatment. Even the details of direct instruction would attract a Roman reader by reminding him of labours which he may often have watched and perhaps have shared. Though Virgil found new sources of attraction by references to Greek mythology and science, and though he availed himself of the diction of Greek poets much inferior to himself in their perception of beauty and their power over language, yet his materials are mainly drawn either from personal observation, or from Italian writers who had put on record the results of what they had seen and done. There is a thoroughly Roman character in the technical execution of the poem, in the command over details, in the power of orderly arrangement with a view to convenience rather than logical symmetry, and in the combined sobriety and dignity of the workmanship. But it is in the longer episodes, in which the deeper meaning of the poem is most brought out, that the intimate connexion between the various topics treated in it and the national character and fortunes becomes most apparent. There is indeed one marked exception to the maintenance of this unity of impression. The long episode in Book iv, from line 315 to 558, has no national significance. And this is an undoubted blot on the artistic perfection of the work. This episode not only adds nothing to its representative character, but it suggests fancies and associations utterly alien from the Italy of the Augustan Age. The space given to such a theme is opposed to the truer taste of the poet, expressed in such lines as these—

  Non hic te carmine ficto

  Atque per ambages et longa exorsa tenebo.

  and

  Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes,

  Omnia iam volgata.

  But it is not the judgement of the poet, but the despotic will of the Emperor, that is responsible for this imperfection. The fourth Book originally ended with an episode which afforded scope for the expression of personal feeling, for awakening an interest in that land which was now of vast importance to the State, and which affected the imagination of cultivated Romans as it does that of cultivated men in modern times, and for illustrating the national greatness and the recent history of Rome. In the first edition the mention of Egypt at line 287 had led Virgil to celebrate the administration of that province under his early friend Cornelius Gallus. When Gallus fell into disgrace and was forced to commit suicide in 26 B.C., Virgil was required to re-edit the poem with a new concluding episode. The subject treated in the earlier edition of the poem would have enabled Virgil to give renewed expression to his admiration and affection for the Gallus of the Eclogues, to tell the tale of the downfall of Cleopatra, and to magnify the greatness of Rome in the conquest and government of her provinces. The episode as it now stands is a finished piece of metrical execution; it illustrates the attraction which the Greek mythological stories had for educated Romans; it is expressed in those tones of tender pathos of which Virgil was a master; but it is at the same time a standing proof of the malign influence which the Imperial despotism already exercised on the spontaneous inspiration of genius, as well as on all sincere expression of feeling.

  IV.

  If the idea of the poem and of the national interests associated with it arose in Virgil’s mind during his life in Rome, it was in his retirement in Campania that he prepared himself for and executed his task. Like the Aeneid it was a work of slow growth, the result of careful study and meditation. Besides the great change of the concluding episode, there are some slight indications that the poem was retouched in later editions; and perhaps a very few lines added to the original work may have been either left finally unadjusted to their proper place, or may have been transposed in the copying of the manuscript. Although regard for his art was a more prominent consideration in the mind of Virgil than of Lucretius, yet he did not, any more than his predecessor, wish to separate the office of a teacher from that of a poet. How far the experience of his early years in the farm in the district of Andes or of his later residence on his land near Nola may have contributed to his knowledge of his subject, we have no means of knowing; but probably the delicacy of his health as well as his devotion to study may have limited his experience to the observation of the labours of others. But the power of vividly realising and enjoying the familiar sights and work of the farm,—the life which he gives to the notices of seed-time and harvest, of the growth of trees and ripening of fruits, of the habits of flocks, herds, and bees, etc.,—the deep love for his subject in all its details—

  Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore—

  were gifts which could not come from any study of books. The poetry of manhood is, more often perhaps than we know, the conscious reproduction of the unconscious impressions of early years, received in a susceptible
and retentive mind. Virgil, in common with all great poets, retained through life the ‘child’s heart within the man’s.’ Through this geniality of nature he was able—

  angustis hunc addere rebus honorem—

  to glorify trite and familiar things by the light reflected from the healthy memories and the idealising fancies of boyhood and early youth.