Vergil - History of Roman Literature

A History of Roman Literature by Charles Thomas Cruttwell

CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).

PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS, or more correctly, VERGILIUS [1] MARO, was born in the village or district [2] of Andes, near Mantua, sixteen years after the birth of Catullus, of whom he was a compatriot as well as an admirer. [3] As the citizenship was not conferred on Gallia Transpadana, of which Mantua was a chief town, until 49 B.C., when Virgil was nearly twenty-one years old, he had no claim by birth to the name of Roman. And yet so intense is the patriotism which animates his poems, that no other Roman writer, patrician or plebeian, surpasses or even equals it in depth of feeling. It is one proof out of many how completely the power of Rome satisfied the desire of the Italians for a great common head whom they might reverence as the heaven-appointed representative of their race. And it leads us to reflect on the narrow pride of the great city in not earlier extending her full franchise to all those gallant tribes who fought so well for her, and who at last extorted their demand with grievous loss to themselves as to her, by the harsh argument of the sword. To return to Virgil. We learn nothing from his own works as to his early life and parentage. Our chief authority is Donatus. His father, Maro, was in humble circumstances; according to some he followed the trade of a potter. But as he farmed his own little estate, he must have been far removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition assigns the death of the poet Lucretius. Some time later (53 B.C.), we find him at Rome studying rhetoric under Epidius, and soon afterwards philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. The recent publication of Lucretius's poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful, and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth," The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling, deserves to be quoted:--

"Ite hinc inanes ite rhetorum ampullae...
Scholasticorum natio madens pingui:...
Tuque o mearum cura, Sexte, curarum
Vale Sabine: iam valete formosi.
Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus
Magni patentes docta dicta Sironis,
Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura.
Ite hinc Camenae...
Dulces Camenae, nam (fatebimur verum)
Dulces fuistis: et tamen meas chartas
Revisitote, sed pudenter et varo."

These few lines are very interesting, first, as enabling us to trace the poetic influence of Catullus, whose style they greatly resemble, though their moral tone is far more serious; secondly, as showing us that Virgil was in aristocratic company, the names mentioned, and the epithet _formosi_, by which the young nobles designated themselves, after the Greek _kaloi, kalokagathoi_, indicating as much; and thirdly, as evincing a serious desire to embrace philosophy for his guide in life, after a conflict with himself as to whether he should give up writing poetry, and a final resolution to indulge his natural taste "seldom and without licentiousness." We can hardly err in tracing this awakened earnestness and its direction upon the Epicurean system to his first acquaintance with the poem of Lucretius. The enthusiasm for philosophy expressed in these lines remained with Virgil all his life. Poet as he was, he would at once be drawn to the theory of the universe so eloquently propounded by a brother-poet. And in all his works a deep study of Lucretius is evidenced not only by imitations of his language, but by frequent adoption of his views and a recognition of his position as the loftiest attainable by man. [4] The young Romans at this time took an eager interest in the problems which philosophy presents, and most literary men began their career as disciples of the Lucretian theory. [5] Experience of life, however, generally drew them away from it. Horace professed to have been converted by a thunder-clap in a clear sky; this was no doubt irony, but it is clear that in his epistles he has ceased to be an Epicurean. Virgil, who in the _Eclogues_ and _Georgics_ seems to sigh with regret after the doctrines he fears to accept, comes forward in the _Aeneid_ as the staunch adherent of the national creed, and where he acts the philosopher at all, assumes the garb of a Stoic, not an Epicurean.
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