Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/1277

Rh regard to the nature of the evidence. This passage in the sixth book was certainly written after the death of Marcellus, but Virgil may have sketched his whole poem and even finished in a way many parts in the later books before he elaborated the whole of his sixth book. A passage in the seventh book (v. 606),

" Auroramque sequi Parthosque reposcere signa,"

appears to allude to Augustus receiving back the standards taken by the Parthians from M. Li- cinius Crassus b. c. 53. This event belongs to B. c. 20 (Dion Cass. liv. 8) ; and if the passage of Virgil refers to it, the poet must have been working at his seventh book in b. c. 20.

When Augustus was returning from Samos, where he had spent the winter of b. c. 20, he met Virgil at Athens. The poet it is said had in- tended to make a tour of Greece, but he accom- panied the emperor to Megara and thence to Italy. His health, which had been long declining, was now completely broken, and he died soon after his arrival at Brundusium on the 22d of September B. c. 19, not having quite completed his fifty-first year. His remains were transferred to Naples, which had been his favourite residence, and placed on the road (Via Puteolana) from Naples to Puteoli (Pozzuoli) between the first and second milestone from Naples. The monument, now called the tomb of Virgil, is not on the road which passes through the tunnel of Posilipo ; but if the Via Puteolana ascended the hill of Posilipo, as it may have done, the situation of the monument would agree very well with the description of Donatus.

'I"he inscription said to have been placed on the tomb,

Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces."
 * ' Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc

we cannot suppose to have been written by the poet, though Donatus says that it was.

Virgil named, as heredes in his testament, his half-brother Valerius Proculus, to whom he left one half of his property, and also Augustus, Mae- cenas, L. Varms and Plotius Tucca. It is said that in his last illness he wished to burn the Aeneid, to which he had not given the finishing touches, but his friends would not allow him. Whatever he may have wished to be done with the Aeneid, it was preserved and published by his friends Varius and Tucca. It seems from different extant testimonies that he did express a wish that the unfinished poem should be destroyed.

The poet had been enriched by the liberality of his patrons, and he left behind him a considerable property and a house on the Esquiline Hill near the gardens of Maecenas. He used his wealth liberally, and his library, which was doubtless a good one, was easy of access. He used to send his parents money every year. His father, who became blind, did not die before his son had at- tained a mature age. Two brothers of Virgil also died before him. Poetry was not the only study of Virgil ; he applied to medicine and to agriculture, as the Georgica show, and also to what Donatus calls Mathematica, perhaps a jumble of astrology and astronomy. His stature was tall, his complexion dark, and his appearance that of a rustic. He was modest and retiring, and his character is free from reproach, if we except one scandalous passage in Donatus, which may not tell the truth.

In his fortunes and his friends Virgil was a happy man. Munificent patronage gave him ample means of enjoyment and of leisure, and he had the friendship of all the most accomplished men of the day, among whom Horace entertained a strong affection for him. He was an amiable good-tem- pered man, free from the mean passions of envy and jealousy ; and in all but health he was pros- perous. His fame, which was established in his life time, was cherished after his death, as an in- heritance in which every Roman had a share ; and his works became school-books even before the death of Augustus, and continued such for centuries after. The learned poems of Virgil soon gave em- ployment to commentators and critics. Aulus Gel- lius has numerous remarks on Virgil, and Macro- bius, in his Saturnalia, has filled four books (iii — vi.) with his critical remarks on Virgil's poems. One of the most valuable commentaries of Virgil, in which a great amount of curious and instructive matter has been preserved, is that of Servius [ServiusJ. Virgil is one of the most difficult of the Latin authors, not so much for the form of the expression, though that is sometimes ambiguous enough, but from the great variety of knowledge that is required to attain his meaning in all its ful- ness. To understand the Aeneid fully requires great labour and every aid that can be called in from the old commentators to those of the present day.

Virgil was the great poet of the middle ages too. To him Dante paid the homage of his superior genius, and owned him for his master and his model. Among the vulgar he had the reputation of a conjurer, a necromancer a worker of miracles ; it is the fate of a great name to be embalmed in fable.

The ten short poems called Bucolica were the earliest works of Virgil, and probably all written between B. c. 41 and b. c. 37. These Bucolica are not Bucolica in the same sense as the poems of Theocritus, which have the same title. They have all a Bucolic form and colouring, but some of them have nothing more. They are also called Eclogae or Selections, but this name may not have originated with the poet. Their merit consists in their versi- fication, which was smoother and more polished than the hexameters which the Romans had yet seen, and in many natural and simple touches. But as an attempt to transfer the Syracusan muse into Italy, they are certainly a failure, and we read the pastorals of Theocritus and of Virgil with a very different degree of pleasure. The foiu-th Eclogue, entitled Pollio, which may have been written in b. c. 40 after the peace of Brundusium, has nothing of the pastoral character about it, as the poet himself admits in the first lines,

" Sicelides Musae paulo majora canamus, Non omnes arbusta juvant humilesque myricae. Si canimus sylvas, silvae sunt consule dignae."

Virgil was aware that he was not following his professed model, and that the poem was Bucolic only in name. It is allegorical, mystical, half his- torical and prophetical, aenigmatical, anything in fact but Bucolic. Pope's Messiah, a kind of imi- tation of Virgil, is also not an Eclogue. The first Eclogue is Bucolic in form and in treatment, with an historical basis. The second Eclogue, the Alexis, which the critics suppose to have been written before the first, is an amatory poem, with a Bucolic colour-