Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/272

Rh 250 VIRGIL on Virgil by these confiscations, and of the effect they had on his fortunes, we have a vivid record in the poem which stands first in his collected works. Mantua, in consequence of its vicinity to Cremona, which had been faithful to the cause of the republic, was involved in this calamity; and Virgil s father was driven from the farm which he had acquired by the thrift and industry of his early years. By the influence of his powerful friends, and by personal application to the young Octavianus, already practically master of the Western world, Virgil obtained the resti tution of his land ; but, on attempting to resume posses sion of it, he was exposed to imminent personal danger, and had to swim across the river to escape from the violence of the soldier to whom it had been allotted. Immediately afterwards he took his father and family with him to the small country house of his old teacher Siron (&quot; Villula qua; Sironis eras, et pauper agelle.&quot; &c., Calal., x.), which may have become his own by gift or inheritance. Soon afterwards we hear of him living in Rome, enjoying, in addition to the patronage of Pollio, the favour of Maecenas, intimate with Varius, who was at first regarded as the rising poet of the new era, and soon afterwards with Horace, who had just returned from his unfortunate adventure with the army of Brutus. His friendship with Gallus, for whom he indicates a warmer affection and more enthusiastic admiration than for any one else, was formed before his second residence in Rome, in the Cisalpine province, with which Gallus also was connected both by birth and office. The pastoral poems, or &quot; eclogues,&quot; as they are usually called, though that name is never given to them by himself, commenced in his native district, were finished and published in Rome, probably in 37 B.C. Soon afterwards he withdrew from habitual residence in Rome, and lived chiefly in Campania, either at Naples or in a country house in the neighbourhood of Nola. He resided also for some time in Sicily; and there is in the fourth Ceorgic distinct evidence of his familiarity with the neighbourhood of Tarentum. He was one of the companions of Horace in the famous journey to Brundisium ; and it seems not unlikely that, sometime before 23 B.C., he made the voyage to Athens which forms the subject of the third ode of the first book of the Odes of Horace. The seven years from 37 to 30 B.C. were devoted to the composition of the Georgics. In the following year he read the poem to Augustus, on his return from Asia. The remaining years of his life were spent on the com position of the sEneid. In the course of its composition, in 23 B.C., the year of the death of the young Marcellus, he read three books, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th, to the emperor and the members of the imperial family. In 19 B.C., after the ^Eneid was finished but not finally corrected, he set out for Athens, intending to pass three years in Greece and Asia, and to devote that time to perfecting the workman ship of the poem. At Athens he met Augustus and was persuaded by him to return with him to Italy. While visiting Megara under a burning sun, he was seized with illness, and, as he continued his voyage without interrup tion, he grew rapidly worse, and died on the 21st of September, in his fifty-first year, a few days after landing at Brundisium. In his last illness he called for the cases containing his manuscripts, with the intention of burning the jEne sl. He had previously left directions in his will that his literary executors, Varius and Tucca, should publish nothing of his which had not already been given to the world by himself. This pathetic desire that the work to which he had given so much care, and of which such great expectations were formed, should not survive him has been used as an argument to prove his own dissatisfaction with the poem. A passage from a letter of his to Augustus is also quoted, in which he speaks as if he felt that the undertaking of the work had been a mistake. Virgil does not indeed show that sanguine confidence in the result of his labours which Horace expresses on the completion of the three books of lyrical poetry to which he devoted the best years of his life ; but the lines (*En., ix. 444, &c.), &quot; Fortunati anibo si quid mea carnrina possunt,&quot; &o. , though with less self-assertion, imply a similar assurance that his work would endure as long as the Roman state and empire. The dissatisfaction with his work, increased by the depression of his last illness and the fatigue of the long tension of mind, heart, and imagination upon it, may more probably be ascribed to his passionate craving for a perfection of workmanship which death prevented him from attaining than to any sense either of the un worthiness of his subject or of his own inadequacy to do j ustice to it. The commands of Augustus fortunately intervened to prevent the loss of some of the noblest poetry of antiquity and of the most enduring monument of the greatness and glory of Rome. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb was long regarded with religious veneration, and visited as a temple. That veneration was a survival of the feeling with which he was regarded in his lifetime, and is greater than what we find attaching to the actual memory of any other ancient poet, though the mystery connected with the personality of Homer excited a greater curiosity. Horace is our most direct witness of the aifection which he in spired among his contemporaries. The qualities by which he gained their love were, according to his testimony, &quot; candor,&quot; that sincerity of nature and goodness of heart which, along with &quot; fides &quot; or loyalty, the Romans valued most among the qualities which attach men to one another ; and &quot; pietas,&quot; the deep affection for kindred, friends, and country, combined with a reverent spirit, which they prized above all personal qualities. The statement of his biographer, that he was known in Naples by the name &quot; Parthenias,&quot; is a testimony to the exceptional purity of his life in an age of licence. These direct testimonies are confirmed by the indirect testimony of his works. Scarcely any poet in any age seems to deserve so high a rank among those whom he himself characterizes as &quot;pii vates et Phoebo digna locuti.&quot; The seclusion of his life and his devotion to his art touched the imagination of his countrymen as the finer qualities of his nature touched the heart of his friends. It had been, from the time of Cicero, 1 the ambition of the men of finest culture and most original genius in Rome to produce a national literature which might rival that of Greece ; and the feeling that at last a poem was about to appear which would equal or surpass the greatest among all the works of Greek genius found a voice in the lines of Propertius &quot; Cedite Roman! sciiptores, cedite Graii; Neseio quid majus nascitur Ilia.de. &quot; The feeling which his countrymen and contemporaries entertained towards him seems justified by the personal impression which he produces on modern readers, an impression of sanctity, as of one who habitually lived in a higher and serener sphere than that of this world. The reverential love inspired by him is something distinct from the affection felt for Horace as a familiar friend, a wise 1 Cf. Tusc. Disp., ii. 2: &quot; Quamobrem hortor omnes qui facere id possunt, ut hujus quoque generis laudem jam languenti Groeciaj eripiant,&quot; &c. These words apply specially to philosophical literature, but other passages in the same and in other works imply that Cicero thought that the Romans had equal aptitudes for other departments of literature ; and the practice of the Augustan poets in each appro priating to himself a special province of Greek literary ait seems to indicate the same ambition.