Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 20.djvu/95

* VERGIL. 69 his literary cxcculois, Varius and Tueca, with li'jiacios to Ma>cenas and to Aiii,'ustus. In appearance he is deserilied l)y Donatus as of a huge frame, a dark complexion, and a rustic air. Xo bust of the poet which can be regarded as genuine has been preserved, and the numerous ]jurt raits which appear in the editions of his worlo have little or no claim to authenticity, with the exception of some miniatures which ale found in the earlier manuscripts, and two mosaics, one discovered at Treves in 1884, the other at Susa, in Africa, in 18t)0. The latter, which seems to belong to the first century of our era, and probably gives us our best representa- tion of the poet, shows him seated between the muses of tragedy and of history. holding in his hands a scroll, partly unrolled, on which are the words : Miisa. mi/il causaa meinova, quo numitw ffv.so Qitith-e. . . . {.En, i. a.) The face and figure, while less attractive than some of the spurious portraits, agree much more closely with the descri]ition of Donatus than they. Vergil's most marked cliaracteristics seem to have l)een modesty and gentleness. The prom- inence which came to him early in life was a genuine cause of distress to him, and he. is said to have taken refuge in the nearest shop or doorway to a'oid what Horace glories in. being pointed out b- the finger of the passer-by. Like nearly all the poets of the Augustan Age except Horace, Vergil was strongly influenced by llie Alexandrian school of Greek writers. His acquaintance with them doubtless began at the time of his studies at Naples under farthenius. It was this influence which gave his works their cosmopolitan and modern tone, which with their pathos, that note of brooding pity, as Mackail happily expresses it, makes them' mark a new era in the history of Roman literature. It is to these characteristics also that their general and lasting popularity is in a great measure due. But though a master in his treatment of the passion of love, he docs not belong to the fol- lowers of Alexandria on whom Horace vents his scorn. As Cicero in oratory avoided the extremes of the Asianic and of the Attic schools, and developed a characteristic style of his own, so Vergil combined the best features of the Alex- andrian poets with those of what we may term the national school of Roman writers. During his early life Vergil is said to have written some short poems, which he appears afterwards to have suppressed : these will be considered later. His first serious work was in a field as yet un- tried by Roman poets, that of pastoral poetry. He is said to have taken this up at the sugges- tion of Asinius Pollio. although his fondness for country life and his love of nature must have made the task a thorouglily congenial one, The ten poems which have come down to us. the Eclogues or Biicoli en (Bc/or/rr. B»co?icrt), appear to have been written between the years 4.'? and 37 anil to have been published at first separately and afterwards in a body. The arrangement, which does not seem to be a strictly chronological one, is doubtless that of the poet himself. They fall into two general classes, the purely pastoral poems, in which he sings of the life and the loves of shepherds, and those in which Vergil himself and his contemporaries appear in the guise of VERGIL. country folk. To the former class belong the sceonil, third, fifth, seventh, and eighth. The second sings of the hopeless love of Corydon for Alexis, his master's favorite. The others all represent contests in song between shepherds: in the third and seventh the singers arc rivals who contend before a .judge for a [jrize : in I In- fifth two shepherds meet and sing in turn the praises of Daphnis, the ideal shepherd, with many eomplinu^nts to each other; aii<l in Die eighth two friends sing of unre(iuite<l love. Of the other class the first and ninth have to do with ^'crgil's loss of his paternal estate, and present not a few dilfieulties of chronology and of interpretation. The ninth, which seems' to be the earlier, refers to his expulsion from his prop- erty and is supposed to have been designed to secure the aid of Alfenus Varus in recovering it; the first represents the poet as restored to his home and sings the praises of his benefactor, Octavian. The famous fourth Eclogue celebrates the birth of a child, whom it seems impossible to identify, who is to bring back the Golden .ge. The child is variously supposed to be the un- liorn child of Octavi.-in and Scrihonia, the off- spring of Antony and Octavia, and Asinius Gal- lus, the son of C. Asinius Pollio. The first view seems on the whole the most probable, although the last is supported by such high authority as Rihbcck and Sellar. In Christian times this was regarded as a prophecy of the coming of the Jlcssiah. In the sixth two shepherds capture Silenus by a clever stratagem, and compel him to sing to them. It is supposed to have the object of justifying a refusal to celebrate the ex- ploits of his friend Alfenus Varo on the plea that Apollo bids him devote himself to the liumble field of pastoral poetry. The tenth condoles with his fi-iend Cornel'ius Gallus for the faithlessness of his mistress. It represents Gallus as dying of love and singing of his woes to the Arcadian shepherds. The Eclogues are modeled closely on the IdiiUs of Theocritus. The names of the personages who figure in the poems are taken from the Greek poet, and the scenery is throughout Sicilian and not Italian. Yet Vergil succeeded in giving them a national character, and the pathos which is characteristic of all his work appears in the feel- ing descriptions of the miseries caused by the civil wars. The interpretation of the poems of the first of the two classes mentioned above, which follow Theocritus most closely, jiresent no special ditiieulty. The allegorical poems, on the other hand, are full of puzzling contradictions and inconsistencies. A recent German writer regards the sixth and tenth, which are especially difficult, as 'catalogue poems.' made up in great part of passages from the works o^ Cornelius Gallus. In spite of their highly imitative char- acter and of many obvious defects gf versification and of composition, the Eclogues take a high rank in the history of Roman literature. The seven years which followed the publica- tion of the Eclogues were spent liy Vergil in the composition of a poem on agriculture, the Oeorgics (Gcnrgicn). This was published in the year 20 and represents the perfection of Vergil's work from the point of view of finish. The sub- ject is said to have been suggested by IMjccenas and Augustus, with the purpose of arousing a