Aeneid

“ DRYDEN, AEneid, BOOK XII.
AEneas was led away to his tent, bleeding from his wound. Then Turnus called for his war chariot and his arms, and drove furiously over the plain into the midst of the Trojans, dealing death around him on every side.
He drives impetuous, and, where'er he goes,
He leaves behind a lane of slaughtered foes.
DRYDEN, AEneid, BOOK XII.
One brave Trojan warrior named Phe'geus made a gallant fight against Turnus. ”

“ The Iliad and the Odyssey are thus seen to be essentially epics of human life; the Aeneid is essentially the epic of national glory. The Iliad indeed is the noblest monument of the greatness, as it is of the genius, of the Greeks. And the Aeneid is much more than a monument of national glory. It is full of pathetic situations and stirring incidents which move our human compassion or kindle our sympathies with heroic action. ”

“ Virgil was deservedly popular both as a poet and as a man. The emperor esteemed him and people respected him; he was constitutionally pensive and melancholy, temperate, and pure-minded in a profligate age, and his popularity never spoiled his simplicity and modesty. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole manuscript of the Aeneid, and directed his executors either to improve it or commit it to the flames.
The idea and plan of the Aeneid are derived from Homer. As the wrath of Achilles is the mainspring of the Iliad, so the unity of the Aeneid results from the anger of Juno. ”

“ What has been won by virtus must be preserved by pietas, by the sense of duty in family and State,—that is the moral of the Aeneid. In no other work of Roman genius is this idea found in anything like the same degree of prominence and consistency; and when a student has steeped his mind well in the details of the Roman worship, and begins to weary of what must seem its soulless Pharisaism, let him take up the Aeneid and read it right through for the story and the characters. ”

“ They wind the hill, and thro’ the blissful meadows go.
But old Anchises, in a flow’ry vale,
Review’d his muster’d race, and took the tale:
Those happy spirits, which, ordain’d by fate,
For future beings and new bodies wait.
With studious thought observ’d th’ illustrious throng,
In nature’s order as they pass’d along:
Their names, their fates, their conduct, and their care,
In peaceful senates and successful war.
He, when Aeneas on the plain appears,
Meets him with open arms, and falling tears.
“Welcome,” he said, “the gods’ undoubted race! ”

“ With Bernard, each Book of the Aeneid represents one of the ages of man, the first Book betokening infancy, the second boyhood, and so forth. Allegorical etymologies are applied to the names of the personages; and in general the whole natural course and setting of the poem is taken allegorically. “The sea is the human body moved and tossed by drunkenness and lusts, which are represented by waves.” Aeneas, to wit, the human soul joined to its body, comes to Carthage, the mundane city where Dido reigns, which is lust; this allegory is unfolded in detail. ”

“ Each ceremony embodies some glorious reminiscence; each minute technicality enshrines some special national blessing.
Here, as in the Georgics, Cato and Varro live in Virgil, but with far less of narrow literalness, with far more of rich enthusiasm. We can well believe that the Aeneid was a poem after Augustus's heart, that he welcomed with pride as well as gladness the instalments which, before its publication, he was permitted to see, [67] and encouraged by unreserved approbation so thorough an exponent of his cherished views. To him the Aeneid breathed the spirit of the old cult. ”

“ Not only is the warlike passion less cruel in the Aeneid, but the feeling of the sanctity which invests the dead is stronger. The only passage in the Aeneid which might have exposed Virgil to the reproach of Lucretius, as forgetting in the supposed interests of religion the certain claims of humanity, is that in which Aeneas, following the example of Achilles, sets aside the captive youths for immolation to the Manes of Pallas. ”

“ II. THE GODS AND GODDESSES. It is said that Vergil wrote the AEneid at the request of the Emperor Augustus, whose family—the Ju'li-i—claimed the honor of being descended from AEneas, through his son I-u'lus or Ju'lus. All the Romans, indeed, were fond of claiming descent from the heroes whom tradition told of as having landed in Italy with AEneas after escaping from the ruins of Troy. The city of Troy, or Il'i-um, so celebrated in ancient song and story, was situated on the coast of Asia Minor, not far from the entrance to what is now the Sea of Mar'mo-ra. ”

“ Now stern Aeneas his weighty spear
Against his foe, and thus upbraids his fear:
"What farther subterfuge can Turnus find?
What empty hopes are harbor'd in his mind?
'T is not thy swiftness can secure thy flight;
Not with their feet, but hands, the valiant fight.
Vary thy shape in thousand forms, and dare
What skill and courage can attempt in war;
Wish for the wings of winds, to mount the sky;
Or hid, within the hollow earth to lie!"
The champion shook his head, and made this short reply:
"No threats of thine my manly mind can move;
'T is hostile heav'n I dread, and partial Jove." ”

“ Alternate hopes and fears their minds possess,
Whether to deem 'em dead, or in distress.
Above the rest, Aeneas mourns the fate
Of brave Orontes, and th' uncertain state
Of Gyas, Lycus, and of Amycus.
The day, but not their sorrows, ended thus.
When, from aloft, almighty Jove surveys
Earth, air, and shores, and navigable seas,
At length on Libyan realms he fix'd his eyes-
Whom, pond'ring thus on human miseries,
When Venus saw, she with a lowly look,
Not free from tears, her heav'nly sire bespoke:
"O King of Gods and Men! ”

“ Trapp, in his preface to the Aeneis, observes, 'that his lordship's Translation is pretty near to the original, though not so close as its brevity would make one imagine; and it sufficiently appears, that he had a right taste in poetry in general, and the Aeneid in particular. He shews a true spirit, and, in many places, is very beautiful. ”

“ Then sought the queen: she took him to her arms
With greedy pleasure, and devour’d his charms.
Unhappy Dido little thought what guest,
How dire a god, she drew so near her breast;
But he, not mindless of his mother’s pray’r,
Works in the pliant bosom of the fair,
And moulds her heart anew, and blots her former care.
The dead is to the living love resign’d;
And all Aeneas enters in her mind.
Now, when the rage of hunger was appeas’d,
The meat remov’d, and ev’ry guest was pleas’d,
The golden bowls with sparkling wine are crown’d,
And thro’ the palace cheerful cries resound. ”

“ They marvel at Aeneas' gifts, marvel at Iülus, at the god's face aflame and forged speech, at the mantle and veil wrought with yellow acanthus-flower. Above all the hapless Phoenician, victim to coming doom, cannot satiate her soul, but, stirred alike by the boy and the gifts, she gazes and takes fire. He, when hanging clasped on Aeneas' neck he had satisfied all the deluded parent's love, makes his way to the queen; the queen clings to him with her eyes and all her soul, and ever and anon fondles him in her lap, ah, poor Dido! witless how mighty a deity sinks into her breast ”

“ The personages of the action are prominent in poetry and legend, or by their ethnical names stir the sentiment of national enthusiasm—Aeneas and Anchises, Dido, Acestes, Evander, Turnus. The spheres of activity in which they are engaged are war and sea adventure. The passion of love is a powerful addition to the older sources of interest. The Aeneid revives, by a conventional compromise between the present and the remote past, some image of the old romance of Greece; it creates the romance of “that Italy for which Camilla the virgin, Euryalus, and Turnus and Nisus died of wounds.” ”

“ By its combination of opposite excellences the style of the Aeneid is at once an admirable vehicle of continuous or compressed narrative, of large or concentrated description, of fluent and impassioned, or composed and impressive oratory. It possesses also the power, which distinguishes the older Latin writers, of stamping some grave or magnanimous lesson in imperishable characters on the mind—
Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito. ”

“ Great in her charms, as when on gods above
She looks, and breathes herself into their love.
DRYDEN, AEneid, BOOK II.
Taking the hero by the hand as he was in the act of raising his sword to strike Helen, the goddess thus rebuked him: "What is it that excites your anger now, my son? Where is your regard for me? Have you forgotten your father Anchises and your wife and little son? They would have been killed by the Greeks if I had not cared for them and saved them. It is not Helen or Paris that has laid low this great city of Troy, but the wrath of the gods. ”

“ Here the fluttering phantom of flying Aeneas darts and hides itself. Nor is Turnus slack to follow; he overleaps the barriers and springs across the high gangways. Scarcely had he lighted on the prow; the daughter of Saturn snaps the hawser, and the ship, parted from her cable, runs out on the ebbing tide. And him Aeneas seeks for battle and finds not, and sends many a man that meets him to death. Then the light phantom seeks not yet any further hiding-place, but, flitting aloft, melts in a dark cloud; and a blast comes down meanwhile and sweeps Turnus through the seas. ”

“ If my presaging soul divines with truth;
Which, O! I wish, might err thro' causeless fears,
And you (for you have pow'r) prolong his years!"
Thus having said, involv'd in clouds, she flies,
And drives a storm before her thro' the skies.
Swift she descends, alighting on the plain,
Where the fierce foes a dubious fight maintain.
Of air condens'd a specter soon she made;
And, what Aeneas was, such seem'd the shade.
Adorn'd with Dardan arms, the phantom bore
His head aloft; a plumy crest he wore;
This hand appear'd a shining sword to wield,.
And that sustain'd an imitated shield. ”

“ She steers a various course among the foes;
Now here, now there, her conqu'ring brother shows;
Now with a straight, now with a wheeling flight,
She turns, and bends, but shuns the single fight.
Aeneas, fir'd with fury, breaks the crowd,
And seeks his foe, and calls by name aloud:
He runs within a narrower ring, and tries
To stop the chariot; but the chariot flies.
If he but gain a glimpse, Juturna fears,
And far away the Daunian hero bears.
What should he do! Nor arts nor arms avail ”

“ The work in English poetry which comes most near to the Aeneid in the union of modern ethical and political feeling with the spectacle of the martial life and the ideas of the supernatural belonging to a much earlier time, is ‘The Faery Queen561:’ though the allegorical meaning of that poem is as different as possible from the solid basis of fact—the marvellous career of Rome—on which the Aeneid is founded. Virgil produces much more than Spenser the illusion of a kind of life not absolutely withdrawn from mundane experience. ”

“ Aeneas looks swiftly back, and sees beneath the cliff on the left hand a wide city, girt with a triple wall and encircled by a racing river of boiling flame, Tartarean Phlegethon, that echoes over its rolling rocks. In front is the gate, huge and pillared with solid adamant, that no warring force of men nor the very habitants of heaven may avail to overthrow ”

“ That he is, on the one hand, the passive receptacle of Divine guidance, and, on the other, the impersonation of a modern ideal of humanity, playing a part in a rude and turbulent time, are the two main causes of the tame and colourless character of the protagonist of the Aeneid. ”

“ The trouvère, however, omits the greater part of the wanderings of Aeneas, and adorns his narrative with gorgeous descriptions, with accounts of the marvellous properties of beasts and stones, and of single combats among the knights who figure in the story. He also elaborates the episodes most attractive to his audience, notably those of Dido and Aeneas and Lavinia, the last of whom plays a far more important part than in the Aeneid. Where possible, he substitutes human for divine intervention, and ignores the idea of the glorification of Rome and Augustus, which dominates the Virgilian epic. ”

“ This is what makes the Aeneid a religious poem; the character of Aeneas is pivoted on religion; religion is the one sanction of his conduct. There is no appeal in the Aeneid to knowledge, or reason, or pleasure,—always to the will of God. Pietas is Virgil's word for religion, as it had been Cicero's in his more exalted moments. ”

“ So all surrounded him with loud murmur and cries, good Aeneas the foremost. Then weeping they quickly hasten on the Sibyl's orders, and work hard to pile trees for the altar of burial, and heap it up into the sky. They move into the ancient forest, the deep coverts of game; pitch-pines fall flat, ilex rings to the stroke of axes, and ashen beams and oak are split in clefts with wedges; they roll in huge mountain-ashes from the hills. Aeneas likewise is first in the work, and cheers on his crew and arms himself with their weapons. ”

“ Aeneas then unsheath'd his shining sword,
And thus with pious pray'rs the gods ador'd:
"All-seeing sun, and thou, Ausonian soil,
For which I have sustain'd so long a toil,
Thou, King of Heav'n, and thou, the Queen of Air,
Propitious now, and reconcil'd by pray'r;
Thou, God of War, whose unresisted sway
The labors and events of arms obey;
Ye living fountains, and ye running floods,
All pow'rs of ocean, all ethereal gods,
Hear, and bear record: if I fall in field,
Or, recreant in the fight, to Turnus yield,
My Trojans shall encrease Evander's town ”