The Aeneid

THE AENEIR - 1907 - INTRODUCTION - VIROIL--PUBLIUS V ERGILIV M A RO-was born at Ad-near Mantua, in the year 70 8. c. His life was meventful, though he lived in stirring times, and he p a d by far the greater part of it in reading his books and writing his poems, undisturbed by the fierce civil strife which continued to rage throughout the Roman Empire, until Octavian, who afterwards became the Emperor Augnetur, defeated Ant at the battle of Actium. Though his father was a man of humble origin, Virgd received an excellent education, firat at Cremona and Milan, and afterwards at Rome. He waa intimate with all the distinguished men of his time, and a personal friend of the Emperor. After the publication of his wcond work, h Georgia, he was recognized as being the greatest poet of hi8 age, and the most striking 6gure in the brilliant circle of literary men, which was centred at the Couk He died at Brindisi in the spring of 19 B. C. whilst returning horn a journey to Greece, leaving his greatest work, the A e m wr itten but inrevied It was published by hie executors, and immediately took ita place as the great t i o n a lE pic of the Roman people. Virgil wema to have been a man of simple, pure, and loveable character, and the references to him in the worke of Horace clearly ahow the affection with which he wan regarded by his friends. Like every cultivated Roman of that age, Virgil aae a close student of the literature and philosophy of the 161 Greeks, and hie poeme bear eloquent testimony to the profound impression made upon him by his reading of the Greek poets. His first important work, the eclogue, was directly inspired by the pastoral poeme of Theocritua, from whom he borrowed not onlymuch of his imagery but even whole lines in the Ge0rg. i h e took as his model the WorRs and Day8 of Hesiod, and though iri the former caue it must be confessed that he suffers from he weakness inherent in all imitative poetry, in the latter he far surpasses the slow and simple verses of the Boeotian. But here we must guard ourselves against a misapprehension. We modems loak askance at the writer who borrows without acknowledgment the thoughts and phrases of his forerunners, but the Roman critics of the Augustan Age looked at the matter from a different point of view. They regarded the Greeks as having set the standard of the highest possible achievement in literature, and believed that it should be the aim of every writer to be faithful, not anly to the spirit, but even to the letter of their great exemplars. Hence it was only natural that when Virgil essayed the task of writing the national Epic of his country, he should be studioue to embody in his work all that was bat in Greek Epic poetry. It is difficult in criticizing Virgil to avoid compwing him to some extent with Homer But though Virgil copied Homer freely, any comparison between them is apt to be misleading. A primitive epic, like the Iliad or the Nibclungenlird, produced by an imaginative people at an early stage in its development, telling its stories simply for the sake of story telling, cannot be judged by the same canons of criticism as a literar epic like the Acneid or Paradbe Lad, which ie the work of a great poet in an age of advanced culture, and sets forth a great idea in a narrative form...