Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small]

INTRODUCTION.

I. LIFE AND POEMS OF VIRGIL1.

1. P. VERGILIUS MARO was born on Oct. 15, in the year 70 B. C., five years before Horace and seven years before the Emperor Augustus, at Andes, a 'pagus' or country district in the neighbourhood of Mantua. The green banks and slow windings of the Mincius, recalled with affectionate memory in the Eclogues and Georgics, were thus familiar to him from childhood; but the only passage which seems to describe the features of any one spot along that stream is Ecl. ix. 7-10 :

'qua se subducere colles Incipiunt, mollique iugum demittere clivo,

Usque ad aquam et veteres, iam fracta cacumina, fagos.'

'The only hills in the neighbourhood,' says Professor Sellar2, ‘to which these lines can apply are those which for a time accompany the flow of the river from the foot of the Lago di Guarda, and gradually sink into the plain a little beyond the picturesque hill and castle of Valleggio, about fifteen miles higher up the river than Mantua.' Pietola, three miles down the river from Mantua, was by a tradition as old as Dante's time identified with Andes; but lines 62-64 of the same Eclogue, implying that the two shepherds had further than this to walk into Mantua, give an indirect support to Professor Sellar's view. The 'sacri fontes' of Ecl. i. 53 (cp. G. ii. 2co) are 'more naturally to be sought in the more picturesque environment of the upper reaches of the river than in the level plain in the midst of which Mantua stands 3': and the accurate

1 In this edition the English spelling 'Virgil' is retained in preference to the less familiar Vergil,' used by some modern editors. The Latin form of the poet's name is 'Vergilius': but the Anglicised form Virgil' has (like 'Horace,' 'Livy,' 'Athens,' etc.) the sanction of long usage, and is as legitimate for us as 'Virgilio' for Italians, or Virgile' for Frenchmen. 2 Virgil,' p. 105. 3 Ibid.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

description of the Lago di Guarda, in G. ii. 160, might well reproduce familiar impressions of a scene not far from the poet's early home. Though Virgil claims a Tuscan origin for Mantua (Aen. x. 203), Etruscan had long been superseded by Gaulish (i. e. Celtic) settlements in the region north of the Po; and the population, however assimilated to the Italian races, must have retained a large admixture of Celtic blood. 'Andes' is probably a Celtic name, for Caesar (B. G. ii. 35) mentions a Gallic tribe and town of that name, now 'Angors' in the Anjou district ; and so, according to one theory, is 'Vergilius'-though Corssen more probably connects it with 'Vergiliae,' a name for the Pleiades as rising at the end of spring (vergo), comparing it with 'Quintilius,' 'Sextilius,' 'Marcius,' and other names originally denoting time of birth.

1

2. His parents were of obscure social position; but, like those of Horace, were able to appreciate their son's talent, and give him the best education obtainable. At twelve years old he was sent to Cremona, the birthplace of the poet Furius Bibaculus, thirty years his senior, and of Quintilius Varus (Hor. Od. i. 24, A. P. 438), the critic and friend of both Horace and Virgil. At sixteen he assumed the 'toga virilis' and went to Milan, removing thence to Rome in 53 B. C., when in his seventeenth year; and, after the fashion of the time, studied, first rhetoric under Epidius (also the teacher of the young Octavianus), and then philosophy under Siron, a celebrated exponent of Epicureanism. To the period spent at Rome are assigned some of the collection of short poems called 'Catalepton' (Toinμara катà λETTÓν, 'minor poems'), or 'Catalecta' (karaλeктá, 'selections'), which bear his name, but which can hardly all have been by his hand. Three of them (iii, iv, and v) are abusive lampoons in the style of Catullus and Horace, which no one would willingly believe to be written by Virgil. The parody on Catullus' Phaselus ille' (No. viii) may well be his so may No. vi, in which a sacrifice is promised to Venus in the event of finishing the Aeneid, and No. x, which seems to refer to his ejection from his farm in 41 B.C. (Ecl. i, ix, see below, § 4). More interesting is vii, written apparently when beginning philosophical studies, and expressing delight at exchanging rhetorical and grammatical studies for philosophy:

[blocks in formation]
« ZurückWeiter »