The Aeneid Read online

  In the opening lines of the poem, addressed to Maecenas, he announces the subject of the four books:

  What makes the corncrops glad, under which star

  To turn the soil, Maecenas, and wed your vines

  To elms, the care of cattle, keeping of flocks,

  All the experience thrifty bees demand—

  Such are the themes of my song.

  (1.1-5, trans. Wilkinson)

  With an invocation of the country gods, Virgil proceeds to describe the farmer’s life of hard work as in his model, Hesiod. Later he writes about the weather signs that the farmer must recognize as prophecies of what is to come, sometimes evil, as he ends the book with memories of the recent civil wars, of Roman blood shed on the fields of Greece, and with a finale that is a prayer and a dark vision of the future:

  Gods of our fathers, Heroes of our land . . .

  Do not prevent at least this youthful prince

  From saving a world in ruins . . .

  For right and wrong change places; everywhere

  So many wars, so many shapes of crime

  Confront us; no due honor attends the plow.

  The fields, bereft of tillers, are all unkempt . . .

  . . . throughout the world

  Impious War is raging.

  (1.498-511)

  Book 2 is concerned with trees and vines, principally with the olive and the wine grape. There is much good advice here for the farmer, but the book is notable not only for the hymn of praise for Italy already quoted, but also for its praise of the happy life of the farmer as compared to that of the city dweller:

  How lucky, if they know their happiness,

  Are farmers, more than lucky, they for whom,

  Far from the clash of arms, the earth herself,

  Most fair in dealing, freely lavishes

  An easy livelihood . . .

  . . . Peace they have and a life of innocence

  Rich in variety; they have for leisure

  Their ample acres, caverns, living lakes,

  . . . cattle low, and sleep is soft

  Under a tree . . .

  (2.458-70)

  Book 3 is concerned with the breeding and raising of farm animals: horses and cattle in the first part and sheep and goats in the later section. After an exordium in which Virgil promises to celebrate the victories of Octavian, a promise fulfilled in the Aeneid, he proceeds to his subject. His discussion of farm animals contains the famous lines that apply equally to the human animal:

  Life’s earliest years for wretched mortal creatures

  Are best, and fly most quickly: soon come on

  Diseases, suffering and gloomy age,

  Till Death’s unpitying harshness carries them off.

  (3.66-68)

  Virgil ends this book, as he did Book 1, on a sad note: an account of a plague that struck cattle in the northern region of the Alps, in which he draws much from Lucretius’ portrayal of the plague that struck humans in the Athens of Pericles, described in exact detail by Thucydides.

  In his introduction to Book 4, about bee-keeping, Virgil assures Maecenas that he will describe

  . . . a world in miniature,

  Gallant commanders and the institutions

  Of a whole nation, its character, pursuits,

  Communities and warfare.

  (4.3-5)

  And this theme, of the hive as a community, in harmony or dissension, is a constant in the book.

  A great deal of misinformation about bees is conveyed to the reader. Bees were not properly observed in the hive until the invention of the glass observation hive, and until the seventeenth century it was believed that the leader of the hive was the king, not the queen. But what has made Book 4 famous is the end—the long tale of Aristaeus and his bees and of Orpheus and Eurydice.

  Virgil first describes the process of bougonia (the Greek word means something like “birth from a steer”), for re-creating the hive of bees in case the original bees die. A two-year-old steer is brought to a specially constructed hut that has windows facing in all four directions. The animal is then beaten to death and the remains left in place through the spring. Suddenly, in the rotting flesh a whole cluster of bees is born. This is not true, but it was widely believed in the ancient world (except by Aristotle) and appears also in the riddle Samson asked the Philistines to answer: “out of the strong came forth sweetness” (Judges 14:14).

  Virgil’s account of the origin of this method is told through the story of the farmer Aristaeus, whose hive of bees has died. He goes to his mother, the nymph Cyrene, and she tells him to find out what has gone wrong from Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who “knows / All that has been, is now, and lies in store” (4.392-93). Aristaeus must seize Proteus as he comes out of the water with his seals and hold him tightly as he changes shape, “for suddenly / He’ll be a bristly boar or a savage tiger / or a scaly serpent or a lioness” (4.407-8). But he must be held fast until he gives up and resumes his own shape, and then he will answer questions. (This scene is adapted from Menelaus’ similar interrogation of Proteus in the Odyssey 4.428-641.)2 Aristaeus follows directions faithfully, and finally Proteus, back in his own shape, tells Aristaeus what is wrong. “Piteous Orpheus / It is that seeks to invoke this penalty / Against you” (4.454-55). It is revenge for the death of his wife, the nymph Eurydice, who, fleeing Aristaeus’ advances, ran along the banks of a river where she was killed by a serpent. After mourning for her, Orpheus decided to seek her in the land of the dead.

  And entering the gloomy grove of terror

  Approached the shades and their tremendous king . . .

  [Orpheus’] music shook them . . .

  (4.468-71)

  And Virgil goes on to describe the dark kingdom and its denizens in lines that foreshadow his more detailed description of the Underworld later, in Book 6 of the Aeneid. Orpheus’ music wins him his Eurydice.

  She is allowed to follow him back to the land of the living, but on condition that he does not look back at her until they reach the light of the upper world. But Orpheus,

  . . . on the very brink of light, alas,

  Forgetful, yielding in his will, looked back

  At his own Eurydice. . . .

  (4.490-91)

  And as she reproached him bitterly, she

  . . . suddenly

  Out of his sight, like smoke into thin air,

  Vanished away . . .

  For seven whole months on end, they say, he wept . . .

  Alone in the wild . . .

  And sang his tale of woe . . .

  (4.499-510)

  And finally, wandering in Thrace in the north, he was torn to pieces by Bacchantes in their Dionysiac frenzy, his limbs were scattered far and wide, and his head was thrown into the Hebrus River. And there,

  His head, now severed from his marble neck,

  “Eurydice!” the voice and frozen tongue

  Still called aloud, “Ah, poor Eurydice!”

  (4.523-26)

  So Proteus departed and Aristaeus, instructed by his mother Cyrene, made sacrifices to the shade of Orpheus and to the nymphs, the sisters of Eurydice, and then left for his bougonia for the regeneration of his bees. And the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, in Virgil’s musical verse, has inspired poetry and song ever since.

  In the final lines of the Georgics, published probably in 29 B.C., two years after the battle of Actium, which made Octavian master of the Roman world, Virgil tells us that he finished the poem at Naples (to which he gives its Greek name, Parthenope), while Octavian, soon to be given the title Augustus, was making a triumphant progress through the East.

  This song of the husbandry of crops and beasts

  And fruit-trees I was singing while great Caesar

  Was thundering beside the deep Euphrates

  In war, victoriously for grateful peoples

  Appointing laws and setting his course for Heaven.

  I, Virgil, at that time lay in the lap

  Of sweet Part
henope, enjoying there

  The studies of inglorious ease, who once

  Dallied in pastoral verse and with youth’s boldness

  Sang of you, Tityrus, lazing under a beech-tree.

  (4.559-66)

  That last line is a quotation, slightly adapted, of the opening line of his first book, the Eclogues.

  THE AENEID

  Near the opening of the third book of the Georgics Virgil speaks of what will be his next work:

  Yet soon I will gird myself to celebrate

  The fiery fights of Caesar, make his name

  Live in the future . . .

  (3.46-47)

  This promise would be kept by the writing of his last and most grandly ambitious poem, the Aeneid, which he never finished to his full satisfaction. After reading Books 2, 4, and 6 to Augustus and Octavia and completing his work on Book 12, he decided to visit Greece in 19 B.C. and spend three years on correction and revision. But he met Augustus in Athens on Augustus’ return from the East and was persuaded to return to Italy with him. However, passing from Athens to Corinth, at Megara Virgil contracted a fever, which grew worse during the voyage to Brundisium, where he died on September 21. He was buried near Naples, and on his tomb were inscribed verses that he is said to have composed himself:

  Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc

  Parthenope. Cecini pascua, rura, duces.

  Mantova gave me life, the Calabrians took it away, Naples

  holds me now; I sang of pastures, farms, and commanders.

  (trans. Knox)

  There is a report that he had ordered his literary executors, Varius and Tucca, to destroy the unfinished manuscript; if so, these orders were immediately canceled by Augustus. Imperfections remain: some incomplete hexameters, which Virgil would certainly have tidied up, and several minor contradictions, which he would certainly have dealt with. One passage (2.702-28), which is not in the oldest manuscripts, was removed, according to the much later commentator Servius, by Varius and Tucca. (In the most recent editions of Virgil’s text, for example that of Fairclough, revised in 1999-2000 by George P. Goold, the passage is marked as spurious. Other recent commentators, however, notably R. G. Austin and R. D. Williams, consider it genuine.) The passage pictures Helen as seeking sanctuary at the shrine of Vesta, fearing the vengeance of the Trojans for the ruin she has brought on them, and Aeneas’ angry decision to kill her. This passage contradicts a long and intricate story of Helen triumphantly welcoming the Greeks and organizing the mutilation and death of Deiphobus, the Trojan whom she had married after the death of Paris (6.573-623). But however it may complicate the narrative, and however Virgil might have revised it later, one may still be impressed by its strong Virgilian style and the effectiveness with which it suits its context, setting the scene for Venus, who redirects Aeneas’ energies to the rescue of his family. So we have bracketed the passage and kept it in the translation.

  The Aeneid, of course, is based on and often uses characters and incidents from the Homeric epics. In the Iliad Aeneas is an important warrior fighting on the Trojan side. He is the son of the love-goddess Aphrodite (Venus in the Roman pantheon) and Anchises, and he is often rescued from death at the hands of Greek warriors by divine intervention: from Diomedes by Aphrodite (Iliad 5.495-517), and from Achilles by Poseidon (Neptune) at Iliad 20.314-386. On this occasion Poseidon comments on Aeneas’ piety toward the gods: “He always gave us gifts to warm our hearts, / gifts for the gods who rule the vaulting skies” (20.345-46). He also says something else about Aeneas:

  “He is destined to survive.

  Yes, so the generation of Dardanus shall not perish . . .

  Dardanus, dearest to Zeus of all the sons

  That mortal women brought to birth for Father.” (20.349-53)

  Dardanus was the founder of the race of Trojan kings, ancestor not only

  of Priam and Hector but also of Anchises and Aeneas. And Poseidon goes

  on to say: “and now Aeneas will rule the men of Troy in power—/ his

  sons’ sons and the sons born in future years”

  (20.355-56).

  Poseidon’s mention of Aeneas’ insistence on gifts of sacrifice to the gods anticipates the adjective that Virgil often attaches to him—pius, and its abstract noun pietas. He is called in the early lines of the poem (1.10) “a man outstanding in his piety,” insignem pietate virum, and in 1.457 he introduces himself to his mother, Venus (whom he has not yet recognized), with the words “I am pious Aeneas,” sum pius Aeneas (trans. Knox). The adjective and the abstract noun occur often in the poem and are attributed to its hero. Virgil’s mastery of the hexameter line rules out the Homeric reason for the repetition of such modifiers—metrical necessity; in Virgil the frequent reappearance of these words in connection with the hero has a meaning and an emphasis, though not those of Yeats’s sailor who told him Aeneas sounded more like a priest than a hero.

  The word pius does indeed refer, like its English derivative, to devotion and duty to the Divine; this is the reason cited by Poseidon in the Iliad for saving Aeneas from death at the hand of Achilles. And in the Aeneid he is always mindful of the gods, constant in prayer and thanks and dutiful in sacrifice. But the words pius and pietas have in Latin a wider meaning. Perhaps the best English equivalent is something like “dutiful,” “mindful of one’s duty”—not only to the gods but also to one’s family and to one’s country.

  Aeneas’ devotion to his family was famous. Book 2 describes how, after realizing that fighting was no longer of use, that Troy was doomed, he carries his father, Anchises, on his shoulders out of the burning city, holding his son Ascanius by the hand, with his wife, Creusa, following behind. But she is lost on the way, and he arrives at the rendezvous outside the city with only his father and son. In desperation he rushes back into the burning city to find her, but finds only her ghost, which tells him what his future and his duty are now:

  “‘A long exile is your fate . . .

  the vast plains of the sea are yours to plow

  until you reach Hesperian land, where Lydian Tiber

  flows with its smooth march through rich and loamy fields,

  a land of hardy people. There great joy and a kingdom

  are yours to claim, and a queen to make your wife . . .

  And now farewell. Hold dear the son we share,

  we love together.’”

  (2.967-80)

  He tries to embrace her only to find

  “. . . her phantom

  sifting through my fingers,

  light as wind, quick as a dream in flight.”

  (2.984-86)

  But pietas describes another loyalty and duty, besides that to the gods and to the family. It is for the Roman, to Rome, and in Aeneas’ case, to his mission to found it in Hesperia, the western country, Italy. And it is noticeable that this adjective is not applied to him when, in love with Dido, in Book 4, he actually takes part in helping to build her city, Carthage, “founding the city fortifications, / building homes in Carthage” (4.324-25). Jupiter in heaven, enraged that Aeneas has forgotten his mission, sends his messenger, Mercury, down to him with the single-word command Naviget! “Let him set sail!” (4.296). Only when Aeneas realizes he must leave Dido, and suffers from her rage as he makes his reply to her accusations, only when he leaves for the shore and gives his fleet the order to set sail, is he called pius again (4.494-95). He has given up her love, and left her to die, as he fulfills his duty to his son—for as Mercury reminds him, “you owe him Italy’s realm, the land of Rome!” (4.343)—and his own duty to found the western Troy that is to be.

  But pietas is not a virtue confined to Aeneas; it is also an ideal for all Romans. Unlike the Greeks whom they added to their empire, and admired for their artistic and literary skills, but who never acted as a united nation, not even when invaded by the forces of the Persian Empire in 480 B.C., the Romans had a profound sense of national unity, and the talents and virtues necessary for a race of conquerors and
organizers, of empire-builders and rulers. One of the virtues besides pietas that they admired was gravitas, a profound seriousness in matters political and religious, in which they distrusted attempts to change; they deferred on these and other matters to auctoritas, the power and respect won by men of experience, of successful leadership in war and peace. They admired discipline, the mark of their legionary soldiers who conquered and held for centuries an empire that included almost the whole of western Europe and much of the Middle East.