Virgil's Aeneid
 Cato (234-149 BC) raised his pen as a part of his patriotism because
he cherished the old Roman values and denounced the slippery character
of the average Greek. Cato had been the father of Roman history and thus
kept Greek influences at bay. He displaced his contempt towards the
arrogant Roman aristocrats to reveal his disgust for Greeks. He wrote
his history in Latin and hence Roman history was composed in the
language of the Romans.
The creation of the Roman character became more powerful than that of
the Greek poetry. The rough eloquence of Cato flooded Plato's thoughts,
Aristotle's investigation and the semi-scientific philosophy of
Epicurus. These and many more were the advent to Virgil's arrival.
The atmosphere had been created, doors flung open for the Messiah of
poetry to descend. After Cato, Cicero's prodigious triumph as the
creator of Latin prose was making a mark while Caesar and Sallust were
interesting writers but Virgil who was living in Rome from 40 BC to 20
BC was a trusted friend of Augustus Caesar. Latin literature of his time
were at its highest glory and in the midst of that glory, Virgil shone
as the brightest star.
Virgil was the son of a peasant who lived in Mantua. His father
educated him with the little money he earned and sent him to Verona,
Milan and Rome. He was a shy and delicate boy with a curious slowless
and public exposure never attracted him. He shrank from noise, crowds
and burning ambition. After an education he returned to his country and
wrote poetry about peasant life and corn fields.
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Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro)
15 October 70 BC – 21 September 19 BC |
He was convinced that something in Nature resisted man and the chief
glory of human life lay in opposing the soul of Nature. God Himself had
decided that man must rouse the slumbering globe to greater life. IN
this context, Lucretius was a fatalist and Virgil the evolutionist.
Lucretius thought that man was helpless in the hands of Nature while
Virgil believed that man is the Master of Nature. Thus, he boldly
declared 'Italy as the mighty motherland of harvest and of man. Man made
the harvests, and the harvests made man.
In his immortal epic, the Aeneid Virgil made his hero Aeneas and not
a superman nor a god-like hero or for that matter, a sage, but an
instrument of God's Will. Rome had to be a part of the Divine plan.
Aeneas was not the father of the nation but a servant of Destiny
while regards all people as material for the Divine plan. And with these
high things went the most exquisite passion for simple human pity.
Virgil's Mission
He elevated mankind with his poetry in the most beautiful language
with a strange power of making his words meaningful while this shy and
solitary man raised Roman poetry to the level of the Greek and endeared
himself to all generations of mankind. His contemporary, Horace was
different being the son of an auctioneer, he became a man of words and
absolutely a delightful poet.
He grateful loved his rich parton. Maecnas whom he introduced to
Virgil saying 'half of my soul' and together gave such an impetus to
Roman poetry, they were followed other great poets such as Ovid and
Cicero. There was also Pliny the Elder, Livy, Terance, Tacitus and
Horace etc.
But none of them able to produce an epic such as the Aeneid. Little
is known of the primitive words of the Latin race; Why is the
traditional literature of the Roman so scanty? The answer to this is
that Italy lay under the scourge of civil war and after five centuries
of Greek struggles, the city of Rome acquired the mastery of the country
and the Latin soul stiffled.
Rome was able to give peace to an almost savage country. The Greeks
had long ago established colonies in the south of Italy and they had
given their alphabet to the Romans. As literary instinct began taking
shape in Rome, the Greeks were pushed back with the emergence of
immortal Roman poets.
The Seneid
'He raised his head from the water and looked around,
Calmly, and saw Aeneas's fleet scattered,
On the surface far and wide, the Trojans
Hard-pressed by the waves and the tumbling sky..... (Book 1)
The hero Aeneas, guided by Venus, harassed by Juno comes under divine
protection when fleeing from the burning city. This is when Troy falls
after ten years of siege with no escape from the marauding Greeks.
Aeneas turns to the west, especially Italy to realize his destiny. He
lays the foundation to what would become the glory of Rome.
Since Virgil's death, Aeneas's trials and adventure to win his
kingdom have amazed and inspired every generation.
His tragical love for Didi, queen of Carthage and the journey to
kingdom of death, his ferocious war against the Italian tribes were so
powerful that they caught the imagination of famous poets such as Dante,
Shakespeares, to T S Eliot because they were like the first to realize
it formed a integral part of history as much as we are from the modern
world of literati.
Poet Properties hailed Virgil's Aeneid as the greatest classic to
have ever been written even before Vigil's death, surpassing rival
Homer's Iliad.
The Roman Emperor, Augustus waited impatiently for this classic that
would guarantee immortality not only to Rome but for himself too.
At that time Virgil was the most famous living poet but he died with
Aeneid still unfinished. It took him over ten years to write the twelve
(12) books that made up the Aeneid with over 10,000 lines.
After twenty years of civil war being ended by Octavian and Agrppa
with the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium which
Virgil describes with splendour in Book Viii, it was apparent that the
years of composition of the Aenied (30-19 BC) were the years of
political experiments of Augustus's new Government.
Virgil created the immortal, Aeneas to stamp history through
mythology as well as war, peace, poetical literature.
'The dawn rose from her bed in the ocean
Aeneas, with men to be buried
Much on his mind, and troubled most by one death
At first light paid what he owed to the Gods.... (Book XI)
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