It must always be noticed, however, that in his mature art he is
master of his vast hoard of material. There is never, as in the _Culex_
and _Ciris_, a display of irrelevant facts, a yielding to the temptation
of being excursive and episodic. Wherever the work had received the final
touch, the composition shows a flawless unity.
[Footnote 2: Carcopino, _Virgile et les origines d'Ostie_.]
The poet's response to personal experience reveals itself nowhere more
than in the political aspect of the _Aeneid_ a fact that is the more
remarkable because Vergil lived so long in Epicurean circles where an
interest in politics was studiously suppressed.
What makes the poem the first of national epics is, however, not a
devotion to Rome's historical claims to primacy in Italy. The narrow
imperialism of the urban aristocracy finds no support in him. Not the
city of Rome but Italy is the _patria_ of the _Aeneid_, and Italy as a
civilizing and peace-bringing force, not as the exploiting conqueror.
Here we recognize a spirit akin to Julius Caesar. Vergil's hero Aeneas,
is not a Latin but a Trojan. That fact is, of course, due to the
exigencies of tradition, but that Aeneas receives his aid from the Greek
Evander and from the numerous Etruscan cities north of the Tiber while
most of the Latins join Turnus, the enemy, cannot be attributed to
tradition.
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