The Aeneid Read Free Page B

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 Parthenope, 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