HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
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GEORGE BANTA Puausnms co‘
MANUFACTURING PUSLISHERO
MENASHA, WISCONSIN
SMITH COLLEGE CLASSICAL STUDIES
Number I June, 1920
HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE
ON THE AENEID
BY
ELEANOR SHIPLEY QUCKETT, PILD.
Assistant Professor of La‘t‘in, Smith College
EDITORS
JOHN EVERETT BRADY JULIA HARWOOD CAVERNO
NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS
1920
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CONTENTS
I. THE HELLENISTIC AGE . . . . . . . . 1
II. THE INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE
AND LITERATURE—A . . . . . . . . 12
III. THE INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE
AND LITERATURE—B . . . . . . . . 38
IV. THE INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECH-
NIQUE...............46
PREFACE
The inﬂuence of Hellenistic literature upon Vergil is no new
subject, for commentators have long since exhausted their
efforts in bringing to light every resemblance between the words
of Apollonius, Theocritus, or Callimachus, and the language
of the Aeneid, Georgics, or Bucolz'cs. It is not, therefore, to
actual correspondence of letter that I now direct my attention,
nor primarily to the inﬂuence of literature upon literature; but
rather to correspondence of spirit and manner, to the inﬂuence
upon Vergil’s mind and work of the Hellenistic tradition of life
and thought, together with its literary expression. Vergil, as
well as other Romans, had shared the inheritance, good or evil,
which Roman life had received and was still receiving from every
part of the Hellenistic world, Greece and Macedonia, Egypt and
Asia. To the general education derived from this source he
could add special training in Hellenistic thought and theory:
under the Greek Parthenius, he had grown familiar with these
traits of Hellenistic life as they were represented in the best
poets of the Hellenistic day. Further, he had drunk of the
Hellenistic philosophy as its differing Schools had oﬁered it to
him; had debated with Greek dwellers in Italy, and had ﬁnally
looked forward to drawing from Greece herself a wider knowl-
edge in which to steep his greatest work. “It is necessary,”
Warde Fowler reminds us in one of his studies of the Aeneid,
“to insist on the fact, however obvious it may be to those who
know, that in Virgil’s time the Empire was almost as much
Greek as it was Roman. Augustus had reunited the Greek and
Roman elements, the east and the west, which for a time had
been sundered under sinister Egyptian inﬂuence. Every edu-
cated Roman was bilingual and Greece was his intellectual and
also his spiritual, home.” It is in this indirect and spiritual,
not in the verbal, inﬂuence of Hellenistic life and literature
upon Vergil that I ﬁnd a reason for my work. N 0 one as yet,
I think, has adequately traced its effect upon the poet who grew
up in the midst of its dominant sway, whose youth was spent in
an atmosphere, as we may learn from the Cirz's, the Culex, and
X PREFACE
the C atalepton, surcharged with inquiries regarding phenomena
both psychical and physical; combined with conscious eﬁorts
toward an understanding of the natures of men and of things,
and with efforts, equally conscious, directed toward the repro-
duction of thought in ﬁtting form. It was impossible that the
man whose early training was received in such a school should
fail to show in his riper work certain traces of Hellenistic
inﬂuence—a keener insight into the minds of men, a greater
curiosity concerning the things of Nature, and a livelier appre-
ciation of art.
Especially at this moment is this study of interest; for now,
after much debate and argument, we have learned to recognize
the Ciris and the Cnlex as poems of Vergil’s youth.1 And so we
are ready to discuss not only traces of Hellenistic art in the
Aeneid, but the progression of Hellenistic art in Vergil from its
cruder manifestations, as revealed in the earlier poems, up to
the ripened stage, where its pervasive subtlety lends richness
to this latest work. In the earlier works, written at a time
when Hellenistic inﬂuences were more attractive to the poet
than at any other time, the fruits, both good and bad, of this
training can be distinguished most clearly. Later on, as the
poet’s art became more mature, the exaggerations were pruned
away, the true skill was developed and enriched. It is easy to
put one’s ﬁnger on the Hellenistic features of the opera minora;
it is not so easy to do so for the Aeneid. The reason is, of course,
that, while in the Culex and the Ciris this Hellenistic inﬂuence
is as yet of over-great importance, in the Aeneid, while it leavens
and adds spice to the whole story, yet it does not forcibly
obtrude itself upon the reader. Vergil, in his later work, has
so many other sources of inspiration and powers of artistic
expression at his command, and has so marvellously welded
them all together, that nothing Hellenistic jars upon us, or can
be separated from the whole which he made his own.
1 Those of us who are willing to agree with E. K. Rand: “instead, then, of
creating from Bueolics, Georgics, and Aeneid a deﬁnition of what Virgil at all
times must have been, and by that deﬁnition excluding the minor poems as
unworthy of him, we should accept the ancient statement and in the light of it
enlarge our understanding of Virgilian qualities, thankful for the opportunity
of seeing his genius mount from stage to stage”: Young Virgil’s Poetry, Harvard
Studies in Classical Philology, XXX, 1919, pp. 103 ft; see also Tenney Frank,
Vergil’s A pprentioeship, Classical Philology, January, 1920, pp. 23 ff.
PREFACE xi
Furthermore, it is obviously true that our study of Hellenis-
tic inﬂuence carries us but a little way in our search for the
spirit of Vergil. As is true with every genius, so he, of necessity,
rises above each literary inﬂuence and tells the thoughts that
are altogetherhis own: student of man, beast, and ﬁeld, he
gives us primarily himself. The elements which moulded and
developed this spirit are drawn in inﬁnitely deeper measure
from the old Greek epic and from Greek tragedy, above all,
y from Euripides, than from the Hellenistic School. To his own
nature, trained by these masters, Vergil owes, indeed, in the
ﬁrst instance many of the characteristics here discussed in
connection with Hellenistic life and its literary form. The
Poet himself—Man and Roman—has been revealed to us in
inimitable fashion and in manifold lights by the great English
students of Vergil. Yet—for all that sheds any light on Vergil
is of interest—it has seemed worth while to study brieﬂy the
possible effects of this undoubted inﬂuence of Hellenistic Greece
still lingering in the background of his mind.
In these pages I have drawn constantly, especially in
Chapter I, from Kaerst’s History of Hellenistic Greece; and
from Heinze’s Va'rgz'ls Epische T echnlk. The titles of other books
which I have consulted or from which I have taken material
are given at the end, or, for special reference, in the notes. T 0
Professor Tenney Frank of the Johns Hopkins University I owe
the gift of my subject; to Professor Florence Alden Gragg of
Smith College I am indebted for many keen criticisms and apt
suggestions, to Professor Mary Belle McElwain, also of Smith
College, for many valuable emendations of form. Acknowledg-
ment is also due to the Classical Journal of its permission to
reproduce material published therein, especially much of Chap-
ters II and III; and to Professor Andrew Keogh, Librarian of
Yale University, of his courteous assistance in my research.
Northampton, Massachusetts,
January, 1920.
CHAPTER I
THE HELLENISTIC AGE
With the victories of Alexander, a new manner of life starts
for the Greek world. The City State, through stasis within
and federative union without, has already lost its power, and
an era is established in which individual personality strikes
the dominant note; not indeed the unreasoning personality of
the Tyrant, but one that seeks to embody the rule of reason in
its own hands. Government passes from the control of citizens
incorporated in a rational union to one supreme Head, in whom
all authority is centred. In the rapid changes following the
death of Alexander, advancement in life depends on a man’s own
merits; among the many struggling for highest position, the
ﬁttest survive. Supreme authority is based,not upon ancestral
descent, but upon personal eﬂiciency, which can express its will
in personal mandates assuming for themselves the authority
of the plebiscite. All, therefore, depends upon the individual,
conscious of his own capability and awaiting the occasion to use
it; Alexander’s scheme for world-rule, vested in himself as the
wapﬁamkebs, is succeeded by individual supremacies, and the
individual, once ﬁrmly planted in power, perpetuates his rule:
in Egypt the son of Lagus founds the House of the Ptolemies,
in Syria and in Macedonia, after many and various wepwré'retar,
the dynasties of Seleucus and Antigonus are established. The
very possibility of disaster in these kaleidoscopic days of swift
reversal of fortune makes those who hold rule doubly self-
conscious of their limitations, as of their powers; they gain
their place by their own might and hold it till a mightier
comes upon them, as Diana’s king once did at N emi.
This supreme power, then, as founded by Alexander, resting
on and springing from personal achievement, soon assumed
for itself the title of king in the various countries of the Hellenis-
tic world; and in the king, all classes of life centred. Men lived
in cities named after their kings; they were bound, not to the
State, but to the Monarch, as the pivot on which all things
1
2 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
turned in a bureaucratic system which regulated them from the
highest to the most humble. Land, militia, and ﬁnance were of
the king’s domain; intellectual and social life drew inspiration
from him as patron and chief lord: he was as the Sun in the
civic universe. As its Sun, he shed on others his glory, in vary-
ing degrees according to their nearness to himself; the nobles of
the Hellenistic Court were the king’s Friends, their children,
the royal o'l'W'rpogbot; and the same was true for all ranks, for the
very privates in the army were his Comrades. Apart, more-
over, from particular acts of gracious benignity on the part of the
sovereign, he bestowed by his very position a reﬂected prestige
upon his subjects. For by his importance, the importance, real
or potential, of every man in his realm was necessarily enhanced;
since the sovereign held his power through his own efﬁciency
and the kindness of Fate, and What one man had done, other
men might do. The Hellenistic world was, therefore, strongly
individualistic, made up of units separately invested with a
potential importance, which might at any moment be realized
before the public eye. The deeds and sayings of those who at-
tained to prominence were chronicled, and the writing of
biographies, as a type of literature, dates from this time; their
features and expressions were studied and remembered: for
portraits in marble and bronze were now ﬁrst commonly
Wrought.
But, further, these units were of all kinds, as is natural;
since a world which lays special stress on personality we may
expect to ﬁnd cosmopolitan in character; and individuals of
widely different nations strove to realize their special destiny
in the Hellenistic kingdoms. This widening-of social limits was
naturally advanced by the extension of commerce, in which
Macedonians, Greeks, Iranians, Egyptians,and Semites mingled
freely with one another; and the mind of Alexander had already
conceived the idea of a great World-Empire embracing at least
the three ﬁrst named. The distinction between Greek and
barbarian was becoming obliterated in practice, and a new bond
of union of various nationalities was being forged, based on
the common Hellenistic culture, of which a common language,
the Icon/1'7, was the outward sign.
One of the most interesting marks of this increasing value of
personality under monarchical rule appears in the changed
THE HELLENISTIC AGE 3
position of women. For the ﬁrst time in Greek history, woman
had now a chance to show what she, too, as an individual could
accomplish. And Fortune aided her in giving to the feminine
side of the royal house a special importance through the extinc-
tion of the dual line by the murder of AleXander’s half-brother
and his son; for by marriage the Diadochi sought to conﬁrm
their claims to sovereignty. Olympias, accomplice in her hus-
band’s assassination, slayer of the T hessalian Arridaeus and his
Illyrian queen, and herself pelted to death by the relations of
those she had slain: Cleopatra, sister of Alexander, publicly
defending her cause before the Macedonian army: Arsinoé the
“moving spirit of Ptolemy Philadelphus,” and jointly acknowl-
edged with him in the cult of the 060i tumor, as Berenice with his
predecessor in that of the Saviour Gods: Laodice, “the evil
genius of the Seleucid Empire” and, it seems, worshipped with
her husband “Theos”—these were individuals well able to earn
their own prominence. In part, the untamed blood which drove
to fury Cynane and her daughter Eurydice accounted for deeds
of violence. In a more civilized sphere, women were now given
special honour in the society of the Imperial Court, joined
schools of philosophy, undertook serious study of letters or art,
wrote poetry themselves and were the main intellectual inspira-
tion for the men whose poetry they read; obtained freedom of
cities, undertook liturgies in Asia Minor, and in Athens called
forth the gynaeconornz' of Demetrius of Phalerum to stay their
extravagance.
A system in which promotion is based on individual merit
tends naturally towards efﬁciency; and specialization in techni-
cal knowledge was characteristic of the individuals of this time.
The bureaucracy was a honeycomb of small subdivisions entail-
ing special professional equipment; and in this period, guilds
of tradesmen and workpeople were ﬁrst formed in Egypt. The
Dionysiac Guild was a similar union of specialists in art; and
Kaerst has shown how this professional bent appeared in
Egypt as described by Hecataeus and in Euhemerus’ fabled
island of Panchaea.
Yet, when all is said, the Sun eclipses the stars; minor differ-
ences of rank, so important in a City-State, tend to disappear
when confronted with the one great distinction common to all
between ruler and subject; a dull level of monotony now spread
4 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
over the multitude who failed to attain prominence, and from
this we trace in part the pessimism of the Hellenistic age and the
waning of political life. If all duties centre in the king, why
should ordinary men trouble themselves? and if professional
bureaucratics are paid to do the work, what responsibility
devolves upon the citizen? all are but pawns in a monarch’s
diplomatic game. The ambitious sought to make their fortunes
in the foreign world of adventure; feeling for home politics
disappeared, long before the time of Polybius, who will have
none of the patriotism of the City-State, the mark of a foolish
and narrowminded man. The spread of the mm’; hindered
patriotism in the different regions, and the cosmopolitan fusing
of races took away special interest in national affairs. Side by
side, also, with subservience to monarchy lay the hatred of this
yoke laid on men who had once been free. The Athenians, in
gratitude for their “liberty” from the rule of Cassander’s gen-
eral, hailed Demetrius and his father as Gods; even in Egypt,
where monarchy was an established principle, the Pharaoh
was forced to maintain his autocratic rule by imported military
power: for his hand bound on his people heavy burdens of
taxation.
The private life, therefore, of this period developed to a
degree unknown in the City-State. Men turned their eyes
from Without to within; freed from civic burdens, they now,
some gladly, some perforce, gave themselves up, in steadily
increasing measure, to a manifold variety of individual interests.
This concentration in a narrower sphere led to a realistic view of
humanity and nature, already presented to the world by
Aristotle, and to an interest in the humble things of the world of
every-day. Thus we reach again the same result—passion for
detail—which interest in human personality has given us in
realistic portrait-painting, literary sketches, and minute records
such as the écpnpepiéles of Alexander. Scientiﬁc investigation in
botany, zoology, human anatomy, fostered in its turn the habit
of noticing details, however trivial; intellectual discussion, so
freely promoted at this time, was compelled to take notice of
the seemingly unimportant. The same tendency is true of
Hellenistic art, as Helbig has shown. Science, once established,
stimulated the love of novelty, which drove men to delve into
hitherto unexplored regions of society. And as of society, so of
THE HELLENISTIC AGE 5
territory; Alexander’s campaigns had opened up new worlds in
which the adventurous and curious might travel by land and sea
in search of new lore; the royal chroniclers published accounts of
all they had seen and learned, and the knowledge of the Chal-
daeans and the Egyptian priests was now ﬁrst spread abroad.
The marvels that came to light inculcated a love of the strange;
and the aretalogus who entertained the company super cenam
was well known in Hellenistic circles, among those who truly
spent their time in little else but in telling, tracing, or inventing
some new thing. The same spirit reveals itself in the art which
produced the Colossus. Moreover, the current ﬂowed in two
ways; for intellectualism looks not only forward in modern
scientiﬁc research, but backward to antiquity in the feeling for
the past. Men of art sought the “old masters,” men of litera-
ture raked up old myths, men of scholarship devoted them-
selves to Commentaries upon Homer, to the formation of
libraries, to philological research; tradition was all-important,
authorities and sources were investigated with eager zeal. In
the midst of all this new stream of knowledge, it is little wonder
that writers felt the need of concentration; there was no time
for anything but brevity, and much information in little space
was the motto of this day.
As the individual turned his attention to the study, so he
cultivated the emotions, of private life. The cult of friendship
had already been given recognition in the Sacred Band of
Thebes; it had been given ofﬁcial standing in the O'l'WTpOdJOL, who
were alike the counsellors of the king and his friends from
early childhood; and in the o'vpﬂtwrai, a group of philosophers
admitted to the intimacy of the king’s table for the enlivening of
the play of argument prevalent at Hellenistic feasts. But,
further, this Hellenistic age was a time especially ripe for the
welding of friendship on the basis of similar intellectual thought
and natural desires. Patriotism, including the many interests
of civic life, had gone, and marriage was a formal institution,
readily dissolved. Although the wife was supreme in her posi-
tion in the home, yet this bond was commonly formed for the
sake of social and oﬂicial status, and brought little depth of
feeling; for the latter a man turned to his friends, to associations,
such as that of the Phalerean Demetrius with Theognis, and to
the demi-monde. Since the world was overwhelmingly inter-
6 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
ested in private questions, love inevitably assumed a position of
paramount importance, and from being an accessory, became,
itself, an end and object of study and experience. The formal-
ism of the Hellenistic family, the quickened sense of feeling
caused by a quickened mental curiosity, the enhanced desire to
penetrate in search of adventure, led men in the direction of
sentiment. In keeping with the sentimental trend of life, was
the hero-worship of the bold knight-errant of chivalry, who,
endowed with mighty form and noble mien, knows no superior,
renders courtesy for courtesy to his equals, is terrible in revenge,
yet can show generosity to those he has overcome. Such a halo
of romance surrounded a line of heroes from Alexander to
Pyrrhus.
A world that revolves round an Imperial House must always
pay more heed to pomps and pageants than a Republic; and
a world that ﬁxes its eyes on private life must care greatly for
its own comfort. Hence we trace the growth of luxury at this
time: in household trappings, in banquets, in dress of every
kind. Men lived in a world of artiﬁcial ‘culture, veneered with
a suave and polished courtesy, sparkling with gold and many
colours, heavy with perfume. The inevitable reaction followed
upon satiety, and these pampered exquisites began to sigh for
the simple pleasures of the good old days, even of primitive
times. They turned with relief to the contemplation of the fair
beauty of Nature, and the joys of rustic life; a reaction aided for
many on the practical side, as Mahaffy notes, by the dull
landscapes surrounding them in Alexandria, the centre of
commercial and intellectual activity.
This individualistic movement, further, touches not only
politics and social life, but also religion; for with the decline
of the City-State, came also the decline of the worship of the
City-Gods, and in proportion as the individual grew in impor-
tance, men came more and more to seek support through their
own efforts rather than through the aid of deity. The old Greek
gods have, therefore, little meaning for the Hellenistic age, and
survive mainly in formal observances promoted by the king for
his own political advantage. Alexander had given an example in
this respect; he had set out for Asiatic conquest under the aegis
of the Gods and heroes who had fought for Greece at Troy,
and had supported his claim to world-supremacy through his
THE HELLENISTIC AGE 7
acclamation as son of Zeus by the priests of Zeus-Ammon; the
Seleucids, in their turn, connected their line with Apollo, the
Ptolemies, with Heracles and Dionysus. In like manner the
Hellenistic rulers, especially the Ptolemies, were careful to
consolidate their new power by associating it with cults intro-
duced under their auspices; and an attempt was made to sup—
port the worship of deities hitherto unknown to the Greek
world,by the claim of the gods of Egypt and Asia that the old
Greek gods were but incomplete revelations of themselves.
We ﬁnd, therefore, that the prevailing religion, like the life,
was cosmopolitan in composition; the union of races was
reproduced in the syncretism of cults. Yet, as in secular life, 1
men of the Hellenistic world offered honour within their king-
doms to strangers on the ground of personal merit, so, in the
religious world, men paid their homage at times to strange gods,
whom they believed to be invested with special powers to meet
their individual need. From this we trace the growing cult of
Asclepius; and the rapid spread of the worship of the Great
Mother, of Mithras, Isis, Osiris, and Serapis. To these the
individual ﬂed to gain puriﬁcation from his burden of sin, and
his consciousness of impurity; individual initiations into a new
form of worship placed him in the path of peace and offered to
him a refuge from the terrors of a future life. It was these
same terrors, inspired by the uncertainty of Man’s ultimate fate,
that led him to consult the magicians and astrologers who had
entered the Hellenistic world from Babylonia and Chaldaea,
and thus to gratify as well the impulse, springing from the
consciousness of personality and peculiar destiny, characteristic
of the age. The practice of magic rested upon the belief in a
general sympathy or antipathy reacting through all Nature,
living and dead, in a subtle and all-powerful relation. This
creed, which found its mainspring in the dual theology of the
Persians, also had its utilitarian side: for evil, in the practice
of sorcery; for good, in the art of medicine. The cult of the stars
was of even greater moment: for they are divine beings inﬂuenc-
ing mortal lot for good or evil as they will; the human soul,
itself wrought from ﬁre, is united in bonds of deepest sympathy
with these beings, from whom it came and unto whom, in due
course of time, it shall return. So, as Cumont has shown,
believed the Chaldaeans and the Persians; and their doctrines
8 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
gained wide currency, furthered by the translation into Greek
of the sacred books of Zoroaster. The study of astrology was
thus both the privilege and the proper business of the man who
would rise to higher things, and Euhemerus commends the
dwellers in Panchaea for their worship of the stars.
These stars, once heroes of the earth, are, therefore, living
personalities; and indeed personiﬁcation is characteristic of the
time. Among the ideas thus embodied none is more prominent
than that of T yche, who ruled the ebb and ﬂow of Hellenistic
accident. The cult of this Hellenistic Fortuna was largely due
to the Hepi TI'JX'HS of Demetrius of Phalerum, who as Ferguson
remarks, “elevated this capricious goddess into the place of
Zeus and his colleagues.” Hellenistic also, by adoption, is the
loftier view of Destiny: “from the Chaldaean doctrine of the
stars and their unchanging movements sprang the belief in
immutable Fate, ruling men and Gods alike.”
Since, then, Hellenistic gods are valued throughout their
cosmopolitan variety for what they bestow upon individual
man, it is not difﬁcult to understand the apotheosis of Hellenis-
tic rulers. The gift was,indeed, entirely welcome; Alexander,
inspired by the oracle of Zeus-Ammon, had prepared the way
by his exaction of the proskynesz's; the Diadochi gladly cast
the glamour of this worship over their absolute rule, and soft-
ened the force of this rule to native-born and foreigner alike
by the assertion of the monarch’s divinity as an article of
religious creed. The movement was greatly helped by the
traditional position of the Egyptian Pharaoh and the Oriental
sovereigns; yet the apotheosis derives its claim from personal
merit, from the bestowal of blessings which win for the human
benefactor the worship of his grateful subjects. The titles
assumed by the Ptolemies and Seleucids in their cults—
o'w'r'ﬁp, el’lep'yé'rns—Show the working of this claim; so rational, in
fact, was the Hellenistic idea of deiﬁcation that Ferguson can
state “the apotheosis of Alexander was grounded in impiety,
in disbelief of the supernatural altogether.” Not only Alexan-
der and the Diadochi, but the Greek gods themselves were once
but men, who had won deity through the blessings they had
given to their fellows: such is the creed which Euhemerus
establishes in his island of Panchaea; similarly, in the work of
THE HELLENISTIC AGE 9
Hecataeus, kings rise to godhead because they have advanced
the civilization of the world in which they rule.
From religion based on rationalism we come to philosophy,
the refuge of those many more highly educated men for whom
the City-Gods no longer were of moment, and who refused to
quell their forebodings in orgiastic cults. The philosophy of the
time reﬂected the main features of its practical life. Its schools
were as various as the cosmopolitan races of the Hellenistic age;
and Mahaﬂy well describes this feature in its ultimate develop-
ment: “Gradually, then, at this period, not only from the
inﬂuence of Rome, which required practical lessons without
subtlety, but also from internal causes, from the decay of earnest
faith in speculation, of earnest faith in the aims of practical life,
eclecticism, the creed of weary minds, laid hold of the Hellenistic
world. Carneades had not only shattered all the remaining
dogmatism by his brilliant polemic, but he had laid down as his
highest principle mere probability, so that there was no reason
why the researches of any set of men might not contain some
approximate truth. And as the doctrines might be culled from
any school, so the men who taught them might hail from
any country. Hellenism had been wide enough in former
generations; we now seem to approach an even wider cosmo-
politanism.” In each sect the individual was responsible for
his own progress toward the highest good, and was conscious of
an individual mission to help others on his way. Personality,
therefore, was a question of absorbing interest to philosophers,
as to men of affairs; the head of the Peripatetic School himself
takes minute pains to classify in scientiﬁc fashion the characters
of the men he meets. A cosmopolitan community of ideals and
interests, not kinship of blood, united all men in Zeno’s State;
and women, as well as men, in that indifference which assigned
to both sexes a uniform dress. The Hellenistic philosopher
strove to gain eﬂiciency; for the ambition to perform with all
possible ability and care one’s own task in life—To éav'roii—had
been the teaching of philosophy from the time of Plato. In the
days of loss of independence and civic rights, philosophers, too,
turned men’s thoughts to private matters; dvrpa'ypom’ivn was
the attitude of Epicurus and his disciples toward public life;
the Sceptic could take little interest in State questions, inas-
10 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
much as they represented to him only probabilities, the exact
nature of which was not to be ascertained. Euhemerus and
Iambulus reﬂected the prevailing pessimism on the one hand,
the desire of the unusual on the other, in their strange Utopian
tales. Epicurus found highest happiness in the cult of friend-
ship; Love, an ever-recurrent theme in the study of human
character, from Plato onward occupied the minds and writings
of every School. The Cynic despised convention and turned all
his thoughts toward aI’JTépKeLa, self-sufﬁcing joy in the simple life
ruled by Nature, contrasted with which all transient history
seemed vain. The Stoic, indeed, took part in public life; but
only with the consciousness that he must of necessity fall short
of his ideal, the life in accord with the Law uniting and ruling
every part of the universe in the great World-Harmony which is
the outward expression of God. And it is in this creed of the
Stoics that Hellenistic philosophy reaches its highest level,
embodying as it does the character of Hellenistic life. Zeus
reigns supreme over the lesser deities, who in their place ﬁnd
individual expression in the component parts of the World-
whole; his beauty revealed in Nature is meet for worship, as
Cleanthes worshipped it: his word is the will of Fate. In the
Harmony which is the body of Zeus all men are brethren, knit
together in a common bond of universal law and order. And yet
only the individual, who through the struggle of constant
progress ﬁnally succeeds in identifying himself with Nature, that
is, with God, can, by perfect obedience to His will, attain the goal
of real satisfaction. His life is free from extravagance because
Nature is essentially reasonable and has no place for artiﬁciality
or waste of energy; his advance is consciously wrought by the
continual choosing of the better thing. Divination and oracles
guide his steps because of “the harmony which binds all phe-
nomena, the event foretokened with the omen or word that fore-
tells.” But only few men, such as Heracles, had ever realized
this ideal, and Heracles found Godhead for his reward; other
men remained on the lower plane, all classed together as fools.
As, therefore, the monarch rises in his single pre-eminence, the
hope of all his subjects, so the Sapiens is the hope of those who
seek to rise to union With God; the ﬁnal regeneration of the world
lies in the reign of the Sapiens-Monarch, who shall unite his
people under the law of Nature’s truth. This ideal kingdom
THE HELLENISTIC AGE 11
Aristotle had already foreshadowed for his pupil in his dream of
City-States, each ruled by a perfect king. Alexander’s World-
kingdom, based not only upon Oriental precedent, but also on
Stoic faith, foreshadowed to the Stoic mind the coming of that
universal reign of wisdom, wherein alone the varied discords
among men could be stilled in perfect harmony under the
guidance of Fate, the Word of God.
CHAPTER II
THE INFLUENCE oF HELLENIsTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE (A)
Such were, brieﬂy told, the main features which character-
ized the Hellenistic Age; how far does their spirit yet live in the
epic work of Vergil?
In keeping with the stress laid in the Hellenistic world
upon the individual self, is the absence in narrative poetry,
Hellenistic or written under Hellenistic inﬂuence, of the child-
like impersonality of the Homeric narrative, and the fresh
spontaneity of Homeric characters. The poet and his people
inevitably turn their thoughts inward upon themselves; the
whole atmosphere is intensely self-conscious. The Cirz's and
the Cnlex show this spirit in marked degree, deepened as it is
by the self-consciousness of untried youth. In the Cirz's Vergil
devotes a whole preface of forty-seven lines to himself, his
ambitions and his doings; in the Cnlex ten lines of personal
import precede the invocation, and the poet drags himself away
at last from telling his desire for Octavius’ glory, with the
words—sed nos ad coepta feramur. In the Aeneid, he is still
self-conscious, but he has learned to conﬁne self-expression to a
brief touch here and there, which is, after all, due not so much
to the remembrance of his own personality, as of himself as the
responsible poet of Rome. In the lines handed down by Dona-
tus and Servius, Aeneid I, 1a-1d, we ﬁnd a touch of personal
history which links present to past in Vergil’s life; in like
manner present is linked with past in the opening of the Cz'rz's,
and present with future in that of the Cnlex. Ennius, also,
opens his Annales with a personal touch, borrowed, we may
believe, from Callimachus. There is a distinction between the
admission of this element in the opening of an historical epic,
and such obtrusion of his own personality as Hesiod naturally
makes in beginning a didactic treatise addressed to his offending
brother. At times the Hellenistic writer of epic or epyllion
addresses himself, or his characters, or his readers.1 Callimachus
1 This is, of course, part of rhetorical tradition: Longinus, De Snblim.
XXVI.
12
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 13
interrupts his story of Acontius and Cydippe to rebuke himself;
Callimachus, Apollonius, and Vergil in the Ciris, address those
of whom they are writing;2 the Aeneid frequently shows the
same practice, and passages occur in which persons mentioned
in description are directly invoked. Direct address to the
reader is a feature of eophrasis found in the poetry of Apollonius
and of Moschus, and in the Aeneid; the Homeric description of
Achilles’ shield, on the other hand, does not contain this detail.
Even more marked is the Hellenistic poet’s habit of interrupting
his narrative with his own reﬂections. Apollonius bursts into
pity at the fate of the women of Lesbos, or into an indignant
accusation of pitiless Love; he laments that we men ever suﬁer
joy mingled with pain and lie at the mercy of terrors unknown.
Theocritus utters his lament for the temerity of lovers or voices
his thought on religion. Vergil is very sorry for Scylla:
omnia, quae retinere gradum cursusque morari
possent, o tecum vellem tua semper haberes!
He grieves over the fall of Pallas, pities men’s ignorance and
folly in prosperity. A similar detail appears in the use of the
single epithet, for which there is indeed precedent in Homer.
Yet it is of interest to mark, in the later poets, a sympathy with
their characters, shown in the selection of these epithets; it is with
sympathy, I think, that Callimachus writes o'xé'l'Nos of the victims
of Artemis’ wrath and of the rash Teiresias: so Apollonius
of Medea; so, too, Catullus and Vergil write such words as
infelix or miser lien! or visn rniserabile in descriptions of their
folk which come from the authors themselves.2
But far more self-conscious than even the poet himself are
the characters on his stage, men and gods alike. The Medea of
Apollonius, Simaetha, and the Maid of the Grenfell Fragment
ﬁnd their Latin counterparts (if we exclude Dido) in this respect
in Ariadne, Scylla, and Amata; Juno views herself objectively
in the ﬁrst and in the seventh book of the Aeneid, as does Arte-
mis in the hymn addressed to her; both Vergil and Callimachus
use, on one occasion, the objective proper name instead of the
ﬁrst personal pronoun in such speech.3 So Polyphemus in
2 See Jackson, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, XXIV (1913), p. 49.
3 Aen. I, 48 f. Juno soliloquizes:
et quisquam numen Iunonis adorat
praeterea, aut supplex aris imponat honorem?
I4 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
Theocritus’ eleventh idyll consciously reviews his own good
and bad points, and even breaks out into exhortation
addressed to himself. Medea speaks of herself with pity: the
heroines of the Latin epyllion do the same ;4 so, too, does Juno,
bafﬂed in her design, Amata in her rage, and Evander in his
sorrow. Here, also, each character, in a higher or lower degree,
according to his ability, is aware of the self he represents and is
to realize. All depends upon individual merit; as the Hellenistic
monarch, as the Roman Augustus held his rule through the merit
of his success, so the Juno of the Aeneid fears for her power if
unsupported by triumph visible before the eyes of her worship-
pers. One of the most forcible similes of the Aeneid pictures a
vast and seething multitude quelled into silence by the strength
of one man’s overruling personality. The same belief in a
supreme destiny to be won by peculiar merit, which inspired
Alexander5 and Augustus, ﬁlls the heart of Vergil’s chief heroes.
Turnus, relying on his own might, indignantly hurls back the
reproach of Drances—“Pulsus ego?”—Aeneas bids his son look
to himself,6 and bids the dying Lausus seek solace in the thought
that it is the great Aeneas who has dealt the mortal stroke;
the height of self-consciousness is reached in the words of
this, Vergil’s hero:
sum pius Aeneas, raptos qui ex hoste penates
classe veho mecum, fama super aethera notus.
The corresponding words of Odysseus—IX, 19, 20:
e’Lu’ ’Or$voebs Aaepnérlns, 6; ram oéhow'w

ritvﬂpcbrrow't ,uéhw, Kou'. pev Khéos oﬁpavov 'ZKeLI
Call. Artern. 18 f. Artemis asks of Zeus:
56s 5e ,uor oiﬁpea 1rc'w1'a' 1r6>\w 555 ,um. ijv'rwa ve'ipov,
'ijv'rwa Aﬁs' 0'1rapvov 'ydp ('51- "Aprems iio'rv Kd'rew'w.
103 f. The poet narrates of Artemis:
éEa'rrb/ns 5’ié'ragbés 76 Km‘. 611 1ro'ri ﬂvpov genres,
7091-6 K611 ’Ap'rém50s 1rpw'rét'yptov 615L011 e’ln.
4 Jackson, op. cit, p. 49.
5 Mahaﬂy, Greek Life and Thought,2 1896, p. 33: “It may be said that he
(i.e., Alexander) had full conﬁdence in his fortune, and that the king’s valour
gave tremendous force to the charge of his personal companions.”
6 So, indeed, do Hector and Ajax: but cf. with Aeneas’ words those of
Hector (Il. VI, 479 f.):
Kai arm-é 'rcs e’i'zrot "war-pox 7,656 wakhév dueivwv”
éK 1ro>\épov rivu'w'ra . . .
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
show nothing of Aeneas’ burden of responsibility for the ful-
ﬁlling of his destiny.
Vergil, then, in the Aeneid, reﬂects both directly and
indirectly, the self-consciousness of the great men of Hellenistic
days, while Roman History was itself running a course resem-
bling that of Hellenistic Greece in that the rule of the people was
passing into the hands of one man. Here, too, in Rome the
Emperor was supreme, and under his power men were levelled,
in uniform subjection. Within this despotism literature became
the vehicle of the praise, not simply of Rome, but of the Caesar
and of Rome as led by him. The Emperor promoted the
cause of letters by his personality, set with a halo of glory in
the centre of all, and by the material gifts which encouraged and
often made possible the works of his literary circle. As the old
free initiative of the Greek 7T6ALS had waned, so the old free spirit
of the Roman Republic no longer breathed in the Imperial
literature.
nil nimium studeo, Caesar, tibi velle placere,
nec scire utrum sis albus an ater homo:
is very different from deus nobis haec otia fecit. The Aeneid is a
Court poem, dedicated to the glory of Rome under one man’s
rule. Thus wrote Callimachus and Theocritus in praise of
Ptolemy. But the Aeneid, like the Georgics, in so far as it
concerns the Emperor, does not merely glorify him. Mahaffy
notes, with regard to Callimachus, that “the adroit allusions to
Ptolemy in these (i.e., Callimachus’) hymns were not mere
ﬂattery—they are intended to commend to the people of Argos,
Delos, Ephesus, Cnidos, as well as to the many Greeks as-
sembled at Alexandria, the beneﬁts of a close alliance with, if not
of submission to, the throne of Egypt.”7 So we may think that
Augustus hoped by the Aeneid to foster a spirit of Imperial
community among his subjects of many races, as the Georgics
had stimulated the lagging energy of his veterans for the tilling
of their lands. Warde Fowler sees this eﬂ’ort in the catalogue of
Book VII; here “the Roman poet set himself to support with
all his gifts the deﬁnite Italian policy of Augustus. . . . This,
I think, was the poet’s primary motive.”8 The highest attain-
7 Op. cit., p. 273.
8 Virgil’s Gathering of the Clans, 1916, p. 28.
16 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
ment of Vergil in this direction is well summed up by Conway:
“And when it is said that Horace and Vergil praised too highly
and too soon what Augustus accomplished, let me suggest to
you that it would be truer to say that they both dictated and
inspired it. We owe it to them that for all time the notion of
supreme power, the power of an actual monarch, not of a
dreamland body of philosophers, was identiﬁed with transcend-
ent but practical goodness, with beneﬁcent toil, of which the
whole world was the province.”9 In truth We have travelled
far by this time from those grateful praises of a patron which
Jt’he Culex and the Eclogues tell.
Aside from this direct inﬂuence, these signs of the day are
reﬂected indirectly in various details of Vergil’s work. All the
hope of the Trojans is centred in Aeneas; it is only of Aeneas
that Palinurus thinks when tempted by persuasive Sleep.
Aeneas sends none other, he declares, than his very Self to sue for
the help of Evander; the Trojans, though longing sore for battle,
may not leave their walls in the absence of their king. “There
are no parties among the Trojans. They have no politics but
loyalty to their prince. This means a certain lack of interest.
The Trojans generally . . . ‘want physiognomy.’ Like the
Romans under the later Emperors, they lack initiative; they
are apt to be rather helpless, almost spiritless, when without
their prince; and the life of the nation is summed up in the
prince.”10 Nor is Aeneas lacking in royal state. He is repeatedly
spoken of as rex; “like an Alexander he dots the world with
his foundations”;11 his son, “fairer than all other Trojan
youths,” is accompanied by the Bacnkucol M256 and entrusted
to the care of a loaedagogus.12 The land owned by Latinus
(Aen. IX, 274; XI, 316)13 corresponds to the royal demesne of
the Ptolemies. The diplomacy for which Hellenistic kings were
9 “Horace as Poet Laureate,” in “Falernian Grapes,” ed. Rhys Roberts,
1917, p. 9.
1° Glover, Studies in Virgil,2 1912, p. 230. Cf. Nettleship, Lectures and
Essays, 1886, Suggestions Introductory to a Study of the Aeneid, p. 103: “It
is instructive to observe the similarity of language in which Aeneas is spoken of
in the ﬁrst and the Roman nation in the sixth book” (Aen. I, 263; VI, 851).
11 Glover, ibid., p. 228.
12 Aen. V, 548 f.; 569; IX, 647 if; cf. the “rectores imperatoriae iuventae”
of Nero’s day.
13 Cf. Lersch, Antiquitates Vergilianae, 1843, p. 28.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 17
justly famed reappears in the careful ponderings of Latinus,14
who, as the ambassador, Ilioneus, stands before him, considers
the splendid gifts, and realizes the importance of a son-in-law
who shall perpetuate his race in manliness and might of conquest
over all the Latin world. Not piety alone is working here. So
Aeneas, with similar policy, shows kindness to the wretched
subjects of Latinus. Gercke has remarked that the great War is
one of kings and their quarrels, not of peoples: so the Diadochi
fought for their thrones.15 The subjects of Latinus try to make
peace (XII, 584); and Aeneas himself answers the envoys (XI,
113 f.):
nec bellum cum gente gero: rex nostra reliquit
hospitia et Turni potius se credidit armis.
The honour of the king must be pre-eminent; and therefore
Vergil carefully absolves Latinus from blame in transferring
his support.16 At the same time, supreme as the kingly fame
stands, Aeneas in giving the title of sooii to his companions
reminds us of the diplomatic friendships of the Hellenistic and
the Augustan courts. Occasionally, too, here also is seen a
touch of the old independence of spirit. Latinus must yield;
Mezentius is dethroned; even Aeneas, as he confesses to Tar-
chon, feels the instability of the affairs of men. We remember,
in passing, the attitude of Vergil and Horace to their royal
master.
M‘ In keeping with this importance of individual life, is the
absorbing interest of the Hellenistic poet and his successors
in personal detail. To this interest we may trace in part the
care with which Vergil gives us touches descriptive of the
dress of his heroes, the surroundings in which they live, natural
or artiﬁcial, their very form and face. The pictures of Troy’s
great men which comfort Aeneas on his ﬁrst landing in Cartha-
ginian territory are directly due to the Hellenistic custom of
introducing real portraits in historical panel scenes. Dido’s
14 As of the kings of Apollonius: Mahaﬂy, op. cit, p. 292; Couat, La
Poésie alexandrine, 1882, p. 324.
15 Die Entstehnng der Aeneis, 1913, p. 108.
16 (a) No very deﬁnite agreement had been made with Turnus regarding
Lavinia; he was only wooing her, as were many others (VII, 54 f.): (b) the
oracle bade Latinus join Aeneas, and he was a pious king: (c) the Latins forced
the war: ((1) he held aloof; see Gercke, op. cit, pp. 108 if; Heinze, Virgils
Epische T echnik,3 1915, pp. 174 ﬁ'.
18 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
palace boasts similar portraits, and its other adornments are
carefully enumerated; the havens in which the Trojans land
are constantly pictured, not only from delight in _natural
scenery, but as a background for the all-important human ac-
tion therein; the gorgeous robes of Dido, the wild garb of
Camilla’s childhood, the splendid armour of heroes, the rustic
equipment of Evander, are all in turn faithfully noted.
But there is another reason for study of detail. As in
Hellenistic days the transferring of the political energies of
independent citizens to the controlled work of a monarchical
system set free many men, who, relieved of liturgies and civic
duties, even encouraged by royal muniﬁcence, devoted them-
selves to study, so it was in Rome when the turmoil of Republi—
can struggle gave way to the peace of an ordered land. Ptolemy
established the great Museion and presided over a circle of
eager scholars; Augustus founded the Library in the temple
of Apollo, and called to the service of art the ﬂower of the G01-
den Age. The result amid the Hellenistic poets was the growing
up of a new habit of observation of detail, which tended to enrich
and enliven all their story. Not only the beautiful, but the
ordinary, even the repulsive, were examined and described in
this zealous representing of reality. Herondas described the
daily life of his time; Callimachus told of the poor old woman
who gave welcome to Theseus in her cottage, and of the rustics
who acclaimed his feat: told, in homely language, the care of
Artemis for her horses and of Rhea for her new-born child.
T heocritus described the daily life of Alcmene and her babes,
or of Gorgo and Praxinoé. This same passion for realistic detail
appeared in Hellenistic art in the conception of portraits, as
that of Homer. “But when” wrote Vernon Lee “Greek art had
run its course, when beauty of form had well-nigh been ex-
hausted or begun to pall, certain artists, presumably Greeks,
but working for Romans, began to produce portrait work of
quite a new and wonderful sort. . . . And the secret of the
beauty of these few Graeco-Roman busts, which is also that of
Renaissance portrait sculpture, is that the beauty is quite dif-
ferent in kind from the beauty of Greek ideal sculpture, and
obtained by quite different means.”17 Of similar spirit are the
17 “Euphorion,” II, p. 24; quoted by Mrs. Strong, Roman Sculpture, 1907,
p. 347. Baumgarten, Die hellen. rb'rn. Kullur, 1913, p. 449, observes “the
INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 19
natural backgrounds which replace the conventional settings
of older Greece. The portrayal of still life and scenes of the
genre type is especially associated with Hellenistic times, and in
the hands of Peiraecus and his school must have widely inﬂu-
enced later work.
This tendency to exactness the young Roman poet of late
Republican days ﬁrst receives as part of his heritage from
Alexandrian life and writings, then cultivates in his own life of
leisurely watching of men and things. We come upon it in
Catullus and in the early work of Vergil, where at times it
offends us by its untimely appearance, and mars the effect of
the whole. The description of birds and frogs in the Culex is
scarcely poetical:
et quaqua geminas avium vox obstrepit aures,
hac querulas referunt voces, quis nantia limo
corpora lympha fovet . . .
Neither are the details of the metamorphosis of Scylla, which
remind us of the similar description that spoils Horace’s epi-
logue; nor the exact deﬁnition of the spot where the culex stung
the shepherd—qua diducta genas pandebant lumina—. In like
manner Catullus spoils the picture of Ariadne’s passionate
misery, as she dashes wildly into the surf:
mollia nudatae tollentem tegmina surae.
In the Aeneid Vergil allows us to imagine the process of a
metamorphosis, or the details that add only frigid interest to
the story. But his art embraces all sorts and conditions of men,
and he willingly lingers in the description of simple scenes that
he may bring them vividly before his readers: the stages by
which the Trojans build a ﬁre and bake their bread; the life of
the country king, Evander; the play of the boys spinning their
top, as they did in Alexandria in the time of Callimachus. The
ﬁsherman Menoetes, who knew not rich gifts, recalls the toilers
of the sea in Theocritus; from Apollonius comes the glimpse of
the woman who rouses the sleeping embers of her ﬁre that even

difference between the relief of the Ara Pac. Aug. and that of the Parthenon of
which the Ara superﬁcially reminds one. The ﬁgures on the Parthenon frieze
are ideal, those of the Ara are of men, women and children of the Imperial
Court in their actual dress.” See also Ernest Gardner, Greek Sculpture,2 1915,
pp. 559 f.
20 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
by night she may toil to support her needy family. The de-
scriptions of scenery—framed by est locus—and of dress, recall
the miniatures of Hellenistic painting.
Realism, however, paints the beautiful no less than the
humdrum things of everyday; and here, too, the youth in
Vergil is father to the man. The Aeneid sparkles with the
descriptive adjective, introduced just where it may attract the
eye and vivify the scene: the art is of the poet’s own genius, but
has been trained in ways of skill as is any power of delineation.
With such trained art Catullus reproduces the moment when
Clodia breaks upon his solitude as he waits :18
quo mea se molli candida diva pede
intulit et trito fulgentem in limine plantam
innixa arguta constituit solea.
Vergil pictures for us Scylla, now dashing after her ball, as it
runs to and fro, unconscious of her danger, her dress ﬂying in
the wind; now sick with panic, hardly daring to breathe,
creeping at midnight down the stairs, scissors in hand. All is
dark except the stars twinkling in the frosty sky. But the door
creaks—just as Clodia’s slipper did—it is all-important for the
action of the poem. Examples could be multiplied: I will quote
only one more picture, that of the shepherd and his ﬂocks
(Cut. 45 if):
propulit e stabulis ad pabula laeta capellas
pastor, et excelsi montis iuga summa petivit,
ﬂorida qua patulos velabant gramina colles.
iam silvis dumisque vagae, iam vallibus abdunt
corpora, iamque omni celeres 6 parte vagantes
tondebant tenero viridantia gramina morsu.
scrupea desertis haerebant ad cava ripis,
pendula proiectis carpuntur et arbuta ramis,
densaque virgultis avide labrusca petuntur;
haec suspensa rapit carpente cacumina morsu
vel salicis lentae vel quae nova nascitur alnus,
haec teneras fruticum sentes rimatur, at illa
imminet in rivi prostantis imaginis undam.
Already in the neoteric poets we see the painting of colour
and sound for which the Odes of Horace and the Aeneid are
famous.19 Heinze remarks the brightness of Book V: all the
earth is green and all the company is joyous to celebrate the
18 Mr. Glover ﬁrst pointed out to me the force of this picture.
19 See Roiron, Etude sur l’imagination auditive de Virgile, 1908.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
games. So Catullus, by a similar repetition of descriptive adjec-
tive, had vividly drawn the sea ﬂying with foam . . . oentosnrn
. aeqnor (LXIV, l. 12) . . . spnniis inoandnit nnda (l. 13)
. candenti e gnrgile (l. 14) . . . gnrgite oano (l. 18); or the
radiance of Peleus’ home, decked for marriage rites . . . ful-
genti splendent anro atque argento (l. 44) . . . candet ebnr (l. 45)
collncent pocnla (l. 45) . . . dornns gandet regali splendida gaza
(l.46);or the blaze of Ariadne’s passion: ﬂagrantia . . . lnrnina
ll. 91, 92) . . . oonoepit . . .ﬂarnrnarn (l. 92) . . . exarsit
tola (l. 93). In the second pastoral scene of the Cnlex (ll. 98-
156) We ﬁnd oiridern . . . rnnsonrn; lnoo . . . oirenli; oiridi
. in herba; viridi pallore; snsnrrantis . . . Zyrnphae; reson-
ante snsnrro; anra snsnrranlis . . . vent/i; together with seven
lines charged with sound:
at volucres . . . .
carmina per varios edunt resonantia cantus.
his suberat gelidis manans e fontibus unda,
quae levibus placidum rivis sonat acta liquorem.
et quaqua geminas avium vox obstrepit aures,
hac querulas referunt voces, quis nantia limo
corpora lympha fovet; sonitus alit aeris echo,
argutis et cuncta fremunt Tardore cicadis.
But while the Hellenistic spirit devoted itself to the observa-
tion of life, it followed no less eagerly the study of written
records; the Alexandrians have ever been reproached with their
learning. Yet in itself, the love of study is excellent, and one
recognizes in these scholars that same zeal for efﬁciency which
animated all who sought to glorify their royal patron. So the
young Vergil would gladly write a lofty poem of philosophy to
glorify Messala, but his power is not ripe; in the Culex he
promises Octavius a more worthy offering later on:
posterius graviore sono tibi musa loquetur
nostra, dabunt cum maturos rnihi tempora fructus,
ut tibi digna tuo poliantur carmina sensu.
The declaration that a task is too great for one’s powers—the
reonsatio—is indeed part of the literary tradition of the time,
inherited from Alexandria.20 Horace delights in it. Catullus
sends his gift to Allius with an apology:
hoc tibi, quod potui, confectum carmine munus:
2° Shorey, ed. Horace, Car. 1916, p. 162; Reitzenstein, N ene ]ahrb., XXI
(1908), p. 84.
22 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
Vergil makes the same reﬂection:
fortunati ambo! si quid mea Carmina possunt,
nulla dies umquam memori vos eximet aevo.
The effort to attain the highest is eminently worth while for
the poet who holds in his power the unique gift of mindful song.
If Horace at one moment deprecates his unworthy Muse, he
is usually well aware of the value of his words:
non ego te meis
chartis inornatum silebo,
totve tuos patiar labores
impune, Lolli, carpere lividas
obliviones:
corresponds exactly to:
non ego te, Ligurum ductor fortissime bello,
transierim:
OI‘:
nec tu carminibus nostris indictus abibis,
Oebale . . . i
To the desire of attaining excellence, a desire springing
obviously from his own character, but stimulated by his
training, is due the care with which Vergil has treated many
and various subjects in his work. It is instructive in this con-
nection to compare the technical details concerning the customs
and armour of the tribes in Vergil’s catalogue with the lack of
technicality in the Homeric list:21 to contrast his treatment of
the healing of Aeneas with the Homeric tale of Glaucus, or his
simile of the activity of the bees with that of the Iliad (II, 87 f'.):
to note his acquaintance with details of agriculture, astronomy,
navigation;22 one might well suppose him to be a specialist in
many crafts. Suetonius attests his devotion “inter cetera
studia” to medicine, mathematics, and law; “eminent lawyers
have admired his knowledge of their profession; agriculturists
and physicians have but imitated their admiration where they
21 Cf. Ehrlich, M ittelitalien, Land and Leute in der Aeneide Vergils, 1892.
22 Royds, The Beasts, Birds, and Bees of Virgil, 1914; Prosper Meniére,
Etudes médicales sur les poétes latins, 1858, pp. 131 if; Jal, Virgilius N auticus.
1861, pp. 265 ff.; Segebade, Vergil als Seemann, 1895.
INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 23
have each been best able to judge; as a rhetorician Macrobius
prefers him to Cicero.”23 “Ancient commentators,” remarks
Sellar, “have drawn attention . . . to the exact acquaintance
which Virgil shows with the minutiae of Pontiﬁcal and Augural
lore.”24 Such scrupulous care to speak with the authority of
the specialist in each sphere of knowledge is in complete har-
mony with the scientiﬁc spirit, of the Hellenistic world?’5
In his early efforts Vergil is full of this fresh enthusiasm for
learning, and cannot, as the neoterics in general, forbear to give
it us. The list of subjects, mythological and historical, which
he might have chosen instead of the Culex, the laboured introduc-
tion of the story of Agave, and the fables attached to the
different trees in the shepherd’s resting place, all savour of
Hellenistic methods. The learned epithet meets one repeatedly.
At times it is simply conventional, as in Carme’s laden words:
Gnosia neu Partho contendens spicula cornu
Dictaeas ageres ad gramina nota capellas!
So wrote Horace in his Odes. The Hellenistic authors loved the
unusual, the fanciful, even in their words: and at times Vergil’s
phrasing might merit the satire of Moliere. Scylla is called
“patris miseri patriaeque sepulchrum”; the sun is Hyperion,
the culex is introduced as “parvulus umoris alumnus” without
further naming; the nurse anxiously inquires of her charge:
nam qua te causa nec dulcis pocula Bacchi
nec gravidos Cereris dicam contingere fetus?
The word “Ceres” of the Aeneid, on the other hand, simply
replaces “bread,” according to common usage.
Even the Alexandrians, however, did not distribute their
learned remarks at random. Mackail can write of the hymns ‘
of Callimachus as marked by a “fastidiousness, by an instinct
for rejection which almost amounts to a passion”; Catullus
carefully motivates the introduction of his story of Ariadne.
Throughout the Aeneid, in contrast to the earlier work, this
instinct of artistic selection is to be observed. Mirmont points
23 Prentice, The Philosophical Opinions of Vergil, 1859, p. 7.
24 Virgil,3 1897, p. 374.
25 Even so, as every one knows, the Georgics borrowed from Aristotle,
Nicander, Theophrastus, Aratus, and Eratosthenes.
24 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
012,70“
out cases where Vergil deliberately turns material, which in
Apollonius is of only learned interest, to the greater glory of
his country: as in the tracing of the Trojan race to Crete, and
the honour done to the cult of Cybele. Aetiological tales are
deftly introduced: the tale of Hercules and Cacus comes
naturally from Evander, as does the description of the Ludus
T roiae amid the sports of Anchises’ memorial games, or the
story of Hippolytus which enlivens the catalogue. There are
numerous scientiﬁc details, but they usually serve rather to
stimulate than annoy. The name of Byrsa is traced to the
bull’s hide; of the Laurentes to the laurel. The eponymous hero
is sometimes mentioned: Romulus, Capys, Chaon; and the
Latin name is preserved for evermore at juno’s urgent ‘prayer.
That matters of astronomy should be introduced is not surpris-
ing in view of Aratus’ wide inﬂuence; but, like Callimachus,
Vergil brought his scientiﬁc notes into harmony with his tale.
It is entirely natural that the helmsman Palinurus should scan
at midnight the stars that are passing in the silent sky; that
Pallas, in his bright armour, should be likened to Lucifer as it
comes from the ocean and drives away the gloom; that the
swing and clash of battle should remind one of the hailstorm
that rises out of the west under the rain-bringing Kids. The
‘song of Iopas recalls Lucretian philosophy; so also the descrip-
tion of the shade that personates Aeneas:
morte obita quales fama est volitare ﬁguras,
aut quae sopitos deludunt somnia sensus.
There is matter historical: the founding of Ardea by Danae or
of Patavium by Antenor, and the tracing of the lineage of
various noble houses; geographical: the formation of the strait
between Italy and Sicily, the accurate description of the fruitful
ﬂood of the Nile, the deﬁnite local touch which marks so many
of Vergil’s similes; philological: the Greek derivation of Stro-
phades, the ‘changing of Camilla’s name. Alexandrian, as
Apollonius shows, is the frequent epithet which in Vergil marks
the historvof person orplace“. Nor does the love of the strange
and novel fail to leave its mark. The Hellenistic metamorphosis
appears in the tale of the changing of the ships into nymphs; in
the story of Polydorus, which, with its realistic detail, savours of
Hellenistic fav'zrapo'ypécbot, who dived even into lowest depths of
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
society in search of some new picture; in the reference to the
changing of the followers of Diomedes into birds, and to Circe’s
transforming of Picus into a Woodpecker, in revenge for her
slighted love; in the story of Cycnus, changed into a swan
while grieving at the loss of his loved Phaethon. The last two
of these stories are told in greater detail in that storehouse of
Hellenistic tales, Ovid’s Metamorphoses; the story of Phaethon
was popular among the Hellenistic and neoteric poets. The
marvellous attack of the Harpies, the settling of Sleep upon the
stern of Aeneas’ boat, and his besprinkling of Palinurus with
drops from the magic branch, all ﬁnd their counterpart in
Apollonius.
In this scholarly current, the remembrance of primitive
days naturally ﬁnds a place. Sellar long ago wrote that “the
Alexandrian Age had endeavoured to revive an interest in the
heroic adventure of early or mythical times. It had recognized
the principle that this distant background was essential to a
poem of heroic action. . . .”26 Varro, Dionysius of Halicarnas-
sus, and Livy eagerly pursued the research into antiquities
promoted by the scholars of Alexandria; Callimachus “intro-
duces old myths for the sake of artistic contrast and of giving
the glamour of historical truth to his narrative.” Vergil con-
stantly brings forward for the glory of Augustus the Trojan
origin of the Roman race, and describes the celebrating before
Aeneas of the Lndns T roiae which Augustus himself reinstated,
as he did the old secular games. Alexander, also, had scrupu-
lously observed the ancient religious rites, and had endeavoured
to revive the old Greek games and festivals. Reverence for the
past, as seen in the appeal to authority, especially that of
tradition, a feature so marked in Hellenistic poetry, and in
Catullus, appears also in varied form throughout the Aeneid.
Furthermore, V ergil’s description of the manners of the primi-
tive tribes of Italy recalls that epic on the second Messenian
War by Rhianus of Crete, who “had made special researches
into the local antiquities of various cities” (Mahaffy, Greek
Life and T honght,2 p. 293). But the old myths and stories
must be told accurately; and the Alexandrians, as Norden
points out, were keen to mark the correct version of a tradition.27
26 Op. cit, p. 298.
27 Norden, ed. Aeneid VI,2 1916, p. 291; cf. Skutsch on this Alexandrian
characteristic of the “author of the Ciris,” Ans Vergils Frnhzeit, 1901, p. 80.
26 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
He compares the insistence in the story of Maia (Aen. VIII,
140) with Kaibel’s example in Callimachus (ad Art. 172). In
the story of Maia Aeneas conﬁnes his zeal to two lines, and the
detail is of great moment to the occasion. In his earlier poems
Vergil can delay his narrative to give differing versions or
possibilities. The various stories of Scylla’s fate are recited;
the real cause is assigned to Juno’s anger against her; the ques-
tion of her guilt debated. The nurse interrupts her lamentations
on her daughter’s loss to discuss the theories attending that
loss: a discussion natural in its place, but hardly appropriate
in the midst of an attempt to console another girl, Scylla,
racked with acute misery of mind and body. In the Culex the
poet must tarry to wonder what induced the conquest of the
serpent, or caused the storm that overcame Ajax.
For here we see that intellectual argument, that meticulous
questioning for questioning’s sake, in which the Hellenistic
soul delighted, and the memory of which it handed down to
stimulate its successors. And if debate was grateful over
matters of outward accident, it was doubly welcome when it
concerned the things of the mind or the heart. So, too, Vergil,
growing up amid this spirit of probing into inner things, inspired
by Euripides and by Euripides’ followers, cares, above all,
for the psychology of his tale. And whereas in Homer, descrip-
tive epithets often refer to the outside man, as well as to his
spirit, in the Aeneid the phrases—pius Aeneas, ﬁdus Achates,
bonus Acestes, or magnanimus Volcens rather direct our thoughts
to the inner character. Masterly in its succinct force is the
portrait of Aeneas, as King, Priest, War-Lord, drawn in two
lines:
rex erat Aeneas nobis, quo iustior alter,
nec pietate fuit nec bello maior et armis.28
It is signiﬁcant, too, that a student of Callimachus should begin
his poem with the appeal:
Musa, mihi qagsas memora . . .
The Trojans, as they see the blaze of Dido’s pyre, discuss its
unhappy cause; the poet himself discusses the motives that lead
N autes to give his counsel regarding the Trojan weaklings, that
28 Kunz, Realien in Vergils Aeneis, 1895, p. 31.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
inﬂuence Latinus to welcome Aeneas, and the Rutuli to follow
Turnus. Heinze mentions the detailed motives assigned for the
pursuit of Chloreus by Camilla as savouring of the pragmatic
historian, and characterizes the incident—that of Silvia’s stag—-
which Vergil introduced into tradition for the more immediate
deriving of the great war, as distinctly Hellenistic in nature.
So Scylla had been ruined——by the careless throwing of a ball.
And as the triviality of outward causes of great happenings may
be placed by the artist in striking contrast with the description
of their yield of tragedy, so, in contrast with the analysis of the
workings of mind, the narrative of deeds is very slight. The
description of the struggle between right and wrong in Medea’s
mind is of much greater importance to Apollonius than the tell-
ing of the deeds which follow. After the long struggle of Scylla
comes the brief statement of the cutting of the lock, the taking
of Megara, the punishment of the girl: then follows further an-
alysis in her lament. In the Aeneid this insight into the human
mind reaches its clearest expression with the development of
the poet’s own experience of his fellowmen. The most stirring
story in the Aeneid—the Fall of Troy—is placed where it may
directly move the heart of Dido; and yet this story itself is a
record of mental struggle, between Laocoon and Sinon, between
Aeneas’ own desire and the bidding of Fate, between Anchises
and Aeneas, between Aeneas’ impulse to ﬂee and his longing to
seek his wife. The consummation of the Aeneid—the Fall of
T urnus—is given but insigniﬁcant place in comparison with
the sufferings of T urnus’ mind as, despite himself, yet of his
own will, he draws nearer to his death, a death which he owes
directly to the issue of conﬂict in Aeneas’ mind. It would be
hard to ﬁnd in so small a space greater play of feeling than these
few words toward the end of the strife:
aestuat ingens
uno in corde pudor mixtoque insania luctu
et furiis agitatus amor et conscia virtus.29
But now we have passed from the intellectual analysis of
mental action and reaction to the keen interest of understanding
sympathy with mankind. It is, need one say? fundamentally
essential to the understanding of Vergil that to the poet’s own
29 See Warde Fowler, The Death of Turnus, 1919, pp. 117 ff.
28 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
mind, character, heart, should be wholeheartedly attributed all
that in the Aeneid reveals feeling for his fellows, whether dwelt
on in their mass or as individual men or women. The sympathy
of Aeneas with human joy and suffering springs directly from
Vergil’s own heart. The resemblance-s here traced concern only
the surface of the poet’s creative art; yet, I think, they are not
without some interest as matter of comparison. The intimate
knowledge of human nature, which every student of Vergil has
admitted in his work, is obviously the poet’s own, but he agrees
with the manner of Hellenistic Comedy when he clearly dis-
tinguishes types of human character, and, as Heinze has noted,
graphically paints details distinctive of nation, age, and sex.
And indeed the ideal of the Roman .Court reﬂected the liberal
ideal of Alexander. All nations ﬂocked into Rome; scholars,
whatever their race or School—Athenodorus the Stoic, Xenar-
chus the Peripatetic, Didymus the Eclectic—were welcomed
into the presence of Augustus; men of literary genius, whatever
their standing in society, were invited to join the royal circle.
It is true that the Roman still cherished the deeply rooted
dislike for foreigners—Jews, Greeks, and Egyptians—which
the Macedonians entertained toward barbarians; it is true also
that the Romans had a national consciousness such as was never
reached by the peoples of the Hellenistic realms, and that a
Hellenistic parallel to the Aeneid never could have been pro-
duced;30 but the way was always open to those, whatever their
blood, who were able to rise through their own capability and
the help of powerful friends. The cult of humanitas which had
grown up in the days of Panaetius, of the younger Scipio and of
Cicero, still continued its inﬂuence under the early Empire;
though the cult lost deﬁnite shape, yet Panaetius’ noble hope of
transforming the Stoic kingship into an aristocracy of men whose
aim was the uplifting, not merely of their own circles, but of all
mankind, could not but leave its mark on thinkers of the suc-
ceeding generations.31 The introduction of oriental rites,
practised by all without distinction of race, strengthened the
feeling for a common nature of mankind.32 So Vergil pictures
3° Cf. Schwartz, Charakterleopfe, H2, 1911, p. 61.
31 Ibid., I, 1903, pp. 88 f.
3'2 Cumont, Oriental Religions, trans. 1911, p. 28; Clifford H. Moore, The
Decay of N ationalisrn under the Roman Empire, T ransaetions of the A. P. A.
XLVIII (1917), p. 35.
INFLUENCE or HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 29
the Roman Caesar uniting under his empire in long array sub-
jects of manifold race, dress, and tongue. The mark of humanis-
tic philosophy appears every now and again; now in general
sympathy with human suﬁering:
sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt;
and:
non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco;
and in the consolationes, which remind us of that one probably
addressed by Horace to Vergil himself ;33 thus Creusa comforts
her distracted husband, and the old Nautes offers hope to
Aeneas after the loss of his ships; or in the feeling for individual
sorrow, even of hardened soldiers, for a miserable old woman:
hoc ﬂetu concussi animi, maestusque per omnes
it gemitus: torpent infractae ad proelia vires.
Here there is once more need of care, lest undue in-
ﬂuence be granted to the Hellenistic spirit in describing the
emotional side of Vergil’s work. As I have said, emotional
experience found a peculiarly congenial place among the el-
le'ﬁis't'iE peoples; and their authors are as famed for their expres-
sion of this experience as they are for their intellectual ambi-
tions. The sympathy of Nature with human joy or sorrow is
strongly marked in their writings. All Nature mourns for Daph-
nis, for Adonis, for Bion; in Callimachus’ verse, Nature is
transformed into gold at Apollo’s birth, or fears the wrath of
Ares; river rejoices in Artemis, and sea keeps silence before
Apollo. So in the Aeneid: Nature weeps for the loss of the
fallen Umbro, and quakes with terror at the exploits of Hercules
or the cry of Allecto, a touch borrowed directly from Apollonius;
the Tiber ebbs in fear at the change worked in the ships, or
marvels at the Trojan vessels, as it aids them to reach their
journey’s end. The Euphrates owns allegiance to Caesar, as
the rivers stay their ﬂow to do Messala reverence. The stead-
fast course of Nature in her familiar road symbolizes that which
is familiar and welcome among men; discord in Nature sym-
pathizes with strange and sad happenings in the human world.
The Auﬁdus ﬂees backward, declares Turnus, when Greeks
33 Horace, Car. I, 24; Reitzenstein, N ene J ahrb. XXI (1908), pp. 82 f.:
“so 5011 auch Vergil sich der Klage und der Klagelieder nicht schamen.”
30 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
fear Trojan arms, and a conquered race prevails; so Daphnis
bids all Nature run riot, since he must die.
@- '\\v5 The mention of ﬂowers occurs in passages tinged with
UV‘ emotion. m, nothing new to literature in this;
the only point we need notice is this weaving of ﬂowers into the
emotional passages of epic or epyllion, where they might well
attract more attention than in the more natural setting of
Sappho’s lyrics or Pindar’s odes. Theocritus stays his verse to
tell of the grasses around the well where Hylas falls to the arms
of the Nymphs; Europa meets the bull as she plays among the
hyacinths, the roses, and the violets of spring. Apollonius
writes of Medea’s love:
iaive'ro at ¢pévas ela'w
T'ﬂKOMéVT], olév 're 1repi boﬂéno'w éépa'n
'riyrce'rat ijq'www iau/opéz/n qbaéeo'o'w.
In the Aeneid Venus carries the sleeping Ascanius in her arms
to Idaliaz—
ubi mollis amaracus illum
ﬂoribus et dulci aspirans complectitur umbra.
We remember Evadne’s babe:
600$ év
Kélcpmr'ro 'Yo‘tp axolvcp Ba'relqt 1" 351/ Zr'n'etpc't’rcp,
icbv Eavﬂa'io't Kai. wamropqbl'lpots o’uc'r'ia't Beﬁpeypévos itﬁpov
Gama.
Euryalus fades in death as a crimson ﬂower cut down by the
plough; the body of Pallas lies in death like a soft violet, or like
a hyacinth snapped from its stem by a girl’s hand. Such
pictures bring back the memory of Catullus’ love, fallen like
the ﬂower touched by the passing plough at the meadow’s end.
Neither does the animal world fail to contribute its touch of
emotion. The story of Silvia’s pet stag and its fate Heinze
calls "hellenistisch-genrehaft,” and would trace to some
Hellenistic poem telling of the story of Cyparissus, as in the
Metamorphoses of Ovid. Alexandrians among the writers of the
Palatine Anthology had also told of pets; the detail in Catullus
and in later Latin poetry is known to all.
Among emotional tendencies of human life, the cult of friend-
vs__h__ip,,_ as we have noted, was strongly marked in Hellenis 1c
circles, and indeed rose directly from the circumstances of the
time. This trait ﬁnds its corresponding place in the epic of
INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 31
Rome. F idus is the epithet chosen for Achates and for Orontes;
the group of followers mourned by Aeneas after the great storm,
reminds us of Augustus’ oﬂicial “friends.” The story of Nisus
and Euryalus, and of their enterprise, beginning with merry
contest in sport and ending in death, diﬂers utterly in spirit
from the quest of Diomedes and Odysseus, to which it bears
certain external resemblances; Diomedes chooses Odysseus on
the ground of expediency, not friendship; no tragic end seals
their union. The tale of Vergil’s two heroes, as that of Cycnus’
love for Phaethon, rather recalls the Hellenistic fable of the bond
between Heracles and the boy Hylas.“ A reference to love of
man for boy—such as the Alexandrians knew it—is found in the
second Eclogue;35 and in the description of Cydon’s stream of
erotic adventure in Book X.
When, however, we come to the painting of human emotion,
so far as Vergil depended at all on literary forerunners to help
him express his own concepts, he drew from Attic tragedy more
than from its later imitators. This tragic inﬂuence on the
Aeneid has been dealt with in many works ;36 I may merely note
here traces of resemblances where both Rome and Alexandria
have drawn from the older Greek poetry. Among the characters
of the Aeneid, a prominent place is given to those who allow of
emotional display, and persons of minor importance are intro-
duced -to lead up to this element; to Hylas, Alcimede, Gorgo
and Praxinoé, correspond in this respect Aegeus, Amata, Nisus
and Euryalus. The emotions of priyatglife are constantly
brought into prominence against the setting of the ___l_1__e_r_oic in
that contrastﬁso characteristic of Alexandrian poetry. Love
entangles Vergil’s hGT—o TENTH? *s'ame romanticism which
could cast its glamour about the cold Achilles of Homeric tale ;37
and Jupiter strives to dry the tears of Hercules for the son
called by inevitable Fate. Sorrow is described by means of
the conventional lament of parent for son; as Alcimede and
Aegeus mourn, so do Evander, the mother of Euryalus, and
Amata. It is in order that the son should be an only one, the
34 De Witt, The Dido Episode in the Aeneid, 1907, pp. 14, 15.
35 I bid, p. 13; Suet. Vita Verg. 9.
3“ E.g., Nettleship, Sellar, Glover, De Witt, opp. citt.,' Rand, Virgil and the
Drama, Class. Journal IV (1908); etc., etc.
37 Rohde, Gr. Roman, 1900, pp. 109 f.
32 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
comfort of his parents’ old age, that death should be held
preferable to this loss, that men or maids should surround the
mourner to render sympathy or practical help. So act the Greek
tragic Chorus. The story of Achaemenides is introduced by
Vergil, in the tragic manner, in order to excite sympathy with
suffering; in pitiful appearance and supplication the Greek
resembles Phineus among the Argonauts, and is in keeping with
the spirit of the Pergamene School and the Laocoon of Rhodes.
Horror is inspired, as the Alexandrians loved to inspire it, by
the battle in burning Troy and the violence of Pyrrhus’ deeds;
crude force awakens wonder in the wanton slaughter of the ox
by Entellus during the funeral games.
Running throughout Hellenistic descriptions of emotional
experience there is a certain lack of depth; at times the story
is crude and lacking in subtlety, at times it is conventional.
For nothing else is this truer than for the central emotion of
love, on which the Hellenistic poets delighted to dwell. It is,
especially, the passion of the woman for the man; for love, from
the time of Euripides onwards, is the “sickness sent by the
god,” against which the soul in its weakness struggles, but in
vain.38 The dignity of older drama, we remember, would have
none of it:
’ , c , A 7 n
065 015 ol’x'ieis rjv'rw épwaav 'n'cbrro'r évroinaa 'YUVGLKG.
But with Euripides, the Realist, grew up a desire of analysing
this victimizing passion, as part of the phenomena of the actual
world; his followers in Hellenistic circles eagerly seized the task
of probing the heart no less than the mind, and handed on
this attractive problem to their Roman pupils. Did not Par-
thenius himself write Love Tales? Catullus and Vergil must
try their hand at this theme which ﬁgured so largely in their
lesson-books.
And, indeed, whether as a source of emotional, or of intel-
lectual, inspiration, woman was prominent in Vergil’s world.
If we turn a moment from books to real life, we remember that
in Rome, as in Greece, with the rising of the individual man to
arbitrary control, came woman’s increased opportunity.39
38 Ibid., p. 157.
39 Helbig, Campanische Wandrnalerei, 1873, p. 191.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 33
Livia was almost to Augustus as Berenice to Ptolemy, and her
Emperor-consort frequently sought her counsel. The royal
ladies were well versed in literature, a philosopher dedicated his
work to Octavia, and before her and Augustus Vergil read the
sixth book of his Aeneid. From the words of the Stoic Aureus,
Livia gained consolation after the death of Drusus; philosophy
was studied among women, and Plutarch advised for them
instruction in science. It is not surprising, then, to ﬁnd that
Iopas entertains the guests of Dido with Lucretian questions of
suns and stars, though comment both ancient and modern has
approved on other grounds the choice of philosophic song for
the queen’s court. The rule of Carthage centres in its monarch,
as did the government of Ptolemy or of Mithridates; in inde-
pendence and ambition Dido is their equal4°—dnxferninafacti—
and she was leader, moreover, as Kvicala reminds us,41 of a race
intractabile hello. Her royal state entirely resembles that of the
Egyptian queen ;42 and the remembrance of Cleopatra was fresh
in the poet’s mind.43 We may think here of Nettleship’s
parallel from the other end of the story: “As Caesar was half
won by Cleopatra, Aeneas is half won by Dido.”“4 Hecuba
controls her aged husband-king; the spirit of Creusa counsels
Aeneas. The burning jealousy of Juno is skilfully described;
the passionate struggle between her and her rival goddess is well
contrasted with the few calm words of Jupiter, and might recall
4° So Mahaﬁy (op. cit., p. 291) remarks Medea’s “strength of will and
determined action as compared with Jason. . . . It is she who has to propose
every plan; it is she who ﬂies alone and unsolicited through the night, and
hails the ship to take her on board. It is she who, to defeat the various eﬁ‘orts
made by her father to recover her, supplicates, upbraids, and objurgates, while
the heroes show her very lukewarm courtesy.”
41 Vergil-Studien, 1878, p. 105. He compares (p. 146) the rule of Dido
in Carthage with that of the women in Lemnos described by Apollonius.
42 Cf. that of Medea in Apollonius. Mahaﬁy notes (op. cit., p. 292): “The
respect with which Medea is treated when she appears in the street (III, 885)
is very different from the independent criticism of the Phaeacians upon N ausicaa
or even Arete.”
43 Warde Fowler, Rel. Exp. of the Roman People, 1911, p. 415: “It is to me
inexplicable . . . that neither Heinze nor Norden should have even touched
on the possibility that Cleopatra was in the poet’s mind when he wrote the
fourth book.”
‘4 Op. cit., p. 104.
34 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
many a stormy scene among ladies of Hellenistic Courts.45 It
is women who ﬁre the Trojan ships, Dido who ﬁres a funeral
pyre—notumque furens quid femina possit. The martial spirit
of Hellenistic royal women is exactly pictured in Camilla, who
comes to help T urnus, to his deep gratitude. The fury of the
queen Amata, goading on her Women in rebellion, recalls Olym-
pias, mother of Alexander; Olympias would have none of Philip
Arridaeus and Eurydice, for they were not born of Macedonian
race: Amata will have none of the foreigner who seeks to oust
her chosen T urnus avis atavisqne potens. Nettleship notes
the resemblance :46 “the description of the queen (i.e., Amata),
and more particularly the ingens oolnber in which the frenzy is
embodied (VII, 352) recalls Plutarch’s ‘description of the
Bacchanalian celebrations of Olympias (Alex. 2):
1‘; as ’O)\v/.nrtd.s m'ihhov é'répwv g’nhdaaaa'a 'ras Karoxds Kai 'rol‘zs évﬂova'tao'pous
éEd'yovo'a Bapﬁaptxcb'repov 5¢ets ue'ydhovs Xetpm'yﬂets éqbeihxero 'ro'is Htéw'ots, 02
1ro>\)\é.ms éK 1'09 Kt'r'roi‘z Kai 1'63? uvo'nlcc'bv Mia/ow impair/1151261461101. Kai. 'n'epteht'rrépevot
To'is Obpo'ots 76511 'yvvaucé‘w Kai 'ro'is UTG¢dJIOLS éﬁén'hnr'rov robs iivﬁpas."
If, again, the Diadochi supported their insecure claims to royal
power by marriage, we need not forget that the whole struggle
of Aeneas and Turnus was centred about the hope of Lavinia’s
hand and her father’s throne.
Woman, then, was of material interest and importance
in life, as she was in literature, also, from the time of Euripides.
But the Hellenistic poets did not care especially to dwell on
Phaedras or Stheneboeas. One of their favourite types of
woman is the sylvan huntress, all pure in her simple life among
woods and woodland creatures, untouched by passion of man.
‘*5 Cf. Sellar, op. cit, p. 366; and Warde Fowler, Virgil’s Gathering of the
Clans, pp. 39 f.: “Emphatically we may say that in the Aeneid she (Juno)
represents the feminine temper, or at least some aspects of it which were well
known in the last century B.C. Dr. Glover has rightly pointed out that she also
in the poem stands for a false idea of empire. . . . This idea of empire is false
not only because it is backed up by a great female numen, whose temper is
irreconcilable with the large masculine benevolence of Jupiter, but because, with
the aid of that nnmen, it is embodied in a woman, Dido, foreshadowing the
beautiful dangerous queen of Virgil’s own day.”
‘5 0p. cit., p. 109, note 3.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
So Vergil painted Camilla.47 The other is the girl of royal birth
wrapped in like purity,48 suddenly attacked by the god of
mischief—the boy and his wanton arrow. Her high birth gives
poignancy to the 'n'eptrré'reta which ensues: her fall from the
happiness of innocence to the knowledge of despair. As it is
constantly the untried girl who is the victim, so constantly the
passion inspired by Cupid must struggle with conscience, and
conscience yields to its stress. But the struggle itself is not
tragic unto death: Medea’s tragedy is yet many years distant
at the end of the Argonautica—
uvﬁo'ot'ro ,uév Teprrvc'bv, 50" 521111 {(907301 ﬂ‘éAOl/‘TGL,
pm'jo'aﬂ’ ounhxins 1repL'y170éos, old 1'6 Kobpn'
Iacchus comforts Ariadne; Scylla and Tarpeia suffer an involun-
tary punishment inﬂicted from without.
It is in this skilful painting of the battle between passion
and conscience that the Vergilian epyllion heralds the epic.
The very ﬁrst word of the narrative of the Ciris is impia—
followed by exterrita; skilfully the poet thus arouses with a
touch both censure and sympathy before he gives any details
of the crime. It is against her father that Scylla sins—scelerata:
yet did she know what she did?
quis non bonus omnia malit
credere, quam tanto sceleris damnare puellam?
So Vergil works upon our critical faculties, and now we blame
and now we excuse. Yet to no avail; the end is the same:
heu tamen infelix: quid enim imprudentia prodest?
For the passion is irresistible—neque est cum dis contendere
nostrum—that Juno, for her jealousy, sends upon the girl. Her
crime stands out, when it is ﬁnally accomplished, as strongly
as her love: she is both a traitor to her father and her father-
land. There is no mistake about her guilt in the eyes of any
one, only excuse. Medea, likewise, slays her brother for her
love, and Ariadne allows her brother’s death:
eripui et potius germanum amittere crevi
quam tibi fallaci supremo in tempore deessem.
4'’ De Witt, op. cit., p. 53.
‘8 Mahaffy, p. 291.
36 HELLENIsTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
This is the elementary motive which Vergil transferred to his
story of Dido, and enriched and deepened till it is altogether
transﬁgured.49 Dido is not merely of royal birth: she is a
queen in her own right, ruling a warlike folk; hers is no mere
untried innocence, ignorant of suffering, but a purity of con-
scious determination, the outcome of sorrow and knowledge of
ill. Proudly she has stood ﬁrm in her resolve to have nought
more of man’s wooing and man’s love. Then, not through a
mere glimpse of a stranger within her gates or without her walls,
but through her quick human feeling she meets her destiny:
non ignara mali miseris succurrere disco.
The Cupid of the Aeneid is not the spoiled child of the Argonau-
tica, or the heartless youth of Catullus, or the wilful son of the
Ciris, but the obedient son; Venus does not seek to win his help
by bribes of playthings, but appeals to his sympathy for his
brother in distress. The heart of Dido is not penetrated by a
wanton arrow swiftly sent, but through the warmth of her own
mother-love. She is as ignorant as Scylla of the attack of the
god——inscia . . . insidat quantus rniserae deus—yet here, too,
there is a struggle between right and wrong when once her love
reveals itself. There is no gross complication of ethics in this
case; no one could imagine Vergil’s heroine betraying or mur-
dering her kin. But is she to keep her own high standard of
resolve? To be untrue to her vow of chastity is a crime; culpa
she calls it. And she starts out in her brave spirit to down this
thing:
sed mihi vel tellus optem prius irna dehiscat,
vel Pater omnipotens abigat me fulmine ad umbras,
pallentes umbras Erebo noctemque profundam,
ante, Pudor, quam te violo, aut tua iura resolvo.
Ille meos, primus qui me sibi iunxit, amores
abstulit; ille habeat secum servetque sepulcro.
She has a girl’s shame before the admission of her love. Scylla
can hardly bring herself to mention Minos:
dicendum est, frustra circumvehor omnia verbis:
Dido will not mention Aeneas to Anna by name; hic hospes is
enough.
‘9 De Witt, op. cit; Glover, 01>. cit, chapter VIII.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
Like all the others, she yields, and she suffers; her suffering
is thrown into greater shadow because Aeneas in deserting her,
rather—so Vergil would have us believe—regains faithfulness
to duty than abandons it. But, unlike the others, there is for
her no comfort, no amelioration of her fate—Moriernnr innltae,
sed moriarnnr. She alone gives herself to death; and her fate
strikes pity and fear in so much the greater degree as she excelled
other victims in her former triumph;
illa ego sum Nisi pollentis ﬁlia quondam:
cries Scylla dragged through the waves;
felix, heu nimium felix, si litora tantum
numquam Dardaniae tetigissent nostra carinae:
cries Dido as she mounts the funeral pyre.
CHAPTER III
THE INFLUENCE OF HELLENIsTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE (B)
Without in any way attempting to enter into a discussion of
Vergil’s views—Stoic or Epicureanl—we may note, further-
more, in the Aeneid some traces of the trend of the times in
matters of the soul. We have observed that as in the things
pertaining to the mind or heart, so in those of the soul, the
individual of Hellenistic times was engrossingly absorbed in
himself. The more educated man felt but formal need of
higher beings; to his own efforts should his own success be due.
This independence is reﬂected in literature. Neither in Apol-
lonius nor in Vergil do the gods dwell among mankind as in the
Homeric day. It is true that, as Gercke points out, Vergil
makes use of an extraordinary detail of religious apparatus for
the furthering of the destiny of Aeneas and his companions;
i~~but it is apparatus clearly external to the inner life of the poem.
Zeus dwells far apart, as the almost impersonal arbiter of
‘Fate. No idea of his appearance can be gathered from either
poet; each shows reserve in dealing with the human passions
of Zeus of which Homer freely spoke. Prayers are no more the
daughters of Zeus; Anchises doubts whether they avail to move
him. Pallas feels no fear of unseen principalities and powers:
numina nulla premunt, mortali urgemur ab hoste
mortales . . .
The other gods, with the exception of Apollo in the Argonautioa
and of Venus in the Aeneid, take very little part in the action;
a situation strongly in contrast with their energetic interest,
amounting even to actual war, in the progress of the battle
before Troy. Few details are given concerning them, but
Venus, when she appears to Aeneas, entirely resembles an earth-
born huntress, bare of knee, and scant of skirt; when she mani-
fests herself as true goddess, her rose-hued neck shines forth,
her hair exhales sweet perfume, her dress falls to her feet—-
details worthy of Apollonius’ picture of Cypris combing her hair.
1 For example, I do not deal here with Book VI, discussed by Norden and
many others.
38
INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE 39
In like fashion the ancient worship of the gods, as at Alexan-
dria, so at Rome, was useful to the Emperors as machinery for
the promotion of their state craft, but had little inﬂuence
upon the practice of individual citizen life. As the Ptolemies
leaned on Heracles and Dionysus, so Augustus diplomatically
honoured the cult of Vesta and of Apollo. Vergil is careful for
the glory of Rome to emphasize the Trojan origin of Vesta and
the Penates—a dogma ﬁrst established in the time of Caesar
and Augustusz—and Augustus’ devotion to Apollo, whose seer,
Helenus, plays so important a part in the guidance of Aeneas’
destiny.
For individual consolation, the lower classes of Vergil’s
City were turning to Hellenistic deities, while at the same time
“the syncretic tendencies of Egypt responded admirably to
those that began to obtain at Rome,”3 reﬂected in the suprem-
acy of the Jupiter of the Aeneid. And other traces of the newer
developments in religion appear. Anchises mentions Crete
as the home of Cybele and her Corybants and yoked lions;
Aeneas, the ancestor of Rome, is represented twice as oﬂering
prayer to the Phrygian Mother of the Gods. Yet she, too,
must sue for favour from her greater son; and in general we
ﬁnd here the antagonism of the philosophic thinkers to strange
worship of foreign gods. Evander declares of the sacriﬁce to
Hercules:
non haec sollemnia nobis,
has ex more dapes, hanc tanti numinis aram
vana superstitio veterumque ignara deorum
imposuitz4
the conﬂict rages between Gods of Egypt and of Rome:
omnigenumque deum monstra et latrator Anubis
contra N eptunum et Venerem contraque Minervam
tela tenent . . . :
all ﬂee in panic at the sight of the drawn bow of the Apollo
of Actium, and Caesar offers thanksgiving to the gods of Italy.
Even the orgies of the Great Mother are ﬁt for women rather
2 Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Ro'mer, 1902, p. 148.
3 Cumont, op. cit, p. 88; De Witt, Virgil and Apocalyptic Literature,
Class. Journal, XIII (1918), pp. 605 f.
4 Nettleship, op. cit., p. 134 f. Warde Fowler, Aeneas at the Site of Rome,
1917, p. 57, remarks on these lines: “There is here no doubt an allusion to
Augustus’ distrust of new foreign worships, especially that of Isis, which had
been showing itself while the Aeneid was being written . . . ”
40 HELLENIsTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
than men, and the ﬂute of Bacchus ranks among the dissipa-
tions of love-sick youths. The spread of magic art in Rome
drew forth the legislation of Augustus. Vergil’s knowledge
of the black art is, of course, best revealed in the Ciris and the
eighth Eclogue, where Carme and Alphesiboeus recall Simaetha;
and in the fourth book of the Aeneid. Of the description of
Umbro and his skill in Book VII F ahz remarks: “quibus locis
nihil fere nisi usitatissimae res exhibentur, quas quivis Romanus
illis temporibus noverit.”5 De Witt sees a hint of the prejudice
against magic practices in Rome in the lines of Book IV:
testor, Cara, deos et te, germana, tuumque
dulce caput, magicas invitam accingier artis;
and reminds us: “that in the latter part of the Aeneid the
powers of the nether world are on the side of Rome’s enemies.”6
The song of Iopas brings us within the realm of astrology, and
there was a general belief, even in the Imperial Court of Vergil’s
day, in astrological cult. Sinon appeals to the divine will of
the stars; Helenus and Asilas can interpret their meaning.
Achaemenides cries in entreaty:
per sidera testor,
per superos atque hoc caeli spirabile lumen, (v.1. numen)
tollite me, Teucri .
At the moment of the fulﬁlment of his hope in at length gaining
the destined shore, Aeneas himself prays to Night and the
rising signs of Night; on the brow of the victorious Augustus
shines the Star of his house, a token ﬁrst vouchsafed to Julius
Caesar.
The personality conceived of as animating the stars is
read in a lesser degree into other aspects of Nature: the hostile
5 De poetarum Romanorum doctrine magica, 1904, pp. 145 f. He continues:
“Sed ne haec quidem intimam rerum magicarum scientiam redolent, quare in
Vergilio libenter concedo posse dubitari utrum res magicae haustae sint e vul-
gari magiae cognitione an descriptae adhibito auxilio nescio quo. Tamen
reliquos si spectamus auctores, in hanc sententiam inclinem.” Here Fahz cites
Norden (A en. V1,2 p. 199) on the inﬂuence of the Hellenistic Zauberliteratur
upon Vergil and other Augustan poets. Cf. also Reitzenstein, Die hellen. M ys-
terienreligionen, 1910, p. 12, on the work of Nigidius Figulus, as early as Cicero’s
time, in Hellenistic magic.
‘ The Dido Episode in the Aeneid, p. 23; cf. Nettleship, op. cit., p. 135;
Glover, op. cit., p. 133.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
shower, the threatening cliffs, the quivering shade. The same
tendency pervades the Georgics.7 In personiﬁcation expressed
by allegory the most prevalent ﬁgures are Fama, the description
of whom by Vergil has given rise to so many imitations, and
Fortuna, whose cult developed under the stress of the later
Roman republican days as did that of Tbxn in the Hellenistic
age. But, while the cult of Fortune was becoming steadily
more prominent under Augustus, in the Aeneid it is not the
Tbxn of “universal power,” that goddess whom Hellenistic
inﬂuence introduced indeed into Latin lyric poetry of the
Empire, but the Roman Fortuna popnli Romani who guides
the Trojans throughout their journeyings and their strife, from
the time when Aeneas “profugus fato” sets sail from Troy, to
the time when Turnus utters his last cry to his despairing sister:
iam iam fata, soror, superant; absiste morari;
quo deus et quo dura vocat Fortuna, sequamur.
How fundamentally the F ortuna of the Aeneid differs from the
Hellenistic Tbxn may be seen in Warde Fowler’s words: “For
Virgil, when Rome or Aeneas or even Evander his predecessor
and ally is in question, F ortuna is the same thing as Fate, or
Providence, or the will of Jupiter representing the Divine
government of the world, or the Destiny of the Stoics.”8
Amid the swaying current of destiny, when men were so
keenly conscious of success and failure, it is no marvel that
Godhead was attributed to the one who had achieved most and
had brought all under his control; or that Augustus, like the
Diadochi, willingly entertained this support, and consented to
receive homage in his own divinity, or as some one of the Gods
incarnate upon earth. He thus appears as Mercury, the
restorer of trade after the war, with Livia as Ceres, the bestower
of plenty.9 And if in Egypt the cult of the Pharaoh made
Godhead easier of attainment by the Diadochi, in Rome also
the uplifting of morality and the advancement of the State were
inextricably interwoven with the State religion, and he who
7 Liinzner, U eber Personiﬁcationen in Vergils Gedichten, 1876.
8 Hastings’ Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 1914, sub "000.; so Heinze,
op. cit., p. 293. Cf. Warde Fowler, Class. Review, XVII (1903), pp. 153; 445;
and Roman Ideas of Deity, 1914, p. 77.
9 Wissowa, op. cit., pp. 247 ii.
4:2 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
succeeded in helping the State toward a better and purer life
was easily identiﬁed with the Gods to whom the Romans looked
for such aid. The poets readily received this idea of a divinity
won by merit.10 In the Aeneid Jupiter promises, and Anchises
prophesies, a deiﬁcation of Caesar laden with Oriental spoil;
of Augustus, restorer of the Golden Age to Rome. Sellar
(Virgil, 1897, p. 16) cites in this connection Horace: Odes III,
3, 9; Epistles II, I, 5; and Aeneid VI, 801: “in all these passages
the idea implied is that, as great services to the human race
have in other times raised mortals from earth to heaven, so it
shall be with Augustus after the beneﬁcent labours of his life
are over.” He notes also: “these comparisons may be more
naturally referred to Roman “Euhemerism,” than to the sur-
vival of the spirit of hero-worship, which, although still active
in Greece, was a mode of feeling alien to the Roman imagina-
tion.” The belief in reward based on merit appealed, of course,
especially to the practical Roman.11 Aeneas, when he has
founded his great race, shall reap in like fashion his reward.
So declare the Penates:
idem venturos tollemus in astra nepotes
imperiumque urbi dabimus. Tu moenia magnis
magna para longumque fugae ne linque laborem.
Of Iulus Apollo declares:
macte nova virtute, puer: sic itur ad astra;
so Dardanus, and so Pandarus won immortality.
Few traces were left, then, of uncritical acquiescence in the
orthodox tenets of a former day. We ﬁnd here the same
rationalism that, already, in the decline of the Republic, had
1° But cf. Warde Fowler on the “apotheosis” passages of Vergil and Horace:
“You have only to examine them to see that they represent Augustus not as a
deity, but as having the germ of a deity in him, which may be developed at
his death; and that the farthest length they go is to assume proleptically in
imagination that this development has already taken place.” (Roman Ideas
of Deity, p. 126.)
11 “A great Roman governor often had the chance of thus helping humanity
on a vast scale and liked to think that such a life opened the way to heaven”:
Gilbert Murray, Four Stages of Greek Religion, 1912, pp. 139 f. Cf. Kiessling on
Horace’s portrayal of Augustus as divine giver of prosperity, Phil. Unters.
II (1881), p. 92, note.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
attracted so many to the teachings of Epicurus, against which
Poseidonius had endeavoured, contrary to older Stoic practice,
to encourage scientiﬁc research in support of the Stoic faith.12
Miracles need apology in this rationalistic age. Legrand has
remarked the little details which Theocritus adds to the story
of the strangling of the serpents by Heracles in order to make
a» Erthis story appear more probable—the age of the child, the hour
at which the deed was done, the light sent by Zeus. In similar
fashion Vergil treats marvels, as Heinze has shown in comparing
the miraculous healing of Hector by Apollo in the Iliad with
that of Aeneas at Venus’ hand; the latter is a marvel, but a
marvel naturally worked out. Vergilwibs halflauhaunefdbtglell
the wonderful transformation of The ships: and must support
his tale with reference to long-standing belief; so Apollonius, in
deference to the Pierides and as a concession to rumour, tells of
the bearing of the Argo over the Libyan sands. Neither his
oﬂice nor his holy life save Apollo’s priest, Panthus, from death,
just as augury cannot protect T urnus’ favourite, Rhamnes;
Palinurus would trust his own knowledge of seamanship before
the assurance of the king of Gods and men himself; in two
passages (XI, 118; XII, 538, 539) deus and dextra are used in
an almost parallel fashion. The Stoic ratio physica seems to
be reﬂected, as Heinze suggests, in the prayer of Nisus to Luna
in the ninth book; and in the bow of a thousand colours which
Iris, the glory of Heaven, traces across the sky. And yet, as
Reitzenstein points out,13 Stoic philosophy sought no quarrel
with Hellenistic religion, but rather sympathy: “with the rise
of monarchies we ﬁnd systematic attention paid for the ﬁrst
time to the religious feelings of the people in general, at all
times a necessary measure in Oriental politics. Stoic philosophy
adapted itself to this endeavour: gave to Apologetics a place
in literature, explained the Gods as ideas or powers of Nature,
and Myths in allegorical fashion. Thus, ﬁrst for the Greek,
and shortly after for Oriental religions, it succeeded in attaining
a tolerari posse, a proof, appealing to the intellect, that popular
belief and the scientiﬁc lore of the savant need not war one on
the other.”
12 See Schwartz, op. cit., I, pp. 93 ff.
13 Die hellen. M ysterienreligionen, pp. 3 f.
44 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
Other philosophical elements may easily be traced; the
prevalent intellectual debate arises in Nisus’ question:
sua cuique deus ﬁt dira cupido?
the eternal moral questioning in Sinon’s well-feigned scruples:
fas mihi Graiorum sacrata resolvere iura,
fas odisse viros, atque omnia ferre sub auras;
and in the question of Coroebus:
dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?
The joy of the Simple Life occurs again and again, now voiced
by the lips of Evander:
aude, hospes, contemnere opes et te quoque dignum
ﬁnge deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis;
now straight from the poet’s own heart:
nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae
et servare modum, rebus sublata secundis!
and now in the words of his hero:
quid non mortalia pectora cogis,
auri sacra fames . . .
Sychaeus is blind with love of gold, Oebalus in discontent with
his father’s estate oppresses other men, to the Golden Age
succeeds an age of evil hue, spoiled by the growing desire for
’ gain. Back to the life of harmony with Nature! So preached
the Hellenistic Stoics, so preached the Roman Stoicism reﬂected
; by Vergil here. And so we reach that vital doctrine of its
1‘ philosophy: submission to the will of Fate. Dis aliter visum
——says the poet of the death of righteous Rhipeus, and Nautes
thus consoles Aeneas:
nate dea, quo fata trahunt retrahuntque sequamur;
quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.14
Above all, the Aeneid reﬂects Hellenistic philosophy in its
emphasis upon the individual soul. Aeneas, against his will,
is drawn forward to his high adventure; so the Hellenistic
philosopher, so Vergil himself, found his happiness in drrpa'y-
uoabvn. The ﬁrst six books reveal the hero’s weaknesses, his
14 Reitzenstein, N eue Jahrb. XXI (1908), p. 82.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC LIFE AND LITERATURE
terror, his shrinking, his foolishness: as these traits are revealed
in every man whom his better self sends forward to achieve his
destiny. Through error, trial, and failure, he progresses, slowly
yet surely choosing ro 'n'pon'ypévov, the better thing, till with the
progress of the work he, too, progresses to conquest. Finally,
as the Sapiens was the hope of ordinary men in Hellenistic days,
as thinkers desired to see this hope fulﬁlled in Alexander; so
in Aeneas, the Philosopher-King, brought to his goal by Fate,
the guiding hand of God, through triumph over every hostile
force, lies the ﬁnal hope for all the race who shall draw from
him their common life.
CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
__A_
Contributing alike to Vergil’s thought and the form in
which he clothes it, is the art of the Aeneid, as Heinze and
Norden have traced it: “the constructive and architectural
power which was part of his own gift from nature, and which he
slowly developed through:unceasing study.”1 This art Vergil
owes in appreciable measure to Hellenistic ﬁneness of percep-
tion; for he adopted certain of the technical expedients of his
predecessors. Thus, for example, effects are heightened by the
employment of the principle of contrast. In Theocritus, also,
light is contrasted with shadow: realistic with heroic narrative
in the story of the infant Heracles, comedy with tragedy in the
Adoniaznsae. In Apollonius the secure joy of the Colchians in
possession of the ﬂeece and their hope of safe return are rudely
broken by terror at the anger of Zeus; the misery of the Syrtes
follows hard upon wedding joy; grief for Idmon and Tiphys
follows the mirth of the feast. The vision of Apollo at dawn,
the sight of the wretched Phineus, the attack of the bird of
Ares, fall with sudden joy, pity, and fear upon the heroes;
the stories of Medea, the earthborn men, the sons of Phrixus,
come suddenly before the readers.
Again, Carl Newell Jackson has remarked:2 “It is an essen-
tial feature of the Alexandrian school of poetry to allow one
literary form to encroach upon the province of another. Hence
the epyllion is éﬁﬁi‘be a complex of at least two different forms.
The twenty-ﬁfth poem of T heocritus, for instance, is really an
epic idyl within a pastoral setting. . . . The thirteenth idyl,
the episode of Heracles and Hylas, is an epyllion set in an elegiac
frame. . . . It remained, however, for the Latin poets, ambi-
tious to be original, to develop this idea of merging two forms
in one poem, or rather of setting one form within another.
In his sixty-fourth poem Catullus has put the lyric "lament of
1 Mackail, Lectures on Poetry, 1911, p. 55.
2 0p. cit., p. 42; cf. Mackail, Lectures on Greek Poetry, 1910, p. 252.
46
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
Ariadne, descriptive entirely, within a piepgoi ure narrative,
that “is, a romantic “within an epyllion “almost hem,
to boot, following the heroic epyllion an epithalamium which is
essentially a variation of the elggggggenus. The Aristaeus
episode in the fourth book of the Georgics follows a somewhat
similar arrangement, in that the lament of Orpheus is preceded
and followed by the Aristaeus epyllion. The author of the
Ciris outdid all his fellow-poets by combining epic, lyric, and
dramatic elements, and then adding to the mixture a bit of
didactic verse, and closing this effort with a metamorphosis, a
form distinct in itself. Finally in the Culex, the epyllion lies
side by side with the pastoral. None of these poets, it would
seem, had learned the Theocritean or the Virgilian art (as it
appears in the Aeneid) of weaving these separate threads into
a single texture. The step from epic to lyric, or epic to pastoral,
or epic to elegy is too abrupt, with the result that unity of effect
is destroyed.” I would note in the Aeneid the maturing of the
art of that same poet of the C iris and the Culex. The ninth book
of the Aeneid might be taken as an example of Vergil’s skilled
mingling of the various threads in his artistic web. Here we ﬁnd
the didactic element, illustrated in the description of the sluggish
Ganges with seven mouths, the psychological question as to
whence comes fell desire, the frigid derivation of the name
Albani; the lyric element inspires the poet’s memorial to
the fallen heroes and the cry of the mother over her son;
the dramatic instinct is responsible for the exciting story of the
capture in the moonlight which ﬁlters through the darkness of
the wood.
Another detail of technique seen in the Aeneid, the artistic
introduction of ecphrasis, is rightly referred by Heinze to Hellen-
istic precedent. T heocritus’ description of the bowl arouses the
desire of Thyrsis to sing, and the erotic and rustic characters
described are entirely in keeping with the shepherd’s life; Mos-
chus in the story of Europa chose well to inscribe on his bowl
the fate of Io; the mantle of Jason is described in order to
enhance Hypsipyle’s desire, and Apollonius was careful to show
Phrixus and the ﬂeece in the embroideries thereon. The inﬂu-
ence of ecphrasis upon descriptive narrative is interesting; the
expressions at parte ex alia . . . alia parte . . . dioersa in
parte in literary descriptions of life point to this model, and one
48 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
Wonders if literary contrast was furthered by the scenes con-
trasted in Hellenistic embroideries and paintings. How strong
this inﬂuence was in Latin poetry is shown both in actual de-
scription and by the words of the youthful Vergil, who would
gladly weave a philosophic song to Messalla’s glory as tapestries
wove the fame of heroes and gods.
In this ecphrasis we trace one of the most prominent details
of Vergil’s form: concentration, due partly to Callimachus,
partly, as Heinze remar s, to the practical requirements of
recitation. Vergil, like Apollonius, begins quickly or passes
suddenly from the heroic to the erotic sphere; the abrupt transi-
tions in minor details, the parenthetic remarks, and the neat
prplerbial sayingsvpithe Aeneid point two__t_he___A_le_x_andrians arid
the Latin hweoﬁt'eri school. Traces of the Hellenistic epigram
can at times also be found; as in the address of the living to the
dead, Caieta and Palinurus (VII, I—4; V, 870—871), in the words
of the spirit of Creusa to the living Aeneas (II, 788-789), in the
admonition of the thrifty host Evander to his guest Aeneas
(VIII, 364-365).
The neoterics, in following this standard of brevity, made
their work consist of a number of loosely connected scenes.
Catullus, in the Peleus and T hetis, turns an artistic ﬁlm before
us: the voyage of the Argonauts: the preparations for the mar-
riage: the story of Ariadne: the description of the guests: the
song of the Parcae—-combine to form what has well been called
a “mosaic,” linked by short connecting passages. The Culex
consists of three distinct pictures: the shepherd’s noon-day rest
amid his ﬂocks: the shepherd’s rescue: the description of Hades.
Each could be recited separately with few alterations. The
Ciris can be broken up into scenes without diﬂiculty; the M ore-
turn and the Copa are examples of the narrative with one picture
drawn in detail. When Vergil wrote the Aeneid he had learned
how to combine pictures into a progressive climax, as Heinze
points out in his section on the second book; scene follows scene,
not in loosely connected sequence, but in ever-increasing ten-
sion of excitement. The narrative is linked by the fact that one
person, an onlooker and participator, tells all the parts. Guided
by him, we come from without the city to within its gates;
from the house of Anchises, remote and withdrawn, into the
rush of the highways; from the centre of the city to the inner-
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
most penetralia of the royal palace, where interest culminates
in the death of Priam amid the ruins of his rule. So the Aeneid
itself follows the fate of its hero from utter despair through
the stages of increasing hope till it ends in the overthrow of his
last enemy. Vergil’s dramatic instinct is at work here. A
simpler instance of working to a climax is noted by Heinze in
Book IX, 569-574:3
Ilioneus saxo atque ingenti fragmine montis
Lucetium, portae subeuntem ignisque ferentem,
Emathiona Liger, Corynaeum sternit Asilas,
hic iaculo bonus, hic longe fallente sagitta;
Ortygium Caeneus, victorem Caenea Turnus,
Turnus Ityn Cloniumque, Dioxippum Promolumque . . .
Heinze remarks, with regard to this passage, that “the Hellenis-
tic poets certainly followed this principle (i.e., of increasing
concentration for effect) in their longer lists” (of details of
names); and compares this tendency as seen in Tibullus’
description of life in the Golden Age (I, 3, 37 ft):
nondum caeruleas pinns contempserat undas,
eﬁusum ventis praebueratque sinum,
nec vagus ignotis repetens compendia terris
presserat extema naoita merce ratem.
illo non validus subiit iuga tempore taurus,
non domito frenos ore momdrdit eqnns,
non domns ulla fores habuit, non ﬁxus in agris
qui regeret certis ﬁnibus arva lapis.
ipsae mella dabant qnercns, ultroque ferebant
obvia securis ubera lactis oves.
non acies, non ira fuit, non bella, nec ensem
immiti saevus duxerat arte faber.
nunc Iove sub domino caedes et vulnera semper,
nunc mare, nunc leti mille repente viae.
In like manner Apollonius writes with growing complexity
(I, 1043 ft):
airrdp ebppeMns Tekapcbv Bao'ih'ja Ka'réx'ra.
"Ibas (Tab Hpopéa, Khvrios 6' ‘Ténwﬁov Z'rreqM/ev,
mapibal. 5'&p.¢w Me'yakoo'ab-Kea <I>Xoyu5v ‘re.


In Heinze’s book on Vergil there is, moreover, a suggestion
that part of Vergil’s artistic technique might possibly have been
3 Epische T echnila,3 1915, p. 220, and note 2.
0 ‘9'0
5
a’.
i§‘.‘.
b‘.
'
.,,.‘.e
50 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID
stimulated by study of the style of historical narrative, as the
Hellenistic historians wrote it. Further light is thrown on this
art of narration by the critics Polybius, Dionysius of Halicar-
nassus, Diodorus,and Cicero. Now no one can prove that
Vergil owed anything of his technique to the study of Hellenis—
tic historiography; but because there is a certain similarity of
art in the two cases, I think it worth while to describe brieﬂy
here something of the writings of Scheller and Schneider, who
have studied this question in detail.‘
Many of the precepts of the Greek or Latin critics may at
once be excluded: the choosing of a noble subject, the aim at a
well knit unity of action, the search for variety in subject mat-
ter, the symmetrical treatment of the diﬂerent parts, the
avoidance of wearisome digression, may all be safely credited
to the poet’s own artistic sense. The position of the historian
as teacher and, by example deftly pointed, as preacher, is
strongly marked in these Hellenistic writers. History for them
has a moral (usually, it is true, a politically-moral) aim; whence
spring the landationes and oituperationes which formed so impor-
tant a part of their technical apparatus. Diodorus thus con-
ﬁdes to us his policy:5 “Having, throughout the whole work,
used the common and accustomed liberty of an historian, we
have both praised the good, and condemned the bad, as they
have fallen in our way, to the end that those whose genius and
inclination prompts them to virtue may be the more encouraged
to noble actions, in hopes of having the glory of their names
continued to all succeeding generations; and, on the other hand,
that they who are bent to wickedness may be curbed and
restrained from the heat, at least, of their implety, by those
marks of dishonour and disgrace ﬁxed upon them” (preface
to XV). Polybius repeatedly avows a similar motive: “Of
King Attalus, who now died, I think I ought to speak a suitable
word, as I have done in the case of others. . . . This king’s
greatness of mind therefore deserves our admiration, be-
cause . . . ” (XVIII, 41). “This event conveys many useful
lessons to a thoughtful observer. Above all, the disaster of
."0‘
r’ .
4 See Heinze, ibid., p. 471, and note 1, for bibliography.
5 The translations used in this section are: for Diodorus, that of Booth,
1814; for Polybius, that of Shuckburgh, 1889; for Dionysius, that of Rhys
Roberts, 1901.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE 51
Regulus gives the clearest possible warning that no one should
feel too conﬁdent of the favours of Fortune, especially in the
hour of success—I record these things in the hope of beneﬁting
my readers” (I, 35). “No nobler action has ever been, or ever
will be performed; none to which an historian could better draw
his reader’s attention—But of all this Phylarchus says not a
word, being, as it seems to me, entirely blind as to all that is
noblest and best suited to be the theme of an historian” (II, 61).
Dionysius in his Antiquitates puts forward a similar aim:
6v 5é rporrozl a Aapmos éxpho'a'ro rois 1rpd'yuao't, 5ucra'rwp upébros
arrotleixﬁeis, Ital‘. KéO'MOV oiov 'n'eptéﬁnxe 'rﬁ apxﬁ, avv'ropws 7l'GLpéo'0/JGL
5tegehﬂe'iv, rai‘rra ﬁ’yob/zevos eiz/at Xpnomcbrara rois ava'yvwo'ouévots,
c'i 1r0)\7\1‘7v el'nropiav 1rapé£ec KaM‘w Kai avpqbepov'rwv 'n'apaiewuarwv
vojuoﬂérats re Kai 517ua'yw'yois . . . (V. 75). And Cicero Carries on
the tradition: cum et reprehendes ea, quae vituperanda duces,
et quae placebunt exponendis rationibus comprobabis (ad
Fain. V, 12, 4).6
In order to point his moral intelligently and forcibly, the
historian must study the origin and motive of the incidents
he recordsz—“What is really educational and beneﬁcial to
students of history is the clear view of the causes of events”—
(Polyb. VI, I); and the personality of his actors: “It is strangely
inconsistent in historians . . . to pass over in complete
silence the characteristics and aims of the men by whom the
whole thing was done, though these in fact are the points of the
greatest value. . . . For . . . one feels more roused to emula-
tion and imitation by men that have life, than by buildings
that have none . . .” (X, 21). Livy, in his Preface, shows a
similar aim; and it is conceivable that Vergil, too, was stimu-
lated from this direction by the general Hellenistic desire of
probing into causes, motives, and character.
Parallel with the moral aim of the Hellenistic historian runs
the hedonistic: the desire to please and attract. The strength
of the belief in the value of this policy is best seen in Polybius.
Though the most sober of historians he yet declares: “Those
who are engaged on representing anything either to eye or ear
can have only two objects to aim at—pleasure and proﬁt”
(XV, 36). “Either to eye or ear”—this implies the évap'yeta, the
6 See Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Wundererza'hlungen, 1906, pp. 84 ﬁ.
52 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
eoidentia, the graphic representation based on imitation—-
planets—Of the living actor. This évo'tp'yeta, above all, the
Hellenistic writer longs to attain that he may stir the emotion
of his readers. Dionysius calls it “the ﬁrst of the extraneous
excellences” of an historian (ad Pomp. III): and well sums up
its theory in his Antiquitates: r‘jierat 'yap i7 (Sula/ow. wavros civOpénrou
xeipa'yw'yovuévr) (Sta 're'bv Ni'ywv érri 'ra iip'ya, Kat m) uévov axoz'lovo'a
rc'bv >\€’YO[.téVO.W, 600x01 Kat rd. uparrépeva opc'baa (XI, 1, 25 if).
Admiration, anger, sympathy, are to be called forth, if the
historian fulﬁl his work aright: Polybius strives ‘tua m) uéz/ov
eﬁrrapaxohobdnros, and Kat Kararrhmcrmr) 'yivnrat rois 1rpoo'éxovo'w
1'7 (iuh'yrjats (IV, 28): “without knowing these” (i.e., the causes
of catastrophes) he declares “it is impossible to feel the due indig-
nation or pity at anything which occurs” (II, 56). Personal
touches are to enhance the effect: “those who have gone through
no such course of actual experience produce no genuine enthusi-
asm in the minds of their readers” (XII, 25, h); marvellous tales
of descriptions of the vagaries of Fortune may stimulate the
reader’s interest. “I thought it, therefore,” says Polybius,
“distinctly my duty neither to pass by myself, nor allow any one
else to pass by, without full study, a characteristic specimen of
the dealings of Fortune at once brilliant and instructive in
the highest degree. For fruitful as Fortune is in change, and
constantly as she is producing dramas in the life of men, yet
never assuredly before this did she work such a marvel, or
act such a drama, as that which we have witnessed” (I, 4).
We remember Cicero’s similar words: nihil est enim aptius ad
delectationem lectoris quam temporum varietates fortunaeque
vicissitudines (ad Fem. V, 12, 4). History, in short, may
become a drama: habet enim varios actus mutationesque et
consiliorum et temporum; in which the varying fortunes of the
hero are to carry our hearts through the whole gamut of emo-
tion: saepe excellentis ancipites variique casus habent
admirationem, expectationem, laetitiam, molestiam, spem,
timorem: si vero exitu notabili concluduntur, expletur animus
iucundissima lectionis voluptate.
Such is the canon laid down for the Hellenistic historiog-
rapher, and its roots lie in the spirit of the Hellenistic life.
Around the basic idea of Personality are grouped the laudationes,
the vituperationes which shall give practical aid to men in
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
furthering their ends, the vivid pictures of the changing for-
tunes of conspicuous characters, the portrayal of magniﬁcence
and marvel which shall awake wonder, of suffering and kindness
which shall arouse sympathy and love. No less self-conscious
than the Hellenistic poet is the historian in whose power lie
the characters of the men he describes, and the hearts of the
readers he instructs and moves to feeling at his will.
The sources of these precepts lie in the movements started
by Isocrates and Aristotle. To Xenophon and Isocrates, as
Leo has noted, is due the introduction of the biographical
epilogue, which was to be found afterward in the work of
Ephorus and Theopompus. It sprang partly from the personal
interest in his subject natural to an orator, partly from the
interest in personality remarked above. The theory, as Heinze
and Scheller point out, that history must exert a moral inﬂuence
on its readers, can be traced to Isocrates.7 Oratorical training
is revealed also in the care with which Ephorus and Theopom-
pus, in obedience to their master, strove to vary their historical
work by digressions—rrapexﬂémas—that their readers might be
duly entertained. The practices of the epideictic school of
oratory and of those historiographers inﬂuenced by it are well
described by Cicero—Orator 19, 65; sophistarum, de quibus
supra dixi, magis distinguenda similitudo videtur, qui omnes
eosdem volunt ﬂores quos adhibet orator in causis persequi.
Sed hoc diﬁerunt quod, cum sit eis propositum non perturbare
animos, sed placare potius, nec tam persuadere quam delectare,
et apertius id faciunt quam nos et crebrius, concinnas magis
sententias exquirunt quam probabilis, a re saepe discedunt,
intexunt fabulas, verba altius transferunt eaque ita disponunt
ut pictores varietatem colorum, paria paribus referunt, adversa
contrariis, saepissimeque 'aimiliter extrema deﬁniunt. Huic
generi historia ﬁnitima est, in qua et narratur ornate et regio
saepe aut pugna describitur; interponuntur etiam contiones et
hortationes, sed in his tracta quaedam et ﬂuens expetitur, non
haec contorta et acris oratio. . . . From the orator, Isocrates,
then, springs a school of historiography that seeks the pleasure
of its public.8 Aristotle, on the other hand, starts the quest of
7 Heinze, op. cit., pp. 475 f.
8 Wachsmuth, U eber Ziele and M ethoden der griech. Gesch. schreibnng,
1897, p. 15 f.
54 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
the individual after knowledge, ﬁrst of science, then of the
history of science and of scientiﬁc men; hence arises a like
interest in men and manners springing from an absolutely
different source from that of Isocrates’ school, the desire to
learn the truth rather than the desire to please. Leo cites the
story of Peisistratus and the labourer, and the characterization
of Peisistratus and his deeds in the IIoMreta ’A6nvalwv as fore-
shadowing the biographical eioosz a student of Aristotle,
Aristoxenus, introduced the literary biographies—Biot—which
inﬂuenced so strongly peripatetic historiography. From
Aristotle, as Leo notes, sprang the method which told the
1rpdEeLs of an individual and allowed the i’jﬂos which characterized
him to be inferred from them. As Aristotle prescribed—
1179a18—ro 5’c’0u70és év 'ro'Zs 'n'parcro'is éK rc'bv iép'ywv Kai rot‘) Biov
rcpive'rat' év roi'lrots 'ydp To la'zpwv—, so Theophrastus Wrote his
Characters, and so wrote the post-Aristotelian historians, in
distinction from the Alexandrian, from Polybius, and from
Suetonius, who deﬁnitely describe the ijﬂos of their individual
men.
Yet Aristotle was the rhetorician no less than the student of
science; and to this fact is due the ultimate reconciliation
between the schools of Aristotle and Isocrates in the headlong
pursuit of \lvxaywyta, as embodied in the writing of the peripa-
tetic Duris and of Phylarchus. The arousing of emotions in the
heart of the spectator is the fundamental principle of the Poetics;
évépyeta, juimycns, the working of Fortune in the 71'6pL7t'éT6La,
the calculated effect of re rz'apo't6osov, the due care that the
Mfrs, éc‘w fj naﬂn'ruo'y 're Kai iyﬂun), shall represent 'rc) 1rpé1rov, either
of circumstance, age, or sex—all these are, as everyone knows,
prescribed in Aristotle’s theories of art.
If we turn now from the theory of these critics to the practice
of the Hellenistic historiographers, we may discover traces of
the principle prodesse et delectare even amid the scanty frag-
ments of their writings. Concrete examples of vice and virtue
appear in the work of Ephorus-Diodorus. ’Eyxd>,uwv and
Il/é'yos are found in Theopompus, the follower of Isocrates (Polyb.
VIII, 11 f.), who wrote a Philippi Laudatio, and yet is
vehemently upbraided by Polybius for his unrestrained vituper-
atio Philippi in the forty-ninth book of the Philippica; he also
wrote a De Pietate, and told in the Philippica of extravagant
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
living and its hapless end. Phylarchus praises Cleomenes:
'rm'i'ra new ﬁu'iv E51'7Awo'e (<I>I'))\apxos), Bovhouevos brro5e'igat 'm‘jv Kheop—
évovs jue'yahozl/vxiav Kai ue'rpco'rn'ra 1rpos robs noheuiovs (Polyb. II, 61);
he describes the drunkenness of the Byzantii (Fr. 10), and of the
Colophonii (Fr. 62), and the reverent absence of wine from the
oblations of the worshippers of the Sun (Fr. 24). Philochorus
warns his readers in vino 'veritas (Fr. 20) ; Clearchus in his Lives
tells of the degeneration of the Tarentines from indulgence to
open sin, and the ensuing punishment sent by the wrath of the
gods (Fr. 9; cf. Fr. 10). Trogus, whose Hellenistic characteris-
tics Schneider has pointed out in detail, affords us an excellent
example of this tendency. He examines the 1rpoaipecns—princi-
ple of conduct or life: the bravery of Lysimachus (XV, 3), the
temperance of Hannibal, which brought its own reward
(XXXII, 4, 10 ﬂ.): as the vice of Ptolemy Philopator ended
in disaster (XXX, I): spoliassetque regno Antiochum, si
fortunam virtute iuvisset. Sed . . . (here follows the descrip-
tion of his wickedness, and the moral): haec primo laborantis
regiae tacita pestis et occulta mala fuere. Similarly, the ﬂight
of Ptolemy Philometor is directly traced to his sloth and
over-indulgence of sensual appetite (XXXIV, 2, 7 f.). The
comparison, in point of morals, between man and man—or
between nation and nation—received its impulse from Poseidon-
ius, was fostered by Panaetius and Polybius, and came to
maturity in Nepos, Cicero, and Plutarch. That the reader’s
moral and mental horizon may be widened, descriptions of the
customs of various peoples are frequently introduced: of the
Sybarites by T imaeus (Fr. 60); of the Scythians, of Sicily, of the
Macedonians, of Spain, by Trogus. Poseidonius, especially,
delighted in pursuing investigations touching the history of
countries and peoples; later on appeared the monographs of
Caesar and Tacitus. Historians proper wrote separate treatises
of this kind—as Philochorus’ books on ritual observances, and
Duris’ De moribus et institutis. Akin to all this examination into
motive and custom is the aetiological element. Timaeus
discusses the philological meaning of Sardonic laughter; Phy-
larchus, that of Bosphorus and of Serapis; Philochorus, that
of Areopagus and of sundry other words. Duris shows the
same tendency (Fragg. 16, 25, 34); Schneider points out abun-
dant instances in Trogus. Parallel with the curiosity as to names
56 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
is the zeal for interpreting the motives of men. The study of
motives revealed in Diodorus XIX—XX may well be derived
from Duris. Trogus prefers to dwell on the events that precede
war rather than to give military details; Sempronius Asellio
(Gell. N. A. V, 18, 8 f.) declares that, in distinction from the
older Roman annalists, who were content to write dry records of
history: nobis non modo satis esse video, quod factum esset,
id pronuntiare, sed etiam, quo consilio quaque ratione gesta
essent, demonstrare. Then follows explicitly the moral motive:
nam neque alacriores ad rem p. defendundam, neque segniores
ad rem perperam faciundam annales libri commovere quicquam
possunt. scribere autem bellum initum quo consule et quo
confectum sit et quis triumphans introierit ex eo et eo libro
quae in bello gesta sint non praedicare aut interea quid senatus
decreverit aut quae lex rogatiove lata sit neque quibus consiliis
ea gesta sint iterare: id fabulas pueris est narrare, non historias
scribere. I think here we may fairly see Hellenistic inﬂuence.
At times the historian comes forward in his own person to point
the moral: the Lydians, Trogus declares, owed their fall to
their own lack of discipline (1, 7, 13); the failure of Dionysius’
attack on the men of Croton is pointed with the remark: tan-
tum virtutis paupertas adversum insolentes divitias habet—
(XX, 5, 3); fear of the gods kept the king of Phrygia more
safely than force of arms (XI, 7, 14). To this we may add the
use of the story for the purpose of instruction, as it is employed
in Euhemerus’ phantasy to declare the author’s views on
the gods and on an ideal government.9
More interesting than the moral tendency, is the desire of
these men to attract, and to excite the emotions of their readers.
On the milder side, descriptions of wedding-feasts, calculated to
give a pleasure like that produced by society records of modern
times, formed already part of the history of Alexander’s court
(as in Chares: Geier, pp. 302 ff., Fragg. 16, 17). But, further,
in these historians, scenes of horror are related, and stories of
barbarous cruelty given in detail. Plutarch accuses Duris of
exaggeration for “tragic” effect in his narrative of the surrender
of the Samians to Pericles (Per. 28, trans. Perrin): “To these
9 Raymond de Block, Euhémére, Son liore et sa doctrine, 1876, pp. 55f.
So Hecataeus teaches the “Ideale seiner Zeit” under the guise of Egyptian his—
tory: Wendland, Hellen.-R5m. Kultur,2 1912, pp. 116 f.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE 57
details Duris the Samian adds stuff for tragedy, accusing the
Athenians and Pericles of great brutality, which is recorded
neither by Thucydides nor Ephorus nor Aristotle. But he
appears not to speak the truth when he says, forsooth, that
Pericles had the Samian trierarchs and marines brought into
the market-place of Miletus and cruciﬁed there, and that then,
when they had already suffered grievously for ten days, he gave
orders to break their heads in with clubs and make an end of
them, and then cast their bodies forth without burial rites.
At all events, since it is not the wont of Duris, even in Cases
where he has no private and personal interest, to hold his
narrative down to the fundamental truth, it is all the more
likely that here, in this instance, he has given a dreadful por-
trayal of the calamities of his country, that he might calumniate
the Athenians.” If, as is most probable, Diodorus drew upon
Duris for his history of Agathocles in Books XIX—XXI, we can
see clear indications of Duris’ appetite for gruesome story and
dramatic detail. We may compare with the above quotation
the criticism of Polybius on Phylarchus’ description of the
sufferings of the Mantineans (II, 56): “It was his” (i.e., Phy-
larchus’) “object to bring into prominence the cruelty of
Antigonus and the Macedonians, as well as that of Aratus and
the Achaeans; and he accordingly asserts that, when Mantinea
fell into their hands, it was cruelly treated; and that the most
ancient and important of all the Arcadian towns was involved in
calamities so terrible as to move all Greece to horror and tears.
And being eager to stir the hearts of his readers to pity, and to
enlist their sympathies by his story, he talks of women embrac-
ing, tearing their‘hair, and exposing their breasts; and again
of the tears and lamentations of men and women, led off into
captivity along with their children and aged parents.” Plu-
tarch makes a similar statement (Them. XXXII, trans. Perrin)
with regard to the body of Themistocles—“and Phylarchus, too,
when, as if in a tragedy, he all but erects a theatrical machine
for this story, and brings into the action a Certain Neocles,
forsooth, and Demopolis, sons of Themistocles, wishes merely
to stir up tumultuous emotion; his tale even an ordinary person
must know is fabricated.” The fragments themselves show
evidence of pathetic tales: in Phylarchus, that of the heroic
Danae, dying to save him she loved (Fr. 23): of the dreadful
58 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE 0N THE AENEID
death of Aristomachus, tyrant of the Argives (Fr. 52) ; in Tima-
eus, the fate of Dido (Fr. 23).
Of equal importance in this connection are love-tales.
Four of the stories of Parthenius’ Erotica (15, 23, 25, 31) are
attributed by Miller to Phylarchus, though only one of these
is assigned by him to the Histories.10 Timaeus affords one
story (Par. Erot. 29). Seven of the fragments of Duris deal with
matters of love or sex (F rs. 2, 3, 19, 27, 35, 42, 63); he attributes
the punishment of Prometheus to his love for Athene (Fr. 19),
and the Samian and Peloponnesian Wars to Aspasia (Fr. 58).
Yet another natural means of arousing emotion lies in the
introduction of the marvellous. As we have noted before,
mpaaoge and rnirabilia were the passion of the Hellenistic Age;
76 5e ﬂavyao'rov n56‘ onue'iov Bé, aria/res 'yo‘tp rrpocr'rlﬂévres c’mra'y'yéh—
hovo'w tbs Xaptj‘épevoau Cicero speaks of the “innumerable
fables” of T heopompus (de legg. I, I, 5), whose stories earned
the name of T haurnasia—“Book of Wonder.” Strabo (ch.
814) accuses Callisthenes—rrpoarpa'ycp6e'i 6% mirrors—101' his tale of
portent; Polybius (XII, 24) notes Timaeus’ propensity for
marvels: “In attacking others he shows great acuteness and
boldness; when he comes to independent narrative, he is full
of dreams, miracles, incredible myths—in a word, of miserable
superstition and old wives’ tales”; compare his history of
Diomedes (Fr. 13), and his tales of the miracle of the river’s
healing power (Fr. 15), of the kindly cicada (Fragg. 64, 65).
Megasthenes is full of the marvels of India; and his presentation
of them is strongly condemned by Strabo: 5ta¢epévrws sam-
reiz/ 615L011 Amndxcp re Kai MG'YQO'HéVGL. oi‘irot 'yép eio'w oi robs ’Evwro-
noiras Kai robs ’Ao'rc'>,uovs Kai "Appwas io'ropoi‘w'res, MovoqSﬂéth/aovs 're
Kai Marcpoaxehe'is Kai ’Orrrrr605arcrl'))\ovs' (ch. 70). Duris falls under
the like condemnation from Didymus (on Dem. col. 12, 50):
@561. 'yap abrov Kc’wraiiﬂa 'repa'ra'toeaﬂatt the fragments Of Phylar-
chus’ work contain stories of marvel after marvel. So Theopom-
pus in his narrative of the Meropes; so Euhemerus, Iambulus,
and Hecataeus all added a touch of romance and a wealth of
imaginary detail in their description of far-off lands; Antigonus,
Myrsilus, Philostephanus and others wrote Wonderbooks.
Dreams, oracles, portents were found recorded side by side
1° Cf. Rohde, Gr. R. p. 55.
11 Aristotle, A. P., 1460a.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
with accounts of physical phenomena; even the history of
Hannibal is embellished with dreams and nightly visions of the
god.
Lastly, the Hellenistic historians delight in dramatic scenes.
Duris, whose interest in the stage is shown by his works on .
tragic writers and tragedy, announces in his ﬁrst book: "EqSopos
5e Kai Oeorrouiros r5611 'yevojuévwv irhe'io'rov arreheiqﬁﬂno'av' oii're yap
mur'jaews ,ue'réhaﬁozl outleutfis oi'rre ﬁrlovﬁs év n25 ¢paaat, aim-00 5é Tofi
'ypagbew ,uovov érrejuehﬁﬂnaav . . . Mi/mo'ts, then, graphic imitation
of life, is his object. Therefore he pictures vividly in his His-
tories the appearance or dress of his people; no fewer than nine
fragments deal with this. The story of the triumphant return
of Alcibiades from exile gives a good instance of Duris’ method
(Plut. Alc. 32, trans. Perrin): “Duris the Samian, who claims
that he was a descendant of Alcibiades, gives some additional
details. He says that the oarsmen of Alcibiades rowed to the
music of a ﬂute blown by Chrysogonus the Pythian victor;
that they kept time to a rhythmic call from the lips of Callip-
ides, the tragic actor; that both these artists were arrayed in
the long tunics, ﬂowing robes, and other adornment of their
profession; and that the commander’s ship put into harbours
with a sail of purple hue, as though, after a drinking bout, he
were off on a revel. But neither Theopompus, nor Ephorus,
nor Xenophon mentions these things, nor is it likely that
Alcibiades put on such airs for the Athenians, to whom he was
returning after he had suffered exile and many great adversities.”
Xenophon does not relate these details. Anecdotes, little
touches which reveal personal character, appear in the frag-
ments of the work of Duris (4, 14, 22); quotation of actual
sayings in those of Phylarchus (8, 18, 40a).12
Tragic technique on Hellenistic lines is pointed out by
Schneider in Pompeius Trogus. "EmrMérs is aroused by 76
12 Lauckner, Die Kilnst und polit. Ziele d. M onographie Sallusts uber d.
Jug. Krieg, 1911, pp. 59 ff., sees in Plutarch’s Life of Cleomenes a good example
of Phylarchus’ dramatic technique of this kind. Cf. R. Schubert, Die Quellen
Plutarchs, J ahrb. fur kl. Phil, Supp. Bd., IX (1878), pp. 709 it, who suspects
the hand of Duris in the Life of Demetrius. Schwartz also remarks the vivid
painting,“of which no modern historical novel need be ashamed,” of Phylarchus,
in the Life of Cleomenes (Fiinf Vortrdge itber den griech. Roman, 1896, pp.
114 if).
6O HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
W065“, as in the narrative of Lysimachus’ achievements
(XV, 3), of the career of Agathocles (XXII, 1 f.), and of Mithri-
dates (XXXVII, 2); by ‘TÖ émraﬂés, pictured in such pitiful
stories as we have seen; by To 7rap‘ä7\o'yov, the unexpected, such
as the passage in XXVII, 2: Post discessum Ptolomvei Seleucus
cum adversus civitates, quae defecerant, ingentem classem
conparasset, repente velut diis ipsis parricidium vindicantibus
orta tempestate classem naufragio amittit; nec quicquam illi
ex tanto adparatu praeter nudum corpus et spiritum et paucos
naufragii comites residuos fortuna fecit. Misera quidem res,
sed optanda Seleuco fuit; siquidem civitates, quae odio eius
ad Ptolomeum transierant, velut diis arbitris satis factum sibi
esset, repentina animorum mutatione in naufragi misericordiam
versae imperio se eius restituunt. Other examples of wepmé'reta
are the fate of Arsinoé’s sons in the midst of her marriage
festivities (XXIV, 3), where we notice the poetical detail:
Pro ﬁliis saepe se percussoribus obtulit, frequenter corpore suo
puerorum corpora amplexata protexit vulneraque excipere,
quae liberis intendebantur, voluit. Ad postremum etiam
spoliata funeribus filiorum scissa veste et crinibus sparsis cum
duobus servulis ex urbe protracta Samothraciam in exilium
abiit, eo miserior, quod mori ei cum ﬁliis non licuit; and the
change of fortune of Lysimachus, consequent upon his murder
of Agathocles: Haec illi prima mali labes, hoc initium inpen-
dentis ruinae fuit (XVII, 1). This careful noting of cause and
effect Trogus shares with Livy and Vergil.
To the reader, then, who compares these notes with the
detailed description given by Heinze of Vergil’s workmanship,
it might appear not impossible that the natural genius of the
eager student, not only of men but of their ways and of their
artistic devices for portraying life and manners, was streng-
thened by ﬁnding either directly or through the agency of the
later Roman Annalists,13 an aim and method similar to his own.
The Aenez'd, as Heinze shows by exhaustive detail, is a story of
mental and spiritual struggle; its hero is an example to other
men who are striving to fulﬁl their moral destiny. Moral
13 See Zarncke, Der Einﬂuss der grz'eck. Lit. aufdz'e Entwicklung der rb'm. Prosa:
Comm. Rz'bbeckz'anae, 1888, p. 316. For traces of a technique in Livy somewhat
similar to that of Vergil see Witte, U eber die Form der Darstellung in Livius’
Geschichtswerk, Rh. M us., LXV (1910), pp. 283 ff.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
faitoWrnal accident, decide the day; mock
contests and real battles am strengTF of mind—ind will,
liveqsmare lost in failure resulting from motives of fcﬂly. Each
character—‘and Vergil tries to concentrate on a few that these
may live more really—is brought home to the reader’s heart by
his acts, and his speeches; Vergil, like Livy,“ followed this
indirect method of characterization as more dramatic and eﬁec-
tive. N 0 man is wholly good at the start: Aeneas ﬁghts his way
,to perfection; no man is wholly bad: Mezentius loves his son;
\ Latinus, for all his cowardice, will not break his plighted word.
2 And that Vergil may win his reader, he pictures all emotions
common to man: terror, surprise, wonder, pity, reverence,
lyawe, gratitude, love. Hépl'il'é'féw. falls to all the more noble
'lcharacters, that we may grieve over the fate that follows upon
happiness, a fate the more pathetic if it is the outcome of weak-
ness of some sort: the fate that overtakes Priam and the
Trojans in Troy, Aeneas in Latium, and Nisus and Euryalus
on the battle-ﬁeld. The narrative from beginning to end is
steeped in the life given by the touch of colour; physical details
of dress, of habit, of surrounding, spiritual details of mood and
temperament, form the évdp'yeta. which enlivens the picture. At
least we may say that that same spirit which animated the
followers of Aristotle is seen in its height in Vergil—to work
without stint that his story may be a living whole.


. -——B——
When Vergil, as every one knows, spent his day polishing
and repolishing a few lines of verse, we are not to imagine that
he called to his aid any handbook or textbook of Hellenistic
poetry. He worked according to his own sense of what read
and sounded well. But there is no doubt that his sense had been
most carefully trained; the impatience with which he throws
away rhetoric in the ﬁfth poem of the Catalepton, as he after-
wards rejects Alexandrian mythology in the beginning of the
third Georgie,15 shows how thorough and how general was the
education in these subjects.
14 Stimulated, very probably, by the Roman Annalists: Bruns, Die Pers'o'n-
lichkeit in der Gesch. schreib-ung der Alten, 1898, pp. 63 ff.
15 See Wight Duﬁ, Literary History of Rome, 1909, p. 450.
62 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE oN THE AENEID _


It is, however, very rash to select instances from the Aeneid
(other than verbal imitations) and assert that they were deﬁn-
itely modelled after Hellenistic poetry or rhetoric; the most, I
think, we can say is that Vergil’s training had made him highly
conscious of the possibilities of artistic diction, and that pic-
torial turns of narrative (which do occur in older Greek prose
of this training, to adorn his story. For instance: Demetrius,
whoever he was (according to Rhys Roberts, not Demetrius
of Phalerum, but a writer, very possibly, of the ﬁrst century of
our era), drew up a manual De elocntione,16 containing examples
of rhetorical expression culled from preceding writers—Homer,
Plato, Xenophon—together with some principles as to the
purpose of these expressions. A number of these examples can
be paralleled by passages from the Aeneid.
(1) (Dem. 7 f.). A short member represents vigour. “As
a wild beast gathers itself together for the attack,” wrote
Demetrius, “so should discourse gather itself together as in a
coil in order to increase its vigour.” In Vergil, brevity expresses
vigour in the swoop of the attack: Fit via vi (II, 494); in the
crash of the trumpet, and in the display of the signal:
classica iamque sonant; it bello tessera signum (VII, 637);
brevity expresses haste in the sudden descent of night: Ponto
nox incubat atra (I, 89); in the forward leap of the boatmen:
Haud mora, prosiluere suis (V, 140); in the dash of Nisus:
Nisus abit (IX, 386); in the distracted darting to and fro in
terror of capture: Diversi circumspiciunt (IX, 416). Surprise
needs words equally few: e.g., the thrill of the vision: Obsti-
puit visu Aeneas (V, 90). Likewise note the emphasis secured
through brevity: in the indignation of Venus: Navibus (infan-
dum) amissis (I, 251); or of Juno: Quippe vetor fatis (I, 39);
and in the decision of the oracle: Mutandae sedes (III, 161).
(2) (Dem. 139). Arrangement: the progress from the usual
t,o_t_h_e__unusual, from the cwmmmsmm; as in Xeno-
phon’s words regarding Cyrus: “As presents he gives him a
horse, a robe, a linked collar, and the assurance that his country
should be no longer plundered.”
1° Ed. and trans. Rhys Roberts, 1902; I have used this translation here.
and poetry) are more deliberately chosen by him, in consequence‘
INFLUENCE oF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE 63
Compare Horace, Car. I, XV, 1.1 f.:
iam galeam Pallas et aegida
currusque et rabiem parat.
So Vergil:
ruit Oceano nox
involvens umbra magna terramque polumque
Myrmidonumque dolos (II, 250 if);
and:
tectum augustum, ingens . . .
horrendum silvis et religione parentum (VII, 170 ff.);
and:
Paeoniis revocatum herbis et amore Dianae (ib. 769).
(3) (Dem. 263). Alleged “praetermission”:
quid repetam exustas Erycino in litore classes,
quid tempestatum regem, ventosque furentes
Aeolia excitos, aut actam nubibus Irim? (X, 36 ii).
Compare Catullus, LXIV, 116 ff.:
sed quid ego a primo digressus Carmine plura
commemorem,ut . . . ut . . . ut . . .
(4) (Dan 50 f-)- Workineitoia slim; in Phtasina as
Plato’s: “when a man suffers music to play upon him and to
ﬂood his soul through his ears.” Such is:
quippe ferant rapidi secum verrantque per auras (I, 59).
(5) (Dem. 48 f.). Cacophony: “impressive effect is pro-
duced by a harsh collocation. of words—as for example in the
line:
A,’
A’tas 5’ 6 yé'yas aiév ed)’ "Elcropt- XGAKQKOpUO'T'U.
Compare:
insequitur clamorque virum stridorque rudentum (I, 87);
and:
exoritur clamorque virum clangorque tubarum (II, 313) ;
and:
monstrum/horrendum informs/ingens, cui lumen/ademptum ‘- J- .6; ,A [M
‘* ‘J (III, 658).
(6) (Dem. 156). Use of proverbs: “by its very nature there
is a certain piquancy in a proverb.” Such is given by:
una salus victis nullam sperare salutem (II, 354);
and:
spes sibi quisque (XI, 309).
64 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
Nor is the use of rhetorical ﬁgures conﬁned to any particular
epoch of poetry. Though Vergil undoubtedly made deliberate
use of antithesis, repetition, traductio, paronomasia and the
like,17 examples of these can be found in Homer. So can chias-
mus, and that kind of arrangement of Words of which Kviéala
gives so many interesting illustrations from the Aeneid.18
Caspari has quoted some Hellenistic illustrations,19 and such
examples have caused Norden to refer the symmetrical placing
of words in the Aeneid partly to Hellenistic poetry, partly to
rhetoric.20 Certainly parallels are interesting, and a few may
be given here:
Aen. XII, 103 f. muge'tus veluti cum prima in proelia taurus
terriﬁeos ciet atque irasci in cornua temptat;
A. R. II, 1118 f. Tabs 5’ awe‘; Kpa'repé‘m abv (sot/pan Kbparos 6pm)
viﬁas <I>p££ow per’ 1’7t6vas Bake m'yo'ov:
Aen. I, 242 f. Antenor potuit, mediis elapsus Achivis,
Illyricos penetrare sinus atque int'nna tutus;
A.R. I, 28 f. (#17702. 5’ 6/yped5es, Keivns in o'a'maxra pwMrﬁS,
drc'rﬁs Gpnudns Zc'ovns Em. 'rnXeGc'JwcraL Z
Aen. I, 592 f. quale manus addunt ebori decus, aut ubi ﬂa'vo
argentum Pariusve lapis circumdatur euro;
A.R. I, 6851. m5; 'rﬁpos Bdaa'ea'ﬁe 5vo'ap4uopot; ﬁeﬁaﬁeiats
airrépa'rot Boas 6mm! évtfevxﬁév'res o’tpoz'lpalsl

Aen. I, 9 f. quidve dolens regina deum tot volvere easus
insignem pietate virum, tot adire Zabores
impulerit;
A.R. I, 11681. #6006661’ 6.5611 épe'rpév. c’vrdp 'rpz'xpos iikko px‘ev abros
é'mqﬁw Xepo'iv Zxwv 1réo'e ﬁéxmos, iihko 6% m'w'rosi
Aen. II, 314. arma amens capio; nec sat rationis in armis;
A.R. II, 365. Aivtakés‘ wokéos 5’ ém‘. weipaaw Ai'ytaho'io.
17 Cholmeley notes examples of these ﬁgures in Theocritus: ed. 1913, pp.
39 ff.
18 U eber die Wortsymmetrie in der Aeneis, N eue Beitriige, 1881, pp. 274 if.
19 De ratione quae inter Vergilium et Lucanum intercedat, 1908, pp. 88 f.;
see also Meta Glass, T he Fusion of Stylistic Elements in Vergil’s Georgics, 1913,
pp. 26 ﬁ.
2° Ed. Aeneid, V12, 1916, p. 395.
INFLUENCE OF HELLENISTIC TECHNIQUE
But the cause, no doubt, is partly a natural rhythm, partly
that artistic feeling which Vergil instinctively possessed. That
this feeling was to some extent stimulated by study of later
Greek style, seems reasonable; its results run throughout the
work: the technique is more monotonous in the carmina
minora, wonderfully varied in the Aeneid. Individual points
of arrangement seen in »Vergil can certainly be paralleled in
Homer or in Lucretius, and might well be entirely spontaneous;
the fact, however, that such points meet us in close succession
in the Vergilian work seems to point to the conscious artist.
In the ﬁrst hundred lines of Aeneid II we ﬁnd numerous exam-

ples :21
l. 4. Troianas ut opes et lamentabile regnnrn:
cf. 47; 62;
l. 11. et breviter T roiae supremum audire laboreni:
cf. 35; 51;
l. 13. fracti bello fatisque repnlsi:
cf. 61;
l. 20. ingentes uterumque armato milite complent;
l. 26. ergo omnis longo solvit se Teucria lnctn:
cf. 39; 42; 93;
l. 31. pars stupet innnptae donum exitiale M ineroae:
cf. for the assonance 38; 45, 46; 53; and notice the
linking verbs in these passages;22
l. 7. M yrmidonnm Dolopumve aut duri miles U lixi;
l. 33. dnci intra muros hortatur et arce locari;
l. 96. promisi ultorem et verbis odia aspera rno'oi:
cf. 68;
a c b
11. 19, 20. includunt caeco lateri, penitusque cavernas
b c a
ingentes uterumque armato milite complent;
a b a b
l. 50. sic fatus validis ingentem viribus hastam;
ll. 58, 59. pastores magno ad regem clamore trahebant
Dardanidae;
ll. 79, 80. hoc primum; nec, si miserum fortuna Sinonem
ﬁnxit, vanum etiam mendacemque improba ﬁnget;
21 See Cholmeley, loc. cit. ; Kirby Flower Smith, ed. Tibullus, 1913, pp.
104 ff.
22 The fragment of Hermesianax from Athenaeus is full of this assonance;
and it frequently occurs in Catullus (K. F. Smith, p. 104).
66 HELLENISTIC INFLUENCE ON THE AENEID
ll. 97, 98. hinc mihi prima mali labes, hinc semper Ulixes
criminibus terrere novis, hinc spargere voces:
cf. 29, 30.
l‘hexsp‘ondaic ending is a well knownpoﬂinLoLAlexan-dnian
and yneoteric technique;23 in the particular hundred lines I
am discussing, Vergil, as we are aware, has used the spondee
with beautiful effect to express Sinon’s slow inspection (1. 68):

constitit atque oculis Phrygia agmina circumspexit?4
A similar art is seen in Book VII, 634:
aut leves ocreas lento ducunt argento;
on which Conington noted that “the spondaic metre expresses
the slowness of the process.” “Forms of spondaic endings,”
wrote Munro,25 “borrowed from the Greek and mostly applied
to Greek words, are not uncommon in Catullus, Virgil, and
Ovid.” And, again, we ﬁnd also polysyllabic endings due to
Greek inﬂuence: “Now, in Virgil such endings as quadrupedan-
tum ancipitemque, and in Catullus such a one as egredientem,
are exceedingly uncommon. But these poets make one striking
exception in-favour of Greek words and delight to close a verse
with hymenaeus, Deiopea, T hersilochumque, and the like: a
concession to Greek rhythm and a prettiness which Lucretius
would not care for.”26 Yet it is the combining of this and mani-
fold other types and varieties of verse into a perfect union,
which gives to Vergil’s rhythm the unique power that it has
ever held.
23 Glover, op. cit., p. 62, referring to Munro’s discussion of the Latin hexam-
eter, Lucretius, vol. ii, p. 14.
24 Cf. the slow and reluctant smile of Cocytus (Herm. ap. Athen. line 9.) :
Kwxv'rév r’ c’tﬂéuwrov inr’ 6¢pbat ,uetﬁﬁo'avra
6156.
‘25 Munro, ibid., p. 14.
26 Ibid., p. 13.
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Conway, The Youth of Vergil, reprinted from “The Bulletin of the John Rylands
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Couat, La Poésie alexandrine, 1882.
Cumont, The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, trans. 1911.
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Ferguson, Greek Imperialism, 1913.
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67
68 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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