THE PATHETIC FALLACY IN EARLY LATIN POETRY 
 
 BY 
 
 GREGORY MARCOSSON MAZER 
 
 A. B. Harvard University, 1917 
 
 THESIS 
 
 SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
 FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN CLASSICS 
 IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, 
 
 1922 
 
 URBANA, ILLINOIS 
 
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 
 THE GRADUATE SCHOOL 
 
 Q. J ux. 
 
 19*2, 
 
 I HEREBY RECOMMEND THAT THE THESIS PREPARED UNDER MY 
 SUPERVISION BY JtU y^r 
 
 ENTITLED 
 
 Ju ttc JaJCecCtj t y. f&e Ia^j 
 
 BE ACCEPTED AS FULFILLING THIS PART OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR 
 
 THE DEGREE OF <Tj- ^ 
 
 l /Q F^/Ly f ^£o^f t 
 
 In Charge of Thesis 
 
 >/3 Q/rtaiA^ 
 
 Head of Department 
 
 Recommendation concurred in* 
 
 
 Committee 
 
 on 
 
 Final Examination* 
 
 *Required for doctor’s degree but not for master’s 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Contents 
 
 page s 
 
 I. Introduction 
 
 Chap. l.(a) Ruskin's view of the pathetic fal- 
 lacy 1 
 
 ( b } Ky vieW of the pathetic fallacy.... 5 
 
 (c) The 'apathetic reality' 9 
 
 Chap. 2. (a) Animism 11a 
 
 (h) 'Animization' 16 
 
 (c) My definition of the pathetic fal- 
 lacy 19 
 
 Chap. 3. Personification 20a 
 
 Chap. 4. The idea of metamorphosis 25 
 
 Chap. 5. The doctrine o n 
 
 Chap. 6. (a) 'faded' epithets 37 
 
 ( h ) Transferred epithets 39 
 
 (c) Other figures excluded 41 
 
 (d) Personifying epithets 45 
 
 (e) Summary of introduction 44 
 
 II. Evidence 
 
 1. The Pre-Ciceronian Period 46 
 
 a. Plautus and Terence 46 
 
 b. The fragments of early poetry......... 47 
 
 2. The Ciceronian Period 48 
 
 a. Lucretius 48 
 
 b . Catullus 51 
 
 3. The Augustan Age 55 
 
 a. Vergil 55 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/patheticfallacyiOOmaze 
 
pa^es 
 
 Id. Horace and Tibullus 66 
 
 c. Propertius 68 
 
 d. Ovid 75 
 
 III. Conclusion 85 
 
 t 
 
Bibliography . 
 
 1. Allen; The 'treatment of nature in the Poetry of the Republic, 
 
 Uadi son Wisconsin, 1898. 
 
 2. Arnold: On the Study of Celtic Literature, 1903. 
 
 3. Arnold : Roman Stoicism, 1911. 
 
 4. Canter: The Paraclausi thyron as a Literary Theme, in American 
 
 Journal of Philology, Volume 41, part 4, 1920. 
 
 5. Caesaresco; Outdoor Life in Creek and Roman Poets, London 1911 
 
 6. Frank: Fortunatus et Ille, in Classical Journal, Volume XI., 
 
 May 1916. 
 
 7. Clover: The Conflict of Religion in the Early Roman Empire, 
 
 1909 . 
 
 8. Harrington: Horace as a nature Poet, PAPA, Volume 35, 1904. 
 
 9. Harrington: Tibullus as a Poet of nature, PAPA Volume 31, 
 
 1900. 
 
 10.IIill6r: Some Features of Ovid's Style, in Classical Journal, 
 Volume XI., June, 1916. 
 
 11. Murray: The Stoic Philosophy, 1915. 
 
 12. Postgate: Introduction to Select El£ gies of Propertius, 1885. 
 
 13. Rand: notes on Ovid, in TAPA, Volume 35, 1904. 
 
 14. Ruskin: Modern Painters, 1904 
 
 15. Sellar: Horace and the Elegiac Poets, 1899. 
 
 16.Shairp: On Poetic Interpretation of nature, 1884. 
 
 17. Thomson: Creeks and Barbarians, 1921. 
 
 18 . 'falters : Classical Dictionary, 1916. 
 
 19 . Wordsworth: Complete Poetical Works, 1904. 
 
 20. Zielinskuilarginalien, in Philologus, Volume 64, 1905. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Texts. 
 
 1. Accius: Ribbeck, 1897 
 
 2. Andronicus: Baehrens, F.P.R., p. 37 
 
 5. Cato (Valerius): IJaekius, Bonn, 1847 
 
 4. Catullus, tr. by F.W.Cormick: Loeb Classical Library, 1912. 
 
 » 
 
 5. Cicero: Mueller, C.F.V., Vol. 4, 3, leipsig, 1879. 
 
 6. Fnnius : Vahlen , Leipsig, 1903. 
 
 7. Horace, Lo6b Classical Library, 1918. 
 
 8. Lucilius: Llarx, Leipsig, 1904. 
 
 9. Lucretius: Munro, H.A.J., Cambridge, 1895. 
 
 10. Manilius: Brel ter, Leipsig, 1907. 
 ll.ilaevius: Ribbeck, Vol. 1 a d 2. 
 
 12. Ovid: Heroidesand Amores, tr. by Grant Showerr an, loeb. Class . Lib, 
 
 1914. 
 
 13. Ovid: Metamorphoses , tr. by Frank J. Hiller, Loeb Classical 
 Library, 1916 . 
 
 14. ?acuvius: Ribbeck, Vol. I Pervigilium Veneris, tr. by J.7. . 
 
 Hackail, Leeb Classical Library, 1912. 
 
 15. Phaedrus: HaveiT, Paris. 
 
 16. Plautus: Oxford, 1903. 
 
 17. Propertius, tr. by K.B. Butler, Loeb Classical Library, 1912. 
 
 18. Ribbeck: B^aenicae Roman. Poes. Frag. Volume I, 189 7 , Vol. 11.1898 
 
 Leipzig. 
 
 19. Terence: Oxford, 1912. 
 
 20. Tibullus, tr. by J. P. Postgate , Loeb Classical Library, 1912. 
 
 21. Valerius: Kramer, Leipzig, 1913. 
 
 22. Varro: Riese, Leipzig, 1865 
 
 23. Vergil, H'.R. Fair dough, Loeb Classical Library, 1918. 
 
 The material for the following discussion has been collected 
 by the reading of all Roman poets--whether important or of minor 
 rank- -from Bnnius through the Augustan Age. 
 
 i 
 

 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 
 
The Pathetic Fallacy in Early Latin Poetry 
 from Ennius to the End of the Augustan Age. 
 
 I. 
 
 Introduction . 
 
 John Ruskin is probably the first writer of literary import- 
 ance who undertook to discuss at length that literary form of poet- 
 ic expression which he termed the Pathetic Fallacy. In his " Modern 
 Painters " he devotes considerably more than a chapter to de- 
 
 scribing the pathetic fallacy, but without precisely defining it. 
 
 Fallacy is of two principal kinds, he points out. "Either it 
 is the fallacy of wilful fancy, which involves no real expectation 
 that it will be believed; or else it is a fallacy caused by an ex- 
 cited state of the feelings, making us, for the time more or less 
 irrational." ^ It is with the latter that we are here chiefly con- 
 cerned, and one example of each type, taken from English literature, 
 will suffice as illustration. 
 
 "The spendthrift crocus, bursting through the mold 
 Naked and shivering, with his cur) of gold." 
 
 "Here is something pleasurable,” believes Ruskin, in written 
 poetry which is nevertheless untrue," and this elaborate in- 
 stance of personification he calls a "cheating of the fancy." 
 
 1. Ruskin, Modern Painters 1904, Yol. 3 pp. 161-177 
 
 2. op.citr-pl5a 
 
 3. ibid. 
 

2 
 
 But, in Alton Locke,-- 
 
 "They rowed her in across the rolling foarn-- 
 The cruel, crawling foam." 
 
 Thus he explains: M The foam is not cruel, neither does it crawl. 
 The state of mind which attributes to it these characters of a liv- 
 ing creature is one in which the reason is unhinged by grief. All 
 violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a false- 
 ness in our impressions of external things, which I would generally 
 characterize as the Pathetic Fallacy." ^ 
 
 His general view of the matter is this: "that the temperament 
 which is subject to the pathetic fallacy is that of a mind or body 
 overborne by feeling, and too weak (for the time) to deal fully and 
 truthfully with what is before them or upon them." He points out 
 that "this state is more or less noble according to the force and 
 elevation of the emotion which has caused it; but at its best, if 
 the poet is so overpowered as to color his descriptions by it, then 
 it is morbid and a sign of weakness. For the emotions have van- 
 quished the intellect." "It is T , T he says , "a higher order of mind, in 
 which the intellect rises and asserts itself along with the utmost 
 tension of passion and when the whole man can stand in an iron glow, 
 white hot perhaps, but still strong, and in no wise evaporating; 
 even if he melts, losing none of his weight." ( 2 ) Mr. Ruskin further 
 states: "There are four classes of men -the men who feel nothing, 
 and therefore see truly. The ,men who feel strongly, think weakly 
 and see untruly (the second order of poets). 
 
 1. op. cit- p. 165 
 
 2. op. citip p 167-168 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
3 
 
 The men who feel strongly, think strongly, and see truly (first order 
 of poets). And the men who, strong as human creatures can be are 
 yet submitted to influences stronger than they, and see in a sort 
 untruly, because what they see is inconceivably above them.” This 
 last he calls "the usual condition of prophetic inspiration.” ^ 
 These classes "of course are united each to the other by imper- 
 ceptible transitions, and the same mind, according to the influence 
 to which it is subjected, passes at different times into the various 
 states. Still, the difference between the great and lesser man is, 
 on the whole, chiefly in this point of alterability. Further- 
 
 more, ”so long as we see that the feeling (which induces the Pathetic 
 Fallacy) is true, we pardon, or are even pleased by, the confessed 
 
 fallacy of sight which it induces... But the moment the mind of the 
 
 cold, that moment every such expression becomes 
 
 speaker becomes^untrue , as being forever untrue in the external 
 
 facts. ” ^ 
 
 But how, may one ask, is the reader to know with any degree of 
 
 definiteness when the mind of the poet, or character represented by 
 
 him, is or has become cold? And how is one to determine with an 
 
 appreciable degree of certainty whether or not a pathetic fallacy 
 
 is clearly induced by some powerful mood or emotion? An attempt 
 
 to answer these questions, the indirect purpose of this thesis, I 
 
 shall further embody in my definition of the pathetic fallacy. 
 
 1. op. cit.p. 167-168 
 &. op.cit. p. 168-169 
 3. ibid. 
 
4 
 
 In conclusion,Mr . Ruskin states that the pathetic fallacy TT is 
 powerful only so far as it is pathetic, feeble so far as it is fal- 
 lacious, and, therefore, that the dominion of truth is entire, over 
 this, as over every other natural and just state of the mind.” ^ 
 
 Commenting on Mr. Huskin' s view of the matter, Dr. J. C. Shairp, 
 in his " Poetic Interpretation of Matur e,” says.: "It will be con- 
 ceded to Mr. Ruskin that it is not the highest order of poet who, as 
 he looks out on Nature, is bo overmastered by his emotions as to be 
 continually coloring it with his own mental hues. It is higher to 
 feel intensely and still think truly, than merely to feel intensely 
 without true thought. But Mr. Ruskin would allow that for the poet, 
 whether dramatic , epic , or other to represent his characters as color- 
 ing the world with their own excited feelings, is neither falsity nor 
 weakness, but is merely keeping true to a fact of human nature,” ^ 
 The aesthetic side of the pathetic fallacy need not deeply con- 
 cern us here. I believe we may no more hope to realize an absolute 
 
 definition offthe pathetic fallacy, embodying its true aesthetic 
 significance, 'than of the literary genus Poetry. Whether the pathetic 
 
 fallacy is beautiful or true, whether it is a sign of strength or 
 weakness on the part of the poet, thus denoting the superior or in- 
 ferior poet, or whether it is merely "keeping true to a fact of hu- 
 man nature” is, for the purpose of this thesis, a matter of secondary 
 importance. I shall attempt to show, however, in a folio?/ ing chapter 
 that Dr. Shairp 1 2 s vie?/ has strong foundation. 
 
 1. op.cit»p,177 
 
 2. Poetic Interpretation of Natur e , 1884 .p. 117 
 
5 
 
 At this point let us consider more precisely what the pathetic 
 fallacy is, and how we are to recognize it. Although it would be 
 practically impossible to furnish a clue-- a key that would open all 
 doors, as it were — because of the rather complex nature and tran- 
 sitional character of the pathetic fallacy, there is a definite meth- 
 od of observation whereby we may recognize it to an appreciable ex- 
 tent as well as its various stages of transition. 
 
 For, after all, Mr. Ruskin has merely ventured to explain the 
 reason for the pathetic fallacy, but, leaving a general view of the 
 problem, has by no means shown us, despite his quoting of various in- 
 stances, exactly what it is. 
 
 I propose, therefore, at first roughly to divide the field of 
 bhe pathetic fallacy into two groups : 
 
 1. The s ympathetic fallacy 
 
 2. The fallacy 
 
 These two kinds of fallacy, although they may be induced by the same 
 3ause, are really opposite in effect. By a mere change of view point, 
 however, they may in some cases become identical, as I shall show in 
 this chapter, let us again consider the quotation from Alton Locke 
 which Ruskin quoted : 
 
 ’’They rowed her in across the rolling foam- 
 The cruel, crawling foam.” 
 
 He tells that it is an expression of grief-- "of a state of mind in 
 which the reason is unhinged”. Perhaps it is. But is there a clear 
 indication within the fallacy itself that the underlying emotion is 
 not fear or cruelty, or even avarice? I mean, does the personality 
 with which the poet endows the foam reflect the mood or emotion of 
 the speaker? On the contrary, the feelings and emotions of the sea 
 are "cruel” , "crawling” , admitting that the speaker may be filled with 
 

 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
6 
 
 grief, no doubt stricken with a sort of bitterness that causes him to 
 imagine that the sea--perhaps even the whole earth-- is cruel, un- 
 feeling. Ah, noI--the sea does not share his emotions. In fact, his 
 emotion,, granting that it is mainly grief, has caused him. to con- 
 sider the sea hostile, heartless, revealing to him emotions sharply 
 opposite to his own. This fallacy, for indeed it is a fallacy, we 
 may designate by the term ’’antipathetic. ” 
 
 There is a similar, and perhaps even more interesting, instance 
 of such a fallacy in third book of the Aeneid . 
 
 Aeneas, when he had come to Thrace after the destruction of Troy 
 first wishes to celebrate the inception of his labor by decking the 
 altar with leafy boughs before offering sacrifice. As he tears up 
 the green growth of the soil he beholds a portent, and, upon further 
 investigation, the shade of Polydorusj Pr iam 1 s son who had been mur- 
 dered here by Polymxnestor , king of Thrace, laments and bids him flee. 
 
 tertia sea postquam maiore hostilia nisu 
 adgredior genibusque adver sae obluctor harenae 
 (eloquor|an sileam? ) , gemitus lacrimabilis irno 
 aud itur turnulo , et vox reddita fertur ad auris: 
 
 ’’quid miserurn, Aenea, laceras? iam parce sepulto , 
 parce pias scelerare rnanus.non me tibi Troia 
 externum tulit, aut cruor hie de stipite manat 
 h enl fuge crude 1 is terras, fuge litus avarum 
 ham Polydorus ego hie confixum ferrea texit •> 
 telorum seges et iaculis increvit acutis." ' 
 
 Here a shade, overcome by grief and pain, mental as well as 
 physic ial, bids Aeneas flee from a place that had been the scene of 
 treachery, greed and cruelty, as Aeneas explains : 
 
 1. Vergil, Aene id ,5, 27-48 
 

 
 
 
7 
 
 Hunc Polydorum auri quondam cum pondere raagno 
 infelix Priarnusfurtim mandaret alendum 
 fhre s _j.cio regi,cum iam diffideret arrnis 
 Dardaniae cingique urbem obsidione videret. 
 ille,ut opes fractae Teucrum et For tuna recess it, 
 res Agamemnon ias victriciaque arma secutus 
 fas omne abrurnpit; Polydorum obtruncat et auro 
 vi potitur, Quid non mortal ia cogis, 
 auri sacra fames! 
 
 In the line; 'heul fuge crudelis terras, fuge litus 
 avarum’ we see an instance of the antipathetic fallacy. 
 
 The land is "cruel'’, the shore is "greedy" — opposite emotions 
 caused by a mind and body overpowered with grief and pain. Without 
 attempting to avoid a paradox, moreover, we may note that if we view 
 this fallacy in the light of the second passage, which serves as 
 
 an explanation of the preceding one, we would find that here we have. 
 
 but perhaps in a minor sense, also a sympathetic fallacy; the land 
 and shore are made to reflect, and perhaps sympathize with, the 
 cruelty and greed of Polymnestor 
 
 But in his tenth Eclogue Vergil, singing the love of his friend 
 Gallus for a mistress who had deserted him, shows such deep sympathy 
 for him in his (the latter’s) grief that he causes Nature to suffer 
 sorrow as if humanized. 
 
 Quae nemora aut qui vos saltus habuere , puellae 
 Naides , indigfco cum Gallus amore peribat? 
 
 Nam neque Parnasi vobis iwga, nam neque Pindi 
 ulla moram fecere, neque Aouie Aganippe 
 ilium etiam lauri, etiarn flevere myricae, 
 pinifer ilium etiam sola sub rupe iacentem 
 Maenalus, et gelid i fleverunt saxa Lycaei 
 slant et oves cireum (nostri nec paenitet illas, 
 nec te paeniteat pecoris, divina poeta : . . 
 
 et formosus ovis ad fluinina pavit Adonis) 
 
 1. op. c it . -49-57 
 
 2. Vergil, Eclogue 10, 9-18 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 t 
 
8 
 
 "For him even the laurels, even the tamarisks wept (1.13) 
 
 For him, as he lay beneath a lonely rock, even pine- 
 orowned Ivlaenalus wept, and the crags of cold Lycaeus. 
 
 The sheep, too think no shame of us, " 
 
 Here we see reflected in nature the loneliness (sola--rupe , 1. 14 ) 
 and grief (fleverunt, 1. 15) of Gallus as viewed through the syrnpa- 
 
 if 
 
 thetic eyes of his friend Vergil. This is therefore a "sympathetic 
 fallacy, in effect the direct opposite of what we termed "anti- 
 pathetic", although both of these are induced by a violent, and per- 
 haps even the same, emotion or poignant mood. 
 
 And so, conceding to Mr. Huskin that such fallacies are induced 
 by a violent emotion or deep mood, either that of the poet himself 
 or that which, for artistic reasons, he ascribes to one of his 
 characters, we ask: what is the relation between the emotion or mood 
 and the resulting pathetic fallacy? And, how are we to discern an 
 instance of this fallacy? In the first place, we must be perfectly 
 aware when the poet, or any of his characters, is under the influence 
 of a definite mood or emotion. Then, the pathetic fallacy, if it is 
 to be considered such , must reveal a reflection in some inanimate 
 or brute object of that same, or an opposite mood, or emotion. 
 
 Thus the emotion revealed within the pathetic fallacy w ill be easily 
 identified, or contrasted with the emotion or mood of the poet, or of 
 his characters. 
 
 That the pathetic fallacy is induced not by emotion alone, but 
 is also a result of a latent sense of sympathy between man, the poet 
 being the voice or instrument, as it were, of mankind — and Nature, 
 or the outer world in general; and that its expression, spontaneous 
 or premeditated, is (as a poetic endowing of Nature in which the 
 human soul, in some aspect, sees itself reflected) not unjustifiable 
 I shall try to show in a later chapter. For the present, at least. 
 
9 
 
 I should define the pathetic fallacy as a poetic form of expression, 
 spontaneous or premeditated, revealing a sympathetic, or perhaps an 
 antipathetic, reflection of a mood or emotion of the poet or of any 
 of his characters in some external, non-human field. 
 
 Connected with the pathetic fallacy, but as its antithesis and 
 particularly in the way of contrast, is what I may call the Apa- 
 thetic Reality. This is undoubtedly a premeditated form- a real- 
 istic yet poetic method of accentuating, for artistic purposes, the 
 infiniteness and inhumaneness of Nature; that side of Nature which 
 yields no response to man's yearnings and refuses to make itself 
 plastic under even the strongest power of emotion. For^outsiae of 
 and beyond man, aloof from his warm hopes and fears, his joy and 
 sorrow, his strivings and aspirations, there lies the vast im- 
 mensity of Nature's forces, which pays him no homage and yields 
 him no sympathy. This aspect of Nature may be seen even in the 
 tamest landscape, if we look to the clouds or the stars above us, or 
 to the ocean waves that roar around our shores. Man's heart may be 
 full of gladness, yet Nature frowns: he goes forth to the death 
 chamber and Nature affronts him with sunshine and the song of 
 birds. 
 
 This inhuman and perhaps real aspect of Nature the poet sees 
 with a clear eye and calm mind, at the same time employing it in 
 his poem as a setting which contrasts with poignancy a violent 
 emotion or deep mood which he or his characters experience. But it 
 is when the mind falters before the force of violent emotion and 
 the eyes sees falsely that this impassiveness and apathy of Nature 
 is interpreted by the poet or his characters as hostility or 
 
 1. T. G. Shairp, Poetic Interpretation of Nature .1884 .p.lia 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 ■ 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
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10 
 
 antipathy and gives rise to what I have previously defined and il- 
 lustrated as the antipathetic fallacy. 
 
 An interesting example of the Apathetic Reality is that passage 
 in the Aeneid where Vergil sets off the tumult in the heart of the 
 wronged and lovelorn queen Dido in contrast with the calm and 
 silence of night 
 
 Mox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem 
 corpora per terras, silvaeque et saeva quierant 
 aequora, cum medio volvuntur sidera lapsu 
 cum tacet omnis ager , pecudes pictaeque vo lucres, 
 qua^ue latus late liquidos, quaeque aspera dlurnis 
 rura tenent, somno positae sub nocte silenti 
 (lenibant curas et cor da oblita laborum) 
 at non infelix anirni Phoenissa, neque umquam 
 solvitur in somno s, oculisve aut pectore noctem 
 accipit; ingeminant curae , rursus que resurgens 
 saevit amor, maqnoque irarum fluctuat aestu. ' 
 
 The peaceful quiet of the night. All Mature is sunk in calm 
 sleep; even the weary creatures, the woods and wild seas," when all 
 the land is still,.. are couched in sleep beneath the silent night.... 
 But not so the unhappy Dido ; she never sinks to sleep, nor drav/s 
 the night into her eyes and breast; her pangs redouble and her love, 
 swelling, surges forth anew, as the mighty tides of passion clash 
 within her". 
 
 One is struck by the modern tone of this passage, for it seems 
 that it might have been written by a poet of the nineteenth century. 
 This contrast between Mature's calm and the souls 1 ’ 1 tumult certainly 
 must belong, one thinks, to a late and self-conscious age. Among 
 the English poets, the pathetic fallacy, as well as the apathetic 
 reality, has often been treated by Byron, Meats, Shelly, Tennyson 
 and others, -one may readily observe- to enhance the emotional effect 
 
 of a setting, by representing Mature in a mood corresponding to, or 
 
 contrasting with the human one which the poet wishes to represent. 
 l.Vergil.Aeneid4 .522-522 ; 
 
11 a. 
 
 In such instances fallacies are obviously premeditated literary 
 iornis. That there are other and spontaneous instances, to be 
 sure, leaving a different and perhaps stronger impression upon 
 the reader is equally obvious, but for the purposes of this the- 
 -is, I must i.or6ro strict distinction of such a nature, which 
 can oe based only on analysis that must seem often unduly sub- 
 jective . 
 
 Perhaps it is because of the frequent employing of these 
 fallacies by the modern poets that they have been termed charac- 
 teristically modern and romantic. But the term ’romantic' has 
 been subject to so many different interpretations that it may be 
 said to lose its value somewhat for the interpreting of the re- 
 sults of my investigation; indeed, it may confuse rather than 
 illuminate. Yet if, at any rate, the terms ’’romantic" and"mo- 
 iern * in reference to poetic expression, are to be considered 
 onl t / as peculiarly synonymous, than I may maintain with confi- 
 dence that such "modern" or "romantic" elements are not lacking 
 in the poetry of classical antiquity. 
 

11 Id 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The religion of a people is inextricably woven in the thread 
 
 of its daily life; and the life o^? the Greeks and Romans was 
 
 c 
 
 greatly colored by siirvivals of a primitive belief in animism. 
 This belief found its expression in a man-sided religious life 
 filled with cult and ritual, full of divinities, petty or terri- 
 ble, but generally vague and ill-defined. "When,” asks Augustine 
 "can I ever mention in one passage of this book all the names 
 of gods and goddesses, which they have been able to compass in 
 great volumes, seeing that they allot to every individual thing 
 the special function of some divinity ?"' ) 
 
 1. C. B. 4,8 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
12 
 
 These spirits or daamones who inhabited the woodland country- 
 side, in fact, the entire realm of Nature, \e may know better in art 
 and poetry. "Faunus lover of fugitive nymphs” may have been a pretty 
 conceit expressed by Horace, but ”it is quite probable that the 
 rustics took the fauns, nymphs and satyrs seriously. "Trees", 
 
 says Pliny, "were temples of divinities, and in the old way the sim- 
 ple country folk to this day dedicate any remarkable tree to a god. 
 Nor have we more worship for images glittering with gold and ivory 
 than for groves and the very silence that is in them. ^ These 
 spirits, invisible and impersonal, possessed material bodies, they 
 believed, shadowy no doubt, and subtle, and impalpable, and carried 
 on an existence of their own. To the early Roman mind they were in- 
 deed real, possessing human moods, emotions and activities. 
 
 Traces of animism were for a long time noticeable at Rome, es- 
 pecially among the peasants. The ex-voto offerings found in springs 
 a,nd groves, the worship of the lares and penates, the offerings that 
 Horace so sympathet ically encourages among the simple people of the 
 Sabine hills, the ease with which even the state officials could 
 3reate "abstract" deities out of mere daylight exper iencas-all these 
 prove that animism was not far off. And it is the same psychology 
 '/hich makes possible animism in religion and"sympathy between man and 
 :iature" in poetry. Vergil in the Georgia s and Shelley in " The 
 Se nsitive Plant "are simply employing imagination so as to re-experi- 
 jnce something that we have none of us far outgrown. 
 
 1. T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religion in the H a rly Roman 
 Umpire ,19Q9,p. 12 
 
 2. Pliny, N.B.12.5 
 
 3. Tenney Frank, in Glass Jour. Vol. 11 , May, 1916 ,p^85 
 
13 
 
 But in the course of time Greek myths killed. Homan animism, just 
 as Greek rationalism had killed the myths. After the "religious 
 panic” of the Second Punic War, as Fowler calls it, the cultured 
 Roman was no naive primitive. A gulf of cold fact soon closed in 
 between man and IJature. ^ Every educated Roman was, if not a be- 
 liever in Epicurean theories of Atomism, at least not unaware of 
 their existence and their implications. It would therefore, have 
 been childish to seek to retain or perhaps to revive, in a religious 
 sense, the mood of animism. 
 
 Yet even if the mood of animism is revived by the Latin poets 
 
 solely for literary effect, it is to this revival or "make-believe” 
 owe 
 
 that we N that immensely beautiful poetic expression of Nature which 
 
 { 2 ) 
 
 Matthew Arnold calls "natural magic”, ' which J. A. X. Thomson 
 terms, in part., Bar bar ism J^lnd which entrances us partly because some- 
 where in us there sleeps a memory of miracles wrought in days when 
 every rock and tree and river w as alive with supernatural force. And 
 it was perhaps this feeling for nature that caused the great Shelly 
 to write in a sonnet: 
 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
 
 Great GodJ I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; . . 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn . ' 
 
 1. Tenney Frank, Fortunatus et Ille . in Glass. Jour,, lllviayg 1916p. 585 
 
 2. Matthew Arnold,On the Study of Celtic Literature ,1905 ,p. 126 
 
 3. J. A. X. Thomson, Greeks and Barba rians, 1921. p. 148 
 
 4. •ordsworth* s Complete Poetical Works j Cambridge Edition 1904 p34 9 
 
14 
 
 And although there was little in this belief to awaken in the 
 early Romans sympathies and affections with regard to the surrounding 
 world, among the Latin poets, however, the imaginative and literary 
 recreation of this belief, which I may characterize as Animization, 
 induced a poetic treatment of nature in some respects, at least as 
 diversified as among the poets of any period. The Roman poets, how- 
 ever showed tendencies unlike those of modern extremists because they 
 were more dependent upon literary convention in the treatment of 
 their themes and the selection of their forms. Yet a poet is by his 
 very nature primarily subjective; "he may deal with objective things 
 but, endowed with the divine gift of the imagination, he must feel 
 himself in touch with the heart of the world; he must have a temper- 
 ment sensitive and fine, a temperment shot with luminous and delicate 
 threads of feeling? ^ 1 ^ In short, a poet must be, in a sense, "ro- 
 mantic" 
 
 fet perhaps not all the modern "romantic" expressions of nature 
 may be found in Latin poetry, and only under the stress of emotion 
 does tne poeiPs outlook become changed and his strong sense of reason 
 and restraint falter before the force of his emotion. Although 
 Lature herself is but rarely the subject of poetic mysticism, at 
 times even the modern note of the sympathetic sense for a moment 
 appears upon the horizon, but is soon lost in a more or less re- 
 strained treatment of a subject which is, for the poet, prescribed 
 by literary convention. 
 
 1 . 
 
 Liona Pearl Hoanett, 
 1918) p. 12 
 
 xhe iiea in Roman Poe try, (master 1 s 
 
 Thesis 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15 
 
 The Roman poet was chiefly interested in man and his desires 
 and ambitions: the Romans were an objective people; woven in the tex- 
 ture of their thoughts were pictures of war , vast empire, govern- 
 ment and laws. Besides, the Romans, as contrasted with the Greeks, 
 were utilitarian . They were as a people, rather unobservant of 
 
 Mature and uninterested in natural science and in all that seemed to 
 
 no « 
 
 have N practical bearing. The cold seriousness of the Romans, tneir 
 matter-of-fact good sense, the inflexibility of their language with 
 its limited sentence structure, together with their realistic 
 tendency did not allow/ their feeling for Mature to proceed in very 
 full measure. ^ They did not commune with Mature, linking their 
 souls with hers, nor did they gather from her light of the moral and 
 spiritual world. The more comprehensive view of Mature as a whole, 
 which belongs rather to thought and reflection than to feeling and 
 passion, is to be more easily found in the philosophers than in the 
 poets of the ancient world. These are perhaps the reasons why the 
 the Roman poets are indicted by critics for failing to express th6s# 
 "sense of sympathy between man and nature," and for having known 
 little of "that sense of grandeur and mystery" which is perhaps the 
 most prominent characteristic of modern poetry. But this decision 
 need not be taken as final in regard to the ancient poets, because 
 on account of their literary convention their expression, thus of 
 necessity limited, cannot be considered as an adequate indication of 
 the extent of their emotional nature. 
 
 1. Allen, The Treatment of Mature in the Poetry of the Roman 
 Republic , Madison, Wis . , 1899 ,pp. 215-216 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
16 
 
 But, to grasp the relation between Animization and the Pathetic 
 Fallacy, let us turn to Vergil's Georgies . There the husbandman 
 nurtures and fondles the tender plants as though they were living- 
 creatures. He gives them water the air's searching breath' steals 
 in, and 'the plants take courage' ; he overlays them with stones and 
 
 jars of heavy weight , thus protecting them against the time 'when the 
 
 > 
 
 sultry dog-star splits the fields that gape with thirst; he forms 
 canes, rods and stakes on which 'they learn to mount and scorn the 
 winds'; he spares their tenderness and while 'the shoots push 
 joyously forward' he does not prune them with a knife- 'for they 
 shrink under the steel'- but picks them with his fingers. ^ 
 
 Here objects in nature actually live: they exhibit feelings, 
 emotions, desires,- an extraordinary instance of Animization. That 
 such an apparently fantastic expression is to some extent justifiable 
 even from a scientific standpoint has been recently shown experi- 
 mentally by Prof. Jagadis Chunder Bose, the eminent Hindoo botanist, 
 in regard to organic and inorganic objects, particularly in the in- 
 stance of plants. He has shown that "plants exhibit many of the 
 activities which we have been accustomed to associate only with 
 animal life. In the one case, as in the other, stimulus of any kind 
 will induce a responsive thrill. There are rhythmic tissues in the 
 plantjwhich, like those in the animal, go on throbbing ceaselessly.... 
 A time comes when, after an answer to a supreme shock, there is 
 a sudden end of the plant's power to give any further response 
 
 1. Vergil , Georgies 2, 346-370 
 

 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
17 
 
 These, our mute companions, silently growing beside our door, 
 have now told us their life tremulousness and their death spasm in 
 script that is as inarticulate as they. May it not be said that this 
 their story, has a pathos of its own beyond any that we have con- 
 ceived?” d) 
 
 May it not also be said that the truth of the scientific reve- 
 lations of Prof. Bose justifies to some extent, at least the great- 
 est primitive belief, or shall we say, instinctive superstition of 
 man? Is it not, besides an indication of the potency or the true 
 poetic genius in its dealing with the unknown, and does it not sug- 
 gest that a greater Truth, perhaps never to be discovered by science 
 alone, holds sway over the life of mankind and the natural world to 
 which he is bound in mutual service? 
 
 Prof. Bose, then teaches us that plants feel,- are sensitive, 
 because they respond to physical stimuli. As to whether they have 
 our sense of sympathy and the higher emotions we do not know. And 
 as long as we remain in ignorance of these things we must regard all 
 poetic attribution of human expression to inanimate objects as possi- 
 bly true but apparently fallacious. 
 
 At this point we may return to our original topic Anirnization, 
 and observe its relation to the Pathetic Fallacy. We turn to Vergil 
 again. In the case of the joys and sorrow's of trees, flowers and 
 rocks that the shepherds sang of upon the death and apotheosis of 
 Daphnis, emotions that reflect the shepherds’ own emotions, we find 
 in the following two remarkable passages, illustrations of the 
 pathetic fallacy. 
 
 1. J. G. Bose, Plant -Autographs, in the Annual Report 
 Smithsonian Institution, 1914, p. 442 
 
18 
 
 extinotum nymphae crude li funere Daphnim 
 flebant (vos coryli testes et flumina Nymphis), 
 ouin oomplexa sui corpus mis era bile nati 
 atque deos atque astra vocat crudelia mater, 
 non ulli pastos illis egere diebus 
 
 frigida, Daphni, boves ad flumina; nulla neque amnen (25) 
 libavit quadrpes nec graminis attigit herbam. 
 
 Daphni, tuum Poenos etim ingemuisse leones 
 interitum montesque feri silvaeque loquuntur. 
 
 postquam te Fata tulerunt 
 
 ipsa Pales agros atque ipse reliquit Apollo. (25) 
 grand ia saepe quibus mandavimus hordea sulcis, 
 infelix lolium et steriles nascuntur avenae ; 
 pro mo Hi viola, pro pur pur eo narcisso 
 carduus et spinis surgit pa'liurus acutis. 
 spargite humurn foliis, indue ite fontibus umbras, (40) 
 pastores (mandat fieri sibi talia Daphnis), 
 et tumulum facite et tumulo superaddite carmen: 
 
 'Daphnis ego in silvis, hinc usque ad sidera notus, 
 forinosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse'. (1) 
 
 Here all Nature mourns: beasts forget to eat or drink (1.25 and 
 26); the mountains and woods say that even African lions moaned 
 (1.27 and 28); Pales and Apollo leave the fields (1.25); unfruitful 
 darnel and barren oat-straws spring up instead of grain (1.36 and 37); 
 thistles and thorns take the place of the violet and narcissus (1. 38 
 and 39 ) 
 
 This passage is followed by another: 'Daphnis I will exalt to 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 the stars; me, too, Daphnis loved,' sang the shepherd ken ale as 
 
 Candidus insuetum miratur lirnen Olympi 
 sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis 
 ergo alacris silvas et cetera rura voluptas 
 Panaque pastoresque tenet Dryadasque puellas. 
 nec lupus insidias pecori nec retia cervis (60) 
 ulla dolum meditantur; amat bonus otia Daphnis. 
 ipsi laetitia voces ad sidera iactant 
 intonsi montes; ipsae iam carmina rupes, 
 ipsa sonant arbusta; 'deus, deus ille , Menalca! ' 
 Sis bonus o felixque tuisl en quattuor atas:,(65) 
 ecce duas tibi, Daphni, duas altaria Phoebo.'‘~ ; ' 
 
 1. Vergil, Georgies ,2, 346-270 
 
 2. Vergil, Etlogue 5, 52 
 
 3. Ibid., 55-66 
 

 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
19 
 
 Daphnis is filled with wonder when he reaches Heaven: ergo(1.58), 
 the woods, all the countryside are filled with T frolic glee T . Even 
 the wolf becomes peaceful: 'Kindly Daphnis loves peace’. Yea, the 
 very mountains, the rocks, the groves rejoice, flinging their voices 
 in song to the stars: ’A god is he, a god, MenalcasI ' 
 
 Thus far we have witnessed in Vergil instances of Animization 
 and the Pathetic Fallacy. Hence we may surmise that the underlying- 
 belief, sincere or pretended, in animism, makes way for and in a sort 
 justifies the expression, under force of a poignant mood or violent 
 emotion, of the pathetic fallacy: such a fallacy, with the presupposi- 
 tion of animism, seems rather natural and unstrained, since the poet, 
 apparently freed temporarily from the restraint of reason, un- 
 consciously perhaps falls into his primitive self, recognizes for 
 the time life in Mature, and hence, concomitant human expression. 
 
 Also, implied and invisible feelings and emotions in Nature may seem 
 visible to poets through a poetic interpretation of accidental and 
 temporary changes in physical appearances of objects in Nature, 
 appearances which, being originally imagined symbols of human moods 
 or emotions, are for the moment interpreted as actual emotional ex- 
 press io ns . 
 
 The ’pathetic’ interpretation of such appearances, for the sake 
 of a desired effect, when the poet is not clearly moved by a mood or 
 emotion, is a literary conceit- a ’cheating of the fancy,' as Ruskin 
 would say. When such an interpretation is caused, however, by the 
 effect upon the mind of a powerful emotion, and is 'in sympathy with' 
 or shows apathy towards the poet’s or his hero's mood or emotion, 
 actual or pretended, it is what we have called the Pathetic fallacy. 
 
 We may therefore hazard the follov^ing definition as final: A poetic 
 

 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HO a. 
 
 form of expression, spontaneous or premeditated, that is in effect 
 such an interpretation of a temporary change in appearance of an 
 inanimate or brut6 object or natural phenomenon as to reveal either 
 a sympathetic or antipathetic reflection of a mood or emotion of 
 the poet or of his characters. 
 

20 b. 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 "Shat the Roman poet does not often personalize the creatures 
 of nature is quite true,"(D asserts one scholar. Shis statement 
 needs further explanation, it seems to me, before it may be fully 
 accepted. Let us first observe that literary form known as personi- 
 fication, which is the clothing of an inanimate thing or abstraction 
 with human personality. The most cursory reader of the classics 
 will admit that personification, both oi abstractions and inanimate 
 things, is more or less frequently employed by Vergil, Ovid, and 
 other poets in the sense that objects or abstractions are treated 
 for the moment as possessing personality and represented as persons 
 in action. Often only a personifying epithet is used, an epithet 
 which is strictly applicable only to a person, as "envious night" 
 or "greedy waves". The poet may, however, prolong his personi- 
 fication into a more detailed characterization. Perhaps the most 
 familiar illustration of this is Vergil’s description of 'Rumor' 
 his one great example of extended personification. 
 
 Ovid's description of personified 'Rumor* ^ ) is perhaps indepen- 
 
 dent of Vergil' s, and, to some extent, more telling. Y.hile he 
 clearly personifies Rumor, still he fixes our attention more upon 
 the house of Rumor than upon Rumor herself. This is conceived of 
 as a great "whispering gallery" midway of land, sea and sky, a 
 sort of cen- 
 
 1. Tenney Prank, Fortunatus et Idle in Class. Jour., 11 May, 
 1916 p. 485 
 
 2. Vergil, ^en. 4,. 173 ff. 
 
 3. OVid . Llet . , 12,39 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ; 
 
 .! 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
( 1 ) 
 
 tral office for dome universal news agency. ' In the same passage 
 we have minor personifications of Credulity, Error, Joy, Pear, 
 Sedition and Whisperings. In all these, with one exception, the 
 personification is helped out by a vividly characterizing epithet. 
 
 Often the Roman poets, particularly Ovid, employ curious half- 
 personifications, in which the poet's imagination, while partially 
 bridging the chasm between the inanimate and the personal, still 
 finds itself unable (or unwilling?) to abandon the inanimate side 
 completely. ^ 
 
 Perhaps just as often objects in nature are personalized, but 
 not so extensively. 
 
 Lucretius personifies even his 'first-beginnings': 
 
 Vt. 
 
 fiet ut risu tremulo concussa cachment , r , v 
 et lacrimis salsis umectent ora genasque ’ 
 
 And the winds, the clouds and the sea: 
 
 te dea, te fugiunt venti; te nubila caeli 
 adventumque tuum tibi suavis daedala tellus 
 suminittit flores, tibi rident aequora pon^i 
 placatumque nitet diffuse lumine caelum. 
 
 And, again, 'the faithless sea laughing treacherously': 
 
 sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis 
 disiectare so let magnum mare transtra cavernas 
 antemnam proram raalos tonsasque natantis, 
 per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra 
 ut videantur et indicium edant, 
 infidi mar is insidias virisque dolumque 
 ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credaat 
 subdola cum riaet placidi pellacia ponti' 0 ' 
 
 1. Prank T. Miller, Some Features of Ovid's Style in Class Jour. 
 
 11, June 1916, p. 618 
 2.1b. p.527 
 
 3. Lucretius ,Le Rerum Latura.l, 916-92GCf. also 2,976-978 
 4. Ibid 11, 6- 9 
 5. Ibid, 2, 652-669 
 
22 
 
 Catullus personifies, in a simile, the dawn at sea: 
 
 Hio qUalis flatu placid urn mare matutino 
 horrificans kephyrus proclivis incitat ‘ undis 
 Aurora exoriente vagi sub limins Solis, 
 quae tarde primum clement i flamine pulsae 
 procedunt lenique sonant plangore cachinni, 
 
 Post vento crescente magis increbescunt /, » 
 purpureaque procul nantes a luce refulgent' 
 
 And Vergil, the ocean: 
 
 qualis ubi alterno procurrens gurgite pontus 
 nunc ruit ad terram scopulosque super iac it unda 
 spumens extremamque s inu perfundit h&renarn, 
 nunc rap id us retro atque aestu revoluta resorbena 
 saxa fugit litusque vado labente relinquit . ' ’ 
 
 And a tree being cut down by woodmen: 
 
 ilia usque minatur 
 
 et tremefacta comam concusso vertice nutat 
 volneribus donee paulatim evicta supremem 
 congemuit traxitque iugis avolsa ruinam. 
 
 And Ovid endow et even a horse with the personality of a brave 
 
 Roman. A devastating scourge comes upon the earth and the weaker 
 
 animals are destroyed; the horse’s courage and victorious spirit 
 
 disappears, and now, forgetful of his former glory, he actually 
 
 groans in his stall, since he fears the approach of such inglorious 
 
 death. 
 
 acer equus quondam magnaeque in pulvere famae 
 degeneret palmas veterumque oblitus honorum 
 ad praesepe gemit leto moriturus inert i'°) 
 
 This may, on the other hand, be considered an exaggerated 
 
 reality and denote, perhaps, the intimacy of feeling between the 
 
 3.6 3 ^ 
 
 Roman warrior and his horse. That even dumb animals react more or 
 
 1. Cat., 64, £69-275 
 £. Vergil, Aen 11, 624-628 
 5. Ovid, Let . .7. 542-545 
 
23 
 
 intelligently to outside forces is, of course, unquestionable, but 
 one hesitates, except in poetry, to interpret their reactions in 
 human terms. 
 
 In the passage last quoted there is a slight hint of what may 
 be called an intentional pathetic fallacy that is quite modern. Ho 
 doubt the poet desired to accentuate the mood, of the picture, in 
 order to arouse in us an appreciation of his effective description 
 of the scourge and the havoc it wrought in its wake. But in that 
 case we must suppose that he himself was deeply moved by the mental 
 image that he was translating into language. 
 
 I have given at random these examples of personification of 
 objects or phenomena of nature, although that literary form in itself 
 merits more complete investigation, and I feel quite certain that the 
 nature of the personification, its literary or poetic value, and its 
 relation to Animization and other forms depends entirely and sepa- 
 rately upon the belief and personality of the poet. 
 
 For example, Lucretius is not ’cheating’ his or our fancy when 
 he speaks of’ the faithless sea laughing treacherously. ’ ^ ^Lucretius 
 is not here influenced so much by his emotion or poetic imagination 
 as by his philosophic conviction. He believed the sea actually was 
 unfriendly to man. In his ’Be Eerum Katura’ he denies all super- 
 natural agency, attributes consciousness, will and passion to the 
 great creative power of nature, the source of all life, joy, beauty 
 and art. His personification of the sea is therefore metaphorical, 
 no doubt, but it cannot, it seems to me, be called ’a cheating of the 
 fancy’ . 
 
 1. Gf. note 3 on p. 19 
 

24 
 
 That he thought the sea treacherous is quite certain; it is also 
 just as likely that he expected his reader to agree with him. 
 
 Vergil, I have noticed, uses personification primarily in 
 similes, to illustrate and accentuate action. Accordingly, he at- 
 tributes metaphorically and boldly verbs of action to objects in 
 nature primarily for artistic effect, and particularly to strengthen 
 the action in a scene. Moreover, it is usually difficult to decide 
 whether he means an object or phenomenon of Nature or the divinity, 
 possessing human feelings and capable of human activities, residing 
 in, and presiding over, it. 
 
 At this point it is well to attempt to differentiate between 
 that literary form which I termed animization and the one ve are now 
 discussing. In Animization the poet attributes sensibilities, feel- 
 ings and emotions to objects in nature, perhaps presupposing an indi- 
 vidual spirit or daemon in every object without attempting to differ- 
 entiate between the spirit and the object, although it was supposed 
 that these spirits were physical beings. In the instance of the 
 
 passage, from Vergil’s Georgies , quoted on p. 14, in describing the 
 
 fi o them 
 
 emotional life of plants, Vergil does not far a moment attribute^ any 
 sharacter istics which are not, for the believer in animism, natural 
 bo plants. Personification, on the other hand, is usually a meta- 
 phorical description of an object in terms of action that is appli- 
 sable only to persons. 
 
 That there is any relation between Personification, as a literary 
 form and the pathetic fallacy I cannot find evidence. That it is 
 possible to deduce some relation between the pathetic fallacy and 
 personifying epithets applied to inanimate objects I shall attempt 
 to show in a following chapter. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 Chapter IV. 
 
 25 
 
 According to a popular interpretation of mythology, myths may 
 be generally considered a personification to the controlling forces 
 of nature, forces personified at first as incorporeal gods; but these 
 gods, having ages ago, it was believed, undergone anthropomorphism, 
 figured in myth as men of like passions with mortals, but with great- 
 er power. But even more interesting evidence of the supernatural 
 are the stories of metamorphoses , Hellenistic tales popularized, 
 among the Romans, particularly by Ovid in his Metamorphoses; a roman- 
 tic description of those miraculous changes rehearsed in Greek and 
 Roman mythology, all the way from the first great metamorphosis, 
 when chaos became an orderly universe, down to the very age of the 
 poet himself, when the soul of Julius Caesar was changed to a star 
 and set in the heavens among the immortals. Ovid’s story generally 
 records the change as complete and effective, and this effect is not 
 vitiated but rather enhanced by some characteristic of the new 
 creature, reminiscent of the old, as in the case of Daphne, ^ 
 whose change into the laurel is indeed complete but not so com- 
 plete that the gleam of her beauty is lost. This remains in the 
 
 hard, polished, and glistening leaves of the tree; similarly in the 
 of (2) 
 
 case Lycaon ; in the case of Mt. Tmolus, , however , who in the story 
 becomes Judge Tmolus, we oannot be quite sure whether it is a mount- 
 ain or judge who is presiding over the contest in music between 
 Apollo and Pan, so incompletely has Ovid conceived the personifi- 
 
 cation of the mountain. 
 
 ( 3 ) 
 
 1. Ovid s Met.l. 548 ff, 
 
 2. ibid, 1 , 232ff. 
 
 3* ibid, llj 157f f. 
 
(JO 
 
 (1) (2) (3) 
 
 Ovid often mixes fact and figure. Thus, Atlas, and Cyane, 
 
 ( 4 ) their 
 
 and Arethusa, mountain, pool and stream are still confused with^ 
 
 several personifications. 
 
 Trees have always had, in the minds of men a half-human 
 characteristic. This is true even in our own time, and much more 
 was it the case in the days when any tree trunk might be the lurk- 
 ing place of some shy dryad of the woods, or the actual person of 
 some mortal who had undergone metamorphosis. Thus, the sacred oak 
 
 of Geres contains an imprisoned nymph whose blood flows under 
 
 ( 5 ) 
 
 the ax stroke of Erysichthon , , and thus Polydorus' blood flows 
 
 ( 6 ) 
 
 from the sprouted spear- shaft thrust in his body. Ovid has him- 
 
 self recorded many metamorphoses of persons into trees: Daphne into 
 
 the 
 ( 10 ) 
 
 ( 7 ) (8 ) (9 ) 
 
 a laurel; Syrinx into reeds; the Heliades into poplars, and 
 
 many others into as many objects. 
 
 With all these stories in mind, it was very easy for Ovid to 
 tell the story reversed, of trees not changed to persons, but en- 
 dowed, like persons, with powers of locomotion and with appreciation 
 
 ( 11 ) 
 
 of the beauty of Orpheus' music. 
 
 1. 2,272ff.; 11, 157ff.; 12,614ff.; 14,573ff. 
 
 2. 4,631 
 
 3. 5,409 
 
 4. 5,572 
 
 5. 8,743 
 
 6. Vergil, Aen 3, 18ff. 
 
 7. Met. l,542ff. 
 
 8. ibid. l,689ff. 
 
 9. ibid. 2, 329ff.;10, 91, 263 
 
 10. Of E.J. Miller, Some features of Ovid's Style in Glass. 
 
 Jour. June , 1916 , Vol . 11 up. 513-534 
 
 11. Met, 10, 86f f 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
27 
 
 We can, therefore, see how personalization grei to be one of the 
 noticeable character ist ics of the ancient aspect of Nature: every 
 animal, tree, flower, river and rock became pregnant with per- 
 sonality. The laurel was Danhne , the flower was Narcissus, Gyane 
 
 fl) 
 
 a fountain, Galatea was the summer sea, Arachne the spider and so on. 
 
 According to the poets the persons metamorphosed continued to 
 exist as birds or animals or plants, but retained their former hu- 
 man personality. They are usually represented by the different 
 poets in a certain characteristic mood and are thus alluded to, for 
 artistic effect, to arouse a desired mood in the reader, or to ac- 
 centuate the emotional setting of a scene. 
 
 For example, the song of the nightingale, which is poetically 
 
 called !T the Naulian bird lamenting the death of Itys, TT is the symbol 
 
 of grief. And Propertius, reminding himself that his mistress’ 
 
 birthday is at hand, drives away gloom and worry in this wise : 
 
 aspiciam. nullos hcdierna luce dolentes 
 
 et -Niobae lacrimas supprimat ipse lapis 
 
 alcyonum positis requj^gant ora querelis, 
 
 increpe t absumptum neo mater Ityn 
 
 s 
 
 And Catullus, in a letter to Hortalus, likens his songs for 
 
 his .brother’s death to those of the nightingale: 
 
 & 
 
 qualia sub dery.s ramorum cone in it umbris 
 Baulias absumpti fata gemens Ityli 
 
 1. Martinengo-Cesaresco : the Outdoor life in Greek and Homan 
 Poets, London, 1911, p. 159. 
 
 2. Prop. 3, 10, 7ff . 
 
 3. Gat. 65 ,13f f . 
 

 
 
 
 t 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 t 
 
 
 r 
 
28 
 
 Propertius, once more, describes the grief of Cynthia v ith 
 these illusions: 
 
 non tam nocturna volucris funesta quei^La 
 Athica Cecropiis obstrepit in fo'liis 
 nec tantum IUobe bis sex ad busta super ba 
 sollicito lacrirnas defluit a Sipylo } 
 
 And Ovid maxes Sappho write to Phaon : 
 
 incubui tetigique locum, qua parte fuisti; 
 grata prius lacrirnas .conbibit herba meas 
 
 pO£g_Jtis lugere videntur 
 et nullae dulce queruntur aves; 
 
 quin e tiara 
 frondibus , 
 
 rami 
 
 (2 
 
 Here branches lay aside their leaves and grieve, in sympathy 
 
 with Sappho, and birds cease their sweet warbling. And to accent- 
 uate further Sappho's mood Ovid continues: 
 
 solum virum non ulta pie maestissima mater 
 concinit Ismarium Daulias ales Ityn 
 ales Ityn, Sappho desertos cantat amores- 
 hactenus; ut media cetera nocte silent (3) 
 
 In the above passage, not content with the effect of the 
 pathetic fallacy in 'quin etiam rami positis lugere videntur 
 frondibus 1 Ovid works in his favorite symbol of grief: the Daulian 
 bird lamenting Itys. Then, like a painter perfecting the background 
 in a portrait, in the last two lines he brings out the finishing 
 touches of his picture with the striking simplicity and naivete / 
 
 that is so characteristic of his art: ’The bird sings of Itys, 
 Sappho sings of love abandoned, -that is all: all else is silent as 
 
 midnight. 
 
 In view of the preceding, I believe that an investigation will 
 prove that such allusions to metamorphosed characters are, among the 
 Latin poets, commonplaces, probably borrowed from Homer or 
 
 l.Prop. 2 , 20, b- 9 
 2. Ovid, Her. 15, 140-256 
 o. Of .Ovid, Hem Am . 6 Goff. 
 
 4 . Gf . Homer , Odyssey 5-9, 513ff.: ’the Daulian bird, etc.’ 
 
29 
 
 Alexandrian poets, and are used, for artistic effect, as character- 
 istic symbols to accentuate the emotional setting of a scene. 
 
 Ovid, to be sure, makes transformed characters in the Lie tamo rphoscs 
 of paramount interest in themselves, and Yergil, in several in- 
 stances, mentions such a realistic manner, sometimes to indicate 
 
 * A 
 
 a portent . ^ 
 
 But instances of metamorphosis we must exclude from the limits 
 of the pathetic fallacy, since characters metamorphosed were con- 
 ceived of in antiquity as the persons they had been rather than the 
 objects they had become, and hence their sympathies and antipa- 
 thies still seemed real rather than fallacious. In fact the idea 
 of metamorphoses might be construed, on the whole, as an unconscious 
 groping of the imaginative ancient mind to establish a link be- 
 tween the human and brutish or inanimate worlds. 
 
 l.e.g. Aen.ll ,274ff. 
 

Chapter V. 
 
 30 . 
 
 Volumes have been written by modern scholars on the subject 
 of oracles, divination and omens of antiquity with the purpose 
 of showing what a significant part they played in the life of 
 the Greeks and Romans. Not only did the untutored believe in 
 divination, but the Stoics found a philosophic justification for 
 it* The flight of birds, the entrails of beasts, rain, thun- 
 der, lightning, dreams, — almost everything was a means of div- 
 ination. What An abundance of signs, omens and dreams the anci- 
 ent historians record J Horace uses them pleasantly enough in his 
 Odes - like much else such things are charming, if one does not 
 
 p 
 
 believe in them. * but it is abundantly clear that it took an 
 effort to be rid of such belief. * 
 
 n Superstition”, says Cicero, "follows you up, is hard upon 
 you, pursues you wherever you turn. If you hear a prophet, or 
 an omen; if you sacrifice ; if you catch sight of a bird; if you 
 see a Chaldean or a haruspex; if it lightens, if it thunders, if 
 anything is struck by lightning; if anything like a portent is 
 born or occurs in any way - something or other of the kind must 
 generally be happening so that you can never be at ease and have 
 a quiet mind. The re£uge from all our toils and anxieties would 
 seem to be sleep. Yet from sleep itself the most of our cares 
 
 It / 
 
 and terrors come. The argument of the later Stoics, well 
 
 Bummed up by Cicero, is of particular significance here, consider- 
 ing that the Stoic philosophy and religion, for a long time pre- 
 valent in Greece ? greatly influenced for more than two centuries 
 
 1. Cf. Cicero, De Divinatione I., 82-83 
 
 2. Cf. Odes III. , 27 
 
 3. T. R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman 
 Empire, 1909, p. 17 
 
 4. Cf. Arnold, Roman Stoicism , 1911 Chap. XVI. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
31 . 
 
 the entire Roman world. Divination was justified by the Stoics 
 by the doctrine of <rup- TuV o/^oJu/ or Sympathy of the 
 Whole. This conception, in the main, was as follows: all the 
 world is working together; it is all one living whole, with one 
 soul through it. This soul is Phusis, the life of the world, and, 
 from another point of view, the Law of Nature; 11 it is the great 
 causation by which all events occur; for the Phusis which shapes 
 things towards their end acts always by the laws of causation. 
 Phusis is not a sort of arbitrary personal goddess, upsetting the 
 natural order; Phusis is the natural order, and nothing happens 
 without a cause. A natural law, yet a natural law which is alive, 
 
 i 
 
 which is itself life, it becomes indistinguishable from a purpose, 
 the purpose of the great world - process , ,f ..... . It approaches 
 
 our idea of a "definite personal God, and, since it must be in 
 some sense material, it is made up of the finest material there 
 is.... fire ... .intellectual fire that is present in life, a fire 
 
 which has consciousness and life, and is not subject to decay. 
 
 This fire, Phusis, God, is in all creation. 
 
 Since Phusis is throughout the world, the world is one great 
 unit, of which no single part can either rejoice or suffer with- 
 out the rest being affected. .... A grand conception, the truth 
 
 of which is illustrated in the ethical world by the feelings of 
 good men, and in the world of natural science -- we moderns may 
 
 be excused for feeling a little surprise — by the fact that the 
 stars twinkle. It is because they are so sorry for us: as well 
 
 they may be! " 
 
 1. Cf. Gilbert Murray, The Stoic Philosophy , 1915, pp. 39-43 
 

And so we see that, for Stoics, sympathy runs through all 
 the universe. Why, even the moon sympathizes] Thus Vergil re- 
 presents the noon as friendly towards the Argives when they rushed 
 from Tenedos to Troy *amid the friendly silence of the peaceful 
 moon, seeking the well - known shores.* 
 
 et iam Argiva phalanx ins true tis navibus ibat 
 a Tenedo, tacitae per arnica silentia lunae 
 litora nota petens, flammas cum regia puppis 
 extulerat, fatisque deum defensus iniquis 
 inclusos utero Danaos et pinea furtim 
 laxat claustra sinon 
 
 How, therefore, not only the supernatural, but particularly 
 Nature, is in Vergil closely allied with human feeling; how the 
 steadfast course of Nature in her familiar road symbolizes that 
 which is familiar and welcome among men; how discord in Nature 
 sympathizes with strange and sad happenings in the human world -- 
 — I shall attempt to show presently in collected evidence. 
 
 At present let us pick up the threads of our argument and 
 observe what relation there was between the doctrine of 
 and divination. M What connection has divination with the nature 
 of things ? w asks Cicero. **And even if it were united and 
 joined therewith, so as to form one harmonious whole, which I see 
 is the opinion of the natural philosophers and especially of those 
 who say that all things that exist are but one whole; still what 
 correspondence can there be between the order of the universe and 
 the discovery of a treasure? For if an increase of my wealth is 
 indicated by the entrails of a victim, and this fact is a necessa- 
 ry link in the chain of nature, then it follows, in the first 
 
 0 
 
 place, that we must suppose that the entrails themselves form 
 1. Aen. II. , 254 ff . 
 
I 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 ■ 
 
 . . 
 
 ' 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 % 
 
 
 
 
 
33 
 
 other links; and secondly, that my private gain is connected with 
 the nature of things, For the Stoics have collected many 
 
 cases which they think confirm the notion, as when they assert 
 that the little livers of little mice increase in winter, and 
 that dry pennyroyal flourishes in the coldest weather, . ... that 
 the chords of a stringed instrument at times give notes different 
 
 from their usual ones, and that trees lose their vitality 
 
 as the moon declines, just as the dry up in winter, and that 
 this is the time to cut them. Why need I speak of the seas, and 
 the tides of the ocean, the flow and ebb of which are said to be 
 governed by the moon? and many other examples might be related 
 to prove that some natural subsists between of jects apparently 
 remote and incongruous, ,,,,,, Antipater, Chrysippus and Posei- 
 donius •• all assert the same proposition 77 namely, that the 
 divine and sentient energy which extends through the universe , 
 directs us even in the choice of the victim by whose entrails we 
 are to frame our divinations. And to improve upon this theory, 
 you will agree with them in asserting that at the very instant 
 that the sacrifice is offered, a certain appropriate change takes 
 place in the victim*s entrails, so that we can therein discover 
 some signal addition or deficiency, since all things are obedient 
 to the will of the gods," In brief, there is a certain con- 
 nection and conjunction of nature (continuatio coniunctioque 
 naturae),^* a natural sympathy and correspondence in the nature 
 
 1, De Div . , II,, 35 
 
 2. ibid. II., 142 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
of things(vis consensusque naturae), which makes possible divi- 
 nation, and that a long continuance of observations has created the 
 
 art, 
 
 Thus we find that the religious atmosphere of the Romans was 
 permeated with such conceptions and usages but in the neighborhood 
 of a skepticism on the part of men like Gicero and Horace, who 
 were probably infrequent as compared with the number of the credu- 
 lous, Accordingly, in the Roman poets thehe are countless refer- 
 ences to omens and portents many of which are interpretations of 
 natural phenomena. Omens, it should be observed, *have no sig- 
 nificance independent of the will of an ooserver to accept them, 
 but he must note words, phrases, or acts and apply them conscious- 
 ly in another than their literal sense. Such definite acceptance 
 (accipere omen) • is paralleled by definite power of refusal 
 (improbare, exsecrari, refutare, abominari omen). ,5# At this 
 point let us observe that omens may be therefore pathetic*, that 
 is, the interpretations may be affected by the mood of the poet 
 or his character. 
 
 But even though some interpretations may be both pathetic* 
 and fallacious, I shall consider them as transitional, and shall 
 exclude them from the field of the pathetic fallacy proper. For 
 example, Propertius, lamenting the illness of Cynthia: 
 
 1. ibid. 144 
 
 2. ibid. 146 
 
 3. e. g. C ic . De Div . , 1. , 103 
 
 4. Examples are too numerous to be cited here but will be found 
 in the collection of Bulenger in Graevius , Thes, Ant., 5 (1696) 
 365; 441-452 
 
 5. A. S. Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Divinatione Liber Primus, 
 
 1920, p.286 
 
35 . 
 
 et lam Luna negat totiens descendere caelo, 
 nigraque funestum concinit omen avis. 1* 
 
 And Ovid makes sad Phyllis say to Demophoon; 
 
 pronuba Tisi£hone thalamis ululavit in illis, 
 et cecinit maestum devia carmen avis. ”• 
 
 And again Ovid, in the Tristia, sorrowing: 
 
 dum loquor et flemus, caelo nitidissimus alto 
 stella gravis nobis, Lucifer ortus erat. 3 4 * 
 
 The owl was usually considered a bad omen: 
 
 sedit in adverso nocturnus culmine bubo 
 funeroqu© graves adidit ore sonos. 4. 
 
 Miracles, too, occur, though they are some times hardly dis- 
 tinguishable from omens and portents and are either 'pathetic 1 2 , 
 fallacious, or both. An interesting example illustrating at the 
 same time mantic, miracles and the pathetic fallacy, in close 
 connection, may be found in Tibullus: at one time the Sibyls 
 prophesied that a war would come. Then a miracle took place: 
 'trumpets and the clash of arms were heard in heaven, the sacred 
 groves rang with the comming rout..... and kine found tongue and 
 spake of the coming doom.' And with them even the images of the 
 gods sympathized, for from them 'poured the warm tears M 
 
 haec fore dixerunt belli mala signa cometen, 
 multus ut in terras deplueretque lapis. 
 
 1. Prop, II* 28,37 ff. 
 
 2. Ovid, Her. II* 117 ff. 
 
 3. Ovid, Tristia, I. 3, 71 ff. 
 
 4. Ovid, IblsT , 221 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
36 
 
 atque tubas atque arma ferunt strepitantia caelo 
 audita et lucos praecinuisse fugam: 
 et simulacra deum lacrimas fudisse tepentes 
 fataque vocales praemonuisse boves. 
 ipsum etiam Solem defectum lumine vidit 
 
 iungere pallentes nubilus annus equos. 1 2 3 * 
 
 And Propertius advises Lynceus , pass ion-tossed for Cynthia, 
 to cease from writing on such serious themes as these: 
 
 nam rursus licet Aetoli referas Acheloi 
 
 fluxerat ut magno fractus amore liquor, 
 atque etiam ut Phrygio fallax Maeandria campo 
 err at et ipsa suas decipit unda vias, 
 qualis et AdTasti fuerit vo calls Arion, 
 
 tristis ad Archemori funera victor equus. 
 
 There are some instances, too, that are on the border line 
 between interpretation of human observation and a miracle, as 
 when, in the Aeneid, victorious Aeneas forms a procession of his 
 vanquished enemies, the Rutulians are overcome with grief, and 
 ’behind, the war-steed Aethon, his trappings laid aside, goes 
 weeping, and big drops wet his face’: 
 
 post bellator equus positis insignibus Aethon 
 
 it lacrimans guttisque umectat grandibus ora 
 
 1. II. 5, 71 ff. 
 
 2. II. 34, 33 ff* 
 
 3. XI. 89 ff • Cf. Iliad XVII. 426 ff . where the horses of 
 Achilles weep. 
 

 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 • , 
 
 ■ 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ’ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 '* 
 
 
 . 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
Chapter VI. 
 
 37. 
 
 One of the most prominent features of poetic diction is to 
 be observed in the use of the epithet* And particularly in the 
 employing of personifying epithets, that is, in such epithets as 
 are cpmmonly applicable only to persons, the pathetic fallacy is 
 not infrequently to be observed: since the poet often applies to 
 inanimate or brute objects or phenomena in nature epithets that 
 are peculiarly descriptive of his own temporary moods or emotions. 
 
 But we must be careful to recognize such personifying epith- 
 ets as are not so much descriptive of some temporary mood or emo- 
 tion as of a clearly defined and permanent state of mind or atti- 
 tude towards certain objects* Such epithets, which I may call 
 *faded*, are almost invariably applied to particular objects at 
 all times, as are, for example, the epithets usually applied to 
 the sea* We may recognize a *faded* epithet when we are aware 
 that the poet employs it while he is a natural or contemplative 
 state of mind and is clearly not influenced by any mood or emo- 
 tion, as in the case of Horace, who, regarding the sea, *eer-~ 
 
 1 . 
 
 tainly leaves the reader in no doubt as to his opinion*. Says 
 he: 
 
 non est meum, si mugiat Africis 
 malus procellis, ad miseras precas 
 decurrere et votis pacisci, 
 ne Cypriae Tyriaeque merces 
 
 o 
 
 addant avaro divitias mari * 
 
 This aspect of the * greedy* or * cruel * sea — the sea 
 
 is very commonly invested with life — as the enemy of man is 
 
 1* Hodnett, The Sea in Roman Poetry. t>. 52 
 2* Odes III. 2§y 57-gl' ' 
 

38 . 
 
 prominent in almost every author, and the feeling toward the sea 
 most often to be inferred is a sense of this power and cruelty, 
 a feeling of dread and at the same time of the fascination which 
 may accompany such dread. Figuratively, the sea usually repre- 
 sents misfortune, and human cares and trouble are often repre- 
 sented as waves. To be sure, says Lucretius, * the waves 
 
 2 . 
 
 of the sea smile 1 , but man should not trust them. After a 
 
 t 5. 
 
 shipwreck ' the face of the sea laughs treacherously. 
 
 But in the case of poets who allude to the sea with various 
 
 epithets expressing nearly every aspect, it is somewhat difficult 
 
 to recognize d 'faded* epithet or determine a pathetic fallacy, 
 
 as when Attis addressing his companion: 
 
 aliena quae petentes velut exules loca celeri 
 sectam meam exectitae duce mihi comites 
 rapidum salum tulistis truculentaque pelage 
 et corpus evirastis Veneris nimio odio, 
 hilarate erae citatis erroribus animum. 
 
 There may be a slight hint of the sympathetic fallacy here: 
 
 'rapidum' (1*16) may mean 'restless* or 'impetuous' as reflected 
 
 from 'exules '(1.14. ) , 'celeri '( 1.14. ) and 'citatis erroribus' 
 
 (1.18.). The sea here is 'truculenta' - 'savage* or 'cruel*, 
 and the epithet is hardly a 'faded' one but may express here 
 
 something of the antipathetic fallacy: considering that in 
 
 Catullus the ' calm * and 'dazzling' sea is not without repre- 
 
 5. 
 
 sentation. Fear was, to be sure, the pervading element in the 
 
 6 . 
 
 Roman feeling for the sea, and although it is difficult to 
 estimate the poetry of the early Republic, we find there such 
 
 1. Cf. Vergil, Aen . IV., 532. 
 
 2. I., 100 
 
 3. ibid., II., 652-561 
 
 4. Cat., LXIII. , 14-18 
 
 5. Cf. LXIV. , 2 69 JLXIV • , 14;LXIV., 7; XXXVI., 11 
 
 6. Hodnett, The Sea in Roman Poetry, Master's thesis, 1918, p.10 
 
39 
 
 stereotyped epithets as 'minax', 1 avidus 1 , 'infidus', 'subdolus', 
 
 'horridus ' , 1 iramisericors 1 , 'immanis', etc., clearly indicating 
 
 1 . 
 
 the Roman conventional attitude towards it. 
 
 On the whole, it seems to me, we must be guided not only 
 by our knowledge of a poet's style of diction but also of his 
 mental traits and personality if we attempt to distinguish 
 'faded* epithets: from those expressing the pathetic fallacy. 
 
 Such 'faded* epithets as, for example, those applied to 
 the sea by certain poets as indicative of their personal atti- 
 tude towards it — who comprise, according to Miss Hodnett's 
 excellent study, all of the pre-Augustan excepting Catullus, and 
 the Augustan poets excepting Virgil and Ovid — I shall exclude 
 from my consideration of the pathetic fallacy. In the case of 
 epithets applied to other objects it is more difficult to draw 
 hard and fast lines between 'faded* and fresh epithets. 
 
 Another kind of epithet which may be mistaken as an indi- 
 cation of the pathetic fallacy is the transferred epithet, that 
 is, an epithet transferred from a person to some object towards 
 which he bears some relation in the context. But very often 
 distinction of the transferred epithet from the regular personi- 
 fying epithet is necessarily arbitrary. I shall therefore con- 
 sider as transferred epithets only such as are transferred from 
 a person to some object towards which he bears a desidedly per- 
 sonal relation as, for example, his clothes, bed, etc. 
 
 1. Id. , 
 
 p. 25 
 
40 
 
 A few examples : 
 
 Hermione, sorrowing, in a letter to Orestes mentions 
 incidentally her borrowing 1 bed? 
 
 nox ubi me thalamis ululantem et acerba gementem 
 condidit in maesto procubuique toro. 1» 
 
 And Ovid, in exile, describes his illness: he is pale, 
 emaciated, sorrowing: 
 
 nec vires adimit Veneris damnosa voluptas : 
 non solet in maestos ilia venire toros. 
 
 Ovid attributes his forced flight even to his ship: 
 
 et Scythicum profuga scindere puppe fretum.*" * 
 
 And, in another place: 
 
 4 
 
 accedam profugae sarcina parva rati. 
 
 But in the first book of the Aene id Vergil describes 
 the harbor where the f wearied sons of Aeneas ’ 5# *wearied 
 of their lot 1 , 6# take refuge. ’Here 1 , says Vergil, T no fetters 
 imprison weary ships 1 : 
 
 hie f ess as non vincula navis 7 
 
 ulla tenent unco non alligat ancora morsu. * 
 
 The poet here reflects in the ships the state of mind 
 
 1. Ovid, Her. VIII., 107 ff. 
 
 2 . Ex PonCcT“l. , 10 , 33 f f . 
 
 3. Tr'isrisT V. , 2, 62 
 
 4. ibid. , I., 3, 84 
 
 5. I., 157 
 
 6. I., 177 
 
 7. I., 168 ff. 
 

 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ‘ . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 •> 
 
 * 
 
 
41 . 
 
 and body of the sons of Aeneas. If the sons of Aeneas had them- 
 selves, Instead of Vergil, ascribed their own state of mind and 
 body to their ships, this might probably have been merely a 
 transferred epithet. The ! weary f ships is obviously a pathetic 
 interpretation of the breaking and groaning 1 of the ships as 
 they were anchored in the harbor. 
 
 Sometimes, too, the Roman poets employ a noun like 'ship 1 
 or 'land' not as an object but as a poetic expression signify- 
 ing persons who presumably occupy the land or ship, as in the 
 following rhetorical question: 
 
 quid, ferus Andromachae lecto cum surgeret Hector ? 
 be 11a Mycenae ae non timuere rates ? 1* 
 
 Here f the Mycenaean ships* obviously refer to the men who 
 occupied them. To ascribe fear and trembling to men is not, 
 of course, fallacious. Such instances are certainly to be ex- 
 cluded from the limits of the pathetic fallacy. 
 
 An interesting example of a figurative reference to persons 
 that may easily be mistaken for the pathetic fallacy I have found 
 in the Tristia . Ovid describes his last night in Rome, before 
 departing for Tomi, his place of exile. Depicting the grief of 
 his wife and household, 'every corner', he says, 'in the house 
 has its share of tears ' : 
 
 inque domo lacrimas angulus omnis habet. 
 
 Very probably Ovid here refers to persons who might have been 
 sitting or standing in the corners of the rooms. 
 
 1. Prop. II., 22, 51 ff # 
 
 2. I., 324 
 
42 
 
 Besides, one often finds verbs originally suggesting the 
 presence of emotion on the part of the subject, but which have 
 in the course of time lost their emotional significance. For 
 example, 'queror', originally meaning 'to lament had become to 
 mean merely to 'coo' or 'warble' ; 
 
 fons sacer in medio speluncaque pumic e ^pendens , 
 et latere ex omni dulce queruntur aves. 
 
 This I think may be explained as follows: every bird was con- 
 
 sidered symbolically, at least by poets, as representing some 
 person who had been metamorphosed, after a tragic experience, 
 and who was, therefore, forever doomed to utter emotional ex- 
 pression symbolic of his experience. Thus, the nightingale, 
 'forever lamenting', it was imagined, 'the death of Itys ' , 
 
 ‘ ; - ~ ‘ ’ 'l- * 
 
 had been, according to one version, ASdon, a Theban queen, who, 
 jealously attempting to kill her brother-in-law Amphion's eldest 
 
 son, by mistake killed her own son.Itylus, and was changed by 
 
 2 . 
 
 Zeus into a bird. Hence the song was imaginatively construed 
 as a lament and was usually expressed by the verb 'queror', 
 in even the most realistic or prosaic descriptions, the origi- 
 nal meaning of which, as applied to birds, having faded. By 
 whom it was used for the first time in the sense of 'to warble' 
 or to 'coo' is difficult to ascertain. 
 
 Another verb of 'faded' meaning is 'remugire', 'to bellow 
 back', as in this 'lover's complaint': 
 
 audio quo strepitu ianua, quo nemus 
 inter pulchra s a turn tela remugiat 
 vent is. 3. 
 
 1. AmoreS III., 1> 3 ff. 
 
 2. Cf. Walters, Classical Dictionary, 1916, p. 20 
 5. Horace III., 10, 5 ff. 
 

 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 t'.r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
43 
 
 Perhaps 'faded 1 , too, is 'gemere' or 'congemere', to groan, 
 as when a tree was being cut down by woodsmen, in a simile 
 emphasizing the destruction of Troy: 
 
 volneribus donee paulatim evicta supremum 
 congemuit traxitque iugis avolsa ruinam. 
 
 This may also be a curious transferred pathetic fallacy: Vergil 
 perhaps implies that Aeneas groaned as he described the destruction 
 of Troy, or, that perhaps Troy groaned as she tottered, but he trans- 
 fers the ’pathetic' verb to the simile, thus interpreting the 
 creaking of a tree as it falls. 
 
 But Hero, in her letter to Leander, describes her drowsy mood 
 and ascribes her sleepiness also to her lamp; 
 
 namque sub aurora, iam dormitante lucerna 
 soronia quo cerni tempore vera solent, 
 stamina de digitis cecidere sopore remissis, 
 collaque pulvino nostra ferendi dedi. 
 
 This is a premeditated pathetic fallacy: in the interpretation of 
 the flickering and sputtering of the lamp by the personifying epithet 
 'dormitante', Ovid consciously accentuates the mood of Hero. At 
 the same time, from the character's viewpoint. Hero, filled with 
 anxiety for Leander and with the terror of a dream she is about 
 to relate, imagines the reflection of her mood in the lamp. En 
 passant, it is interesting to note that the sputtering of a lamp 
 was considered a bad omen, and is therefore here cleverly brought 
 in obviously to supply a sympathetic atmosphere in connection with 
 the dream which Hero is about to relate and interpret as a bad omen. 
 
 1. Vergil, Aen . II. 630 ff. 
 
 2. Ovid, Her. XIX. 195 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 : * i. 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 „ • 
 
 > 
 
 , 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 , 
 
44 . 
 
 And now, to sum up the main points in the argument of this 
 lengthy hut, I feel, necessary introduction: I have attempted 
 to show that Dr. Shairp's belief, mentioned in the begining of 
 this study, that the expression of the pathetic fallacy * is keep- 
 ing true to a fact of human nature' has strong foundation. And 
 that this is even more true regarding Latin poetry not only 
 because it is natural for sone poets to express the pathetic 
 fallacy when under the influence of some poignant mood or violent 
 emotion, but also because: 
 
 I* The time during which there existed 
 a belief in animism, that is, a spontaneous attribution of life to 
 Nature, and hence concomitant human expression, could not have been 
 so far distant, from any period in Roman history. The revival, 
 therefore, of this belief, which I have termed Animization, by 
 Roman poets may be considered a characteristic of Latin poetry 
 that was to some extent borrowed from the Alexandrian, and which 
 paved the way for the expression of the pathetic fallacy. 
 
 II. The culture of mythology and par- 
 ticularly the idea of metamorphosis may be construed as an un- 
 consdious groping of the ancient imagination to establish a link 
 between the human and brutish or inanimate worlds. 
 
 III. This li#k was finally realized to 
 some extent in the Stoic doctrine of ^ • 
 
45. 
 
 r 
 
 The body of my evidence will afford a view of the occurence 
 of the pathetic fallacy in Roman poetry, from Snnius through the 
 Augustan Age, to determine, in so far as the evidence of th6 oc- 
 currence of the pathetic fallacy in each author, the literary e- 
 poch in which the author wrote, and his characteristic personal 
 traits, allow (1) a most probable conjecture of the emotional tem- 
 per of the different Roman po6ts whose works are extant; and (2) 
 the purpose of the use of the pathetic fallacy, th.-.t is, a differ- 
 entiation of such fallacies as are stock forms, borrowed probably 
 from the Alexandrian poets, from those which give the appearance 
 of originality, and (3) the nature of the use of the fallacy. 
 
 Rote. As I had not developed the idea of the antipathetic 
 fallacy until after I had completed my collection of material, my 
 evidence of this fallacy will be necessarily incomplete. 
 

 ... . — - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
46 . 
 
 The Pre -Ciceronian Period 
 The Comic Poets 
 
 Inasmuch as the pathetic fallacy is primarily a poetic form, 
 we need not be surprised to find practically no evidence of it in 
 the comic poets, Plautus and Terence, who were termed poets’ by 
 the ancients probably by virtue only of having written in verse, 
 according to the view of Horace, who asserts that poetry depends 
 not upon metre alone, but it is such a composition as will, by 
 its diction, proclaim itself poetic, even if the metre is broken 
 up by a transposition of the words. Satire and comedy, he main- 
 tains , in which people are made to talk very much as in ordinary 
 life, are not poetry. 
 
 But even in prose writing there may sometimes appear a poetic 
 strain, if perhaps only for comic effect, there is, for example, 
 in Plautus and instance of what may be called an anticipated pa- 
 thetic fallacy. In the opening scene of the Miles Gloriosus 
 Pyrgopolinices , a villainous captain of Ephesus, addressing his 
 henchman Artotrogus bids him take care that the lustre of his 
 shield is 'more bright than the rays of the sun are wont to be 
 at the time when the sky is clear, so that when the occasion 
 comes.... it may dazzle the eyesight of the enemy.' 'And', he 
 continues, 'he wishes to console his sabre that it may not lament 
 nor be downcast in spirits. .. .since it longs right dreadfully to 
 havoc of the enemy * s 
 
 1. Cf. Horace, Satires, I. 4 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 SC 
 
 * 
 
 
 ' 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 h a 4^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
47 
 
 nam ego hanc machaeram mihi consular i volo, 
 ne lamentetur neve animum despondeat, 
 quia se iajn pridem feriatam gestitem, 
 quae misera gestit fartem facere ex hostibus 1. 
 
 The fallacy becomes intelligible if we suppose, as it is plausible, 
 that the speaker thus mirrors his own longing 'to make havoc of the 
 enemy 1 , and is himself ' downcast in spirits’ because he could not 
 
 do so. 
 
 In the earliest Roman poets it is in most cases impossible to 
 obtain conclusive evidence of the pathetic fallacy, since the frag- 
 mentary nature of the material compels the investigator to withhold 
 his decisions because of a lack of context* What evidence there is 
 can not be explained, therefore, too confidently* 
 
 There is perhaps, one instance of the sympathetic fallacy in 
 Pacuvius 2 
 
 profectione laeti piscium lasciviam intuentur, 
 nec tuendi satietas capier potest 
 
 The sailors, happy in their departure, see their joy reflected in 
 the playfullness of the fishes*. 
 
 Perhaps, too, in Accius (33) there is a possible indication, 
 in a negative way, of a sense of kinship between man and nature in 
 •the pitiless waves': 
 
 flucti inmisericordes iacere taetra ad saxa adlidere. 
 
 1 * Plautus , Miles Glorlosus , 5 f f . 
 
 2* B. 265 
 
48 
 
 The Ciceronian Period 
 
 In Lucretius, too, the evidence is almost negligible. There 
 are not a few metaphorical expressions that at first sight give 
 the impression of the fallacy as, for example, in his invocation 
 to Venus at the opening of Book I. 
 
 tibi rident aequora ponti 
 placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. 
 
 
 
 I believe there is little likelihood, however, that in 'rident* 
 Lucretius mirrors anything other than the conventional mood a poet 
 is wont to adopt when invoking Venus. But in Book IV. he describes 
 the gamut of feelings and emotions which an impetuous lover ex- 
 periences. Deluded he, to imagine that his mistress's daintily- 
 polished shoes smile at him! 
 
 unguenta et jbulchra in pedibus Sicyonia rident 
 
 2 . 
 
 'Of the sympathetic or sentimental view of nature there 
 seems to be little trace in Lucretius', finally observes one writer. 
 But there is one sentimental element in Lucretius that is, I believe 
 
 3 
 
 peculiarly modern. Ke introduces it immediately in his prooemium: 
 
 nam simul ac species genitabilis aura favoni 
 aeriae primum volucres te, diva, tuumque 
 significant initum perculsae corda tua vi. 
 inde ferae pecudes persultant pabula laeta 
 et rapidos tranant amnis : it a capta lepore 
 te sequitur cupide quo quamque inducere pergis. 
 
 1. De Rerum Nature, I. 8 ff . Cf. also II. 559; V. 1005; III. gg 
 
 2. II. 1125 
 
 3. Allen, The Treatment of N ature in t h e Poetry of the Republic, 
 Madison, W is., 1898, p. 1886. 
 
r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 « 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 . 
 
 i 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
49 . 
 
 denique per maria ac montis fluvisque rapacis 
 frondif erasque domos avium camposque virentis 
 efficis ut cupide generatim saecla propagent 
 quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas 
 nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras 
 exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile laetum. ^ • 
 
 The above sentiment rests upon the fancy that "springtime is the 
 season of romance in all creation; in spring the trees and flowers 
 bud, the birds skip and sing and mate, and--here is the vital 
 
 t 
 
 point — 
 
 '2 
 
 ’In spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. 
 
 ■ 
 
 This pretty fancy that the nightingale and the rose feel in the 
 springtime the very same impulses as the poet re-established a 
 Sympathy between man and nature and thus disclosed a limitless 
 source of emotion. But when such a bond is once established 
 through supposed fellowship in joy and suffering the aesthetic 
 sense also finds room to play. And in this case man attributes 
 
 ’ C. 
 
 to nature not mere sensation, as in the xase of animization, but 
 the one vital and universal passion. 
 
 But Lucretius was not the only classical Latin poet to ex- 
 press this conceit or 'pathetic' fancy, notwithstanding Tenney 
 Prank's assertion that 'the suggestion of Lucretius had to awaite 
 the spirit of mediaevalism' and that 'the rationalistic Roman 
 
 recognized the sentiment as f antastic. . . .and had little patience 
 
 3. 
 
 with this momentary outburst of Lucretius.' For Vergil later 
 expressed the same feeling just as poigantly in his Georgies: 
 
 1. I. 10-25 
 
 2. Tenney Frank, in Class. Jour., Vol. XI., May 1916, p. 488 
 
 3. ibid., p. 489 
 
 9 * 
 
50 . 
 
 In the spring 'th* rooks joyous with some strange unwonted delight 
 chatter to each other amid the leaves. Glad are they, the rains 
 over, to see once more their little brood and sweet nests, .... 
 now their hearts conceive new impresses, other than they felt 
 when the wind was chasing the clouds ... .Hence that chorus of the 
 birds in the fields, the gladness of the cattle, and the exultant 
 cry of the rooks. 1 2 3 In spring, again, 'Heaven comes down in 
 fruitful showers into the lap of his joyous spouse, and his might, 
 with her might commingling, nurtures all growths.... the herds 
 
 2 
 
 renew their loves ....the fields loosen their bosoms. .. .the grasses 
 
 jj 
 
 safely dare to trust themselves to face new suns; the vine-tendrils 
 fear not the rising of the South or the storms of the North, but 
 thrust forth their buds and unfold all their leaves.' 2. This 
 sentiment which reflects his own love for every living thing 
 Vergil sums up in three words — 'amor omnibus idem.' 
 
 Lucretius however, was obviously the first Latin poet to 
 express this sentiment which later clearly had so deep an influence 
 on Vergil-, although their respective philosophic views of nature 
 were widely different, and still later, on the unknown author of 
 the Pervigilium V eneris , a romantically colored poem of the later 
 Empire. Hence Lucretius appears to me in an unusual but brilliant 
 light: his true spirit seems to force itself out regardless of 
 
 his philosophy. In this light he appears not so much a propounder 
 
 1. I. 410 ff . 
 
 2. II. 325 ff. 
 
 3. III. 244 
 
51 
 
 1 
 
 of the Epicurean philosophy as preeminently a poet of intense 
 feeling and emotion--a poet who, despite his materialistic philo- 
 sophy and the conservative literary creed of his day, was so 
 intensely given to expressing his mystical nature that, even in 
 the treatment of a subject defined only by the intellect, he 
 expressed the mystic and emotional elements which, in modern times 
 became so prominent a characteristic of the French and English 
 poets of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The pat. etic fallacy is more frequent in Catullus than in any 
 other poet of the Republican period. Throughout the Atti s and 
 the Pole us and Thetis nature is in sympathy with the mood of the 
 Suffering human being. The fallacy is usually artificial, and is 
 clearly lacking in the spontaneity that characterizes Catullus’s 
 shorter poems. It is more than probable that this premeditated 
 adaptation of nature was borrowed by Catullus from Alexandrian 
 models, although we have not the models to verify this conjecture. 
 In his longer poems the pathetic fallacy is most prominent. The 
 sea-shore and the sea are made, for artistic effect, to enhance 
 the loneliness of the scenes in the laments of Ariadne and of 
 Attis. The latter gazes in the direction of his lost home and 
 yearhs for it 'looking upon the lonely sea with tearful eyes': 
 
 ibi maria vasta visens lacrimantia oculis 
 patrian allocuta maestast ita voce miseriter. 
 
 1. LXIII. 48 ff 
 

 
 
 
 
 •s 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 t ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 ! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
Htrn 
 
 Ovid and > t o some extent, Catullus are characterised by the 
 premeditated or artificial use of the pathetic fallacy, and spon- 
 taneous instances, though they occur, seem comparatively rare. 
 
 Prospertius ' s use is, in the main, natural and spontaneous, 
 quite in keeping with the general nature of his poetry. It is, 
 fur the ignore of such a character as is peculiarly harmonious with 
 the very modern romantic view of aesthetics, a view which, I be- 
 lieve, maintains that the truly beautiful defies definition or 
 
 classification and is revealed only in the light of impression 
 that is necessarily subjective. 
 
 Further, to quote Professor Postgat6 : "In the employment of 
 
 sentiment Propertius is modern and even romantic. The personal 
 
 feeling which is so predominant in his poems is reflected upon in- 
 animate objects and external events: they are transfigured, so to 
 
 apeak, in a human mirror. His fancy often assumes a modern shape 
 when swayed by the pathetic fallacy." (1) 
 
 . 1. Postgate furnishes several examples of the i:;athetic 
 
 fallacy, one of which he explains as follows: "Thus 
 in V. 11, 42 f lab6 mea vestros erubuisse foe os' (and 
 note) the fire’s red lifirht appears to the poet as a 
 blush of shame." . Again, 
 
 he explains another pathetic fallacy: "the Parthian 
 
 arrows are gladdened by blood IY. 12, 11, ' tua Medae 
 laetentur caed6 sagittae.'" But the fallacy does not 
 exist, if we quote the entire sentence: 
 
 ilia ouidem interea fama tabescet inani , 
 haec tua ne virtus fiat araara tibi 
 heve tua Medae laetentur caede sagittae , 
 ferreus aurato neu catasphractus equo. 
 
 'She will pine»T». for fear.... lest the median arrows 
 rejoice in thy death or the mailed soldier on his 
 gilded steed.’ The last. part of the sentence appears 
 to indicate that in ’sag4ttae’ there is a case of 
 metonomy': not the arrows, but those who shoot them is 
 here meant. To impute the emotion of joy to the Medes 
 is not, of course, fallacious. 
 

 
 
 
 . 
 
 . 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
52 . 
 
 So too Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus, climbs to the hilltop 
 and thence Tazes upon the lonely waves of the sea 'D and feels 
 hfcrself hopelessly abandoned, hemmed in by the waters,^) where \ 
 no mortal appears upon the empty seaweed, and she stands by the 
 lonely sea, and while its waves sweep up the beach, within her own ! 
 heart "great waves of sorrow roll".^ ; 
 
 On the contrary, Catullus calls upon the waves of his lake to 
 rejoice with him upon his return to Sirmio. Here the poet wishes 
 his joy to be reflected in the ripples of the waters on the lake 
 bordering on his estate, and in the laughter of his "home": 
 
 Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude : 
 gaudete vosque , o Lydiae lacus undae : 
 ridete, quidquid est domi cacchinorum. »5) 
 
 And the stars are called on as witnesses and perhaps sympa- 
 thizers with the loves of men The obverse of this feeling is 
 
 brought out where Catullus contrasts the coming and going of the 
 bright days (soles) with their short intermission of night, and 
 
 his ov/n brief season of happiness, to be followed by perpetual 
 
 ( 7 ) 
 
 night . An interesting example of an antipathetic fallacy is 
 
 the following: the daughter of Minos weeps in grief, and the 
 
 waves respond in play: 
 
 1. LXIV . 127 .ff. 
 
 2. LXIV. ,184/f.. 
 
 3. LXIV. , 168 ff . 
 
 4. LXIV., 62-ff. 
 
 5 . XXI . , 1 ff . 
 
 6. VII. 7 ff. 
 
 7. V. , 4ff. 
 
ipsius ante pedes fluctus salis adludebant. ^ 1 ^ 
 
 And when Chiron brings flowers "cheered with whose grateful odour 
 the house smiled in gladness": 
 
 quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore^) 
 
 But Ariadne, abandoned by Theseus and distracted with woe , is 
 impatient with the inhumaneness of nature: "why should I cry in 
 
 vain to the senseless airs--the airs that are endowed with no 
 feeling, and can neither hear nor return the messages of my voice? 
 (3) "But how murderous," says she, "the tract of sea which sep- 
 arates my kin from me!" She demands vengeance, and Jupiter nods 
 assent: the earth and stormy seas tremble, and the heavens shake 
 
 the quivering stars! (4) 
 
 It is in the Peleus and Thetis that the largest proportion 
 of the description of nature is found, and that the traces of the 
 pathetic fallacy are most evident. 
 
 But in Catullus the pathetic fallacies are largely premedi- 
 tat6d--they seem to partake of the artificiality of the other 
 portions of the poem. They lack the spontaneity that character- 
 izes all phases of Catullus' shorter poems, and all references 
 to nature in Lucretius, and though we have not Catullus' Alexan- 
 drian models , we may surmise that to them must partly be laid the 
 use of nature characteristic of this poem. Had this attitude 
 
 1. LXIY. , 67 ff. 
 
 2. LXIV. , 284 ff. 
 
 3. LXIY., 164 ff. 
 
 4. LXIY., 179 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
54 
 
 toward nature been purely natural to the Roman poet, he would 
 surely have shown more of it in the briefer poems in which his 
 
 own feelings are so strongly and freely expressed. But his inter- 
 ests were in man rather than nature, and it seems to he only un- 
 der outside influence that he cares to use nature in any way to 
 deepen and enhance the expression of feelings. 
 

 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 
55 . 
 
 The Augustan Age. 
 
 Vergil. 
 
 It is almost trite to remark that the noble arts flourish 
 best in an atmosphere of freedom and wealth and tranquility. And 
 no literary epoch so clearly demonstrates this truism as the Aumus 
 tan Age which may well be extended over nearly sixty years, and 
 which forms a singularly well-defined epoch in literary art. The 
 Augustans ''gave expression to the weariness and longing for rest, 
 to the revival of Roman and Italian feeling, to the pride of the 
 empire, the charm of ancient memories a:id associations, the aspir- 
 ations after a better life and a firmer faith; and all these feel- 
 ings are made subordinate to the personal glory of Augustus who 
 stands out as the central and commanding figure in all their re- 
 presentations. ,f f ^ ) 
 
 By far the most imposing poetic figure of this Age was Vergil 
 who reached the maturity of his powers in the treatment of the 
 Aeneid , the greatest subject possible for his time. The charm 
 Vergil exerted over his countrymen was so intense because he was 
 the reviver of the early poetry of Greece and the first creator 
 of the early romance of Italy. Yet his permanent value lies in 
 the fact that he v/as one of the great interpreters of the secret 
 of nature and the meaning of life. 
 
 The difference between Vergil and Homer, even where th6y de- 
 scribe the same natural objects or where the Latin poet borrows 
 his similies directly from the Greek is quite obvious: in Vergil 
 gone is the clear, majestic calm, the classic serenity and perfect 
 simplicity of Homer. But Vergil takes the outward world into his 
 
 1. Sellar, Roman Poets of the Augustan Age , Vergil, 1883, p.14 
 
56. 
 
 heart, and colors it with his own melancholy, Which Saint Beade 
 calls ,T demi tristesse". In Vergil, as in no other Roman poet, na- 
 ture is really human--too human. She lends herself to human joys 
 and sorrows and, like a bright deep pool, reveals in her depths 
 images of human moods, emotions, passions. This sympathy between 
 man and nature, Vergil felt and expressed more poignantly than any 
 other Roman poet; and in this, as in so many other things, we find 
 in him an anticipation of modern times. "As compared with Lucre- 
 tius, Vergil deals with nature in a less sublime, but more human 
 way. Lucretius demands the explanation of ilature and her processes 
 Vergil seems to enter into her feeling, to catch her sentiment". : - ) 
 This perception of a sympathy between the feelings and vicis- 
 situdes of man and the world that surrounds him appears nowhere 
 so strongly as in the Rene id . and particularly throughout the fourth 
 book there is maintained a fine sympathy between the aspects of 
 the outer world and the passions which agitate the human actors. 
 
 "In the Georgies and Aen6id , as well as in the Rc loguea , 
 
 Vergil shows a susceptibility to the beauty and power of Nature. 
 
 But Nature presents different aspects and awakens a different 
 class of feelings in these poems. In the Eclogue s he shows a 
 great openness and receptivity of mind, through which all the sof- 
 ter and more delicate influences of the outer world enter into 
 
 and become part of his being In the Georgies , the sense of 
 
 the relation of Nature to human energy imparts greater nobleness 
 to the conception. She appears there, not only in her majesty and 
 beauty but as endowed with a soul and will. She stands to man at 
 first in the relation of an antagonist: hut, by compliance with 
 her conditions, he subdues her to his will and finds in her at Iasi 
 1. Sh s^rp, p. 167 
 

 
 
 
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 V 1 
 
 X 
 
 
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 - 
 
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 ■ 
 
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 N 
 
 
 
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a just and beneficient helpmate • "( 1 ) 
 
 57. 
 
 One of the most prominent characteristics in the Ce orgies 
 
 and Eclogues is Animization which I defined and illustrated in 
 
 * 
 
 the introduction to this study. The force, too, of many of the 
 epithets applied to material objects, such as"ignava", "laeta et 
 f ortia" , "maligni " , n infelix", etc. consists in the suggestion 
 of a kind of personal life underlying and animating the silent 
 processes of nature. 
 
 In the Eclogues llature seems actually to live and speak. She 
 mourns for the clear Caesar, as in Creek poetry she mourned for 
 the dead Eaphnis. The very pines, springs and orchards call for 
 the absent Tityrus: 
 
 inirabar , quid maesta deos, Amarylli , vocares 
 cui pendere sua patereris in arbore poma 
 Tityrus hinc aberat, ipsaete, Tityre , pinus, 
 ipsi te forites, ipsa haec arbusta vocabant. ' ^ ' 
 
 All llature now mourns at the death, no?/ rejoices at the apotheosis, 
 of Daphnis. (3) And now she smiles, but if fair Alexis should de- 
 part you will see the very rivers dry: 
 
 omnia nunc rident: at si formosus Alexis, 
 montibus his abeat, videas et flumina sicca. (4) 
 
 When Phyllis is absent the country is parched, the grass is athirst 
 
 dying; but at the coming of Phyllis the v/oods will be green and 
 Jupiter v/ill descend in "joyful rain": 
 
 aret ager, vitis marie ns sit it aeris herba, 
 
 Liber panipineas invidit collibus umbras: 
 Pnylliois adventu nostrae nemus omne virebit, 
 
 1. Sellar, p. 164 
 
 2. 36 ff. 
 
 3. Y. u. 18 
 
 4. ViTI . , 55-56 
 
 
 
I 58. 
 
 Juppiter et laeto descandet plurimus Imbri (1) 
 
 When Daphnis gases up at the heavens, Caesar’s star makes the 
 fields rejoice in their fruitage, and the grapes on the hills find 
 their color: 
 
 ffi a phni , quid anti' quo s signorum suspicis art us ? 
 
 ; ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum, 
 
 a strum, quo segetes gauderent frugibus et quo 
 duceret apricis in collibus uva colorem. (2) 
 
 By his pleas Moeris puts off the longing of Lycidas: the whole 
 sea-plain lies still and silent, and every breath of the murmur- 
 ing breeze is dead: 
 
 causando nostros in longum due is amores 
 
 et nunc ornne tibi stratum silet aequor, et omnes, 
 
 aspic e, ventosi eeciderunt murmur is aurae. (3) 
 
 In the tenth Eclogue, Ver-il shows such deep sympathy for Callus 
 
 that all Ilature grieves. ■ 1 But it is when the black south wind 
 
 rises, "saddening the sky with chilly rain" (5) that v/e see the 
 
 natural melancholy of Vergil. And when a plague strikes the earth, 
 
 "sadly goes the plowman and unyokes the steer sorrowing for his 
 
 brother's death". (6) 
 
 One of the most elaborate instances of the pathetic fallacy 
 (probably of Alexandrian origin): Orpheus rages for the loss of 
 his bride Bury dice. She is hastening headlong along the river, 
 and a monstrous serpent is awaiting her near by while all nature 
 weeps! 
 
 at chorus aequalis Dryadum clamor e supremos 
 
 1. VII., 57-60 
 
 2. IX. 46-49 
 
 3. X., 56-59 
 
 4. V. p. 7 
 
 ' 5. Ceorgids, III. 278 6. III., 518. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • • 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 - * 1 r»- 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 or . 
 
 
 
 
 
59 . 
 
 implerunt montis; flerunt Rhodopeiae arces 
 altaque Pangaea et Rhesi Mavortia tellus 
 atque Oetae atque Hebrus 6t Actias Orithyia 
 
 But Orpheus sang only of Eurydice, as he sat on the lonely shore, 
 
 alone, at the corning and the going of the day: 
 
 ipse dava solans aegrum testudine amorem 
 te, dulcis coniunx, te solo in litore secum 
 te venient6 die, te decedente canebat, (i ) 
 
 And when Orpheus, poor wretch, regains his love only to lose her 
 again, for seven whole months by lonely Strymon's wave he wept 
 and unfolded his tale, charming the tigers and making the oaks 
 attend his strain: even as th6 mourning nightingale, bewailing 
 the loss of her brood, weeps all night long, filling the region 
 with sad laments. 
 
 qualis populea maereus philomela sub umbra 
 amissos queritur fetus, quos durus aratcr 
 observ&ns . nido implumis detraxit; at ilia 
 ole.t noctsm, ranoqu6 sedens miserabile carmen 
 integrat, et maestis late loca quest ibus implet. (3) 
 
 Especially at the tim.6 of the composition of the Aeneid , the spi- 
 rit of Stoic pantheism is closely allied to Vergil's sense of mys- 
 ticism and "sympathy for nature." Wordsworth, of the modern 
 poets, has well expressed that spirit. 
 
 a sense sublime 
 
 Of something far more deeply interfused 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting sun 
 And the sound ocean and the living air, 
 
 And th6 blue sky and in the mind of man. (3) 
 
 And this not6 Vergil clearly sounds in his sixth book: 
 
 1. IV. , 460-466 
 
 2. IV., 511-515 
 
 3 . 
 
60 
 
 spiritus in bus alit, totamque inf us a per artus 
 mev*3 agitcat molem (1) 
 
 And in Vergil this is not a mere studied philosophy but a reflec- 
 tion of the inner spirit of the poet himself as well as of his 
 personal philosophy. Tenney Frank is not of course correct in 
 saying, regarding Vergil, that "stoicism could never become a per- 
 sonal religion, a gripping human emotion". p or j, n perhaps no 
 
 other Latin work^ 5 ^ of the Republic or Empire, as in the ^erieid 
 does the Stoic doctrine of <rt/|An«Of so deeply and so consistently 
 characterize the life of nature. Indeed, nature is the kind friend 
 of man; she shares his loves, his fears. Lucretius desired to 
 wrest her secret from her, but Vergil actually became her friend 
 and confidant. There is moreover, a beneficent purpose in the 
 world, Vergil suggested, and the force which moves Nature is akin 
 to ourselves. And not only Nature, but even the supernatural is 
 closely allied with human feeling. Hence the fallacy Vergil em- 
 ploys is usually sympathetic, but sometimes antipathetic. 
 
 Thus, the ships of the weary sons of Aeneas are weary , too,(4) 
 and the Argives move to Tenedos amid the friendly silence of the 
 peaceful ; o on , ' : 1 As Lido, overcome with sorrow, prays for death, 
 the lonely owl with ill-boding son oft complains, drawing out its 
 lingering notes into a wai 1 . ( ° ) Tottering Troy is like a tree 
 groaning as it crashes to the ground. ( ) Achilles hurls the Tro- 
 
 1. Aen . VI., 126 pp. 
 
 2. Frank, Fortunatus et 1116, in Class. Jour. XI., 1916, p, 486 
 
 3. This assertion covers only the periods extending through 
 the Augustan Age, 
 
 4. I., 157. _ / 
 
 5 . ll . , 255 . 
 
 6. IV. , 462 • 
 
 7. II. , 631 . 
 
61 
 
 jans into a panic, the choked rivers pro an and Xanthus cannot 
 
 find his way or roll out to sea.^^ as for Qallus and Daphnis in 
 
 the Sclogues , so in the neneid , nature weeps for the fallen Umbro: 
 
 sed non Dardaniae rnedicari cuspidis ictum 
 evaluit neque eum iuvere in volnere cautus 
 somniferi et liarsis quaesitae montibus heruae 
 1 6 nemus Angitiae, vitrea te Fucinus unda, 
 te liquidi flevere lacus. (2) 
 
 'Alien Turnus kills Bitias in battle the earth groans: 
 
 conlapsa ruunt immania membra, 
 
 dat tellus germitum et olipeum super intonat ingens' 3) 
 
 She groans , too, when Aeneas and lEurnus clash.' And when blood- 
 stained liars gives rein to his frenzied steeds, utmost Thrace 
 moans with the beat of their hoofs. As the grieving Rutulians 
 form the procession of victorious Aeneas, an old war horse weeps 
 as he follows behind them. ( 6 ) Llezentius, too, filled with grief, 
 addresses his grieving steed* ( ) 
 
 llature often reflects human dread. Thus, as Hecate comes to 
 
 open the way, Aeneas is frightened, the ground rumbles and wooded 
 ( 8 ) 
 
 ridges quive r . And when, from the pinnacle, the goddess sang 
 
 the shepherd’s signal, straining her hellish voice to the horn, 
 the groves tremble and the woods echo. The mere of Diana hears it 
 afar off, as does the river liar and the Ye line founts. 
 
 1. Y. , 806. 
 
 2. VII. 756. 
 
 3. IX., 708* 
 
 4. XII., 713* 
 
 5. XII., 335 {ff. 
 
 6. XI. , 89 f±\ 
 
 7 . X. , 860 f f 
 8. VI. 225 ff ^ 
 
 The trem- 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
62 
 
 bling mothers hear it and press their children to their breasts. ^ 
 
 Nature quakes with terror at the exploits of Hercules, when, 
 mad with rage, he shakes to pieces a rock of flint: 
 
 ( 2 ) 
 
 dissultant r.ipae ref luit^ne exterritus anunis 
 
 And v/hen the Salii extol the deeds of Hercules in song, they sing: 
 ’’Before th6e the Stygian lakes trei bled . ) As Aeneas rushes 
 forth with spear in hand, the startled earth trembles , and a cold 
 shudder runs through the Ansonians . ( 4 ) ’..hen Aeneas sets sail 
 from Carthage overhead loons a black cloud: the wave shudders dark 
 ling : 
 
 olli caeruleus supra caput adstitit imber, , r , 
 
 noctem hiememque ferens, et inhorruit unda tenebris 
 
 Victorious Pallas gases down upon the revelling flames, in which 
 his own joy is reflected: 
 
 ( A \ 
 
 ille sedens victor flamrnas despectat ovaritis 
 
 Quite frequently a fallacy may be either sympathetic or anti- 
 pathetic, depending upon the point* of view assumed. Thus, Poly- 
 dorus’ shade, overcome with grief and pain, bids Aeneas flee from 
 the cruel land, the g reedy shore of Thrace.^ ' ‘ Of evil intention 
 and hostile character are the approaches and woods where Turnus 
 lies in ambush: 
 
 l.VII., 512 ff. 
 
 VIII., 240 
 
 3 . VIII . , t-yo 
 
 4. XI 445 
 
 5. V., 11 . 
 
 6. X. 409 
 
 ?. V. p. 6 
 

G3. 
 
 Sat ourvo anfractu valloa, aooomoda fraud! (522) 
 armorumque dolis, quam densis frondibus at run 
 urget utrimque latus tenuis quo ser.ita ducit 
 angustaeque ferunt fauces aditusque m align! (525) 
 hanc super in sp6oulis sumr. oque in vert ice rnontis 
 planities ignota iacet tutique receptus, 
 sen dextra laev&que velis occurrere pugnae , 
 sive instare iugis et grandia volvere saxa ( 53C) 
 hue invenis nota fertur regione viarun 
 arripuitque locum et silvis iin sedit iniquia. ( 1 ) 
 
 Thus "malign!" (525 ) reflects the evil intention, and is sympathetic 
 with the feeling, of Turnus towards Aeneas, and"iniquis" (532) 
 reflects Turnus’ hostility. On the other hand, from the point of 
 view of Aeneas, whose mind is greatly upset, all the surroundings 
 seems suspicious— antipathetic .( ) And when, later, Turnus enga- 
 ges in combat with Aeneas, alas, his t reacherous sword snaps. ' J 
 And, as he dies, he smites the hostile earth with bloodstained 
 mouth. ^ 1 ^ "I trust Aeneas to the treacherous breezes?" (5) 
 exclaims Palinurus. 
 
 When Aeneas in Thrace plucks at the roots of shrubbery he 
 struggles against resisting sands,(°) and later he greedily plucks 
 and breaks off a reluctant — so he imagined— golden bough. ^ And 
 Juno, when Latinus was bidden to proclaim war on the sons of Ae- 
 neas, with her own hand breaks in the delaying doors. (8.) 
 
 Beroe laments that the Trojans must chase a fleeing Italy, 
 and later, Aeneas, invokes Phoebus, exclaiming: "now at last we 
 grasp the shores of fleeing Italy I" d ‘ When Aeneas sets sail 
 on the Tiber: the waves and woods look on in wonder: 
 
 1. XI., 522-551 
 
 2. H.R.Fairclough, in the Loelr, Glass. Lib. edition, 1908, 
 translates "iniquis" by"perilous" and adds: "i.e. involv- 
 ing peril for Aeneas." 
 
64 
 
 labitur uncta vadis abies; mirantur et undae , 
 
 miratur nomus insuetum fulgent ia longe 
 
 scuta virum fluvio pictasque iuvare casinas. (1) 
 
 Again, Nature acta as a prophetess, as when, for example, at 
 the marriage of Dido, and Aeneas, she prophesies the impending ca- 
 tastrophe : 
 
 iAterea magno misceri murmure caelum 
 incipit; insequitur commixta grandine nimbus, 
 et Tyrii comites passim et froiana inventus 
 Dardaniusque nepos Veneris diversa per agros 
 tecta metu petiere; ruunt de montibus amnes. 
 
 Speluneam Dido dux et Or oi anus eandem 
 deveniunt, prima et Tellus et pronuba luno 
 dant Sig^um ; fulsere ignes et conscius aether 
 connubiis, summoque ulularunt vertice Nymphae , 
 ille dies primus leti prir usque malorum 
 causa fuit neque enim specie famave movetur 
 neciam furtivum Dido meditatur amorem; 
 coniugium vocat ; hoc jiraetexit nomine eulpam.(2) 
 
 Yet Nature does not always sympathise; she sometimes follows 
 her own straight course: all is peace and quiet, but not so Dido: 
 
 she is sleepless and heaves with a mighty tide of passion.(3) 
 
 And Nature, like man, responds to divinity: When Zeus speaks, the 
 gods grow silent, heaven and the zephyrs are hushed, and earth 
 trembles from her base. (4) 
 
 In the Lydia, a poem sometimes attributed to Vergil, the 
 poet envies th6 .fields and meadows because his mistress Lydia plays 
 upon them. This is a sympathetic fallacy that mefges into a some- 
 what opposite feeling. With her whom the poet loves Nature, too, 
 will fall in love: the woods, meadows, springs will all rejoice: 
 
 •audebunt silvae, gaudebunt mollia prata, 
 et gelidi fontes, aviumque silent ia fient 
 
 1. VIII. 91 ff. 
 
 2. V. p. 10 
 
 3. 'IV., 160-172 
 
 4. X. , 100 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 jfl 
 
 
65 . 
 
 tardabunt rivi labentes (sistite lyr phae 
 dum me a inoundas exponat our a guerelas. 
 
 ^hus the poet sings, while his "dying limbs are wasting with grief, 
 steeped in the chill of deathf^^ because his mistress is absent: 
 "0 moon, thou knowest what rrief is: pity one who grieves^'.... 
 Unhappy I, who v/as not born in those days when Nature was kindj^' 1 2 3 4 ^ 
 
 1 . 16-20 
 
 2 . 22-24 
 
 3 . 42 
 
 4 . 76 
 
3 
 
G6 • 
 
 Horace and Tibullus 
 
 We are not surprised not to find the slightest trace of the 
 pathetic fallacy in Horace. As Professor Harrington points out, 
 Horace was 'the most careftllly polished, the most laboriously 
 concise, the most artfully naive of the Roman poets, who taught 
 Rome to appreciate Greek models of lyric verse in abounding 
 variety. ' ^ • And, to be sure, he was a poet not only of good 
 
 humor but of good sense, and was a good example of the sophisti- 
 cated Roman. Surely, he believed, between Nature and man lay a 
 
 * 
 
 deep gul£. As a believer in the Epicurean philosophy, what else 
 was Nature but a concourse of atoms or elements that must be 
 understood and mastered? Yet he was a good lover of the country-- 
 as he was also of wine — and particularly of his own Sabine farm 
 which he immortalized in song. 
 
 "More minute analysis of his preferences in describing nature 
 phenomena shows unusual interest in the winds and the sea, less 
 appreciation of day and night. Fire, the stars, rain, and the 
 seasons have impressed him less than we should have expected. 11 2. 
 But of the pathetic fallacy there is not unnaturally no trace. 
 
 A search to discover what Tibullus saw, what he loved to see, 
 
 . 
 
 and what it meant to him, is, however, somewhat disappointing, 
 particularly since it would appear that as one of the elegiac 
 
 t 
 
 poets, who were on the whole rather introspective as well as the 
 poets of their own moods, one would on a priori grounds expect 
 him to exhibit a considerable amount of description of nature, 
 some of it tinged, perhaps, with his own moods and feelings. 
 
 1. K. F. Harrington, Horace as a Nature Poet , F. A.P.A. (1904) 
 
 vol. 35, p. 6 
 
 2. ibid. 
 

 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■v. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 • - * .... 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
67 . 
 
 ‘‘The epithets he employs are the faded conventional ones: 
 
 ‘soft garlands’, ’yellow grain’, 'snow-v/hite sheep’, 'cruel wild 
 beasts', ’caerulean waves', 'pitiless winds'* Although a few 
 passages betray some love of nature's beauty, even these are rather 
 monotonous and empty of real feeling.” 
 
 Says Professor H. V. Canter; "Tibullus is so thoroughly Roman 
 that his writings are free from the chief characteristics of Alex-- 
 anderian poetry: emotion, mythology, metonomy, excessive metaphor. ”2 , 
 Perhaps, too, the fact that he is free from the pathetic fallacy 
 is a further indication of the typical Roman character; but if such 
 is the case, most of the great Latin poets covered in this thesis 
 were, in the main, obviously not typically Roman. 
 
 1. K. P. Harrington, Tibullus as a Poet of Nature, PAPA (1900) 
 Vol*31 , p.35 
 
 2. In lecture, University Of Illinois, Dec. 2, 1921. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 • * 
 
 * 
 
 -1 
 
 • 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
60 . 
 
 Propertius 
 
 None of the elegiac poets has been so varyingly estimated as 
 Propertius* But, of late, scholars and critics have been more or 
 less unanimous in asserting his greatness* Propertius's poems 
 show lofty imagination, fiery eagerness, nervous vigor* He is 
 feverishly self-conscious, displays poetic daring and irregular 
 brilliance, although he violates, at times, good taste, good sense, 
 and sane proportion. 
 
 His personality is clearly revealed by his poetic style and 
 diction. He displays a habitual melancholy, and was of a sickly, 
 nervous disposition — a restless, tormented soul. His make-up was 
 indeed strange and solitary: he expressed a morbid self-conscious- 
 ness, a longing for sympathy, a feeble will, a foreboding gloom, 
 a deficiency in self control and self-restraint. On the other 
 hand, he was amiable, and as his chief merits, possessed a capacity 
 for gentleness and tenderness; his most serious defects were ir- 
 resolution and inconstancy. Postgate tells us that his personal 
 traits are clearly revealed by an examination of his language. 
 
 The redundant and unusual use of personal pronouns denotes his 
 self-consciousness. The excessive use of such words as tarn, tantus , 
 tot , totiens , etc., involve a reference to personal knowledge and 
 a feeling for others. The frequent use of such adjectives as 
 ignotus , extremus , insolitus , etc., show a repulsion of mind that 
 recoils from the strange and the unknown. A melancholy and almost 
 tearful disposition is shown by the frequency in which such words 
 as lacrimae , tris bis and fie re occur. Allusions to death and the 
 grave are apparent: bus turn , fata , cinis , f avilia , f unus , mane s , 
 
 1. • Postg ate, In trodu ction to P r operti us , 1 885 f pp-38-44 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 t* 
 
 , 
 
 ■ . . 
 
 ■ 
 
 , 
 
 , 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
69 . 
 
 mors, pulvis , ossa , rogus , torus , sepulcrum . His weakness of will 
 is seen in his free use of potentials and the paraphrases of syntax 
 and thought. In general, Propertius prefers the potential to the 
 actual: the aim, desire, etc*, impressed him far more than the com- 
 pleted result. His very free use of the pluperfect and other com- 
 pleted tenses, as well as the periphrastic and future, seems to 
 show that he shrank from contemplating reality face to face: he 
 relegated it so far as he could into the buried padt or formless 
 future* And in his use of the pathetic fallacy we may further 
 read his character: his constant grief of, his terror and almost 
 tearful disposition he reflects in inanimate objects and objects 
 of nature* 
 
 The most elaborate pathetic fallacy is a paraclausithyron, 
 a lament to the door of his indifferent mistress. The poet lapses 
 now into the antipathetic, now into the sympathetic fallacy: 
 the door is 'cruel', ' pitiless', 'unrelenting'; the portals are 
 'grim', and 'mute'; the threshold is 'chill ' # But for him, the 
 midnight, the stars and the chill breeze grieve as they behold him 
 prostrate : 
 
 Janua vel domina penitus crude Jlior ipsa, 
 
 quid mihi iam duris, clausa taces foribus? 
 cur numquam reserata meos admitti& amores, 
 nescia furtivas reddere mota preces? 
 nullane finis erit nostro concessa dolori, 
 
 turpis et in tepido limine somnus erit? 
 
 1. Cf. H. V. Canter, The Paraclausithyron as a Literary Theme, 
 in Am. Jour. Phil., Vol, 41, part 4, 19^0, p.555. This" is a 
 more or less conventional attitude of irate lovers. 
 

 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
70 . 
 
 me mediae noctes, me sidera prona iacentem, 
 firgidaque Eoo me do let aura gelu: 
 tu sola humanos numquam miserata dolores 
 
 respondes tacit is mutua cardinibus, 1 
 
 And he exhorts Lygdamus to describe his mistress Cynthia’s 
 grief which, he hopes, should have been caused by his absence* 
 
 So anxious is he to satisfy his curiosity that he imputes the emo- 
 tion to her dark-hued robe: 
 
 ac maestam teheris vestem pendere lacertis, 
 scriniaque ad lecti clausa iacere pedes? 
 tristis erat domus, et tristes sua pensa ministrae 
 carpehant 
 
 And Calliope, in a dream, advises him not to concern himself with 
 the poetic glorification of military achievements, such as, for 
 example, the victory of Caesar over Ariovistus, ’when the wild 
 Rhine, steeped with the Swabian's blood bears mangled bodies down 
 its sorrowing waves’: 
 
 barbarus aut Suevo perfusus sanguine Rhenus 
 saucia maerenti corpora vectet aqua. 3 * 
 
 Later Fropertus strives to free himself from his passion for 
 Cynthia: ’Farewell to the thresholds still weeping with my plaint*: 
 
 4 
 
 limina iam nostris valeant laerimantia verbis * 
 
 Ovid, too, expresses himself in like manner, but he avoids the 
 fallacy: 'See how the door has been made wet with my tears': 
 
 uda sit ut lacrimis ianua facta meis 
 
 1. I. 16, 17-26 
 
 2. III. 6 , 13-17 
 
 3. III. 3, 45 
 
 4. III. 29, 9 
 
 5. Am. I. 6, 18 
 
 5 
 

 
 
 
 - 
 
 - 
 
 
 ' 
 
 t. ;.i .-juts 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 ' 
 
 « 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ - 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 * 
 
71 
 
 And Properlus represents Arethusa, pining for her absent 
 soldier-husband, as reflecting her plaint in the whine of her 
 puppy and in the hoot of the night owl: 
 
 Craugidos et catulae vox est mihi grata querentis 
 ilia tui partem vindicat una toro. 
 
 and: 
 
 £ 'W 
 
 sive in finitimo gmuit s tarns moctua tigno, 
 seu voluit tangi parca lucerna mero 
 
 In one of his aetiological poems, recalling how Aeneas bore 
 his trembling father on his shoulders through burning Troy, the 
 poet reflects in the flames Anchises's fear, as well as, perhaps, 
 the human awe for so worthy a deed: the flames fear to burn the 
 hero*s shoulders: 
 
 <£um pater in nati trepidus cervice pependit . 
 et verita est umeros urere flamma pios 2. 
 
 And in a sudden apostrophe to Cleopatra, he exclaims: *yet didst 
 thou fly, 0 queen, to the wandering streams of timorous Nile’: 
 
 fugisti tamen in timidi vaga flumina Nili 
 
 Here, the fear and flight of Cleopatra and her fleet is reflected 
 in the swift-flowing Nile, 
 
 1. IV. 3, 55-56 and 59-60 
 
 2. IV. 1, 45-44 
 
 3. III. 11,51 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .. 
 
 
 > ' 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 . 
 
 : 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 ♦ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
72 . 
 
 Propertius poignantly expresses his unwillingness to travel 
 by sea by imputing his own state of mind to tne sea itself: 
 
 a pereat, quicumque rates et vela paravit 
 perimus et invito gurgite fecit iter. 
 
 And, in an attempt to treat a theme like the one used by Ovid in 
 the Fasti , he begins to feel a lack of confidence. His lyre, un- 
 accustomed to such strains, seems unwilling: 
 
 accersis lacrimas cantans; aversus Apollo: 
 pose is ab invita verba pigenda lyra* 2. 
 
 His dread and hatred for Acanthis, Cynthia ! s keeper, is reflected, 
 at the old woman's death resulting from a chill, in the shivering 
 of the broken shed wherein she lay: 
 
 vidi ego rugoso tussim concrescere collo, 
 
 sputaque per dentes ire sruenta cavos, 
 atque animam in tegetes putrem exspirare paternas : 
 horruit algenti pergula curt a foco. *• 
 
 Propertius is disturbed by the heartlessness of Cynthia. Ee recalls 
 how evercome with grief was Calypso after the departure of Odysseus: 
 she wept to the lonely waste of the waves (sympathetic ) , and moan- 
 ing with locks unkempt, she uttered namy a plaint to the cruel, the 
 unjust sea ( antipathetic): 
 
 at non sic ithaci digressu mot a calypso 
 desertis olim f leverat aequoribus 
 multos ilia dies incomptis maesta capilli 
 sederat, iniusto multa locuta salo. 
 
 1. I. 17, 13-14 
 
 2. IV. 1, 73-74 
 
 3. IV. 5, 66-70 
 
 4. I. 15, 9-12 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . . 
 
 - 
 
 . 
 
73 
 
 Propertius, in a drunken stupor, approaching his sleeping 
 Cynthia is impatient with the 'officious* moon playing upon her 
 with its beams: 
 
 donee diver sas praecurrens mota Calypso 
 luna moraturis sedula luminibus i. 
 
 In the perils of a storm at sea the poet laments his folly 
 in leaving Cynthia: he cries to the 'lonely sea-mews', and his 
 prayers fall idly on a 'heartless shore ' j the winds aid Cynthia's 
 cruelty, and the gale howls fierce threats in his ear. Let the 
 dark night and 'threatening shoals' be enough punishment J Perish 
 the man who first voyaged over the 'unwilling deep'. Propertius 
 now gives vent to the sympathetic, now to the antipathetic fallacy. 
 Bereft of Cynthia, he is lonely: all nature is lonely and deserted. 
 But he must make his moan -- if only the lone crags can keep faith J 
 
 And ye trees and founts witness my Cynthia's cruelty! * 
 
 , ^ 
 
 Perhaps the most sincere, pathetic, and spontaneous of Pro- 
 
 Ithe* 
 
 pertius's elegies is B sympathetic probably written to comfort 
 the sorrowing mother of the ill-fated youth Paetus who lost his 
 life at sea. Propertius is completely overcome with emotion, and 
 
 I * 
 
 the poem is ome long antipathetic fallacy: 'oh, money, source of 
 many woes, 'tis thou hast o'erwhelmed Paetus with raging waters; 
 
 \ 
 
 thou givest men's vices cruel nourishment. Nature is treacherous 
 -- with guile hath she made a path for greed! 
 
 natura insidians pontum substravit avaris (37) 
 
 1. I. 3, 31*32 
 
 2. I. 17 
 
 3. I. 18 
 

 
 J8 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
74 
 
 Ah, cruel NoEth wind# (13) Poor Paetus did the wild nig t see "born© 
 on a slender plank: so many ills conspired for the death of 
 Paetus : 
 
 hunc parvo ferri vidit nox improba ligno: 
 
 Paetus ut occideret tot coiere mala. 
 
 Finally, the examples quoted above seem to bear out the truth 
 of Seller's statement: "Propertius forces the Latin language fr6m 
 its ordinary obedience to grammatical laws and its ordinary 
 sobriety of phrase to be the medium of an imagination working 
 powerfully, incessantly, and irregularly under the influence of 
 powerful, unceasing, and irregular emotion. The language of Pro- 
 pertius is the idealised monologue 6f an introspective mind, 
 making its meaning vividly present to itself , as that of Ovid 
 is the idealized conversation addressed to a pleasure -loving, 
 refined, and quick-witted society." # Propertius, I may add, 
 may be said to possess, besides his intimate familiarity with all 
 the conflicting elements of human passion and the deeper sources 
 of melancholy in human life, more than almost any ancient poet 
 a sympathy with nature in her lonely desolate scenes, an antipathy 
 for her tempestuous forces, an appreciation of the soothing 
 effects of her softness and beauty. 
 
 1. III. 7, 53-4 
 
 2. Sellar, H orace and the Elegiac Poets, 1899, p.307 
 
Ovid 
 
 In Ovid the pathetic fallacy occurs with considerable fre- 
 quency, it is usually artificial, in keeping with the poet's style 
 as a whole, and is lacking in the spontaneity of its use by Pro- 
 pectius as well as in the less spontaneous but more philosophic 
 use of it by Vergil in the Rene id . Ovid’s use of this fallacy 
 has contributed greatly to the progress of his artificiality, and 
 shows that he has not only all the arts of the rhetorician at 
 his command, but also the benefit of all that has preceded him in 
 Roman literature, as well as in that of Greece No Latin au- 
 
 thor has borrowed so freely and extensively from, his contemporar- 
 ies and immediate predecessors as Ovid,^ who, among other 
 things, artistically adopted instances of the pathetic fallacy 
 from his Greek and Roman forerunners. The Alexandrian origin of 
 his Lie tar: or chose s , as well as of much of the content of his other 
 writings is a matter of reasonable certainty, and, I believe a 
 study of Hellenistic parallels would reveal his debt to Greek lit- 
 erature in the use he made of the pathetic fallacy. 
 
 Ovid’s elaborate fallacy in the representation of Nature's 
 
 c< a- 
 
 grief at the death of Orpheus is not dissimilar to Vergil's de- 
 scription of Nature's grief at the threatening danger to Surydice. 
 But Ovid is not reserve! in his presentation: in the iletai or nhoses 
 Nature grieves more intensely and more completely than in any 
 work of .his predecessors. Hence, not only do the mountains and 
 towers weep, as in Vergil, but the birds, beasts, roaks, trees, 
 river s--and his very lyre weeps, in Ovid, for Orpheus; 
 
 1. Zielinski in Philolo -us , Vol. 64(1905), p. 16 
 
 2. Rand in O.A.P.A., Vol. 55 (1904), pi;. 143 ff. 
 
76 
 
 Te maestae volueres, Orphans, te turba ferarun, 
 te rigidi silicas, te carmina saepe secutae 
 fleverunt silvae, positis te frondibus arbor 
 tonsa comas luxit; lacrimis quoque flur ina dicunt 
 increvisse snis , obstrusaque carbasa pullo 
 naides et dryades passosque habuere capillos. 
 membra iacent diversa locis, caput, Hebre ^ lyramque 
 excipis: et (minimi) medio dum labitur arnne , 
 flebit nescio quid queritur iyro, flebite lingua 
 murmurat exanimis, respondent flebiterripae ■ ~ ' 
 
 A further indication of Ovid's artificial use of the pathetic 
 fallacy may be see^ in the studied repetition of the sane fallacy 
 in several instances: In her letter to Phaon, Sappho is made to 
 imagine that the trees, as in the passage last quoted, "lay aside 
 their leaves and grieve" in sympathy with her: 
 
 quin etiarn rami positis lugere videntur , > 
 frondibus, et nullae dulce queruntur aves'^' 
 
 a leafless tree being a symbol of grief. And even in such a 
 pseudo-didactic work as the Berne diun Amoris t ) he digresses to 
 refer to Nature's lament at the death of Phyllis, a theme whi ch 
 Vergil, too, treated in his Eclo ;.?ue 3 . ( 1 
 
 And yet, whether or not Ovid was himself a man of deep feel- 
 ing and emotion, in his works, at least, he/ never loses sight 
 of the realm of feeling--it is because he possesses to a great ex- 
 tent the creative imagination which clothes inanimate things with 
 personality, calls forth him who is far distant or long since 
 dead, so grasps the hidden relations between objects that the 
 name of one suggests the other, sees resemblances between seeming- 
 ly unlike things and uses these to enhance the beauty, the clear - 
 
 1. Met XI., 45 ff. 
 
 2. Per. XV., 152 ff. 
 
 3. e.g. Bejt XIII. , 324 
 
 4. Kern. Am . 606 ff. 
 
 5. V. p. 
 
I . 
 
 
 - - 
 
77 
 
 ness, the strength, either or all, of a given locution. Ovid 
 even makes the sound of words reproduce their sense so that in all 
 situations, lie not merely describes a scene as done, hut sees and 
 hears and feels it in the doing. In short, of all Roman poets, 
 
 Ovid is, I believe, the most consummate artist in the field of 
 literary technique and human psychology. It is moreover, easy to 
 observe how well he realised the aesthetic significance of the pa- 
 thetic fallacy, and with what artistic skill he strove for and to 
 
 its 
 
 a great extent attained perfection. But, in an attempt to show 
 
 A 
 
 how far Ovid drew from, and perhaps improved on, the themes and 
 literary technique of his predecessors, we must be careful at the 
 same time not to underestimate his originality. 
 
 As in his predecessors, in Ovid , too, the emotions of -rief 
 and sorrow claim a considerable number of instances of the pathetic 
 fallacy. He describes how a tempest arose in the Ionian sea dur- 
 ing his voyage to lomi , , and the very ship groaned responsively 
 to his woes: 
 
 pinea texta sonant, pulsi stridore rudentes, 
 ingemit et nostris ipsa carina mails. (1) 
 
 He sends his book, personified, to Rome. It is represented in neg- 
 lected and sordid attire, and as wandering through various parts 
 of the city and praying to Augustus to pardon the poet, pining in 
 exile. Ovid represents his shaking and tremulous fear, his white 
 and lifeless color, and his dread as reflected in the writing: 
 
 me mi serum J vereorqne locum vereorque potentem, 
 et quatitur rapido littera nostra metu. 
 aspicis exsangui chart am pa lie r e colore? 
 aspicis alternos intremuisse pedes? 
 
 1. Tristia, IV. 9 ff 
 

78 
 
 And he pictures in the Metamorphoses Aethaea's struggle be- 
 tween mother-love for her son and that fierce clan-love for her 
 brothers, whom Meleager, her son had slain. As her love for her 
 brothers, wins, "turning away her face, with trembling hand she 
 throws the fatal billet into the flaies: 'She brand either gave 
 
 or seemed to give a groan as it was caught and consumed by the 
 unw illing fire": 
 
 aut dedit aut visus gernitus eut ipse dedisse 
 stipes, ut invitis conreptus ab irnibus arsit'^J 
 
 And while Pan, failing to catch Jyrinx, sighed in disappointment, 
 the soft air stirring in the reeds gave forth a low and complain- 
 ing sound: 
 
 dumque ibi suspirat , motos in harunde ventos 
 effecine sorum tenuem similBmque. querenti(2) 
 
 In the Past i : the exiled poet digresses to remind Germanicus 
 that cold Sulmo was his native place. She re .is something pathetic 
 in this digression and in the poet’s allusion to the immense dis- 
 tance that then separated hir from it-- "But", he interrxipts, "sup- 
 press thy complaints, my Muse; sacred subjects must not be sung 
 to a sorrowing lyre": 
 
 Sulmonis gelidi, patriae, Germanics, nostrae. 
 ne mis 6 rum, Scythico quam procul ilia solo est! 
 
 Ergo age-tarn longas sed supprime , Musa, querellas: 
 non tibi sunt raesta sacra canenda lyra. (3) 
 
 And a soldier’s horse when a scourge comes upon the earth, "for- 
 getting his former glory, groans in his stall, doomed to an in- 
 
 1. Met. VIII, 513 ff. 
 
 2. Met. I. , 707 ff . 
 
 3. Past i ,IV. , 81 ff. 
 
79 
 
 glorious death”. ^ 
 
 Ovid, often represents his heroines, grieving and abandoned 
 by their lovers giving vent to the antipathetic fallacy. V/hen 
 Adriadne climbs a cliff, scanning the horizon as she searches for 
 
 to) 
 
 sight of Theseus, she "finds the winds cruel , too. ' ' And 
 
 "Oh faithless bed--the greater part of my being, oh, where is he? 
 ...Cruel were her slumbers, the winds and breezes "eager to start" 
 her "tears"! 
 
 crudeles somni , quid me tenuistis inertem? 
 
 aut semel aeterna nocte premenda fui 
 vos quoque crudieles, venti, nimiumque parati 
 flaminaque in lacrimas officiosa meas. 
 dextera crude lis, quae me frat se que necatit, 
 v et data poscenti, nomen inane, fides! 
 in me iurarunt somnus vent us que 'fidesque 
 prodita sum causis una puella tribus! (3) 
 
 urging 
 
 But she lapses into the sympathetic fallacy? Theseus to tell, 
 
 U 
 
 when he returns to his home , of her, abandoned on a "lonely shore" 
 When the poet’s tablets, sent to his mistress, return to him 
 with gloomy nbw£ that she is unwilling to see him, he vents his 
 diappointment on them, ".away, ill nature! tablets, funereal pieces 
 of *wood!" 
 
 hinc, difficiles , funebria ligna, tabellae, 
 tuque, negaturis cera referta notis! (5) 
 
 At one time, Ovid’s mind, sad and despairing sees Nature devita- 
 lized: he asks the sun to be pointed out to him. He does not see 
 Nature at all : 
 
 tristitiae causam. si quis cognoscere quaerit, 
 
 1. Met . VII., 542 ff. 
 
 2. Her . X, 29 4. 
 
 3. Her. X. , 111-118 5. 
 
 129 
 
 Amores XI. , 7 ff 
 
GO. 
 
 ostendi solem postulat ille sibi, 
 
 nee frondem in silvis nec aperto mollis prato 
 gramina, n6c pleno flumine cernit aquam. (1) 
 
 Leander, pining in grief for H6ro wrote that "for the seventh 
 night" — space longer than a year to him--he had not slept: the 
 "troubled" S6a, the "raging" deep has been boiling with hoarse- 
 voiced waters: 
 
 septima nox agitur, spatium mihi longius anno, 
 sollicitum raucis ut mare fervet aquis 
 his ego si vidi mulcentem pectora somnum 
 noctibus, insani sit mora longa fretij (2) 
 
 He essayed to swim across to her, but "wind and wave denied" him 
 "everything": (3) Why must my heart be troubled as oft as the sea 
 is troubled?"^) "I envy PhrJLxus, whom the ram with gold in its 
 wooly fleece bore safely over the sad S6as."(5) But he tries again 
 to swim across, and he imagines, at times he can almost touch her 
 with his hand. "But oft, alas I this "almost" starts my tears. 
 
 What else than this was the catching at elusive fruits, and pur- 
 suing with the lips the hope of a retreating stream?" 
 
 veil© quid est aluid fugientia prendere poma 
 spemque suo refugi fluminis ore sequi. (6) 
 
 But, in spite of the turbulent sea, he must swim to her, even though 
 he will lose his life in the attempt. And such an omen of his 
 death, he ventures to imagine, will no doubt offend her and stir 
 her displeasure: "I cease--no more complain; but, that the sea, 
 
 too, may end its anger, add, I beseech, your prayers to mine": 
 
 1. Tristia X. . 4. 7 ff . 
 
 2. Her. XVIII., 25 ff. 
 
 3. Ibid, 53 
 
 4. Ibid . , 129 
 
 5. ibid., 143 
 
 6. Her. XVIII., 180 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
81 . 
 
 desino parcelqueril sed ut et mare finiat irara, 
 accedant, quaeso, fac tua vota rneis. (1) 
 
 Just a brief space ox aalm. Then v/ill I be slow to swim, then 
 willfL beware , nor cast revilement on the deaf floods again, nor 
 complain that the sea is harsh when I fain would swim:" 
 
 nec faciam surdis convicia fluctibus ulla 
 triste nataturo nec querar esse fretum (2) 
 
 Hero, too, pining for leander is troubled because, even when 
 the heavy wave has a little laid aside its fierce mood, her lo- 
 ver could come, but will not": 
 
 aut , ubi sa&vitiae paulum gravis unqta remisit 
 posse quidem, sed te nolle venire, queror (3) 
 
 And she imagines the storm is Jealous of her and beats her lover 
 back; that is why he does not come: 
 
 quoque minus venias, invida pugnat hiemps (4) 
 
 Then she lapses into the sympathetic fallacy!* she falls asleep 
 before dawn , "just when her lamp was falling asleep", (5) 
 
 And again, as Ariadne, wanders aimlessly, calling the name of 
 Theseus, her desire for him is too powerful to be felt by her 
 alone: so it is quite natural for her to imagine that the very 
 place experienced her desire and "felt the will to bring her aid" 
 thus she unconsciously interprets the echo of her voicel 
 
 1 . Ibid . 203-204 
 2. Ibid, 211-212 
 
 3. Her. XIX., 23-24 
 
 4. Ibid. 120 
 
 5. Y. p.^3 
 

 ' J 
 
 
 
 . 
 
 
82 . 
 
 interea toto claraanti litore "Iheseu!’’ 
 reddebant noinen concava saxa tuun , 
 et quatiens ego te , totiens locus ipse vocabat. 
 ipse locus miserae ferre volebat opem (1) 
 
 And Ovid's "weary " bark carries him, an exile, on his jour- 
 ney to Tomi , touching on the way Samos: 
 
 ind6 levi vento Zerynthia litora nacta 
 Threiciam tetigit f e ssa carina Samon (2) 
 
 When the player is sorrov/ing, his lyre, too, is unresponsive, 
 "unwilling" : 
 
 et Linon in silvis idem pater "aelinon 1 " altis 
 dicitur invita concinuisse lyra. ( 3 j . 
 
 fhe excited lover, in Ovid, often imagines that even inani- 
 mate objects are jealous of him (antipathetic), at the same time 
 reflecting his own jealousy: "Oh, envious wrap, to cover such 
 pretty limbs 12 
 
 invida vestis eras, quae tarn bona crura tegebas 
 quoque magis spectes--inf ida vestis eras! (4) 
 
 And the lovers, py ramus and fhisbe, appealed to the "envi- 
 ous "wall that separated tl em. "How small a thing, it would be 
 to be to open, 0 v/all, for our kiss!" 
 
 "invide" dicebant "paries, quid amantibus obstas. 
 quantum erat, ut sii\ eres toto nos corpore iungi ( 
 aut , hoc si ' '.nimium est, vel ad oscula danda pater6S? 
 
 1 . Her . X. 21 ff. 
 
 2. -histia I. 10, 19 
 
 3. Amoves III., 9 23 
 
 4. Am. III. , 2, 27 
 
 5. I let . IV. 73 ff. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
83. 
 
 Filled with wonder at the origin of ships and sailing, Ovid 
 supposes that the ’’waves looked on in wonder” when the i*rgo first 
 set sail: 
 
 Prima malas docuit miBantibus aequoris .undis 
 Peliaoo pinus vertice caesavias! ' 1 1 
 
 Y hen l.Iedea went forth, desiring to renew Aeson's span of life, 
 
 "all alone she wandered out into the deep stillness of nidnight." 
 All Nature was mute, silent, unresponsive: ’’ only the stars twin - 
 kled . ” She invokes all the gods of th6 groves ^nd of night: "Mth 
 
 your help when I have willed it, the streams have run back of 
 their f ountain-heads , while the banks wondered : 
 
 quorum ope, cum volui , r i pi s mi r antibus omnes 
 in fontis rediere suos, ' ^ 1 
 
 Ani she continued, "I have need of |uices to renew old age: and 
 
 you will give me them: for not in vain have the stars gleamed in 
 
 reply'.’ 
 
 "I am now surprised,” writes Ovid during his voyage to Pomi 
 "that amid such billowy conflicts both of my spirit and of the 
 sea, my genius did not vanish. If I gain my port, by that very 
 port I shall be frightened; the shore has more horrors for meothan 
 the hostil e waves. And although the sea be agitated by wintry 
 storms, yet is my breast more agitated than the sea itself." Thus, 
 to Ovid, the storm battles and rages because he dares to write, 
 while it hurls its threats: 
 
 1. Am . II. 11 ff. 
 
 2. Met .VII . , 199 
 
 3. Ibid . 21? 
 
84 
 
 improba pugnat hiernps indi gnatmrque , quod ausim 
 scribere se rigidas incutiente minas 
 vincat hiernps hominemJ sed eodem tempore, quaeso, 
 ipse modum statuam carminis, ilia sui (1) 
 
 1. Tristia I., II el ff. 
 
 » 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
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 . 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
85 
 
 Conclusion. 
 
 As I have shown in my evidence, Lucretius and, perhaps even 
 in a greater decree, both Horace and Tibullus, are the only clas- 
 sical poets of the period investigated of whom more than fragments 
 are extant, who do not make some appir^c/A use of the pathetic 
 fallacy. The other Latin poets whom I have treated were either 
 wholly or partly influenced by their Alexandrian predecessors , as 
 was probably the case with Catullus, and more than probably with 
 Vergil, Propertius and Ovid, in each case, of course, in varying 
 degree . 
 
 As we have seen the close connection of the pathetic fallacy 
 with the belief in animism, with mythology and the idea of meta- 
 morphosis, (the latter being largely of Alexandrian development), 
 it is therefore not unlikely to suppose a priori that the use of 
 th6 pathetic fallacy reached a concomitant development during the 
 Alexandrian period, and that the fallacy was one of the by-pro- 
 ducts of that part of the Alexandrian literary tradition and at- 
 mosphere which wap adopted by the Roman poets. 
 
 The direct influence of this culture upon Vergil’s earlier 
 works is a generally recognized fact, and a recent investigator 
 has traced the indirect influence of a literary atmosphere, charged 
 
 CD 
 
 with Alexandrian elements, upon Vergil's later work, the Aeneid . 
 That Vergil, in his earlier works, adopted the Theocritean style 
 of the pathetic fallacy, will become obvious from the following: 
 where, in Theocritus, all nature mourns for Daphnis: 
 
 "For him the jackals, him the wolves did lament; 
 for him did even the lion of the thicket roar, when he v/as dead... 
 
 1. Cf. Eleanor 3. Duckett, Influence of Alexandrian Poetry 
 upon the Aeneid in Class . Jour . Vol. XI ., March 1916 ppT 3^tsi7 
 
86 . 
 
 Many the kine about his feet, many the bulls, and many the heifers 
 and the young steers which bellowed their lament." (1) Converse- 
 ly, Mature is supposed to rejoice at the approach of the loved 
 one : 
 
 "There does th.6 ewe, there do the goats bear twins ; there the 
 bees fill full the hives, and oaks are loftier where fair Hilon 
 sets his foot. But alas, if he depart, lean is the shepherd then 
 and lean the pastures." "Everywhere is spring, everywhere fresh 
 pastures, the cow's udders are swollen with milk and the young 
 are nourished, wheresoever lovely Kais wanders. "( 2 ) 
 
 And in Bion: 
 
 " I wait for Adonis; beauteous Adonis is dead .. .Around 
 that youth, indeed, faithful hounds whine... .All mountains and the 
 
 oaks say "Alas for Adonis'. And rivers sorrow for the woes of 
 Aphrodite, and springs on the mountains weep for her Adonis, and 
 flowers redden from grief...... since he is dead, ay, all flowers 
 
 have become withered" . ^ ^ 
 
 In Callimachus, too, Mature is transformed into gold at Apol- 
 lo's birth, or fears the wrath of Ares; the river rejoices in Ar- 
 temis and the sea keeps silence before Apollo. ^ ^ y So in the 
 Aeneid Mature weeps for the loss of the fallen Umbro, and quakes 
 with terror at the exploits of Hercules. 
 
 As in Theocritus and Bion Mature mourns for Daphnis and 
 Adonis, so in Vergil's Eclogues she mourns for the dear Caesar, 
 
 for the deserted Gallus, and, in the Georgies . for the endangered 
 
 1. Idyl I., 71-75 
 
 2. Idyl VIII., 45-48 
 
 3. Idyl I. 
 
 4. Of. Duckett, p. 538 
 
87 . 
 
 Eurydice. And as in the Greek poets nature responds joyfully to 
 the presence and conversely to the absence, of the loved one, so 
 does she, in the Eclogues . react to the presence and absence of 
 Alexis and’ Phyllis. 
 
 Ovid, too, in his Me tamorphoses . imagines Nature affected in 
 like manner at the death of Orpheus, although the heroines of his 
 love-letters find nature very "cruel." 
 
 Consequently I believe a further comparison of Alexandrian 
 and Latin parallels would show that the pathetic fallacy is ,in 
 the main, an Alexandrian characteristic that was adopted and not - 
 ably perfected, along with other peculiarities of the Alexandrian 
 tradition, by certain Homan poets. That the expression of the' 
 fallacy, is in the main, not typical of the classical character, 
 either Roman or Greek, becomes evident when we consider that the 
 Roman poets who are free from Alexandrian, out perhaps not from 
 classical Greek, influence are noticeably free also from the fal- 
 lacy, whereas the opposite _ holds true in the case of those who 
 are clearly influenced by the Alexandrian tradition. 
 
 Because of the flexible nature of the pathetic fallacy, I 
 find that its relative occurrence is not of so great significance 
 as the clear view of the nature or type of the fallacy in the dif- 
 ferent poets, he have seen that the fallacy is more or less com- 
 mon to Vergil, Propextius and Ovid. It is also present, but in 
 a much lesser degree, in Catullus. 
 
 Vergil’s use may be said to be, on the whole, philosophic, 
 that is, in harmony with the doctrine, of # . fheie 
 
 may be some instances that are perhaps spontaneous but distinc- 
 tion in such cases can only seem unavoidably subjective. 
 
09 . 
 
 Finally, the romantic origin and effect, therefore, of the 
 pathetic fallacy in Latin poetry, and perhaps even in all poetry, 
 I believe may be traced to the Alexandrian pefiod of culture and 
 refinement when the genuine mythology of Greece reached its high- 
 est development, an age which believed in natural magic, in the 
 transformation of men and women into birds and beasts and trees 
 and flowers, and in the existence of life in all objects of na- 
 ture .