St John Central High School - Centralite Yearbook (Bellaire, OH)

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Q 020 11010101 114:1-nioxoimnicnicnioienioiirjoiinjoie xjozoioiogirioioioifxxnxox' 1 Ioiuioiliioioioilrioioiuioioii T H E L A M P A D I S T ieniivivilrilitviliritvi 14111 100 1880--1930 BIMIULILIENIUM VJERGIUIANUM As the year 1930 marks the two thousandth anniversary of Vergil's birth, it is fitting that some tribute be paid to the memory of so great a poet. Particularly appropriate for the occasion are the programs prepared throughout the world by those who in their final high school year spend much time and thought on ,t!he works of him whom Tennyson calls, Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. If the footprints a man leaves on the sand of time are marks of his greatness, and the degree of that greatness can be measured by the permanency of the prints or the number of people who are interested in them, then indeed was Vergil's life sublime. He studied with a view to a political career, like other ambitious Roman youths: but on account of uncertain health, he had to abandon politics, and he retired to Naples, where he lived a great part of his life. Here inspiration for his great epic came to him, and he became deeply interested in Greek life and Greek culture. As he had a wide acquaintance with Hellenic literature, a study of which he had made as a boy, the seeds of inspiration sank into fertile, well prepared soil. From his earliest days Vergil loved the farmer and the shepherd. The tremendous influence upon his mind of the scenes amid which his boyhood was spent, is shown in his poems. His Eclogues treat of the lives and occupations of. herdsmen, and although he associated with the greatest men of his time, he himself never lost a certain appearance of rusticity. His Georgics, too, were written to restore the old Roman virtues of thrift, industry, and fondness for rustic life. When Vergil was forty years old, he turned from the plowman and the shepherd to sing of arms and a hero who came from the shores of Troy, to found great Rome in Italy. If he could have looked down the centuries and beheld boys and girls with other languages on their tongues scanning his long hexameter lines and puzzling over the prepositions he left out, we wonder what he would have thought? He would have found some who catch glimpses of the Muse's charm in his golden phrases, and others, a noisier, if not a greater number, ready to do for him what his dearest friends would not-burn his Aeneid. Yet others, like Tennyson, who loved him since his days began, realize that the Aeneid is a model of epic poetry. It is an epic in what, for the sake of distinction, may he called the literary sense. It has the foundation of traditions and all the divine machinery of the true epic, yet the tradi- tions are no longer living: the divine machinery is no longer a matter of belief. The Aeneid is a product of patriotic sentiment and belief in the high destiny of the Roman State. Everywhere in the Aeneid Vergil emphasizes that in all his hero's wanderings, sufferings, and wars, he is under the guidance of the gods. Aeneas ever seeks by prayer and sacrifice to appease the divinities and to learn their will. lndeeu we must. admit that Vergil's ancient pagans showed more reverence for their gods than some Christian people today show their Creator, the one true God. It is sometimes depreciatively said that Vergil borrowed from Homerg but this should not be held as a condemnation or a reproach. If it were, we should have to condemn much that is best in modern literature. Shakespeare also borrowed from other writers, but both. Vergil and Shakespeare, gave in most cases a more splendid form to what they had borrowed. The best writers of Vergil's own day were his staunchest friends and admirers. Horace makes him the subject of some verses in which he expresses fear that the Qlfontirxzzml on Pagr 95, 0:01111101112010241301111114ni:linioinioioioioiisqDimitri:nicnitaim114vii101:riauinioioiuioioioic 2 l 0

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