Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M ASM I D 21 Virgil this same relationship was a feeling of happy dependence on a higher Power and a desire to conform to His will. In conclu- sion, we may say that by sublimating the old religion and its formalistic ritualism — brought about, in our opinion, through his contact with Lucretian thought — Virgil came to his conception of a higher morality and a more spontaneous, spiritual realationship between a divine Power and human life. Sel- lar ' s statement seems very appropriate at this juncture: His religious belief, like his other speculative convictions, was composite and undefined: yet it embraced what was purest and most vital in the religion of antiquity, and in its deepest intuitions it seems to look forward to the belief which became dominant in Rome four centuries later. This Lucretian world-view, with its modi- fication or its religious transvaluation, is best seen in the following quotation from the Georgics : Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas . . . Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestes. (Fortunate is he who knows the causes of all things . . . Blest too is he who knows the rural gods) . How typically Lucretian is the first sentence. How typically Virgilian is the second. In praying to the Muses, Virgil says: . . . accept my devotion and teach me the constellations of heaven and the labors of the moon: what is the causa of earth- quakes: by what force of nature is it that the seas are made to swell and burst their bar- riers, and to sink back into their channels: why winter ' s suns make haste to dip them- selves in the ocean, or what delay retards its tedious nights . . . Happy is he who knows the causes of all things, and who has trod- den under foot all idle fears, and inexorable Destiny, and the roar of devouring Acheron. In the same breath, he continues: Blest, too, is he who has been intimate with the rural deities. Pan, old Sylvanus, and the sister nymphs. Virgil and Lucretius blended into one majestic poem! The spirit of the De Rerum Natura and of the Eclogues blend- ed into perfect harmony. The method through which this harmony was effected needs elaboration, but before we do this we must deviate for a moment, and note the in- fluence the cosmos had upon the ancient mind. Generally speaking, the study of the celes- tial bodies and the discovery of the laws of Nature evolved among the ancients two dis- tinct attitudes toward life: pantheistic Stoic- ism and religious Mysticism. Stoicism by its emphasis upon the regularity of Nature ' s laws formulated a Pantheism by which it con- ceived a spirit interpenetrating all things in such a way as to admit no essential difference between God and the world. Man ceased to be a favorite of the gods and his position in the universe became that of a microcosm in a macrocosm. No longer was immortality and heavenly bliss reserved for him, but dis- solution into the primordial stuff or prima materia of which he was made. The study of the heavenly bodies, on the other hand, was conducive to mysticism. When man raised his eyes to heaven and fol- lowed the evolution of the heavenly bodies, there arose in the inmost depth of his soul a veneration for the prime Mover of this infinite mass. Thus the founder of Neo- Platonism argues that the reverent contempla- tion of the world brings the soul into con- tact with the God of the cosmos. In pagan mysticism, too, the observation of the sky causes the soul, a detached parcel of the fires of ether, to enter into communion with the gods which shine in the firmament. Possessed with their desire to know them, this soul re- ceives their revelations: they instruct it as to their nature: thanks to them it understands the phenomena produced in the cosmic organ- ism. (F. Cumont). Thus Virgil, the epitome of noble piety, af- fects this harmony between the traditional re- ligion and the new concept of Nature by mak- ing nature symbolize the divine. By a knowl- edge of Nature, man will lose all fear of in- exorable Destiny and the roar of devouring Acheron because of a quickening of the reli- gious response in man. The Georgics then reveal to us Virgil in his purest and truest nature: a native, rural piety emerging into the universal, a pastoral nature transcending its source through poetic divination, and a love for the ancient gods and cult — paradoxi- cal as it may sound — embracing the cosmos. In the Aeneid, too, there is manifest the spirit of Lucretius. The fate of Aeneas is not in the hands of the gods — though their aid is indispensable — but rather in the power of the Fata. Even the gods are subservient to this Power that moves the forces of life with a stern and unflinching might. Juno, in wish-

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20 M ASMl D musical echoes from the divine soul of Virgil. But more pertinent to our thesis is the rural pietistic element in these Eclogues. The shepherd goes about his way tending his flocks, piping a tune, and engaging with his neighbor in alternate song. He worships the nymphs, the rural deities in charming groves, but he is never conscious of the vast universe about him, of an ethics and a moral- ity above his immediate needs. The sense of mystery, of cosmic consciousness, characteris- tic of a progressive pastoral people, so defin- itely present in the Georgics. is strangely lacking in his Eclogues. We meet, however, with a different spirit as we read the Georgics. True, the Geor- gics, in the main, deal with tilling, sowing planting, and management of cattle. The careful reader, however, cannot but feel the chords of universal sympathy vibrant throughout the poem. As we read the Geor- gics. we catch flashes of a spirit breaking through the hampering confines of primitive fears and superstitions in search of the divine spirit interprenetrating the entire universe. The narrow symapthy. characteristic of all primitive peoples, is replaced by a universal sympathy extended to man and animal alike. The passage of the nightingale bereft of her young, quoted above, well illustrates the uni- versal tenderness of Virgil. In describing the dying bull. Virgil asks in a soliloquizing fashion: What do the oxen profit now by their labor or kind services? What avails it to have turned the heavy lands with the share? In the Eclogues the death of a bull would have evoked a prayer and a sacrifice to the rural deities in the hope of receiving a bless- ing: (See Horace — Liber 3-18: how truly h: recaptures the spirit of the rural dweller!) but in the Georgics it is the cause for the contemplation upon the mysterious cycle of the life — force. In the Georgics there seems to be an affinity between the man in the field and the nature that surrounds him. The laborer in the field seems to have become con- scious of a vast Nature symbolical of the divine spirits, and hence the higher necessity to submit to them by prayer and sacrifice. As Scllar has well remarked, the sen,se of natural beauty is in the Georgics intertwined with the toil of man. raising him as it were, to a higher level of humanity as he lifts his eyes from his work. This universality of thought and feeling in the Georgic is decidedly Lucretian. The emergence of man from the attachment to a limited anthropomorphism and his search in the cosmic evolution for a higher principle of ethics well reflect Epicurean thought. But there is one essential difference between Lucre- tius and Virgil: whereas Lucretius overcome by the vastness of the cosmos and convinced of the regularity of Nature ' s laws, smashed the whole primitive theology by the asser- tion: Fear holds dominion over mortality Only because, seeing in land and sky So much the cause of which no wise they know. Men think Divinities are working there: Virgil, because of his pious nature, saw in this newly revealed universe a secret unceas- ing, tranquil power, communicating to out- ward things the grace and tenderness of hu- man sentiment, the variety and vivacity of human energy. (Sellar) Eor the decaying State religion Lucretius sought the remedy in a knowledge of a rerum natura (the nature of things) : but Virgil found it in the eleva- tion of the conception of deity, in placing ritualism upon an ethico-religious basis. Lu- cretius, realizing the insignificance of man in the universe, found consolation in a quiet- ism in this life and annihilation afterwards : but Virgil, in order to approximate religion to the new CDnception of the cosmos, found his haven i i a higher spiritual morality. Lucretius raised the position of man by de- stroying his gods; Virgil, because of an in- herent religious yearning, raised the position of man by elevating his conception of ethics and the gods. This widening of the religious outlook of ' ' irgil should not, however, lead us to as- sume that Virgil rejected the old rituals and deities. No one of the Latin poets was a more earnest teacher of the necessity of the scrupulous observance of the traditional modes of worship and sacrifice. All the rural and city cults retained with him their ori- gmal, specific importance, but witli this dif- ference: whereas to the ordinary Roman ritu- alism was a formal habitual recognition of a strong power, to Virgil it was a spontaneous force for propitiating the gods. Whereas to the average Roman the relationship between himself and the gods was sort of quid pro quo agreement, a give-and-take proposition, to

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22 M AS M I D ing to make Carthage the ' sovereign of the nations ' adds: Si qua Fata sinant. (If the Fates permit ) . The entire story of Dido is introduced, not as some critics would have it, for pathetic and artistic effect, but to illus- trate the helplessness of individual passions against the will of Heaven. Aeneas, too. is an unwilling tool in the hands of the Fates. He falls a victim to the passions of queenly Dido, forgetting the mission for which he was destined; in the midst of danger he cries out in despair that he would have been thrice fortunate if the fate of Hector had befallen him. Warned of danger by Mercury, Aeneas embarks upon his ship, only to fall asleep, careless of his fate and sense of duty. In the sixth book, the priestess rebukes Aeneas for being a laggard, with the words; Cesas in vota precesque, Tros Aenea, cessas. Aeneas is not permitted to follow his individual desires, but must always submit to the determined Will of the Fata. Almost to the very end do we fmd the sterness of the Fates in their treat- ment of human passions and interests. But, as in the Georgics. alongside this pic- ture of hard Destiny, there is also typical Roman piety. Aeneas propitiates the gods by prayer and sacrifice. All rituals are ob- served with the meticulous care characteristic of the Romans. The deep respect that Aeneas pays to his father is in line with the best tra- ditions of Roman piety. The performance of the ritual of the Parentalia also emphasizes the pietas of Aeneas. Thus we see how there developed this immediate relationship between man, and the universal — the Fates; and man ' s final victory when he subjects his individual interests and aspirations to the consummate will and purpose of the universal Power. With this view well in mind, let us now approach the sixth book of the Aeneid. This book deals with the descent of Aeneas into to nether world, his meeting with his father Anchises, and the latter ' s prophecy of the future greatness of Rome. It would not come properly under our thesis, were it not for the fact that our point of view does away with a serious criticism of Prof. Nettleship. He points out that the book opens with the description of the lower world with its mon- sters and rivers; but at the conclusion of the book we find Anchises expounding the doc- trine of the transmigration of the soul — that one spirit pervades all things, that from this spirit all living things derive their being, that the body is the prison-house of this divine spark whose liberation comes in death, that guilt is purged after death until the heavenly aether is left pure, that after this purifica- tion the emancipated soul returns again to its embodiment on Earth. The ordinary mythology , says Prof. Nettleship, is put side by side with the doctrine of transmigra- tion and the reader is left to harmonize them as he can. In arguing thus. Professor Nettleship as- sumes that this mythology is to be taken literally as the expression of ' Virgil ' s reli- gious experiences. Let us then examine the plausibility of this assumption. Cicero in his ' Nat. Deorum ' says: There was not left an old woman foolish enough to fear the deep dwellings of Orcus. No one , claims Seneca, is foolish enough to fear Cerberus and the phantoms which appear in the form of skeletons. That there are Manes , says Juvenal, a subterranean king- dom, a ferry-man armed with a pole . . . these are things in which everyone had ceased to believe except very young children. Dis- counting the skepticism of Cicero, the differ- ence in generation with regard to Seneca, and the satirical temperament of Juvenal, we still cannot conceive of ' Virgil accepting as literal truth a mythology so emphatically discredit- ed by the writers just quoted, and so bar- barous to the aesthetic spiritual religion of ' Virgil. Moreover, Virgil himself said in his Georgics; Happy is he who .... has trodden under foot all idle fears and inexorable Des- tiny, and the fear of devouring Acheron. Virgil, in our opinion, introduced this eschatological mythology not because of per- sonal belief, but rather in imitation of the descent of Homer ' s hero into the nether world. The doctrine of transmigration, put in the mouth of Anchises, is more akin to Virgil ' s inner nature because of its profound poetic appeal and its deep spiritual implica- tions. Only one word more. Having seen Virgil as a religious teacher we must not forget that Virgil was also an artist. It was the artistic element in him which raised him to the lofty heights of religious purity. He was a teacher, a historian, but above all a poet. With true characteristic insight does Dr. Fowler say of Virgil that learning, legend, philosophy, religion, whatever in the whole range of human thought and fancy entered his mind, emerged from it as poetry and poetry only,