Virgil was buried at Naples, where his tomb was long regarded with religious veneration. Horace is our most direct witness of the affection which he inspired among his contemporaries. The qualities by which he gained their love were, according to his testi mony, candor—sincerity of nature and goodness of heart—and pietas—the union of deep affection for kindred, friends and country with a spirit of reverence. The statement of his biog rapher, that he was known in Naples by the name "Parthenias," is a testimony to the exceptional purity of his life in an age of licence. The seclusion of his life and his devotion to his art touched the imagination of his countrymen as the finer qualities of his nature touched the heart of his friends. It had been, from the time of Cicero, the ambition of the men of finest culture and most original genius in Rome to produce a national literature which might rival that of Greece; and the feeling that at last a poem was about to appear which would equal or surpass the great est among all the works of Greek genius found a voice in the lines of Propertius Cedite Romani scriptores, cedite Graii ; Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade.
The veneration in which his name was held between the over throw of Western civilization and the revival of letters affords testimony of the depth of the impression which he made on the imagination of the ancient world. The traditional belief in his pre-eminence has been on the whole sustained, though not with absolute unanimity, in modern times.
The effect of this was a juster estimate of Virgil's relative posi tion among the poets of the world. Lucretius, it may be thought, was individually the greater poet. But it can hardly be questioned, on a survey of Roman literature, that the position of Virgil is central and commanding, while that of Lucretius is in a great measure isolated. If we could imagine the place of Virgil in Roman literature vacant, it would be much the same as if we imagined the place of Dante vacant in modern Italian, and that of Goethe in German literature.
Virgil's fame as a poet rests on the three acknowledged works of his early and mature manhood—the pastoral poems or Eclogues, the Georgics and the Aeneid—all written in that hexameter verse which Tennyson has called The stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man.
Eclogues.—The pastoral poems or Eclogues—a word denoting short selected pieces—were composed between the years 42 and 37 B.C. His expressed aim is to pay in the Latin language to the Italian countryside the tribute of Theocritus to Sicily.
The earliest poems in the series were the second, third and fifth; and these, along with the seventh, are the most purely Theocritean in character. The first and ninth, which probably were next in order, are much more Italian in sentiment, and have a much more direct reference both to his own circumstances and the circum stances of the time. The first is a reflex of the distress and con fusion which arose out of the new distribution of lands. The ninth contains the lines which seem accurately to describe the site of Virgil's farm, at the point where the range of hills which accom pany the river Mincio for some distance from the foot of the Lago di Garda sinks into the plain about 14 or 15 m. above Mantua.
The sixth is addressed to Varus, who succeeded Pollio as governor of the Cisalpine district. Its theme is the creation of the world, and the oldest tales of mythology. The fourth and eighth are both closely associated with the name of Virgil's earliest protector, Pollio. The fourth celebrates the consulship of his patron in 40 B.C., and also the prospective birth of a child, though it was dis puted in antiquity, and still is disputed, who was meant by this child whose birth was to be coincident with the advent of the new era, and who, after filling the other great offices of state, was to "rule with his father's virtues the world at peace." The main purpose of the poem, however, is to express the longing of the world for a new era of peace and happiness, of which the treaty of Brundisium seemed to hold out some definite hopes. Some of the phraseology of the poem led to a belief in the early Christian church that Virgil had been an unconscious instrument of inspired prophecy. The date of the eighth is fixed by a reference to the campaign of Pollio against the Dalmatians in 39 B.C. It brings before us two love tales of homely Italian life. The tenth repro duces the Daphnis of Theocritus, and is a dirge over the unhappy love of Gallus and Lycoris.
There is no important work in Latin literature, with the excep tion of the comedy of Terence, so imitative as the Eclogues. But they are not purely exotic. They are rather composite, partly Greek and partly Italian, and, as a vehicle for the expression of feeling, hold an undefined place between the objectivity of the Greek idyll and the subjectivity of the Latin elegy. For the most part, they express the sentiment inspired by the beauty of the world, and the kindred sentiment inspired by the charm of human relationships. The supreme charm of the diction and rhythm is universally recognized.