The fact that Vergil was engaged on a national epic soon became known, and the appearance of the .Eneid was awaited with great expeetaney, to which Properties gives expression in the well known lines: Cerlite Romani scriptores, Grail; -Ycscio quid mains (mei( ur Mode (iii. 2G. 25).
In the year 20 Augustus, who was absent in Spain, wrote asking to see a first draft of the poem or some part of it but Vergil was not yet ready and spoke of himself as having been mad to undertake such a task. A few years later, however, he read three hooks to Augustus. in cluding the sixth, in which he inserted lines SG0-Ss10 in memory of the young When the poet. who is said to have been an effective reader. finished the beautiful lines, Oct avia, who was present, is reported to have swooned. and on her recovery to have presented Vergil with 10.000 sesterees (about $500) for each line of the tribute.
The outline of the .Eneid is in brief as fol lows. The poem begins with the voyage of ...Divas from Sicily to Italy in the sixth year after the fall of Troy. .1uno, the relentless foe of the Trojans, persuades .liolus, king of the winds, to raise a great storm, which destroys one ship of the 'Wet and scatters the rest far and wide over the sea. .Eneas with seven ships takes refuge in a harbor on the African coast within the ter ritory ruled by lido, Queen of Carthage. llis mother, Venus, who has appealed to Jupiter and received from him assurance of her son's great mission and its fulfillment, appears to .Eneas in the guise of a huntress and advises him to seek the protection of Dido. Ile does so, and on reaching her palace finds messengeriq from the rest of his ships, which have all been saved but one. Venus meanwhile induces Cupid to in spire Dido with a passion for _Eneas. Dido re ceives the Trojans kindly and entertains them at a magnificent banquet. Here :Eneas tells the story of the capture of Troy by the stratagem of the wooden horse, of the sack of the city and his escape. Ile tells of his attempts to found a city in Thrace and in Crete, and of the oracles and portents which pointed to Italy as his destined goal, of his meeting with Helenus and Andro mache in Epirus, of his adventure with the Cyclops. and of his final arrival in Drepanum. where he lost. his father, Anchises, by death. Then the story goes on from the night of the banquet. ...Eneas lingers for some time in Carth age. forgetful of his mission, beguiled by Dido's love. At last by the command of Jupiter lie sets sail for Italy without the knowledge of the Carthaginian Queen. Dido kills herself and as she dies prays that there may he everlasting hatred between the Carthaginians and the de scendants of He is driven by contrary winds to Sicily. where he is welcomed by his countryman Aeestes, and celebrates funeral games on the anniversary of his father's death. During the games the Trojan women, weary of their apparently endless wanderings, set fire to the ships. but the flames are extinguished by rain sent in answer to the prayers of _Eneas. After leaving with Aeestes those of his com panions who wish to remain behind. .Incas sails to Cume. By the aid of the Sibyl he gains access to the lower world, and consults Anchises, who tells him the glorious destiny of the race which Ile is to found. ,Eneas then proceeds to the mouth of the Tiber, where Latinus. King of that region, receives him hospitably, forms an alliance with the Trojans, and promises their leader his daughter Lavinia in marriage. Juno now makes a last attempt to prevent Aneas from carrying out his purpose. She involves the Trojans in a quarrel with the people of Latinus, while at the same time Turnus. King of the Rutuli, one of Lavinia's disappointed suitors, prepares to make war on them. The result is that Turnus forms a coalition against the Trojans, who are aided by Evander, an Arcadian king who has founded a city called Pal lanteum on the site afterwards occupied by Rome. A long struggle follows with varying for tunes. The Trojans are finally victorious and Turns is slain in single combat by _Eneas.
The .Uncid is unequal in its execution and in its interest for the general reader. Certain episodes stand out prominently from the rest of the work, and in particular the last six hooks, in which the numerous battle scenes demanded by literary tradition are somewhat ted ious, are less gem-rally known than the rest of the poem. They are, however. full of beautiful episodes, and the greatness of Vergil's achieve ment can only be fully appreciated when the ‘Eneid is carefully studied as a complete work of art. zEneas, the hero of the poem, is through
out the man of destiny, with whom everything else is subordinated to his mission of founding a mighty empire. The episode of the unhappy Dido, which has most strongly appealed to the readers of 1111 times, has many of the elements of a Greek tragedy. She, too, has her great task to perform, and love forms no part of her plans, but to save :Eneas she is made the victim of the wiles of Venns. Although she knows from .lineas's story of his wanderings that the gods have willed that he should fulfill his destiny on Italian soil. she attempts to turn him aside from Isis purpose, not of her own will, hut through the influence of a mighty power. Ills desertion of her is justified and even praiseworthy. since it is the result of submission to the command of the king of gods and men, and the episode fur nishes a tragic motive for the Panic Wars, that titanic struggle for the mastery of the world which took so strong a hold on the imagination of the successors of the victors. „Eneas typifies the old Roman virtues, which Horace celebrates in the first six odes of his thin) book, and his escape from the wiles of the enchantress must have recalled to the Romans of the Augustan Age the yielding of Antony to the charms of Cleopatra. 'rhe struggle for supremacy in Italy was that of the higher civilization against semi barbarism. The anti-type of :Miens is the violent and godless TarallS, allied with 31ezentins. the con.temptor diroruni. and other such men. So far as the outward form of the poem is concerned. it is generally agreed that in the .Eacid Vergil brought the hexameter, "the stateliest measure ever molded by the lips of man," to the highest degreo of perfection' of which it was capable. Even in his earliest works lie surpassed his pre decessors. Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, and his progress in the mastery of his chosen verse was constant, reaching its culmination in the last six hooks of the „Encid. He is particularly suc cessful in adapting sound to sense; the swing of the Cyclops' hammers, the trampling of horses and the like are imitated, not only in lines, but in longer passages. A recent critic says: "He has been perhaps more successful than any other poet in fusing together the expressed and the suggested emotion; be has discovered the hidden music which can give to every shade of feeling its distinction, its permanence, and its charm." The .Encid was hailed with acclamation im mediately on its publication, and its author was regarded as the inspired bard of his native land, the Roman Homer. A few' feeble voices were raised in opposition to the general chorus of praise, but without effect. The influence of the poem was widespread and lasting, not only on the later Roman poetry. but on prose as well, and strongly affected even such writers as Livy and Taeitus. No poet ventured to handle the same theme, but the later epic writers for the most part drew heavily on Vergil for inspiration and material, and fully acknowledged his preemi nence. His works became text-books in the Ro man schools at an early period, and lines from the _Diehl have come to light which were scrib bled on the walls of Pompeii by schoolboys. No works were more extensively quoted. They came to be regarded as canons of grammatical and sty listic usage: they are extensively cited and dis cussed by such writers as Gains, Nonius Marcel Ins, and Macrobius, and numerous commentaries were written on them. That of Servius, which embodies much of the work of hi- predecessors, has come down to us. In the estimation of the Christians Vergil held a position unique among the pagan writers of Home. Saint Augustine, for example, vividly describes the charm which the .Encid had for him. Ile was even thought to have received some measure of divine inspiration, and a meaning was read into his works which was entirely foreign to them. The writers of the decline, not content with imitating Vergil, busied themselves with the composition of coitus, com posed of lines and half-lines taken from his works and arranged in such a way as to give in many instances a sense very different from that which they had in their context. With diabolical ingenuity some grossly obscene poems were con structed in this way from lines which had no sug gestion of impropriety, such as parts of the Epithalamin in of .tusonius. The writing of Ver gilian eentos became a regular form of literary production, and there were even those who im provised them.