With the revival of learning, Vergil's influence hecame very great in most of the countries of Europe, and from That time until the present day the greatest poets have nearly all shown traces of his inspiration. Dante, Ariosto, and Tasso, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Dryden. and Tennyson may be mentioned as striking examples. His works have been translated into most of the la» gnages of Europe. It was not until early in the nineteenth century that Vergil's claims to great ness began to be questioned, especially in Ger many. Since then he has been criticised and de fended with equal lack of discrimination by many of his opponents and champions. The most com mon charges brought against him are lack of originality and the inferiority of the .Encid to the Homeric poems. The latter point has al ready been discussed. The former criticism is in a sense justified, but there can lie no doubt that Vergil had in common with many other great poets the power of making what he borrowed his own, as is shown by the fact that. he was able to inspire imitation as well as to imitate. A fair estimate must rank him among the greatest poets of ancient times, and among the great poets of the world's history.
At. an early period a series of mythological le gends began to be associated with the name of Vergil. The ancient biographies assert that his birth was attended with prodigies prophetic of his future greatness, and the reputation for vast learning, whieli he gradually acquired, and the belief in his prophetic powers, increased the ven eration in which he was held and the mystic at mosphere Which surrounded him. As early as the second eentury the custom of consulting the sm.tes Vergilianw liecame eurrent. that is, the _Eneid was opened at random, and an omen was drawn from the words of rho first passage on which the eye fell. This custom, which the shares only with the Bible and the Homeric poems, lasted for many centuries. (Marks the First of England is said to have consulted the sort es Vcryilianfr and to have opened the .Eneid at iv. 615-621. Still earlier Sinus Italieus. as the younger Pliny tells us, used to make an an nual pilgrimage to Vergil's tomb, which he ap proached with as much reverence as if it were a temple, and this practice also became a current one. By the Middle Ages we find in legend and literature a mythical Vergil, a seer and a man profoundly acquainted with the secrets of nature. Among the common people of Naples lie came to be regarded as a necromancer or wizard, and the most grotesque legends were associated with his name, in which chronology was entirely disre garded. He was said to have made a bronze fly which kept all other flies away from the city, a butcher's block on which meat kept fresh for six weeks, as well as other marvelous and curious things, and his name was associated with numer ous adventures of a more or less disreputable character. These tales were carried by travelers to other countries and found their way into the romantic literature of the day and even into Latin works of a learned character.
Besides the works which are known to be Ver gil's a number of minor poems have come down to its tinder his name, which are included in many editions. Three of these. the Culc,r, ('iris, and Morel um, belong to the class of the epyllian, or 'little epic.' In the first, which is a poem of about 400 hexameter lines, a gnat (cules) stings a sleeping shepherd and thus saves his life from a serpent. The shepherd as lie awakens kills his preserver. The ghost of the gnat comes from the lower world, of which a full description is given, and reproaches his murderer with his untimely fate. The second, of about 500 hexameters, tells the story of Scylla and Nisi's, and takes its name from the bird into which the former is changed. The third. a charming little poem of 124 hexameters, describes a farmer preparing his breakfast, which consists of bread, which lie prepares and hakes, and a rustic salad ( ntorctnnt). Besides these there is a poem of 3S lines in the elegiac distich, the Copa, 'Mine Hostess.' which represents a Syrian woman (lancing in the doorway of her wayside inn and inviting the way farer to enter; and a collection of fourteen short er pieces in various metres called Catalepton, (radiyara Kan) exrov, 'minor poems'). The evidence for the Vergilian authorship of these works is not strong. Donates and Servius at tribute a number of minor poems to Vergil. Both enumerate the Cul( .e, Dirw, no, ('iris, ra ton, Priopcia, and Epiyraminata, to which v ins adds the Cope. An _Etna and Dine have also been preserved, but it is the general eon sensus of scholars that they cannot have been written by Vergil. The rest of the list corre sponds exactly With the poems which have come down to us as youthful works of Vergil, for the Pria peirt and Epigm»1»la it are both represented among the COO( plan but we have only to as sume that the po?ms were collected and ascribed to Vergil in the time of Nero, a belief which is held by some scholars, to make the testimony of Donatus and Servius, and even that of Stating and Martial, who refer to a Cu/ex by Vergil, of little weight. The testimony of Luenn to a
Vergilian Coles is, however. more difficult to dispose of. On the other hand, the contrary evi dence is not very convineing. Much has been made of certain Illetrieel features of the poems, but these, which were really the only strong argument against a Vergilian authorship, have recently been shown by Skutsch to be of no great weight, at least in the case of the and the Ciris. The latter has been generally regarded us the work of an unknown poet belonging to the circle of M. Valerius Messala, the patron of Tibullus, but Skutsch claims the poem for Cor nelius Gallus, and regards the lines \Odell the Ciris lias in common with Vergil's works as origi nal with the former. There is little to show that the Citlex may not have been a youthful work of Vergil's. Chronologically it belongs to that period, and with reference to the triviality of the theme and the inferiority of the poem to Vergil's later productions, which are offered as argu ments against its genuineness, one may recall the words of Lucas, when comparing his early efforts with those of Vergil, which are (punted by Suet onius et quantize; mihi reale t Ad (Wenn 7 There is still less ground for skepticism in the case of the llorclum, and the only reason for re jecting the Cope is its entire unlikeness to Ver gil's manner, which, as Mackail says, night tempt one into the paradox of its authenticity. The question is a very difficult one and cannot be re garded as settled; nor is it likely, without more evidence than is at present available, that una nimity of opinion will ever be reached. The ma jority of scholars regard the whole collection as spurious, with the possible exception of some of the Catalepton, though uncuit express this opin ion more decidedly in the case of some of the poems than of others. The brilliant work of Skutsch, though not very convincing in its main thesis, rather increases the probability that the poems are the work of Vergil by disposing of the metrical arguments and sonic of the chronologi cal difficulties. If the objection of unlikeness to the Vergilian manner is a valid one, it applies with more or less force to the entire collection. The whole question is comparatively unimportant, so far as Vergil's position in literature is con cerned, but it is of great interest as regards the development of his genius. Vergil's popularity during the time of the Roman Empire and throughout the Middle Ages led to the preserva tion of his works in an unusual number of old and good manuscripts. Of these not less than four, together with three sets of fragments, are written in capitals or uncials and may be as signed to the fourth or fifth century. These are among the oldest manuscripts of Latin writers which have come down to us. The editio princeps was published at Rome about the year 1469. The standard critical edition is that of Ribbeek (Leip zig. 1859-68), containing his famous Prolegomena. There is a later edition, without the Prolegomena (ih., 1894-95). The best English edition is that of Conington and Nettleship (London, 1872-75). There are numerous good editions published in this country and abroad, of which the following may be mentioned: Forbiger (4th ed., Leipzig, 1872-75) ; Kappes (5th ed., Hi.. 1893) : Benoist (2d ed., Paris, 1876) Papillon and Haigh (Ox ford, 1892) Sidgwiek (Cambridge, 1894-97) ; and Page (London, 1894-1900). There is also au edition of Servius's commentary by Thilo and Hagen (Leipzig, 188187). The translations of Vergil into English are very numerous. The ear liest is that of Dryden. The .Eneid has been translated by Conington into prose (London, 1872) and into verse lib., 1873), as well as by William Morris, Cranch, Kennedy, and others. The Georgics have been translated by Rhodes and Blackmon-. and the Eclogues by Calverley and Palmer. The following works be consulted with h 'Malt : Sella r, lioetun Pods of the Aye—I rryi/ (3d ed., Oxford, 1897) ; sainfe Benve, Elude stir Virgile (2d ed., Paris, 1870) ; Meyers, Essays Classical (London, 1897) ; Mae kail, Latin Literature (New York, 1895) ; Tyrrell, /Alia Poetry lib, : Ileinze, cpische 7're/mik ( Leipzig, 1.9113) Nettleship, Lectures Unsays (oxford, 1885) ; id., _biennia Lines of Vcryil 187(I) ; .1 us Vergils zrit (Leipzig, 1891) : C'omparetti, Firgilio net mcdio err) (2(1 ed., Florenee, 1896; Eng. trans. of the first edition by Benecke, Virgil in the Mid dle. Ages, London, 18!15) Tunison, .I/ aster Virgil (Cincinnati, 1888) ; Boissier, Thc Country of Horace and Vergil (New York, 1896) ; Leland, Legends of Virgil (Ili., 1900) ; Henry, .1 Voyage.
of Discovery in the ( Dresden, 1853) ; id., .Eneidea (London, 1873.79) : Miller and Nel son, Dido, an Epic Tragedy (Chicago, 1900).