children, and was pregnant with a third when in 40 B.C. her hand was pawned to Mark Antony; their elder daughter became the mother of Domitia Lepida, who was the mother of Messalina. When Agrippa, Octavian's greatest commander, was thirty-five years old, he was forced to put away the wife he had long since chosen for himself in order to marry Cæsar's niece Marcella, a child of fifteen; four years later she was divorced in her turn that he might marry the Emperor's daughter Julia, who was seventeen years old, her new husband being fortyone. Julia, however, was already a widow, having been married when she was fourteen years old to the Emperor's nephew. Ten years later, when the good Agrippa died, she was married to the Emperor's step-son Tiberius, a partner nearer her own age, but an unwilling bridegroom, since he had been forced by the Emperor to put away a wife whom he dearly loved-Vipsania, the daughter of Agrippa-in order that he might marry this same Agrippa's widow. The outcome in Julia's own history is not surprising. Her daughter Agrippina must have learnt both from her mother's lips and from what she saw of the hypocritical cruelty with which her mother was punished, to hate the callousness of the imperial system even before she came to experience it in her own life. In all this lay the seed of the license and cruelty associated with the names of her daughter Agrippina, and her grandson Nero. Some years ago in commenting on a lecture in which I called attention to this, the late Prof. W. R. Hardie pointed out to me the probability that Vergil was a friend of the Princess Octavia, and intimately acquainted with her in the sorrowful years (37–32 B.C.) when Antony was gradually deserting her. But the professional politician is apt to reduce moral questions to their lowest terms; the orthodox view of Roman Society was not quite so callous. The generation which saw and respected † Cicero's profound grief at the death of his daughter Tullia and the devoted affection with which Turia ‡ saved her husband through the long *This, of course (in 13 B.C.), was after Vergil's death. † Cic., ad Famil.,' iv, 5. p. 159. Corp. Inscr. Lat.,' vi, 1527, and Warde Fowler, 'Social Life at Rome,' terror of the proscription, was by no means careless of human affection. But what a modern reader needs to remember is that in the eyes of that generation, in some ways so humane, the tie between the sexes, whether in marriage or outside it, did not normally involve a bond of affection also, none at least that implied a life-long companionship. Not merely emperors but men of benevolent temper regarded divorce, for what we should think trivial causes, as a natural thing. The husband of Turia, in the delightful story of her life which he engraved upon marble, counts it as an example of her goodness that she proposed to him to divorce her because she was childless; Cicero divorced his wife Terentia mainly because she disagreed with him in politics, and arranged for his beloved daughter Tullia to be divorced from both her second and third husbands; even the stern moralist Cato handed over his wife to a friend.* And, at a time when this was the common view of unions nominally permanent, no sentiment of shame attached to the discontinuance of less regular ties, and very little to their formation, unless there were some conspicuous breach of decorum. The ordinary, decent Roman citizen of Vergil's day would have told us that the ideal union between man and woman was one of affection on both sides, but that this was rare; and that, though one might be sorry for any painful separation, it would be monstrous to think that a woman's claim upon a man's affection could be weighed in the balance against his political duties. And he would point conclusively to the disasters which had befallen great men who had defied Roman opinion on this point. Now this attitude of Roman society is represented at one point of Vergil's story, precisely where the modern reader feels most bewildered, namely, in the reply of Aeneas, and especially in the line which we have already examined, in which he says frankly that he had not promised to be her husband. Even if he had, Roman opinion would have thought it his duty to break his word; and, whether he had or had not, it is quite certain that no one in Rome, unless it were Vergil, would have thought the worse of him for what he had done. The point which has not been realised is that Vergil's own attitude is represented not merely or chiefly by what Aeneas says in his defence, but by what he admits; and that, while the actual words put into the mouth of Aeneas are perfectly true and serve to clear his honour by the current standards of Vergil's time, Vergil's own comment lies not in them, but in the sequel. Observe that Aeneas receives explicit reproof and utters explicit regret. Jupiter reproaches him for having forgotten his son Ascanius; and this reproof Aeneas painfully accepts. His duty to his son is the call to conscience which compels him to face the pain of leaving Dido. He feels as Nelson might have felt had he ever been tempted to resign his commission for Lady Hamilton's sake. He had given no formal pledge to Dido; but, short of that, his forgetting had been complete. He had lived not merely as Dido's consort, but as a kingly consort, taking up the duties of government which she herself had now forgotten. When Mercury arrives at Carthage he finds Aeneas arrayed in the uniform of a Tyrian general, engaged in building houses and planning fortifications; and Mercury's first word of reproach is that he is behaving like a husband' (uxorius), building a pretty city for his wife and forgetting his own promised land. His duty had been a national duty; and through his love he was betraying it for the benefit of a city destined to be his nation's most deadly foe. Yet this is not the whole of Vergil's comment. To modern readers the guilt of the tragedy appears to rest wholly with Aeneas, whom they roundly condemn. Now suppose we granted all that Dr Page or others can urge; it remains true that it is not we who should be condemning Aeneas, we with nineteen Christian centuries, with our Northern habit of mind, with the age of chivalry, with the puritan struggle all behind us to shape our judgments-not we, but Vergil himself. If we must conclude that Vergil has represented his hero as a poltroon, at least let us observe that, if he did so, it was because he was twenty centuries in advance of the ethics of his day. But did he? But did he? Are we to think of the Aeneid as a contradiction and a complete artistic failure? Where is it that the story goes wrong? Surely its beginning is a true picture? Aeneas and Dido meet under conditions which show each to the other in the noblest light. Their love for each other was human and natural and sprang from the finest side of each. But afterwards the same sinister machinery which contrived the storm is set to work again; Dido is betrayed not merely by Venus, but by her own sister; and the fatal meeting in the cave was the direct outcome of conditions which Juno had devised. What do these goddesses really represent in Vergil's mind? Observe always that the picture of Dido herself is not a mere psychological study which might represent any woman in love; she is a queen who has done great things, who has proved herself a leader and inspirer of men, and triumphed over treachery and sorrow. Just as in his picture of the maiden warrior, Camilla, a picture unique in ancient poetry, so in Dido Vergil loved to dwell upon her greatness as a human being, her worth to the world, entirely apart from the wealth of her beauty. Vergil was the first poet in Europe who conceived the picture of a great woman greatly in love, and ruined by her very nobleness when it dashed itself against the social framework of her age. For why is it that Dido must die when Aeneas forsakes her? Because, says Dr Mackail,* she has lost her self-respect. But when and why did she lose it? Only when Aeneas decided to leave her. And why can she not accept, as he does, the bitterness of their separation as an ordinance of inscrutable Providence, and continue her work for her own people, heartbroken but still pursuing? Because the conventions of men forbid her. Juno, Venus, Iarbas, Pygmalion, are four cardinal factors in Dido's position which Vergil has depicted with abundant clearness, but of which I believe the real meaning has hardly yet been pointed out for the simple reason that we have been and are too much under the dominion of those very social and national conceptions which Vergil questions, to dream that he doubted their validity. The neighbour king Iarbas, her swarthy suitor, is prepared to make war upon her city if she will not be his bride; and her brother Pygmalion is at one with him In the discussion that followed this lecture at the Roman Society's meeting. in the belief that an unwedded woman-sovereign is a thing not to be tolerated. It follows that, if the man whom Dido loves cannot stay to defend her or take her with him, her only escape from barbarism is death. Again, what brought Aeneas into contact with Dido? Who made the conditions that threw them into fatal nearness? What ordained their separation? Why could not Aeneas take Dido with him, as he half suggests and as she long contemplates? The answer is the same as that which dictated those other bitter alliances and bitter divorces which Vergil saw in the world of his day: raisons d'état. It was a political design, or rather the conflict of political designs; it was what appeared a high necessity of state to each of the schemers possessed by, indeed embodying, the idea of a merely national sentiment, jealous, narrow, essentially anti-human. And what has Vergil to say of the plots by which Juno, who cares nothing for Aeneas, and Venus, who cares nothing for Dido, conspire to ensnare them both? What is his comment on the 'treachery of the two gods' and of Juno, who ought to have countenanced none but a regular union? His comment is in the outcome. And what in Vergil's eyes was the outcome? Nothing less than three deadly wars * of which one was the most terrible and one the most cruel that Rome ever waged-nothing less than the extinction of Saguntum and Capua and Carthage, the carnage of Trebia and Trasimene and Cannæ, the terror that walked in Italy for eleven years and made the name of Hannibal the dread of every Roman home. That, says Vergil, is the fruit, that is the issue which comes when men of state make human affections an instrument of their designs. That is the meaning of Dido's curse upon Aeneas; and that is Vergil's last word on the problem he has raised. Hear me, ye gods, and one day from my bones Occasion gives thee power, drive and destroy! * This point, which Vergil makes the climax of the whole tragedy (11. 620-9), has been strangely ignored. Even Heinze writes ('Ep. Technik,' p. 135, footnote 1), 'What Dido means as a curse, is all turned to good.' |