P. VERGILI MARONIS

AENEIDOS

LIBER QUINTUS.

IN the first half of the Aeneid it would almost seem as if Virgil had intentionally relieved those portions of his narrative which possess the most absorbing interest with others of a more level and less exciting kind. The detailed account of the agonies of the one night of Troy's capture was succeeded by a rapid sketch of the events of seven years of travel: and now we pass from the spectacle of Dido's frantic love and (as a modern reader will regard it) Aeneas' faithlessness to a description of the games celebrated by the Trojan hero in Sicily on the anniversary of his father's death. This serves to conduct us from the tragedy of the Fourth Book to the mysterious solemnities of the Sixth. Aeneas does not pass at once from the terrible conflict of love and duty to the initiation which is reserved for the chosen favourites of Heaven, but is shown to us the pious and beneficent prince, reverentially dutiful to his father's memory, and kind and liberal to his followers and friendsencouraging the ambition of his own men and returning the courtesies of the Sicilians by a display in which it is his honour to be the dispenser of honour to others.

As usual, the subject and much of the treatment in detail are from Homer. The heroic courtesy of Achilles is never more conspicuous than in the games which he gives in memory of his dead friend, as described in the Twenty-third Iliad: and by treading in the steps of Homer, Virgil has succeeded in investing his own hero with similar associations of chivalrous magnificence. For the scene in which the action is laid, he was indebted to that variety of the Trojan legend which made Anchises die in Sicily, and to the tradition which had fixed a Trojan colony there already. That Aeneas should revisit the island by choice or accidentally, and that being there he should honour his father by a splendid funeral celebration, was a sufficiently plausible development of the story. The earlier games, it is true, are little more than a re-arrangement of the Homeric materials; but they are made interesting in themselves, and the few novelties introduced increase the reader's pleasuresuch as the affection between Nisus and Euryalus, the defeat of the braggart by the veteran in the boxing-match, and the portent of Acestes' arrow. The tilt, which was Aeneas' surprise for his spectators, is Virgil's surprise for his readers; it is described with an ingenious felicity of language which exercises commentators and translators alike; and it must have been peculiarly flattering to Augustus to find an exhibition in which he took pleasure referred to his great progenitor. Virgil never seems to be more in his element than [p. 332] when he is speaking of the young; and the halo of hope which surrounds the sons of the conquerors of Italy is one of the most pleasing features in the Aeneid.

The burning of the ships by the Trojan women was a part of the Trojan legend, though the story was very variously told, as will be seen by any one who will consult Heyne's Excursus on the subject, some placing the scene in Greece, some in Italy, while one account connected it with the foundation of Rome. Dionysius agrees with Virgil in making it an incident in the voyage of Aeneas. In the account of the fate of Palinurus, with which the book closes, the poet, as usual, has combined an Italian tradition with an imitation of Homer. The promontory of Palinurus was supposed to have derived its name from the pilot of Aeneas, who was buried there: in the Odyssey, Menelaus' pilot dies at his post in the middle of his voyage: Ulysses loses one of his comrades just as he is about to visit the shades. Virgil has fitted these fragments into his tessellated work, and has thus, as Heyne remarks, secured an episode to give interest to the voyage from Sicily to Italy, which would otherwise have been uneventful.

It is no impeachment of the aptness and relevancy of this Book that it probably did not form part of Virgil's original conception. Conrads, whose views about the composition of the Aeneid have been mentioned in the Introduction to Book 3, has pointed out, what had occurred more or less distinctly to others, that the words libyco cursu, Book 6. 338, naturally mean that Palinurus was lost during the voyage from Carthage to Italy, which accordingly he supposes to have formed part of the story as Virgil first planned it. There are other points in the scene with Palinurus in Book 6, which it requires some ingenuity to reconcile with the narrative at the end of this Book; the mention of Apollo's prediction (6. 343 foll.), the stress laid on the stormy condition of the sea (vv. 354 foll.), and perhaps the time during which Palinurus represents himself as kept alive after his fall (ib.). Again, the request of Anchises that Aeneas would consult the Sibyl mentioned in Book 6. 115, would seem rather to have been an injunction given in life than identical with that which we read of vv. 731 foll. of this Book. Lastly, the supposition that this Book was an afterthought, would account at once for the doubt which existed in ancient times, whether the two first lines of Book 6 do not really belong to the present Book. Had Virgil lived to complete his work, he would doubtless have observed these discrepancies: as it is, they concern the critical scholar rather than the general reader. The introduction of Nisus and Euryalus in Book 9, as if they had not appeared in the narration before, may perhaps show that the present Book was composed later than Book 9.

Aeneas as he sails away sees the flame of Dido's pyre, and fears the worst.