briefly, as to the beginning of life. Anchises then goes on, 730 sqq., igneus est ollis vigor et caelestis origo seminibus, quantum non corpora noxia tardant hinc metuunt cupiuntque, dolent gaudentque, neque auras These five lines I trust we can attach more distinctly to Platonic doctrines or reminiscences of such. Plato frequently treats of the incorporation and incarnation of spirit as a process of degradation by which the spiritual and mental faculties are fettered, cut short and weakened. Especially so in one dialogue which was much read and discussed at that time in Rome even in the courses of rhetorical instruction (vid. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Caecilius of Cale Acte, etc.), the Phaedrus. As for the present philosophic views, compare especially Phaedr. 246 d sqq. or 250 c, ka apoi örreç καὶ ἀσήμαντοι τούτου, ὃ νῦν σῶμα περιφέροντες ὀνομάζομεν, ὀστρέου Tрóñoν dedeoμevμérou. As to the souls in Virgil's line being clausae tenebris et carcere caeco, while living with the body on earth, see the famous passage, Rep. VII 514 sqq., where the human souls are compared with captives kept in a cave underground. The soul's power and sight is cramped like the outlook of these captives who can see only the shadows of the things and persons passing by reflected on a wall at the narrow mouth of the cave. Returning now to Virgil we find that the further doctrine is even more distinctly Platonic; Aen. VI 737 sqq. Even after death men are still subject to a process of purgation and of atonement for the evils done in the flesh, in various ways, until the proper period has been exacted and the spots utterly removed. The same doctrine recurs in Plato again and again so often and indeed so elaborately set forth in mythic and half-mythic form, that there is no need of supposing with Nettleship (Suggestions introductory to a study of the Aeneid, Oxford, 1875, p. 30) that Virgil borrowed this from the Orphic poems. The Platonic dialogues which embody these doctrines were then as always amongst those which were most in the hands of philosophical readers and of literary and rhetorical scholars; they are principally the Gorgias, Phaedrus, Phaedo, Republic. As to the Apology, its conclusion is genuinely Socratic both in other regards and in this that nothing of purgation is advanced there. But at the conclusion of the Gorgias (the ideal apology of the best career), p. 526 sqq., we find the theory of retribution, atonement, and purgation, a myth which the author himself however considers a veritable Aóyog: that judgment will be made by the standards of abstract and ideal justice, not of conventional and worldly morality. The myth at the end of the Phaedo is mainly concerned with the topography of the abode of the blessed and of the nether world; but the theory of the final reward is also brought out, e. g, 113 a; and with Virgil's statement of time (745), donec longa dies, perfecto temporis orbe, compare Plato's words (ibid.), οὗ αἱ τῶν τετελεσμένων ψυχαὶ τῶν πολλῶν ἀφικνοῦνται καί τινας είμαρμένους χρόνους μείνασαι, αἱ μὲν μακροτέρους, αἱ δὲ βραχυτέρους, πάλιν ἐκπέμπονται εἰς τὰς τῶν ζῴων YEVÉGE. Very succinctly the doctrine is stated as a part of transcendental psychology in the Phaedrus 249 a: ai de åλλai, ὅταν τὸν πρῶτον βίον τελευτήσωσι, κρίσεως ἔτυχον. κριθεῖσαι δὲ αἱ μὲν εἰς τὰ ὑπὸ γῆς δικαιωτήρια ἐλθοῦσαι δίκην ἐκτίνουσιν, αἱ δὲ κτέ. The following Virgilian lines, 743–4, involve considerable difficulties for the commentators: quisque suos patimur manis; exinde per amplum Virgil says of all those souls who have finished their purgation and atonement that they are sent through the vast Elysium, but that to a few only is granted the privilege of dwelling there, including in this instance the speaker Anchises himself. Are the eventual dwellers in Elysium at any stage of their life after death subjected to any degree or kind of atonement? Will they lead their Elysian life forever? The want of clearness in Virgil's life is unmistakable. Conington, who is not satisfied with the several suggestions of other commentators and critics, including Jahn and Munro, winds up a long note with the remark that "we have here one of the passages in the Aeneid which Virgil left unfinished." Here then there is a notable divergence from the line of Platonic doctrine if indeed we are sure of understanding Virgil aright. All souls according to him are compelled to go through some kind or degree of purgation. But in Plato (Gorg. 526 c) there present themselves sometimes (Eriore) those who have led a pure and just life, and who are sent to the isles of the blessed forthwith from the judgment seat. Again in the passage quoted from the Phaedrus above, 249 a; ai de (opposed to those who δίκην ἐκτίνουσιν) εἰς τοὐρανοῦ τινὰ τόπον ὑπὸ τῆς δίκης κουφισθεῖσαι διάγουσιν ἀξίως οὗ ἐν ἀνθρώπου εἴδει ἐβίωσαν βίου. At the judgment seat, according to the apologus of Er in the Republic X 614 c, there are simply two categories of decisions and two classes of those dismissed: the disato, who are bidden. to go the way upward dià rov ovparou; and the others, who are despatched to the lower world. Returning now to Virgil's Anchises, we come to the important point of metempsychosis, 748, has omnis, ubi mille rotam volvere per annos, The mille anni of Virgil are found in Plato in the same connection, Rep. X 615, εἶναι δὲ τὴν πορείαν χιλιέτη, both of those who were punished and of those who went to bliss ; and also in the passage from Phaedrus 249 b T DE XIXOT ἀμφότεραι ἀφικνούμεναι ἐπὶ κλήρωσίν τε καὶ αἵρεσιν τοῦ δευτέρου βίου. As for the god's calling up (evocat), Virgil no doubt has metempsychosis in his mind when he says, Aeneid IV 242, tum virgam capit; hac animas ille evocat Orco In the present passage, the god calls them all up, and thus in Plato all souls come back from their thousand years' experience of reward or atonement, descending (Rep. X 614 d) from heaven or ascending from the earth below. All then with great pleasure move into the meadow where they stay for a while. And this the final portion of the entire process is the one which the visitor Aeneas is then himself witnessing in Virgil's poem: the state of expectancy which precedes the second terrestrial life of the souls who fill the river and there (715) securos latices et longa oblivia potant. As regards the Greek prototype, Conington suggests that it is a translation of Plato's words παρὰ τὸν ̓Αμέλητον ποταμόν. III. We have reviewed this remarkable episode on transcendental psychology in Aeneid VI. It now behooves us to inquire after the design of this parabasis: what is it in the economy of the Epic? When Aeneas met his sire, the latter was just occupied (679) with reviewing the souls who were to become descendants and go into life, and in this review he was also studying their ordained lot of life, their character and deeds. This however was not prophetic vision. All these things were implied in the mere presentation of the several souls standing on the threshold of incarnation. The real purpose of this mystic and philosophic parenthesis is embodied in the words, 717 sqq.: jam pridem hanc prolem cupio enumerare meorum, The worthies of Roman history pass in review before the founders of the Julian house, and in their passing they exhibit as on a shield or on a coat of arms their character and career. Notice the order of this pageant. First come some names of the Alban period, then Romulus-a rapid and cursory review. From Romulus a great leap is taken to the Julian house; first the glory of Augustus' universal sway is described; then Caesar and the civil wars; the order of time is inverted. The poet's patron precedes. Then come the six remaining kings, each characterized in about two lines, and all within the limit of ten lines. The heroes of the Republic are reviewed in some twenty lines without any regard to the order of time, the Gracchi preceding the Scipios, and these again coming before Fabius Cunctator. The largest amount of space is given to the laudatio funebris of young Marcellus, the hope of Augustus, his son-in-law and heir apparent; twenty-five lines form the garland which the grateful poet hangs on the urn containing the ashes of his patron's and benefactor's beloved. I now desire to show that this review of the souls of great Romans to come, is itself a close imitation of Plato: it is the shift by which the learned Virgil advances his Epic into a vista of Roman glory, and this contrivance he has borrowed from the Greek philosopher. The latter in his Phaedrus 249 b, c, says: "In the thousandth year they (the souls) come to the drawing of lots and to the choosing of second life, and they choose whichever each one will." Of this epitome the elaboration is found in the narrative of Er. The latter himself saw how the souls chose lots of life (Rep. X 617 c, sqq.) in accordance with definite examples and types: the life of tyrants both prosperous and wretched, the lives of famous men, of rich and poor. Some chose the opposites of their former life: thus Ulysses chose the life of a private person free from any great worry or trouble. But in the case of all, their course of second life was fully determined when once their choice was made and Er could review the several lives of the several men while they were on the threshold of a new incarnation. Anchises, therefore, in the Roman epic, is not a prophet; but he beholds those lives chosen by certain souls which Aeneas and the Sibyl see and review from the hill past which the souls move; a mere plain prediction put into the mouth of Anchises would have been too severe a strain upon the opportunities of the pure Epic, and so the learned Roman has resorted to a shift which he very probably owes to the scheme of metempsychosis set forth especially in Plato: All the transcendental psychology in Anchises' exposition was merely a necessary introduction leading up to metempsychosis. Virgil as a beneficiary of Augustus was obliged to advance his narrative from the mythical beginning to the historical end, and to the Augustan present in which he lived. The glorification of Augustus and the glorious past back of the civil wars were, to the utilitarian Augustus, objects the treatment of which he expected and desired from his literary beneficiaries. |