Read Online The Aeneid by Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Fagles Virgil, Bernard Knox
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in arms, . . .
let him grovel for help and watch his people die
a shameful death! And then, once he has bowed down
to an unjust peace, may he never enjoy his realm
. . . let him die
before his day. . . . ”
(4.767-73)
When the Roman world became Christian, Virgil remained as its classic poet, not only because of the fourth Eclogue, which many Christians regarded as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but also because of a recognition of a fellow spirit— anima naturaliter Christiana, a naturally Christian spirit he was called by Tertullian, the great Christian figure of second century Carthage. And Virgil’s significance in the European Christian tradition is emphasized by the important part he takes, both in the many borrowings from his work and also in the prominent role he plays himself in the Divina Commedia of Dante (1265-1321).
Not only are there striking resemblances between Dante’s account of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and Book 6 of the Aeneid, not only does he choose Virgil as his guide through the first two countries of the next world, he thanks him also for the gift of bello stilo, which Virgil had given to the Latin language, and which Dante has re-created for the Italian. And recalls of Virgil’s language occur at once as he recognizes the figure before him; he addresses him in a reminiscence of his own Aeneid, “ Or se’tu quel Virgilio . . . / che . . . ?” ( Inferno 1.79-80), “Are you that Virgil who . . . ?” It is a recall of Dido’s question as she realizes who her visitor must be: “ Tune ille Aeneas quem . . . ?” (1.617). And the reminiscences are not just verbal; subject matter and character are borrowed too. The same Charon ferries spirits across the same river and refuses again to take a living passenger at first. Minos judges the dead; Cerberus must have his “sop.” And there are even wider resemblances—the special place in both poems for suicides, and for those who died for love. And on a broader scale between Elysium and Paradiso, between Purgatorio and Virgil’s “souls” who are “drilled in punishments, they must pay for their old offenses” (6.854-55), with the difference that in Dante the souls who have finished purgation drink the water of Lethe and go to Paradise, where in Virgil, except for those who go to Elysium, they go, after drinking the water of Lethe, back to life in a fresh incarnation to become the Romans.
And there is one reference to Virgil in Dante that echoes down the centuries to the twentieth. It is the passage in Canto I of Inferno (106-8, trans. Robert and Jean Hollander):
Di quella umile Italia fia salute
per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,
Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.
“He shall be the salvation of low-lying Italy
for which maiden Camilla, Euryalus,
Turnus, and Nisus died of their wounds.”
Why Italy is lowly and who her savior is are matters still disputed by scholars, but the phrase “ umile Italia ” is obviously a memory of Aeneid 3.522-23: “ umilemque videmus / Italiam ”—“and low-lying we see / Italy” (trans. Knox). It is Aeneas’ first sight of Italy, as indeed it looks still to the traveler coming from Greece—a low line on the horizon. And the heroes who have laid down their lives for this Italy fought on both sides. This ter cet of Dante’s, among the most copious of his references to Virgil’s text, was destined to echo down the ages until its appearance in a remarkable twentieth-century context in the Italy of Mussolini, who was trying to restore the warlike image of Roman Italy and make the Mediterranean once more mare nostrum, “our sea.”
In this endeavor he made opponents and enemies whom he silenced and punished in various ways. One of his critics and opponents, Carlo Levi, was sent into a sort of exile in a small poverty-stricken town in Calabria, a town so poor that its inhabitants claimed that Christ, on his way through Italy, had stopped at Eboli, and never reached them. In
let him grovel for help and watch his people die
a shameful death! And then, once he has bowed down
to an unjust peace, may he never enjoy his realm
. . . let him die
before his day. . . . ”
(4.767-73)
When the Roman world became Christian, Virgil remained as its classic poet, not only because of the fourth Eclogue, which many Christians regarded as a prophecy of the birth of Christ, but also because of a recognition of a fellow spirit— anima naturaliter Christiana, a naturally Christian spirit he was called by Tertullian, the great Christian figure of second century Carthage. And Virgil’s significance in the European Christian tradition is emphasized by the important part he takes, both in the many borrowings from his work and also in the prominent role he plays himself in the Divina Commedia of Dante (1265-1321).
Not only are there striking resemblances between Dante’s account of Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso and Book 6 of the Aeneid, not only does he choose Virgil as his guide through the first two countries of the next world, he thanks him also for the gift of bello stilo, which Virgil had given to the Latin language, and which Dante has re-created for the Italian. And recalls of Virgil’s language occur at once as he recognizes the figure before him; he addresses him in a reminiscence of his own Aeneid, “ Or se’tu quel Virgilio . . . / che . . . ?” ( Inferno 1.79-80), “Are you that Virgil who . . . ?” It is a recall of Dido’s question as she realizes who her visitor must be: “ Tune ille Aeneas quem . . . ?” (1.617). And the reminiscences are not just verbal; subject matter and character are borrowed too. The same Charon ferries spirits across the same river and refuses again to take a living passenger at first. Minos judges the dead; Cerberus must have his “sop.” And there are even wider resemblances—the special place in both poems for suicides, and for those who died for love. And on a broader scale between Elysium and Paradiso, between Purgatorio and Virgil’s “souls” who are “drilled in punishments, they must pay for their old offenses” (6.854-55), with the difference that in Dante the souls who have finished purgation drink the water of Lethe and go to Paradise, where in Virgil, except for those who go to Elysium, they go, after drinking the water of Lethe, back to life in a fresh incarnation to become the Romans.
And there is one reference to Virgil in Dante that echoes down the centuries to the twentieth. It is the passage in Canto I of Inferno (106-8, trans. Robert and Jean Hollander):
Di quella umile Italia fia salute
per cui morì la vergine Cammilla,
Eurialo e Turno e Niso di ferute.
“He shall be the salvation of low-lying Italy
for which maiden Camilla, Euryalus,
Turnus, and Nisus died of their wounds.”
Why Italy is lowly and who her savior is are matters still disputed by scholars, but the phrase “ umile Italia ” is obviously a memory of Aeneid 3.522-23: “ umilemque videmus / Italiam ”—“and low-lying we see / Italy” (trans. Knox). It is Aeneas’ first sight of Italy, as indeed it looks still to the traveler coming from Greece—a low line on the horizon. And the heroes who have laid down their lives for this Italy fought on both sides. This ter cet of Dante’s, among the most copious of his references to Virgil’s text, was destined to echo down the ages until its appearance in a remarkable twentieth-century context in the Italy of Mussolini, who was trying to restore the warlike image of Roman Italy and make the Mediterranean once more mare nostrum, “our sea.”
In this endeavor he made opponents and enemies whom he silenced and punished in various ways. One of his critics and opponents, Carlo Levi, was sent into a sort of exile in a small poverty-stricken town in Calabria, a town so poor that its inhabitants claimed that Christ, on his way through Italy, had stopped at Eboli, and never reached them. In
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