 | The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) |  |
ECLOGUE IV. On the Birth of MARCELLUS.
To POLLIO.
ARGUMENT.
Catrou seems to be the first commentator that has given the true interpretation of the subject of this famous Eclogue. His words are as follows, viz. In the year of Rome 714, says he, when Asinius Pollio and Domitius Calvinus were consuls, the people of Rome compelled the triumvirs Octavian and Anthony to make a durable peace between them. It was hoped, that thereby an end would be put to the war with Sextus Pompey, who had made himself master of Sicily, and by the interruption of commerce, had caused a famine in Rome. To make this peace the more firm, they would have Anthony, whose wife Fulvia was then dead, to marry Octavian Caesar's sister Octavia, who had lately lost her husband Marcellus, and was then big with a child, of which she was delivered, after her marriage with Anthony. This child retained the name of his own father Marcellus, and as long as he lived, was the delight of his uncle Octavian, and the hope of the Roman people. It is he that is the subject of this Eclogue. Virgil addresses it to Pollio, who was at that time consul, and thereby makes a compliment to Caesar, Anthony, Octavia, and Pollio, all at once. The Marcellus, whose birth is here celebrated, is the same whose death is lamented by Virgil in the sixth Aeneid. The poet borrows what was predicted by the Camaean Sybil concerning Jesus Christ, and applies it to this child.
All love not lowly shrubs and rural plains:
Or if ye chuse to sing the shady grove,
Make your theme worthy a great consul's love.
Again by circling time in order roll'd!
Astrea comes, old Saturn's holy reign,
Peace, virtue, justice, now return again!
See a new progeny from heav'n descend!
Lucina hear! th'important birth befriend!
The golden age this infant shall restore,
Thy Phoebus reigns—and vice shall be no more.
The months begin, the babe's auspicious face,
Pollio, thy glorious consulship shall grace;
What footsteps of our ancient crimes remain
For ever shall be banish'd in thy reign.
He shall enjoy the life divine, and see
The gods, and heroes of eternity;
The jarring world in lasting peace shall bind,
And with his father's virtues rule mankind.
Green ivy, mix'd with ev'ry choicest flow'r:
And sweets ambrosial round thy cradle bloom:
With milk o'ercharg'd the goats shall homeward speed,
And herds secure from mighty lions feed.
The baleful asp and speckled snake shall die,
Nor pois'nous herb 'mid flow'rs conceal'd shall lie.
But when his matchless father's deeds divine,
And how in virtue's arduous paths to shine,
Warm'd with old heroes' fame, the youth shall know,
Then clustering grapes on forest-thorns shall glow;
Swains without culture golden harvests reap,
And knotted oaks shall showers of honey weep.
Yet of old crimes some footsteps shall remain,
The glebe be plough'd, ships tempt the dang'rous main;
'Round cities bulwarks rise, and massy tow'rs,
And other Argo's bear the chosen pow'rs;
New wars the bleeding nations shall destroy,
And great Achilles find a second Troy.
The sailor shall forsake the useless fleet;
No freighted ship shall wander ocean 'round,
With ev'ry fruit shall every clime be crown'd:
No lands shall feel the rake, nor vine the hook,
The swain from toil his bullocks shall unyoke:
No wool shall glow with alien colours gay,
The ram himself rich fleeces shall display
Of native purple and unborrow'd gold,
And sandyx clothe with red the crowded fold.
The sisters to their spindles said—“Succeed
Ye happy years, for thus hath fate decreed!
Assume thy state! thy destin'd honours prove,
Dear to the gods! O progeny of Jove!
Behold how tottering nature nods around,
Earth, air, the wat'ry waste, and heav'n profound!
At once they change—they wear a smiling face,
And all with joy th'approaching age embrace!
To tell thy actions in heroic strain;
Not Orpheus' self, not Linus should exceed
My lofty lays, or gain the poet's meed,
Tho' Phoebus, tho' Calliope inspire,
And one the mother aid, and one the sire.
Should Pan contend, Arcadia's self should own
That I from Pan himself had gain'd the crown.
Begin, begin, O loveliest babe below!
Thy mother by her tender smile to know!
(Ten tedious months that mother bore for thee
The sickness and the pains of pregnancy)
For if thy parents smile not, 'tis decreed,
No god shall grace thy board, no goddess bless thy bed.
Ver. 21. For thee, O child.] 'Tis impossible to forbear observing the great similitude of this passage, and that famous one of Isaiah:
“The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them: and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose, chap. xxxv. ver. 1. The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee, the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, chap. xi. ver. 13. The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the kid: and the calf, and the young lion, and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed, their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play upon the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder's den, chap. xi. ver. 6, 7, 8.”
How much inferior is Virgil's poetry to Isaiah's. The former has nothing comparable to these beautiful strokes; “that a little child shall lead the lion;—that the very trees of the forest shall come to pay adoration.”—Virgil says only occidet et serpens; Isaiah adds a circumstance inimitably picturesque, that the sucking child shall play upon the hole of the asp; and that the weaned child, a little older and beginning to make use of its hands, shall put his fingers on the adder's den. There are certain critics who would never cease to admire these circumstances and strokes of nature, if they had not the ill fortune to be placed in the bible.
33. Harvests.] The ancients used to sow bearded or prickly wheat, which deterred the birds from picking the ears. The epithet molli may therefore imply, that the corn shall no longer stand in need of this fortification, this pallisade, this vallum aristarum as Cicero calls it, to defend it from injuries, but shall spring up spontaneously, and grow ripe with soft and tender beards. See Martyn.
38. Argo's.] By navigation and commerce Virgil means that avarice, and by wars, that ambition shall still subsist. Catrou.
39. Wars.] A bloody war at last reduced Sextus Pompey to quit Sicily, and meet his death in Asia by Anthony. The conjuncture of affairs, the preparations made by Octavian, and above all, the dispositions of men's minds, gave room for the prediction of the poet. Catrou.
49. Purple.] Murex was a shell fish set about with spikes, from whence the Tyrian colour was obtained. Lutum is that herb, says Dr. Martyn, which our English writers of botany describe under the name of Luteola, wild woad, and dyer's weed. It is used in dying yellow both wool and silk.
50. Sandyx.] Servius and La Cerda affirm the sandyx to be an herb, which is a great mistake. Sandyx is spoken of by Pliny, as a cheap material for painting. The true sandaracha, says Dr. Martyn, which seems to be our native red arsenic, was said to come from an island in the Red Sea.
54. O progeny of Jove] Would it have been proper to bestow these illustrious appellations on a son of Pollio? Surely Virgil does not here pour them forth without reason. But what young prince could at that time deserve to be called the child of the gods, and the illustrious offspring of Jupiter? Without doubt it must have been one of the family of the Caesars! And did there at that time come into the world any child of the family of the Caesars, except young Marcellus. Tiberius was not yet entered into the house of Octavian by his mother, and Drusus was not yet born. Catrou.
55. Tottering nature.] What is the meaning of nutantem? says the learned Dr. Trapp. With, or under what does it nod or stagger? With its guilt and misery, say some, and so wants to be succoured by this new-born hero. But that to others seems not to agree with the happiness which is ascribed even to the first division, and to the beginning of this happy age. And therefore they say, it either nods, i. e. moves and shakes itself with joy and exultation; which is pretty harsh to my apprehension; or, which is not much better, inclines and tends to another, i. e. a yet more happy state; vergentem, say they, nutantemque in meliorem statum. After all I like the first interpretation best.—'Twas good sense to say, the world at present labours with its guilt and misery: but yet rejoices at the very near prospect of the happy change, which is in a manner begun already.
68. Thy mother by her tender smile.] The commentators are divided in opinion, whether he means the smile of the child, or that of the mother. I chuse the latter meaning, as it may be supported by the best reasons. See Ruaeus, and Erythraeus.
71. Smile not.] Those who understand this passage of the smiling of the child, strain the verb cognoscere, to signify that the child should own, or acknowledge his mother, by smiling on her: but I do not find any instance of its having been used in that sense.
In the next line, the making of the last syllable but one short tulĕrunt, is a poetical licence not very unusual; thus we read stetĕrunt et miscuĕrunt, for stetērunt et miscuērunt; so that there is no occasion to read tulerint, as some have done without any good authority.
72. No god.] The life of the gods or apotheosis (here promised by the poet) consisted of two particulars; the sitting at the table of Jupiter, and the marriage of some goddess; therefore the threats of Virgil amount to this.—You shall not enjoy the life of the gods, because neither Jupiter will admit you to his table, nor any goddess to her bed. Ruaeus.
| The eclogues and georgics of Virgil (1753) | |