I think it’s fair to say the Romans are not best known for their Literature, and while that is
frankly a shame, I can very much understand why. When an unstoppable train of legionaries comes
battering down your door in their imperialistic quest to confiscate the entire Mediterranean Sea,
you are unlikely to be focusing on the stylistic choices in their poetry. No amount of artistic
alliteration would alleviate the absolute atrocities suffered by the people and kingdoms
who found themselves the new beneficiaries of the Roman Peace. And even during the subsequent
Pax Romana when life was at least nominally chill, most Romans engaged with their culture
through the physical art and architecture that dominated civic spaces all throughout the empire.
Very little Latin is necessary to understand that Marcus Agrippa made this bigass temple,
as public megaworks have a conspicuous habit of speaking for themselves. BUT, if Rome wanted to
become more than a land of soldiers and engineers and ascribe some sense of purpose to its world
conquering-ness, it needed to start writing stuff. Now by the time of the first emperor Augustus,
Greece had been hard at work for nearly a millennium, and their immense catalogue of epics,
poems, plays, and philosophies had become a core pillar of Roman culture. However,
seeing as those were all written in Greek, the citizens were hungry for more literature in the
Latin language. That’s not to say Romans didn’t have a strong start in the 200s BC, as they came
out the gate with the invention of the sitcom by comedy playwrights like Plautus. For context,
most of Shakespeare’s comedies are adaptations of Plautus, and for further context, Roman comedy is
absolutely hilarious. This seemingly contrasts with the straight-laced, stuff-upper-lip that
we observe in Cicero’s formal letters on politics and philosophy, or in the utterly emotionless war
commentaries by Caesar – but as soon as we expand our sample size beyond politicians,
we observe, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the Romans were really quite expressive writers..
Take the first-century BC poet Catullus, whose verses painstakingly chronicled the
emotional rollercoaster of his affair with an aristocratic woman; the poor lovebird probably
felt more ecstasy and heartbreak in his 30 year lifespan than most people get in a century, and
some of his poems would make even Sappho blush. So the Romans clearly had poetry, and expressive
poetry at that – defying the stereotype of the cold, unfeeling statesman – but there is
one attribute that binds early roman literature together and distinguishes it from the Greek:
it’s all concerned with what is. Family dynamics, politics, war, love affairs:
all varied topics, but all part of the everyday world and deeply familiar to the Roman audience.
And so enters Virgil, a poet perfectly timed to meet the new Roman world, or perhaps,
the empire of Augustus was lucky to have dawned during Virgil’s lifetime. It’s hard to convey how
transformative Virgil’s poetry was for Roman culture, but it’s harder to imagine what Rome
would have been like without him. With just three works in his lifetime, one of them unfinished,
Virgil built on the foundations of Greek literature, stepped beyond the familiar world,
and created, in beautiful Latin, a comprehensive cultural identity for the Roman people. So,
to see how this humble poet marks the high point of Latin Literature and hard-carried the entire
ethos of the empire, Let’s do some History. Publius Vergilius Maro was born in 70 BC just
outside the northern Italian city of Mantua and would have grown up in a republic that only knew
chaos. Coming off of a decade of civil wars with several more on the way once Caesar crosses the
Rubicon in 49 BC, the prevailing attitudes in the mid first century would have ranged from Glum to
outright Doom. And Virgil, who all his life was terribly shy and frequently sick, wanted
absolutely nothing to do with it. In his youth he studied law, but once he got to Rome he spoke
in court exactly once and immediately decided to leave. This choice may have also been influenced
by the General Caesar recently being stabbed to death 23 times by the Senate. Either way,
good to leave, so Virgil hopped down to Naples to study stoic philosophy, met the young poet Horace
while he was there, and at that time began working on his first poetry collection, The Eclogues.
Inspired by some earlier Greek work, this is a set of 10 poems praising life in the countryside,
where farmers talk about their land, young men bemoan unrequited love, singers compete
with each other, and life is good. Well, at least it’s supposed to be, as the poems are
loosely set in the Greek wilderness of Arcadia, but there are some curiously modern inclusions,
as those farmers in poem 1 are actually talking about how their lands just got confiscated. See,
though Virgil got out of Rome, politics marched on, sometimes literally, as Caesar’s
allies Octavian and Marcus Antonius waged a war against the Assassins, and after their victory
at the battle of Philippi, Octavian paid off his armies with farmlands seized from towns in Italy,
of which Virgil’s hometown was one. So the Eclogues are establishing what will become a
running theme of the natural world under threat from disaster and political chaos. But all is
not lost, as Eclogue 4 promises a golden age dawning with the arrival of a young boy, and
depending on how you read that metaphor it could be anybody from the child of Antony and Octavia,
a metaphor for Virgil’s poetry, or… as later Romans believed: Baby Jesus. Taken all together,
the Eclogues see Virgil refashioning Arcadia from a distant mythological land into contemporary
Italy; beauty, crisis and all. He also took the leap of using the old Greek Dactylic Hexameter,
the metrical structure of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but in Latin. He was not the first
to do this, but he was the best, and the Eclogues catapulted Virgil into literary stardom. A year
after their publication in 38 BC, Virgil made friends with Gaius Maecenas, patron of the arts
and close associate of Caesar Octavian, now de facto ruler of the western Mediterranean. In the
following decades, Maecenas would become the primary driver of Roman literature under the
Augustan Program, which is a flashy way to say minister of propaganda. But we’re not there yet,
because it’s still 37 BC, and Virgil was just gifted a house on the Esquiline hill in Rome,
but he once again immediately left for the countryside. Absolute boss move.
In the 30s BC, Virgil’s private life of writing poetry out in the country once again ran parallel
with a Roman civil war, as Octavian vied with his former friend Antony for control of the
Mediterranean world, culminating in the battle of Actium in 32 BC. So two years later, Virgil
presented Maecenas and the triumphant Octavian with a poem about… farms. Specifically, it’s an
instruction manual for farming, growing trees, animal husbandry, and beekeeping, all written in
meter, full of poetic flourishes and mythological allusions, and somehow actually really good?
How does he keep getting away with this? This collection, called the Georgics, echoed his
early work’s presentation of an ideal pastoral world threatened by natural and man-made crises,
as disasters, storms, wars, and corruption all come to cause a ruckus at various points in the
poem. Like the Eclogues, this work weaves ancient mythology in alongside very contemporary ideas
and fears, but it also marks Virgil’s first contribution to the Augustan program: bees.
Let me explain – Bees are adorable, and they make delicious honey, but they are also an excellent
model for organizing society. So Virgil’s observations on beekeeping double as a guide
for bringing Roman civilization back from the disorder of all those civil wars. You will note,
kind viewer, that bees are recognized not only for their efficient teamwork, but also for the curious
fact that bees operate under a monarchy, not as a tyrant, but in a reciprocal relationship as
the patron guardian of the whole colony. This will become a very Augustan idea, and there’s frankly a
whole hive’s-worth of philosophically-nuanced Bee ContentTM in book 4 of the Georgics. My
ability to say that sentence with a straight face should be a testament to this man’s insane skills.
Because it’s comparatively easy to make a good poem out of action and drama, but to make high
art out of a gardening textbook is some real talent… Now with that said, for his next poem,
Virgil did take on a tale of action and drama, and it. is. spectacular. So in the years after Actium,
Octavian became Augustus, Rome became an Empire, and Maecenas’ circle of poets became the voice
of Roman culture. To mark his achievement, Augustus went absolutely nuts on public works,
but also wanted to portray his reign as the start of a new golden age, and to do that, Virgil looked
backwards: to the earliest foundations of Roman history and of Greek literature,
and those 2 threads converged on The Trojan War. Specifically, legend went that the Trojan prince
Aeneas, son of the goddess Venus, escaped the burning city and somehow made it over to Italy,
where his distant descendants Romulus and Remus would later found the city of Rome. And seeing as
Augustus claimed descent from Aeneas, Virgil could praise the emperor indirectly without writing him
in as a Marius Sue. Keep in mind this also gives Virgil cover to criticize the great Princeps,
because Aeneas represents Rome’s best and worst attributes. He’s written to be pious, dedicated,
cold, stubborn, and rageful all at once. In practice, he’s the full inversion of the cunning
and charming Odysseus. That comparison is handy, because, on paper, the Aeneid is a Romanized
retread of the Iliad and Odyssey, but remember the Georgics was a farming manual, so there’s
a lot more going on here than just Homer II.0. To summarize the over-plot, Aeneas washes up on
the shores of Carthage, has a brief affair with Queen Dido until he’s gently reminded about his
cosmic destiny to find Italy and establish an empire. So he leaves, she died mad about it,
and Aeneas makes it to Italy, but has to fight a war about it with Prince Turnus of the Rutuli to
cement his claim to Latium and also win the hand of Lavinia in marriage, which evidence suggests
he sees exclusively as a business commitment. The plot in itself isn’t groundbreaking, but it’s the
details and the style that elevate it into one of the best pieces of poetry in the world. For
instance, as Aeneas is crossing the Aegean sea, the one thing he brings with him are the Penates,
which become the household gods specific to Roman religion, and when mourning the
death of his father Anchises he holds the very first Parentalia, a traditional Roman funerary
festival. Aeneas leaving Troy and journeying toward Italy parallels his slow progression of
becoming more Roman over the course of the epic, establishing a continuity between the ancient past
and the new Augustan golden age. He’s not just going to a place, he’s creating a new identity,
just as Virgil is creating a new identity for Rome by composing a distinctly Roman mythology. Aeneas
of course serves as a vehicle for Augustan glory, specifically in the scenes where he
goes into the underworld and sees Augustus at the head of a metaphorical roman triumph,
and later receives a shield forged by Vulcan with Augustus’ victory at Actium front and center,
but his characterization and structural role make him into a singular symbol of
Rome. His destiny is to found a civilization he’ll never live to enjoy, but he does it
anyway because selflessness is the currency of Roman heroism, and that all begins in Aeneas.
Now just as the poem begins In Media Res, with Aeneas caught in a storm at sea wishing he had
died at Troy, mood, it also ends in the middle of the action, closing literally three lines
after Aeneas kills his rival Turnus. Thing is, the Aeneid is unfinished: several lines
have incomplete meter, as Virgil died of a fever in 19 BC while traveling from Greece,
and he wanted three more years to polish the poem, but all evidence indicates this abrupt
climax was the intended ending, which is frankly a baller move on Virgil’s part. Less cash money
of him was his request that the unfinished poem be burned – maybe as a cover for his criticisms
of Augustus, maybe because he was that much of a perfectionist – but literally everyone
up to and including the emperor stepped in to ensure the poem was published. With scenes like
the retelling of the sack of Troy, Aeneas and Dido’s let’s call it “wedding” in the cave,
Dido’s silence in the underworld, and Aeneas grieving over the death of his battle companion,
the epic far transcends any mere asset-flip of Homeric material. In fact, Virgil’s
deliberately-composed poetry is far more robust than the rigid and formulaic Greek that was passed
down through ancient oral traditions. Virgil’s Latin is varied and ornate and dynamic and it
makes me want to learn Latin again, which is by far the best compliment I can give him. There are,
rightly, mountains of scholarship on Virgil, because he’s such an essential presence in
Roman culture, Augustus doesn’t work without Virgil in his corner, and I dare say there is
no empire without the Aeneid. Now Go Read It. Thank you so much for watching. I could have
easily made this video triple the length, because Virgil slaps harder than a roman
legion armed with padleboards, but I, like Aeneas, am demonstrating selfless heroism.
And Vanity. Anyhow, Virgil is best boy and you should all for-real read the Aeneid, I’ve linked
the David Ferry translation in the description below, and I will see you in the next video.