Virgil's poetry. Virgil, biography and works Virgil's poetry

Poet of the August century

Virgil is the most famous poet of the Augustan age. Genus. in 70 BC e. near Mantua, received his first education in Cremona; At the age of sixteen he received the toga of maturity. This celebration coincided with the year of Lucretius's death, so that contemporaries looked at the beginning poet as a direct successor to the De rerum natura singer. Virgil received further education in Milan, Naples and Rome; there he studied Greek literature and philosophy. Despite his interest in Epicureanism and his deep admiration for Lucretius, Virgil did not join the Epicurean doctrine; he was attracted to Plato and the Stoics.

His small poems date back to this time, of which the most reliable is Culet, recognized as Virgil's by Martial, Suetonius and Statius. After the death of Caesar, Virgil returned to Mantua and devoted himself there to the study of Theocritus; but his peace was disturbed by civil wars. During the distribution of land to veterans - supporters of the triumvirs after the battle of Philippi, Virgil was twice in danger of losing his possessions in Mantua; but each time he was saved by the personal intervention of Octavian, to whom the grateful poet soon dedicated two laudatory eclogues (I and IX).

In Rome, where Virgil often came to take care of his possessions, he made friends with Maecenas and the poets around him; subsequently he introduced Horace into this circle, and both poets made, together with their patron, the journey they both sang to Brundusia. In 37, Bucolica, the first mature work of Virgil, was completed, and at the request of the Patron, he took up Georgica, written in Naples in 30. In 29, after many preliminary works, Virgil proceeded to the Aeneid and, having worked on it for several years in Italy, set off to Greece and Asia in order to study the theater of action of his poem on the spot and give his work more vital truth. In Athens he met Augustus, who persuaded him to return to Italy. On the way to Rome, Virgil fell ill and died in Brundusia in 19 BC. e. Before his death, he asked that his unfinished and, in his opinion, imperfect epic be burned. Some scientists (Bartenstein, for example) explain this request as follows: the reign of Augustus convinced Virgil that he had been singing the tyrant all his life, and he felt remorse before his death that his epic would bring him immortality.

Bucoliki

In his first work - "Bucolica" (consisting of 10 eclogues and written in 43-37 years) - Virgil wanted to introduce Greek features into Latin poetry, its simplicity and naturalness, and began by imitating Theocritus. But he completely failed to achieve the goal, despite the direct translation in many places of the Sicilian poet - it is precisely the simplicity and naturalness that are absent in Virgil's Bucolics. While the shepherds of Theocritus really live the unpretentious life of children of nature, whose whole interest is in the prosperity of the flocks and the love of the shepherdess, the shepherds of Bukolik are a poetic fiction, an artistic image that covers the complaints of the Romans about the hardships of civil wars. In some of them, Virgil represents prominent figures of that era; for example, Caesar is represented in Daphnis. The most famous and in fact the most interesting in terms of solemnity of mood and subtlety of details is eclogue IV (Pallio), in which Virgil predicts a future golden age and the imminent birth of a child who will change the course of life on earth. The poet paints a picture of this future happy life, when any labor will be superfluous and a person will find everything he needs everywhere (omnis fert omnia tellus), and ends with a glorification of the future benefactor of people. Christian writers saw in this eclogue a prophecy of the birth of Christ, and it is based mainly on the belief in Virgil, widespread in the Middle Ages, as a magician. Most likely, Virgil had in mind in this poem the son of Augustus, Marcellus, whose early death he later sang in the poetic episode of the VI song of the Aeneid. In the general character of the X eclogue, her hatred of war and the thirst for a quiet life, Virgil reflected the desire for peace that gripped the entire Roman society. The literary significance of the Bucolic consists mainly in the perfection of the verse, which surpasses everything previously written in republican Rome.

Georgics

The Georgics, Virgil's second poem, was written to arouse the love of agriculture in the souls of veterans who were rewarded with lands. Taking Hesiod as a model, Virgil, however, does not enter, like his Greek model, into all the details of the agricultural business - his goal is to show the delights of rural life in poetic images, and not write rules on how to sow and reap; therefore, the details of agricultural labor occupy him only where they are of poetic interest. From Hesiod, Virgil took only indications of happy and unhappy days and some agricultural practices. The best part of the poem, that is, digressions of a natural-philosophical character, is mostly taken from Lucretius.

"Georgics" are considered the most perfect work of Virgil for the purity and poetic completeness of the verse. At the same time, they deeply reflected the character of the poet, his outlook on life and religious beliefs; these are poetic studies on the dignity of labor. Agriculture in his eyes is a holy war of people against the earth, and he often compares the details of agricultural life with military life. The "Georgics" also serve as a protest against the atheism that has spread in the republic in recent times; the poet helps Augustus to awaken in the Romans the extinct faith in the gods, and he himself is sincerely imbued with the conviction of the existence of a higher Providence that governs people.

Aeneid

The Aeneid is Virgil's unfinished patriotic epic, consisting of 12 books written between 29-19 AD. After the death of Virgil, the Aeneid was published by his friends Varius and Plotius without any changes, but with some cuts. In all likelihood, the Aeneid was calculated, like the Iliad, for 24 songs; The 12th ends only with a victory over Turn, while the poet wanted to tell the very settlement of the hero in Latium and his death. The plot of the epic is Aeneas, founding a new Ilion in Rome and becoming the ancestor of gens Julia, from which Augustus came.

Virgil took up this plot at the request of Augustus in order to arouse national pride in the Romans with tales of the great destinies of their ancestors and, on the other hand, to protect the dynastic interests of Augustus, allegedly a descendant of Aeneas through his son Julius, or Ascanius. Virgil in the Aeneid closely adjoins Homer; in the Iliad, Aeneas is the hero of the future. The poem begins with the last part of Aeneas's wanderings, his stay in Carthage, and then episodically tells the previous events, the destruction of Ilion (II p.), Aeneas's wanderings after that (III p.), Arrival in Carthage (I and IV p.), Journey through Sicily (V p.) to Italy (VI p.), where a new series of adventures of a romantic and militant character begins. The very execution of the plot suffers from a common defect in Virgil's works - the lack of original creativity and strong characters. Especially unfortunate is the hero, “pious Aeneas” (pius Aeneas), deprived of any initiative, controlled by fate and the decisions of the gods, who patronize him as the founder of a noble family and the executor of the divine mission - transferring Lar to a new homeland. In addition, the Aeneid bears the imprint of artificiality; in contrast to the Homeric epic, which came out of the people, the Aeneid was created in the mind of the poet, without connections with folk life and beliefs; Greek elements are confused with Italian ones, mythical tales with history, and the reader constantly feels that the mythical world serves only as a poetic expression of the national idea. On the other hand, Virgil used all the power of his verse to finish off the psychological and purely poetic episodes that constitute the immortal glory of the epic. Virgil is inimitable in the descriptions of gentle shades of feelings. One has only to recall the pathetic, despite its simplicity, description of the friendship of Nizus and Erial, the love and suffering of Dido, the meeting of Aeneas with Dido in hell, in order to forgive the poet for his unsuccessful attempt to exalt the glory of Augustus at the expense of the legends of antiquity. Of the 12 songs of the Aeneid, the sixth, which describes the descent of Aeneas into hell to see his father (Anchises), is considered the most remarkable in terms of philosophical depth and patriotic feeling. In it, the poet expounds the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of the "soul of the universe" and recalls all the great people of Rome. The external structure of this song is taken from the eleventh paragraph of the Odyssey. In other songs, borrowings from Homer are also very numerous.

In the construction of the Aeneid, the desire to create a Roman parallel to the poems of Homer is emphasized. Virgil found most of the motives of the Aeneid already in previous processing of the legend about Aeneas, but their choice and arrangement belong to Virgil himself and are subject to his poetic task. Not only in the general construction, but also in a whole series of plot details and in stylistic processing (comparisons, metaphors, epithets, etc.), Virgil's desire to "compete" with Homer is revealed.

The more profound differences are revealed. "Epic calm", loving drawing of details are alien to Virgil. The Aeneid presents a chain of narratives full of dramatic movement, strictly concentrated, pathetically tense; the links of this chain are connected by skillful transitions and a common purposefulness that creates the unity of the poem.

Its driving force is the will of fate, which leads Aeneas to the foundation of a new kingdom in the Latin land, and the descendants of Aeneas to power over the world. The Aeneid is full of oracles, prophetic dreams, miracles and signs that guide every action of Aeneas and foreshadow the coming greatness of the Roman people and the exploits of its leaders right up to Augustus himself.

Virgil avoids mass scenes, usually singling out several figures whose emotional experiences create a dramatic movement. Drama is enhanced by stylistic processing: Virgil knows how to skillfully select and arrange words to give the erased formulas of everyday speech greater expressiveness and emotional coloring.

In the depiction of gods and heroes, Virgil carefully avoids the crude and comic, which is so often the case with Homer, and strives for "noble" affects. In the clear division of the whole into parts and in the dramatization of parts, Virgil finds the middle path he needs between Homer and the "neotherics" and creates a new technique of epic narration, which for centuries served as a model for subsequent poets.

True, the heroes of Virgil are atomistic, they live outside the environment and are puppets in the hands of fate, but such was the life-sense of the dispersed society of the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire. Virgil's protagonist, the "pious" Aeneas, with his peculiar passivity in voluntary submission to fate, embodies the ideal of Stoicism, which has become almost an official ideology. And the poet himself acts as a preacher of Stoic ideas: the picture of the underworld in the 6th song, with the torment of sinners and the bliss of the righteous, is drawn in accordance with the ideas of the Stoics. The Aeneid was only a rough draft. But even in this "draft" form, the Aeneid is distinguished by the high perfection of verse, deepening the reform begun in the Bucolics.

Other works

Of the minor poems, in addition to the above-mentioned Culet, Ciris, Moretum and Sora are also attributed to Virgil. Virgil, in his poetry, as well as in his private life, is more a man of feelings than of thought. "Bonus", "optimus", "anima candida" - these are the epithets that constantly accompany his name in Horace, Donatus, and others. In his poetry, Virgil is least of all a philosopher, although he is strongly fascinated by the philosophical problems that occupied republican Rome, and he would like to go in the footsteps of Lucretius. But he feels his impotence and sadly exclaims at Lucretius (Geor. II):

Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas…

Fortunatus et ille deos qui novit agrestis…

Everything concerning the philosophical systems in the "Aeneid" and "Georgics" is directly borrowed from various Greek authors (as, for example, "the doctrine of the afterlife" in paragraph VI, etc.). In politics, Virgil is one of the most sincere supporters of Augustus. Full of enthusiasm for the great past of Rome, he wholeheartedly glorifies the peacemaker in Italy. August for him is a representative of the national idea, and he worships him without any hint of fawning, alien to his pure soul.

Veneration of Virgil after death

The worship with which the name of Virgil was surrounded during his lifetime continued even after the death of the poet; already since the August century, his writings were studied in schools, commented on by scientists and served to predict fate, like the oracles of Sybil. So called " Sortes Virgilianae' were in great use during the time of Hadrian and Severus. The name of Virgil was surrounded by a mysterious legend, which in the Middle Ages turned into a belief in him as a magician. Numerous legends about his miraculous power were based on some misunderstood passages in his writings, such as eclogues IV and VIII. The story of the afterlife in paragraph VI of the Aeneid, etc. and, in addition, the interpretation of the hidden meaning of his name ( Virga- magic wand) and the name of his mother ( Maia - Maga). Already in Donatus there are allusions to the supernatural significance of Virgil's poetry. Fulgentium (" De Continenta Vergiliana”) gives the Aeneid an allegorical meaning. Then the name of Virgil is found in Spanish, French and German folk books, which date him either to the time of the fabulous king Octavian, or king Servius; Breton legends speak of him as a contemporary of King Arthur and the son of a knight from the Campania in the Forest of Arden. Virgil obeys the elements, he miraculously kindles and extinguishes fire, causes an earthquake and a thunderstorm; Virgil is the patron or genius loci of Naples, which he founded by building it on three eggs (a variant is a castle built on an egg, Castello del'uovo); Virgil punches an underground passage through the mountain (Posilippo). He is an unsurpassed craftsman, crafting miraculous items ( ingeniosissimus rerum artifex), among which is a complex system of signaling and protecting the city with the help of bronze statues Salvatio Romae(option - a system that protects against the eruption of Vesuvius); a bronze fly that drives out flies from Naples and thus protects the city from infection; a wonderful mirror reflecting everything that happens in the world; bocca della verita; an ever-burning lamp; air bridge, etc. The highest manifestation of the significance attributed by the Middle Ages to Virgil is the role of the psychopomp, which Dante gives him in The Divine Comedy, choosing him as a representative of the deepest human wisdom and making him his leader and guide through the circles of hell.

Virgil's writings have come down to us in a large number of manuscripts, of which the most remarkable are the Medicean, probably written before the fall of the Western Roman Empire (ed. Foggini in Florence in 1741), and the Codex Vaticanus (ed. Bottari, Rome, 1741). .). From edid. prince we note a small folio of 1469 published by Sveingheim and Panartz, the Aldin edition in Venice of 1501, several editions of the 15th and 16th centuries. with commentary by Servius et al., ed. I. L. de la Cerda, Madrid, 1608-1617, ed. Nick. Gelsius in Amsterdam, 1676, Burkmann in 1746, Wagner in 1830, corrected from manuscripts and provided with remarks on the spelling of many words of Virgil - Schweigger's "Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie" contains a listing of all other editions and an indication of their merits.

The primary sources for information about the life and writings of Virgil are Donatus' Vita Vergilii, some other vitae, which are provided with manuscripts, comments by Servius and Virgil's biography in the verses of Focius.

Translations into Russian

Translations of Virgil into Russian are very numerous.

The first of them date back to the 18th century:

The Aeneid was translated by V. Sankovsky (2nd ed., with a preface and explanations by V. Ruban, 3 parts, St. Petersburg, 1775);
"Georgics" by V. Ruban (4 books, with the addition of I Eclogue, called Titir, St. Petersburg, 1777) and A. Raich (M., 1821);
"Eclogues" A. Merzlyakov (M., 1807);
Virgil's Aeneids, trans. poems by I. Sosnetsky (Moscow, 1872);
"Aeneid" by I. Sosnetsky (I-XII p., 1870-76);
"Aeneid of Virgil" by I. Shershenevich (Warsaw, 1868);
Bucolica and the Georgics of Virgil, trans. in verse by I. Sosnetsky (Moscow, 1873);
"Aeneid" (4, 5, 6, 9 and 12 books, translated by A. Sokolov, Kyiv, 1881-83);
"Aeneid. V canto, trans. V. Alekseev (M., 1886);
"Aeneid" by A. Fet (2 volumes, books 1-12, Moscow, 1888);
“I Song” by S. Manstein (with notes, Moscow, 1878);
R. A. Sharbe, “Translation and analysis of the IV Eclogue” (“Scientific notes of the Kazan University”, 1854, IV, 69-120);
"Aeneid" song I, V. Begak and F. Blonsky (Kyiv, 1879); canto III, translated by Sokolov (Kyiv, 1874); canto IV-VI, trans. Loginova (Kyiv, 1886): song VIII-IX, trans. I. Gorovy and E. Kotlyar (Kyiv, 1884-87).

Virgil in iconography

As a pagan pre-Christian poet, Virgil was considered the indisputable authority among ancient authors, and reached the pinnacle of Roman poetry. Direct borrowings, references and Virgilian reminiscences are found in many Christian works. Considering Virgil a harbinger of Christianity, on which there was the grace of God, the church honors him among other pre-Christian geniuses and heroes. In confirmation of this, Virgil is quite often depicted in the cycle of murals of the temple, or his images (usually without a halo - a sign of holiness) are part of the iconostases, occupying, of course, subordinate places in the hierarchy of images.

Literature

S. S. Averintsev. Two thousand years with Virgil // Averintsev S.S. Poets. - M.: School "Languages of Russian culture", 1996, p. 19-42

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Publius Virgil Maro one of the greatest poets of ancient Rome. Nicknamed "Mantuan swan". Virgil's furrow on Pluto is named after him.

Poet of the August century

Virgil is the most famous poet of the Augustan age. Born in 70 BC. e. near Mantua, received his first education in Cremona; at the age of sixteen he received the toga of maturity. This celebration coincided with the year of the death of Lucretius, so that contemporaries looked at the novice poet as a direct successor to the singer De rerum natura. Virgil received further education in Milan, Naples and Rome; there he studied Greek literature and philosophy. Despite his interest in Epicureanism and his deep admiration for Lucretius, Virgil did not join the Epicurean doctrine; he was attracted by Plato and the Stoics.

By this time, his small poems belong, of which the most reliable is Culex (“Mosquito”), recognized as Virgil's by Martial, Suetonius and Statius. After the death of Caesar, Virgil returned to Mantua and devoted himself there to the study of Theocritus; but his peace was disturbed by civil wars. During the distribution of land to veterans - supporters of the triumvirs after the battle of Philippi, Virgil was twice in danger of losing his possessions in Mantua; but each time he was saved by the personal intervention of Octavian, to whom the grateful poet soon dedicated two laudatory eclogues (I and IX).

In Rome, where Virgil often came to work on his possessions, he made friends with Maecenas and the poets around him; subsequently he introduced Horace into this circle, and both poets made, together with their patron, the journey they both sang to Brundisium. In 37, Bucolica, the first mature work of Virgil, was completed, and at the request of Maecenas he took up Georgica, written in Naples in 30. In 29, after many preliminary works, Virgil proceeded to the Aeneid and, having worked on it for several years in Italy , went to Greece and Asia to study the theater of action of his poem on the spot and give his work more vital truth. In Athens, he met Augustus, who persuaded him to return to Italy. On the way to Rome, Virgil fell ill and died in Brundisium in 19 BC. e. Before his death, he asked that his unfinished and, in his opinion, imperfect epic be burned. Some scientists (Bartenstein, for example) explain this request as follows: the reign of Augustus convinced Virgil that he had been singing the tyrant all his life, and he felt remorse before his death that his epic would bring him immortality.

Bucoliki

In his first work - “Bucolica” (consisting of 10 eclogues and written in 43-37 years) - Virgil wanted to introduce Greek features into Latin poetry, its simplicity and naturalness, and began by imitating Theocritus. But he completely failed to achieve the goal, despite the direct translation in many places of the Sicilian poet - it is precisely the simplicity and naturalness that are absent in Virgil's Bucolics. While the shepherds of Theocritus really live the unpretentious life of children of nature, whose whole interest is in the prosperity of the herds and love, the shepherds, the shepherds of Bukolik, are a poetic fiction, an artistic image that covers the Romans' complaints about the hardships of civil wars. In some of them, Virgil represents prominent figures of that era; for example, Caesar is represented in Daphnis.

The most famous and in fact the most interesting in terms of solemnity of mood and subtlety of details is eclogue IV (also called "Pollio", that is, "Pollio", after the Roman consul Gaius Asinius Pollio), in which Virgil predicts the future golden age and the imminent birth of a child that will change the course of life on earth. The poet paints a picture of this future happy life, when any labor will be superfluous and a person will find everything he needs everywhere (omnis fert omnia tellus), and ends with a glorification of the future benefactor of people. Christian writers saw in this eclogue a prophecy of the birth of Christ, and it is based mainly on the belief in Virgil, widespread in the Middle Ages, as a magician. It is possible that Virgil had in mind in this poem the nephew of Augustus, Marcellus, whose early death he later sang in the poetic episode of the VI song of the Aeneid.

In the general character of the X eclogue, her hatred of war and the thirst for a quiet life, Virgil reflected the desire for peace that gripped the entire Roman society. The literary significance of the Bucolic consists mainly in the perfection of the verse, which surpasses everything previously written in republican Rome.

Georgics

The Georgics, Virgil's second four-book poem, was written to instill a love of agriculture in the hearts of land-rewarded veterans. Taking Hesiod as a model, Virgil, however, does not enter, like his Greek model, into all the details of the agricultural business, his goal is to show in poetic images the delights of rural life, and not write rules on how to sow and reap; therefore, the details of agricultural labor occupy him only where they are of poetic interest. From Hesiod, Virgil took only indications of happy and unhappy days and some agricultural practices. The best part of the poem, that is, digressions of a natural-philosophical character, is mostly taken from Lucretius.

One of the imitators of Virgil is Luigi Alamanni.

Aeneid

Virgil took up this plot at the request of Augustus, in order to arouse national pride in the Romans with tales of the great destinies of their ancestors and, on the other hand, to protect the dynastic interests of Augustus, supposedly a descendant of Aeneas through his son Iulus, or Ascanius. Virgil in the Aeneid closely adjoins Homer; in the Iliad, Aeneas is the hero of the future. The poem begins with the last part of Aeneas's wanderings, his stay in Carthage, and then episodically tells the previous events, the destruction of Ilion (II p.), Aeneas's wanderings after that (III p.), Arrival in Carthage (I and IV p.), Journey through Sicily (V p.) to Italy (VI p.), where a new series of adventures of a romantic and militant character begins. The very execution of the plot suffers from a common defect in Virgil's works - the lack of original creativity and strong characters. Especially unfortunate is the hero, “pious Aeneas” (pius Aeneas), deprived of any initiative, controlled by fate and the decisions of the gods, who patronize him as the founder of a noble family and the executor of the divine mission - transferring Lar to a new homeland. In addition, the Aeneid bears the imprint of artificiality; in contrast to the Homeric epic, which came out of the people, the Aeneid was created in the mind of the poet, without connections with folk life and beliefs; Greek elements are confused with Italian ones, mythical tales with history, and the reader constantly feels that the mythical world serves only as a poetic expression of the national idea. On the other hand, Virgil used all the power of his verse to finish off the psychological and purely poetic episodes that constitute the immortal glory of the epic. Virgil is inimitable in the descriptions of gentle shades of feelings. One has only to recall the pathetic, despite its simplicity, description of the friendship of Nis and Euryal, the love and suffering of Dido, the meeting of Aeneas with Dido in hell, in order to forgive the poet for his unsuccessful attempt to exalt the glory of Augustus at the expense of the legends of antiquity. Of the 12 songs of the Aeneid, the sixth, which describes the descent of Aeneas into hell to see his father (Anchises), is considered the most remarkable in terms of philosophical depth and patriotic feeling. In it, the poet expounds the Pythagorean and Platonic doctrine of the "soul of the universe" and recalls all the great people of Rome. The external structure of this song is taken from the eleventh paragraph of the Odyssey. In other songs, borrowings from Homer are also very numerous.

In the construction of the Aeneid, the desire to create a Roman parallel to the poems of Homer is emphasized. Virgil found most of the motives of the Aeneid already in previous processing of the legend about Aeneas, but the choice and arrangement of them belong to Virgil himself and are subject to his poetic task. Not only in the general construction, but also in a whole series of plot details and in stylistic processing (comparisons, metaphors, epithets, etc.), Virgil's desire to "compete" with Homer is revealed.

It is true that Virgil's heroes are autonomous, they live outside the environment and are puppets in the hands of fate, but such was the way of life of the dispersed society of the Hellenistic monarchies and the Roman Empire. Virgil's protagonist, the "pious" Aeneas, with his peculiar passivity in voluntary submission to fate, embodies the ideal of Stoicism, which has become almost an official ideology; in his wanderings, Aeneas is accompanied by the fearless squire Ahat, whose devotion has become a household word. And the poet himself acts as a preacher of Stoic ideas: the picture of the underworld in the 6th song, with the torment of sinners and the bliss of the righteous, is drawn in accordance with the ideas of the Stoics. The Aeneid was only a rough draft. But even in this "draft" form, the Aeneid is distinguished by the high perfection of verse, deepening the reform begun in the Bucolics.

Veneration of Virgil after death

The worship with which the name of Virgil was surrounded during his lifetime continued even after the death of the poet; already since the August century, his writings were studied in schools, commented on by scientists and served to predict fate, like the oracles of the Sybils. The so-called "Sortes Virgilianae" were in great use in the time of Hadrian and Severus. The name of Virgil was surrounded by a mysterious legend, which in the Middle Ages turned into a belief in him as a magician. Numerous legends about his miraculous power were based on some misunderstood passages in his writings, such as eclogues IV and VIII. The story of the afterlife in paragraph VI of the Aeneid, etc. and, in addition, the interpretation of the hidden meaning of his name (Virga - a magic wand) and the name of his mother (Maia - Maga). Already in Donatus there are allusions to the supernatural significance of Virgil's poetry. Fulgentius (De Continenta Vergiliana) gives the Aeneid an allegorical meaning. Then the name of Virgil is found in Spanish, French and German folk books, which date him either to the time of the fabulous king Octavian, or king Servius; Breton legends speak of him as a contemporary of King Arthur and the son of a knight from the Campania in the Forest of Arden. Virgil obeys the elements, he miraculously kindles and extinguishes fire, causes an earthquake and a thunderstorm; Virgil is the patron or genius loci of Naples, which he founded by building it on three eggs (a variant is a castle built on an egg, Castello del'uovo); Virgil punches an underground passage through the mountain (Posilippo). He is an unsurpassed craftsman who makes wonderful objects (ingeniosissimus rerum artifex), among which is a complex system of signaling and protecting the city with the help of bronze statues of Salvatio Romae (an option is a system that protects against the eruption of Vesuvius); a bronze fly that drives out flies from Naples and thus protects the city from infection; a wonderful mirror reflecting everything that happens in the world; bocca della verita; an ever-burning lamp; air bridge, etc. The highest manifestation of the significance attributed by the Middle Ages to Virgil is the role of the psychopomp that Dante gives him in the Divine Comedy, choosing him as a representative of the deepest human wisdom and making him his leader and guide through the circles of hell. Also in the role of a psychopomp, Virgil is presented in the satirical novel "Penguin Island" by Anatole France, who was an ardent admirer of the poet. In the novel, Virgil accuses Dante of misinterpreting his words, denies his role in Christianity and proves his adherence to the ancient gods.

Virgil's writings have come down to us in a large number of manuscripts, of which the most remarkable are the Medicean, probably written before the fall of the Western Roman Empire (ed. Foggini in Florence in 1741), and the Codex Vaticanus (ed. Bottari, Rome, 1741). .). From edid. prince we note a small folio of 1469 published by Sveinheim and Pannarz, the Aldin edition in Venice of 1501, several editions of the 15th and 16th centuries. with commentary by Servius et al., ed. I. L. de la Cerda, Madrid, 1608-1617, ed. Nick. Gelsius in Amsterdam, 1676, Burkmann in 1746, Wagner in 1830, corrected from manuscripts and provided with remarks on the spelling of many words of Virgil - Schweigger's "Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie" contains a listing of all other editions and an indication of their merits.

Publius Virgil Maron (lat. Publius Vergilius Maro). Born October 15, 70 B.C. e., Andes near Mantua - died September 21, 19 BC. e., Brundisius. One of the greatest poets of ancient Rome. Nicknamed "Mantuan swan".

In his first work - Bucolica(consisting of 10 eclogues and written in 43-37) - Virgil wanted to introduce Greek features into Latin poetry, its simplicity and naturalness, and began by imitating Theocritus. But he completely failed to achieve the goal, despite the direct translation in many places of the Sicilian poet - it is precisely the simplicity and naturalness that are absent in Virgil's Bucolics. While the shepherds of Theocritus really live the unpretentious life of children of nature, whose whole interest is in the prosperity of the herds and love, the shepherds, the shepherds of Bukolik, are a poetic fiction, an artistic image that covers the Romans' complaints about the hardships of civil wars. In some of them, Virgil represents prominent figures of that era; for example, Caesar is represented in Daphnis.

"Georgics", the second poem of Virgil, consisting of four books, was written to arouse a love of agriculture in the soul of veterans awarded lands. Taking Hesiod as a model, Virgil, however, does not enter, like his Greek model, into all the details of the agricultural business, his goal is to show in poetic images the delights of rural life, and not write rules on how to sow and reap; therefore, the details of agricultural labor occupy him only where they are of poetic interest. From Hesiod, Virgil took only indications of happy and unhappy days and some agricultural practices. The best part of the poem, that is, digressions of a natural-philosophical character, is mostly taken from Lucretius.

One of the imitators of Virgil is Luigi Alamanni.

"Aeneid"- unfinished patriotic epic of Virgil, consists of 12 books, written between 29-19 years. After the death of Virgil, the Aeneid was published by his friends Varius and Plotius without any changes, but with some cuts.

In the construction of the Aeneid, the desire to create a Roman parallel to the poems of Homer is emphasized. Virgil found most of the motives of the Aeneid already in previous processing of the legend about Aeneas, but the choice and arrangement of them belong to Virgil himself and are subject to his poetic task. Not only in the general construction, but also in a whole series of plot details and in stylistic processing (comparisons, metaphors, epithets, etc.), Virgil's desire to “compete” with is revealed.

***

Virgil's writings have come down to us in a large number of manuscripts, of which the most remarkable are the Medicean, probably written before the fall of the Western Roman Empire (ed. Foggini in Florence in 1741), and the Codex Vaticanus (ed. Bottari, Rome, 1741). .). From edid. prince we note a small folio of 1469 published by Sveinheim and Pannarz, the Aldin edition in Venice of 1501, several editions of the 15th and 16th centuries. with commentary by Servius et al., ed. I. L. de la Cerda, Madrid, 1608-1617, ed. Nick. Gelsius in Amsterdam, 1676, Burkmann in 1746, Wagner in 1830, corrected from manuscripts and provided with remarks on the spelling of many words of Virgil - Schweigger's "Handbuch der classischen Bibliographie" contains a listing of all other editions and an indication of their merits.

As a pagan pre-Christian poet, Virgil was considered the indisputable authority among ancient authors, and reached the pinnacle of Roman poetry. Direct borrowings, references and Virgilian reminiscences are found in many Christian works. Considering Virgil a harbinger of Christianity, on which was the grace of God, the church honors him among other pre-Christian geniuses and heroes. In confirmation of this, Virgil is quite often depicted in the cycle of murals of the temple, or his images (usually without a halo - a sign of holiness) are part of the iconostases, occupying, of course, subordinate places in the hierarchy of images.

XI. VERGILIUS

1. Life and works.

Publius Virgil Maro was born in 70 BC. in Northern Italy, in the Andes village, near Mantua. Educated in Cremona and in Rome. However, already in 42, he returned home, since he was not disposed to city life, but loved the simple life in a remote province. In 41-40s. his estate was confiscated by the Caesarians, who, after the battle of Philippi, were given the opportunity to reward themselves with land allotments in Italy. Being expelled from his native estate, with the assistance of the Maecenas, he received an estate in Campania and a house in Rome. His attitude to the empire of Augustus is deep and sincere, and he sings of his patron from the bottom of his heart in the first eclogue of the Bucoliki collection. These "Bucolics" are preceded by early poems included in the collection "Catalepta" ("Trinkets"), in which we find heterogeneous miniatures of the Epicurean, idyllic, literary-critical and epistolary-everyday character. In his early youth, Virgil was indeed close not only to the neotherics, but also to the Epicurean philosophers Siron and Philodemus. The authorship of both the entire collection and its individual poems was often not attributed to Virgil.

Virgil's world fame was made up of other works that already undoubtedly belonged to him: "Bukoliki" ("Shepherd's Poems") or "Eclogues" ("Selected Poems"), and then "Georgics" ("Agricultural Poems") and especially "Aeneid". "Bucoliki" were written in 42-39, "Georgics" - in 37-30. and "Aeneid" - in 29-19. Virgil died in 19. BC. after traveling around Greece, where he went to collect materials.

Sources portray Virgil as a modest, unambitious man, spiritually devoted to rural life and quite sincere and ardent supporter of the empire of Augustus. The emperor Augustus, who had put an end to the turmoil in Rome and dreamed of reviving the primordial simple Roman virtue and, moreover, did not tolerate any political groupings that could be dangerous for him, had in the person of Virgil just such a suitable person, who loved, above all, agriculture and poetic creativity and far from any political struggle.

His modesty was so popular that in the future they began to write his name not "Virgil", but "Virgil", deriving it from the Latin word virgo - "girl" (this etymology, of course, is the result of fiction).

2. Bucolics, or Eclogues.

a) As the very name of the collection shows, this is a shepherd's poetry. The collection contains 10 eclogues, which can be classified as follows. First of all we have properly bucolic eclogues, and then allegorical-bucolic eclogues. The former depict the shepherds' poetic contests in couplets (III), quatrains (VII) and whole songs (VIII). Allegorical-bucolic eclogues (I, IV, IX, X) allegorically express important socio-political phenomena and philosophical ideas: the peaceful and happy life of Titir (I), blessed by the "young god", cosmogony in the mouth of the drunken Silenus (IX), "prophecy" about the birth of a baby for the salvation of the world (IV).

b) Artistic style. Despite his great dependence on Theocritus, whose verses Virgil sometimes fancifully combines, he creates his own style. The fact that Virgil's shepherds experience love languor and engage in poetry or music is very similar to Theocritus. But the very attitude of Virgil to the shepherds depicted in him is completely different. The shepherds of Theocritus are little individualized, they all speak urban, and Theocritus draws them rather condescendingly and even critically, or, in any case, ironically. The shepherds of Virgil are presented as real shepherds, no irony in relation to their characters and occupations is imperceptible in Virgil; although his shepherds also speak in a highly poetic language and speak learnedly, it is nevertheless felt that for Virgil this is real realism, that he really saw such people and himself shared their feelings and hopes.

Thus, from the point of view of the plot, Virgil's eclogues are an image of shepherd life, but from the point of view of the ideological meaning, they are propaganda of the ideology of small landownership or the idealization of rural work and simple village poetry. From the combination of such a plot with such an ideological content, the eclogue artistic style is born, which is also presented in a rather diverse way.

c) We note first of all the style in the proper sense of bucolic, which can be observed in almost every eclogue, but especially in eclogues II, III, V, VII, VIII. In eclogue II - love languor surrounded by a dense forest, violets, poppies, daffodils, anise blossom, cinnamon, laurel, quince, chestnuts, myrtle, mallow, lilies. Cicadas sing, lizards hide from the heat in the grass. There are many sheep and kids, and there is no lack of fresh milk. Images of a calm and mirror-still sea, a hot day and a setting sun flash by. In eclogue III there are beech goblets on which vines, ivy, and human faces are carved. In eclogue V - a song about the death of the mythical shepherd Daphnis among delicate flowers and smiling nature, among his grateful and enthusiastic admirers. In none of these eclogues, including VII and VIII, is there a single hint of either politics or philosophers. Here shepherds are simply depicted with their love feelings, with their poetic competitions, surrounded by tender, abundant and flowering nature.

d) However, the serene idyllic peace drawn by Virgil, far from literary disputes and city life, is still distinguished by different literary and social trends. Thus, at the beginning of Eclogue VI, we find a dedication to the proconsul of Cisalpine Gaul, Alphen Varus, who assisted Virgil during the period of agrarian unrest. This Vara, says the poet, is sung by all nature. Eclogue X is dedicated to the poet's friend, elegiac lyricist and civic leader Cornelius Gallus. It depicts the unsatisfied love of this Gallus, who is also sad in the midst of a tender, fragrant and flowering nature. This love interests Silvanus, Pan, and even Apollo himself. Gallus is also mentioned in Eclogue VI along with Hesiod. In eclogue III, Asinius Pollio and his literary work are sympathetically recalled, and two mediocre poets, Bavy and Meviy, are unsympathetically recalled. Asinius Pollio is also dedicated to eclogue IV.

e) Among the idyllic moods of Virgil, mythological motifs also appear. In eclogue IX, the tipsy Silenus, who is restrained by the flower ties of the Satyrs, sings in a cave about the emergence of the world from traditional ancient elements - earth, water, air and fire, about the appearance of solid earth, forests, animals in the forests, sun and rain.

Eclogues are generally interspersed with various mythical images - naiads, nymphs, muses, Galatea, Bacchus, Orpheus, Jupiter, Apollo, etc.

The mythological utopia developed in eclogue IV deserves special mention. Here Virgil says that he wants to tell about more important matters. It depicts the birth of some wonderful baby who will bring peace to the whole earth: the earth itself will deliver everything necessary for man, all wars will stop not only among people, but also mutual devouring among animals, all poisonous snakes and poisonous plants will die, and in general a new golden age will be reborn on Earth. This eclogue caused a lot of controversy, since everyone wanted to establish what kind of baby Virgil was talking about. Different assumptions were made about different famous people who were born at the time of the creation of Bucolik. With the development of Christianity, when its forerunners were established in the pagan world, the idea arose that Virgil was here prophesying the birth of Christ. At the turn of the old and new eras in the ancient world, there were many different legends and prophecies about the onset of the golden age; this is quite understandable in connection with the crisis of society and the ensuing hopes for a new order of the world. Virgil, living in an atmosphere of this kind of disappointment and hope, brought his idyllic mood also to the image of this expected earthly paradise.

f) Finally, the "Bucolics" are not alien to the political element, which, however, slips through the whole work only twice, and even then in terms of the author's purely personal and everyday interest. So, in eclogue I, the shepherd Titir, who received his estate back after the confiscation, reverently recalls the "god" who arranged this return for him and returned him to a quiet life. Another shepherd depicted here, Melibey, with a heavy mood, must leave his site, taken from him by soldiers. Here, of course, we have in mind the patronage provided to Virgil by Augustus. The taking away of the estate from the poet is also referred to in eclogue IX. In the Bucolics there is no doubt the ideology of the small or middle landowner, who is far from any kind of politics and who can hardly endure its dangers and anxieties.

g) We note the great progress of the poetic technique "Bukolik". Virgil already in this early work is quite a classic of Roman poetry. A more detailed analysis of the work reveals abundant terminology in the field of botany and zoology, a clear syntactic structure, some sophistication and rhetoric, but always graceful softness and sincerity of the depiction of nature, the author’s simplicity and realistic mood when describing his characters, the absence of length, brevity of characteristics and genuine sincerity. and warmth of artistic images. In all this, Virgil differs sharply from the Alexandrian learning, which is characteristic of works of this kind in the era of Hellenism.

h) The four main sources of "Bucolik" by Virgil are reworked beyond recognition. From the first source - Theocritus - an idyllic mood is taken. The second source - neotheric - gave Virgil a sense of a graceful small form. The third source is Epicureanism. But in Virgil there is not even a hint of any kind of anti-religiousness; any kind of enlightenment is excluded from him. Finally, the scientific and didactic poetry of Hellenism, abundantly represented by Virgil, is completely devoid of that dryness and formalism that distinguished it in Greece. All of these four Greek sources, in addition, are imbued with Roman sentiments in Virgil, are associated with the ideology of small or medium landownership and are distinguished by an intimate idealization of simple rural life.

3. "Georgics".

"Georgics" means nothing more than "Agricultural Poems". It is not surprising that after pastoral poetry, Virgil turned to the poetry of agriculture. This, again, fully corresponded both to his own sincere sympathies and to the policy of Augustus, who was trying to restore and improve the small and medium-sized economy of the village, ruined after so many decades of civil war.

With great warmth, sincerity and sincerity, the poet draws various pictures of agriculture. This didactic poem consists of four books, several hundred verses each, of which the first is devoted to agriculture, the second to gardening, the third to cattle breeding and the fourth to beekeeping,

a) The plot of "Georgic" is simple and clear. In Book I, after turning to Maecenas and Octavian and invoking the rural gods of Ceres, Liber (Bacchus), fauns, dryads, Neptune, Pan, Minerva, Sylvanas Virgil speaks of plowing and fertilizing the land and, in general, of the necessary prerequisites for the harvest, about agricultural tools, about seeds, seasons in connection with field work, autumn weather and weather in general. At the end of Book I he speaks of the death of Caesar and praises Augustus (466-514).

Book II, devoted to horticulture, deals with the reproduction of trees, as well as their varieties in connection with the nature of the soil. He talks in particular about the care of grapes. Adjoining here are the instructions addressed to the Maecenas, the praise of Italy, the description of spring and pictures of the happy life of the farmer (458-540).

In book III, after a long introduction, dedicated to the gods, Octavian, Maecenas and himself, the author deals with the issues of breeding cattle and horses and talks about caring for these animals, and later on about small cattle (about sheep and goats) and about diseases in livestock. The book also contains two inserted episodes - about bullfighting and about the life of shepherds in the south and in the north.

In Book IV, after the usual appeal to the Maecenas and reflections on our own creativity, we find a discussion about beekeeping: about the life of bees and their breeding, about their properties and about their diseases. The myths about Aristeas, as well as about Orpheus and Eurydice (315-558), adjoin these arguments about beekeeping. At the end, a summary of all "Georgics" is summed up.

b) The ideological meaning of the poem "Georgics" is so simple that it does not require any comment at all. This is still the same ideology of small and cozy agriculture, which the poet loves with all sincerity. Frequent references to Octavian Augustus might even be absent - it is so clear that this ideology of Virgil was quite in the spirit of the socio-political measures of Augustus, who resettled impoverished citizens in the countryside to work on the land. Virgil inspired this policy and sincerely strove for the restoration of Italy, devastated by centuries of wars. He speaks out against the ongoing wars (490-514), idealizing rural life.

c) Artistic and style "Georgic" is distinguished by the combination of the most prosaic, practical and even scientific advice on agriculture with a very complacent tone, which turns all agricultural work into something beautiful and pleasant. When describing the fertility of the land, Virgil talks about what different lands produce. Giving advice on planting different plants in different sequences, he supplies the names of these plants with poetic epithets. And if any difficulties await the farmer, then Jupiter himself arranged this for the benefit of the farmer. Those who work on the land, away from the bustle of the city and the excessive luxury of life, away from wars and politics, do not themselves understand their happiness. Blessed are those people to whom the earth gives everything they need, who deal with goats, pigs, cows, gather strawberries, compete in throwing darts, gather grapes, watch the udders of cows resting on the grass full of milk. How nice it is when the owner nibbles a torch on a winter evening and sings songs, and the hostess is engaged in weaving, or when both of them boil grape juice and remove foam from boiling liquid with leaves. We find this good-natured, but at the same time inspired idealization and downright poeticization of rural life, for example, in book II; Virgil lists numerous varieties of grapes and sings about them poetically.

Virgil loves the rich, flourishing and productive nature of Italy. Abundant olive trees, warlike horses and white herds, unchanging spring, twice yearly livestock and twice fruiting plants, absence of predatory animals, fortified cities, numerous lakes and seas, abundant deposits of silver, gold and copper, the birthplace of strong youth and great heroes - this is a picture filled with the blessings of Italy.

In particular, the poet is inspired by nature and especially by the picture of the luxury of spring with its fruitful rains, the reproduction of offspring among animals and birds, the first growth of useful plantations, with the general resurrection of life everywhere. Also noteworthy is the very dramatic depiction of a bullfight over a heifer. The pictures of the life of the shepherds - African and Scythian - are also distinguished by a rich and dramatic character.

In general, Virgil's nature is depicted in the "Georgics" with very rich colors, in which there is a lot of drama, not to mention poetry in the detail of the descriptions. The future author of the Aeneid is already felt here. Virgil's picture of wealthy Italy, of course, contradicts the ruined state of this country, to which it came as a result of a protracted socio-political crisis.

A noticeable element of the artistic style of "Georgics" is mythology. It is expressed by the constant mention of numerous gods and demons, but is especially vividly presented at the end of book IV in the myth of Aristeas and Orpheus.

The son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, Aristaeus, the demon of cattle breeding and agriculture, died from a sudden illness of bees, whom he loved very much. He turns to his mother for help, and she directs him to the werewolf Proteus. Proteus tells him about how the wife of Orpheus, Eurydice, fled from the persecution of Aristeas into the sea, how she was stung by a poisonous snake and died. Orpheus, with his singing, forced the underground gods to return Eurydice to him, but she disappeared when Orpheus looked back at her. The yearning Orpheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes, and the nymphs sent pestilence on the bees of Aristaeus. On the advice of Cyrene, Aristaeus then made plentiful propitiatory sacrifices to the nymphs and received the bees back. This myth, which occupies about two and a half hundred verses in Virgil, told to deepen the reasoning on beekeeping, has, of course, a completely independent meaning. He, too, is a mixture of great learning, replete with rare names and titles, and heartfelt lyrics in the depiction of the feelings of Aristaeus, Orpheus and Cyrene. The description of Aristaeus' journey to the depths of the Peneus River to meet his mother is distinguished by plasticity (the waters of Peneus parted before him and formed a vault for his free descent), and Orpheus's longing and his being torn to pieces are depicted without details. The werewolf of Proteus is quite reminiscent of the picture of his transformations in Canto IV of the Odyssey. G

) Sources "Georgic". First of all, this is Hesiod, with whom Virgil has didacticism in common here, but is sharply distinguished by the good-natured idealization of rural life, which we find instead of those heavy pictures that are drawn in Works and Days. But most of all Virgil borrowed from Hellenistic authors.

"History of Animals" by Aristotle, "History of Plants" and "Causes" by Theophrastus, "Heavenly Phenomena" by Aratus, "Hermes" by Eratosthenes, "On Beasts" by Nicander of Colophon, "On Agriculture" by Cato the Elder, "On Agriculture" and "On Bees" Hyginus, "On Village Life" by Varro Reatinsky - these are the works that Virgil used in the poem.

In a poetic sense, the influence of Ennius, Lucretius, Catullus, Varro of Atacin, not to mention Homer and Hesiod, is undeniable. All these petty poetic borrowings are drowned in the general artistic style of the "Georgics", which is just as independent, original and sincere as the "Bukoliki".

4. "Aeneid".

World fame was brought to Virgil, especially by his third great work - the heroic poem "Aeneid". As the very title of this work shows, here we find a poem dedicated to Aeneas. Aeneas was the son of Anchises and Venus, while Anchises was the cousin of the Trojan king Priam. In the Iliad, Aeneas appears many times as the most prominent Trojan leader, the first after Hector. Already there he enjoys the invariable favor of the gods, and in the Iliad (XX, 306 et seq.) he speaks of the subsequent reign of him and his descendants over the Trojans. In the Aeneid, Virgil depicts the arrival of Aeneas with his companions after the fall of Troy to Italy for the subsequent founding of the Roman state. All this mythology, however, is not given in the Aeneid in full, since the foundation of Rome is related to the future and only prophecies are given about it. The twelve songs of the poem created by Virgil bear traces of incomplete work to and (for example, some poetic lines remained unfinished). There are a number of contradictions in content. Virgil did not want to publish his poem in this form and ordered to burn it before his death. But by order of Augustus, the initiator of this poem, it was nevertheless published after the death of its author.

a) The plot of the poem consists of two parts: the first six songs of the poem are devoted to the wanderings of Aeneas from Troy to Italy, and the second six - to the wars in Italy with local tribes. Virgil imitated Homer in many ways, so that the first half of the Aeneid may well be called an imitation of the Odyssey, while the second half of the Iliad.

Canto I, after a brief introduction, tells of the pursuit of Aeneas by Juno and of a sea storm, as a result of which he and his companions arrive in Carthage, that is, in North Africa. Venus asks Jupiter to help Aeneas establish himself in Italy, and he promises her this. In Carthage, Aeneas is encouraged by Venus herself, who appeared to him in the form of a huntress. Mercury prompts the Carthaginians to kindly receive Aeneas. Aeneas appears before Dido, the queen of Carthage, and she arranges a solemn feast in honor of the arrivals.

Canto II is dedicated to the stories of Aeneas at the feast of Dido about the death of Troy. Aeneas tells in detail about the deceit of the Greeks, who could not take Troy for 10 years and in the end resorted to an unprecedented trick with a wooden horse. Troy was burned by Greek soldiers who came out of the inside of a wooden horse at night (1-199). The song is replete with many dramatic episodes. Laocoon, a priest of Neptune in Troy, who objected to the admission of a wooden horse into the city and himself threw a spear into it, died along with his two sons from the bite of two snakes that came out of the sea (199-233). The recently deceased Hector appears in a dream to Aeneas and asks him to resist the enemies. And only when the royal palace was already on fire and Pyrrhus, the son of Achilles, brutally killed the defenseless old man Priam, king of Troy, near the altar in the palace, Aeneas stops the fight, and even then after admonishing Venus and after a special miraculous sign. Together with his penates and companions, together with his wife Creusa and son Ascanius (Creusa immediately disappears), carrying his elderly father Anchises on his back, Aeneas finally gets out of the burning city and hides on the neighboring mountain Ida.

Canto III is a continuation of Aeneas' story of his journey. Aeneas ends up in Thrace, on Delos, on Crete, on the Strofadsky Islands; but under the influence of various frightening events, he cannot find shelter anywhere for himself. Only at Cape Actium were games held in honor of Apollo, and only in Epirus was he touchingly received by Andromache, who married Helen, another son of Priam. Various circumstances prevent Aeneas from establishing himself in Italy, although he safely passes Scylla and Charybdis, as well as the Cyclopes. Anchises dies in Sicily.

Canto IV is dedicated to the famous romance of Dido and Aeneas. Dido, admiring the exploits of Aeneas, seeks to marry him, in which Juno helps her. Aeneas has a great future in Italy, where the gods themselves direct him, and he cannot stay with Dido. When the fleet of Aeneas sails from the coast of Africa, Dido, cursing Aeneas and foreshadowing the future wars of Rome with Carthage, throws herself into a blazing fire and pierces herself with the sword that Aeneas gave her.

In Canto V, Aeneas arrives for the second time in Sicily, where he arranges games in honor of the deceased Anchises. However, Juno does not stop her intrigues against Aeneas and, through Iris, induces the Trojan women to set fire to his fleet; through the prayer of Aeneas to Jupiter, this fire stops. Having founded the city of Segesta in Sicily, Aeneas goes to Italy.

Canto VI depicts the arrival of Aeneas in Italy, his meeting with the prophetess Sibyl in the temple of Apollo in Cuma and receiving advice from her for descending into the underworld in order to learn from Anchises a prophecy about his future (1-263). Guided by the Sibyl, Aeneas descends into the underworld, which is depicted by Virgil in great detail. They are met first by various monsters, then by Charon, a terrible ferryman across the Acheron River, then they have to lull Cerberus to sleep and meet an innumerable number of shadows, and among other things the shadows of the well-known dead. In Tartarus, in the deepest place of the underworld, famous mythological sinners like the impudent Titans, the rebellious Aloads, the godless Salmoneus, the dissolute impudent Titias and Ixion and others experience eternal torment. Bypassing the palace of Pluto, Aeneas and the Sibyl find themselves in Elysium, that is, in the area where the righteous spend their lives blissfully and where Aeneas meets Anchises, showing all his future descendants and giving advice on wars in Italy. After that - the return of Aeneas to the surface of the earth.

The second part of the Aeneid depicts the wars of Aeneas in Italy for his establishment there for the foundation of the future Roman state.

In Canto VII, Aeneas, having entered Latium, receives the consent of the king of this country, Latinus, to marry his daughter Lavinia. However, Juno, the constant opponent of Aeneas, upsets this marriage and restores another Italian tribe, the Rutuli, with their leader Turk, against Latin. Latin leaves power, and because of the intrigues of Juno, there is a gap between Aeneas and the inhabitants of Latium, to whose side another 14 other Italic tribes go over.

In canto VIII, Turnus makes an alliance with Diomedes, the Greek king in Italy, and Aeneas with Evander, a Greek from Arcadia, who founded the city that was destined to become Rome later. The son of Evander Pallas, together with Aeneas, asks for help from the Etruscans, who rebelled against their king Maecenius. At the request of Venus, her husband Vulcan makes for Aeneas brilliant weapons and a shield of highly artistic work with pictures of the future history of Rome.

Canto IX is a description of the war. Rutuli under the leadership of Turnn break into the Trojan camp to burn the ships, but Jupiter turns these ships into sea nymphs. The episode with two Trojan warriors, friends Nis and Euryal, who bravely defend the entrance to the Trojan camp, but die after reconnaissance undertaken by them, is very important in the rutul camp. After this, Turnn breaks into the Trojan camp again and, after a fierce battle, returns home unharmed (176-502).

In song X - a new fierce battle between enemies, already with the participation of Aeneas, who until that time was with the Etruscans. Even Jupiter cannot stop the fight. Turnus resists the landing of Aeneas and kills Pallas. Turna protects him. The patroness of Juno. But Aeneas kills Mezentius and his son.

In Canto XI - the burial of the slain Trojans, the meeting and quarrel between Latinus and Turnus. As a result, the warlike Turnn takes over Latinus, who offered a truce with the Trojans. Further - the performance of the Amazon Camilla on the side of the rutuli, which ends with her death and the retreat of the rutuli (445-915).

Canto XII is mainly devoted to the single combat of Aeneas and Turnus, which is depicted in solemn tones, with various slowdowns and digressions. Juno stops chasing Aeneas, and Turnus dies at the hands of the latter.

"Aeneid" was not completed by Virgil, it does not depict those events that followed the war of the Trojans and Rutuli: reconciliation and unification of the Latins with the Trojans, from where the history of Rome began; the marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia; the appearance of their son Iulus (who, according to other sources, was identified with the former son of Aeneas, Ascanius); the appearance in the offspring of Iulus of the brothers Romulus and Remus, from whom the first Roman kings descended.

b) The historical basis for the emergence of the "Aeneid" was the grandiose growth of the Roman Republic and later the Roman Empire, a growth that imperatively demanded both historical and ideological justification for itself. But some historical facts in such cases are not enough. Here mythology always comes to the rescue, the role of which is to turn ordinary history into a miracle. Such a mythological justification for the whole of Roman history was the concept that Virgil used in his poem. He was not its inventor, but only a kind of reformer, and most importantly, its most talented spokesman. The motif of the arrival of Aeneas in Italy is found in the Greek lyricist of the 6th century. BC. Stesichora. The Greek historians Hellanicus (5th century), Timaeus (3rd century) and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century BC) developed a whole legend about the connection of Rome with the Trojan settlers who arrived in Italy with Aeneas. Roman epic writers and historians also did not lag behind the Greeks in this regard, and almost every one of them paid one or another tribute to this legend (Nevius, Ennius, Cato the Elder, Varro, Titus of Libya). It turned out that the Roman state was founded by representatives of one of the most respectable peoples of antiquity, namely the Trojans, that is, the Phrygians; while Augustus, as adopted by Julius Caesar, ascended to Iulus, the son of Aeneas. And as for Aeneas, the entire ancient world never doubted that he was the son of Anchises and Venus herself. So Rome justified its power. And mythology came in handy here, since the impression of a grandiose world empire suppressed minds and did not want to put up with the low and, so to speak, "provincial" origin of Rome.

From this follows the whole ideological meaning of the Aeneid. Virgil wanted in the most solemn form to glorify the empire of Augustus; and Augustus really comes to him as the heir of the ancient Roman kings and has Venus as his progenitor. In the Aeneid (VI), Anchises shows Aeneas, who came to him in the underworld, all the glorious descendants who will rule Rome, kings and public and political figures. And he ends his speech with elephants, in which he opposes purely Roman art - military, political and legal (847-854) to Greek art and science:

They will forge thinner than others let animated coppers, I still believe, they will make living faces from marble, They will speak more beautifully in courts, they will determine the movements of the sky With a compass, they will name the rising stars. You rule the peoples powerfully, Roman, remember! Behold, your arts will be: conditions to impose peace, Spare the overthrown and overthrow the proud! (Bryusov.)

These words, like many other things in Virgil, testify to the fact that the Aeneid is not just a praise to Augustus and the rationale for his empire, but also a patriotic and deeply national work. Of course, there is no patriotism without any socio-political ideology; and this ideology in this case is the glorification of the empire of Augustus. Nevertheless, this glorification is given in the Aeneid in such a generalized form that it already applies to the entire Roman history and to the entire Roman people. According to Virgil, Augustus is only the most prominent representative and spokesman of the entire Roman people.

Note that from a formal point of view, the idea of the Trojan origin of Rome is in complete contradiction with the Italic idea. According to one version, the Roman kings are descended from Aeneas and, therefore, from Venus, and according to another version, they are from Mars and Rhea Silvia. Let us add to this that in the Aeneid itself, purely Italian patriotism is presented extremely expressively. Strength, power, courage, hardiness in battles, devotion to the homeland among the Italians are sharply contrasted in Numan's dying speech with Phrygian effeminacy, a penchant for aesthetic pleasures, lethargy and laziness. Jupiter himself, both in Songs I and in Song XII, intends to create a Roman state on the basis of a mixture of Italians and Trojans, but with a clear superiority of the Italians, since the Roman people will not perceive the customs and customs, nor the language, nor the name of the Trojans, but will, according to the words Jupiter, only their blood. , but understands this latter as a descendant of Aeneas, and not as a native Italian (following Nevius and Ennius, who made Rhea Sylvia not even a distant descendant of Aeneas, but directly his daughter). Thus, Virgil wants to unite the healthy, strong, but rough Italian people, headed by Mars, with the noble, refined and cultured Trojan world, headed by Venus.

c) The artistic reality of Virgil's Aeneid is distinguished by purely Roman and even emphatically Roman features. Roman poetry is characterized by a style of monumentality, combined with great detail, reaching naturalism. However, both were enough in ancient literature even before Virgil. We find features of monumentality in Homer, Aeschylus and Sophocles, in the Roman epics and Lucretius, as well as affective psychology is sufficiently represented in them. But in Rome, and especially in Virgil, these features of the artistic style are brought to such a development that it translates them into a new quality. Monumentality is brought to the image of the world Roman power, and individualism is embodied here in an extremely mature and even overripe psychology, depicting not only titanic feats, but hesitation and uncertainty, reaching deep conflicts, passions and foreboding catastrophes. This complex Hellenistic-Roman style of Virgil can be observed both in the artistic reality of his poems, including things, people, gods and fate, and in the form of depiction of this reality, including epic, lyrics, drama and oratory in their incredible interweaving.

d) Let us point to the image of things in Virgil. These things are shown as luxurious and designed to make a deep impression. In Song XII, before the duel between Aeneas and Turnus, King Latinus rides in a four-horse chariot and his forehead is surrounded by 12 golden rays. Turn arrives on a white pair and shakes two wide spears. Aeneas sparkles with a star shield and heavenly weapons.

About the work of Hephaestus (Vulcan) in Homer we read only a mention of a hammer with an anvil, tongs, furs and clothes of a worker and speaks of a strong back, chest and his sinewy arms. Virgil depicts a grandiose and terrible underground factory, striking with its thunder, brilliance and its cosmic works like thunder, thunderbolts, clouds, rains, winds, etc. While on the shield of Achilles, Homer has paintings of an astronomical and everyday nature, Virgil (VIII, 617-731), the whole grandiose history of Rome is depicted, its greatest figures and the world power of Rome are shown, and all this sparkles and shines, and all the weapons of Aeneas are compared to how a gray cloud lights up from the sun's rays. The monumentality and brilliance of the image is evident here.

Nature in Virgil also bears the features of Roman poetry. Here grandiosity is often mixed with very great detail, accompanied by a detailed analysis of various psychological experiences. It is worth reading at least the depiction of a storm on the sea in Canto I (50-156).

In contrast, the peaceful silence of the night, and also with different details, is depicted in canto IV (522-527).

Evander, walking with Aeneas near the future Rome, shows his companion groves, rivers, cattle; in general, a peaceful idyllic setting is depicted (VIII). Particular attention is drawn to the idyllic nature of Elysium in the underworld (VI, 640-665). Here the ether and the fields are clothed with purple light. People here and there are reclining on the grass and feasting. In the forest - fragrant laurels. It has its own sun and its own stars. Many spend time in games and competitions in the bosom of nature. Horses graze in the meadows. However, the image of the cave of the Sibyl (VI), as well as the dirty and stormy underground river Acheron and the underground city in Tartarus surrounded by a fiery river with a triple wall, adamant pillars and an iron tower up to the sky (VI, 558-568) is fanned with gloomy horror. Paintings of this kind are almost always given in the context of depicting powerful heroes, the founders of Rome.

e) People in their relationship with the gods - this is the main subject of artistic reality in Homer - in Virgil is always depicted in situations full of drama. It is not for nothing that Aeneas is often called here "pious" or "father". He is entirely in the hands of the gods and does not create his own will, but the will of fate. In Homer, the gods also constantly influence people's lives. But this does not prevent Homeric heroes from making their own decisions, often coinciding with the will of the gods, and often contradicting them. In Virgil, everyone lies prostrate before the gods, and the complex psychology of the heroes, if it is depicted, is always at odds with the gods.

The historical paintings of Rome on the shield, made by Vulcan, give Aeneas pleasure, but, according to Virgil, he does not know the events themselves (VIII, 730). Aeneas leaves Troy in a direction that is completely unknown to him. He gets to Dido, having no intention of meeting with the Carthaginian queen. He arrives in Italy - it is not known why. Only Anchises in the underworld tells him about his role, but this role does not at all make him happy. He wanted to stay in Troy; and when he got to Dido, he would like to stay with Dido; when he came to Latinus, he wanted to stay with Latinus and marry Lavinia. However, fate itself is predestined to become the founder of Rome, and all that remains for him is to request oracles, offer prayers and make sacrifices. Aeneas, against his own will, submits to the gods and fate.

The poet at the same time shows how simple and direct religious faith was lost in his time. He forcibly at every step forces the reader to recognize this faith and see its ideal examples.

Dido, the other protagonist of the Aeneid, for all his opposition to Aeneas, again repeats the religious concept of Virgil. This is a powerful and strong woman, feeling her duty to her late husband; she is blinded by the heroic fate of Aeneas and feels a deep love for him, so that for this alone she is torn apart by an internal and, moreover, the most cruel conflict. Ancient literature did not know such an internal conflict until Euripides and Apollonius of Rhodes. But Virgil further deepened and aggravated this conflict. When Aeneas leaves Dido, she, full of love for him and at the same time cursing him, throws herself into the fire and immediately pierces herself with a sword. Virgil sympathizes with the experiences of Dido, but as if he wants to say that this is what disobedience to the gods leads to.

Turn is another confirmation of the religious-psychological concept of Virgil. As a leader and warrior, and even as an orator, he is distinguished by a restless character. He was appointed by fate to destroy the Trojans who came to Italy. He loves Lavinia and goes to war because of her. Therefore, his personal feelings coincide with the destiny of rock. He evokes unfailing sympathy. But here we read about the unwillingness of Thurn to fight the Trojans and about the impact on him of the Allekto fury (VII, 419-470). This fury comes to Turnu in the form of an old prophetess, but soon reveals her true face:

Erinia hissed in so many Serpents, such was her face; the burning, rotating Eye, while it hesitated and tried to say more, She pushed him away, erected two snakes from her hair, Slammed her whip and added her mouth so fiercely ... (Bryusov.)

With a formidable speech, she throws a torch at Turn and pierces his chest with a torch that breathes black flame. He is seized with immeasurable horror, sweating, rushing about on his bed, looking for a sword and begins to burn with the fury of war. Even heroes devoted to deities and fate still experience violence from them. The natural softness of the soul made Virgil find attractive features in another enemy of the Trojans - the old man Latinus. Virgil has a gentle and philanthropic attitude towards both warring parties at the same time. He paints with great sorrow the death of Priam at the hands of the boy Pyrrhus. Positive and negative heroes (Mezentsiy, Sinon, Drank) are presented both from the Greek and Italian side, and all do the will of rock.

The gods of Virgil's wife are in a more relaxed form. Roman discipline meant that Jupiter was not as powerless and insecure as Homer's Zeus. In the Aeneid, he is the sole manager of human destinies, while other gods are incomparable with him in this respect. In Canto I, Venus addresses Jupiter as the absolute ruler, and he solemnly declares to her: "My decisions are unchangeable" (260). Indeed, the picture he draws of the future fate of Rome and the clash of entire peoples is predetermined by him to the smallest detail. Venus addresses him with the words (X, 17 et seq.): "Oh, the eternal power of both people and events, my father! Besides, whom should we beg?" An omnipotent ruler, but at the same time noble and merciful, he turns out to be in a conversation even with the constant rebel Juno, who does not dare to object to him (XII). In contrast to the softer and more peaceful Venus, Juno is depicted as restless, malicious. One has only to read about how Jupiter tries to reconcile Venus and Juno (X) to see the comparatively accommodating nature of Venus. Demonic, brutally merciless Rumor, sowing discord among people and not distinguishing between good and evil (IV).

Apollo, Mercury, Mars and Neptune are depicted in perfect form. The highest deities in Virgil are depicted more or less sublimely, in violation of traditional polytheism. In addition, they (in contrast to Homer) are very disciplined and do not act at their own risk and fear. Everything is ruled by Jupiter, and all the gods are divided, so to speak, into some kind of class. Each has its own function and specialty. They are characterized by a purely Roman subordination, and, for example, Neptune, the god of the sea, is indignant at the fact that not he, but some minor deity Aeolus, should pacify the winds.

The intervention of gods, demons and the dead in the lives of living people not only fills the entire Aeneid, but almost always has an extremely dramatic, violent character. In addition, all these manifestations of the gods, predictions and signs almost always have in the Aeneid not some narrowly domestic or at least a simple military character, but they are always historical in the sense of contributing to the main goal of the entire Aeneid - to depict the coming power of Rome. The gods entering the battle during the fire of Troy behave violently. Among the fire, smoke, among the chaos of stones and the destruction of houses, Neptune shakes the walls of the city and the whole city at its very foundation. Juno, girded with a sword and occupying the Scaean gate, shouts furiously, calling on the Greeks. Pallas Athena, illuminated by a halo and frightening everyone with her Gorgon, sits on the fortress walls of Troy. Jupiter himself excites the troops (II, 608-618). During the fire of Troy, Aeneas is in a dream the ghost of Hector, who was killed by Achilles shortly before. Hector, after the abuse of him by Achilles, is not only sad, he is black from dust, bloody, his swollen legs are entangled in belts, his beard is in mud, and his hair is stuck together from blood, wounds gape on him. With deep groaning, he orders Aeneas to leave Troy, entrusting him with the shrines of Troy (I, 270-297).

When Aeneas appears in Thrace and wants to tear a plant out of the ground for the sake of sacrifice, he sees black blood on the trunks of the plant and hears a mournful voice from the depths of the hill. It was the blood of Polydorus (son of Priam), who was killed by the Thracian king Polymestor (III, 19-48).

Fate is against the marriage of Aeneas and Dido, and now, when Dido makes sacrifices, the sacred water turns black, the brought wine turns into blood, a voice is heard from the temple of her dead husband, a lone owl groans on the towers. In Homer, Zeus sends Hermes to Kirk with a command to let Odysseus go, and she lets him go only with some displeasure. In Virgil, Jupiter also sends Mercury to Aeneas with a reminder of his departure (IV). After that, the tragic story with Dido is played out. And when Aeneas, having boarded the ship, fell asleep peacefully, Mercury appears to him in a dream for the second time. Mercury hurries Aeneas and talks about the possible intrigues of Dido (IV, 5.53-569).

In Homer, Odysseus descends into Hades to find out his fate. According to Virgil, Aeneas descends into Hades to find out the fate of a thousand-year-old Rome. In a conversation with Aeneas, the Sibyl is presented as completely frenzied (VI, 33-102):

When she spoke like this Before the door, her appearance suddenly, a single color laying cheeks And in disorder, her hair - changed; And in a wild frenzy the heart rises; and it seems, She is higher, she does not speak like people, she is already fanned by the will of the Close God (46-51). (Bryusov.)

In a more peaceful form, Aeneas Tiberin, the god of the Tiber River, appears among poplar thickets, covered with azure muslin and with a reed on his head, but he again speaks about the creation of a new kingdom (VIII, 31-65).

In Crete, Penates appear to Aeneas and announce that it is Italy that is the ancient homeland of the Trojans and that he must go there to create Trojan power (III). Venus gives a sign to Aeneas about the war, again among the terrible phenomena (VIII, 524-529):

For suddenly the ether trembled, the radiance flashed With thunder and ringing, and all was suddenly hidden from view, And the howling of the Tyrrhenian trumpet was heard in the ether. They look, again and again a huge roar is heard. They see how, among the clouds, where the sky is clear, weapons are flashing in the azure distance and rattling, rattling against each other. (S. Solovyov.)

Especially frequent is the intervention of the gods in the affairs of people in songs IX-XII, where war is depicted; Virgil everywhere wants to portray something wonderful or unusual. If Homer wants to make everything supernatural quite natural, ordinary, then with Virgil it is just the opposite. In Homer, Athena Pallas, in order to hide Odysseus from the feacs, envelops him in a thick cloud, but this happens in the evening (Od., VII). In Virgil, Aeneas and Ahat are shrouded in a cloud in broad daylight, so that the miraculousness of this phenomenon is only emphasized. When Virgil depicts people outside of any mythology, they also differ in his increased passion, often reaching to hesitation and uncertainty, to insoluble conflicts. The love of Dido and Aeneas ignites in a cave where they hide from a terrible storm and sudden mountain streams (IV). Aeneas is full of hesitation. In this difficulty, he prays to the gods, makes sacrifices and asks for oracles. At the decisive moment of the victory over Thurn, when this latter begs him for mercy in touching words, he hesitates whether to kill him or leave him alive, and only the belt of Pallas with plaques, noticed them on Turn, forced him to do away with his opponent (XII, 931-959).

The main characters in the Aeneid are, strictly speaking, Juno and Venus. But they, too, constantly change their minds, hesitate, and their enmity is devoid of principle and often becomes petty. Touching is the unfortunate Creusa, the disappeared "wife of Aeneas, who, even after passing away, still takes care of both Aeneas himself and their boy Ascania (I, 772-782). Andromache is also touching, having also experienced endless disasters and still yearning for her Hector , even after marrying Helen (III). Palinur's request for his burial grabs the heart, since he remains unburied in a foreign country (VI). The mother of Euryal, who learned about the death of her son, gets cold feet, knitting needles fall out of her hands, drops yarn, in madness, with torn hair, she runs away to the troops and fills the sky with groans and lamentations (IX, 475-499) Evander falls almost unconscious on the body of his dead son Pallas and also moans furiously and wails passionately and helplessly (XI) In contrast, the Trojans Nis and Euryalus, two soldiers devoted to each other, are depicted in sublime, simple features, who die as a result of mutual devotion (IX, 168-458).

Not only Dido resorts to suicide, but also the wife of Latina, Amata, shocked by the defeat of her relatives (XII). Virgil did not pass by the simple life of ordinary workers, which, obviously, was also well known to him (VIII, 407-415).

f) The genres in the "Aeneid" are very diverse, which was the norm for Hellenistic-Roman poetry. First of all, of course, this is the epic, that is, the heroic poem, the source for which was Homer, as well as the Roman poets Nevius and Ennius, along with the Roman annalists. From Homer, Virgil borrows a lot of individual words, expressions and whole episodes, differing from his simplicity in enormous psychological complexity and nervousness.

The epic genre also manifests itself in Virgil in the form of a multitude of epillia, in which it is impossible not to see some influence of the neotherics. Almost every canto of the Aeneid is a complete epillium. But even here, the socio-political ideology once and for all separated Virgil from the carefree small forms of the neo-Terics, who often wrote in the style of art for art's sake.

Virgil's lyricism is also vividly represented, examples of which are seen in the laments of Evander and Euryal's mother. But what especially sharply distinguishes Virgil's epic from other epics is the constant, sharp drama, the tragic pathos of which sometimes reaches the degree of tragedy.

As for prose sources, the influence of stoicism (Aeneas' stoic obedience to fate) is undeniable in the Aeneid. The Aeneid is further overflowing with rhetoric (a mass of speeches, many of which are very skillfully composed and require special analysis). Virgil is no stranger, as we have seen, also to descriptions, which are also very far from his calm and balanced epic and are interspersed with dramatic and rhetorical elements. These descriptions refer to nature, and to the appearance of a person, and to his behavior, and to his weapons, and to numerous battles. Rhetoric, as well as the diverse Hellenistic learning of Virgil in general, testifies to the long study by the poet of numerous prose materials. He also undertook his trip to Greece to study various materials for his poem. All of these genres are by no means represented by Virgil in an isolated form - this is an integral and unique artistic style, which is often only epic in form, and in essence it is impossible even to say which of the indicated genres prevails in such, for example, a picture as the capture of Troy, in such a novel, for example, as in Dido and Aeneas, and in such a duel, for example, as between Aeneas and the Turk. This is a Hellenistic-Roman variegation, accompanied, moreover, by a typically Hellenistic learning.

g) The artistic style of the Aeneid, arising from this variety of genres, is also extremely far from the simplicity of the classics and is full of numerous and contradictory elements that make an indelible impression on the reader.

The whole originality of Virgil's artistic style lies in the fact that his mythologism is indistinguishable from historicism. Everything in Virgil is filled with history. The origin of Rome, its growing power, and the principate that finally arose are the ideas to which almost every artistic device in it is subordinated, even such, for example, as description or speech.

However, this historicism should not be understood as just an objective ideology or as just an objective picture of the history of Rome. All these methods of objective representation were deeply and passionately experienced by Virgil; his emotions often reach an ecstatic state. Therefore, psychologism, and, moreover, psychologism of a tremendous nature, is also one of the most essential principles of the artistic style of the poem.

The construction of artistic images in the "Aeneid" is distinguished by great rationality and organizational power, which could not but be here, since the whole poem is the glorification of a powerful world empire. There is nothing frail, unbalanced in Virgil's psychologism. All hysterical characters (Sibyl, Dido) are complex psychological, but they are strong in their organization and logical sequence in actions. Virgil builds on this the entire positive ideological side of his artistic style. This style often pursues educational goals, since the whole poem was written only to preach ancient ascetic ideals, to restore strict antiquity in this age of depravity, to restore an ancient and harsh religion with all her miracles and signs, oracles, her social and ancient morality. Virgil in his poetics is one of the greatest ancient moralists. His moralism is filled with the most sincere and most sincere condemnation of war and love for a simple and peaceful rural life. In Virgil, decisively all the heroes not only suffer from the war, but also perish from it, except perhaps only Aeneas. However, Aeneas also instructs his son (XII, 435 et seq.):

Valor, lad, learn from me tireless labors, Happiness - alas! - other's. (S. Solovyov.)

Anchises says to Aeneas (VI, 832-835):

To such strife, O children, do not accustom your souls, Do not turn your fatal power to the homeland of the heart. You are the first, you leave your kind leading from Olympus, Drop the sword from your hands, you who are my blood! (Bryusov.)

Not only Turnn asks Aeneas for mercy, but Drank also addresses Turnn with these words (XI, 362-367):

There is no salvation in battle, and we all demand peace, Turn, from you, and to seal the peace with an indestructible pledge. I myself am the first, whom you regard as an enemy, and I will not argue with this, I come with a prayer. Have pity on yours! Drop your pride and leave amazed. We, the defeated, have seen enough feasts and ruins of huge villages. (S. Solovyov.)

Thus, Virgil is a man of soft soul, cordial and peaceful moods, not only in the Bucolics and Georgics, but also in the Aeneid, and here, perhaps, most of all. One of the wrong views regarding the artistic style of the Aeneid is that it is a far-fetched and fantastic work, far from life, overflowing with mythology, in which the poet himself does not believe. Therefore, the alleged artistic style of the Aeneid is the opposite of any realism. But realism is a historical concept, and ancient realism, like any realism in general, is quite specific. In the eyes of the builders and contemporaries of the rising Roman Empire, the artistic style of the Aeneid is undoubtedly realistic. Did Virgil believe in his mythology or not? Of course, any naive and literal mythological belief in this age of high civilization is out of the question. However, this does not mean that Virgil's mythology is a complete fantasy. Mythology is introduced in this poem solely for the purpose of generalizing and substantiating Roman history. According to Virgil, the Roman Empire arose as a result of the immutable laws of history. He expressed all this immutability with the help of the invasion of mythical forces into history, since the ancient world was not at all able to substantiate this immutability in any other way. Thus, the artistic style of the "Aeneid" is the realism of the period of the rising Roman Empire.

To this it is necessary to add the fact that the gods and demons in Virgil in the end themselves depend on fate, or fate (the words of Jupiter in Song X, 104-115).

Finally, all those nightmarish visions and hysteria, of which there are so many in the Aeneid, also represent a reflection of the bloody and inhuman reality of the last century of the Roman Republic with its proscriptions, the mass destruction of innocent citizens, and the unprincipled struggle of political and military leaders.

One could cite many texts from Roman historiography that depict the last century of the Roman Republic in even more nervous and nightmarish tones than we find in the Aeneid.

In the same sense it is necessary to speak about the nationality of the Aeneid. Nationality is also a historical concept. In the strictly defined and limited sense in which one can speak of the realism of the Aeneid, one must also speak of its nationality. "Aeneid" - a work of ancient classicism, complex, scholarly and overloaded with psychological detail. But this classicism is a reflection of the same complex and confusing period of ancient history.

The Aeneid cannot be put on the same plane with the poems of the so-called "false classicism" of new literature.

Finally, in full accordance with all the noted features of the artistic style of the "Aeneid" is its external side.

The style of the "Aeneid" is distinguished by a compressed and intense character, which is noticeable in almost every line of the poem: either it is an artistic image itself, passionate and restrained at the same time, or it is some short, but sharp and accurate verbal expression. Numerous expressions of this kind became sayings already in the first centuries after the appearance of the poem, entered world literature and remain so in literary use to this day. This strong artistically expressive verse of the poem masterfully uses longitude for semantic purposes where we would expect a short syllable, or puts a monosyllabic word at the end of the verse and thereby sharply emphasizes it; there are numerous alliterations and verbal sound recording, of which only those who read the Aeneid in the original have an idea. Such tension and maximum conciseness, lapidarity of stylistic devices are characteristic of the Aeneid.

5. The historical significance of Virgil.

Despite the presence of various kinds of critics and detractors of Virgil, it can be said that in the history of world literature, the path of Virgil was, as it were, his triumphal march. Propertius said during Virgil's lifetime:

Away here, all you Roman writers, away, you and the Greeks: Something more grows and the Iliad itself. (Fet.)

Already ancient literature is full of admiration for Virgil. He is imitated by epic poets (for example, Silius Italicus, Valery Flaccus), Ovid in his "Heroines", the playwright Seneca, historians Titus Livius and Tacitus. In later times, a whole genre was born in literature, whose representatives composed poems on any topic from individual expressions and parts of Virgil's poems. Even tragedians, even Christian writers, did not escape this method when compiling their religious works. Already under Augustus, Virgil became the subject of study in schools, and the famous theoretician of oratory, Quintilian, praised the custom of starting reading poets from Homer and Virgil. Virgil early became popular also among the broad masses of the population of the Roman Empire. Individual poems by Virgil could often be found written on household utensils, on walls, on works of art, and on signboards. They were used both as epigraphs and as epitaphs; and on the themes of his works, wall paintings were created inside the houses. According to Virgil's verses, they were guessing, turning his writings into some kind of sacred books. Some Roman emperors argued their claim to power with references to various poems of Virgil. It was also translated into Greek. There was no shortage of scientific commentaries on the works of Virgil (such, for example, are the huge commentaries of Donatus and Servius).

With the advent of Christianity, Virgil did not lose his significance at all, but rather became even more popular. Eclogue IV, with its prophecy about the advent of a new world in connection with the birth of some miraculous baby, was understood in the Middle Ages as a prophecy about the coming of Christ. Virgil is often interpreted as a wizard and sorcerer, as a guardian of cities and entire nations, and is included in the circle of chivalric tales and court poetry. Dante speaks of himself in The Divine Comedy as being led by Virgil on a journey through Hell and Purgatory. Fairy tales about Virgil flourish especially during the XII-XV centuries.

With the advent of modern times, the image of the prophet and sorcerer Virgil begins to fade into the past, but Virgil becomes the subject of constant imitation among the largest representatives of the epic (Ariosto, T. Tasso, Camões, Milton). The greatest French philologist of the 16th century. Scaliger and the most prominent ruler of thoughts in Europe in the 18th century. Voltaire ranked Virgil unquestionably superior to Homer. And only with Lessing begins a critical attitude towards Virgil as a poet, devoid of Homeric naturalness, a poet too artificial. Such an attitude towards Virgil, however, did not mean his complete denial, but, on the contrary, only placed Virgil in a certain historical framework.

Our assessment of Virgil is also strictly historical. There can be no abstract comparison of Virgil with Homer, since each of them is great in a different sense, for different ages and from different points of view. Only such a historical assessment of both these works themselves and their world role is able to eliminate all the one-sidedness of understanding that existed in the past and create a correct idea of them for the present.

Information about Virgil is scarce. Some messages about him were transmitted by his friends in oral and written form. Some of these messages have come down to us in the form of scattered quotations from later Roman authors, as well as in the form of seven short Biographies, or rather an outline of a biography. The most complete of these is preserved in the manuscript of Aelius Donatus, but actually goes back to Suetonius. Some of the information we find in other texts is borrowed from this biography; certain information, such as that contained in biography from the Bernese manuscript, obtained independently, although, probably, all versions had a single source - notes of Virgil's contemporaries.

As for the names of Virgil, the name Publius is quite common for a Roman, the other two seem to be of Etruscan origin, although the name Virgil was borne by many Latins. The poet's father was probably a Latin, whose family had settled several generations before in northern Italy, then called Cisalpine Gaul. We know almost nothing about his life. It is reported that he was a potter or a messenger, married the daughter of his master, and then hunted by breeding bees and selling timber. Undoubtedly, he had a small estate. Virgil's mother's name was Magic Polla, which also sounds Etruscan. Virgil had at least two brothers, but by the time he came of age his relatives must have died.

Virgil was born on October 15, 70 BC. near Mantua, in the village of the Andes, but it is not known exactly where this village was located. He received a good education, until the age of 15 in Cremona and then in Mediolana (Milan). Around the age of 19, Virgil came to Rome to study rhetoric, in those days an indispensable part of higher education necessary for a political career. After staying in Rome for about a year, he settled in Naples, joining the circle of Epicureans founded by Philodemus, which was headed by Siron. In Naples itself or near it, Virgil lived almost his entire life. He only occasionally visited Rome, visited Sicily and Tarentum, once visited Greece. In 19 BC Virgil embarked on a great journey through Greece. Arriving in Athens, Virgil met Augustus here, after which he decided to abandon the trip and return to Italy. When examining Megara, he became seriously ill, the illness worsened on the ship, and shortly after arriving in Brundisium, Virgil died on September 20, 19 BC.

WORKS

Virgil wrote three great works of poetry, all in hexametric (or "heroic") verse - Bucoliki or Eclogues, 42–39 (or 37) BC; Georgics(about 36-30 BC) and Aeneid, in 29–19 BC In antiquity, several other small poems were attributed to Virgil, all or almost all of which date from earlier years than Eclogues. Usually these poems appear under the collective title Appendix Vergiliana(lat. Virgil Application). Most of them, including the three longest ones, are obviously not genuine. This is Ciris(Gull), a love story ending with the transformation of the characters into birds; Etna dedicated to the description of the famous volcano, and Mosquito- a story about a shepherd who was bitten by a mosquito in a dream in order to wake him up and save him from a snake; the shepherd, without understanding, kills a friendly insect, which moves to the afterlife.

The rest of the poems are much shorter. One, two-line epigram on the robber, is considered the very first fruit of Virgil's work. Another group of poems, written in different sizes, is combined under the Greek name catalepton(which can be approximated as Miniatures). One of these poems, the 10th, an extremely subtle parody of the 4th poem by Catullus, may indeed be Virgil's. Two other poems can also be considered authentic with a high probability. The 5th conveys the feelings of Virgil, who renounces hateful rhetoric and is about to move to Naples to study Epicurean philosophy; at the end of the poem, he also asks the Muses to leave him and return from now on only occasionally and observing prudence. The 8th poem, presumably, conveys the poet's grief at parting with relatives and parting with the estate confiscated by Octavian (later Emperor Augustus) among the lands intended for the settlement of veterans who won the victory at Philippi in 42 BC.

There are good enough reasons to reject all other poems. Applications as inauthentic, but the discussion on this issue is undoubtedly not yet complete.

Bucoliki.

Bucoliki(gr. shepherding, i.e. pastoral poetry), also called Eclogues(gr. Favorites) are ten short pastorals containing mainly dialogues between imaginary villagers. They are based on Idylls Theocritus, also Greek pastorals written in hexameter. Virgil had already reached maturity when he began this work. He completely mastered the method of widely using literary sources, from which he extracted words, phrases and even consonances, creating new combinations from them, as well as from the allusions arising from them, so that in the end a completely new work, belonging to Virgil himself, appeared. In the early stages of the development of literature, this approach to verbal creativity is found everywhere, but it gained particular popularity in Rome in connection with the active translation and adaptation of Greek authors that took place here. However, Virgil, and this is his greatest originality, developed this method to such an extent that in his hands it turned into a technical innovation. Like many other innovations of Virgil, this method spread in later poetry, in particular it is noticeable in the work of S. Coleridge.

AT Eclogues Virgil creates unique music of consonances, which is also one of the most important features of his work. Even in this relatively light form, the poet discusses the most important problems of life. Some eclogues contain allusions to the confiscation of the father's estate, and then to its return by Octavian to Virgil - as a sign of respect for his poetic merits and thanks to the intercession of an influential friend. Prominent statesmen and writers such as Alphen Varus, Gaius Asinius Pollio, Varius Rufus, and Gaius Cornelius Gallus are named in Eclogues by the name. However, for the most part, Virgil prefers to hide the real faces behind collective characters. So, he himself, a young free man, appears here as an elderly slave who has just received his freedom (1st eclogue). And in general, the whole matter with confiscation, in all its undoubted historicity, in Eclogues is not affected in any way: it is allowed to become here only a source of thoughts and feelings that contribute to the creation of these poems. landscape in Eclogues also collective. It seems to us that we are not far from Naples or Sicily, but some details point to northern Italy. There are many vivid observations, but not a single whole and direct description of the scene.

The 4th eclogue is different from the others. This is a combination of a wedding hymn and an ode to the birth of a child. The infant of whom we are speaking here must again bring with him to earth the Golden Age. As to who this baby is, there are endless disputes. This short, indecipherable, but significant poem was used by Emperor Constantine, who established Christianity in his empire, as evidence that even a pagan Roman predicted the birth of Christ. It was mainly because of this eclogue that Virgil became famous in the Middle Ages as the "Prophet of the Gentiles."

In the 1st eclogue, Virgil praises the benefactor (this is almost certainly Octavian), calling him a god. From the very beginning, the poet believed in Octavian, in his calling to give peace and prosperity to Rome. He soon became a close friend of Octavian, probably even closer than the lyricist Horace. The emperor's generosity eventually enriched Virgil, but the poet managed to maintain personal independence and creative freedom.

Georgics.

Virgil's next poetic work was Georgics(gr. Poem about agriculture) in four songs. The urgent task of the Roman state then became (or was to become in the near future) concern for the encouragement and revival of agriculture in order to restore public morality and well-being, as well as to boost the economy. Virgil enthusiastically supported this policy. In one place of the poem, he even mentioned that he was writing “at the behest” (or at least “on the advice”) of Maecenas, a close friend of Virgil and Horace, a kind of “Minister of the Interior” under Octavian. The praise addressed in this poem to Octavian is conventional. And yet, in writing the poem, Virgil was absolutely sincere. Indeed, it is possible that the official agricultural policy itself was partly prepared and inspired by the poetry of Virgil.

The topics covered in the four songs of the poem are field cultivation, horticulture, animal husbandry and beekeeping. However, the presentation of the material varies subtly. From time to time, passages are woven into the poem, which contain a reminder of how necessary the knowledge about agriculture reported here is for a person who is obedient to the will of the gods. The connection of lyrical digressions with the main theme is sometimes very loose, and yet they never fall out of the general presentation, but invariably reinforce a wise and penetrating view of things.

However, the special advice offered in the poem is valuable in itself, they are directly and successfully applied even in modern agriculture. Of course, Virgil had predecessors in literature, including the great Greeks - Hesiod, Theophrastus, Aratus, Nicander, as well as the treatise of the Carthaginian Mago in Latin translation and the works of the Romans, especially Cato the Elder. In addition, Virgil introduces into the poem his own carefully calibrated observations of nature and agriculture.

One of Virgil's main sources was the philosophical poem De rerum natura (About nature), owned by his older contemporary Lucretius, where he acted as a passionate champion of Epicurean materialism. Echoes of this poem are heard in Eclogues, and in the last two great works of Virgil they are very frequent, sometimes repeating themselves after several lines. AT Georgikah he borrows many of the poetic turns of Lucretius, but turns them in such a way that they serve to express views that are opposed to materialism. For Virgil himself advocates a deeply religious view of the world, in which spiritual forces and purposes rule. A person here acquires the highest bliss not through epicurean calm and detachment, but in hard rural work, in moral and physical health, enjoying the beauty of nature, relying on patriotic love for Italy and faith in divine providence.

Aeneid.

AT Aeneid, i.e. "History of Aeneas", the experience already gained is used, here Virgil is given the opportunity to put his worldview to the test in connection with the presentation of dynamic political and military events. The epic narrative in 12 songs describes the capture of Troy by the Greeks, the journey of the Trojan prince Aeneas to Italy, his diplomatic and military enterprises. As a result, Aeneas unites the Trojans and Latins into a single people, who in the future, after the founding of Rome several centuries later, will become Romans.

When working on the last, greatest work, Virgil's general views on the world and his creative method remained the same as before, except for his constant growth. The erudition of the author and the research work that he had to do while working on Aeneid are truly colossal. It must have embraced almost all modern Greek and Roman literature, of which only a small part has come down to us. Aeneid relies primarily on the works of Homer, Greek tragic poets and representatives of early Roman poetry, authors of epics and tragedies of Nevius and Ennius. The influence of Lucretius continues to be felt, the influence of more modern Greek "Hellenistic" poetry, as well as the latest Latin poetry of Catullus and other authors, primarily representatives of the neoteric or "modernists", makes itself felt. There are also traces of Latin comedy, prose and, perhaps, oral tradition. There are suggestions that Virgil used sources outside the Greek and Roman world, from the East.

In the ancient commentary of Servius on Bucoliki it is reported that initially Virgil conceived a historical poem about the ancient kings of Latium, but then preferred the mythological epic, choosing the widespread legend of Aeneas, who escaped after the capture of Troy and went west. The first half of the poem, describing the wanderings of the Trojans, is based on Odyssey Homer, the second, describing the battles in Italy, follows the pattern of the Homeric Iliad. Virgil first wrote Aeneid in prose, dividing it into 12 books. Then he proceeded to gradually transcribe it into verse, and he did this not in succession, but each time referring to the passage that most corresponded to his mood. When Virgil created, the inexhaustible sources of his memory and mind rained down poetic lines, which were then subjected to critical analysis and finishing.

Generally Aeneid in terms of structure, it freely follows the Homeric model, and its individual episodes are interpreted according to Homeric rules. Like Homer, Virgil portrays the gods interfering in people's lives, both of them using comparisons, especially in tense moments. On the other hand, Virgil very rarely reproduces a line or even a poetic turn verbatim, while Homer constantly resorts to epic formulas and repetitions. Virgil never stays long on the same source, sometimes in one line we can find allusions to several texts. So, using the Homeric comparison for his own purposes, Virgil immediately uses the variations of this comparison, which were already encountered by previous poets. He combines the structure of Homeric poetry with the compositional laws of smaller works created in Hellenistic Greek and "neotheric" Latin poetry. Although Aeneid as a whole, it has an epic structure, its individual songs are likened not only to Greek tragedy as such, but also to quite specific works of Greek tragedians, and sometimes not even one tragedy, but several, is used within the same song.

According to Virgil, after the decisive battle and the death of Troy, Aeneas sails to Italy. Along the way, he finds himself in various parts, in particular in Carthage, where Aeneas and Queen Dido fall in love with each other. However, fate forces Aeneas to continue his journey to Italy, and Dido lays hands on herself in despair. Arriving in Italy, Aeneas visits the Cuma Sibyl, the oracle of Apollo (near Naples) and receives permission to descend underground, into the world of the shadows of the dead. Here, the secrets of the judgment on the dead are revealed to him, awaiting their punishment or bliss and a new bodily incarnation of souls. In particular, Aeneas sees many Romans who have yet to play a role in the history of the city when it is their turn to come into the world. Enriched by this experience, Aeneas enters into an alliance with Latin, the king of Latium, but very soon this world collapses at the will of the gods. A war breaks out, which ends only after Aeneas kills Turn, the brave leader of the enemy forces. Throughout the poem, Aeneas receives divine instructions, and when he manages to understand them, he invariably obeys them and succeeds. Aeneas is patronized by his mother, the goddess of love Venus, he also enjoys the favor of the supreme deity Jupiter, whose will corresponds to the dictates of fate. However, Juno, the powerful wife of Jupiter, opposes Aeneas, helping his enemy Turn. At the end of the poem, Jupiter and Juno conclude a compromise: the Trojans and Latins must unite, later they will be given power over Italy and the whole world.

A similar ending is characteristic of Virgil. Indeed, the principle of reconciliation through compromise pervades both his worldview and poetry. He applies it to small problems as well as to large ones: any four-word phrase can be a compromise between two phrases already used before - one by a Greek, the other by a Latin poet. Even in matters of religion, Virgil has both Greek and Roman religious ideas, with Plato's more spiritual beliefs balancing Homer's humanistic theology. Virgil invariably tries to approach the problem from both sides. Stylistically, Virgil begins with the accessible and clear Latin of the mature Cicero, but at the same time expresses it with a distinct conciseness that already resembles the style of his contemporary, the historian Sallust. Virgil carefully introduces new elements into modern Latin, including, when it suits his tasks, he uses archaisms. The highest skill allowed the poet to convey several diverse thoughts at once in one short phrase and thus, skillfully using all the possibilities provided by the Latin language, to inform the reader of a skillful system of meanings. The same trend is evident on a larger scale. All points of view must be taken into account, the claims of all parties should be kept in mind. As a result, Aeneas turns out to be a hero completely different from those acting in Homer, his goal is much higher than personal success. Therefore, he is constantly referred to in the poem as pius Aeneus, which does not mean at all the “pious” Aeneas, as they mistranslate, but the “faithful Aeneas”. He must remain faithful to his family and friends, his fellow citizens and his deities - this corresponds to the moral standards on which the greatness of Rome is based.

Aeneas is weak, unreasonable, cruel. Here we are dealing with yet another example of Virgil's approach. It is not enough for him to sing of the legendary past; the historical past and the present must also be present in the poem. In particular, Aeneas (and by no means at his best) may be like Augustus, whom Virgil supported, with reservations and disappointments. There is a widespread belief, and there is nothing improbable in it, that by thus forcing Augustus to look into the mirror, Virgil managed to influence the emperor. Resorting to subtle allusions to the history of the beginnings of Rome, Virgil makes it clear that in the civil war won by Augustus, the truth was not only on the side of the future emperor.

Fundamental to Virgil is the principle of reconciliation, which springs from deep and unbiased sympathy. Equally important for the poet is sensitivity to the musical sound of words, a passion for creating harmonious consonances. Sound predominates, it is often born first in Virgil, and meaning comes from it. During the life of Virgil, the Latin hexameter had not yet lost its meaning. The poet has made great efforts to reach the pinnacle of perfection in this verse. According to sources, Virgil managed to write many lines in the morning, and during the day he revised and finished them, leaving several lines by evening, and sometimes only one. So, when creating Georgics Virgil wrote only one line a day.