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A Biography
By
Professor of Latinin theJohns Hopkins University
1922
Modern literary criticism has accustomed us to interpret our masterpiecesin the light of the author's daily experiences and the conditions of thesociety in which he lived. The personalities of very few ancient poets,however, can be realized, and this is perhaps the chief reason why theirworks seem to the average man so cold and remote. Vergil's age, with itsterribly intense struggles, lies hidden behind the opaque mists of twentycenturies: by his very theory of art the poet has conscientiously drawn aveil between himself and his reader, and the scraps of information abouthim given us by the fourth century grammarian, Donatus, are inconsistent,at best unauthenticated, and generally irrelevant.
Indeed criticism has dealt hard with Donatus' life of Vergil. It hasshown that the meager Vita is a conglomeration of a few chance factsset into a mass of later conjecture derived from a literal-mindedinterpretation of the Eclogues, to which there gathered during thecredulous and neurotic decades of the second and third centuries anaccretion of irresponsible gossip.
However, though we have had to reject many of the statements of Donatus,criticism has procured for us more than a fair compensation from anothersource. A series of detailed studies of the numerous minor poemsattributed to Vergil by ancient authors and mediaeval manuscripts—tillrecently pronounced unauthentic by modern scholars—has compelled mostof us to accept the Appendix Vergiliana at face value. These poems,written in Vergil's formative years before he had adopted the reservedmanner of the classical style, are full of personal reminiscences. Theyreveal many important facts about his daily life, his occupations, hisambitions and his ideals, and best of all they disclose the processes bywhich the poet during an apprenticeship of ten years developed the matureart of the Georgics and the Aeneid. They have made it possible for usto visualize him with a vividness that is granted us in the case of noother Latin poet.
The reason for attempting a new biography of Vergil at the present timeis therefore obvious. This essay, conceived with the purpose of centeringattention upon the poet's actual life, has eschewed the larger task ofliterary criticism and has also avoided the subject of Vergil's literarysources—a theme to which scholars have generally devoted too muchacumen. The book is therefore of brief compass, but it has been keptto its single theme in the conviction that the reader who will studyVergil's works as in some measure an outgrowth of the poet's ownexperiences will find a new meaning in not a few of their lines.