Vergil History of Roman Literature
A History of Roman Literature by Charles Thomas Cruttwell
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).
Part V
Continued from Part IV
Lavinia is the modest maiden, a sketch, not a portrait. Dido is a character for all time, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the _Aeneid_. Among the stately ladies of the imperial house --a Livia, a Scribonia, an Octavia, perhaps a Julia--Virgil must have found the elements which he has fused with such mighty power, [72] the rich beauty, the fierce passion, the fixed resolve.
Dido is his greatest effort: and yet she is not an individual living woman like Helen or Ophelia. Like Racine, Virgil has developed passions, not created persons. The divine gift of tender, almost Christian, feeling that is his, cannot see into those depths where the inner personality lies hidden. Among the traditional characters few call for remark. The gods maintain on the whole their Homeric attributes, only hardened by time and by a Roman moulding. Venus is, however, touched with magic skill; it may be questioned whether words ever carried such suggestions of surpassing beauty as those in which, twice in the poem, her mystic form [73] is veiled rather than pourtrayed. The characters of Ulysses and Helen bear the debased, unheroic stamp of the later Greek drama; the last spark of goodness has left them, and even his careful study of Homer, seems to have had no effect in opening the poet's eyes to the gross falsification. Where Virgil did not feel obliged to create, he was to the last degree conventional.
CHAPTER II.
VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.).
Part V
Continued from Part IV
Lavinia is the modest maiden, a sketch, not a portrait. Dido is a character for all time, the _chef d'oeuvre_ of the _Aeneid_. Among the stately ladies of the imperial house --a Livia, a Scribonia, an Octavia, perhaps a Julia--Virgil must have found the elements which he has fused with such mighty power, [72] the rich beauty, the fierce passion, the fixed resolve.
Dido is his greatest effort: and yet she is not an individual living woman like Helen or Ophelia. Like Racine, Virgil has developed passions, not created persons. The divine gift of tender, almost Christian, feeling that is his, cannot see into those depths where the inner personality lies hidden. Among the traditional characters few call for remark. The gods maintain on the whole their Homeric attributes, only hardened by time and by a Roman moulding. Venus is, however, touched with magic skill; it may be questioned whether words ever carried such suggestions of surpassing beauty as those in which, twice in the poem, her mystic form [73] is veiled rather than pourtrayed. The characters of Ulysses and Helen bear the debased, unheroic stamp of the later Greek drama; the last spark of goodness has left them, and even his careful study of Homer, seems to have had no effect in opening the poet's eyes to the gross falsification. Where Virgil did not feel obliged to create, he was to the last degree conventional.
