VOL. XI

THE TEACHING OF VERGIL IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

To be a successful teacher of any subject one must have knowledge and personality; he must know something, he must be somebody. If one knows enough, if one is enough, and if, with knowledge enough and personality enough, he applies himself with singleminded devotion to the task of teaching as the one business of supreme importance, he stands some chance of doing what, according to old Trimalchio in Petronius's Latin novel, the teacher of a favorite slave of Trimalchio did: 'He taught the boy more than he knew himself'. A fine ideal this, surely, for every teacher to hold before himself.

Now, for the acquisition of a personality no formula has as yet been presented. Here, at least, I can be of no service whatever to anyone else. I am constrained, therefore, to confine myself to the question of knowledge.

What should the teacher of Vergil know? In seeking to answer this question the most I can hope to do is to make a new grouping of more or less familiar materials. I beg the reader to keep in mind the following wise words, written by Professor J. B. Greenough as part of the Preface to his edition of the Satires and the Epistles of Horace:

But the editor has derived so much advantage from editions of the Classics in which the notes reminded him in particular connections of things which in general he knew before, that he has not inquired so much whether a thing was likely to be known, as whether it was likely to be thought of in the connection.

What, then, in order to teach Vergil successfully in the Secondary Schools, should the teacher of Vergil know?

(1) He should know, first of all, Vergil himself. How?

(a) By long, loving and intimate study of all Vergil's works. What manner of man, for instance, was Vergil? Vergil is like Homer, unlike Horace, in that he tells us little directly of himself. In the main, then, we must gain our understanding of Vergil's character and personality through inferences which we draw from the character and the contents of his writings. Fortunately for us, in some instances we can reinforce these inferences by appeals to ancient testimony concerning Vergil (see below, under b).

No. 1

One impression of Vergil gained by every careful reader of his works is that Vergil was an untiring student and a profound scholar. He had, manifestly, an extraordinary knowledge of the whole range of Greek literature and of the earlier literature of his own country. He was profoundly versed also in the history of Rome, mythical and actual alike. Further, he had a complete mastery of Greek mythology and of Greek and Roman religion. Such accomplishments as these are won only by the severest work, the most careful study, carried on for long years. In perfect harmony with the impression of these matters we gain from reading Vergil's own writings is a tradition recorded by Suetonius (see below, under b) in his Life of Vergil. This declares that, when Vergil was writing his Georgics, it was his practice to dictate early in the morning as many verses as he could and then to spend the rest of the day working them over and over and reducing them to as small a number of verses as possible. Suetonius adds: <solitus Vergilius est dicere> non absurde carmen se ursae more parere et lambendo effingere. Part of this tradition had already appeared in Quintilian (10.3.8): 'That Vergil wrote very few verses in a day Varus bears testimony'. Part of it appeared again, in fuller form, in the second century A.D., in Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae 17.10.2-7, as follows:

'According to the friends and the intimates of Vergil, in the accounts they have left of his nature and his character, Vergil was wont to say that he produced his verses as a bear gives birth to her cubs. The cubs are at first formless and shapeless: the mother bear licks them into fair form and shape. So, said Vergil, my verses at first are crude and imperfect, but by handling them and fondling them over and over I give to them at last fair features, decent lineaments'.

It is worth while to compare, in this connection, what Horace, that other great poet of the Augustan age, said of himself (Carmina 4.2.25-34. I give Wickham's prose translation):

Strong are the winds that upbear the swan of Dirce <Pindar> as oft as he soars into the cloudy spaces. For me, after the fashion of a Matine bee, that through incessant toil makes boot upon the fragrant thyme about the woods and river-banks of streaming Tibur, I humbly build my laborious verses.

From a study of Vergil, then (and of Horace), one might learn well the lesson set forth by the famous bore on the Appian Way (Horace, Satires 1.9.59-60) Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus, set forth so beautifully, also, in the fine story of The Choice of Hercules, told by Xenophon, Memorabilia 2. 1. 21 ff., and summed up tersely in the motto of a certain German-English Dictionary, 'Kein Preis ohne Fleiss'.

Another thing that impresses even the casual reader of Vergil is the fact that he possessed a deeply religious temperament. This is all the more striking because, as every one knows, there was in his day and generation a marked drift towards irreligion. One of Augustus's most cherished purposes as ruler of Rome was to bring about a religious revival. In vigorously supporting this, Vergil spoke from the heart and acted from deepest conviction1.

It is interesting here to recall that Vergil was born in Gallia Cisalpina, and that two other Roman writers who were born in Gallia Cisalpina possessed a deeply religious temperament. I have in mind, of course, Livy and Pliny the Younger. In the case of these three men we can, perhaps, see the effect of environment. In one of his letters (1.14) Pliny writes to a certain Junius Mauricus, who had requested Pliny to find a husband for Mauricus's niece:

Patria est ei Brixia ex illa nostra Italia, quae multum adhuc verecundiae, frugalitatis, atque etiam rusticitatis antiquae retinet ac servat. Habet aviam maternam Serranam Proculam e municipio Patavino. Nosti loci mores; Serrana tamen Patavinis quoque severitatis exemplum est.

We may remember that Martial (11.16. 7-8) is persuaded that even a puella Patavina may safely read his verses! Lest, however, we make too much of this point, the effect of environment on Vergil in matters of morals and religion, let us recall the life history of Catullus, also a native of Gallia Cisalpina.

The reference in the preceding paragraph to Vergil's birthplace recalls an interesting speculation-the possibility that certain Latin writers owed some of their characteristics to the fact that Celtic blood flowed in their veins. In the case of Vergil, the evidence in this respect has been examined afresh, in an article entitled The Nationality of Vergil, by G. E. K. Braunholtz, The Classical Review 29 (1915), 104-110. The author admits, in his summing up, that we

can arrive at no demonstrable conclusion. All we can say is that the preceding investigation suggests the probability that Vergilius and Maro are Etruscan or Etrusco-Latin, though the former may well be Keltic, whereas Magia and Silo would appear to be probably Keltic, though a Latin (perhaps Etruscan) claim might also be allowed. The name of Vergil's birthplace, however, if that may be cited as evidence of his nationality, is certainly Keltic.

This hypothesis of a blend of Etruscan and Keltic blood is strongly supported by the poetry of Vergil. He was proud of the Etruscan origin of Mantua, and had intimate knowledge of Etruscant character

are many.

the Keltic traits in Vergil's poetry

The points thus far presented must serve as specimens of the sort of thing one should keep in mind in repeated rereading of the entire body of Vergil's writings. One can, to be sure, find these matters elaborated in such standard works on Vergil as W. Y. Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Augustan Age: Virgil2 (Oxford, 1883), and T. R. Glover, Virgil2 (New York, 1912). But it is far better to find these things out through reading of the poet himself. What can be done in this way is illustrated by an excellent paper, entitled Reflections On Re-reading Vergil, by Dr. Emily Helen Dutton, published in the Bulletin of Tennessee College, Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Volume 9, No. 6 (March, 1916). I hope to present an abstract of this paper, with some comment on it, in a later number of THE CLASSICAL WEEKLY.

(b) Next, the teacher of Vergil should come to know Vergil through a study of the ancient Vitae Vergilianae. These lives are all short, they are all easy to read, they are highly entertaining, and they throw much light on our author's life, work, and character; in fact, most of what is said on these topics in editions of Vergil and in standard works on Vergil, like those named above, comes directly from the Vitae Vergilianae. These lives, may be studied in the following works: Ancient Lives of Vergil: An Essay on the Poems of Vergil in Connection with his Life and Times, by H. Nettleship (Oxford, 1879); Vitae Vergilianae, by Jacob Brummer (a small volume in the Teubner Series, published at Leipzig, in 1912); Die Vitae Vergilianae und ihre Antiken Quellen, by E. Diehl (published at Bonn, in 1911, by Marcus and Weber). The latter two books are small and cheap, and, when the war in Europe is over, can no doubt be imported again without difficulty.

Some years ago, when I was trying to conduct a Summer Session class in Vergil, I found to my surprise and disquietude that very few, if any, members of the class had read a line of these ancient Vitae Vergilianae. That it might not be possible for anyone in the future to reproach them with this omission in their preparation for the teaching of Vergil, I set them to the task of going through certain sections of the Introduction of my edition of the Aeneid, especially 33-50, in connection with the Vitae Vergilianae, and of copying out for each of these sections whatever authority for its statements was to be found in the several Vitae Vergilianae.

In reading the Vitae Vergilianae, at least in the form in which they are given by Brummer's edition, one must remember that the material which has come down to us in these Lives is of two sorts. On the one hand, we have authentic information, going back to Suetonius, who died about 135 A. D., or rather, going back through Suetonius to earlier materials, some of which are con

It surely is not necessary to elaborate the thought that of course the teacher of Vergil should gain a thorough mastery of the contents of all Vergil's writings.