4—
The Sublime
We return to the purely aesthetic aims of the poem. What we assembled under the
heading
Virgil was striving: alongside it, or above it, comes his striving for the
sublime. This is certainly more than a certain solemnity of diction, such as had long
been de rigueur in rhetoric and poetry for treating certain sublime matters; nor is it
the same as the concept of 'seemliness' (
role in Hellenistic poetics, but had little effect on the epic other than the negative
requirement that it should avoid anything which detracted from heroic dignity.
Rather, the sublime is a thoroughly positive aesthetic quality, permeating both con-
tent and form, an aspect of 'style' in its widest sense. We need not hesitate to
include it in a description of poetic technique, since Virgil was certainly striving for
it deliberately; it is not, as it is in Aeschylus, say, or, in a different form, in Schiller,
an integral part of his poetic personality: the Eclogues alone, written when Virgil
was already mature, are sufficient proof that
come naturally to him; nothing has changed, in spite of the very considerable
transformation which his Weltanschauung had undergone in the intervening period.
In spite of this, one does not have the impression that the sublimity in the Aeneid is
'manufactured' in order to conjure up feelings in the reader which do not fill the
482 poet's own heart and mind; also, it would certainly be wrong to look for deliberate
calculation in every instance; it is rather that Virgil himself felt transported to a
higher sphere by the story which he had undertaken to treat, and this mood made
him try to create in his poem an ideal of the sublime such as he had built up for
himself while being carried along on the currents of his time. The result was a work
of art with a completely unified atmosphere, something which made it stand out
from earlier and later poems which otherwise had similar artistic aims. Even less
than for other areas of technique can an examination of details here be a substitute
for the total impression which one can gain only by reading the work for oneself; but
we must attempt to establish a kind of standard type of the sublime.
Homer's Hephaestus is a grimy smith of supernatural skill, who sweats at the
bellows himself, and when important visitors are expected, lays his tools tidily in
their box, has a wash and puts on a clean shirt; Virgil's Vulcan is the god who rules
the fire, served by the powerful Cyclopes, and who, when armour needs to be forged
for Aeneas, does not turn his own hand to it but orders his slaves to set to work. This
is a typical example of the difference between the world of the gods in Homer and in
Virgil. Homer's gods are men, except that the bounds of their physical limitations
have been extended or removed; Virgil's gods are the supreme powers which rule
the universe, who have taken on human form only because they cannot otherwise be
made visible. In this form, as active characters in a poem, it is true that they are
liable to a certain degree of human frailty: but only precisely as much as is essential
for the story, and never in a way that appears petty. Thus their Olympian life-style
has little of the earthy about it: they do not sit feasting and drinking and playing the
lyre and laughing uproariously; they do not bicker, if they do argue it is in passion-
ate but well-chosen words; they do not threaten each other with insults and jeers,
they do not attack and wound each other and therefore do not need to weep with
483 anger or roar with pain. The way in which they intervene in earthly matters matches
this. No Virgilian god meets a mortal in battle; even at the destruction of Ilium, in
which they have a hand, they are not among the combatants. They do not concern
themselves with minor matters: it is beneath their dignity to intervene in the Games,
and Cloanthus' ship is brought to the finishing-line not by Neptune but by a host of
subordinate maritime spirits. When help is needed, they come to their favourites in
person: in this way Venus reveals herself to her son, Apollo comes to warn Asca-
nius, Mercury to warn Aeneas. When they wish to do harm, they do not dirty their
own hands: Juno has Aeolus raise the tempest, Allecto raise the war, Juturna break
the treaty; Diana gives bow and arrow to her nymph to execute the sentence on
Camilla's murderer, Neptune lets Palinurus be pushed into the sea by the god of
sleep, although he himself personally opens the Syrtes with his trident in order to
rescue Aeneas. Minerva would certainly not behave like Homer's Athena, who
delivers Hector to his doom with a shameful deception:[17] when Juno deceives
Turnus with a mirage it is in order to rescue him. As with the ignoble, so they are
also kept far from anything teasing or jocular. The scenes in the Olympian nurseries
and living-rooms in Hellenistic poetry were the exact opposite of the sublime: when
Apollonius has Aphrodite receiving two visiting goddesses as a middle-class house-
wife would receive two slightly more distinguished friends, and complaining about
her mischievous rogue of a son and afterwards finding him when he has just beaten
poor Ganymede at knucklebones, Virgil will not have understood how Apollonius
could so parody divine matters in an epic. However, his Venus does not display total
divine sublimity: love, even in its highest forms, cannot be thought of as always
serious. Venus does not behave to her son as gods usually do to mortals; she is freer,
one might almost say flirtatious. She laughs with pleasure at the successful ruse,
when she anticipates the ruin of Juno's evil plan (4.128), she also weeps, and the
king of the gods smiles at her groundless fears (1.228). In her, the personification of
484 love, the sensual aspect of love may also have its due: with her charm she entangles
her husband, as Homer said that the proud queen of the gods does, although sensual
love does not inflame her, the guardian of marriage (1.73; 4.126).
Thus far, the Virgilian world of the gods would satisfy the severest requirements
about avoiding
positively in its working: where it proclaims itself,[18] Nature shudders; it is not
however in the wild disturbance of the elements but in its greatest calm that the poet
finds the divine to be most solemn: Neptune does not stir up the sea with his trident
but calms the waves and chases away the clouds so that the pure blue sky shines
over the motionless water (1.142; 5.820); when Jupiter begins to speak, 'the high
house of the gods is dumb, the earth quakes and is silent, silent the sky, the wind
dies down and the sea levels its waves to a calm' (10.100). The effect of the divine
on the human spirit is equally sublime: each time that a human suspects the presence
of the divine (8.349), or hears a divine voice (3.93; 9.112) or the divinity even
comes bodily to him (p. 256 above), he is seized by the fear of supernatural power,
and is shattered to the depth of his being.
Virgil intensifies the uncanny and horrific aspect of supernatural power, making
it frightful and sublime: he mitigates the horror of the appearance of the Harpies
with two lines which place these scourges of the gods in the realm of hellish
monsters (p. 84 above); the terrifying figures of the Underworld are made both more
intense and more sublime: Cerberus immania terga resolvit fusus humi totoque
ingens extenditur antro (6.422) [relaxing his giant back he sprawled all his length
across the floor of the cave]; the fiery eyes of old Charon (300) are a feature which
banishes any thought of a Lucianic peasant ferryman; the Underworld itself, as
conceived by Virgil, consists of 'the silent fields of the night', the 'hollow house and
empty realm of Dis': Schiller felt how the intensification of horror here strives for
sublimity.[19]
485 The sublimity of the gods is reflected in that of the heroes.[20] In Virgil's world of
heroes there is no room for anything mean or petty. That great kings might quarrel
486 over the possession of slave-girls, that a king's son like Paris might leave the
fighting in order to carry on a love-affair – Virgil would not have believed his
heroes capable of anything like this. The crooked, bad-tempered, brawling Thersites
changes into Drances the demagogue, driven on, it is true, by envy of Turnus' fame,
but standing up for the justified interests of the crowd against Turnus' destructive
whims, a man who, as his behaviour towards Aeneas shows, can still perceive and
respect true greatness. How noble are the reasons which lead the Rutulians to break
the treaty, compared with the selfishness of Pandarus! Even the wicked Mezentius
has something of the 'noble transgressor', and his death is sublime. Dido is driven
along all the labyrinthine ways of passion, but in death, when a person is shown in
his true colours, she finds the sublime words:
Vixi et quem dederat cursum fortuna peregi ,
et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago .
[I have lived my life and finished the course which fortune allotted me. Now my
wraith shall pass in state to the world below]. Finally, the further Aeneas develops
into the perfect hero, the more purely he represents the very type of the sublime. It
goes without saying that Virgil keeps his image free of every mean or petty trait.
However, the conventional and fictitious concept of Roman greatness of soul and
strength of character receives a slap in the face when Virgil says of his hero at his
first appearance (1.92):
487 extemplo Aeneae solvuntur frigore membra ;
ingemit et duplicis tendens ad sidera palmas
talia voce refert .
[Instantly Aeneas felt his limbs give way in a chill of terror, and groaned. Stretching
both hands, palm-upward, to the stars, he cried aloud]. Virgil most certainly gave
very careful consideration to this passage in particular, as also to the words which
Aeneas then speaks. He sees death standing immediately in front of him, he knows
that no human power can help him now: but he may not express any fear of death or
any wish to remain alive, as Achilles ( Iliad 21.273) and Odysseus (Odyssey 5.299)
do in similar situations – that would be as unworthy of the hero here as it would be
when he has achieved sublimity (9.10); he is only allowed to express the wish that
he had fallen below Troy's walls, watched by his own household, as Hector and
Sarpedon and so many other brave men had died.[21] In the same way as Aeneas sighs
at his misfortune here but does not complain – conqueri fortunam adversam , non
lamentari decet [one ought to lament one's ill-fortune but not bewail it] Pacuvius
had said, and thereby pleased the Stoic-minded Cicero ( Tusc . 2.48) – he is allowed
to weep at the sight of Hector dishonoured (2.279) and Pallas killed (11.29, 41), at
the memory of the death of noble friends and heroes (1.459, cf. 465, 470, 485) or at
the affecting departure of Andromache (3.492) tears of pity also befit the hero;[22] but
even when he would be inclined to despair, he must be capable of putting on a show
of cheerfulness if duty demands it (1.208), should not let himself be so carried away
by his own grief that he acts in a way contrary to his great mission (4.448), should,
after he has paid the tribute of grief when it is due, return immediately to active
488 service (11.96); the sublime spirit shows itself not in the suppression of human
emotions, but in overcoming them. Aeneas as lover: it is impossible to think of him
billing and cooing; slanderous Fama speaks of a licentious, idle life: Aeneas builds
the citadel which will one day protect the deadly enemies of his people (4.260).
When it comes to practical details, we find that the same is true of Aeneas and the
other heroes as we found with the gods. Aeneas is permitted to slay the stag on the
Libyan shore, but not, like Odysseus, gut it with his own hands and carry it to the
ships. Also, he does not travel alone like any common wanderer, but has at least the
faithful Achates at his side, who carries his weapon or can announce his arrival
(6.34). It is totally inappropriate to the dignity of a heroic poem to include unnecess-
ary mention of the details of daily life, eating and drinking, sleeping and dressing;
where they are mentioned, there is a special reason for it: someone is asleep when he
sees a dream-vision, the meal symbolizes the return of physical pleasure after deadly
dangers (1.174, 210), or it brings the fulfilment of a fateful prediction: and if in this
and similar cases a detail such as the eating of the tables has to be mentioned, then at
least all the splendour of language is called on, to decorate with words what is
lacking in greatness.[23] It is a different matter with festive occasions (1.637, 723;
3.353; cf. also 5.100); there royal splendour is displayed in spacious halls, one
reclines on purple rugs, dines from silver and golden dishes and drinks from a
bejewelled cup. But even at such moments of leisure the minds of the character are
on noble things: Demodocus could serve up as a trifle for the Phaeacians a frivolous
frolic from Olympian married life; at Queen Dido's court Iopas sings of the wonders
of the universe and explains its mysteries: for Virgil and his contemporaries this is
the sublimest content of song. How Virgil deliberately avoids anything base in these
matters is best shown by the one exception: the visit to Evander is described in
deliberately plain language. There is repeated eating and drinking, the men are
489 pillowed on the grass, Aeneas has the seat of honour, the hornbeam stool covered
with sheepskin; Evander's herd of cattle snorts on the pasture; Aeneas enters the
lowly hut which serves as a guest chamber, a bear-skin covers his couch of leaves;
when sunrise and birdsong wake the king, he puts on tunic and sandals, girds on his
sword, puts a panther-skin round him for a cloak and goes to his visitor, two hounds,
the guardians of his threshold, at his side. All these plain details are the exact
opposite of the sublime: yet they serve it indirectly, for the cosily impoverished
still-life of the Romanae conditor arcis [founder of Rome's citadel] is intended to
make the reader, surrounded as he is by the splendour and the buzzing life of
metropolitan Rome, appreciate the present greatness all the more because of the
contrast.
In what we have said so far about Virgil's presentation of the human characters
there is already much which does not merely avoid
strives positively after the sublime. I do not need to spell out how this dominated
Virgil's moral sphere: virtus , manly behaviour towards both human enemies and the
blows of fate, is the ideal, alongside pietas , which shows itself at its sublimest in
self-sacrifice. As in the case of the gods, Virgil seeks to carry his audience along
with him by describing the effect which ideal humanity has: think of the behaviour
of Aeneas when Dido receives him, of Drances towards Aeneas, of Ascanius to-
wards the daring pair of friends, of Aeneas at Lausus' self-sacrifice – that all serves,
as it were, to show the audience how to feel admiration.
Inward greatness is symbolized by physical size; Virgil sees his heroes as power-
ful figures of great strength; ingens [huge], always one of Virgil's favourite words,[24]
is used again and again of the heroes and their deeds. With this concept of greatness,
Virgil does sometimes become immoderate, which is very rare with him. It can
perhaps by excused by the intentionally mythical character of the boxing-match at
the Funeral Games where the caestus [thongs] with which Entellus will fight are
manufactured from seven huge ox-skins (5.401); but when the boulder which
490 Turnus picks up would not, as in Homer, be too heavy for two men of the present
generation, but could hardly be carried by twelve specially selected men (12.899),
then the intensification is so exaggerated that it misses its mark. When Aeneas and
Turnus prepare for the duel, Latinus feels the sublime power of destiny, which has
led the two huge men from distant parts of the world to meet in battle (12.709): one
can understand this feeling;[25] but to compare Aeneas with Mount Athos, with Mount
Eryx, and finally with the snow-covered Apennines, is asking too much of the
imagination.
The tendency towards the magnificent and the sublime also affects the portrayal
of nature in the Aeneid . The Trojans' landing place in Libya is the equivalent of the
harbour of Phorcys on Ithaca, where the Phaeacians land: the steep promontories on
either side of the harbour have been made by Virgil into mighty cliffs with summits
that reach the sky; instead of the one olive tree throwing a wide shadow, in the
background he has a tall grove, murky and gloomy. No real site is described in
anything like as much detail as Mount Etna, thundering, flame-spitting and mighty
(3.570-82): it also serves in the
sublime in nature (35.4).
There is one source of the sublime which we have not yet mentioned and which,
it is true, does not often come to the surface in Virgil's poem, but is all the stronger
when it does, and its subterranean rumble accompanies the poem from beginning to
end: the greatness of Rome, of the Roman people and of their ruler, of Roman
history and of the Roman empire, the maiestas populi Romani [majesty of the
Roman people]. The thoughts which would be most likely to make a Roman feel the
awe of the sublime were all linked to these ideas: the thought of the strength of
destiny and the will of the gods, guiding the Roman people in such a miraculous
way; the thought, which Virgil's contemporaries also like to use, that from the
smallest of beginnings such gigantic greatness can grow; but also the thought of the
endless toil and sacrifice which has been the price of this greatness: as Livy feels,
491 when he comes to the great wars against the Samnites, Pyrrhus and Carthage:
quanta rerum moles [what mighty efforts]! 'How often the greatest dangers had to
be faced, in order that the empire might reach its present almost unencompassable
size!' (7.29). And it is just this thought which Virgil puts at the beginning, as if to set
the tone which will resound through all the sufferings and dangers that Aeneas will
undergo: tantae molis erat Romanam condere gentem [such was the cost in heavy
toil of beginning the life of Rome]. As well as these general sublime feelings there
are also more concrete concepts: the great figures of Roman history whom Aeneas
sees in the Pageant of Heroes, the famous deeds of his descendants, which he
admires on his shield, although he cannot yet understand their significance: such
sublime material was, in Virgil's opinion, more appropriate for the decoration of the
armour of a Roman hero than the colourful scenes of human life in general which
decorated the shield of Achilles. Just as the person of Augustus is the high point in
the pageant of heroes, so the deeds of Augustus crown the images on the shield;
Augustus as prince of peace, wearing the crown of victory, a god on earth, forms the
high point of Jupiter's prophecy, the essential pièce de résistance in the First Book
which paints in glowing colours the tenor of the poem which the poet himself has
expressed in the opening lines in plain words. Just as Augustus is hallowed among
men, so is the Capitol hallowed among all sites on earth: Aeneas still does not guess
at this when he first sees the wooded height, but the sublime future soon proclaims
itself in the pious shudder which the Arcadians feel at the site where Jupiter appears
in the storm-clouds. The sublime concept of infinity is summoned to the aid of these
images: the rule of Lavinium and Alba was limited, Rome's rule will have no limit
to its territory or to its duration (1.278); incluta Roma imperium terris , animos
aequabit Olympo (6.789) [illustrious Rome shall extend her authority to the breadth
of the earth, and her spirit to the height of Olympus]: Virgil's time saw the fulfil-
ment of Anchises' prophecy.
Virgil's highest aim was to arouse a sense of the sublime in his audience; this
defines and limits every other aspect of the poem. Even the
[astonishing] is only allowed if it is also
Virgilian colouring. In particular, Virgil's pathos is ruled and directed by this. We
have seen that Virgil did not merely strive to arouse pity by any available means; he
492 scorned anything depressing or merely worrying or melancholy-making and restricts
himself almost entirely to the portrayal of heroic suffering which will not just be a
source of pleasurable pain to the onlooker but will also inspire him. He also scorns
anything revolting, common or unpleasant, the
the sublimely terrible. Finally, Virgil's striving after the sublime is also the key to
the complete understanding of Virgil's presentation and composition. Great, unclut-
tered contours, organization and clarity on both the small scale and the larger scale,
a tight structure, omission of all superfluous detail which might distract the gaze and
spoil the unified effect – these were the principles which, as we have seen, rule both
presentation and composition; they beget the form which is the only one worthy of
the sublime material.
The Romans were receptive to the sublime, in Virgil's sense, as no other people
were. They possessed a strongly developed sense of the lowest level of the sublime,
the dignity of outward appearance; the national toga is its most eloquent symbol,
and was felt to be such, as Virgil himself shows when he speaks of the gens togata
(1.282) [the nation which wears the toga]. They also had a great sense of the solemn:
their manner of celebrating festivals, their funerals and triumphal processions bear
witness to this: when Virgil depicts the burial of Misenus, the funeral of Pallas, the
solemn procession when the treaty is agreed, he is providing scenes which are not
only poetically attractive but which most vividly represent the Roman way of think-
ing and feeling. However, it would be quite wrong to think of their thoughts as being
directed only towards outward dignity and outward show. The Roman moral and
religious ideal may have been limited and sober, but none can deny that it contained
an element of the sublime, even if in fact very few Romans in the whole course of
their history ever made this ideal into a reality; that it was created at all is evidence
of their aspirations. Moreover, if the Augustan period and its greatness were a
powerful source of sublime feelings for Virgil, it was doubtless the same, to the
same extent, for his contemporaries. A great wind blows through their times and
dies down all too soon; they breathe in a certain intoxication from the sublime,
493 which infects even such an unsublime nature as Horace; it cannot be mere chance
that it was in Augustan Rome that the concept of the sublime was introduced into
scholarly aesthetics. No-one desired and promoted this movement more than
Augustus himself: countless tiny details still speak to us of how keen he was to
re-establish in the Roman life-style the greatness which it was piously believed to
have possessed in the good old days: Augustus' own statue is itself the most perfect
expression of this, the supreme example of the style. It was the early history of
Rome that Virgil was describing, and this meant that he was describing the ideal of
contemporary Rome; he did not dream up or construct or imitate this ideal, he
experienced it and struggled for it himself; that is why it still lives on for us in his
poem.
466