Vergil - A Biography
Frank, Tenney, 1876-1939
English
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VERGIL
_A Biography_
By
TENNEY FRANK
_Professor of Latin
in the
Johns Hopkins University_
1922
_TO_
THE MEMORY OF
W. WARDE FOWLER
PREFACE
Modern literary criticism has accustomed us to interpret our masterpieces
in the light of the author's daily experiences and the conditions of the
society in which he lived. The personalities of very few ancient poets,
however, can be realized, and this is perhaps the chief reason why their
works seem to the average man so cold and remote. Vergil's age, with its
terribly intense struggles, lies hidden behind the opaque mists of twenty
centuries: by his very theory of art the poet has conscientiously drawn a
veil between himself and his reader, and the scraps of information about
him 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 has
shown that the meager _Vita_ is a conglomeration of a few chance facts
set into a mass of later conjecture derived from a literal-minded
interpretation of the _Eclogues_, to which there gathered during the
credulous and neurotic decades of the second and third centuries an
accretion 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 another
source. A series of detailed studies of the numerous minor poems
attributed to Vergil by ancient authors and mediaeval manuscripts--till
recently pronounced unauthentic by modern scholars--has compelled most
of us to accept the _Appendix Vergiliana_ at face value. These poems,
written in Vergil's formative years before he had adopted the reserved
manner of the classical style, are full of personal reminiscences. They
reveal many important facts about his daily life, his occupations, his
ambitions and his ideals, and best of all they disclose the processes by
which the poet during an apprenticeship of ten years developed the mature
art of the _Georgics_ and the _Aeneid_. They have made it possible for us
to visualize him with a vividness that is granted us in the case of no
other Latin poet.
The reason for attempting a new biography of Vergil at the present time
is therefore obvious. This essay, conceived with the purpose of centering
attention upon the poet's actual life, has eschewed the larger task of
literary criticism and has also avoided the subject of Vergil's literary
sources--a theme to which scholars have generally devoted too much
acumen. The book is therefore of brief compass, but it has been kept
to its single theme in the conviction that the reader who will study
Vergil's works as in some measure an outgrowth of the poet's own
experiences will find a new meaning in not a few of their lines.
T.F.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I MANTUA DIVES AVIS
II SCHOOL AND WAR
III THE CULEX
IV THE CIRIS
V A STUDENT OF PHILOSOPHY
VI EPIGRAM AND EPIC
VII EPICUREAN POLITICS
VIII LAST DAYS AT THE GARDEN
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