[Milton-L] On Vergil

[Mario DiCesare]

Jim Watt's lively comment prompts some animadversions on Vergil and Rome, and some 
gentle modifications of his statement. While it is generally true that for most of 
the first 19 centuries after Vergil's death, he was thought to be a front man for 
Augustus, two important qualifications need to be made. First, throughout the ages, 
there have been vigorous dissenters from what seemed to be received opinion. (Craig 
Kallendorf, among others, has devoted a fair amount of space to studying some of 
them in recent years.) Second, the imperialist interpretation of "The Aeneid" has 
had a very rocky history in the last half-century and more.

Few Vergilian scholars and critics consider Vergil anything like a propagandist for 
Augustus any longer. That notion has been thoroughly discredited, at least in this 
country. Much was made for a time of an "optimistic" European school of criticism 
and a "pessimistic," mostly American school. Whatever the merits of such 
classification, the fact is that a host of first-rate scholar-critics have read the 
poem as quite other than a paean of praise for Augustus -- such as Wendell Clausen 
(of the so-called "Harvard School") and including such as Michael C. J. Putnam ("The 
Poetry of the Aeneid," 1965, and other works), Adam Parry, R. A. Brooks, R. D. 
Williams, A. J. Boyle, and Richard Thomas, among others. To these one should add 
Roland Austin, the distinguished British editor of several books of "The Aeneid" 
published by Oxford. Austin did not, I think, belong to any school, but his superb 
commentaries on individual books of "The Aeneid" reflect many of the same views. 
Parvulus inter magnos, I might also cite my own book on Vergil, which developed 
quite independently of the "Harvard School" from its first complete draft in 1963-64 
to its publication (Columbia UP, 1974).

It is difficult to think that Milton himself would have viewed Vergil as 
pro-Augustus; I know of no clear evidence on this question, but the spirit that 
animates "Paradise Lost" seems to me hardly distant from the spirit that animated 
Vergil's great critical poem.

Mario A. DiCesare




Watt, James wrote:
 > .... If anything comes through P.L. for those of us (few certainly --and probably
less likely to claim the 'fit' title) who love epic, it's that he truly loves his
great mentor Virgil for his cheerful dedication  to a hopeless task: acting as a
P.R. man for a bloody crew of fascists, trying to put a positive spin on one of
history's biggest land grabs by making the case for ROME (for Christ's sake! I am
tempted to say anachronistically)!  Working for Caesar is like trying to make Donald
Trump into a benefactor of the Arts.  But both our poets are true to something so
much greater than their putative models; they make out of the mess of reality a
glittering ideal --and so inspire their readers to doing the same in their own
little lives, leaving something behind for their kids to believe in, something to
help them survive the latest version (the one sold by political hacks and cynical
priests) with their souls intact and their eyes on the stars....