" Thus, weepsng whde he spoke, he took hu way,
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
?
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
?
Dryden - Virgil - Aeineid
?
" Thus, weepsng whde he spoke, he took hu way,
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
? THE/_RVARD CLASSICS EDITED BJIr CHARLES W ELIOT LLD
VIRGIL'S _TENE ID TRANSL',TED BY JOHN DRYDEN
WITII INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
VOLUME 13
P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK
? By P F COL_IZR & SON MANUFACTURED I_ U S A
_INDI _. N"A UNIV _o,_ IT_r
LIB i'-__ Y INDIANAPOLIS
Designed. Printed. and Bound at ? ;be _. ollter lPre_, ,IP_et__orl_
? DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
pAGI8 5
75 XO3
I3l
I56
182
211
243
2_2
S97
3s6 360
394
CONTENTS
T-B FU_T BOOK OP THE _E_xs . . . . . . . . . . TEE SECOND BOOK OF Tm_ . _I_8 . . . . . . . . . THE THntD BOOK OF THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . . T_8[E FOURTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . T/KE FIFTH BOOK OF THE . _NEI8 . . . . . . . . .
SIXTH BOOK OF TEE . _NEIB . . . . . . . . . .
SEVENTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
EIGHTH BOOK oP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
THB NINTH BOOK OP THE _HEIS . . . . . . . . . .
TH_ T_T_ Book o# THE ,tE_xs . . . . . . . . . THZ ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE . _NEm . . . . . . . . 'I_WELIW_H BOOK O_ THE _NEIB . . . . . . . .
H0--Vol. 18---i 1
? INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Pt,'m_s Vr_s M,_to, the frsend of Augustus and the great representative poet of the first age of the Roman Empire, was a man of humble origin. Born Oct. zS, B. C. 70, the son of a small farmer near Mantua in Northern Italy, he was educated at Cremona, Mdan, and Rome. Probably as a result of the turmo:l of the Csvil Wars, Virgil seems to have returned to h_ natwe district, where he was engaged for some ttme m writing h_s "Eclogues. " Though he was never a soldier, and though there is no evidence of h:_ having taken any par_ in politics, he suffered severely from the results of the wars. Hss fathers farm lay within the ter_tory which was confiscated by the Tr;umvsrs for the purpose of bestowing grants of land upon thew soldiers, and Virgil succeeded m having it restored only through the personal inter'uent:on of Octawanus, the future emperor. But a change of governors deprsved hm_ of protection, and he was forced to
desert kis heritage in peril o/deatk,escaping only by swimming the river Mmcw. The rest o/his life was spent farther south, in Rome, Naples, Ssc;ly, and elsewhere. As he gamed _eputat_on he became the possessor of a large fortune, bestowed upon hsm by the generosity of friends and patrons, the most d_tzngu_hed of whom, apart [rom Augustus, was M_cenas, the center of the literary aocsety of the day. The "Eclogues" had been finished :n B. C. 37, and m B. C. 30 he published hss great poem on farming, the "Georgics. " It is characteristic of h;s laborious method of composition that this work oflittle more than 2,0o0lmea occupzed hlm for seven years
The completion of the "Georgics" established Virgil's posstlon as the chief poet of h;s time; and at this momentous date, when, the Civil Wars over, the victorious Augustus was laying the foundations of imperial government, the poem which was to be the supreme expression ofthe national life was begun. At the end of eleven years Virgil had written the whole of the ",_neid;' and planned to devote three more to its final re'vision But this revision was never accomphshed, for returning from Athene w_th Augustus in B. C. zg, he was seined with illness and died on Sep- tember zz. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb guas long a placeof relsgious pilgrimage.
3
? 4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The modern appredahon of the "Ihad" and the #Odyssey" has
tended to carry with it a deprec,ation of the "A_neut,'" the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time. But it is foolish to lose sight o[ the splendor of a poet who, [or nearly two thousand years, has been one of the most powerful factors m European culture. "The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all timem," says one of the finest of h_s critics, "marks h,m out as one of the greatest masters of the language whwh touches the heart or moves the manher sens:b;hties, who has ever bred. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformsty to the deeper experiences of life sn every age, a fine humamty as well as a generous elevation of feehng, and some magical charm of music in hss words, have enabled them to _erve many m;nds m many ages as a symbol of some swelhng thought or overmastermg emotson, the force and meamng of which they could scarcely define to themselves "
The subtler elements of the exqmsste style of Vwgzl no tracm- lator can ever hope to reproduce, but Dryden was a master of Enghsh versification, and the content of V_rg_l's epw _s here rendered _n wgorous and nervous couplels. "Desptle man. ? , revoluhons of pubhc taste,'" says Professor Noyes, Dryden's latest editor, "Dryden's Virgil shll rema,n_ prachcally ztnthout a r,val as the standard translat*on of the greatest Roman poet; the only one that, like tzvo or three vers, ons of Homer. has become an English classic "
lJ_'o'den's "Dedication" is an excellent example of hzs prose style, and gives an interesting view o? lhe method and slandpotnt oI the greatest of English seventeenth century critics.
? TO THE
MOST HONORABLE
JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY
EARL OF MULGRAVE, &C.
AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER
HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the great- est work which the soul of man is capable to per- form. The design of it is to form the mind to he-
roic virtue by example 'T is convey'd in verse, that it may delight, while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes, or underactions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design ; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imper- fect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagln'd more suitable to the place in which they are There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be fill'd with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, de- structive to the strength,) but with brick or stone, tho' of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the cran- nies Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical,-and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling no_,els which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is design'd in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, laboring and hast'ning in every line; the other slackens his pace, 5
? 6 DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL
diverts him from his way, and locks him up, likl a knlghto errant, in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observ'd, was ambttlous of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were cele- brated at the funerals of Patroclus. V_rgil imltated the in- vention of Homer, but chang'd the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the sub- ject; tho' to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or at best convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statms, who, thro' his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon,
Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions, (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the-two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had lei- sure to perform when the siege was rais'd, and in the in- terval betwixt the poet's first action and his second, went out of his way, as it were on prepense malice, to commit a fault. For he took his opportumty to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honors which he intended for him. Now if th_s innocent had been of any relation to his Theba_? ; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the town; the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least, for detaining the reader from the promis'd siege. On these tehns, this Capaneus of a poet ingag'd his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his en- terprise.
If this economy must be observ'd in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detach'd from the body, and almost independent of it; what soul, tho' sent into the world with great advantages of na- ture, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conver- sant with histories of the dead, and enrich'd with observa- tions of the living, can be suifcient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, ,without any strict method, on some few of those many rules _f imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's
? DEDICATION OF THE IENEIS 7
Iliads and Odysses, and which he fitted to the drama; fur- nishing himself also with observations from the practice of the theater when it flourish'd under 2Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles: for the original of the stage was from the epic poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it; what at first was told artfully,-was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight and hearing Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action; out of his limbs they form'd their bodies; what he had contracted, they en- larg'd; out of one Hercules were made infinite of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from him, their great creator, they have each of them the divine partlculara aure. They flow'd from him at first, and are at last resolv'd into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their meas- ure and symmetry was owing to him. His one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the propor- tions of the drama. If he finish'd his orb within the year, it suflic'd to teach them, that their action being less, and being also less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be circumscrib'd in a less compass, which they reduc'd within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day; so that, as he taught them to amplify what he had shorten'd, by the same rule, applied the contrary way, he taught them to shorten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draught at length.
" Thus, weepsng whde he spoke, he took hu way,
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
? THE/_RVARD CLASSICS EDITED BJIr CHARLES W ELIOT LLD
VIRGIL'S _TENE ID TRANSL',TED BY JOHN DRYDEN
WITII INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
VOLUME 13
P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK
? By P F COL_IZR & SON MANUFACTURED I_ U S A
_INDI _. N"A UNIV _o,_ IT_r
LIB i'-__ Y INDIANAPOLIS
Designed. Printed. and Bound at ? ;be _. ollter lPre_, ,IP_et__orl_
? DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
pAGI8 5
75 XO3
I3l
I56
182
211
243
2_2
S97
3s6 360
394
CONTENTS
T-B FU_T BOOK OP THE _E_xs . . . . . . . . . . TEE SECOND BOOK OF Tm_ . _I_8 . . . . . . . . . THE THntD BOOK OF THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . . T_8[E FOURTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . T/KE FIFTH BOOK OF THE . _NEI8 . . . . . . . . .
SIXTH BOOK OF TEE . _NEIB . . . . . . . . . .
SEVENTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
EIGHTH BOOK oP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
THB NINTH BOOK OP THE _HEIS . . . . . . . . . .
TH_ T_T_ Book o# THE ,tE_xs . . . . . . . . . THZ ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE . _NEm . . . . . . . . 'I_WELIW_H BOOK O_ THE _NEIB . . . . . . . .
H0--Vol. 18---i 1
? INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Pt,'m_s Vr_s M,_to, the frsend of Augustus and the great representative poet of the first age of the Roman Empire, was a man of humble origin. Born Oct. zS, B. C. 70, the son of a small farmer near Mantua in Northern Italy, he was educated at Cremona, Mdan, and Rome. Probably as a result of the turmo:l of the Csvil Wars, Virgil seems to have returned to h_ natwe district, where he was engaged for some ttme m writing h_s "Eclogues. " Though he was never a soldier, and though there is no evidence of h:_ having taken any par_ in politics, he suffered severely from the results of the wars. Hss fathers farm lay within the ter_tory which was confiscated by the Tr;umvsrs for the purpose of bestowing grants of land upon thew soldiers, and Virgil succeeded m having it restored only through the personal inter'uent:on of Octawanus, the future emperor. But a change of governors deprsved hm_ of protection, and he was forced to
desert kis heritage in peril o/deatk,escaping only by swimming the river Mmcw. The rest o/his life was spent farther south, in Rome, Naples, Ssc;ly, and elsewhere. As he gamed _eputat_on he became the possessor of a large fortune, bestowed upon hsm by the generosity of friends and patrons, the most d_tzngu_hed of whom, apart [rom Augustus, was M_cenas, the center of the literary aocsety of the day. The "Eclogues" had been finished :n B. C. 37, and m B. C. 30 he published hss great poem on farming, the "Georgics. " It is characteristic of h;s laborious method of composition that this work oflittle more than 2,0o0lmea occupzed hlm for seven years
The completion of the "Georgics" established Virgil's posstlon as the chief poet of h;s time; and at this momentous date, when, the Civil Wars over, the victorious Augustus was laying the foundations of imperial government, the poem which was to be the supreme expression ofthe national life was begun. At the end of eleven years Virgil had written the whole of the ",_neid;' and planned to devote three more to its final re'vision But this revision was never accomphshed, for returning from Athene w_th Augustus in B. C. zg, he was seined with illness and died on Sep- tember zz. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb guas long a placeof relsgious pilgrimage.
3
? 4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The modern appredahon of the "Ihad" and the #Odyssey" has
tended to carry with it a deprec,ation of the "A_neut,'" the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time. But it is foolish to lose sight o[ the splendor of a poet who, [or nearly two thousand years, has been one of the most powerful factors m European culture. "The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all timem," says one of the finest of h_s critics, "marks h,m out as one of the greatest masters of the language whwh touches the heart or moves the manher sens:b;hties, who has ever bred. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformsty to the deeper experiences of life sn every age, a fine humamty as well as a generous elevation of feehng, and some magical charm of music in hss words, have enabled them to _erve many m;nds m many ages as a symbol of some swelhng thought or overmastermg emotson, the force and meamng of which they could scarcely define to themselves "
The subtler elements of the exqmsste style of Vwgzl no tracm- lator can ever hope to reproduce, but Dryden was a master of Enghsh versification, and the content of V_rg_l's epw _s here rendered _n wgorous and nervous couplels. "Desptle man. ? , revoluhons of pubhc taste,'" says Professor Noyes, Dryden's latest editor, "Dryden's Virgil shll rema,n_ prachcally ztnthout a r,val as the standard translat*on of the greatest Roman poet; the only one that, like tzvo or three vers, ons of Homer. has become an English classic "
lJ_'o'den's "Dedication" is an excellent example of hzs prose style, and gives an interesting view o? lhe method and slandpotnt oI the greatest of English seventeenth century critics.
? TO THE
MOST HONORABLE
JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY
EARL OF MULGRAVE, &C.
AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER
HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the great- est work which the soul of man is capable to per- form. The design of it is to form the mind to he-
roic virtue by example 'T is convey'd in verse, that it may delight, while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes, or underactions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design ; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imper- fect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagln'd more suitable to the place in which they are There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be fill'd with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, de- structive to the strength,) but with brick or stone, tho' of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the cran- nies Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical,-and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling no_,els which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is design'd in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, laboring and hast'ning in every line; the other slackens his pace, 5
? 6 DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL
diverts him from his way, and locks him up, likl a knlghto errant, in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observ'd, was ambttlous of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were cele- brated at the funerals of Patroclus. V_rgil imltated the in- vention of Homer, but chang'd the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the sub- ject; tho' to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or at best convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statms, who, thro' his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon,
Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions, (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the-two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had lei- sure to perform when the siege was rais'd, and in the in- terval betwixt the poet's first action and his second, went out of his way, as it were on prepense malice, to commit a fault. For he took his opportumty to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honors which he intended for him. Now if th_s innocent had been of any relation to his Theba_? ; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the town; the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least, for detaining the reader from the promis'd siege. On these tehns, this Capaneus of a poet ingag'd his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his en- terprise.
If this economy must be observ'd in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detach'd from the body, and almost independent of it; what soul, tho' sent into the world with great advantages of na- ture, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conver- sant with histories of the dead, and enrich'd with observa- tions of the living, can be suifcient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, ,without any strict method, on some few of those many rules _f imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's
? DEDICATION OF THE IENEIS 7
Iliads and Odysses, and which he fitted to the drama; fur- nishing himself also with observations from the practice of the theater when it flourish'd under 2Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles: for the original of the stage was from the epic poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it; what at first was told artfully,-was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight and hearing Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action; out of his limbs they form'd their bodies; what he had contracted, they en- larg'd; out of one Hercules were made infinite of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from him, their great creator, they have each of them the divine partlculara aure. They flow'd from him at first, and are at last resolv'd into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their meas- ure and symmetry was owing to him. His one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the propor- tions of the drama. If he finish'd his orb within the year, it suflic'd to teach them, that their action being less, and being also less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be circumscrib'd in a less compass, which they reduc'd within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day; so that, as he taught them to amplify what he had shorten'd, by the same rule, applied the contrary way, he taught them to shorten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draught at length. Here, my Lord, I must contract also; for, before I was aware, I was almost running into a long digression, to prove that there is no such absolute necessity that the time of a stage action should so strictly be confin'd to twenty-four hours as never to exceed them, for which Aristotle contends, and the Grecian stage has practic'd. Some longer space, on some occasions, I think, may be allow'd, especially for the English theater, which requires more variety of incidents than the French.
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
? THE/_RVARD CLASSICS EDITED BJIr CHARLES W ELIOT LLD
VIRGIL'S _TENE ID TRANSL',TED BY JOHN DRYDEN
WITII INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
VOLUME 13
P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK
? By P F COL_IZR & SON MANUFACTURED I_ U S A
_INDI _. N"A UNIV _o,_ IT_r
LIB i'-__ Y INDIANAPOLIS
Designed. Printed. and Bound at ? ;be _. ollter lPre_, ,IP_et__orl_
? DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
pAGI8 5
75 XO3
I3l
I56
182
211
243
2_2
S97
3s6 360
394
CONTENTS
T-B FU_T BOOK OP THE _E_xs . . . . . . . . . . TEE SECOND BOOK OF Tm_ . _I_8 . . . . . . . . . THE THntD BOOK OF THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . . T_8[E FOURTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . T/KE FIFTH BOOK OF THE . _NEI8 . . . . . . . . .
SIXTH BOOK OF TEE . _NEIB . . . . . . . . . .
SEVENTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
EIGHTH BOOK oP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
THB NINTH BOOK OP THE _HEIS . . . . . . . . . .
TH_ T_T_ Book o# THE ,tE_xs . . . . . . . . . THZ ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE . _NEm . . . . . . . . 'I_WELIW_H BOOK O_ THE _NEIB . . . . . . . .
H0--Vol. 18---i 1
? INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Pt,'m_s Vr_s M,_to, the frsend of Augustus and the great representative poet of the first age of the Roman Empire, was a man of humble origin. Born Oct. zS, B. C. 70, the son of a small farmer near Mantua in Northern Italy, he was educated at Cremona, Mdan, and Rome. Probably as a result of the turmo:l of the Csvil Wars, Virgil seems to have returned to h_ natwe district, where he was engaged for some ttme m writing h_s "Eclogues. " Though he was never a soldier, and though there is no evidence of h:_ having taken any par_ in politics, he suffered severely from the results of the wars. Hss fathers farm lay within the ter_tory which was confiscated by the Tr;umvsrs for the purpose of bestowing grants of land upon thew soldiers, and Virgil succeeded m having it restored only through the personal inter'uent:on of Octawanus, the future emperor. But a change of governors deprsved hm_ of protection, and he was forced to
desert kis heritage in peril o/deatk,escaping only by swimming the river Mmcw. The rest o/his life was spent farther south, in Rome, Naples, Ssc;ly, and elsewhere. As he gamed _eputat_on he became the possessor of a large fortune, bestowed upon hsm by the generosity of friends and patrons, the most d_tzngu_hed of whom, apart [rom Augustus, was M_cenas, the center of the literary aocsety of the day. The "Eclogues" had been finished :n B. C. 37, and m B. C. 30 he published hss great poem on farming, the "Georgics. " It is characteristic of h;s laborious method of composition that this work oflittle more than 2,0o0lmea occupzed hlm for seven years
The completion of the "Georgics" established Virgil's posstlon as the chief poet of h;s time; and at this momentous date, when, the Civil Wars over, the victorious Augustus was laying the foundations of imperial government, the poem which was to be the supreme expression ofthe national life was begun. At the end of eleven years Virgil had written the whole of the ",_neid;' and planned to devote three more to its final re'vision But this revision was never accomphshed, for returning from Athene w_th Augustus in B. C. zg, he was seined with illness and died on Sep- tember zz. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb guas long a placeof relsgious pilgrimage.
3
? 4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The modern appredahon of the "Ihad" and the #Odyssey" has
tended to carry with it a deprec,ation of the "A_neut,'" the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time. But it is foolish to lose sight o[ the splendor of a poet who, [or nearly two thousand years, has been one of the most powerful factors m European culture. "The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all timem," says one of the finest of h_s critics, "marks h,m out as one of the greatest masters of the language whwh touches the heart or moves the manher sens:b;hties, who has ever bred. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformsty to the deeper experiences of life sn every age, a fine humamty as well as a generous elevation of feehng, and some magical charm of music in hss words, have enabled them to _erve many m;nds m many ages as a symbol of some swelhng thought or overmastermg emotson, the force and meamng of which they could scarcely define to themselves "
The subtler elements of the exqmsste style of Vwgzl no tracm- lator can ever hope to reproduce, but Dryden was a master of Enghsh versification, and the content of V_rg_l's epw _s here rendered _n wgorous and nervous couplels. "Desptle man. ? , revoluhons of pubhc taste,'" says Professor Noyes, Dryden's latest editor, "Dryden's Virgil shll rema,n_ prachcally ztnthout a r,val as the standard translat*on of the greatest Roman poet; the only one that, like tzvo or three vers, ons of Homer. has become an English classic "
lJ_'o'den's "Dedication" is an excellent example of hzs prose style, and gives an interesting view o? lhe method and slandpotnt oI the greatest of English seventeenth century critics.
? TO THE
MOST HONORABLE
JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY
EARL OF MULGRAVE, &C.
AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER
HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the great- est work which the soul of man is capable to per- form. The design of it is to form the mind to he-
roic virtue by example 'T is convey'd in verse, that it may delight, while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes, or underactions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design ; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imper- fect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagln'd more suitable to the place in which they are There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be fill'd with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, de- structive to the strength,) but with brick or stone, tho' of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the cran- nies Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical,-and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling no_,els which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is design'd in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, laboring and hast'ning in every line; the other slackens his pace, 5
? 6 DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL
diverts him from his way, and locks him up, likl a knlghto errant, in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observ'd, was ambttlous of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were cele- brated at the funerals of Patroclus. V_rgil imltated the in- vention of Homer, but chang'd the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the sub- ject; tho' to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or at best convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statms, who, thro' his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon,
Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions, (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the-two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had lei- sure to perform when the siege was rais'd, and in the in- terval betwixt the poet's first action and his second, went out of his way, as it were on prepense malice, to commit a fault. For he took his opportumty to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honors which he intended for him. Now if th_s innocent had been of any relation to his Theba_? ; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the town; the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least, for detaining the reader from the promis'd siege. On these tehns, this Capaneus of a poet ingag'd his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his en- terprise.
If this economy must be observ'd in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detach'd from the body, and almost independent of it; what soul, tho' sent into the world with great advantages of na- ture, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conver- sant with histories of the dead, and enrich'd with observa- tions of the living, can be suifcient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, ,without any strict method, on some few of those many rules _f imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's
? DEDICATION OF THE IENEIS 7
Iliads and Odysses, and which he fitted to the drama; fur- nishing himself also with observations from the practice of the theater when it flourish'd under 2Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles: for the original of the stage was from the epic poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it; what at first was told artfully,-was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight and hearing Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action; out of his limbs they form'd their bodies; what he had contracted, they en- larg'd; out of one Hercules were made infinite of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from him, their great creator, they have each of them the divine partlculara aure. They flow'd from him at first, and are at last resolv'd into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their meas- ure and symmetry was owing to him. His one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the propor- tions of the drama. If he finish'd his orb within the year, it suflic'd to teach them, that their action being less, and being also less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be circumscrib'd in a less compass, which they reduc'd within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day; so that, as he taught them to amplify what he had shorten'd, by the same rule, applied the contrary way, he taught them to shorten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draught at length.
" Thus, weepsng whde he spoke, he took hu way,
HTlle_e, nezo in death, lamented Pallas lay"
--Oage 361
? THE/_RVARD CLASSICS EDITED BJIr CHARLES W ELIOT LLD
VIRGIL'S _TENE ID TRANSL',TED BY JOHN DRYDEN
WITII INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES
VOLUME 13
P F COLLIER & SON COMPANY NEW YORK
? By P F COL_IZR & SON MANUFACTURED I_ U S A
_INDI _. N"A UNIV _o,_ IT_r
LIB i'-__ Y INDIANAPOLIS
Designed. Printed. and Bound at ? ;be _. ollter lPre_, ,IP_et__orl_
? DEDICATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
pAGI8 5
75 XO3
I3l
I56
182
211
243
2_2
S97
3s6 360
394
CONTENTS
T-B FU_T BOOK OP THE _E_xs . . . . . . . . . . TEE SECOND BOOK OF Tm_ . _I_8 . . . . . . . . . THE THntD BOOK OF THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . . T_8[E FOURTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . . T/KE FIFTH BOOK OF THE . _NEI8 . . . . . . . . .
SIXTH BOOK OF TEE . _NEIB . . . . . . . . . .
SEVENTH BOOK OP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
EIGHTH BOOK oP THE _NEIS . . . . . . . . .
THB NINTH BOOK OP THE _HEIS . . . . . . . . . .
TH_ T_T_ Book o# THE ,tE_xs . . . . . . . . . THZ ELEVENTH BOOK OF THE . _NEm . . . . . . . . 'I_WELIW_H BOOK O_ THE _NEIB . . . . . . . .
H0--Vol. 18---i 1
? INTRODUCTORY NOTE
Pt,'m_s Vr_s M,_to, the frsend of Augustus and the great representative poet of the first age of the Roman Empire, was a man of humble origin. Born Oct. zS, B. C. 70, the son of a small farmer near Mantua in Northern Italy, he was educated at Cremona, Mdan, and Rome. Probably as a result of the turmo:l of the Csvil Wars, Virgil seems to have returned to h_ natwe district, where he was engaged for some ttme m writing h_s "Eclogues. " Though he was never a soldier, and though there is no evidence of h:_ having taken any par_ in politics, he suffered severely from the results of the wars. Hss fathers farm lay within the ter_tory which was confiscated by the Tr;umvsrs for the purpose of bestowing grants of land upon thew soldiers, and Virgil succeeded m having it restored only through the personal inter'uent:on of Octawanus, the future emperor. But a change of governors deprsved hm_ of protection, and he was forced to
desert kis heritage in peril o/deatk,escaping only by swimming the river Mmcw. The rest o/his life was spent farther south, in Rome, Naples, Ssc;ly, and elsewhere. As he gamed _eputat_on he became the possessor of a large fortune, bestowed upon hsm by the generosity of friends and patrons, the most d_tzngu_hed of whom, apart [rom Augustus, was M_cenas, the center of the literary aocsety of the day. The "Eclogues" had been finished :n B. C. 37, and m B. C. 30 he published hss great poem on farming, the "Georgics. " It is characteristic of h;s laborious method of composition that this work oflittle more than 2,0o0lmea occupzed hlm for seven years
The completion of the "Georgics" established Virgil's posstlon as the chief poet of h;s time; and at this momentous date, when, the Civil Wars over, the victorious Augustus was laying the foundations of imperial government, the poem which was to be the supreme expression ofthe national life was begun. At the end of eleven years Virgil had written the whole of the ",_neid;' and planned to devote three more to its final re'vision But this revision was never accomphshed, for returning from Athene w_th Augustus in B. C. zg, he was seined with illness and died on Sep- tember zz. He was buried at Naples, where his tomb guas long a placeof relsgious pilgrimage.
3
? 4 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
The modern appredahon of the "Ihad" and the #Odyssey" has
tended to carry with it a deprec,ation of the "A_neut,'" the spirit of which appeals less forcibly to the taste of our time. But it is foolish to lose sight o[ the splendor of a poet who, [or nearly two thousand years, has been one of the most powerful factors m European culture. "The concurrent testimony of the most refined minds of all timem," says one of the finest of h_s critics, "marks h,m out as one of the greatest masters of the language whwh touches the heart or moves the manher sens:b;hties, who has ever bred. A mature and mellow truth of sentiment, a conformsty to the deeper experiences of life sn every age, a fine humamty as well as a generous elevation of feehng, and some magical charm of music in hss words, have enabled them to _erve many m;nds m many ages as a symbol of some swelhng thought or overmastermg emotson, the force and meamng of which they could scarcely define to themselves "
The subtler elements of the exqmsste style of Vwgzl no tracm- lator can ever hope to reproduce, but Dryden was a master of Enghsh versification, and the content of V_rg_l's epw _s here rendered _n wgorous and nervous couplels. "Desptle man. ? , revoluhons of pubhc taste,'" says Professor Noyes, Dryden's latest editor, "Dryden's Virgil shll rema,n_ prachcally ztnthout a r,val as the standard translat*on of the greatest Roman poet; the only one that, like tzvo or three vers, ons of Homer. has become an English classic "
lJ_'o'den's "Dedication" is an excellent example of hzs prose style, and gives an interesting view o? lhe method and slandpotnt oI the greatest of English seventeenth century critics.
? TO THE
MOST HONORABLE
JOHN, LORD MARQUIS OF NORMANBY
EARL OF MULGRAVE, &C.
AND KNIGHT OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER
HEROIC poem, truly such, is undoubtedly the great- est work which the soul of man is capable to per- form. The design of it is to form the mind to he-
roic virtue by example 'T is convey'd in verse, that it may delight, while it instructs: the action of it is always one, entire, and great. The least and most trivial episodes, or underactions, which are interwoven in it, are parts either necessary or convenient to carry on the main design ; either so necessary, that, without them, the poem must be imper- fect, or so convenient, that no others can be imagln'd more suitable to the place in which they are There is nothing to be left void in a firm building; even the cavities ought not to be fill'd with rubbish, (which is of a perishable kind, de- structive to the strength,) but with brick or stone, tho' of less pieces, yet of the same nature, and fitted to the cran- nies Even the least portions of them must be of the epic kind: all things must be grave, majestical,-and sublime; nothing of a foreign nature, like the trifling no_,els which Ariosto and others have inserted in their poems; by which the reader is misled into another sort of pleasure, opposite to that which is design'd in an epic poem. One raises the soul, and hardens it to virtue; the other softens it again, and unbends it into vice. One conduces to the poet's aim, the completing of his work, which he is driving on, laboring and hast'ning in every line; the other slackens his pace, 5
? 6 DRYDEN'S TRANSLATION OF VIRGIL
diverts him from his way, and locks him up, likl a knlghto errant, in an enchanted castle, when he should be pursuing his first adventure. Statius, as Bossu has well observ'd, was ambttlous of trying his strength with his master Virgil, as Virgil had before tried his with Homer. The Grecian gave the two Romans an example, in the games which were cele- brated at the funerals of Patroclus. V_rgil imltated the in- vention of Homer, but chang'd the sports. But both the Greek and Latin poet took their occasions from the sub- ject; tho' to confess the truth, they were both ornamental, or at best convenient parts of it, rather than of necessity arising from it. Statms, who, thro' his whole poem, is noted for want of conduct and judgment, instead of staying, as he might have done, for the death of Capaneus, Hippomedon,
Tydeus, or some other of his seven champions, (who are heroes all alike), or more properly for the tragical end of the-two brothers, whose exequies the next successor had lei- sure to perform when the siege was rais'd, and in the in- terval betwixt the poet's first action and his second, went out of his way, as it were on prepense malice, to commit a fault. For he took his opportumty to kill a royal infant by the means of a serpent (that author of all evil), to make way for those funeral honors which he intended for him. Now if th_s innocent had been of any relation to his Theba_? ; if he had either farther'd or hinder'd the taking of the town; the poet might have found some sorry excuse at least, for detaining the reader from the promis'd siege. On these tehns, this Capaneus of a poet ingag'd his two immortal predecessors; and his success was answerable to his en- terprise.
If this economy must be observ'd in the minutest parts of an epic poem, which, to a common reader, seem to be detach'd from the body, and almost independent of it; what soul, tho' sent into the world with great advantages of na- ture, cultivated with the liberal arts and sciences, conver- sant with histories of the dead, and enrich'd with observa- tions of the living, can be suifcient to inform the whole body of so great a work? I touch here but transiently, ,without any strict method, on some few of those many rules _f imitating nature which Aristotle drew from Homer's
? DEDICATION OF THE IENEIS 7
Iliads and Odysses, and which he fitted to the drama; fur- nishing himself also with observations from the practice of the theater when it flourish'd under 2Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles: for the original of the stage was from the epic poem. Narration, doubtless, preceded acting, and gave laws to it; what at first was told artfully,-was, in process of time, represented gracefully to the sight and hearing Those episodes of Homer which were proper for the stage, the poets amplified each into an action; out of his limbs they form'd their bodies; what he had contracted, they en- larg'd; out of one Hercules were made infinite of pigmies, yet all endued with human souls; for from him, their great creator, they have each of them the divine partlculara aure. They flow'd from him at first, and are at last resolv'd into him. Nor were they only animated by him, but their meas- ure and symmetry was owing to him. His one, entire, and great action was copied by them according to the propor- tions of the drama. If he finish'd his orb within the year, it suflic'd to teach them, that their action being less, and being also less diversified with incidents, their orb, of consequence, must be circumscrib'd in a less compass, which they reduc'd within the limits either of a natural or an artificial day; so that, as he taught them to amplify what he had shorten'd, by the same rule, applied the contrary way, he taught them to shorten what he had amplified. Tragedy is the miniature of human life; an epic poem is the draught at length. Here, my Lord, I must contract also; for, before I was aware, I was almost running into a long digression, to prove that there is no such absolute necessity that the time of a stage action should so strictly be confin'd to twenty-four hours as never to exceed them, for which Aristotle contends, and the Grecian stage has practic'd. Some longer space, on some occasions, I think, may be allow'd, especially for the English theater, which requires more variety of incidents than the French.
