The Aeneid as the Quintessential Classic

There is a certain pleasure that is derived from reading the classics that cannot be experienced by reading contemporary literature. That is not to assert a kind of chronological snobbery that says older literature is automatically better literature. There is plenty of older literature that has been forgotten or ignored because it lacked the peculiar qualities inherent in a classic. In the same way, it is also true there is some promising contemporary literature possessing those qualities which are inherent in classic literature. The problem is contemporary literature, by virtue of its novelty, has not been in existence long enough to be tried by the fires of time.

The question is, then, by what standard can we judge a work to see if it is a classic? In other words, what are the marks of a classic work? And, what is an example of a work that manifests these marks? The poet, T. S. Eliot, argues that a classic work is one that is marked by maturity and suggests Virgil’s Aeneid is perhaps the quintessential classic, a model by which other potential classics might be judged.

In Eliot’s essay, “What is a Classic?,” he asserts “whatever the definition we arrive at, it cannot be one which excludes Virgil—we may say confidently that it must be one which will expressly reckon with him.” Although Eliot dissuades his readers from assuming he means Virgil is the “greatest poet who ever wrote,” his conviction is there is a standard possessed of all classics in which Virgil’s poetry is exemplary. Whatever definition he is able to derive must reconcile with Virgil, and not the other way around. Eliot summarizes this standard as maturity. He writes, “A classic can only occur when a civilization is mature; when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.”

It would be hard to disagree with his assessment, not because of Eliot’s veritable credibility as a poet and literary critic, but because examples of said maturity abound throughout the Aeneid. That is not to say the reader can expect to find mature ideas and episodes thoroughly littered across the pages of the epic like coins scattered along the bottom of a public fountain. Rather, Virgil’s maturity as a poet emerges out of the very fabric of his time, his language, and his mind the same way gemstones and gold nuggets, being part of the earth, reveal themselves to the experienced miner as something other, something pleasant and desirable, something worthy of possession and contemplation.

The Mind and Manner of Writing

As an example of Virgil’s maturity of mind and manner of writing, Eliot cites the episode in Book VI of the Aeneid where Aeneas interacts with the shade of Dido in Hades. He asserts the meeting of the two former lovers is “not only one of the most poignant, but one of the most civilized passages in poetry. It is complex in meaning and economical in expression, for it not only tells us about the attitude of Dido—still more important is what it tells us about the attitude of Aeneas.” That he weeps and speaks to her in “tender love” while she snubs him suggests to Eliot that Aeneas is unable to forgive himself though his actions were performed, not of his own free will, but on orders from the gods. In this scene, Virgil effectively captures and conveys one of the paradoxes of the human condition—the conflict between love and duty, and the consequences each must live with in light of the choices made.

Its Universality

This naturally leads to a second example of the maturity of Virgil’s epic—its universality, the fact that the characters transcend provincialis. To say it another way, Virgil’s characters, though Trojan, Carthaginian, Italian, etc., consistently represent human nature in all times, all ethnicities, all languages, and all conditions. For example, in contrast to Turnus, a flat character with no future, Aeneas is a man with a destiny. In contrast to Dido, a queen deceived, distracted, and overwhelmed to death by love, Aeneas is a man who leads well and exhibits pietas despite hardship, suffering and loss. In contrast to the cruel Greeks who sacked his home for glory, Aeneas submits to the gods and sacrificially conquers Italy for a more significant purpose than his own happiness or success, that of a civilization whose “rule will have no end.” In essence, Virgil presents Aeneas as the romanitas exemplar. He is Rome as far as Rome is the embodiment of the nobility, pietas, social order, and just civilization which all humanity desires.

Poetic Style

A third, and final, example of Virgil’s poetic maturity relates to his poetic style. Virgil builds on his exceptional knowledge of Homeric and Latin literature. Because a body of exceptional literature already existed, he was able to borrow expressions, ideas, and devices and then improve upon them. It is only natural that in the first six books of the Aeneid, Virgil reflects and builds upon Homer’s Odyssey, a story of a man and his homecoming from the Trojan War; and in the last six books he reflects on Homer’s Iliad, a story about the battles of the Trojan War. The very opening lines of the Aeneid alerts the reader to this: “Arms and a man I sing, the first from Troy, A fated exile to Lavinian shores in Italy,” writes Virgil. Yet, in reflecting on and building on Homer’s work, Virgil presents his own style. D.O. Ross, Professor Emeritus of Latin and Greek at University of Michigan, notes Virgil’s difference in style in his preface to C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid. He writes,

In his essay On Translating Homer, Matthew Arnold famously characterized Homer’s verse as rapid, plain, and direct in both language and thought, and noble. It is tempting to think of a mountain stream, flowing with the eagerness and confidence of youth, with smooth shoots between the rocks and boulders and quieter eddies at its margins, seldom pausing, rapid, plain and certainly direct. Virgil’s flow is very different: still a stream (by no means a river), still confident in its passages, but growing wider, deeper, unhurried, and fuller from its gathering of other waters along the way. We would not call it rapid, or plain and direct, but noble (to use Arnold’s somewhat antique term) it certainly is, owing much of its nobility to the depths of the shaded pools that have formed along its course, in which we can see, with clarity, reflections and shadowy forms. Virgil’s poetry is above all reflective.

There it is in summary. Virgil’s poetry is reflective and it calls for the contemplation of the reader because it is mature. The maturity of Virgil’s Aeneid is realized in the longevity of its widespread appeal “among all classes and conditions of men,” but its longevity exists, ultimately, because it is mature. Because the work is mature, it possesses the ability to invite readers to reflect not only on its themes and motifs, or its characters and ideas but on itself as a whole. Because Virgil’s poetry is the work of a mature mind, written in a mature language where its civilization and language were already mature, it stands as the quintessential classic, a work that all other works must reconcile themselves to, and work that continues to reveal itself as something pleasant and desirable, something worthy of possession and contemplation.

Bibliography

Eliot, T. S., and Frank Kermode. Selected Prose of T.S. Eliot. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975.

Reyes, A. T., Walter Hooper, and David O. Ross. C.S. Lewis’s Lost Aeneid: Arms and the Exile. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011.

Virgil, and Sarah Ruden. The Aeneid. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.