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DESTINY AND RELIGION
their individual free will within the framework of a divine purpose, about the
problems of evil and suffering in a world guided by benevolent providence.
His preoccupations are those to which Christianity was so shortly to give its
answers; his own answers are very halting and uncertain. In his invocation to
the Muse (1.8—11) he asks to be told the causes for Juno's hostility towards
a man outstanding for his devotion to his gods and his fellow men (insignem
pietate uirum), and he concludes with the question tantaene animis caelestibus
irae? 'Can there be such anger in the minds of the gods?' For all the final success
of Jupiter's purpose, for all the final reconciliation of Juno, the note of
suffering and pathos is very often dominant in the poem. Unlike Milton, Virgil
does not profess to be able to 'justify the ways of God to men', but this is
the theme which he explores in countless situations in the poem, as he sets
different aspects of human experience, human aspiration, human suffering in
the context of a story laden with destiny.
The religious content of the poem is (naturally enough) largely concentrated
in the narrative as the Olympian deities scheme and counter-scheme and
Jupiter guides events towards the way which destiny demands, and as the
human actors pay their worship, make their prayers and fulfil their religious
ceremonies (the Aeneid is remarkably full of religious ritual, partly because of
Virgil's love of ceremony and antique customs, and partly because of the
essentially religious nature of Aeneas' destiny). But there is one place in the
poem where an exposition of theological doctrine is set forth in a didactic
fashion; this is where the ghost of Anchises explains to his son when they meet
in Elysium the nature of the life after death (6.724-51). The exposition does
indeed serve the plot, because it is needed to explain the presence of the ghosts
at the river of Lethe, but it is primarily a religious message to the Roman
reader, several times reminiscent in style of the didactic method of Lucretius
and strongly coloured with the Stoic ideas which Virgil had come to find more
acceptable than the Epicureanism which he followed in his youth. The message
is the more striking because of its total contrast with the afterlife in Homer,
whose Nekyia in Odyssey 11 had suggested some of the structure of Aeneid 6.
The essence of the speech 1 is based on Orphic and Pythagorean ideas as purified
by Plato: this life is merely a preparation for a richer life to come, and in
proportion as we concentrate on the spirit and not on the body during this
life our soul will be the more easily purified of its stains and made fit to dwell
for ever with the divine essence from which it came. Upon death we all undergo
purification — only a few can be purified sufficiently to stay in Elysium, while
the rest must be reborn for a new life on earth. But the gates of Elysium are
open wide (6.660—4), not only for those who died for their country, or were
priests and poets, or enriched life by their discoveries, but also for those who
1
See Bailey (1935) 275ft".
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