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CONCLUSION
Deiphobus; the deaths of Galaesus in 7, of Nisus and Euryalus in 9, of Pallas
and Lausus in 10, of Camilla in n, of Aeolus in 12:
hie tibi mortis erant metae, domus alta sub Ida,
Lyrnesi domus alta, solo Laurente sepulcrum. (12.546—7)
Here was your end of death; your lofty house was beneath Mt Ida, at Lyrnesus your
lofty house, but your tomb is in X-aurentian soil.
All of these and many more mark Virgil out as the poet of lacrimae rerum
(1.462), of sympathy for the world's suffering; this has been the aspect of his
poetry which has been most strongly stressed and most widely appreciated
during the last hundred years. Sainte-Beuve spoke of tendresse profonde,
Matthew Arnold of 'the haunting, the irresistible self-dissatisfaction of his
heart', Myers of 'that accent of brooding sorrow'.
We may move this conflict between Virgil's public voice and his private
voice into a literary setting. His public voice is set firmly in the tradition of
Ennius, national poet of Rome's history and the greatness of her people; it
would have been approved by Cicero, and it is echoed in Livy's history and
Horace's Roman odes (3.1—6). It is stern, severe, detached, epic in the full
sense in that it deals with the large-scale movement of great events. His private
voice is in the tradition of Catullus, the poet of the individual's hopes and fears
and joys and sorrows. There is a lyric quality, even an elegiac quality in many
passages in the Aeneid, as for example the funeral of Pallas with its reminiscences
of Catullus (11.59—99)- Virgil has combined two modes, the hard and
the soft, because he could sympathize with both. He has a foot in both camps;
no other Roman poet was less dogmatic, more able to appreciate the viewpoint
of contrasting personalities. It is because of his many-sidedness that in every
generation since his own Virgil has been the most widely read of the Roman
poets.
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