Augustines Virgil
Augustines Virgil
Augustines Virgil
5
GI L L I A N C L A R K
Augustine’s Virgil
‘I deferred the discussion to another day, as we had begun when the sun
was already setting, and most of the day had been spent in organizing farm
business and reading Virgil book 1’ (Contra academicos 1.5.15). Augustine
set his earliest surviving work (386 ad ), a philosophical dialogue, in a
country house where the participants are at leisure. His model was Cicero’s
dialogue Academica. There the participants are leading Romans who own
villas near the bay of Naples; Augustine’s, in a borrowed farm at Cassiciacum
outside Milan, are his mother, his teenage son, his brother, two cousins,
his friend Alypius, and two students, all from Thagaste in North Africa.
Augustine had been a student, then a teacher, of literature and rhetoric. He
crossed the sea from Carthage to Italy and taught briefly at Rome before his
appointment in 384 as Professor of Rhetoric at Milan, then a base of the
western imperial court. His duties included praise speeches (Conf. 6.6.9);
panegyrics by others show how Virgil could be evoked in poetry and prose.1
Two years later, Augustine made a commitment to a celibate Christian life
of prayer and study. In late summer 386 he left for Cassiciacum, where he
read Virgil with the students, and everyone, whatever their level of educa-
tion, took part in philosophical discussion. On return to Milan, Augustine
resigned his post, and after his baptism in 387 he decided to return to Africa.
There he became a priest, then bishop, of the seaport Hippo Regius.
Augustine deserves a chapter in this Companion because he has so much
to offer on the experience and the effect of reading Virgil, whom he called
poeta noster (‘our poet’, Contra Acad. 3.9) because Virgil was Latin, but
later ‘their poet’ because Virgil was not Christian.2 In late antiquity Virgil
was central to the education and culture of Latin speakers, as Homer was for
Greek speakers. If parents could afford education, their sons studied with
1
Rees (2017); Ware (2017).
2
MacCormack (1998) remains the classic study.
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3
Kaster (1988).
4
See Fowler, Casali, and Stok in this volume.
5
On Servius and Macrobius, see Pelttari (2014: 32–43).
6
See Braund in this volume on Virgil’s gods. See Ware (2017) on poetic fiction.
7
Hagendahl (1967).
8
Augustine thought Virgil was citing a prophecy by the Sibyl of Cumae (De civitate Dei
10.27). See further Hadas (2013: esp. 113–25).
9
See Pollmann (2017) on borrowing the authority of classical poets; Kaufmann (2017)
on varieties of allusion; McGill (2005) on the cento.
10
Clark (2017).
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of Virgil after the first, and I was lecturing [tractaremus] when it seemed
appropriate’ (Contra acad. 2.4.10).11 The student Licentius, entranced by
Aeneid books 2–4, declared his devotion to poetry. In another dialogue,
Licentius transferred his passion to philosophy, and Augustine’s joy broke
out in words taken from Virgil:12
Hic ego multo uberius cernens abundare laetitias meas quam vel optare
aliquando ausus sum, versum istum gestiens effudi: Sic pater ille deus faciat!
Perducet enim ipse, si sequimur quo nos ire iubet atque ubi ponere sedem, qui
dat modo augurium nostrisque illabitur animis. Nec enim altus Apollo est, qui
in speluncis, in montibus, in nemoribus, nidore turis pecudumque calamitate
concitatus implet insanos, sed alius profecto est, alius ille altus veridicus, atque
ipsa (quid enim verbis ambiam?) veritas, cuius vates sunt quicumque possunt
esse sapientes. Ergo aggrediemur, Licenti, freti pietate cultores, vestigiis nostris
ignem perniciosum fumosarum cupiditatum opprimamus.13
Here, perceiving that my joys were more richly abundant than I had ventured
even to wish, I exultantly uttered the line ‘May God the Father so grant!’ For
he will lead us if we follow where he tells us to go and to settle, he who now
gives the augury and slips into our souls. For it is not ‘lofty Apollo’ who in
caves, in mountains, in groves is aroused by fumes of incense and slaughter
of cattle and fills insane people, but clearly it is another, another is that lofty
truth-teller and (why circumvent with words?) truth itself, whose prophets
are all those capable of wisdom. So let us advance, Licentius, ‘worshippers
relying on devotion’, and tread down with our footsteps the pernicious fire of
smouldering desires. (Aug. De ordine 1.4.10)
‘Words taken from Virgil’ is a precise description. These sentences link parts
of three prayers to Apollo, taken from different contexts in the Aeneid,
and adapted to Augustine’s concerns. The first citation presents a diffi-
culty, because the line Virgil wrote is sic pater ille deum faciat, sic altus
Apollo (‘may the Father of gods so grant, may lofty Apollo!’, Aen. 10.875).
Augustine, or a Christian copyist, changed pater ille deum (‘the father of
gods’) to pater ille deus (‘God the Father’), and left out Apollo.14 If it was
Augustine who made the change, he left his readers to supply Apollo, and
continued by reporting in indirect speech an earlier prayer of Aeneas to
Apollo at Delos: quem sequimur? quove ire iubes? ubi ponere sedes? |
da, pater, augurium atque animis inlabere nostris (‘Whom do we follow?
Where do you tell us to go, where to settle? Give us an augury, father, and
11
Pucci (2014: 179–82) lists all the references to Virgil in the early dialogues.
12
Licentius continued to write poetry with allusions to Virgil. See Augustine, Epistula 26.
13
Text as in CCSL 29:94; words from Virgil in bold.
14
Wills (2010: 127) and Pucci (2014: 108) think that Augustine quoted the line.
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slip into our souls’, Aen. 3.88–9). But, Augustine declared, it is not ‘lofty
Apollo’ who gives guidance, and the god who ‘slips into our souls’ is not
the god, aroused by incense and blood sacrifice, who takes possession of a
prophet. Then Augustine exhorted Licentius with a third citation, from a
prayer by the Etruscan warrior Arruns to Apollo of Mount Soracte in Italy.
It invokes an unusual fire-walking rite to which Augustine gave moral sig-
nificance: medium freti pietate per ignem | cultores multa premimus vestigia
pruna (‘we worshippers, relying on devotion, through the midst of the
fire press our footsteps on the deep live coals’, Aen. 11.787–8). Licentius
abandoned poetry for philosophy, and Augustine used Virgil to show how
Christians abandon Virgil’s gods for devotion to the true God who gives
them direction and moral strength.
The envisaged audience for these dialogues would immediately hear
Virgil, but did Augustine want them to read Virgil differently, taking only
what could be used for Christian purposes and dismissing Apollo and the
rest of the story, as builders of churches reused columns and ornaments
taken from temples?15 In Augustine’s outburst to Licentius, sometimes the
unstated context is appropriate. The second prayer to Apollo comes from
a plea by Aeneas when the Trojan refugees have set sail not knowing for
where: ‘give us a home of our own; we are weary, give us walls and a people
and a city which will last’. But the first and third prayers must be removed
from their contexts in the fight for Italy. In the first, Aeneas responds to the
challenge of Mezentius, father of young Lausus whom Aeneas kills and then
pities; in the third, Arruns asks that his spear hit the virgin warrior Camilla,
and Apollo grants this but not the rest of his prayer, so he achieves glory
but dies.16
In his early career Augustine the teacher assumed that his hearers had
some knowledge of Virgil, but as a bishop in Africa his task was to expound
Christian scripture. He used the techniques he had learned for Latin lit-
erature, asking whether the text was correct, how it should be read, what
readers need to know, whether the author speaks in person or in char-
acter, whether the passage is literal or figurative. To understand a word or
phrase, he considered other uses by the author, believing that the same Spirit
inspired every writer of scripture.17 But he rarely quoted classical literature,
because preaching had to be inclusive. Some hearers, especially women,
lacked formal education; in the early dialogues Augustine’s mother Monica
15
On spolia, see MacCormack (1998: 37–44). Pucci (2014) argues for Augustine
‘recuperating’ Virgil.
16
In contrast, Macrobius (Sat. 5.3.7) discusses the prayer of Arruns and its precedents
in Homer.
17
E.g. Conf. 13.6.7–7.8.
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Now we all see what Virgil says: ‘Assyrian balm is born everywhere’; and in
relation to help from the grace which is in Christ, it is he with whom ‘as leader,
if any traces remain of our crime, they will be annulled and release the lands
from perpetual terror’.20 (Aug. Epist. 137.12)
18
On the education of women, see Clark (2015: 80–95). ‘Monica’ is the traditional
spelling; for ‘Monnica’, now preferred by many specialists, see Clark (2015: 126).
19
Clark (2017). On ‘African ears’, see De doctrina Christiana 4.65.
20
Augustine quotes Ecl. 4.25, 4.13–14. ‘Assyrian balm’, an exotic healing plant, is
accessible to all because the gospel is preached everywhere. See further Hadas
(2013: 121–4).
21
Bennett (1988) argues that Augustine modelled himself on Aeneas.
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laments her son’s death; Monica dies knowing that her son is Christian, and
he laments but hopes for her eternal life. The narrative part of Confessions
ends with Monica’s death at Ostia Tiberina, as Augustine and his friends
await return from Italy to Africa (9.8.17). This might prompt a memory of
Karthago, Italiam contra Tiberinaque longe | ostia (‘Carthage, far off, over
against Italy and the mouths of the Tiber’, Aen. 1.13–14); but Augustine
ended Book 9 not by reversing the Aeneid, but by requesting prayers for his
parents and his fellow Christians.
Augustine did not think that Christians should reject pagan literature.
He preferred the example of the people of Israel, who in their exodus from
Egypt borrowed from the worshippers of false gods real treasure which they
used in the service of the true God.22 Thus, even when writing on a central
Christian doctrine, Augustine could quote Virgil in arguing that the structure
of the human mind reflects the Trinity.23 But in Confessions he used Virgil
to condemn an education based on Virgil. He told (Conf. 1.17.27) how he
had won a school prize for a speech conveying verba Iunonis irascentis et
dolentis quod non posset Italia Teucrorum avertere regem (‘the words of
Juno angry and aggrieved that she could not turn the king of the Trojans
away from Italy’, Aen. 1.38). This was doubly wrong, because Juno was
fiction, and because her words conveyed damaging emotions. A fusion of
scripture and Virgil showed how it could have been:
laudes tuae, domine, laudes tuae per scripturas tuas suspenderent palmitem
cordis mei, et non raperetur per inania nugarum turpis praeda volatilibus.
Non enim uno modo sacrificatur transgressoribus angelis.
Your praises, Lord, your praises through your scriptures would have supported
the vine shoot of my heart, and it would not have been snatched away through
the follies of futility, a shameful spoil for birds. For there is more than one way
of sacrificing to the rebel angels. (Aug. Conf. 1.17.27)
22
Exod. 3:22; De doctr. Chr. 2.144–7.
23
De trinitate 14.11.14, quoting Aen. 3.628–9: ‘Ulysses was not forgetful of himself.’
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24
MacCormack (1998: 132–41).
25
Aen. 1.216, postquam exempta fames epulis, mensaeque remotae; Aen. 1.184,
postquam exempta fames et amor compressus edendi.
26
In the early dialogue De ordine (2.14.39), Augustine used a line of Virgil (G. 2.480–1)
to illustrate the difference between hearing sound patterns and hearing what they
signify; in De musica, begun about the same time (c. 387), the technical discussion in
books 1–5 uses the opening lines of the Aeneid, but Book 6, on moving from physical to
immutable ‘numbers’, uses Ambrose. See further Clark (2017: 428–30).
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gods to its founder’. Virgil became a witness for the defence.27 Augustine
contrasted two cities (civitates), which prove to be two communities of all
rational beings, angels as well as humans.28 The citizens of the city of God
love God even to disregard of themselves, and are motivated by the wish to
serve God and neighbour. The citizens of the earthly city love themselves
even to disregard of God, and are dominated by the lust to dominate. In the
opening sentences, long before these civitates are clearly defined, Virgil says
what the earthly city wants to hear:
Rex enim et conditor civitatis huius, de qua loqui instituimus, in scriptura
populi sui sententiam divinae legis aperuit, qua dictum est: Deus superbis
resistit, humilibus autem dat gratiam [James 4:6]. Hoc vero, quod Dei est,
superbae quoque animae spiritus inflatus adfectat amatque sibi in laudibus
dici: parcere subiectis et debellare superbos [Aen. 6.853].
For the king and founder of this city, of which I have undertaken to speak, has
revealed in the scripture of his people a statement of divine law, in which it is
said, ‘God resists the proud, but gives favour to the humble.’ This belongs to
God, but the swollen spirit of a proud soul lays claim to it, and loves to have
said in its praise, ‘to spare the subject and fight down the proud’. (Aug. Civ.
1 pref.)
27
Almost half of all Augustine’s citations of Virgil come from this work. See Hagendahl
(1967: 705).
28
Augustine had used the theme of the two cities for over a decade, and assumed that
readers knew what he meant. The fullest and most-quoted definition is at Civ. 14.28.
29
De doctr. Chr. 3.75, ‘Almost every page of the holy books proclaims, “God resists
the proud and gives favour to the humble”.’ On the Roman Empire in relation to the
earthly city, see Clark (2018).
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models of anger and cruelty, lust and grief: ‘Diana grieved for Camilla in
Virgil, and Hercules wept for Pallas who would die’ (nam Camillam Diana
doluit apud Vergilium et Pallantem moriturum Hercules flevit, Civ. 3.11).
Sometimes Augustine distinguished Virgil from Virgil’s poetry. Platonists,
he thought, were the best philosophers and the closest to Christianity, but
were overconfident in human reason, permitted worship of lesser gods, and
believed that the soul cannot be blessed until it is separated from the body,
which weighs it down and is the source of the basic emotions: fear and desire,
grief and joy. He cited Virgil for memorable expressions of Platonism, but
did not claim that Virgil was a Platonist. ‘Virgil seems to set out the Platonic
view in brilliant lines’ (Vergilius Platonicam videatur luculentis versibus
explicare sententiam, Civ. 14.3) introduces a quotation from the speech of
Anchises explaining to Aeneas what happens to souls in the Underworld.30
This passage reappears on one of the rare occasions when Augustine did
quote Virgil in a sermon, taking care that everyone understood. One Easter
week he contrasted Christian teaching on resurrection with pagan beliefs
about reincarnation:
One of their authors was horrified: he was shown, or he introduced, a father
showing his son in the Underworld. Almost all of you know this; I wish only
a few did!31 But a few know from books, and many from the theatre, that
Aeneas went down to the Underworld, and his father showed him the souls
of great Romans which would go to bodies. Aeneas was appalled, and said,
‘Father, are we to think some lofty souls go hence to heaven, and return to
bodies slow?’ Are we to believe, he says, that they go to heaven and come
back? ‘What dire desire for light afflicts these wretches?’ [Aen. 6.719–21] The
son understood better than the father explained. (Aug. Ser. 241.5)
In another sermon, preached after the Goths sacked Rome in 410, Augustine
made it explicit that Virgil did not always speak in his own person. He
imagined asking Virgil, ‘Why did you make Jupiter say “Empire without end
I gave”?’ Virgil, he suggested, would reply, ‘I know, but what was I to do,
selling words to the Romans, unless I flattered them by promising something
false?’ Virgil would also point out that he gave the words to Jupiter: ‘the
god was false, the poet a liar’, whereas in his own person, Virgil said, ‘not
Roman state nor kingdoms which will die’ (Ser. 105.10, citing G. 2.498).
30
Aen. 6.750–1, cited Civ. 13.19; Aen. 6.730–5, cited Civ. 14.3. For ‘Virgil the Platonist’,
see Fowler, Casali, and Stok, this volume; for Augustine on Virgil on the afterlife, see
Clark (2010).
31
Not because it is Virgil, but because most people knew from the theatre, of which
Augustine disapproved.
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In the final book, Augustine said that Virgil partly understood the truth
that souls yearn for a body: each soul yearns for its own body (Civ. 22.26).
Scripture did not displace Virgil altogether, for Augustine himself or for later
centuries in which education came to be based on scripture. In the Early
Middle Ages, monastic scribes copied the Bible and Augustine, not Virgil;32
but the transmission of Virgil did not depend on Augustine’s selective
quotation and adaptation, as was the case for some other classical texts.
Augustine did not offer distinctive literary readings of Virgil, but his ways
of alluding to Virgil do illustrate the cultural status of Virgil in late antiquity,
and exemplify late antique willingness to allow the reader’s involvement
with the text.33 Augustine insisted that the objects of love must be rightly
ordered, and he found Virgil his proper place.
FURTHER READING
There is an immense bibliography on all aspects of Augustine, updated
twice a year in the Revue d’études augustiniennes. There are also many
resources online: www.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/augustine, maintained
by the Augustinian scholar and internet pioneer James O’Donnell, offers
an impressive range of material, including O’Donnell’s commentary on the
Confessions (1992), made available with the permission of OUP; www
.augustinus.de is maintained by the Zentrum für Augustinus-Forschung
(Würzburg); and texts are freely available at www.augustinus.it.
32
I owe this point to Daniel Hadas.
33
Pelttari (2014: 114–30); Pucci (1998: 51–82).
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For those new to Augustine, Brown (1967; rev. edn 2000) remains the
classic intellectual and social biography; the revised edition adds two major
chapters on new evidence and new directions, and shows how Brown’s per-
spective has changed. Vessey (2012) offers a wide range of introductory
essays, including Danuta Shanzer’s overview of ‘Augustine and the Latin
Classics’ (2012: 161–74).
MacCormack (1998) remains the fullest study of Augustine’s engagement
with Virgil throughout his writings. For the early philosophical dialogues
see Pucci (2014). Bennett (1988) is the most cited of many readings of the
Confessions in relation to Virgil. O’Daly (1999: 246–8) helpfully surveys
citations of Virgil.
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