Tragic Optimism in the Aeneid

Extract

An ἀγών between the dignity and aspiration of man and the apparently overwhelming power of the gods or of circumstance recurs frequently as a theme in the Greek tragedies. The solution proposed by the Greek writers was always positive and encouraging to man. The same theme is found in the Aeneid, and the answer is not dissimilar to the solution offered in some of his plays by Aeschylus. Virgil views the struggle historically and he makes his hero the embodiment of past, present, and future. He is Aeneas the founder of the Roman race, he is Augustus the inaugurator of the new Rome, and he is also what Augustus and his successors in the poet's opinion should be. That is to say, he is the tradition of the past, the actuality of the present, and an ideal for the future. Above all he is the Roman people then, now, and to come; and the ideal for the future is a social ideal. The tragic idea of the Aeneid is made plain at the beginning of the poem by means of the celestial machinery. The first scene is the storm (i, 34–156) when all the powers of heaven seem to be trying to wreck the already ruined Trojans. We might indulge in a misapplication of words and choose as a motto for this passage

tantaene animis caelestibus irae? (l. 11)

The gods are cruel and unjust as in Prometheus Vinctus. The second scene shows the effect of this ‘persecution’ upon the Trojans. They are fessi rerum (178), ‘weary of the world’. But from Aeneas suffering evokes a confession of faith—

per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum tendimus in Latium, sedes ubi fata quietas ostendunt; illic fas regna resurgere Troiae. Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis. (204–7)