By Water & Blood

Chapter 24: Closing Debate and Invitation to Dinner

When Praetextatus had made an end of speaking, all, with faces fixed upon him, betrayed admiration by their astonishment. Then one praised his memory, another his learning, all his religion, affirming that this man alone was conscious of the secret nature of the gods, who alone could both grasp divine things with the mind and utter them with genius.

Meanwhile Evangelus said: "For my part I wonder that the power of such great divinities could be comprehended; but that you cite our Mantuan as witness to each point when the discourse is of divine things is more flattering than that it should be thought done by judgment. Am I to believe that when he said 'Liber and kindly Ceres' for sun and moon, he did not set this down in imitation of another poet, hearing it so said, yet ignorant why it was said? Unless perhaps, as the Greeks raise all their own things to immensity, we too wish even our poets to philosophize — when Tullius himself, who professed the study of philosophizing no less than of speaking, whenever he disputes either of the nature of the gods or of fate or of divination, diminishes by an unordered relation of matters the glory which he has built up by oratory."

Then Symmachus: "Of Cicero, Evangelus, who is impenetrable to abuse, we shall see later; now, since our business is with Maro, I want you to answer whether you judge this poet's works suitable only for instructing boys, or whether you confess that there are other, higher things in them. For you seem to me still to hold Virgilian verses as we boys used to chant them when masters read them aloud."

"Nay, when we were boys, Symmachus, we admired without judgment, but neither through masters nor through age was it permitted to inspect the faults. Which yet no one will shamefully deny, since he himself confessed. For he who dying bequeathed his poem to the fire — what else did he care for but that the wounds of his fame should be withdrawn from posterity? And not without reason. For he blushed at future judgments of himself, if there should be read a goddess's petition begging arms for her son from a husband to whom alone she had been married and from whom she knew she had not received offspring, or if a thousand other things much to be ashamed of should be caught either in words now Greek now barbarian or in the very disposition of the work."

And when all had shuddered at him still speaking, Symmachus added: "This indeed is Maro's glory, Evangelus, that it grows by no one's praises, is diminished by no one's blame; but those things which you tear apart anyone from the common crowd of grammarians can defend, lest injury be sought against our Servius, who in my opinion surpasses the old teachers in learning, in excusing such things. But I ask whether, when the poetic in so great a poet has displeased you, yet the oratorical sinews, which in the same are most strong, seem to please?"

These words first Evangelus received with laughter. Then he added: "That by Hercules is left at last, that you should also proclaim Virgil an orator: nor is it strange, since your ambition a little earlier has also carried him to the philosophers."

"If you are of this opinion," said Symmachus, "that Maro is thought by you to have felt nothing but the poetic — though you have begrudged him even this name — hear what he himself pronounces of the manifold learning of his work. For Maro's own letter, in which he addresses Augustus, begins thus: 'I indeed receive frequent letters from you'; and below: 'Of my Aeneas indeed, if by Hercules I already had him worthy of your ears, I would gladly send him; but so great a thing is begun that I almost seem to myself to have entered so great a work by a fault of mind, especially since, as you know, I also impart other studies to that work and much preferable ones.' Nor does the abundance of matter disagree with these words of Virgil, which nearly all men of letters pass by with unwashed feet, as if a grammarian were permitted to know nothing beyond the explanation of words. So these fine men have set for themselves fixed bounds of knowledge and as it were certain pomeria and decrees, beyond which if anyone dare to go out, he is to be thought to have looked into the temple of the goddess from which males are frightened away. But we whom coarse Minerva becomes not — let us not suffer the shrines of the sacred poem to be hidden, but, the approach of secret meanings having been investigated, let us offer the unlocked penetrals to be celebrated by the cult of the learned. And lest I seem to wish to embrace all things alone, I promise that I will demonstrate in Virgil's work the most vigorous inventions or senses of rhetoric; but from Eusebius, most eloquent of orators, I do not snatch the treatise on oratorical art in Maro, which he will better pursue both by learning and by the habit of teaching. I would earnestly beg all the rest of you who are present that whatever each of you has especially noted for himself of Maro's genius we may contribute as from a common stock."

In a wondrous manner these words produced eagerness in all who were present, and each rising in desire of hearing others did not see that he himself was also to be called to the same duty. And so, stirred by mutual exhortation, they were easily and gladly animated to assent, and all looking to Praetextatus begged that he first open his judgment, the rest to follow in the order which chance of sitting had made.

And Vettius: "For my part, among all things by which Maro's praise stands out, this as a constant reader I admire: that most learnedly he has observed pontifical law in many and various parts of his work as if he had professed this, and if discourse does not fail so great a dissertation, I promise that our Virgil will be asserted pontifex maximus."

After him Flavianus said: "In our poet I find so great knowledge of augural law that if he were destitute of the teaching of other disciplines, this profession alone would exalt him."

Then Eustathius: "I would especially proclaim how much he has transferred from the Greeks, cautiously and as if doing something else, now by artful dissimulation, now by professed imitation — did not a greater admiration of astrology and of all philosophy hold me, which sparingly and soberly, nowhere to be blamed, he has sprinkled upon his work."

Rufius Albinus, fostering Praetextatus's other side, and next to him Caecina Albinus, both praised the affectation of antiquity in Virgil, the one in verses, Caecina in words.

Avienus said: "I will not take upon myself to dare to proclaim any one of the Virgilian virtues, but by hearing whatever you say, if anything either of these seems to me or long since while reading has seemed noteworthy, I will more opportunely bring it forth: only remember that it is to be required of our Servius that whatever seems obscure he make plain as by far the greatest of all men of letters."

These things said and pleasing to the whole assembly, Praetextatus, when he saw all faces turned upon him, said: "Philosophy, which is the unique gift of the gods and the discipline of disciplines, is to be honored with the first place of speaking; whence Eustathius will remember that the first place for discoursing has been granted him, every other profession yielding. To him you, my Flavianus, will succeed, that I may both be refreshed by your hearing and by some silence restore the strength of speaking."

Meanwhile the slave who directed attendance, whose care was either of burning incense to the Penates or of arranging the store and of ruling the servants of domestic acts, admonished his master that the household had feasted according to the solemnity of yearly custom. For on this feast religious houses first honor the servants with dishes prepared as if for the master's use, and only then is the apparatus of the table renewed for the fathers of families. The president of the household staff therefore hints that it is time for dinner and that the masters are already calling. Then Praetextatus: "Our Virgil then is to be reserved for the better part of the day, that we may destine the new morning to inspecting the poem in order. Now the hour admonishes us that this table be dignified by your honor. But Eustathius and after him Nicomachus will remember that tomorrow's dissertation reserves for them the function of speaking first." And Flavianus: "By the law already agreed I invite you, that on the following day my Penates may boast that they are blessed by the hospitality of so great an assembly." When all had assented to these things, they withdrew to dinner with great eagerness of mind, one recalling and approving one thing, another another, of those which they had conferred among themselves.