Excerpt from Hellenistic Influence on the Aeneid

Especially at this moment is this study of interest, for now, after much debate and argument, we have learned to recognize the Ciris and the Culex as poems of Vergil's youth.1 And so we are ready to discuss not only traces of Hellenistic art in the Aeneid, but the progression of Hellenistic art in Vergil from its cruder manifestations, as revealed in the earlier poems, up to the ripened stage, where its pervasive subtlety lends richness to this latest work. In the earlier works, written at a time when Hellenistic in¿uences were more attractive to the poet than at any other time, the fruits, both good and bad, of this training can be distinguished most clearly. Later on, as the poet's art became more mature, the exaggerations were pruned away, the true skill was developed and enriched. It is easy to put one's finger on the Hellenistic features of the opera minora, it is not so easy to do so for the Aeneid. The reason is, of course, that, while in the Culex and the Ciris this Hellenistic in¿uence is as yet of over-great importance, in the Aeneid, while it leavens and adds spice to the whole story, yet it does not forcibly obtrude itself upon the reader. Vergil, in his later work, has so many other sources of inspiration and powers of artistic expression at his command, and has so marvellously welded them all together, that nothing Hellenistic jars upon us, or can be separated from the whole which he made his own.

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