Talk:Virgil
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The school of Siro (Cecropius Hortulus), and later the very grave of Virgil (“Mantua bore me, Calabria carried me off, now Neapolis holds me; I sang of pastures, fields, and kings.”), were at Posilipo (in Greek pausilypon is "relief from pain"). Off here was seaside Parthenope, one of the Sirens' name: (for which, perhaps, the nickname Syro: male of the three Sirens). "The sage man knows how to captivate the minds more irresistibly than sirens' call." [PHerc 222]. When he was 21, Virgil spent some six years in Siro and Philodemus' company. The traineeship by Siro hold from 48 to 42, when the teacher died.
«Go away, off! Empty cruet of rhetors, words inflated by hoarseness! [...] We have a good wind towards the harbor of happiness, looking for the learned rules of the great Siro, freed from all uneasiness. Go away Muses, yea... you too get hence by now sweet Muses because, we are forced to admit the truth, you were sweet: nevertheless in future visit again my writing, but with reserve and rarely. [Catalepton V]
Catalepton VIII was written after the death of Siro:
"Small villa, which belonged to Siro, and poor little field, thou too origin of wellbeing for thy owner, if I will receive some bad news from homeland, I shall leaving thee me and with me these people whom I always have loved, and most of all my father. And thou now will take the place in his hearth as Mantua and Cremona aforetime".Then he apologize with Messala Corvinus - a good Epicurean friend of Horace and Maecenas - for not having the Wisdom which had espoused the "big four Sages" (Epicurus, Metrodorus, Polyaenus, Hermarcus), for "recognizing the human disorientations and defeating the humiliating distresses" [Ciris]
Villula, quae Sironis eras, et pauper agelle, | verum illi domino tu quoque divitiae | me tibi et hos una mecum, quos semper amavi, | siquid de patria tristius audiero, | commendo, in primis patrem, tu nunc eris illi | Mantua quod fuerat quodque Cremona prius.[Catalepton VIII]
"After I was puffed up by renown's greed, and I experienced also the empty awards of common people, now the Cecropius Hortulus (Athenian Garden) receives me in the green shadow of fertile wisdom, emanating a sweet fragrance."
Etsi me vario iactatum laudis amore, | Irritaque expertum fallacis praemia vulgi, | Cecropius suaueis expirans Hortulus auras | Florentis viridi Sophiae complectitur umbra | mensqe, ut quiret eo dignum sibi quaerere carmen | longe aliud studium inque alios accinta labores | altius ad magni suspexit sidera mundi | et placitum paucis est ausa ascendere collem. [Ciris CL, 3]
The Golden Age is used by Lucretius to symbolize Epicurean ataraxia, and in the Eclogae Virgil hopes too that a sage notable will reconcile the Empire in a allegory of renewal. Servius identifies Siro in Silenus' character who celebrates the Epicurean cosmogony "the atoms of earth, sea, soul which were concentrated in the big vacuum, and the liquid and fire together, and from these first starts everything and the soft globe of the world steadied"; in Aeneid I.330 and IV.584 he tell about multiple skies and an atomic (not divine) sun; he is suspicious of passions, perturbing of serene ataraxia [Ecl 6, 13]. In Priapea he mention the name of Epicurus. In Aetna he speak of: " An harbor at hand, a refuge where every feeling ceases forever ".
Occasionally he is openly Epicurean: quemque trahit sua voluptas: everyone assimilates himself to that which gives him pleasure [Ecl II, 65], not only as both he and Corydon were mostly gay, but most of all because: A ! Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit ?, the poor soul was bogged down in a difficult love [Ecquis erit modus lacrimis? what ratio will have tears?! Ecl. X, 26]. "Don't believe some God takes care of mortals” [Ecl. VIII, 35: nec curare deum credis mortalia quemquam].
The Ecloga IV, describes the birth of a child whose lifetime will see a return of the world to the Golden Age. Christian readers saw reference to the birth of Jesus, and also the text of the Aeneid was consulted as an oracle. Virgil was therefore believed to be a wizard and is the Dante's guide in the hell and the symbol of earthly wisdom. It will be awkward for the stiff classical education to acknowledge his Epicurianism and to publish some works, believed spurious. But Svetonius and Servius do list Catalepton, Priapea, Epigrammata, Diras, Ciris, Culicem; Lucan, Statius, Martial don't contest their authenticity ; and Castner, Aufstieg und Niedergang der Romischen Welt, 1988, does consider him an Epicurean. As a matter of fact Virgil belittled the mythopoietic poetry and he wanted eventually the Aeneid to be destroyed, and fully to devote himself to Philosophy (according to Donatus' V.'s Life, 140-3: vita tantum philosophiae vacaret). He managed to link philosophical preoccupations and literary emotional risks. But Aeneas is nevertheless a paradigm of natural (limited) anger, as passion is no vice but acceptance of corporeality [adrenergic 'fuel']. He reveals his son to have learned virtue and hard work by himself, good luck by others (12.435-436). : “disce, puer, virtutem ex me verumque laborem, fortunam ex aliis.”
We have evidences of Probus' Vita Vergili, about his Epicureanism: "Virgil lived for many years in learned ease, enjoying the friendship of Quintilius Varus [sizeable literary critic and "Horatii familiaris"], Plotius Tucca, Varius Rufus, following the Epicurean sect". "Among you, Plotius, Varius and Vergilius, Quintilius who will not be able to grasp the nature and distinctions of greed?" [PHerc 253, Sbordone]. All together they followed the school of Philodemus in Herculaneum, sometime in the Siro's villula, as revealed by PHerc. 312; 1457; Parisinum. To the four is dedicated the Philodemus' book On Flattery. Horace met them near Naples in 37 on the journey towards Brundisium with Maecenas [Hor. Serm. I, 5: "what great enjoyment were there!"]. In that time in Naples [37-30 BCE] he wrote the Georgics: "In those days I, Virgil, was nursed by sweet Parthenope [Naples, by a siren's name], and rejoiced in the arts of inglorious ease - I who dallied with shepherds' songs, in youth's boldness..." [Geor.. IV 565].
The Georgics are conceived in the spirit of Epicureanism. Philodemus's On Household Management [Col. XXIII] asserts that «possessing a farm and laborers befits the wise man [...] because he has no relationship with intriguing people, he gets an enjoyable life-stile, and a easeful retreat with his friends».
"O happy husbandmen! too happy, should they come to know their blessings! For whom, far from the clash of arms, most righteous Earth, unbidden, pours healthy food... Blessed is he who has been able to win knowledge of the causes of things, and has cast beneath his feet all fear and unyielding Fate, and the howls of greedy Acheron! [...] Him no honors the people give can move, no purple of kings, no strife of the brother with brother, [...] he don't know the condescension of pity for the poor, nor the envy of the rich. [...] (The foolish men) sleep over hidden money, steep themselves in their brothers' blood: for exile they change their sweet homes and hearths, and seek a country that lies beneath an alien sun. [Georg.. II 458]
"To him is at hand relaxation and pleasure drawn from plain needs" [Culex]
When he set out for the last journey, Virgil, reportedly, expressed the purpose of devoting himself to Aeneid revision and then only to philosophy.
