ABSTRACT
The new ideal which animated literature under Augustus was intellectual rather than aesthetic, and even more moral and political than purely intellectual. Horace is separated from Tibullus, Virgil from Propertius, not by a difference of artistic principles, but by a new purpose of usefulness, a sort of political ambition. The elegiac is always art for art’s sake, and its inspiration is individual. The ode, on the other hand, aims at expressing collective sentiments; Virgil, in singing of the soil of Italy and the Roman fatherland, assists Augustus in his work of restoration. But the social purpose which the poet sets before him acts on his art indirectly. First, the idea of a reformation detaches men’s minds from fashions and formulas now regarded as obsolete; it restores art to liberty. Secondly, new subjects and new ideas lead the poet to new forms. The Alexandrian trifle and the elegiac couplet are not sufficient for the more ambitious lyricism of Horace. The poet turns to the stanzas of the ancient Greek lyric, and with the stanzas a new spirit is breathed into Latin poetry. So, too, love of the earth, interest in humble rustic occupations, and the desire to bring the farmer pleasure and profit fill the Georgics with a realism quite unlike that of the Eclogues and the Hellenistic pastoral. To sing the predestination of Rome, Virgil goes back to Homer and to the old Latin epic poets. The Augustan ideal, by taking the Muse out of the little literary schools and salons, changed her appearance and her instrument.
