Vergil - A Biography | Page 3

as the region was called, was receiving
immigrants from all parts of Italy throughout the second century, when
the fields farther south were being exhausted by long tilling, and were
falling into the hands of capitalistic landlords and grazers. Since
Roman citizenship was a personal rather than a territorial right, such
immigrants could preserve their political status despite their change of
habitation. The probabilities are, therefore, that in any case Vergil,
though born in the province, was of the old Latin stock.
[Footnote 5: Vergil we know was tall and dark. The Gauls were as a
rule fair with light hair. The Etruscans on the other hand, while dark,
were generally short of stature. Such data are however not of great
importance.]
About the child appropriate stories gathered in time, but what the
biographers chose to repeat in the credulous days of Donatus, when

Rome was almost an Oriental city, need not detain us long. To Donatus,
no doubt, Magia seemed a suitable name for the mother of a poet who
knew the mysteries of the lower world; that she dreamed prophetically
of the coming greatness of her son, we may grant as a matter of course.
Sober judgment, however, can hardly accept the miraculous poplar tree
which shot up at the place of nativity, or the birth-stories deriving
"Vergilus" from virga, contrary to early Latin nomenclature and
phonology. It is well to mention these things merely so that we may
keep in mind how little faith the late biographers really deserve.
Donatus is also inclined to accept the tradition that Vergil's father was a
potter and a man of very humble circumstances. That Vergil's father
made pottery may be true; a father's occupation was apt to be recorded
in Augustan biography--but it requires some knowledge of Roman
society to comprehend what these words meant at the end of the
Republic. In Donatus' day a "potter" was a day-laborer in loin-cloth and
leather apron, earning about twenty cents for a long day of fourteen
hours. Needless to say, Vergil's leisured competence during many years
did not draw from such a trickling source. Donatus had forgotten that in
Vergil's day the economic system of Rome was entirely different. At
the end of the Republic, the potters of Northern Italy conducted
factories of enormous output, for they had with their artistic red-figured
ware captured the markets of the whole Mediterranean basin. The
actual workmen were not Roman citizens by any means, but slaves.
And we should add that while industrial producers, like traders, were in
general held in low esteem, because most of them were foreigners and
freedmen, the producers of earthenware had by accident escaped from
the general odium. The reason was simply that earthenware production
began as a legitimate extension of agriculture--it was one form of
turning the products of the villa-soil to the best use--and agriculture as
we remember (including horticulture and stock-raising) continued into
Cicero's day the only respectable income-bringing occupation in which
a Roman senator could engage without apology. That is the reason why
even the names of Cicero, Asinius Pollio, and Marcus Aurelius are to
be found on brick stamps when it would have been socially impossible
for such men to own, shall we say, hardware or clothing factories.
Donatus was already so far away from that day that he had no feeling
for its social tabus. The property of Vergil's father--possibly a farm

with a pottery on some part of it--could hardly have been small when it
supported the young student for many years in his leisured existence at
Rome and Naples under the masters that attracted the aristocracy of the
capital. The story of Probus, otherwise not very reliable, may, therefore,
be true--that sixty soldiers received their allotments from the estates
taken from Vergil's father.
Of no little significance is the fact that Vergil first prepared himself for
public life,[6] and progressed so far as to accept one case in court. In
order to enter public life in those days it was customary to train one's
self as widely as possible in literature, history, rhetoric, dialectic, and
court procedure, and to attract public notice for election purposes by
taking a few cases. It was not every citizen who dared enter such a
career. This was the one occupation that the nobility guarded most
jealously. While any foreigner or freedman might become a doctor,
banker, architect or merchant prince, he could not presume to stand up
before a praetor to discuss the rights and wrongs of Roman citizens;
and since the advocate's work was furthermore considered the
legitimate preliminary to magisterial offices it must the more carefully
be protected. It would have been quite useless for Vergil to prepare for
this career had it been obviously closed. We have no sure record in
Cicero's epoch of any