THE VIGIL OF VENUS
TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN
This old poem, which commemorates the festivities with which ancient Rome hailed the returning brightness of spring, may, perhaps, awaken in our readers some melancholy reflections on the bygone delights of the same season in our own country. To the Romans, it would seem, this period of the year never ceased to bring rejoicing holidays. There is good reason to suppose that this poem was written in the declining times of the empire; if so, it seems that, amidst the public misfortunes that followed one another during that age, the people were not woe-worn and distressed; that they were able to forget, in social pleasures, the gradual decay of their ancient glory. Rome "smiled in death." England is still great and powerful, but she is no longer Merry England.
Most people have heard of the Floralia, and have learned to deduce the frolics of Maid Marian and her comrades from the Roman observances on that festive occasion. But few are aware of the close similarity which this poem shows to have existed between the customs of the Romans and those of our fathers. In the denunciations of the latter by the acrid Puritans of the 17th century, we might almost imagine that the tirade was expressly levelled against the vigils described in the Pervigilium Veneris. If the poem had ever fallen into the hands of those worthies, it would have afforded them an additional handle for invective against the foul ethnic superstitions which the May-games were denounced as representing. Hear Master Stubbes, in his Anatomie of Abuses, published in 1585:—
"Against May, Whitsonday, or other time, all the yung men and maides, old men and wives, run gadding over the night to the woods, groves, hils, and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes, and in the morning they return, bringing with them birch and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall; and no meruaile, for there is a great Lord present amongst them as superintendent and Lord of their sports, namely, Sathan prince of hel. But the chiefest jewel they bring from thence is their May-pole, (say rather their stinking poole,) which they bring home with great veneration."
Who does not remember Lysander's appointment with Hermia:
——"in that wood, a league without the town,
Where I did meet thee once with Helena,
To do observance to a morn of May,
There will I stay for thee."
These passages point us to the time when man and nature met to rejoice together on May-day: to the time before the days of the workhouse and factory; when the length and breadth of the land rung to the joyaunce and glee of the holiday-rejoicing nation, and the gay sounds careered on fresh breezes even where now the dense atmosphere of Manchester or Ashton glooms over the dens of torture in which withered and debauched children are forced to their labour, and the foul haunts under the shelter of which desperate men hatch plots of rapine and slaughter.
The poem shows that the Romans, like the English of those days, celebrated the season by betaking themselves to the woods throughout the night, where they kept a vigil in honour of Venus, to whose guardianship the month of April was assigned, as being the universal generating and producing power, and more especially to be adored as such by the Romans, from having been, through her son Æneas, the author of their race. The poem seems to have been composed with a view to its being sung by a choir of maidens in their nocturnal rambles beneath the soft light of an Italian moon. The delicious balm of that voluptuous climate breathes through every line of it, and vividly presents to the reader's imagination the scene of the festivity; but whether we can claim these celebrations for our own May-day, is a doubtful point; for Wernsdorf, who has included the Pervigilium Veneris in his edition of Poetæ Latini Minores, vol. iii., maintains that it is to be referred to the Veneralia, or feast of Venus, on the 1st of April. The Kalendar of Constantius marks the 3d day of April as Natalis Quirini. If, then, the morrow spoken of in the poem is to be taken to mean this birthday of Romulus, we must suppose the vigil of three nights to have begun on the night of the last day of March. But perhaps our readers will agree with us, that there are quite as good grounds for attributing this vigil to the Floralia, which commenced on the 27th of April, and ended on the first of May. For although the rites of the Floralia were in honour of Flora, yet we may easily conceive the principle by which the worship of Venus, the spirit of beauty, and love, and production, would come to be intermingled with the homage paid to the flower-goddess. And then the three nights would denote the nights of the Floralia already past, if we suppose the hymn to have been sung on the night before the 1st of May. This seems more natural, as coinciding with the known length of the festival, than Wernsdorf's hypothesis, which makes the vigil commence before the month of Venus had opened. As regards the time of year, too, May is far more suited than April, even in Italy, for outwatching the Bear on woodland lawns.
The question regarding the author of the Pervigilium Veneris is still a lis sub judice. Aldus, Erasmus, and Meursius, attributed it to Catullus; but subsequent editors have, with much more probability, contended that its age is considerably later. We may notice a scholastic and philosophical spirit about it, which is ill-suited to the Bard of Verona. Lipsius claimed it for the Augustan age, in consequence of the mention of Cæsar which is introduced. But we think we may safely assume, that the observance of this vigil grew into custom after the time of Ovid, otherwise it is difficult to account for the total absence of all allusion, in his Fasti, to a subject so perfectly adapted to his verse. But we will not enter any further into a discussion which Salmasius and Scaliger could not settle, but shall at once present our readers with the following translation of the Pervigilium Veneris:—
He that never loved before,
Let him love to-morrow!
He that hath loved o'er and o'er,
Let him love to-morrow!
Spring, young Spring, with song and mirth,
Spring is on the newborn earth.
Spring is here, the time of love—
The merry birds pair in the grove,
And the green trees hang their tresses,
Loosen'd by the rain's caresses.
To-morrow sees the dawn of May,
When Venus will her sceptre sway,
Glorious, in her justice-hall:
There where woodland shadows fall,
On bowers of myrtle intertwined,
Many a band of love she'll bind.
He that never, &c.
To-morrow is the day when first
From the foam-world of Ocean burst,
Like one of his own waves, the bright
Dione, queen of love and light,
Amid the sea-gods' azure train,
'Mid the strange horses of the main.
He that never, &c.
She it is that lends the Hours
Their crimson glow, their jewel-flowers:
At her command the buds are seen,
Where the west-wind's breath hath been,
To swell within their dwellings green.
She