It’s a matter of undisputed record that Publius Vergilius Maro, known more widely simply as Virgil, was the greatest poet in the history of Rome. His writing was so unmistakably inspired and so grippingly beautiful that many Christians – including saints – have admired him, despite the fact that he was a pagan, and died roughly 20 years before the birth of Christ.
But there is a detail about Virgil’s work that is less well-known than it ought to be, and Christmastime is a perfect time to remind the world about it: Virgil wrote a Christmas poem.
That’s right, approximately 40 years before Christ was born, Virgil wrote his Fourth Eclogue – a poem of praise for a divine Child Who would usher in a golden age and rule the world in accordance with the will of His Father.
A 40-year Advent?
“The base, degenerate iron offspring ends / A golden progeny from heaven descends; / O chaste Lucina, speed the mother’s pains, / And haste the glorious birth: thy own Apollo reigns!” Virgil wrote toward the beginning of the poem.
And later in the same poem: “Unbidden earth shall wreathing ivy bring, / And fragrant herbs, the promises of spring, / As her first off’rings to her infant King.”
To modern Christian ears, the poem (here presented in John Dryden’s translation) sounds like nothing other than a Christmas hymn. “Glory to the newborn King!” one finds oneself responding antiphonally, “and a merry Christmas to you, too, Virgil!”
Or perhaps it might be better to call Virgil’s piece an Advent poem. He himself would never live to see his own prophetic words fulfilled, after all, and one can almost detect a painful longing in between the ecstatic lines: “His cradle shall with rising flowers be crowned; / The serpent’s brood shall die; the sacred ground / Shall weeds and pois’nous plants refuse to bear, / Each common bush shall Syrian roses wear.”
Imagine having such a vision so early! Virgil, one suspects, could sympathize with the holiest of God’s chosen people as they waited in a vale of tears for their Rescuer’s arrival.
In Virgil, St. Augustine could cite a pagan against the pagans
One passage of the Fourth Eclogue in particular sounded “Christmasy” to numerous Christians from the early Middle Ages through the Enlightenment:
The father banished virtue shall restore,
And crimes shall threat the guilty world no more.
The son shall lead the life of gods, and be
By gods and heroes seen, and gods and heroes see.
The jarring nations he in peace shall bind,
And with paternal virtues rule mankind.
Saint Augustine of Hippo referred to this passage in his 22-book treatise “City of God.” Addressing himself to pagans, the great Church Father and Doctor of the Church stated in Book X, Chapter 26 that “Him (Jesus Christ) your own oracles … acknowledged holy and immortal.”
Here, Augustine referred to ancient sibyls, who gave prophecies that would have been familiar to Virgil and likely influenced his poem.
Virgil wrote “truly” of Christ in this passage, Augustine argued, interpreting it to mean that “the greatest progress in virtue and righteousness leaves room for the existence, if not of crimes, yet the traces of crimes, which are obliterated only by the Saviour of whom this verse speaks.”
Augustine’s reading of Virgil would remain the consensus for many centuries.
Alexander Pope
In fact, over a thousand years later, the 18th-century poet Alexander Pope translated the passage above in a way that makes it all the more starkly Christian: “Now the Virgin returns, now the kingdom of Saturn returns, now a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. By means of thee, whatever relics of our crimes remain, shall be wiped away, and free the world from perpetual fears. He shall govern the earth in peace, with the virtues of his father.”
In his introduction to a Christmas poem he wrote himself “in imitation” of Virgil, Pope – a Catholic – compared that passage directly with scriptural quotations from the prophet Isaiah: “Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son,” and, “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given; the Prince of Peace: of the increase of his government, and of his peace, there shall be no end: Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order and to establish it, with judgment, and with justice, for ever and ever.”
In reading Isaiah’s prophecies about the coming of Christ, Pope wrote, “I could not but observe a remarkable parity between many of the thoughts, and those in the [Fourth Eclogue] of Virgil.”
“This will not seem surprising,” he added, “when we reflect, that the Eclogue was taken from a Sybilline prophecy on the same subject.”
Dante: Virgil, a pagan who brought others to Christ
Backing up a few centuries again, another great man who explicitly cited the same passage of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue was Dante Alighieri – often praised as the greatest poet since Virgil. But Dante wouldn’t take that praise all to himself. In the narrative of his epic poem The Divine Comedy, he chooses to portray Virgil as his guide and master.
In Canto XXI of Dante’s Purgatorio, the two companions come across the first-century poet Statius. For an awkward moment, Statius tells the two that Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid was like a “mother” to him, and that without Virgil, his own poetry would never have come to be worth anything.
By Canto XXII, Dante couldn’t help but blurt out who Statius is talking to: His hero and poetic role model. Virgil, in turn, asks Statius how he had managed to escape damnation. “Thou first,” Statius answers Virgil, “concerning God didst me enlighten … When thou didst say: ‘The age renews itself, Justice returns, and man’s primeval time, And a new progeny descends from heaven’” – a direct citation of Virgil’s 4th Eclogue.
“Through thee I Poet was,” Statius tells Virgil, “through thee a Christian.”
Readers can find the full text of the Dryden translation of Virgil’s Fourth Eclogue here.
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