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"The Great Aim of Virgil" by Frank Ramirez


The Great Aim of Virgil
by Frank Ramirez
Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. (Luke 2:1)

Around thirty years before Jesus was born a man named Publius Maro wrote an extraordinary poem about the four seasons, weaving together the lives of birds, bees, animals, and plants, and the people who struggle to make a living in the midst of the natural world.

Publius was born to be a poet, not a soldier. He was too sickly to be conscripted for the great Civil Wars of Rome that century. While the Republic morphed into an Empire, Publius directed the agricultural activities of the estate he inherited from his mentor.

His eye for the world all around was astounding. He listed what stars should be in the heavens, when it was time to plant and to harvest, and how to care for the animals who performed much of the heavy labor, and what to look out for in order to preserve crops from diseases.

His poem connected the dots between heaven and earth, the divine and the human, until a clear picture emerged of order and sanity. Take for instance these words which suggest that God is revealed not only through the work of the bees but in all creatures great and small:

...some say
The Bees have drunk from the light of heaven and have
A share in the divine intelligence,
For the god, they say, is there in everything
In earth and the range of sea and the depth of sky;
The flocks, the herds, and men, all creatures there are,
At birth derive their little lives from him,
And when they die their life returns to him,
And having been unmade is made again;
There is, they say, no place at all for death;
The life of beings flies up to the stars
And finds its place there in the heaven above.
(Georgics, p 159, translated by David Ferry)

Had this been the only poem of his to survive from ancient times Publius Maro would still be fondly remembered today. However in this poem about agriculture he wrote that he hoped to write a grander poem. A poem about how the gods meant to raise up a child of theirs to bring order and peace and security to the world.

He wrote that other poem, that more significant poem, but he felt it was a failure despite the fact it pleased the emperor and asked it destroyed upon his death. But his death came unexpectedly and the poem was not destroyed.

That poem was the Aeneid, the story of how Troy was defeated by the Greek, and how the gods guided one of the surviving Trojans, Aeneas, through many adventures to Italy where he would found the city of Rome, a city that after many centuries would come to rule the world. That poet, Publius Maro, better known by the middle of his three names, Virgilius or Virgil, wrote the poem not only to celebrate the legendary events of centuries past, but to “predict” as it were, the rise of the perfect ruler, Caesar Augustus.

At one point when Aeneas travels to the Underworld he meets his father, then deceased, who foretells:

This man, this is the one whom you hear so often promised to you,
Caesar August, the descendant of God, who will establish
Again a Golden Age...
...to rule the nations...to establish the order of peace,
To spare the humble and war against the proud!
(translated by David R. Wallace, in his book The Gospel of God, p 68)

That was the great aim of Virgil, to demonstrate that Augustus, the son of a god, would be the savior of the world, the ruler of the nations, and the prince of peace!

No doubt Luke had that in mind when he began his story about the birth of Jesus by naming Augustus, before revealing the real Son of God, Savior of the world, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace.

(David Ferry’s translation of The Georgics of Virgil was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2003. Regarding the Aeneid and the Gospel see The Gospel of God: Romans as Paul’s Aeneid, by David R. Wallace, Pickwick Publications, 2008)

Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.


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StoryShare, December 24/25, 2015, issue.

Copyright 2015 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.

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