Читать книгу The Unpublished Legends of Virgil онлайн

5 страница из 60

“These tales,” says Comparetti, “originated in Naples, and thence spread into European literature, in the first instance, however, outside Italy. Their origin in Italy was entirely the work of the lower classes, and had nothing to do with poetry or literature; it was a popular superstition founded on local records connected with Virgil’s long residence in Naples, and the celebrity of his tomb in that city.”

This latter is a shrewd observation, for as the tomb is close by the mysterious grotto of Posilippo, which was always supposed to have been made by magic, it was natural that Virgil, who was famed for wisdom, should have been supposed to have wrought the miracle, and it may well be that this was really the very first, or the beginning of all the legends in question. These were “connected with certain localities, statues and monuments in the neighbourhood of Naples itself, to which Virgil was supposed to have given a magic power.” . . . Foreigners who visited Naples thus learned these legends, and they passed “even into Latin works of a learned nature.” So it resulted that from the twelfth century onward the fame of Virgil as a magician spread all over Europe. Among those who thus made of him a wonder-worker were Conrad von Querfurt, Gervase of Tilbury, Alexander Neckham, and John of Salisbury.