Augustine's Mixed Feelings: Vergil's Aeneid and the Psalms of David in the Confessions

Abstract

The Aeneid of Vergil and the Psalter traditionally attributed to David so influenced Augustine's writing that one scholar has called the Confessions “a recapitulation of Vergilian epic in a Christian universe,” and another has described it as an “amplified Psalter.”1 Since both works permeate Augustine's narrative, classicists and theologians have long studied the place of the Aeneid and the Psalms in the Confessions, but never in relation to each other.2 Consequently, the dialogical quality of Augustine's text, which includes these radically divergent voices, has largely gone without comment. As paradigms of classical and biblical literature, however, the Aeneid and the Psalms contribute to the formation of the author's own voice and affections. Ancient readers, for instance, widely recognized Vergil's epic as the work of the summus poeta, a book with prophetic powers and the crown of Roman literature to be emulated by all Latin writers.3 Early Christians, in turn, regarded the Psalter as the fabric of constant prayer, a kind of compendium of all scripture pointing prophetically to Christ.4 Thus, the Confessions represent a struggle among powerful voices and emotions frequently operating at cross purposes.