Altera iam teritur bellis ciuilibus aetas:
Horatian and Virgilian Influences on Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko

Mary Lou Vredenburg (State University of New York)

Aphra Behn’s novel Oroonoko: or The Royal Slave was a famous seventeenth-century novel whose title character, Oroonoko, is an African prince who is enslaved and transported to Surinam, where he is reunited with his lover Imoinda; Oroonoko and Imoinda are universally admired for their inherent nobility and, once they receive assurances that they will soon be granted their freedom, they wed and conceive a child.  In the end, the slave owners fail to keep their word, and Oroonoko kills Imoinda and their unborn child, disembowels himself, and is ultimately executed.

Though literary critics have noted the many classical references in the novel, none have focused on the Golden Age poems of Virgil and Horace, the 4th Eclogue and 16th Epode respectively, and the parallels between themes in the two poems and the political turmoil of 1688, the year Oroonoko was published.  In his 4th Eclogue, Virgil predicts of the birth of a child to an exceptionally noble father, a child who will then usher in a return to the Golden Age, while Horace, in the more cynical 16th Epode, asserts that the Golden Age can be found only by abandoning Rome and going in search of the Blessed Isles.  Behn combines themes from both poems to signify the downfall of the Golden Age in Oroonoko.  Behn’s emphasis on Oroonoko’s nobility, the child that he and Imoinda are expecting, the location of the Golden Age in the west, and the overall pessimism of the story recalls both Virgil's and Horace's poems, and has a significant historical connection to the reign of James II and the political upheaval that led to the Glorious Revolution.