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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8894-8.txt b/8894-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6a00b9c --- /dev/null +++ b/8894-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9288 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Latin Literature, by J. W. Mackail + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Latin Literature + +Author: J. W. Mackail + +Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8894] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on August 21, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN LITERATURE *** + + + + +Produced by Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +LATIN LITERATURE + +BY + +J. W. MACKAIL, Sometime Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford + + + +A history of Latin Literature was to have been written for this series of +Manuals by the late Professor William Sellar. After his death I was +asked, as one of his old pupils, to carry out the work which he had +undertaken; and this book is now offered as a last tribute to the memory +of my dear friend and master. J. W. M. + + + +CONTENTS. + +I. THE REPUBLIC. + + I. ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY. + Andronicus--Naevius--Ennius--Pacuvius--Accius + II. COMEDY: PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. + III. EARLY PROSE: THE SATURA, OR MIXED MODE. + The Early Jurists, Annalists, and Orators--Cato--The + Scipionic Circle--Lucilius + IV. LUCRETIUS. + V. LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS. + Cinna and Calvus--Catullus + VI. CICERO. + VII. PROSE OF THE CICERONIAN AGE. + Julius Caesar--The Continuators of the Commentaries-- + Sallust--Nepos--Varro--Publilius Syrus + +II. THE AUGUSTAN AGE. + + I. VIRGIL. + II. HORACE. + III. PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS. + Augustan Tragedy--Gallus--Propertius--Tibullus + IV. OVID. + Sulpicia--Ovid + V. LIVY. + VI. THE LESSER AUGUSTANS. + Manilius--Phaedrus--Velleius--Paterculus--Celsus-- + Vitruvius--The Elder Seneca + +III. THE EMPIRE. + + I. THE ROME OF NERO. + The Younger Seneca--Lucan--Persius--Quintus Curtius + --Columella--Calpurnius--Petronius + II. THE SILVER AGE. + Statius--Valerius Flaccus--Silius Italicus--Martial--The + Elder Pliny--Quintilian + III. TACITUS. + IV. JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PLINY, SUETONIUS: DECAY OF CLASSICAL LATIN. + V. THE ELOCUTIO NOVELLA. + Fronto--Apuleius--The Pervigilium Veneris + VI. EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY. + Minucius Felix--Tertullian--Cyprian--Arnobius-- + Lactantius--Commodianus + VII. THE FOURTH CENTURY. + Papinian and Ulpian--Sammonicus--Nemesianus-- + Tiberianus--The Augustan History--Ausonius--Claudian + --Prudentius--Ammianus Marcellinus +VIII. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. + The End of the Ancient World--The Four Periods of + Latin Literature--The Empire and the Church + +INDEX OF AUTHORS. + + + + + +I. + +THE REPUBLIC. + + + + +I. + +ORIGINS OF LATIN LITERATURE: EARLY EPIC AND TRAGEDY. + + +To the Romans themselves, as they looked back two hundred years later, +the beginnings of a real literature seemed definitely fixed in the +generation which passed between the first and second Punic Wars. The +peace of B.C. 241 closed an epoch throughout which the Roman Republic had +been fighting for an assured place in the group of powers which +controlled the Mediterranean world. This was now gained; and the pressure +of Carthage once removed, Rome was left free to follow the natural +expansion of her colonies and her commerce. Wealth and peace are +comparative terms; it was in such wealth and peace as the cessation of +the long and exhausting war with Carthage brought, that a leisured class +began to form itself at Rome, which not only could take a certain +interest in Greek literature, but felt in an indistinct way that it was +their duty, as representing one of the great civilised powers, to have a +substantial national culture of their own. + +That this new Latin literature must be based on that of Greece, went +without saying; it was almost equally inevitable that its earliest forms +should be in the shape of translations from that body of Greek poetry, +epic and dramatic, which had for long established itself through all the +Greek-speaking world as a common basis of culture. Latin literature, +though artificial in a fuller sense than that of some other nations, did +not escape the general law of all literatures, that they must begin by +verse before they can go on to prose. + +Up to this date, native Latin poetry had been confined, so far as we can +judge, to hymns and ballads, both of a rude nature. Alongside of these +were the popular festival-performances, containing the germs of a drama. +If the words of these performances were ever written down (which is +rather more than doubtful), they would help to make the notion of +translating a regular Greek play come more easily. But the first certain +Latin translation was a piece of work which showed a much greater +audacity, and which in fact, though this did not appear till long +afterwards, was much more far-reaching in its consequences. This was a +translation of the _Odyssey_ into Saturnian verse by one Andronicus, a +Greek prisoner of war from Tarentum, who lived at Rome as a tutor to +children of the governing class during the first Punic War. At the +capture of his city, he had become the slave of one of the distinguished +family of the Livii, and after his manumission was known, according to +Roman custom, under the name of Lucius Livius Andronicus. + +The few fragments of his _Odyssey_ which survive do not show any high +level of attainment; and it is interesting to note that this first +attempt to create a mould for Latin poetry went on wrong, or, perhaps it +would be truer to say, on premature lines. From this time henceforth the +whole serious production of Latin poetry for centuries was a continuous +effort to master and adapt Greek structure and versification; the +_Odyssey_ of Livius was the first and, with one notable exception, almost +the last sustained attempt to use the native forms of Italian rhythm +towards any large achievement; this current thereafter sets underground, +and only emerges again at the end of the classical period. It is a +curious and significant fact that the attempt such as it was, was made +not by a native, but by a naturalised foreigner. + +The heroic hexameter was, of course, a metre much harder to reproduce in +Latin than the trochaic and iambic metres of the Greek drama, the former +of which especially accommodated itself without difficulty to Italian +speech. In his dramatic pieces, which included both tragedies and +comedies, Andronicus seems to have kept to the Greek measures, and in +this his example was followed by his successors. Throughout the next two +generations the production of dramatic literature was steady and +continuous. Gnaeus Naevius, the first native Latin poet of consequence, +beginning to produce plays a few years later than Andronicus, continued +to write busily till after the end of the second Punic War, and left the +Latin drama thoroughly established. Only inconsiderable fragments of his +writings survive; but it is certain that he was a figure of really great +distinction. Though not a man of birth himself, he had the skill and +courage to match himself against the great house of the Metelli. The +Metelli, it is true, won the battle; Naevius was imprisoned, and finally +died in exile; but he had established literature as a real force in Rome. +Aulus Gellius has preserved the haughty verses which he wrote to be +engraved on his own tomb-- + + _Immortelles mortales si foret fas flere + Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam; + Itaque postquam est Orci traditus thesauro + Obliti sunt Romai loquier lingua Latina._ + +The Latin Muses were, indeed, then in the full pride and hope of a +vigorous and daring youth. The greater part of Naevius' plays, both in +tragedy and comedy, were, it is true, translated or adapted from Greek +originals; but alongside of these,--the _Danae_, the _Iphigenia_, the +_Andromache_, which even his masculine genius can hardly have made more +than pale reflexes of Euripides--were new creations, "plays of the purple +stripe," as they came to be called, where he wakened a tragic note from +the legendary or actual history of the Roman race. His _Alimonium Romuli +et Remi_, though it may have borrowed much from the kindred Greek legends +of Danae or Melanippe, was one of the foundation-stones of a new national +literature; in the tragedy of _Clastidium_, the scene was laid in his own +days, and the action turned on an incident at once of national importance +and of romantic personal heroism--a great victory won over the Gallic +tribes of Northern Italy, and the death of the Gallic chief in single +combat at the hand of the Roman consul. + +In his advanced years, Naevius took a step of even greater consequence. +Turning from tragedy to epic, he did not now, like Andronicus, translate +from the Greek, but launched out on the new venture of a Roman epic. The +Latin language was not yet ductile enough to catch the cadences of the +noble Greek hexameter; and the native Latin Saturnian was the only +possible alternative. How far he was successful in giving modulation or +harmony to this rather cumbrous and monotonous verse, the few extant +fragments of the _Bellum Punicum_ hardly enable us to determine; it is +certain that it met with a great and continued success, and that, even in +Horace's time, it was universally read. The subject was not unhappily +chosen: the long struggle between Rome and Carthage had, in the great +issues involved, as well as in its abounding dramatic incidents and +thrilling fluctuations of fortune, many elements of the heroic, and +almost of the superhuman; and in his interweaving of this great pageant +of history with the ancient legends of both cities, and his connecting +it, through the story of Aeneas, with the war of Troy itself, Naevius +showed a constructive power of a very high order. It is, doubtless, +possible to make too much of the sweeping statements made in the comments +of Macrobius and Servius on the earlier parts of the _Aeneid_--"this +passage is all taken from Naevius;" "all this passage is simply conveyed +from Naevius' _Punic War_." Yet there is no doubt that Virgil owed him +immense obligations; though in the details of the war itself we can +recognise little in the fragments beyond the dry and disconnected +narrative of the rhyming chronicler. Naevius laid the foundation of the +Roman epic; he left it at his death--in spite of the despondent and +perhaps jealous criticism which he left as his epitaph--in the hands of +an abler and more illustrious successor. + +Quintus Ennius, the first of the great Roman poets, and a figure of +prodigious literary fecundity and versatility, was born at a small town +of Calabria about thirty years later than Naevius, and, though he served +as a young man in the Roman army, did not obtain the full citizenship +till fifteen years after Naevius' death. For some years previously he had +lived at Rome, under the patronage of the great Scipio Africanus, busily +occupied in keeping up a supply of translations from the Greek for use on +the Roman stage. Up to his death, at the age of seventy, he continued to +write with undiminished fertility and unflagging care. He was the first +instance in the Western world of the pure man of letters. Alongside of +his strictly literary production, he occupied himself diligently with the +technique of composition--grammar, spelling, pronunciation, metre, even +an elementary system of shorthand. Four books of miscellaneous +translations from popular Greek authors familiarised the reading public +at Rome with several branches of general literature hitherto only known +to scholars. Following the demand of the market, he translated comedies, +seemingly with indifferent success. But his permanent fame rested on two +great bodies of work, tragic and epic, in both of which he far eclipsed +his predecessors. + +We possess the names, and a considerable body of fragments, of upwards of +twenty of his tragedies; the greater number of the fragments being +preserved in the works of Cicero, who was never tired of reading and +quoting him. As is usual with such quotations, they throw light more on +his mastery of phrase and power of presenting detached thoughts, than on +his more strictly dramatic qualities. That mastery of phrase is +astonishing. From the silver beauty of the moonlit line from his +_Melanippe_-- + + _Lumine sic tremulo terra et cava caerula candent_, + +to the thunderous oath of Achilles-- + + _Per ego deum sublimas subices + Umidas, unde oritur imber sonitu saevo et spiritu_ + +they give examples of almost the whole range of beauty of which the Latin +language is capable. Two quotations may show his manner as a translator. +The first is a fragment of question and reply from the prologue to the +_Iphigenia at Aulis_, one of the most thrilling and romantic passages in +Attic poetry-- + +Agam. _Quid nocti videtur in altisono + Caeli clupeo?_ + +Senex. _Temo superat + Cogens sublime etiam atque etiam + Noctis iter_. + +What is singular here is not that the mere words are wholly different +from those of the original, but that in the apparently random variation +Ennius produces exactly the same rich and strange effect. This is no +accident: it is genius. Again, as a specimen of his manner in more +ordinary narrative speeches, we may take the prologue to his _Medea_, +where the well-known Greek is pretty closely followed-- + + _Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus + Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes, + Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium + Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine + Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri + Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis + Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum: + Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem + Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia._ + +At first reading these lines may seem rather stiff and ungraceful to ears +familiar with the liquid lapse of the Euripidean iambics; but it is not +till after the second or even the third reading that one becomes aware in +them of a strange and austere beauty of rhythm which is distinctively +Italian. Specially curious and admirable is the use of elision (in the +eighth, for instance, and even more so in the fifth line), so +characteristic alike of ancient and modern Italy. In Latin poetry Virgil +was its last and greatest master; its gradual disuse in post-Virgilian +poetry, like its absence in some of the earliest hexameters, was fatal to +the music of the verse, and with its reappearance in the early Italian +poetry of the Middle Ages that music once more returns. + +It was in his later years, and after long practice in many literary +forms, that Ennius wrote his great historical epic, the eighteen books of +_Annales_, in which he recorded the legendary and actual history of the +Roman State from the arrival of Aeneas in Italy down to the events of his +own day. The way here had been shown him by Naevius; but in the interval, +chiefly owing to Ennius' own genius and industry, the literary +capabilities of the language had made a very great advance. It is +uncertain whether Ennius made any attempt to develop the native metres, +which in his predecessor's work were still rude and harsh; if he did, he +must soon have abandoned it. Instead, he threw himself on the task of +moulding the Latin language to the movement of the Greek hexameter; and +his success in the enterprise was so conclusive that the question between +the two forms was never again raised. The _Annales_ at once became a +classic; until dislodged by the _Aeneid_, they remained the foremost and +representative Roman poem, and even in the centuries which followed, they +continued to be read and admired, and their claim to the first eminence +was still supported by many partisans. The sane and lucid judgment of +Quintilian recalls them to their true place; in a felicitous simile he +compares them to some sacred grove of aged oaks, which strikes the senses +with a solemn awe rather than with the charm of beauty. Cicero, who again +and again speaks of Ennius in terms of the highest praise, admits that +defect of finish on which the Augustan poets lay strong but not +unjustified stress. The noble tribute of Lucretius, "as our Ennius sang +in immortal verse, he who first brought down from lovely Helicon a +garland of evergreen leaf to sound and shine throughout the nations of +Italy," was no less than due from a poet who owed so much to Ennius in +manner and versification. + +It is not known when the _Annales_ were lost; there are doubtful +indications of their existence in the earlier Middle Ages. The extant +fragments, though they amount only to a few hundred lines, are sufficient +to give a clear idea of the poet's style and versification, and of the +remarkable breadth and sagacity which made the poem a storehouse of civil +wisdom for the more cultured members of the ruling classes at Rome, no +less than a treasury of rhythm and phrase for the poets. In the famous +single lines like-- + + _Non cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes_, + +or-- + + _Quem nemo ferro potuit superare me auro_, + +or-- + + _Ille vir haud magna cum re sed plenu' fidei_, + +or the great-- + + _Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque_ + +Ennius expressed, with even greater point and weight than Virgil himself, +the haughty virtue, the keen and narrow political instinct, by which the +small and struggling mid-Italian town grew to be arbitress of the world; +not Lucretius with his vast and melancholy outlook over a world where +patriotism did not exist for the philosopher, not Virgil with his deep +and charmed breedings over the mystery and beauty of life and death, +struck the Roman note so exclusively and so certainly. + +The success of the Latin epic in Ennius' hands was indeed for the period +so complete that it left no room for further development; for the next +hundred years the _Annales_ remained not only the unique, but the +satisfying achievement in this kind of poetry, and it was only when a new +wave of Greek influence had brought with it a higher and more refined +standard of literary culture, that fresh progress could be attained or +desired. It was not so with tragedy. So long as the stage demanded fresh +material, it continued to be supplied, and the supply only ceased when, +as had happened even in Greece, the acted drama dwindled away before the +gaudier methods of the music-hall. Marcus Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius, +wrote plays for the thirty years after his uncle's death, which had an +even greater vogue; he is placed by Cicero at the head of Roman +tragedians. The plays have all perished, and even the fragments are +lamentably few; we can still trace in them, however, that copiousness of +fancy and richness of phrase which was marked as his distinctive quality +by the great critic Varro. Only one Roman play (on Lucius Aemilius +Paulus, the conqueror of Pydna[1]) is mentioned among his pieces; and +this, though perhaps accidental, may indicate that tragedy had not really +pushed its roots deep enough at Rome, and was destined to an early decay. +Inexhaustible as is the life and beauty of the old Greek mythology, it +was impossible that a Roman audience should be content to listen for age +after age to the stories of Atalanta and Antiope, Pentheus and Orestes, +while they had a new national life and overwhelming native interests of +their own. The Greek tragedy tended more and more to become the merely +literary survival that it was in France under Louis Quatorze, that it has +been in our own day in the hands of Mr. Arnold or Mr. Swinburne. But one +more poet of remarkable genius carries on its history into the next age. + +Lucius Accius of Pisaurum produced one of his early plays in the year 140 +B.C., on the same occasion when one of his latest was produced by +Pacuvius, then an old man of eighty. Accius reached a like age himself; +Cicero as a young man knew him well, and used to relate incidents of the +aged poet's earlier life which he had heard from his own lips. For the +greater part of the fifty years which include Sulla and the Gracchi, +Accius was the recognised literary master at Rome, president of the +college of poets which held its meetings in the temple of Minerva on the +Aventine, and associating on terms of full equality with the most +distinguished statesmen. A doubtful tradition mentions him as having also +written an epic, or at least a narrative poem, called _Annales_, like +that of Ennius; but this in all likelihood is a distorted reflection of +the fact that he handed down and developed the great literary tradition +left by his predecessor. The volume of his dramatic work was very great; +the titles are preserved of no less than forty-five tragedies. In general +estimation he brought Roman tragedy to its highest point. The fragments +show a grace and fancy which we can hardly trace in the earlier +tragedians. + +Accius was the last, as he seems to have been the greatest, of his race. +Tragedy indeed continued, as we shall see, to be written and even to be +acted. The literary men of the Ciceronian and Augustan age published +their plays as a matter of course; Varius was coupled by his +contemporaries with Virgil and Horace; and the lost _Medea_ of Ovid, like +the never-finished _Ajax_ of Augustus, would be at the least a highly +interesting literary document. But the new age found fresh poetical forms +into which it could put its best thought and art; while a blow was struck +directly at the roots of tragedy by the new invention, in the hands of +Cicero and his contemporaries, of a grave, impassioned, and stately +prose. + + + + +II. + +COMEDY: PLAUTUS AND TERENCE. + + +Great as was the place occupied in the culture of the Greek world by +Homer and the Attic tragedians, the Middle and New Comedy, as they +culminated in Menander, exercised an even wider and more pervasive +influence. A vast gap lay between the third and fifth centuries before +Christ. Aeschylus, and even Sophocles, had become ancient literature in +the age immediately following their own. Euripides, indeed, continued for +centuries after his death to be a vital force of immense moment; but this +force he owed to the qualities in him that make his tragedy transgress +the formal limits of the art, to pass into the wider sphere of the human +comedy, with its tears and laughter, its sentiment and passions. From him +to Menander is in truth but a step; but this step was of such importance +that it was the comedian who became the Shakespeare of Greece. _Omnem +vitae imaginem expressit_ are the words deliberately used of him by the +greatest of Roman critics. + +When, therefore, the impulse towards a national literature began to be +felt at Rome, comedy took its place side by side with tragedy and epic as +part of the Greek secret that had to be studied and mastered; and this +came the more naturally that a sort of comedy in rude but definite forms +was already native and familiar. Dramatic improvisations were, from an +immemorial antiquity, a regular feature of Italian festivals. They were +classed under different heads, which cannot be sharply distinguished. The +_Satura_ seems to have been peculiarly Latin; probably it did not differ +deeply or essentially from the two other leading types that arose north +and south of Latium, and were named from the little country towns of +Fescennium in Etruria, and Atella in Campania. But these rude +performances hardly rose to the rank of literature; and here, as +elsewhere, the first literary standard was set by laborious translations +from the Greek. + +We find, accordingly, that the earlier masters--Andronicus, Naevius, +Ennius--all wrote comedies as well as tragedies, of the type known as +_palliata_, or "dressed in the Greek mantle," that is to say, freely +translated or adapted from Greek originals. After Ennius, this still +continued to be the more usual type; but the development of technical +skill now results in two important changes. The writers of comedy become, +on the whole and broadly speaking, distinct from the writers of tragedy; +and alongside of the _palliata_ springs up the _togata_, or comedy of +Italian dress, persons, and manners. + +As this latter form of Latin comedy has perished, with the exception of +trifling fragments, it may be dismissed here in few words. Its life was +comprised in less than a century. Titinius, the first of the writers of +the _fabula togata_ of whom we have any certain information, was a +contemporary of Terence and the younger Scipio; a string of names, which +are names and nothing more, carries us down to the latest and most +celebrated of the list, Lucius Afranius. His middle-class comedies +achieved a large and a long-continued popularity; we hear of performances +of them being given even a hundred years after his death, and Horace +speaks with gentle sarcasm of the enthusiasts who put him on a level with +Menander. With his contemporary Quinctius Atta (who died B.C. 77, in the +year of the abortive revolution after the death of Sulla), he owed much +of his success to the admirable acting of Roscius, who created a stage +tradition that lasted long after his own time. To the mass of the people, +comedy (though it did not err in the direction of over-refinement) seemed +tame by comparison with the shows and pageants showered on them by the +ruling class as the price of their suffrages. As in other ages and +countries, fashionable society followed the mob. The young man about +town, so familiar to us from the brilliant sketches of Ovid, accompanies +his mistress, not to comedies of manners, but to the more exciting +spectacles of flesh and blood offered by the ballet-dancers and the +gladiators. Thus the small class who occupied themselves with literature +had little counteracting influence pressed on them to keep them from the +fatal habit of perpetually copying from the Greek; and adaptations from +the Attic New Comedy, which had been inevitable and proper enough as the +earlier essays of a tentative dramatic art, remained the staple of an art +which thus cut itself definitely away from nature. + +That we possess, in a fairly complete form, the works of two of the most +celebrated of these playwrights, and of their many contemporaries and +successors nothing but trifling fragments, is due to a chance or a series +of chances which we cannot follow, and from which we must not draw too +precise conclusions. Plautus was the earliest, and apparently the most +voluminous, of the writers who devoted themselves wholly to comedy. +Between him and Terence a generation intervenes, filled by another +comedian, Caecilius, whose works were said to unite much of the special +excellences of both; while after the death of Terence his work was +continued on the same lines by Turpilius and others, and dwindled away +little by little into the early Empire. But there can be no doubt that +Plautus and Terence fully represent the strength and weakness of the +Latin _palliata_. Together with the eleven plays of Aristophanes, they +have been in fact, since the beginning of the Middle Ages, the sole +representatives of ancient, and the sole models for modern comedy. + +Titus Maccius Plautus was born of poor parents, in the little Umbrian +town of Sarsina, in the year 254 B.C., thus falling midway in age between +Naevius and Ennius. Somehow or other he drifted to the capital, to find +employment as a stage-carpenter. He alternated his playwriting with the +hardest manual drudgery; and though the inexhaustible animal spirits +which show themselves in his writing explain how he was able to combine +extraordinary literary fertility with a life of difficulty and poverty, +it must remain a mystery how and when he picked up his education, and his +surprising mastery of the Latin language both in metre and diction. Of +the one hundred and thirty comedies attributed to him, two-thirds were +rejected as spurious by Varro, and only twenty-one ranked as certainly +genuine. These last are extant, with the exception of one, called +_Vidularia_, or _The Carpet-Bag_, which was lost in the Middle Ages; some +of them, however, exist, and probably existed in Varro's time, only in +abridged or mutilated stage copies. + +The constructive power shown in these pieces is, of course, less that of +Plautus himself than of his Greek originals, Philemon, Diphilus, and +Menander. But we do not want modern instances to assure us that, in +adapting a play from one language to another, merely to keep the plot +unimpaired implies more than ordinary qualities of skill or +conscientiousness. When Plautus is at his best--in the _Aulularia_, +_Bacchides_, or _Rudens_, and most notably in the _Captivi_--he has +seldom been improved upon either in the interest of his action or in the +copiousness and vivacity of his dialogue. + +Over and above his easy mastery of language, Plautus has a further +Claim to distinction in the wide range of his manner. Whether he ever +Went beyond the New Comedy of Athens for his originals, is uncertain; +But within it he ranges freely over the whole field, and the twenty +Extant pieces include specimens of almost every kind of play to which +the name of comedy can be extended. The first on the list, the famous +_Amphitruo_, is the only surviving specimen of the burlesque. The +Greeks called this kind of piece [Greek: ilarotrag_oidia]--a term for +Which _tragédie-bouffe_ would be the nearest modern equivalent; +_tragico-comoedia_ is the name by which Plautus himself describes it +in the prologue. The _Amphitruo_ remains, even now, one of the most +masterly specimens of this kind. The version of Molière, in which he +did little by way of improvement on his original, has given it fresh +currency as a classic; but the French play gives but an imperfect idea +of the spirit and flexibility of the dialogue in Plautus' hands. + +Of a very different type is the piece which comes next the _Amphrituo_ in +acknowledged excellence, the _Captivi_. It is a comedy of sentiment, +without female characters, and therefore without the coarseness which (as +one is forced to say with regret) disfigures some of the other plays. The +development of the plot has won high praise from all critics, and +justifies the boast of the epilogue, _Huiusmodi paucas poetae reperiunt +comoedias_. But the praise which the author gives to his own piece-- + + _Non pertractate facta est neque item ut ceterae, + Neque spurcidici insunt versus immemorabiles, + Hic neque periurus leno est nec meretrix mala + Neque miles gloriosus--_ + +is really a severe condemnation of two other groups of Plautine plays. +The _Casina_ and the _Truculentus_ (the latter, as we know from Cicero, a +special favourite with its author) are studies in pornography which only +the unflagging animal spirits of the poet can redeem from being +disgusting; and the _Asinaria, Curculio_, and _Miles Gloriosus_ are broad +farces with the thinnest thread of plot. The last depends wholly on the +somewhat forced and exaggerated character of the title-rôle; as the +_Pseudolus_, a piece with rather more substance, does mainly on its +_periurus leno_, Ballio, a character who reminds one of Falstaff in his +entire shamelessness and inexhaustible vocabulary. + +A different vein, the domestic comedy of middle-class life, is opened in +one of the most quietly successful of his pieces, the _Trinummus_, or +_Threepenny-bit_. In spite of all the characters being rather fatiguingly +virtuous in their sentiments, it is full of life, and not without +gracefulness and charm. After the riotous scenes of the lighter plays, it +is something of a comfort to return to the good sense and good feeling of +respectable people. It forms an interesting contrast to the _Bacchides_, +a play which returns to the world of the bawd and harlot, but with a +brilliance of intrigue and execution that makes it rank high among +comedies. + +Two other plays are remarkable from the fact that, though neither in +construction nor in workmanship do they rise beyond mediocrity, the +leading motive of the plot in one case and the principal character in the +other are inventions of unusual felicity. The Greek original of both is +unknown; but to it, no doubt, rather than to Plautus himself, we are +bound to ascribe the credit of the _Aulularia_ and _Menaechmi_. The +_Aulularia_, or _Pot of Gold_, a commonplace story of middle-class life, +is a mere framework for the portrait of the old miser, Euclio--in itself +a sketch full of life and brilliance, and still more famous as the +original of Moliére's Harpagon, which is closely studied from it. The +_Menaechmi_, or _Comedy of Errors_, without any great ingenuity of +plot or distinction of character, rests securely on the inexhaustible +opportunities of humour opened up by the happy invention of the +twin-brothers who had lost sight of one another from early childhood, +and the confusions that arise when they meet in the same town in +later life. + +There is yet one more of the Plautine comedies which deserves special +notice, as conceived in a different vein and worked out in a different +tone from all those already mentioned--the charming romantic comedy +called _Rudens_, or _The Cable_, though a more fitting name for it would +be _The Tempest_. It is not pitched in the sentimental key of the +_Captivi_; but it has a higher, and, in Latin literature, a rarer, note. +By a happy chance, perhaps, rather than from any unwonted effort of +skill, this translation of the play of Diphilus has kept in it something +of the unique and unmistakeable Greek atmosphere--the atmosphere of the +_Odyssey_, of the fisher-idyl of Theocritus, of the hundreds of little +poems in the Greek Anthology that bear clinging about their verses the +faint murmur and odour of the sea. The scene is laid near Cyrene, on the +strange rich African coast; the prologue is spoken, not by a character in +the piece, nor by a decently clothed abstraction like the figures of +Luxury and Poverty which speak the prologue of the _Trinummus_, but by +the star Arcturus, watcher and tempest-bearer. + + _Qui gentes omnes, mariaque et terras movet, + Eius sum civis civitate caelitum; + Ita sum ut videtis, splendens stella candida, + Signum quod semper tempore exoritur suo + Hic atque in caelo; nomen Arcturo est mihi. + Noctu sum in caelo clarus atque inter deos; + Inter mortales ambulo interdius_. + +The romantic note struck in these opening lines is continued throughout +the comedy, in which, by little touches here and there, the scene is kept +constantly before us of the rocky shore in the strong brilliant sun after +the storm of the night, the temple with its kindly priestess, and the +red-tiled country-house by the reeds of the lagoon, with the solitary +pastures behind it dotted over with fennel. Now and again one is reminded +of the _Winter's Tale_, with fishermen instead of shepherds for the +subordinate characters; more frequently of a play which, indeed, has +borrowed a good deal from this, _Pericles Prince of Tyre_. + +The remainder of the Plautine plays may be dismissed with scant notice. +They comprise three variations on the theme which, to modern taste, has +become so excessively tedious, of the _Fourberies de Scapin_--the +_Epidicus_, _Mostellaria_, and _Persa_; the _Poenulus_, a dull play, +which owes its only interest to the passages in it written in the +Carthaginian language, which offer a tempting field for the conjectures +of the philologist; two more, the _Mercator_ and _Stichus_, of confused +plot and insipid dialogue; and a mutilated fragment of the _Cistellaria_, +or _Travelling-Trunk_, which would not have been missed had it shared the +fate of the _Carpet-Bag_. + +The humour of one age is often mere weariness to the next; and farcical +comedy is, of all the forms of literature, perhaps the least adapted for +permanence. It would be affectation to claim that Plautus is nowadays +widely read outside of the inner circle of scholars; and there he is read +almost wholly on account of his unusual fertility and interest as a field +of linguistic study. Yet he must always remain one of the great +outstanding influences in literary history. The strange fate which has +left nothing but inconsiderable fragments out of the immense volume of +the later Athenian Comedy, raised Plautus to a position co-ordinate with +that of Aristophanes as a model for the reviving literature of modern +Europe; for such part of that literature (by much the more important) as +did not go beyond Latin for its inspiration, Plautus was a source of +unique and capital value, in his own branch of literature equivalent to +Cicero or Virgil in theirs. + +Plautus outlived the second Punic War, during which, as we gather from +prefaces and allusions, a number of the extant plays were produced. Soon +after the final collapse of the Carthaginian power at Zama, a child was +born at Carthage, who, a few years later, in the course of unexplained +vicissitudes, reached Rome as a boy-slave, and passed there into the +possession of a rich and educated senator, Terentius Lucanus. The boy +showed some unusual turn for books; he was educated and manumitted by his +master, and took from him the name of Publius Terentius the African. A +small literary circle of the Roman aristocracy--men too high in rank to +need to be careful what company they kept--admitted young Terence to +their intimate companionship; and soon he was widely known as making a +third in the friendship of Gaius Laelius with the first citizen of the +Republic, the younger Scipio Africanus. This society, an informal academy +of letters, devoted all its energies to the purification and improvement +of the Latin language. The rough drafts of the Terentian comedies were +read out to them, and the language and style criticised in minute detail; +gossip even said that they were largely written by Scipio's own hand, and +Terence himself, as is not surprising, never took pains to deny the +rumour. Six plays had been subjected to this elaborate correction and +produced on the Roman stage, when Terence undertook a prolonged visit to +Greece for the purpose of further study. He died of fever the next year-- +by one account, at a village in Arcadia; by another, when on his voyage +home. The six comedies had already taken the place which they have ever +since retained as Latin classics. + +The Terentian comedy is in a way the turning-point of Roman literature. +Plautus and Ennius, however largely they drew from Greek originals, threw +into all their work a manner and a spirit which were essentially those of +a new literature in the full tide of growth. The imitation of Greek +models was a means, not an end; in both poets the Greek manner is +continually abandoned for essays into a new manner of their own, and they +relapse upon it when their imperfectly mastered powers of invention or +expression give way under them. In the circle of Terence the fatal +doctrine was originated that the Greek manner was an end in itself, and +that the road to perfection lay, not in developing any original +qualities, but in reproducing with laborious fidelity the accents of +another language and civilisation. Nature took a swift and certain +revenge. Correctness of sentiment and smooth elegance of diction became +the standards of excellence; and Latin literature, still mainly confined +to the governing class and their dependents, was struck at the root (the +word is used of Terence himself by Varro) with the fatal disease of +mediocrity. + +But in Terence himself (as in Addison among English writers) this +mediocrity is, indeed, golden--a mediocrity full of grace and charm. The +unruffled smoothness of diction, the exquisite purity of language, are +qualities admirable in themselves, and are accompanied by other striking +merits; not, indeed, by dramatic force or constructive power, but by +careful and delicate portraiture of character, and by an urbanity (to use +a Latin word which expresses a peculiarly Latin quality) to which the +world owes a deep debt for having set a fashion. In some curious lines +preserved by Suetonius, Julius Caesar expresses a criticism, which we +shall find it hard to improve, on the "halved Menander," to whom his own +fastidious purity in the use of language, no less than his tact and +courtesy as a man of the world, attracted him strongly, while not +blinding him to the weakness and flaccidity of the Terentian drama. Its +effect on contemporary men of letters was immediate and irresistible. A +curious, if doubtfully authentic, story is told of the young poet when he +submitted his first play, _The Maid of Andros_, for the approval of the +Commissioners of Public Works, who were responsible for the production of +plays at the civic festivals. He was ordered to read it aloud to +Caecilius, who, since the death of Plautus, had been supreme without a +rival on the comic stage. Terence presented himself modestly while +Caecilius was at supper, and was carelessly told to sit down on a stool +in the dining-room, and begin. He had not read beyond a few verses when +Caecilius stopped him, and made him take his seat at table. After supper +was over, he heard his guest's play out with unbounded and unqualified +admiration. + +But this admiration of the literary class did not make the refined +conventional art of Terence successful for its immediate purposes on the +stage: he was caviare to the general. Five of the six plays were produced +at the spring festival of the Mother of the Gods--an occasion when the +theatre had not to face the competition of the circus; yet even then it +was only by immense efforts on the part of the management that they +succeeded in attracting an audience. The _Mother-in-Law_ (not, it is +true, a play which shows the author at his best) was twice produced as a +dead failure. The third time it was pulled through by extraordinary +efforts on the part of the acting-manager, Ambivius Turpio. The prologue +written by Terence for this third performance is one of the most curious +literary documents of the time. He is too angry to extenuate the repeated +failure of his play. If we believe him, it fell dead the first time +because "that fool, the public," were all excitement over an exhibition +on the tight-rope which was to follow the play; at the second +representation only one act had been gone through, when a rumour spread +that "there were going to be gladiators" elsewhere, and in five minutes +the theatre was empty. + +The Terentian prologues (they are attached to all his plays) are indeed +very interesting from the light they throw on the character of the +author, as well as on the ideas and fashions of his age. In all of them +there is a certain hard and acrid purism that cloaks in modest phrases an +immense contempt for all that lies beyond the writer's own canons of +taste. _In hac est pura oratio_, a phrase of the prologue to _The +Self-Tormentor_, is the implied burden of them all. He is a sort of +Literary Robespierre; one seems to catch the premonitory echo of +well-known phrases, "degenerate condition of literary spirit, +backsliding on this hand and on that, I, Terence, alone left +incorruptible." Three times there is a reference to Plautus, and always +with a tone of chilly superiority which is too proud to break into an +open sneer. Yet among these haughty and frigid manifestoes some +felicity of phrase or of sentiment will suddenly remind us that here, +after all, we are dealing with one of the great formative intelligences +of literature; where, for instance, in the prologue to the lively and +witty comedy of _The Eunuch_, the famous line-- + + _Nullumst iam dictum quod non dictum sit prius-- + +drops with the same easy negligence as in the opening dialogue of _The +Self-Tormentor_, the immortal-- + + _Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto--_ + +falls from the lips of the old farmer. Congreve alone of English +playwrights has this glittering smoothness, this inimitable ease; if we +remember what Dryden, in language too splendid to be insincere, wrote of +his young friend, we may imagine, perhaps, how Caecilius and his circle +regarded Terence. Nor is it hard to believe that, had Terence, like +Congreve, lived into an easy and honoured old age, he would still have +rested his reputation on these productions of his early youth. Both +dramatists had from the first seen clearly and precisely what they had in +view, and had almost at the first stroke attained it: the very +completeness of the success must in both cases have precluded the +dissatisfaction through which fresh advances could alone be possible. + +This, too, is one reason, though certainly not the only one, why, with +the death of Terence, the development of Latin comedy at once ceased. His +successors are mere shadowy names. Any life that remained in the art took +the channel of the farces which, for a hundred years more, retained a +genuine popularity, but which never took rank as literature of serious +value. Even this, the _fabula tabernaria_, or comedy of low life, +gradually melted away before the continuous competition of the shows +which so moved the spleen of Terence--the pantomimists, the jugglers, the +gladiators. By this time, too, the literary instinct was beginning to +explore fresh channels. Not only was prose becoming year by year more +copious and flexible, but the mixed mode, fluctuating between prose and +verse, to which the Romans gave the name of satire, was in process of +invention. Like the novel as compared with the play at the present time, +it offered great and obvious advantages in ease and variety of +manipulation, and in the simplicity and inexpensiveness with which, not +depending on the stated performances of a public theatre, it could be +produced and circulated. But before proceeding to consider this new +literary invention more fully, it will be well to pause in order to +gather up, as its necessary complement, the general lines on which Latin +prose was now developing, whether in response to the influence of Greek +models, or in the course of a more native and independent growth. + + + + +III. + +EARLY PROSE: THE _SATURA_, OR MIXED MODE. + + +Law and government were the two great achievements of the Latin race; +and the two fountain-heads of Latin prose are, on the one hand, the texts +of codes and the commentaries of jurists; on the other, the annals of the +inner constitution and the external conquests and diplomacy of Rome. The +beginnings of both went further back than Latin antiquaries could trace +them. Out of the mists of a legendary antiquity two fixed points rise, +behind which it is needless or impossible to go. The code known as +that of the Twelve Tables, of which large fragments survive in later +law-books, was drawn up, according to the accepted chronology, in the +year 450 B.C. Sixty years later the sack of Rome by the Gauls led to +the destruction of nearly all public and private records, and it was +only from this date onwards that such permanent and contemporary +registers--the consular _fasti_, the books of the pontifical college, +the public collections of engraved laws and treaties--were extant as +could afford material for the annalist. That a certain amount of work +in the field both of law and history must have been going on at Rome +from a very early period, is, of course, obvious; but it was not till +the time of the Punic Wars that anything was produced in either field +which could very well be classed as literature. + +In history as in poetry, the first steps were timidly made with the help +of Greek models. The oldest and most important of the early historians, +Quintus Fabius Pictor, the contemporary of Naevius and Ennius, actually +wrote in Greek, though a Latin version of his work certainly existed, +whether executed by himself or some other hand is doubtful, at an almost +contemporary date. Extracts are quoted from it by the grammarians as +specimens of the language of the period. The scope of his history was +broadly the same as that of the two great contemporary poets. It was a +narrative of events starting from the legendary landing of Aeneas in +Italy, becoming more copious as it advanced, and dealing with the events +of the author's own time at great length and from abundant actual +knowledge. The work ended, so far as can be judged, with the close of the +second Punic War. It long remained the great quarry for subsequent +historians; and though Polybius wrote the history of the first Punic War +anew from dissatisfaction with Pictor's prejudice and inaccuracy, he is +one of the chief authorities followed in the earlier decads of Livy. A +younger contemporary of Pictor, Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who commanded a +Roman army in the war against Hannibal, also used the Greek language in +his annals of his own life and times, and the same appears to be the case +with the memoirs of other soldiers and statesmen of the period. It is +only half a century later that we know certainly of historians who wrote +in Latin. The earliest of them, Lucius Cassius Hemina, composed his +annals in the period between the death of Terence and the revolution of +the Gracchi; a more distinguished successor, Lucius Calpurnius Piso +Frugi, is better known as one of the leading opponents of the revolution +(he was consul in the year of the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus) than +as the author of annals which were certainly written with candour and +simplicity, and in a style where the epithets "artless and elegant," used +of them by Aulus Gellius, need not be inconsistent with the more +disparaging word "meagre," with which they are dismissed by Cicero. +History might be written in Greek--as, indeed, throughout the Republican +and Imperial times it continued to be--by any Roman who was sufficiently +conversant with that language, in which models for every style of +historical composition were ready to his hand. In the province of +jurisprudence it was different. Here the Latin race owed nothing to any +foreign influence or example; and the development of Roman law pursued a +straightforward and uninterrupted course far beyond the limits of the +classical period, and after Rome itself had ceased to be the seat even of +a divided empire. The earliest juristic writings, consisting of +commentaries on collections of the semi-religious enactments in which +positive law began, are attributed to the period of the Samnite Wars, +long before Rome had become a great Mediterranean power. About 200 B.C. +two brothers, Publius and Sextus Aelius, both citizens of consular and +censorial rank, published a systematic treatise called _Tripertita_, +which was long afterwards held in reverence as containing the _cunabula +iuris_, the cradle out of which the vast systems of later ages sprang. +Fifty years later, in the circle of the younger Scipio, begins the +illustrious line of the Mucii Scaevolae. Three members of this family, +each a distinguished jurist, rose to the consulate in the stormy +half-century between the Gracchi and Sulla. The last and greatest of the +three represented the ideal Roman more nearly than any other citizen of +his time. The most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of orators, +he was at the same time a brilliant administrator and a paragon of +public and private virtue; and his murder at the altar of Vesta, in the +Marian proscription, was universally thought the most dreadful event +Of an age of horrors. His voluminous and exhaustive treatise on Civil +Law remained a text-book for centuries, and was a foundation for the +Writings of all later Roman jurists. + +The combination of jurisconsult and orator in the younger Scaevola was +somewhat rare; from an early period the two professions of jurist and +pleader were sharply distinguished, though both were pathways to the +highest civic offices. Neither his father nor his cousin (the other two +of the triad) was distinguished in oratory; nor were the two great +contemporaries of the former, who both published standard works on civil +law, Manius Manilius and Marcus Junius Brutus. The highest field for +oratory was, of course, in the political, and not in the purely legal, +sphere; and the unique Roman constitution, an oligarchy chosen almost +wholly by popular suffrage, made the practice of oratory more or less of +a necessity to every politician. Well-established tradition ascribed to +the greatest statesman of the earlier Republic, Appius Claudius Caecus, +the first institution of written oratory. His famous speech in the senate +against peace with Pyrrhus was cherished in Cicero's time as one of the +most precious literary treasures of Rome. From his time downwards the +stream of written oratory flowed, at first in a slender stream, which +gathered to a larger volume in the works of the elder Cato. + +In the history of the half-century following the war with Hannibal, Cato +is certainly the most striking single figure. It is only as a man of +letters that he has to be noticed here; and the character of a man of +letters was, perhaps, the last in which he would have wished to be +remembered or praised. Yet the cynical and indomitable old man, with his +rough humour, his narrow statesmanship, his obstinate ultra-conservatism, +not only produced a large quantity of writings, but founded and +transmitted to posterity a distinct and important body of critical dogma +and literary tradition. The influence of Greece had, as we have already +seen, begun to permeate the educated classes at Rome through and through. +Against this Greek influence, alike in literature and in manners, Cato +struggled all his life with the whole force of his powerful intellect and +mordant wit; yet it is most characteristic of the man that in his old age +he learned Greek himself and read deeply in the masterpieces of that +Greek literature from which he was too honest and too intelligent to be +able to withhold his admiration. While much of contemporary literature +was launching itself on the fatal course of imitation of Greek models, +and was forcing the Latin language into the trammels of alien forms, Cato +gave it a powerful impulse towards a purely native, if a somewhat narrow +and harsh development. The national prose literature, of which he may +fairly be called the founder, was kept up till the decay of Rome by a +large and powerful minority of Latin writers. What results it might have +produced, if allowed unchecked scope, can only be matter for conjecture; +in the main current of Latin literature the Greek influence was, on the +whole, triumphant; Cato's was the losing side (if one may so adapt the +famous line of Lucan), and the men of genius took the other. + +The speeches of Cato, of which upwards of a hundred and fifty were extant +in Cicero's time, and which the _virtuosi_ of the age of Hadrian +preferred, or professed to prefer, to Cicero's own, are lost, with the +exception of inconsiderable fragments. The fragments show high oratorical +gifts; shrewdness, humour, terse vigour and controlled passion; "somewhat +confused and harsh," says a late but competent Latin critic, "but strong +and vivid as it is possible for oratory to be." We have suffered a +heavier loss in his seven books of _Origines_, the work of his old age. +This may broadly be called an historical work, but it was history treated +in a style of great latitude, the meagre, disconnected method of the +annalists alternating with digressions into all kinds of subjects-- +geography, ethnography, reminiscences of his own travels and experiences, +and the politics and social life of his own and earlier times. It made no +attempt to keep up either the dignity or the continuity of history. His +absence of method made this work, however full of interest, the despair +of later historians: what were they to think, they plaintively asked, +of an author who dismissed whole campaigns without even giving the names +of the generals, while he went into profuse detail over one of the +war-elephants in the Carthaginian army? + +The only work of Cato's which has been preserved in its integrity is that +variously known under the titles _De Re Rustica_ or _De Agri Cultura_. It +is one of a number of treatises of a severely didactic nature, which he +published on various subjects--agricultural, sanitary, military, and +legal. This treatise was primarily written for a friend who owned and +cultivated farms in Campania. It consists of a series of terse and +pointed directions following one on another, with no attempt at style or +literary artifice, but full of a hard sagacity, and with occasional +flashes of dry humour, which suggest that Cato would have found a not +wholly uncongenial spirit in President Lincoln. A brief extract from one +of the earlier chapters is not without interest, both as showing the +practical Latin style, and as giving the prose groundwork of Virgil's +stately and beautiful embroidery in the _Georgics_. + +_Opera omnia mature conficias face. Nam res rustica sic est; si unam rem +sero feceris, omnia opera sero facies. Stramenta si deerunt frondem +iligneam legito; earn substernito ovibus bubusque. Sterquilinium magnum +stude ut habeas. Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportabis spargito et +comminuito; per autumnum evehito. Circum oleas autumnitate ablaqueato et +stercus addito. Frondem populneam, ulmeam, querneam caedito, per tempus +eam condito, non peraridam, pabulum ovibus. Item foenum cordum, +sicilimenta de prato; ea arida condito. Post imbrem autumni rapinam, +pabulum, lupinumque serito._ + +To the Virgilian student, every sentence here is full of reminiscences. + +In his partial yielding, towards the end of a long and uncompromising +life, to the rising tide of Greek influence, Cato was probably moved to a +large degree by his personal admiration for the younger Scipio, whom he +hailed as the single great personality among younger statesmen, and to +whom he paid (strangely enough, in a line quoted from Homer) what is +probably the most splendid compliment ever paid by one statesman to +another. Scipio was the centre of a school which included nearly the +whole literary impulse of his time. He was himself a distinguished orator +and a fine scholar; after the conquest of Perseus, the royal library was +the share of the spoils of Macedonia which he chose for himself, and +bequeathed to his family. His celebrated friend, Gaius Laelius, known in +Rome as "the Wise," was not only an orator, but a philosopher, or deeply +read, at all events, in the philosophy of Greece. Another member of the +circle, Lucius Furius Philus, initiated that connection of Roman law with +the Stoic philosophy which continued ever after to be so intimate and so +far-reaching. In this circle, too, Roman history began to be written in +Latin. Cassius Hemina and Lucius Calpurnius Piso have been already +mentioned; more intimately connected with Scipio are Gaius Fannius, the +son-in-law of Laelius, and Lucius Caelius Antipater, who reached, both in +lucid and copious diction and in impartiality and research, a higher +level than Roman history had yet attained. Literary culture became part +of the ordinary equipment of a statesman; a crowd of Greek teachers, +foremost among them the eminent philosopher, afterwards Master of the +Portico, Panaetius of Rhodes, spread among the Roman upper classes the +refining and illuminating influence of Greek ideas and Attic style. + +Meanwhile, in this Scipionic circle, a new figure had appeared of great +originality and force, the founder of a kind of literature which, with +justifiable pride, the Romans claimed as wholly native and original. +Gaius Lucilius was a member of a wealthy equestrian family, and thus +could associate on equal terms with the aristocracy, while he was removed +from the necessity, which members of the great senatorian houses could +hardly avoid, of giving the best of their time and strength to political +and administrative duties. After Terence, he is the most distinguished +and the most important in his literary influence among the friends of +Scipio. The form of literature which he invented and popularised, that of +familiar poetry, was one which proved singularly suited to the Latin +genius. He speaks of his own works under the name of _Sermones_, "talks" +--a name which was retained by his great successor, Horace; but the +peculiar combination of metrical form with wide range of subject and the +pedestrian style of ordinary prose, received in popular usage the name +_Satura_, or "mixture." The word had, in earlier times, been used of the +irregular stage performances, including songs, stories, and semi-dramatic +interludes, which formed the repertory of strolling artists at popular +festivals. The extension of the name to the verse of Lucilius indicates +that written literature was now rising to equal importance and popularity +with the spoken word. + +Horace comments, not without severity, on the profuse and careless +production of Lucilius. Of the thirty books of his _Satires_, few +fragments of any length survive; much, probably the greater part of them, +would, if extant, long have lost its interest. But the loss of the bulk +of his work is matter of sincere regret, because it undoubtedly gave a +vivid and detailed picture of the social life and the current interests +of the time, such as the _Satires_ of Horace give of Rome in the Augustan +age. His criticisms on the public men of his day were outspoken and +unsparing; nor had he more reverence for established reputations in +poetry than in public life. A great deal of his work consisted in +descriptions of eating and drinking; much, also, in lively accounts of +his own travels and adventures, or those of his friends. One book of the +_Satires_ was occupied with an account of Scipio's famous mission to the +East, in which he visited the courts of Egypt and Asia, attended by a +retinue of only five servants, but armed with the full power of the +terrible Republic. Another, imitated by Horace in his story of the +journey to Brundusium, detailed the petty adventures, the talk and +laughter by roads and at inns, of an excursion of his own through +Campania and Bruttium to the Sicilian straits. Many of the fragments deal +with the literary controversies of the time, going down even to the +minutiae of spelling and grammar; many more show the beginnings of that +translation into the language of common life of the precepts of the +Greek schools, which was consummated for the world by the poets and +prose-writers of the following century. But, above all, the _Satires_ of +Lucilius were in the fullest sense of the word an autobiography. The +famous description of Horace, made yet more famous for English readers by +the exquisite aptness with which Boswell placed it on the title-page of +his _Life of Johnson_-- + + _Quo fit ut omnis + Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella + Vita senis--_ + +expresses the true greatness of Lucilius. He invented a literary method +which, without being great, yields to no other in interest and even in +charm, and which, for its perfection, requires a rare and refined +genius. Not Horace only, nor all the satirists after Horace, but +Montaigne and Pepys also, belong to the school of Lucilius. + +Such was the circle of the younger Scipio, formed in the happy years--as +they seemed to the backward gaze of the succeeding generation--between +the establishment of Roman supremacy at the battle of Pydna, and the +revolutionary movement of Tiberius Gracchus. Fifty years of stormy +turbulence followed, culminating in the Social War and the reign of +terror under Marius and Cinna, and finally stilled in seas of blood by +the counter-revolution of Sulla. This is the period which separates the +Scipionic from the Ciceronian age. It was naturally, except in the single +province of political oratory, not one of great literary fertility; and +a brief indication of the most notable authors of the period, and of the +lines on which Roman literature mainly continued to advance during it, is +all that is demanded or possible here. + +In oratory, this period by general consent represented the golden age of +Latin achievement. The eloquence of both the Gracchi was their great +political weapon; that of Gaius was the most powerful in exciting feeling +that had ever been known; and his death was mourned, even by fierce +political opponents, as a heavy loss to Latin literature. But in the next +generation, the literary perfection of oratory was carried to an even +higher point by Marcus Antonius and Lucius Licinius Crassus. Both +attained the highest honours that the Republic had to bestow. By a happy +chance, their styles were exactly complementary to one another; to hear +both in one day was the highest intellectual entertainment which Rome +afforded. By this time the rules of oratory were carefully studied and +reduced to scientific treatises. One of these, the _Rhetorica ad +Herennium_, is still extant. It was almost certainly written by one +Quintus Cornificius, an older contemporary of Cicero, to whom the work +was long ascribed. It, no doubt, owes its preservation to this erroneous +tradition. The first two books were largely used by Cicero in his own +treatise _De Inventione_, part of a work on the principles of rhetoric +which he began in early youth. + +Latin history during this period made considerable progress. It was a +common practice among statesmen to write memoirs of their own life and +times; among others of less note, Sulla the dictator left at his death +twenty-two books of _Commentarii Rerum Gestarum_, which were afterwards +published by his secretary. In regular history the most important name +is that of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius. His work differed from those +of the earlier annalists in passing over the legendary period, and +beginning with the earliest authentic documents; in research and critical +judgment it reached a point only excelled by Sallust. His style was +formed on that of older annalists, and is therefore somewhat archaic for +the period, Considerable fragments, including the well-known description +of the single combat in 361 B.C. between Titus Manlius Torquatus and the +Gallic chief, survive in quotations by Aulus Gellius and the archaists of +the later Empire. More voluminous but less valuable than the _Annals_ of +Claudius were those of his contemporary, Valerius Antias, which formed +the main groundwork for the earlier books of Livy, and were largely used +by him even for later periods, when more trustworthy authorities were +available. Other historians of this period, Sisenna and Macer, soon fell +into neglect--the former as too archaic, the latter as too diffuse and +rhetorical, for literary permanence. + +Somewhat apart from the historical writers stand the antiquarians, who +wrote during this period in large numbers, and whose treatises filled the +library from which, in the age of Cicero, Varro compiled his monumental +works. As numerous probably were the writers of the school of Cato, on +husbandry, domestic economy, and other practical subjects, and the +grammarians and philologists, whose works formed two other large sections +in Varro's library. On all sides prose was full of life and growth; the +complete literary perfection of the age of Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust +might already be foreseen as within the grasp of the near future. + +Latin poetry, meanwhile, hung in the balance. The first great wave of the +Greek impulse had exhausted itself in Ennius and the later tragedians. +Prose had so developed that the poetical form was no longer a necessity +for the expression of ideas, as it had been in the palmy days of Latin +tragedy. The poetry of the future must be, so to speak, poetry for its +own sake, until some new tradition were formed which should make certain +metrical forms once more the recognised and traditional vehicle for +certain kinds of literary expression. In the blank of poetry we may note +a translation of the _Iliad_ into hexameters by one Gnaeus Matius, and +the earliest known attempts at imitation of the forms of Greek lyrical +verse by an equally obscure Laevius Melissus, as dim premonitions of the +new growth which Latin poetry was feeling after; but neither these, nor +the literary tragedies which still were occasionally produced by a +survival of the fashions of an earlier age, are of any account for their +own sake. Prose and poetry stood at the two opposite poles of their +cycle; and thus it is that, while the poets and prose-writers of the +Ciceronian age are equally imperishable in fame, the latter but represent +the culmination of a broad and harmonious development, while of the +former, amidst but apart from the beginnings of a new literary era, there +shine, splendid like stars out of the darkness, the two immortal lights +of Lucretius and Catullus. + + + + +IV. + +LUCRETIUS. + + +The age of Cicero, a term familiar to all readers as indicating one of +the culminating periods of literary history, while its central and later +years are accurately fixed, may be dated in its commencement from varying +limits. Cicero was born in 106 B.C., the year of the final conquest of +Jugurtha, and the year before the terrible Cimbrian disaster at Orange: +he perished in the proscription of the triumvirate in December, 43 B.C. +His first appearance in public life was during the dictatorship of Sulla; +and either from this date, or from one ten years later when the Sullan +constitution was re-established in a modified form by Pompeius and +Crassus in their first consulate, the Ciceronian age extends over a space +which approximates in the one case to thirty, in the other to forty +years. No period in ancient, and few even in more modern history are so +pregnant with interest or so fully and intimately known. From the +comparative obscurity of the earlier age we pass into a full blaze of +daylight. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Rome of Cicero is +as familiar to modern English readers as the London of Queen Anne, to +readers in modern France as the Paris of Louis Quatorze. We can still +follow with unabated interest the daily fluctuations of its politics, the +current gossip and scandal of its society, the passing fashions of +domestic life as revealed in private correspondence or the disclosures of +the law courts. Yet in the very centre of this brilliantly lighted world, +one of its most remarkable figures is veiled in almost complete darkness. +The poem of Lucretius, _On the Nature of Things_, though it not only +revealed a profound and extraordinary genius, but marked an entirely new +technical level in Latin poetry, stole into the world all but unnoticed; +and of its author's life, though a pure Roman of one of the great +governing families, only one or two doubtful and isolated facts could be +recovered by the curiosity of later commentators. The single sentence in +St. Jerome's _Chronicle_ which practically sums up the whole of our +information runs as follows, under the year 94 B.C:-- + +_Titus Lucretius poeta nascitur, posted amatorio poculo in furorem versus +cum aliquot libros per intervalla insaniae conscripsisset quos postea +Cicero emendavit, propria se manu interfecit anno aetatis xliiii._ + +Brief and straightforward as the sentence is, every clause in it has +given rise to volumes of controversy. Was Lucretius born in the year +named, or is another tradition correct, which, connecting his death with +a particular event in the youth of Virgil, makes him either be born a few +years earlier or die a few years younger? Did he ever, whether from a +poisonous philtre or otherwise, lose his reason? and can a poem which +ranks among the great masterpieces of genius have been built up into its +stately fabric--for this is not a question of brief lyrics like those of +Smart or Cowper--in the lucid intervals of insanity? Did Cicero have +anything to do with the editing of the unfinished poem? If so, which +Cicero--Marcus or Quintus? and why, in either case, is there no record of +the fact in their correspondence, or in any writing of the period? All +these questions are probably insoluble, and the notice of Jerome leaves +the whole life and personality of the poet still completely hidden. Yet +we have little or nothing else to go upon. There is a brief and casual +allusion to him in one of Cicero's letters of the year 54 B.C.: yet it +speaks of "poems," not the single great poem which we know; and most +editors agree that the text of the passage is corrupt, and must be +amended by the insertion of a _non_, though they differ on the important +detail of the particular clause in which it should be inserted. That the +earlier Augustan poets should leave their great predecessor completely +unnoticed is less remarkable, for it may be taken as merely a part of +that curious conspiracy of silence regarding the writers of the +Ciceronian age which, whether under political pressure or not, they all +adopted. Even Ovid, never ungenerous though not always discriminating in +his praise, dismisses him in a list of Latin poets with a single couplet +of vague eulogy. In the reactionary circles of the Empire, Lucretius +found recognition; but the critics who, according to Tacitus, ranked him +above Virgil may be reasonably suspected of doing so more from caprice +than from rational conviction. Had the poem itself perished (and all the +extant manuscripts are copies of a single original), no one would have +thought that such a preference could be anything but a piece of +antiquarian pedantry, like the revival, in the same period, of the plays +of the early tragedians. But the fortunate and slender chance which has +preserved it shows that their opinion, whether right or wrong, is one +which at all events is neither absurd nor unarguable. For in the _De +Rerum Natura_ we are brought face to face not only with an extraordinary +literary achievement, but with a mind whose profound and brilliant genius +has only of late years, and with the modern advance of physical and +historical science, been adequately recognised. + +The earliest Greek impulse in Latin poetry had long been exhausted; and +the fashion among the new generation was to admire and study beyond all +else the Greek poets of the decadence, who are generally, and without any +substantial injustice, lumped together by the name of the Alexandrian +school. The common quality in all this poetry was its great learning, and +its remoteness from nature. It was poetry written in a library; it viewed +the world through a highly coloured medium of literary and artistic +tradition. The laborious perfectness of execution which the taste of the +time demanded was, as a rule, lavished on little subjects, patient +carvings in ivory. One side of the Alexandrian school which was largely +followed was that of the didactic poets--Aratus, Nicander, Euphorion, and +a host of others less celebrated. Cicero, in mature life, speaks with +some contempt of the taste for Euphorion among his contemporaries. But he +had himself, as a young man, followed the fashion, and translated the +_Phaenomena_ of Aratus into wonderfully polished and melodious hexameter +verse. + +Not unaffected by this fashion of the day, but turning from it to older +and nobler models--Homer and Empedocles in Greek, Ennius in Latin-- +Lucretius conceived the imposing scheme of a didactic poem dealing with +the whole field of life and nature as interpreted by the Epicurean +philosophy. He lived to carry out his work almost to completion. It here +and there wants the final touches of arrangement; one or two discussions +are promised and not given; some paragraphs are repeated, and others have +not been worked into their proper place; but substantially, as in the +case of the _Aeneid_, we have the complete poem before us, and know +perfectly within what limits it might have been altered or improved by +fuller revision. + +As pure literature, the _Nature of Things_ has all the defects +inseparable from a didactic poem, that unstable combination of +discordant elements, and from a poem which is not only didactic, but +argumentative, and in parts highly controversial. Nor are these +difficulties in the least degree evaded or smoothed over by the poet. As +a teacher, he is in deadly earnest; as a controversialist, his first +object is to refute and convince. The graces of poetry are never for a +moment allowed to interfere with the full development of an argument. +Much of the poem is a chain of intricate reasoning hammered into verse by +sheer force of hand. The ardent imagination of the poet struggles through +masses of intractable material which no genius could wholly fuse into a +metal pure enough to take perfect form. His language, in the fine +prologue to the fourth book of the poem, shows his attitude towards his +art very clearly. + + _Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante + Trita solo; iuvat integros accedere fontes + Atque haurire, iuvatque novos decerpere flores + Insignemque meo capiti petere inde coronam + Unde prius milli velarint tempora Musae: + Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus, et artis + Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo, + Deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango + Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore._ + +The joy and glory of his art come second in his mind to his passionate +love of truth, and the deep moral purport of what he believes to be the +one true message for mankind. The human race lies fettered by +superstition and ignorance; his mission is to dispel their darkness by +that light of truth which is "clearer than the beams of the sun or the +shining shafts of day." Spinoza has been called, in a bold figure, "a man +drunk with God;" the contemplation of the "nature of things," the +physical structure of the universe, and the living and all but +impersonate law which forms and sustains it, has the same intoxicating +influence over Lucretius. God and man are alike to him bubbles on the +ceaseless stream of existence; yet they do not therefore, as they have so +often done in other philosophies, fade away to a spectral thinness. His +contemplation of existence is no brooding over abstractions; Nature is +not in his view the majestic and silent figure before whose unchanging +eyes the shifting shadow-shapes go and come; but an essential life, +manifesting itself in a million workings, _creatrix, gubernans, daedala +rerum_. The universe is filled through all its illimitable spaces by the +roar of her working, the ceaseless unexhausted energy with which she +alternates life and death. + +To our own age the Epicurean philosophy has a double interest. Not only +was it a philosophy of life and conduct, but, in the effort to place life +and conduct under ascertainable physical laws, it was led to frame an +extremely detailed and ingenious body of natural philosophy, which, +partly from being based on really sound postulates, partly from a happy +instinct in connecting phenomena, still remains interesting and valuable. +To the Epicureans, indeed, as to all ancient thinkers, the scientific +method as it is now understood was unknown; and a series of unverified +generalizations, however brilliant and acute, is not the true way towards +knowledge. But it still remains an astonishing fact that many of the most +important physical discoveries of modern times are hinted at or even +expressly stated by Lucretius. The general outlines of the atomic +doctrine have long been accepted as in the main true; in all important +features it is superior to any other physical theory of the universe +which existed up to the seventeenth century. In his theory of light +Lucretius was in advance of Newton. In his theory of chemical affinities +(for he describes the thing though the nomenclature was unknown to him) +he was in advance of Lavoisier. In his theory of the ultimate +constitution of the atom he is in striking agreement with the views of +the ablest living physicists. The essential function of science--to +reduce apparently disparate phenomena to the expressions of a single law +--is not with him the object of a moment's doubt or uncertainty. + +Towards real progress in knowledge two things are alike indispensable: a +true scientific method, and imaginative insight. The former is, in the +main, a creation of the modern world, nor was Lucretius here in advance +of his age. But in the latter quality he is unsurpassed, if not +unequalled. Perhaps this is even clearer in another field of science, +that which has within the last generation risen to such immense +proportions under the name of anthropology. Thirty years ago it was the +first and second books of the _De Rerum Natura_ which excited the +greatest enthusiasm in the scientific world. Now that the atomic theory +has passed into the rank of received doctrines, the brilliant sketch, +given in the fifth book, of the beginnings of life upon the earth, the +evolution of man and the progress of human society, is the portion of the +poem in which his scientific imagination is displayed most astonishingly. +A Roman aristocrat, living among a highly cultivated society, Lucretius +had been yet endowed by nature with the primitive instincts of the +savage. He sees the ordinary processes of everyday life--weaving, +carpentry, metal-working, even such specialised forms of manual art as +the polishing of the surface of marble--with the fresh eye of one who +sees them all for the first time. Nothing is to him indistinct through +familiarity. In virtue of this absolute clearness of vision it costs him +no effort to throw himself back into prehistoric conditions and the wild +life of the earliest men. Even further than this he can pierce the dim +recesses of the past. Before his imagination the earth rises swathed in +tropical forests, and all strange forms of life issuing and jostling one +another for existence in the steaming warmth of perpetual summer. Among a +thousand types that flowered and fell, the feeble form of primitive man +is distinguished, without fire, without clothing, without articulate +speech. Through the midnight of the woods, shivering at the cries of the +stealthy-footed prowlers of the darkness, he crouches huddled in fallen +leaves, waiting for the rose of dawn. Little by little the prospect +clears round him. The branches of great trees, grinding one against +another in the windy forest, break into a strange red flower; he gathers +it and hoards it in his cave. There, when wind and rain beat without, the +hearth-fire burns through the winter, and round it gathers that other +marvellous invention of which the hearth-fire became the mysterious +symbol, the family. From this point the race is on the full current of +progress, of which the remainder of the book gives an account as +essentially true as it is incomparably brilliant. If we consider how +little Lucretius had to go upon in this reconstruction of lost history, +his imaginative insight seems almost miraculous. Even for the later +stages of human progress he had to rely mainly on the eye which saw deep +below the surface into the elementary structure of civilisation. There +was no savage life within the scope of his actual observation. Books +wavered between traditions of an impossible golden age and fragments of +primitive legend which were then quite unintelligible, and are only now +giving up their secret under a rigorous analysis. Further back, and +beyond the rude civilisation of the earlier races of Greece and Italy, +data wholly failed. We have supplemented, but hardly given more life to, +his picture of the first beginnings, by evidence drawn from a thousand +sources then unknown or unexplored--from coal-measures and mud-deposits, +Pictish barrows and lacustrine middensteads, remote tribes of hidden +Africa and islands of the Pacific Sea. + +Such are the characteristics which, to one or another epoch of modern +times, give the poem of Lucretius so unique an interest. But for these as +for all ages, its permanent value must lie mainly in more universal +qualities. History and physical science alike are in all poetry ancillary +to ideas. It is in his moral temper, his profound insight into life, that +Lucretius is greatest; and it is when dealing with moral ideas that his +poetry rises to its utmost height. The Epicurean philosophy, in his +hands, takes all the moral fervour of a religion. The depth of his +religious instinct may be measured by the passion of his antagonism to +what he regarded as superstition. Human life in his eyes was made +wretched, mean, and cruel by one great cause--the fear of death and of +what happens after it. That death is not to be feared, that nothing +happens after it, is the keystone of his whole system. It is after an +accumulation of seventeen proofs, hurled one upon another at the reader, +of the mortality of the soul, that, letting himself loose at the highest +emotional and imaginative tension, he breaks into that wonderful passage, +which Virgil himself never equalled, and which in its lofty passion, its +piercing tenderness, the stately roll of its cadences, is perhaps +unmatched in human speech. + + _"Iam iam non domus accipiet te Iaeta, neque uxor + Optima, nee dulces occurrent oscula nati + Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent: + Non poteris factis florentibus esse, tuisque + Praesidium: misero misere" aiunt, "omnia ademit + Una dies infesta tibi tot praemia vitae...."_ + +"'Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome thee, nor darling +children race to snatch thy first kisses and touch thy heart with a sweet +and silent content; no more mayest thou be prosperous in thy doings and a +defence to thine own: alas and woe!' say they, 'one disastrous day has +taken all these prizes of thy life away from thee'--but thereat they do +not add this, 'and now no more does any longing for these things beset +thee.' This did their thought but clearly see and their speech follow, +they would release themselves from great heartache and fear. 'Thou, +indeed, as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for the rest +of the ages, severed from all weary pains; but we, while close by us thou +didst turn ashen on the awful pyre, made unappeasable lamentation, and +everlastingly shall time never rid our heart of anguish.' Ask we then +this of him, what there is that is so very bitter, if sleep and peace be +the conclusion of the matter, to make one fade away in never-ending +grief? + +"Thus also men often do when, set at the feast, they hold their cups and +shade their faces with garlands, saying sadly, 'Brief is this joy for +wretched men; soon will it have been, and none may ever after recall it!' +as if this were to be first and foremost of the ills of death, that +thirst and dry burning should waste them miserably, or desire after +anything else beset them. For not even then does any one miss himself and +his life when soul and body together are deep asleep and at rest; for all +we care, such slumber might go on for ever, nor does any longing after +ourselves touch us then, though then those first beginnings through our +body swerve away but a very little from the movements that bring back the +senses when the man starts up and gathers himself out of sleep. Far less, +therefore, must we think death concerns us, if less than nothing there +can be; for a greater sundering in the mass of matter follows upon death, +nor does any one awake and stand, whom the cold stoppage of death once +has overtaken. + +"Yet again, were the Nature of things suddenly to utter a voice, and thus +with her own lips upbraid one of us, 'What ails thee so, O mortal, to let +thyself loose in too feeble grievings? why weep and wail at death? for if +thy past life and overspent has been sweet to thee, and all the good +thereof has not, as if poured into a pierced vessel, run through and +joylessly perished, why dost thou not retire like a banqueter filled with +life, and calmly, O fool, take thy peaceful sleep? But if all thou hast +had is perished and spilt, and thy life is hateful, why seekest thou yet +to add more which shall once again all perish and fall joylessly away? +why not rather make an end of life and labour? for there is nothing more +that I can contrive and invent for thy delight; all things are the same +for ever. Even were thy body not yet withered, nor thy limbs weary and +worn, yet all things remain the same, didst thou go on to live all the +generations down, nay, even more, wert thou never doomed to die'--what do +we answer?" + +It is in passages of which the two hundred lines beginning thus are the +noblest instance, passages of profound and majestic broodings over life +and death, that the long rolling weight of the Lucretian hexameter tells +with its full force. For the golden cadence of poesy we have to wait till +Virgil; but the strain that Lucretius breathes through bronze is +statelier and more sonorous than any other in the stately and sonorous +Roman speech. Like Naevius a century and a half before, he might have +left the proud and pathetic saying on his tomb that, after he was dead, +men forgot to speak Latin in Rome. He stands side by side with Julius +Caesar in the perfect purity of his language. The writing of the next +age, whether prose or verse, gathered richness and beauty from alien +sources; if the poem of Lucretius had no other merit, it would be a +priceless document as a model of the purest Latin idiom in the precise +age of its perfection. It follows from this that in certain points of +technique Lucretius kept behind his age, or rather, deliberately held +aloof from the movement of his age towards a more intricate and elaborate +art. The wave of Alexandrianism only touched him distantly; he takes up +the Ennian tradition where Ennius had left it, and puts into it the +immensely increased faculty of trained expression which a century of +continuous literary practice, and his own admirably clear and quick +intelligence, enable him to supply. The only Greek poets mentioned by him +are Homer and Empedocles. His remoteness from the main current of +contemporary literature is curiously parallel to that of Milton. The +Epicurean philosophy was at this time, as it never was either earlier or +later, the predominant creed among the ruling class at Rome: but except +in so far as its shallower aspects gave the motive for light verse, it +was as remote from poetry as the Puritan theology of the seventeenth +century. In both cases a single poet of immense genius was also deeply +penetrated with the spirit of a creed. In both cases his poetical +affinity was with the poets of an earlier day, and his poetical manner +something absolutely peculiar to himself. Both of them under this +strangely mixed impulse set themselves to embody their creed in a great +work of art. But the art did not appeal strongly to sectaries, nor the +creed to artists. The _De Rerum Natura_ and the _Paradise Lost_, while +they exercised a profound influence over later poets, came silently into +the world, and seem to have passed over the heads of their immediate +contemporaries. There is yet another point of curious resemblance between +them. Every student of Milton knows that the only English poet from whom +he systematically borrowed matter and phrase was a second-rate translator +of a second-rate original, who now would be almost forgotten but for the +use Milton made of him. For one imitation of Spenser or Shakespeare in +the _Paradise Lost_ it would be easy to adduce ten--not mere coincidences +of matter, but direct transferences--of Sylvester's Du Bartas. While +Lucretius was a boy, Cicero published the version in Latin hexameters of +the _Phaenomena_ and _Prognostica_ of Aratus to which reference has +already been made. These poems consist of only between eleven and twelve +hundred lines in all, but had, in the later Alexandrian period, a +reputation (like that of the _Sepmaine_ of Du Bartas) far in excess of +their real merit, and were among the most powerful influences in founding +the new style. The many imitations in Lucretius of the extant fragments +of these Ciceronian versions show that he must have studied their +vocabulary and versification with minute care. The increased technical +possibilities shown by them to exist in the Latin hexameter--for in them, +as in nearly all his permanent work, Cicero was mastering the problem of +making his own language an adequate vehicle of sustained expression--may +even have been the determining influence that made Lucretius adopt this +poetical form. Till then it may have been just possible that native +metrical forms might still reassert themselves. Inscriptions of the last +century of the Republic show that the saturnian still lingered in use +side by side with the rude popular hexameters which were gradually +displacing it; and the _Punic War_ of Naevius was still a classic. +Lucretius' choice of the hexameter, and his definite conquest of it as a +medium of the richest and most varied expression, placed the matter +beyond recall. The technical imperfections which remained in it were now +reduced within a visible compass; its power to convey sustained argument, +to express the most delicate shades of meaning, to adjust itself to the +greatest heights and the subtlest tones of emotion, was already acquired +when Lucretius handed it on to Virgil. And here, too, as well as in the +wide field of literature with which his fame is more intimately +connected, from the actual impulse given by his own early work and +heightened by admiration of his brilliant maturity, even more than from +the dubious tradition of his critical revision of the poem, the glory of +the Ciceronian age is in close relation to the personal genius of Cicero. + + + + +V. + +LYRIC POETRY: CATULLUS. + + +Contemporary with Lucretius, but, unlike him, living in the full whirl +and glare of Roman life, was a group of young men who were professed +followers of the Alexandrian school. In the thirty years which separate +the Civil war and the Sullan restoration from the sombre period that +opened with the outbreak of hostilities between Caesar and the senate, +social life at Rome among the upper classes was unusually interesting and +exciting. The outward polish of Greek civilisation was for the first time +fully mastered, and an intelligent interest in art and literature was the +fashion of good society. The "young man about town," whom we find later +fully developed in the poetry of Ovid, sprang into existence, but as the +government was still in the hands of the aristocracy, fashion and +politics were intimately intermingled, and the lighter literature of the +day touched grave issues on every side. The poems of Catullus are full of +references to his friends and his enemies among this group of writers. +Two of the former, Cinna and Calvus, were poets of considerable +importance. Gaius Helvius Cinna--somewhat doubtfully identified with the +"Cinna the poet" who met such a tragical end at the hands of the populace +after Caesar's assassination--carried the Alexandrian movement to its +most uncompromising conclusions. His fame (and that fame was very great) +rested on a short poem called _Zmyrna_, over which he spent ten years' +labour, and which, by subject and treatment alike, carried the method of +that school to its furthest excess. In its recondite obscurity it outdid +Lycophron himself. More than one grammarian of the time made a reputation +solely by a commentary on it. It throws much light on the peculiar +artistic position of Catullus, to bear in mind that this masterpiece of +frigid pedantry obtained his warm and evidently sincere praise. + +The other member of the triad, Gaius Licinius Macer Calvus, one of the +most brilliant men of his time, was too deeply plunged in politics to be +more than an accomplished amateur in poetry. Yet it must have been more +than his intimate friendship with Catullus, and their common fate of too +early a death, that made the two names so constantly coupled afterwards. +By the critics of the Silver Age, no less than by Horace and Propertius, +the same idea is frequently repeated, which has its best-known expression +in Ovid's beautiful invocation in his elegy on Tibullus-- + + Obvius huic venias, hedera iuvenilia cinctus + Tempora, cum Calvo, docte Catulle, tuo._ + +We must lament the total loss of a volume of lyrics which competent +judges thought worthy to be set beside that of his wonderful friend. + +Gaius Valerius Catullus of Verona, one of the greatest names of Latin +poetry, belonged, like most of this group, to a wealthy and distinguished +family, and was introduced at an early age to the most fashionable +circles of the capital. He was just so much younger than Lucretius that +the Marian terror and the Sullan proscriptions can hardly have left any +strong traces on his memory. When he died, Caesar was still fighting in +Gaul, and the downfall of the Republic could only be dimly foreseen. In +time, no less than in genius, he represents the fine flower of the +Ciceronian age. He was about five and twenty when the attachment began +between him and the lady whom he has immortalised under the name of +Lesbia. By birth a Claudia, and wife of her cousin, a Caecilius Metellus, +she belonged by blood and marriage to the two proudest families of the +inner circle of the aristocracy. Clodia was seven years older than +Catullus; but that only made their mutual attraction more irresistible: +and the death of her husband in the year after his consulship, whether or +not there was foundation for the common rumour that she had poisoned him, +was an incident that seems to have passed almost unnoticed in the first +fervour of their passion. The story of infatuation, revolt, relapse, +fresh revolt and fresh entanglement, lives and breathes in the verses of +Catullus. It was after their final rupture that Catullus made that +journey to Asia which gave occasion to his charming poems of travel. In +the years which followed his return to Italy, he continued to produce +with great versatility and force, making experiments in several new +styles, and devoting great pains to an elaborate metrical technique. +Feats of learning and skill alternate with political verses, into which +he carries all his violence of love and hatred. But while these later +poems compel our admiration, it is the earlier ones which win and keep +our love. Though the old liquid note ever and again recurs, the freshness +of these first lyrics, in which life and love and poetry are all alike in +their morning glory, was never to be wholly recaptured. Nor did he live +to settle down on any matured second manner. He was thirty-three at the +utmost--perhaps not more than thirty--when he died, leaving behind him +the volume of poems which sets him as the third beside Sappho and +Shelley. + +The order of the poems in this volume seems to be an artificial +compromise between two systems--one an arrangement by metre, and the +other by date of composition. In the former view the book falls into +three sections--the pure lyrics, the idyllic pieces, and the poems in +elegiac verse. The central place is occupied by the longest and most +elaborate, if not the most successful, of his poems, the epic idyl on the +marriage of Peleus and Thetis. Before this are the lyrics, chiefly in the +phalaecian eleven-syllabled verse which Catullus made so peculiarly his +own, but in iambic, sapphic, choriambic, and other metres also, winding +up with the fine epithalamium written for the marriage of his friends, +Mallius and Vinia. The transition from this group of lyrics to the +_Marriage of Peleus and Thetis_ is made with great skill through another +wedding-chant, an idyl in form, but approaching to a lyric in tone, +without any personal allusions, and not apparently written for any +particular occasion. Finally comes a third group of poems, extending to +the end of the volume, all written in elegiac verse, but otherwise +extremely varied in date, subject, and manner. The only poem thus left +unaccounted for, the _Atys_, is inserted in the centre of the volume, +between the two hexameter poems, as though to make its wild metre and +rapid movement the more striking by contrast with their smooth and +languid rhythms. Whether the arrangement of the whole book comes from the +poet's own hand is very doubtful. His dedicatory verses, which stand at +the head of the volume, are more probably attached to the first part +only, the book of lyrics. Catullus almost certainly died in 54 B.C.; the +only positive dates assignable to particular poems, in either the lyric +or the elegiac section, alike lie within the three or four years +previous, and, while no strict chronological order is followed, the +pieces at the beginning of the book are almost certainly the earliest, +and those at the end among the latest. + +Among the poems of Catullus, those connected with Lesbia hold the +foremost place, and, as expressions of direct personal emotion, are +unsurpassed, not merely in Latin, but in any literature. There are no +poems of the growth of love among them; from the first, Lesbia appears as +the absolute mistress of her lover's heart: + + _Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, + Rumoresque senum severiorum + Omnes unius aestimemus assis. + Soles occidere et redire possunt; + Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux + Nox est perpetua una dormienda:--_ + +thus he cries in the first intoxication of his happiness, as yet ignorant +that the brief light of his love was to go out before noon. Clodia soon +showed that the advice not to care for the opinion of the world was, in +her case, infinitely superfluous. That intolerable pride which was the +proverbial curse of the Claudian house took in her the form of a flagrant +disregard of all conventions. In the early days of their love, Catullus +only felt, or only expressed, the beautiful side of this recklessness. +His affection for Clodia had in it, he says, something of the tenderness +of parents for their children; and the poems themselves bear out the +paradox. We do not need to read deeply in Catullus to be assured that +merely animal passion ran as strong in him as it ever did in any man. But +in the earlier poems to Lesbia all this turns to air and fire; the +intensity of his love melts its grosser elements into one white flame. +There is hardly even a word of Lesbia's bodily beauty; her great blazing +eyes have only come down to us in the sarcastic allusions made to them by +Cicero in his speeches and letters. As in a few of the finest lyrics of +Burns, with whom Catullus, as a poet of love, has often been compared, +the ardency of passion has effected for quintessential moments the work +that long ages may work out on the whole fabric of a human soul-- +_Concretam exemit labem purumque reliquit aetherium sensum atque aurai +simplicis ignem_. + +But long after the rapture had passed away the enthralment remained. +Lesbia's first infidelities only riveted her lover's chains-- + + _Amantem iniuria talis + Cogit amare magis;_ + +then he hangs between love and hatred, in the poise of soul immortalised +by him in the famous verse-- + + _Odi et amo: quare id faciam fortasse requiris; + Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior._ + +There were ruptures and reconciliations, and renewed ruptures and +repeated returns, but through them all, while his love hardly lessens, +his hatred continually grows, and the lyrical cry becomes one of the +sharpest agony: through protestations of fidelity, through wails over +ingratitude, he sinks at last into a stupor only broken by moans of pain. +Then at last youth reasserts itself, and he is stung into new life by the +knowledge that he has simply dropped out of Lesbia's existence. His final +renunciation is no longer addressed to her deaf ears, but flung at her in +studied insult through two of the associates of their old revels in Rome. + + _Cum suis vivat valeatque moechis + Quos simul complexa tenet trecentos + Nullum amans vere, sed identidem[2] omnium + Ilia rumpens--_ + +so the hard clear verse flashes out, to melt away in the dying fall, the +long-drawn sweetness of the last words of all-- + + _Nec meum respectet ut ante amorem + Qui illius culpa cecidit, velut prati + Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam + Tactus aratro est._ + +Foremost among the other lyrics of Catullus which have a personal +reference are those concerned with his journey to Asia, and the death in +the Troad of the deeply loved brother whose tomb he visited on that +journey. The excitement of travel and the delight of return have never +been more gracefully touched than in these little lyrics, of which every +other line has become a household word, the _Iam ver egelidos refert +tepores_, and the lovely _Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque_, whose +cadences have gathered a fresh sweetness in the hands of Tennyson. But a +higher note is reached in one or two of the short pieces on his brother's +death, which are lyrics in all but technical name. The finest of these +has all the delicate simplicity of an epitaph by the best Greek artists, +Leonidas or Antipater or Simonides himself; and with this it combines the +specific Latin dignity, and a range of tones, from the ocean-roll of its +opening hexameter, _Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus_, to +the sobbing wail of the _Atque in perpehtum frater ave atque vale_ in +which it dies away, that is hardly equalled except in some of +Shakespeare's sonnets. + +It is in these short lyrics of personal passion or emotion that the +genius of Catullus is most eminent; but the same high qualities appear in +the few specimens he has left of more elaborate lyrical architecture, the +_Ode to Diana_, the marriage-song for Mallius and Vinia, and the _Atys_. +The first of these, brief as it is, has a breadth and grandeur of manner +which--as in the noble fragment of Keats' _Ode to Maia_--lift it into the +rank of great masterpieces. The epithalamium, on the other hand, with +which the book of lyrics ends, while very simple in structure, is large +in scale. It is as much longer than the rest of the lyrics as the +marriage-song which stands at the end of _In Memoriam_ is than the other +sections of that poem. In the charm of perfect simplicity it equals the +finest of his lyrics; but besides this, it has in its clear ringing music +what is for this period an almost unique premonition of the new world +that rose out of the darkness of the Middle Ages, the world that had +invented bells and church-organs, and had added a new romantic beauty to +love and marriage. With a richness of phrase that recalls the Song of +Solomon, the verses clash and swing: _Open your bars, O gates! the bride +is at hand! Lo, how the torches shake out their splendid tresses!... Even +so in a rich lord's garden-close might stand a hyacinth-flower. Lo, the +torches shake out their golden tresses; go forth, O bride! Day wanes; go +forth, O bride!_ And the verse at the end, about the baby on its mother's +lap-- + + _Torqutatus volo parvulus + Matris e gremio suae + Porrigens teneras manus + Dulce rideat ad patrem + Semihiante labello--_ + +is as incomparable; not again till the Florentine art of the fifteenth +century was the picture drawn with so true and tender a hand. + +Over the _Atys_ modern criticism has exhausted itself without any +definite result. The accident of its being the only Latin poem extant in +the peculiar galliambic metre has combined with the nature of the +subject[3] to induce a tradition about it as though it were the most +daring and extraordinary of Catullus' poems. The truth is quite +different. It stands midway between the lyrics and the idyls in being a +poem of most studied and elaborate artifice, in which Catullus has +chosen, not the statelier and more familiar rhythms of the hexameter or +elegiac, but one of the Greek lyric metres, of which he had already +introduced several others into Latin. As a _tour de force_ in metrical +form it is remarkable enough, and probably marks the highest point of +Latin achievement in imitation of the more complex Greek metres. As a +lyric poem it preserves, even in its highly artificial structure, much of +the direct force and simplicity which mark all Catullus' best lyrics. +That it goes beyond this, or that--as is often repeated--it transcends +both the idyls and the briefer lyrics in sustained beauty and passion, +cannot be held by any sane judgment. + +How far elaboration could lead Catullus is shown in the long idyllic poem +on the _Marriage of Peleus and Thetis_. Here he entirely abandons the +lyric manner, and adventures on a new field, in which he does not prove +very successful. The poem is full of great beauties of detail; but as a +whole it is cloying and yet not satisfying. For a few lines together +Catullus can write in hexameter more exquisitely than any other Latin +poet. The description in this piece of the little breeze that rises at +dawn, beginning _Hic qualis flatu placidum mare matutino_, like the more +famous lines in his other idyllic poem-- + + _Ut flos in septis secretum nascitur hortis, + Ignotus pecori, nullo contusus aratro, + Quem mulcent aurae, firmat sol, educat imber; + Multi illum pueri, multae optavere puellae--_ + +has an intangible and inexpressible beauty such as never recurs in the +more mature art of greater masters. But Catullus has no narrative gift; +his use of the hexameter is confined to a limited set of rhythms which in +a poem about the length of a book of the _Georgics_ become hopelessly +monotonous; and it finally stops, rather than ends, when the writer (as +is already the case with the reader) grows tired of it. It is remarkable +that the poet who in the lightness and speed of his other metres is +unrivalled in Latin, should, when he attempts the hexameter, be more +languid and heavy, not only than his successors, but than his +contemporaries. Here, as in the elaborate imitations of Callimachus with +which he tested his command of the Latin elegiac, he is weak because he +wanders off the true line, not from any failure in his own special gift, +which was purely and simply lyrical. When he uses the elegiac verse to +express his own feeling, as in the attacks on political or personal +enemies, it has the same direct lucidity (as of an extraordinarily gifted +child) which is the essential charm of his lyrics. + +It is just this quality, this clear and almost terrible simplicity, that +puts Catullus in a place by himself among the Latin poets. Where others +labour in the ore of thought and gradually forge it out into sustained +expression, he sees with a single glance, and does not strike a second +time. His imperious lucidity is perfectly unhesitating in its action; +whether he is using it for the daintiest flower of sentiment--_fair +passions and bountiful pities and loves without stain_--or for the +expression of his fiery passions and hatreds in some flagrant obscenity +or venomous insult, it is alike straight and reckless, with no scruple +and no mincing of words; in Mr. Swinburne's curiously true and vivid +phrase, he "makes mouths at our speech" when we try to follow him. + +With the death of Catullus and Calvus, an era in Latin poetry definitely +ends. Only thirteen or fourteen years later a new era begins with the +appearance of Virgil; but this small interval of time is sufficient to +mark the passage from one age--we might almost say from one civilisation +--to another. During these years poetry was almost silent, while the +Roman world shook with continuous civil war and the thunder of prodigious +armies. The school of minor Alexandrian poets still indeed continued; the +"warblers of Euphorion" with their smooth rhythms and elaborate _finesse_ +of workmanship are spoken of by Cicero as still numerous and active ten +years after Catullus' death. But their artifice had lost the gloss of +novelty; and the enthusiasm which greeted the appearance of the Eclogues +was due less perhaps to their intrinsic excellence than to the relief +with which Roman poetry shook itself free from the fetters of so rigorous +and exhausting a convention. + + + + +CICERO. + + +Meanwhile, in the last age of the Republic, Latin prose had reached its +full splendour in the hands of the most copious and versatile master of +style whom the Graeco-Roman world had yet produced. The claims of Cicero +to a place among the first rank of Roman statesmen have been fiercely +canvassed by modern critics; and both in oratory and philosophy some +excess of veneration once paid to him has been replaced by an equally +excessive depreciation. The fault in both estimates lay in the fact that +they were alike based on secondary issues. Cicero's unique and +imperishable glory is not, as he thought himself, that of having put down +the revolutionary movement of Catiline, nor, as later ages thought, that +of having rivalled Demosthenes in the _Second Philippic_, or confuted +atheism in the _De Natura Deorum_. It is that he created a language which +remained for sixteen centuries that of the civilised world, and used that +language to create a style which nineteen centuries have not replaced, +and in some respects have scarcely altered. He stands in prose, like +Virgil in poetry, as the bridge between the ancient and modern world. +Before his time, Latin prose was, from a wide point of view, but one +among many local ancient dialects. As it left his hands, it had become a +universal language, one which had definitely superseded all others, Greek +included, as the type of civilised expression. + +Thus the apparently obsolete criticism which ranked Cicero together with +Plato and Demosthenes, if not above them, was based on real facts, though +it may be now apparent that it gave them a wrong interpretation. Even +Hellenists may admit with but slight reluctance that the prose of the +great Attic writers is, like the sculpture of their contemporary artists, +a thing remote from modern life, requiring much training and study for +its appreciation, and confined at the best to a limited circle. But +Ciceronian prose is practically the prose of the human race; not only of +the Roman empire of the first and second centuries, but of Lactantius and +Augustine, of the mediaeval Church, of the earlier and later Renaissance, +and even now, when the Renaissance is a piece of past history, of the +modern world to which the Renaissance was the prelude. + +The life of Cicero as a man of letters may be divided into four periods, +which, though not of course wholly distinct from one another, may be +conveniently treated as separate for the purpose of criticism. The first +is that of his immature early writings--poems, treatises on rhetoric, and +forensic speeches--covering the period from his boyhood in the Civil +wars, to the first consulship of Pompeius and Crassus, in 70 B.C. The +second, covering his life as an active statesman of the first prominence, +begins with the Verrine orations of that year, and goes down to the +consulship of Julius Caesar, in 59 B.C. These ten years mark his +culmination as an orator; and there is no trace in them of any large +literary work except in the field of oratory. In the next year came his +exile, from which indeed he returned within a twelvemonth, but as a +broken statesman. From this point to the outbreak of the Civil war in 50 +B.C., the third period continues the record of his great speeches; but +they are no longer at the old height, nor do they occupy his full energy; +and now he breaks new ground in two fields with works of extraordinary +brilliance, the _De Oratore_ and the _De Republica_. During the heat of +the Civil war there follows a period of comparative silence, but for his +private correspondence; then comes the fourth and final period, perhaps +the most brilliant of all, the four years from 46 B.C. to his death in 43 +B.C. The few speeches of the years 46 and 45 show but the ghost of former +splendours; he was turning perforce to other subjects. The political +philosophy of the _De Republica_ is resumed in the _De Legibus_; the _De +Oratore_ is continued by the history of Roman oratory known as the +_Brutus_. Then, as if realising that his true work in life was to mould +his native language into a vehicle of abstract thought, he sets to work +with amazing swiftness and copiousness to reproduce a whole series of +Greek philosophical treatises, in a style which, for flexibility and +grace, recalls the Greek of the best period--the _De Finibus_, the +_Academics_, the _Tusculans_, the _De Natura Deorum_, the _De +Divinatione_, the _De Officiis_. Concurrently with these, he continues to +throw off further manuals of the theory and practice of oratory, intended +in the first instance for the use of the son who proved so thankless a +pupil, the _Partitiones Oratoriae_, the _Topica_, the _De Optimo Genere +Oratorum_. Meanwhile, the Roman world had again been plunged into civil +war by the assassination of Caesar. Cicero's political influence was no +longer great, but it was still worth the while of younger and more +unscrupulous statesmen to avail themselves of his eloquence by assumed +deference and adroit flattery. The series of fourteen speeches delivered +at Rome against Marcus Antonius, between September, 44, and April, 43 +B.C., were the last outburst of free Roman oratory before the final +extinction of the Republic. That even at the time there was a sense of +their unreality--of their being rhetorical exercises to interest the +capital while the real issues of the period were being fought out +elsewhere--is indicated by the name that from the first they went under, +the _Philippics_. In the epoch of the _Verrines_ and the _Catilinarians_ +it had not been necessary to find titles for the weapons of political +warfare out of old Greek history. Yet, in spite of this unreality, and of +the decline they show in the highest oratorical qualities, the +_Philippics_ still remain a noble ruin of eloquence. + +Oratory at Rome had, as we have already seen, attained a high degree of +perfection when Cicero entered on public life. Its golden age was indeed, +in the estimation of some critics, already over; old men spoke with +admiring regret of the speeches of the younger Scipio and of Gaius +Gracchus; and the death of the great pair of friendly rivals, Crassus and +Antonius, left no one at the moment who could be called their equal. But +admirable as these great orators had been, there was still room for a +higher formal perfection, a more exhaustive and elaborate technique, +without any loss of material qualities. Closer and more careful study led +the orators of the next age into one of two opposed, or rather +complementary styles, the Attic and Asiatic; the calculated simplicity of +the one being no less artificial than the florid ornament of the other. +At an early age Cicero, with the intuition of genius, realised that he +must not attach himself to either school. A fortunate delicacy of health +led him to withdraw for two years, at the age of seven and twenty, from +the practice at the bar, in which he was already becoming famous; and in +the schools of Athens and Rhodes he obtained a larger view of his art, +both in theory and practice, and returned to Rome to form, not to follow, +a style. Quintus Hortensius Hortalus, the foremost representative of the +Asiatic school, was then at the height of his forensic reputation. Within +a year or two Cicero was recognised as at least his equal: it is to the +honour of both, that the eclipse of Hortensius by his younger rival +brought no jealousy or alienation; up to the death of Hortensius, about +the outbreak of the Civil war, they remained good friends. Years +afterwards Cicero inscribed with his name the treatise, now lost, but +made famous to later ages by having been one of the great turning-points +in the life of St. Augustine[4], which he wrote in praise of philosophy +as an introduction to the series of his philosophical works. + +The years which followed Cicero's return from the East were occupied, +with the single break of his quaestorship in Sicily, by hard and +continuous work at the bar. His speeches of this date, being non- +political, have for the most part not been preserved. The two still +imperfectly extant, the _Pro Roscio Comoedo_ of 76, and the _Pro Tullio_ +of 72 B.C., form, together with two other speeches dating from before his +visit to the East, the _Pro Quinctio_ and _Pro Roscio Amerino_, and, with +his juvenile treatise on rhetoric known as the _De Inventione_, the body +of prose composition which represents the first of his four periods. +These early speeches are carefully composed according to the scholastic +canons then in vogue, the hard legal style of the older courts +alternating with passages of carefully executed artificial ornament. +Their chief interest is one of contrast with his matured style; for they +show, no doubt with much accuracy, what the general level of oratory was +out of which the great Ciceronian eloquence sprang. + +In 70 B.C., at the age of thirty-six, Cicero at last found his great +chance, and seized it. The impeachment of Verres for maladministration in +the government of Sicily was a political trial of great constitutional +importance. It was undertaken at the direct encouragement of Pompeius, +who had entered on his first or democratic consulate, and was indirectly +a formidable attack both on the oligarchic administration of the +provinces and on the senatorian jury-panels, in whose hands the Sullan +constitution had placed the only check upon misgovernment. The defence of +Verres was undertaken by Hortensius; the selection of Cicero as chief +counsel for the prosecution by the democratic leaders was a public +recognition of him as the foremost orator on the Pompeian side. He threw +himself into the trial with all his energy. After his opening speech, and +the evidence which followed, Verres threw up his defence and went into +exile. This, of course, brought the case to an end; but the cause turned +on larger issues than his particular guilt or innocence. The whole of the +material prepared against him was swiftly elaborated by Cicero into five +great orations, and published as a political document. These orations, +the _Second Action against Verres_ as they are called, were at once the +most powerful attack yet made on the working of the Sullan constitution, +and the high-water mark of the earlier period of Cicero's eloquence. It +was not till some years later that his oratory culminated; but he never +excelled these speeches in richness and copiousness of style, in ease and +lucidity of exposition, and in power of dealing with large masses of +material. He at once became an imposing political force; perhaps it was +hardly realised till later how incapable that force was of going straight +or of bearing down opposition. The series of political and semi-political +speeches of the next ten years, down to his exile, represent for the time +the history of Rome; and together with these we now begin the series of +his private letters. The year of his praetorship, 66 B.C., is marked by +the two orations which are on the whole his greatest, one public and the +other private. The first, the speech known as the _Pro Lege Manilia_, +which should really be described as the panegyric of Pompeius and of the +Roman people, does not show any profound appreciation of the problems +which then confronted the Republic; but the greatness of the Republic +itself never found a more august interpreter. The stately passage in +which Italy and the subject provinces are called on to bear witness to +the deeds of Pompeius breathes the very spirit of an imperial race. +Throughout this and the other great speeches of the period "the Roman +People" is a phrase that keeps perpetually recurring with an effect like +that of a bourdon stop. As the eye glances down the page, _Consul Populi +Romani, Imperium Populi Romani, Fortuna Populi Romani_, glitter out of +the voluminous periods with a splendour that hardly any other words could +give. + +The other great speech of this year, Cicero's defence of Aulus Cluentius +Habitus of Larinum on a charge of poisoning, has in its own style an +equal brilliance of language. The story it unfolds of the ugly tragedies +of middle-class life in the capital and the provincial Italian towns is +famous as one of the leading documents for the social life of Rome. +According to Quintilian, Cicero confessed afterwards that his client was +not innocent, and that the elaborate and impressive story which he +unfolds with such vivid detail was in great part an invention of his own. +This may be only bar gossip; true or false, his defence is an +extraordinary masterpiece of oratorical skill. + +The manner in which Cicero conducted a defence when the cause was not so +grave or so desperate is well illustrated by a speech delivered four +years later, the _Pro Archia_. The case here was one of contested +citizenship. The defendant, one of the Greek men of letters who lived in +great numbers at Rome, had been for years intimate with the literary +circle among the Roman aristocracy. This intimacy gained him the +privilege of being defended by the first of Roman orators, who would +hardly, in any other circumstances, have troubled himself with so trivial +a case. But the speech Cicero delivered is one of the permanent glories +of Latin literature. The matter immediately at issue is summarily dealt +with in a few pages of cursory and rather careless argument; then the +scholar lets himself go. Among the many praises of literature which great +men of letters have delivered, there is none, ancient or modern, more +perfect than this; some of the sentences have remained ever since the +abiding motto and blason of literature itself. _Haec studia, +adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis +perfugium ac solatium praebent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, +pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur;_ and again, _Nullam enim +virtus aliam mercedem laborum periculorumque desiderat, praeter hanc +laudis et gloriae; qua quidem detracta, iudices, quid est quod in hoc tam +exiguo vitae curriculo, et tam brevi, tantis nos in laboribus exerceamus? +Certe, si nihil animus praesentiret in posterum, et si quibus regionibus +vitae spatium circumscriptum est, eisdem omnes cogitationes terminaret +suas, nec tantis se laboribus frangeret, neque tot curis vigiliisque +angeretur, neque teties de vita ipsa dimicaret_. Strange words these to +fall from a pleader's lips in the dusty atmosphere of the praetor's +court! _non fori, neque iudiciali consuetudine_, says Cicero himself, in +the few words of graceful apology with which the speech ends. But, in +truth, as he well knew, he was not speaking to the respectable gentlemen +on the benches before him. He addressed a larger audience; posterity, and +the civilised world. + +The _Pro Archia_ foreshadows already the change which was bound to take +place in Cicero's life, and which was precipitated by his exile four +years later. More and more he found himself forced away from the inner +circle of politics, and turned to the larger field where he had an +undisputed supremacy, of political and ethical philosophy clothed in the +splendid prose of which he had now obtained the full mastery. The roll of +his great speeches is indeed continued after his return from exile; but +even in the greatest, the _Pro Sestio_, the _Pro Caelio_, the _De +Provinciis Consularibus_ of 56, or the _In Pisonem_ and _Pro Plancio_ of +55 B.C., something of the old tone is missing; it is as though the same +voice spoke on a smaller range of notes and with less flexibility of +cadence. And now alongside of the speeches begins the series of his works +on oratory and philosophy, with the _De Oratore_ of 55, and the _De +Republica_ of 54 B.C. + +The three books _De Oratore_ are perhaps the most finished examples of +the Ciceronian style. The subject (which cannot be said of all the +subjects he deals with) was one of which, over all its breadth and in all +its details, he was completely master; and, thus left unhampered by any +difficulties with his material, he could give full scope to his brilliant +style and diction. The arrangement of the work follows the strict +scholastic divisions; but the form of dialogue into which it is thrown, +and which is managed with really great skill, avoids the tediousness +incident to a systematic treatise. The principal persons of the dialogue +are the two great orators of the preceding age, Lucius Crassus and Marcus +Antonius; this is only one sign out of many that Cicero was more and more +living in a sort of dream of the past, that past of his own youth which +was still full of traditions of the earlier Republic. + +The _De Oratore_ was so complete a masterpiece that its author probably +did not care to weaken its effect by continuing at the time to bring out +any of the supplementary treatises on Roman oratory for which his +library, and still more his memory, had accumulated immense quantities of +material. In the treatise _De Republica_, which was begun in 54 B.C., +though not published till three years later, he carried the achievement +of Latin prose into a larger and less technical field--that of the +philosophy of politics. Again the scene of the dialogue is laid in a past +age; but now he goes further back than he had done in the _De Oratore_, +to the circle of the younger Scipio. The work was received, when +published, with immense applause; but its loss in the Middle Ages is +hardly one of those which are most seriously to be deplored, except in so +far as the second and fifth books may have preserved real information on +the early history of the Roman State and the development of Roman +jurisprudence. Large fragments were recovered early in the present +century from a palimpsest, itself incomplete, on which the work of Cicero +had been expunged to make room for the commentary of St. Augustine on the +Psalms. The famous _Somnium Scipionis_, with which (in imitation of the +vision of Er in Plato's _Republic_) the work ended, has been +independently preserved. Though it flagrantly challenges comparison with +the unequalled original, it has, nevertheless, especially in its opening +and closing passages, a grave dignity which is purely Roman, and +characteristically Ciceronian. Perhaps some of the elaborate fantasies of +De Quincey (himself naturally a Ciceronian, and saturated in the rhythms +and cadences of the finest Latin prose) are the nearest parallel to this +piece in modern English. The opening words of Scipio's narrative, _Cum in +Africam venissem, Mania Manilio consuli ad quartam legionem tribunus_, +come on the ear like the throb of a great organ; and here and there +through the piece come astonishing phrases of the same organ-music: +_Ostendebat autem Karthaginem de excelso et pleno stellarum inlustri et +claro quodam loco.... Quis in reliquis orientis aut obeuntis solis, +ultimis aut aquilonis austrive partibus, tuum nomen audiet?... Deum te +igitur scito esse, siquidem deus est, qui viget, qui sentit, qui meminit, +qui providet_--hardly from the lips of Virgil himself does the noble +Latin speech issue with a purer or a more majestic flow. + +During the next few years the literary activity of Cicero suffered a +check. The course of politics at Rome filled him with profound +disappointment and disgust. Public issues, it became more and more plain, +waited for their determination, not on the senate-house or the forum, but +on the sword. The shameful collapse of his defence of Milo in 52 B.C. +must have stung a vanity even as well-hardened as Cicero's to the quick; +and his only important abstract work of this period, the _De Legibus_, +seems to have been undertaken with little heart and carried out without +either research or enthusiasm. His proconsulate in Cilicia in 51 and 50 +B.C. was occupied with the tedious details of administration and petty +warfare; six months after his return the Civil war broke out, and, until +permitted to return to Rome by Caesar in the autumn of 47 B.C., he was +practically an exile, away from his beloved Rome and his more beloved +library, hating and despising the ignorant incompetence of his +colleagues, and looking forward with almost equal terror to the +conclusive triumph of his own or the opposite party. When at last he +returned, his mind was still agitated and unsettled. The Pompeian party +held Africa and Spain with large armies; their open threats that all who +had come to terms with Caesar would be proscribed as public enemies were +not calculated to restore Cicero's confidence. The decisive battle of +Thapsus put an end to this uncertainty; and meanwhile Cicero had resumed +work on his _De Legibus_, and had once more returned to the study of +oratory in one of the most interesting of his writings, the _Brutus de +claris Oratoribus_, in which he gives a vivid and masterly sketch of the +history of Roman oratory down to his own time, filled with historical +matter and admirable sketches of character. + +The spring of 45 B.C. brought with it two events of momentous importance +to Cicero: the final collapse of the armed opposition to Caesar at the +battle of Munda, and the loss, by the death of his daughter Tullia, of +the one deep affection of his inner life. Henceforth it seemed as if +politics had ceased to exist, even had he the heart to interest himself +in them. He fell back more completely than ever upon philosophy; and the +year that followed (45-44 B.C.) is, in mere quantity of literary +production, as well as in the abiding effect on the world of letters of +the work he then produced, the _annus mirabilis_ of his life. Two at +least of the works of this year, the _De Gloria_ and the _De Virtutibus_, +have perished, though the former survived long enough to be read by +Petrarch; but there remain extant (besides one or two other pieces of +slighter importance) the _De Finibus_, the _Academics_, the _Tusculans_, +the _De Natura Deorum_, the _De Divinatione_, the _De Fato_, the _De +Officiis_, and the two exquisite essays _De Senectute_ and _De Amicitia_. + +It is the work of this astonishing year which, on the whole, represents +Cicero's permanent contribution to letters and to human thought. If his +philosophy seems now to have exhausted its influence, it is because it +has in great measure been absorbed into the fabric of civilised society. +Ciceronianism, at the period of the Renaissance, and even in the +eighteenth century, meant more than the impulse towards florid and +sumptuous style. It meant all that is conveyed by the Latin word +_humanitas;_ the title of "the humaner letters," by which Latin was long +designated in European universities, indicated that in the great Latin +writers--in Cicero and Virgil preeminently--a higher type of human life +was to be found than existed in the literature of other countries: as +though at Rome, and in the first century before Christ, the political and +social environment had for the first time produced men such as men would +wish to be, at all events for the ideals of Western Europe. To less +informed or less critical ages than our own, the absolute contribution of +Cicero to ethics and metaphysics seemed comparable to that of the great +Greek thinkers; the _De Natura Deorum_ was taken as a workable argument +against atheism, and the thin and wire-drawn discussions of the +_Academics_ were studied with an attention hardly given to the founder of +the Academy. When a sounder historical method brought these writings into +their real proportion, it was inevitable that the scale should swing +violently to the other side; and for a time no language was too strong in +which to attack the reputation of the "phrase-maker," the "journalist," +whose name had once dominated Europe. The violence of this attack has now +exhausted itself; and we may be content, without any exaggerated praise +or blame, to note the actual historical effect of these writings through +many ages, and the actual impression made on the world by the type of +character which they embodied and, in a sense, created. In this view, +Cicero represents a force that no historian can neglect, and the +importance of which it is not easy to overestimate. He did for the Empire +and the Middle Ages what Lucretius, with his far greater philosophic +genius, totally failed to do--created forms of thought in which the life +of philosophy grew, and a body of expression which alone made its growth +in the Latin-speaking world possible; and to that world he presented a +political ideal which profoundly influenced the whole course of European +history even up to the French Revolution. Without Cicero, the Middle Ages +would not have had Augustine or Aquinas; but, without him, the movement +which annulled the Middle Ages would have had neither Mirabeau nor Pitt. + +The part of Cicero's work which the present age probably finds the most +interesting, and the interest of which is, in the nature of things, +perennial, has been as yet left unmentioned. It consists of the +collections of his private letters from the year 68 B.C. to within a few +months of his death. The first of these collections contains his letters +to the friend and adviser, Titus Pomponius Atticus, with whom, when they +were not both in Rome, he kept up a constant and an extremely intimate +correspondence. Atticus, whose profession, as far as he had one, was that +of a banker, was not only a man of wide knowledge and great political +sagacity, but a refined critic and an author of considerable merit. The +publishing business, which he conducted as an adjunct to his principal +profession, made him of great use to Cicero by the rapid multiplication +in his workshops of copies of the speeches or other writings for which +there was an immediate public demand. But the intimacy was much more than +that of the politician and his confidential adviser, or the author and +his publisher. Cicero found in him a friend with whom he could on all +occasions be perfectly frank and at his ease, and on whose sober judgment +and undemonstrative, but perfectly sincere, attachment his own excitable +and emotional nature could always throw itself without reserve. About +four hundred of the letters were published by Atticus several years after +Cicero's death. It must always be a source of regret that he could not, +or, at all events, did not, publish the other half of the correspondence; +many of the letters, especially the brief confidential notes, have the +tantalising interest of a conversation where one of the speakers is +inaudible. It is the letters to Atticus that place Cicero at the head of +all epistolary stylists. We should hardly guess from the more formal and +finished writings what the real man was, with his excitable Italian +temperament, his swift power of phrase, his sensitive affections. + +The other large collection of Cicero's letters, the _Epistolae ad +Familiares_, was preserved and edited by his secretary, Tiro. They are, +of course, of very unequal value and interest. Some are merely formal +documents; others, like those to his wife and family in book xiv., are as +intimate and as valuable as any we possess. The two smaller collections, +the letters to his brother Quintus, and those to Marcus Brutus, of which +a mere fragment is extant, are of little independent value. The +_Epistolae ad Familiares_ include, besides Cicero's own letters, a large +number of letters addressed to him by various correspondents; a whole +book, and that not the least interesting, consists of those sent to him +during his Cilician proconsulate by the brilliant and erratic young +aristocrat, Marcus Caelius Rufus, who was the temporary successor of +Catullus as the favoured lover of Clodia. Full of the political and +social gossip of the day, they are written in a curiously slipshod but +energetic Latin, which brings before us even more vividly than Cicero's +own the familiar language of the upper classes at Rome at the time. +Another letter, which can hardly be passed over in silence in any history +of Latin literature, is the noble message of condolence to Cicero on the +death of his beloved Tullia, by the statesman and jurist, Servius +Sulpicius Rufus, who carried on in this age the great tradition of the +Scaevolae. + +It is due to these priceless collections of letters, more than to any +other single thing, that our knowledge of the Ciceronian age is so +complete and so intimate. At every point they reinforce and vitalise the +more elaborate literary productions of the period. The art of letter- +writing suddenly rose in Cicero's hands to its full perfection. It fell +to the lot of no later Roman to have at once such mastery over familiar +style, and contemporary events of such engrossing and ever-changing +interest on which to exercise it. All the great letter-writers of more +modern ages have more or less, consciously or unconsciously, followed the +Ciceronian model. England of the eighteenth century was peculiarly rich +in them; but Horace Walpole, Cowper, Gray himself, would willingly have +acknowledged Cicero as their master. + +Caesar's assassination on the 15th of March, 44 B.C., plunged the +political situation into a worse chaos than had ever been reached during +the Civil wars. For several months it was not at all plain how things +were tending, or what fresh combinations were to rise out of the welter +in which a vacillating and incapable senate formed the only +constitutional rallying-point. In spite of all his long-cherished +delusions, Cicero must have known that this way no hope lay; when at last +he flung himself into the conflict, and broke away from his literary +seclusion to make the fierce series of attacks upon Antonius which fill +the winter of 44-43 B.C., he may have had some vague hopes from the +Asiatic legions which once before, in Sulla's hands, had checked the +revolution, and some from the power of his own once unequalled eloquence; +but on the whole he seems to have undertaken the contest chiefly from the +instinct that had become a tradition, and from his deep personal +repugnance to Antonius. The fourteen _Philippics_ add little to his +reputation as an orator, and still less to his credit as a statesman. The +old watchwords are there, but their unreality is now more obvious; the +old rhetorical skill, but more coarsely and less effectively used. The +last _Philippic_ was delivered to advocate a public thanksgiving for the +victory gained over Antonius by the consuls, Hirtius and Pansa. A month +later, the consuls were both dead, and their two armies had passed into +the control of the young Octavianus. In autumn the triumvirate was +constituted, with an armed force of forty legions behind it. The +proscription lists were issued in November. On the 7th of December, after +some aimless wandering that hardly was a serious effort to escape, Cicero +was overtaken near Formiae by a small party of Antonian troops. He was +killed, and his head sent to Rome and displayed in the senate-house. +There was nothing left for which he could have wished to live. In the +five centuries of the Republic there never had been a darker time for +Rome. Cicero had outlived almost all the great men of his age. The newer +generation, so far as they had revealed themselves, were of a type from +which those who had inherited the great traditions of the Republic shrank +with horror. Caesar Octavianus, the future master of the world, was a +delicate boy of twenty, already an object of dislike and distrust to +nearly all his allies. Virgil, a poet still voiceless, was twenty-seven. + + + + +VII. + +PROSE OF THE CICERONIAN AGE: CAESAR AND SALLUST. + + +Fertile as the Ciceronian age was in authorship of many kinds, there was +only one person in it whose claim to be placed in an equal rank with +Cicero could ever be seriously entertained; and this was, strangely +enough, one who was as it were only a man of letters by accident, and +whose literary work is but among the least of his titles to fame--Julius +Caesar himself. That anything written by that remarkable man must be +interesting and valuable in a high degree is obvious; but the combination +of literary power of the very first order with his unparallelled military +and political genius is perhaps unique in history. + +It is one of the most regrettable losses in Latin literature that +Caesar's speeches and letters have almost completely perished. Of the +latter several collections were made after his death, and were extant in +the second century; but none are now preserved, except a few brief notes +to Cicero, of which copies were sent by him at the time to Atticus. The +fragments of his speeches are even less considerable; yet, according to +the unanimous testimony both of contemporary and of later critics, they +were unexcelled in that age of great oratory. He used the Latin language +with a purity and distinction that no one else could equal. And along +with this quality, the _mira elegantia_ of Quintilian, his oratory had +some kind of severe magnificence which we can partly guess at from his +extant writings--_magnifica et generosa_, says Cicero; _facultas dicendi +imperatoria_ is the phrase of a later and able critic. + +Of Caesar's other lost writings little need be said. In youth, like most +of his contemporaries, he wrote poems, including a tragedy, of which +Tacitus drily observes that they were not better than those of Cicero. A +grammatical treatise, _De Analogia_, was composed by him during one of +his long journeys between Northern Italy and the headquarters of his army +in Gaul during his proconsulate. A work on astronomy, apparently written +in connection with his reform of the calendar, two pamphlets attacking +Cato, and a collection of apophthegms, have also disappeared. But we +possess what were by far the most important of his writings, his famous +memoirs of the Gallic and Civil Wars. + +The seven books of _Commentaries on the Gallic War_ were written in +Caesar's winter quarters in Gaul, after the capture of Alesia and the +final suppression of the Arvernian revolt. They were primarily intended +to serve an immediate political purpose, and are indeed a defence, framed +with the most consummate skill, of the author's whole Gallic policy and +of his constitutional position. That Caesar was able to do this without, +so far as can be judged, violating, or even to any large degree +suppressing facts, does equal credit to the clear-sightedness of his +policy and to his extraordinary literary power. From first to last there +is not a word either of self-laudation or of innuendo; yet at the end we +find that, by the use of the simplest and most lucid narration, in which +hardly a fact or a detail can be controverted, Caesar has cleared his +motives and justified his conduct with a success the more complete +because his tone is so temperate and seemingly so impartial. An officer +of his staff who was with him during that winter, and who afterwards +added an eighth book to the _Commentaries_ to complete the history of the +Gallic proconsulate, has recorded the ease and swiftness with which the +work was written. Caesar issued it under the unpretending name of +_Commentarii_--"notes"--on the events of his campaigns, which might be +useful as materials for history; but there was no exaggeration in the +splendid compliment paid it a few years later by Cicero, that no one in +his senses would think of recasting a work whose succinct, perspicuous, +and brilliant style--_pura et inlustris brevitas_--has been the model and +the despair of later historians. + +The three books of _Commentaries on the Civil War_ show the same merits +in a much less marked degree. They were not published in Caesar's +lifetime, and do not seem to have received from him any close or careful +revision. The literary incompetence of the Caesarian officers into whose +hands they fell after his death, and one or more of whom must be +responsible for their publication, is sufficiently evident from their own +awkward attempts at continuing them in narratives of the Alexandrine, +African, and Spanish campaigns; and whether from the carelessness of the +original editors or from other reasons, the text is in a most deplorable +condition. Yet this is not in itself sufficient to account for many +positive misstatements. Either the editors used a very free hand in +altering the rough manuscript, or--which is not in itself unlikely, and +is borne out by other facts--Caesar's own prodigious memory and +incomparable perspicuity became impaired in those five years of all but +superhuman achievement, when, with the whole weight of the civilised +world on his shoulders, feebly served by second-rate lieutenants and +hampered at every turn by the open or passive opposition of nearly the +whole of the trained governing classes, he conquered four great Roman +armies, secured Egypt and Upper Asia and annexed Numidia to the Republic, +carried out the unification of Italy, reestablished public order and +public credit, and left at his death the foundations of the Empire +securely laid for his successor. + +The loyal and capable officer, Aulus Hirtius (who afterwards became +consul, and was killed in battle before Mutina a year after Caesar's +murder), did his best to supplement his master's narrative. He seems to +have been a well-educated man, but without any particular literary +capacity. It was uncertain, even to the careful research of Suetonius, +whether the narrative of the campaigns in Egypt and Pontus, known as the +_Bellum Alexandrinum_, was written by him or by another officer of +Caesar's, Gaius Oppius. The books on the campaigns of Africa and Spain +which follow are by different hands: the former evidently by some +subaltern officer who took part in the war, and very interesting as +showing the average level of intelligence and culture among Roman +officers of the period; the latter by another author and in very inferior +Latin, full of grammatical solecisms and popular idioms oddly mixed up +with epic phrases from Ennius, who was still, it must be remembered, the +great Latin school-book. It is these curious fragments of history which +more than anything else help us to understand the rapid decay of Latin +prose after the golden period. Under the later Republic the educated +class and the governing class had, broadly speaking, been the same. The +Civil wars, in effect, took administration away from their hands, +transferring it to the new official class, of which these subalterns of +Caesar's represent the type; and this change was confirmed by the Empire. +The result was a sudden and long-continued divorce between political +activity on the one hand and the profession of letters on the other. For +a century after the establishment of the Empire the aristocracy, which +had produced the great literature of the Republic, remained forcibly or +sullenly silent; and the new hierarchy was still at the best only half +educated. The professional man of letters was at first fostered and +subsidised; but even before the death of Augustus State patronage of +literature had fallen into abeyance, while the cultured classes fell more +and more back on the use of Greek. The varying fortunes of this struggle +between Greek and literary Latin as it had been formed under the +Republic, belong to a later period: at present we must return to complete +a general survey of the prose of the Ciceronian age. + +Historical writing at Rome, as we have seen, had hitherto been in the +form either of annals or memoirs. The latter were, of course, rather +materials for history than history itself, even when they were not +excluded from Quintilian's famous definition of history[5] by being +composed primarily as political pamphlets. The former had so far been +attempted on too large a scale, and with insufficient equipment either of +research or style, to attain any permanent merit. In the ten years after +Caesar's death Latin history was raised to a higher level by the works of +Sallust, the first scientific historian whom Italy had produced. + +Gaius Sallustius Crispus of Amiternum in Central Italy belonged to that +younger generation of which Marcus Antonius and Marcus Caelius Rufus were +eminent examples. Clever and dissipated, they revolted alike from the +severe traditions and the narrow class prejudices of the constitutional +party, and Caesar found in them enthusiastic, if somewhat imprudent and +untrustworthy, supporters. Sallust was expelled from the senate just +before the outbreak of the Civil war; was reinstated by Caesar, and +entrusted with high posts in Illyria and Italy; and was afterwards sent +by him to administer Africa with the rank of proconsul. There he +accumulated a large fortune, and, after Caesar's death, retired to +private life in his beautiful gardens on the Quirinal, and devoted +himself to historical study. The largest and most important of his works, +the five books of _Historiae_, covering a period of about ten years from +the death of Sulla, is only extant in inconsiderable fragments; but his +two monographs on the Jugurthine war and the Catilinarian conspiracy, +which have been preserved, place him beyond doubt in the first rank of +Roman historians. + +Sallust took Thucydides as his principal literary model. His reputation +has no doubt suffered by the comparison which this choice makes +inevitable; and though Quintilian did not hesitate to claim for him a +substantial equality with the great Athenian, no one would now press the +parallel, except in so far as Sallust's formal treatment of his subject +affords interesting likenesses or contrasts with the Thucydidean manner. +In his prefatory remarks, his elaborately conceived and executed +speeches, his reflections on character, and his terse method of +narration, Sallust closely follows the manner of his master. He even +copies his faults in a sort of dryness of style and an excessive use of +antithesis. But we cannot feel, in reading the _Catiline_ or the +_Jugurtha_, that it is the work of a writer of the very first +intellectual power. Yet the two historians have this in common, which is +not borrowed by the later from the earlier,--that they approach and +handle their subject with the mature mind, the insight and common sense +of the grown man, where their predecessors had been comparatively like +children. Both are totally free from superstition; neither allows his own +political views to obscure his vision of facts, of men as they were and +events as they happened. The respect for truth, which is the first virtue +of the historian, is stronger in Sallust than in any of his more +brilliant successors. His ideal in the matter of research and documentary +evidence was, for that age, singularly high. In the _Catiline_ he writes +very largely from direct personal knowledge of men and events; but the +_Jugurtha_, which deals with a time two generations earlier than the date +of its composition, involved wide inquiry and much preparation. He had +translations made from original documents in the Carthaginian language; +and a complete synopsis of Roman history, for reference during the +progress of his work, was compiled for him by a Greek secretary. Such +pains were seldom taken by a Latin historian. + +The last of the Ciceronians, Sallust is also in a sense the first of the +imperial prose-writers. His style, compressed, rhetorical, and very +highly polished, is in strong contrast to the graceful and fluid periods +which were then, and for some time later continued to be, the predominant +fashion, and foreshadows the manner of Seneca or Tacitus. His archaism in +the use of pure Latin, and, alongside of it, his free adoption of +Grecisms, are the first open sign of two movements which profoundly +affected the prose of the earlier and later empire. The acrid critic of +the Augustan age, Asinius Pollio, accused him of having had collections +of obsolete words and phrases made for his use out of Cato and the older +Roman writers. For a short time he was eclipsed by the glowing and +opulent style of Livy; but Livy formed no school, and Sallust on the +whole remained in the first place. The line of Martial, _primus Romana +Crispus in historia_, expresses the settled opinion held of him down to +the final decay of letters; and even in the Middle Ages he remained +widely read and highly esteemed. + +Contemporary with Sallust in this period of transition between the +Ciceronian and the Augustan age is Cornelius Nepos (_circ_. 99-24 B.C.). +In earlier life he was one of the circle of Catullus, and after Cicero's +death was one of the chief friends of Atticus, of whom a brief biography, +which he wrote after Atticus' death, is still extant. Unlike Sallust, +Nepos never took part in public affairs, but carried on throughout a long +life the part of a man of letters, honest and kindly, but without any +striking originality or ability. In him we are on the outer fringe of +pure literature; and it is no doubt purposely that Quintilian wholly +omits him from the list of Roman historians. Of his numerous writings on +history, chronology, and grammar, we only possess a fragment of one, his +collection of Roman and foreign biographies, entitled _De Viris +Illustribus_. Of this work there is extant one complete section, _De +Excellentibus Ducibus Exterarum Gentium_, and two lives from another +section, those of Atticus and the younger Cato. The accident of their +convenient length and the simplicity of their language has made them for +generations a common school-book for beginners in Latin; were it not for +this, there can be little doubt that Nepos, like the later epitomators, +Eutropius or Aurelius Victor, would be hardly known except to +professional scholars, and perhaps only to be read in the pages of some +_Corpus Sciptorum Romanorum_. The style of these little biographies is +unpretentious, and the language fairly pure, though without any great +command of phrase. A theory was once held that what we possess is merely +a later epitome from the lost original. But for this there is no rational +support. The language and treatment, such as they are (and they do not +sink to the level of the histories of the African and Spanish wars), are +of this, and not of a later age, and quite consonant with the good- +natured contempt which Nepos met at the hands of later Roman critics. +The chief interest of the work is perhaps the clearness with which it +enforces the truth we are too apt to forget, that the great writers were +in their own age, as now, unique, and that there is no such thing as a +widely diffused level of high literary excellence. + +As remote from literature in the higher sense were the innumerable +writings of the Ciceronian age on science, art, antiquities, grammar, +rhetoric, and a hundred miscellaneous subjects, which are, for the most +part, known only from notices in the writings of later commentators and +encyclopedists. Foremost among the voluminous authors of this class was +the celebrated antiquarian, Marcus Terentius Varro, whose long and +laborious life, reaching from two years after the death of the elder Cato +till the final establishment of the Empire, covers and overlaps the +entire Ciceronian age. Of the six or seven hundred volumes which issued +from his pen, and which formed an inexhaustible quarry for his +successors, nearly all are lost. The most important of them were the one +hundred and fifty books of _Saturae Menippeae_, miscellanies in prose and +verse in the manner which had been originated by Menippus of Gadara, the +master of the poet Meleager, and which had at once obtained an enormous +popularity throughout the whole of the Greek-speaking world; the forty- +one books of _Antiquitates Rerum Humanarum et Divinarum_, the standard +work on the religious and secular antiquities of Rome down to the time of +Augustine; the fifteen books of _Imagines_, biographical sketches, with +portraits, of celebrated Greeks and Romans, the first certain instance in +history of the publication of an illustrated book; the twenty-five books +_De Lingua Latina_, of which six are extant in an imperfect condition; +and the treatise _De Re Rustica_, which we possess in an almost complete +state. This last work was written by him at the age of eighty. It is in +the form of a dialogue, and is not without descriptive and dramatic +power. The tediousness which characterised all Varro's writing is less +felt where the subject is one of which he had a thorough practical +knowledge, and which gave ample scope for the vein of rough but not +ungenial humour which he inherited from Cato. + +Other names of this epoch have left no permanent mark on literature. The +precursors of Sallust in history seem, like the precursors of Cicero in +philosophy, to have approached their task with little more equipment than +that of the ordinary amateur. The great orator Hortensius wrote _Annals_ +(probably in the form of memoirs of his own time), which are only known +from a reference to them in a later history written in the reign of +Tiberius. Atticus, who had an interest in literature beyond that of the +mere publisher, drew up a sort of handbook of Roman history, which is +repeatedly mentioned by Cicero. Cicero's own brother Quintus, who passed +for a man of letters, composed a work of the same kind; the tragedies +with which he relieved the tedium of winter-quarters in Gaul were, +however, translations from the Greek, not originals. Cicero's private +secretary, Marcus Tullius Tiro, best known by the system of shorthand +which he invented or improved, and which for long remained the basis of a +standard code, is also mentioned as the author of works on grammar, and, +as has already been noticed, edited a collection of his master's letters +after his death. Decimus Laberius, a Roman of equestrian family, and +Publilius Syrus, a naturalised native of Antioch, wrote mimes, which +were performed with great applause, and gave a fugitive literary +importance to this trivial form of dramatic entertainment. A collection +of sentences which passes under the name of the latter was formed out of +his works under the Empire, and enlarged from other sources in the Middle +Ages. It supplies many admirable instances of the terse vigour of the +Roman popular philosophy; some of these lines, like the famous-- + + _Bene vixit is qui potuit cum voluit mori_, + +or-- + + _Index damnatur ubi nocens absolvitur_, + +or-- + + _O vitam misero longam, felici brevem!_ + +or the perpetually misquoted-- + + _Stultum facit fortuna, quem vult perdere_, + +have sunk deeper and been more widely known than almost anything else +written in Latin. Among the few poets who succeeded the circle of +Catullus, the only one of interest is Publius Terentius Varro, known as +Varro Atacinus from his birthplace on the banks of the Aude in Provence, +the first of the long list of Transalpine writers who filled Rome at a +later period. Besides the usual translations and adaptations from +Alexandrian originals, and an elaborate cosmography, he practised his +considerable talent in hexameter verse both in epic and satiric poetry, +and did something to clear the way in metrical technique for both Horace +and Virgil. With these names, among a crowd of others even more vague and +shadowy, the literature of the Roman Republic closes. A new generation +was already at the doors. + + + + + +II. + +THE AUGUSTAN AGE. + + + + +VIRGIL. + + +Publius Vergilius Maro was born at the village of Andes, near Mantua, on +the 15th of October, 70 B.C. The province of Cisalpine Gaul, though not +formally incorporated with Italy till twenty years later, had before +this become thoroughly Romanised, and was one of the principal recruiting +grounds for the legions. But the population was still, by blood and +sympathy, very largely Celtic; and modern theorists are fond of tracing +the new element of romance, which Virgil introduced with such momentous +results into Latin poetry, to the same Celtic spirit which in later ages +flowered out in the Arthurian legend, and inspired the whole creative +literature of mediaeval Europe. To the countrymen of Shakespeare and +Keats it will not seem necessary to assume a Celtic origin, on abstract +grounds, for any new birth of this romantic element. The name Maro may or +may not be Celtic; any argument founded on it is of little more relevance +than the fancy which once interpreted the name of Virgil's mother, Magia +Polla, into a supernatural significance, and, connecting the name +Virgilius itself with the word _Virgo_, metamorphosed the poet into an +enchanter born of a maiden mother, the Merlin of the Roman Empire. + +Virgil's father was a small freeholder in Andes, who farmed his own land, +practised forestry and bee-keeping, and gradually accumulated a +sufficient competence to enable him to give his son--an only child, it +would appear, of this marriage--the best education that the times could +provide. He was sent to school at the neighbouring town of Cremona, and +afterwards to Milan, the capital city of the province. At the age of +seventeen he proceeded to Rome, where he studied oratory and philosophy +under the best masters of the time. A tradition, which the dates make +improbable, was that Gaius Octavius, afterwards the Emperor Augustus, was +for a time his fellow-scholar under the rhetorician Epidius. In the +classroom of the Epicurean Siro he may have made his first acquaintance +with the poetry of Lucretius. + +For the next ten years we know nothing of Virgil's life, which no doubt +was that of a profound student. His father had died, and his mother +married again, and his patrimony was sufficient to support him until a +turn of the wheel of public affairs for a moment lost, and then +permanently secured his fortune. After the battle of Philippi, the first +task of the victorious triumvirs was to provide for the disbanding and +settlement of the immense armies which had been raised for the Civil war. +The lands of cities which had taken the Republican side were confiscated +right and left for this purpose; among the rest, Virgil's farm, which was +included in the territory of Cremona. But Virgil found in the +administrator of the district, Gaius Asinius Pollio, himself a +distinguished critic and man of letters, a powerful and active patron. By +his influence and that of his friends, Cornelius Gallus and Alfenus +Varus--the former a soldier and poet, the latter an eminent jurist, who +both had been fellow-students of Virgil at Rome--Virgil was compensated +by an estate in Campania, and introduced to the intimate circle of +Octavianus, who, under the terms of the triumvirate, was already absolute +ruler of Italy. + +It was about this time that the _Eclogues_ were published, whether +separately or collectively is uncertain, though the final collection and +arrangement, which is Virgil's own, can hardly be later than 38 B.C. The +impression they made on the world of letters was immediate and universal. +To some degree no doubt a reception was secured to them by the influence +of Maecenas, the Home Minister of Octavianus, who had already taken up +the line which he so largely developed in later years, of a public patron +of art and letters in the interest of the new government. But had Virgil +made his first public appearance merely as a Court poet, it is probable +that the _Eclogues_ would have roused little enthusiasm and little +serious criticism. Their true significance seems to have been at once +realised as marking the beginning of a new era; and amid the storm of +criticism, laudatory and adverse, which has raged round them for so many +ages since, this cardinal fact has always remained prominent. Alike to +the humanists of the earlier Renaissance, who found in them the sunrise +of a golden age of poetry and the achievement of the Latin conquest over +Greece, and to the more recent critics of this century, for whom they +represented the echo of an already exhausted convention and the beginning +of the decadence of Roman poetry, the _Eclogues_ have been the real +turning-point, not only between two periods of Latin literature, but +between two worlds. + +The poems destined to so remarkable a significance are, in their external +form, close and careful imitations of Theocritus, and have all the vices +and weaknesses of imitative poetry to a degree that could not well be +exceeded. Nor are these failings redeemed (as is to a certain extent true +of the purely imitative work of Catullus and other poets) by any +brilliant jewel-finish of workmanship. The execution is uncertain, +hesitating, sometimes extraordinarily feeble. One well-known line it is +impossible to explain otherwise than as a mistranslation of a phrase in +Theocritus such as one would hardly expect from a well-grounded +schoolboy. When Virgil follows the convention of the Greek pastoral his +copy is doubly removed from nature; where he ventures on fresh +impersonation or allegory of his own, it is generally weak in itself and +always hopelessly out of tone with the rest. Even the versification is +curiously unequal and imperfect. There are lines in more than one Eclogue +which remind one in everything but their languor of the flattest parts of +Lucretius. Contemporary critics even went so far as to say that the +language here and there was simply not Latin. + +Yet granted that all this and more than all this were true, it does not +touch that specific Virgilian charm of which these poems first disclosed +the secret. Already through their immature and tremulous cadences there +pierces, from time to time, that note of brooding pity which is unique in +the poetry of the world. The fourth and tenth Eclogues may be singled out +especially as showing the new method, which almost amounted to a new +human language, as they are also those where Virgil breaks away most +decidedly from imitation of the Greek idyllists. The fourth Eclogue +unfortunately has been so long and so deeply associated with purely +adventitious ideas that it requires a considerable effort to read it as +it ought to be read. The curious misconception which turned it into a +prophecy of the birth of Christ outlasted in its effects any serious +belief in its historical truth: even modern critics cite Isaiah for +parallels, and are apt to decry it as a childish attempt to draw a +picture of some actual golden age. But the Sibylline verses which +suggested its contents and imagery were really but the accidental grain +of dust round which the crystallization of the poem began; and the +enchanted light which lingers over it is hardly distinguishable from that +which saturates the _Georgics. Cedet et ipse mari vector, nec nautica +pinus mutabit merces_--the feeling here is the same as in his mere +descriptions of daily weather, like the _Omnia plenis rura natant fossis +atque omnis navita ponto umida vela legit;_ not so much a vision of a +golden age as Nature herself seen through a medium of strange gold. Or +again, in the tenth Eclogue, where the masque of shepherds and gods +passes before the sick lover, it is through the same strange and golden +air that they seem to move, and the heavy lilies of Silvanus droop in the +stillness of the same unearthly day. + +Seven years following on the publication of the _Eclogues_ were spent by +Virgil on the composition of the _Georgics_. They were published two +years after the battle of Actium, being thus the first, as they are the +most splendid, literary production of the Empire. They represent the art +of Virgil in its matured perfection. The subject was one in which he was +thoroughly at home and completely happy. His own early years had been +spent in the pastures of the Mincio, among his father's cornfields and +coppices and hives; and his newer residence, by the seashore near Naples +in winter, and in summer at his villa in the lovely hill-country of +Campania, surrounded him with all that was most beautiful in the most +beautiful of lands. His delicate health made it easier for him to give +his work the slow and arduous elaboration that makes the _Georgics_ in +mere technical finish the most perfect work of Latin, or perhaps of any +literature. There is no trace of impatience in the work. It was in some +sense a commission; but Augustus and Maecenas, if it be true that they +suggested the subject, had, at all events, the sense not to hurry it. The +result more than fulfilled the brilliant promise of the _Eclogues_. +Virgil was now, without doubt or dispute, the first of contemporary +poets. + +But his responsibilities grew with his greatness. The scheme of a great +Roman epic, which had always floated before his own mind, was now +definitely and indeed urgently pressed upon him by authority which it was +difficult to resist. And many elements in his own mind drew him in the +same direction. Too much stress need not be laid on the passage in the +sixth Eclogue--one of the rare autobiographic touches in his work--in +which he alludes to his early experiments in "singing of kings and +battles." Such early exercises are the common field of young poets. But +the maturing of his mind, which can be traced in the _Georgics,_ was +urging him towards certain methods of art for which the epic was the only +literary form that gave sufficient scope. More and more he was turning +from nature to man and human life, and to the contemplation of human +destiny. The growth of the psychological instinct in the _Georgics_ is +curiously visible in the episode of Aristaeus, with which the poem now +ends. According to a well-authenticated tradition, the last two hundred +and fifty lines of the fourth _Georgic_ were written several years after +the rest of the poem, to replace the original conclusion, which had +contained the praises of his early friend, Cornelius Gallus, now dead in +disgrace and proscribed from court poetry. In the story of Orpheus and +Eurydice, in the later version, Virgil shows a new method and a new +power. It stands between the idyl and the epic, but it is the epic method +towards which it tends. No return upon the earlier manner was thenceforth +possible; with many searchings of heart, with much occasional +despondency and dissatisfaction, he addressed himself to the composition +of the _Aeneid_. + +The earlier national epics of Naevius and Ennius had framed certain lines +for Roman epic poetry, which it was almost bound to follow. They had +established the mythical connection of Rome with Troy and with the great +cycle of Greek legend, and had originated the idea of making Rome itself +--that _Fortuna Urbis_ which later stood in the form of a golden statue +in the imperial bedchamber--the central interest, one might almost say +the central figure, of the story. To adapt the Homeric methods to this +new purpose, and at the same time to make his epic the vehicle for all +his own inward broodings over life and fate, for his subtle and delicate +psychology, and for that philosophic passion in which all the other +motives and springs of life were becoming included, was a task incapable +of perfect solution. On his death-bed Virgil made it his last desire that +the _Aeneid_ should be destroyed, nominally on the ground that it still +wanted three years' work to bring it to perfection, but one can hardly +doubt from a deeper and less articulate feeling. The command of the +Emperor alone prevented his wish from taking effect. With the unfinished +_Aeneid,_ as with the unfinished poem of Lucretius, it is easy to see +within what limits any changes or improvements would have been made in +it had the author lived longer: the work is, in both cases, substantially +done. + +The _Aeneid_ was begun the year after the publication of the _Georgics,_ +when Virgil was forty years of age. During its progress he continued to +live for the most part in his Campanian retirement. He had a house at +Rome in the fashionable quarter of the Esquiline, but used it little. He +was also much in Sicily, and the later books of the _Aeneid_ seem to show +personal observation of many parts of Central Italy. It is a debated +question whether he visited Greece more than once. His last visit there +was in 19 B.C. He had resolved to spend three years more on the +completion of his poem, and then give himself up to philosophy for what +might remain of his life. But the three years were not given him. A +fever, caught while visiting Megara on a day of excessive heat, induced +him to return hastily to Italy. He died a few days after landing at +Brundusium, on the 26th of September. His ashes were, by his own request, +buried near Naples, where his tomb was a century afterwards worshipped as +a holy place. The _Aeneid,_ carefully edited from the poet's manuscript +by two of his friends, was forthwith published, and had such a reception +as perhaps no poem before or since has ever found. Already, while it was +in progress, it had been rumoured as "something greater than the +_Iliad,_" and now that it appeared, it at once became the canon of Roman +poetry, and immediately began to exercise an overwhelming influence over +Latin literature, prose as well as verse. Critics were not indeed wanting +to point out its defects, and there was still a school (which attained +greater importance a century later) that went back to Lucretius and the +older poets, and refused to allow Virgil's preeminence. But for the +Roman world at large, as since for the world of the Latin races, Virgil +became what Homer had been to Greece, "the poet." The decay of art and +letters in the third century only added a mystical and hieratic element +to his fame. Even to the Christian Church he remained a poet sacred and +apart: in his profound tenderness and his mystical "yearning after the +further shore," as much as in the supposed prophecy of the fourth +Eclogue, they found and reverenced what seemed to them like an +unconscious inspiration. The famous passage of St. Augustine, where he +speaks of his own early love for Virgil, shows in its half-hysterical +renunciation how great the charm of the Virgilian art had been, and still +was, to him: _Quid miserius misero,_ he cries, _non miserante se ipsum, +et flente Didonis mortem quae fiebat amando Aeneam, non flente autem +mortem meam quae flebat non amando te? Deus lumen cordis mei, non te +amabam, et haec non flebam, sed flebam Didonem exstinctam, ferroque +extrema secutam, sequens ipse extrema condita tua relicto te![6] To the +graver and more matured mind of Dante, Virgil was the lord and master +who, even though shut out from Paradise, was the chosen and honoured +minister of God. Up to the beginning of the present century the supremacy +of Virgil was hardly doubted. Since then the development of scientific +criticism has passed him through all its searching processes, and in a +fair judgment his greatness has rather gained than lost. The doubtful +honour of indiscriminate praise was for a brief period succeeded by the +attacks of an almost equally undiscriminating censure. An ill-judged +partiality had once spoken of the _Aeneid_ as something greater than a +Roman _Iliad:_ it was easy to show that in the most remarkable Homeric +qualities the _Aeneid_ fell far short, and that, so far as it was an +imitation of Homer, it could no more stand beside Homer than the +imitations of Theocritus in the _Eclogues_ could stand beside Theocritus. +The romantic movement, with its impatience of established fames, damned +the _Aeneid_ in one word as artificial; forgetting, or not seeing, that +the _Aeneid_ was itself the fountain-head of romanticism. Long after the +theory of the noble savage had passed out of political and social +philosophy it lingered in literary criticism; and the distinction between +"natural" and "artificial" poetry was held to be like that between light +and darkness. It was not till a comparatively recent time that the +leisurely progress of criticism stumbled on the fact that all poetry is +artificial, and that the _Iliad_ itself is artificial in a very eminent +and unusual degree. + +No great work of art can be usefully judged by comparison with any other +great work of art. It may, indeed, be interesting and fertile to compare +one with another, in order to seize more sharply and appreciate more +vividly the special beauty of each. But to press comparison further, and +to depreciate one because it has not what is the special quality of the +other, is to lose sight of the function of criticism. We shall not find +in Virgil the bright speed, the unexhausted joyfulness, which, in spite +of a view of life as grave as Virgil's own, make the _Iliad_ and +_Odyssey_ unique in poetry; nor, which is more to the point as regards +the _Aeneid,_ the narrative power, the genius for story-telling, which is +one of the rarest of literary gifts, and which Ovid alone among the Latin +poets possessed in any high perfection. We shall not find in him that +high and concentrated passion which in Pindar (as afterwards in Dante) +fuses the elements of thought and language into a single white heat. We +shall not find in him the luminous and untroubled calm, as of a spirit in +which all passion has been fused away, which makes the poetry of +Sophocles so crystalline and irreproachable. Nor shall we find in him the +peculiar beauties of his own Latin predecessors, Lucretius or Catullus. +All this is merely saying in amplified words that Virgil was not +Lucretius or Catullus, and that still less was he Homer, or Pindar, or +Sophocles; and to this may be added, that he lived in the world which the +great Greek and Latin poets had created, though he looked forward out of +it into another. + +Yet the positive excellences of the _Aeneid_ are so numerous and so +splendid that the claim of its author to be the Roman Homer is not +unreasonable, if it be made clear that the two poems are fundamentally +disparate, and that no more is meant than that the one poet is as eminent +in his own form and method as the other in his. In our haste to rest +Virgil's claim to supremacy as a poet on the single quality in which he +is unique and unapproachable we may seem tacitly to assent to the +judgment of his detractors on other points. Yet the more one studies the +_Aeneid,_ the more profoundly is one impressed by its quality as a +masterpiece of construction. The most adverse critic would not deny that +portions of the poem are, both in dramatic and narrative quality, all but +unsurpassed, and in a certain union of imaginative sympathy with their +fine dramatic power and their stateliness of narration perhaps +unequalled. The story of the last agony of Troy could not be told with +more breadth, more richness, more brilliance than it is told in the +second book: here, at least, the story neither flags nor hurries; from +the moment when the Greek squadron sets sail from Tenedos and the signal- +flame flashes from their flagship, the scenes of the fatal night pass +before us in a smooth swift stream that gathers weight and volume as it +goes, till it culminates in the vision of awful faces which rises before +Aeneas when Venus lifts the cloud of mortality from his startled eyes. +The episode of Nisus and Euryalus in the ninth book, and that of Camilla +in the eleventh, are in their degree as admirably vivid and stately. The +portraiture of Dido, again, in the fourth book, is in combined breadth +and subtlety one of the dramatic masterpieces of human literature. It is +idle to urge that this touch is borrowed from Euripides or that suggested +by Sophocles, or to quote the Medea of Apollonius as the original of +which Dido is an elaborate imitation. What Virgil borrowed he knew how to +make his own; and the world which, while not denying the tenderness, the +grace, the charm of the heroine of the _Argonautica,_ leaves the +_Argonautica_ unread, has thrilled and grown pale from generation to +generation over the passionate tragedy of the Carthaginian queen. + +But before a deeper and more appreciative study of the _Aeneid_ these +great episodes cease to present themselves as detached eminences. That +the _Aeneid_ is unequal is true; that passages in it here and there are +mannered, and even flat, is true also; but to one who has had the +patience to know it thoroughly, it is in its total effect, and not in the +great passages, or even the great books, that it seems the most +consummate achievement. Virgil may seem to us to miss some of his +opportunities, to labour others beyond their due proportion, to force +himself (especially in the later books) into material not well adapted to +the distinctive Virgilian treatment. The slight and vague portrait of the +maiden princess of Latium, in which the one vivid touch of her "flower- +like hair" is the only clear memory we carry away with us, might, in +different hands--in those of Apollonius, for instance,--have given a new +grace and charm to the scenes where she appears. The funeral games at the +tomb of Anchises, no longer described, as they had been in early Greek +poetry, from a real pleasure in dwelling upon their details, begin to +become tedious before they are over. In the battle-pieces of the last +three books we sometimes cannot help being reminded that Virgil is rather +wearily following an obsolescent literary tradition. But when we have set +such passages against others which, without being as widely celebrated as +the episode of the sack of Troy or the death of Dido, are equally +miraculous in their workmanship--the end of the fifth book, for instance, +or the muster-roll of the armies of Italy in the seventh, or, above all, +the last hundred and fifty lines of the twelfth, where Virgil rises +perhaps to his very greatest manner--we shall not find that the +splendour of the poem depends on detached passages, but far more on the +great manner and movement which, interfused with the unique Virgilian +tenderness, sustains the whole structure through and through. + +In merely technical quality the supremacy of Virgil's art has never been +disputed. The Latin hexameter, "the stateliest measure ever moulded by +the lips of man," was brought by him to a perfection which made any +further development impossible. Up to the last it kept taking in his +hands new refinements of rhythm and movement which make the later books +of the _Aeneid_ (the least successful part of the poem in general +estimation) an even more fascinating study to the lovers of language than +the more formally perfect work of the _Georgics,_ or the earlier books of +the _Aeneid_ itself. A brilliant modern critic has noted this in words +which deserve careful study. "The innovations are individually hardly +perceptible, but taken together they alter the character of the hexameter +line in a way more easily felt than described. Among the more definite +changes we may note that there are more full stops in the middle of +lines, there are more elisions, there is a larger proportion of short +words, there are more words repeated, more assonances, and a freer use of +the emphasis gained by the recurrence of verbs in the same or cognate +tenses. Where passages thus characterised have come down to us still in +the making, the effect is forced and fragmentary; where they succeed, +they combine in a novel manner the rushing freedom of the old trochaics +with the majesty which is the distinguishing feature of Virgil's style. +The poet's last words suggest to us possibilities in the Latin tongue +which no successor has been able to realise." In these later books +likewise, the psychological interest and insight which keep perpetually +growing throughout Virgil's work result in an almost unequalled power of +expressing in exquisite language the half-tones and delicate shades of +mental processes. The famous simile in the twelfth _Aeneid_-- + + _Ac velut in somnis oculos ubi languida pressit + Nocte quies, nequiquam avidos extendere cursus + Velle videmur, et in mediis conatibus aegri + Succidimus, nec lingua valet, nec corpore notae + Sufficiunt vires aut vox et verba sequuntur--_ + +is an instance of the amazing mastery with which he makes language have +the effect of music in expressing the subtlest processes of feeling. +But the specific and central charm of Virgil lies deeper than in any +merely technical quality. The word which expresses it most nearly is that +of pity. In the most famous of his single lines he speaks of the "tears +of things;" just this sense of tears, this voice that always, in its most +sustained splendour and in its most ordinary cadences, vibrates with a +strange pathos, is what finally places him alone among artists. This +thrill in the voice, _come colui che piange e dice,_ is never absent from +his poetry. In the "lonely words," in the "pathetic half-lines" spoken of +by the two great modern masters of English prose and verse, he +perpetually touches the deepest springs of feeling; in these it is that +he sounds, as no other poet has done, the depths of beauty and sorrow, of +patience and magnanimity, of honour in life and hope beyond death. + +A certain number of minor poems have come down to us associated more or +less doubtfully with Virgil's name. Three of these are pieces in +hexameter verse, belonging broadly to the class of the _epyllion,_ or +"little epic," which was invented as a convenient term to include short +poems in the epic metre that were not definitely pastorals either in +subject or treatment, and which the Alexandrian poets, headed by +Theocritus, had cultivated with much assiduity and considerable success. +The most important of them, the _Culex,_ or _Gnat,_ is a poem of about +four hundred lines, in which the incident of a gnat saving the life of a +sleeping shepherd from a serpent, and being crushed to death in the act, +is made the occasion for an elaborate description of the infernal +regions, from which the ghost of the insect rises to reproach his +unconscious murderer. That Virgil wrote a poem with this title is alluded +to by Martial and Statius as matter of common undisputed knowledge; nor +is there any certain argument against the Virgilian authorship of the +extant poem, but various delicate metrical considerations incline recent +critics to the belief that it is from the hand of an almost contemporary +imitator who had caught the Virgilian manner with great accuracy. The +_Ciris,_ another piece of somewhat greater length, on the story of Scylla +and Nisus, is more certainly the production of some forgotten poet +belonging to the circle of Marcus Valerius Messalla, and is of interest +as showing the immense pains taken in the later Augustan age to continue +the Virgilian tradition. The third poem, the Moretum, is at once briefer +and slighter in structure and more masterly in form. It is said to be a +close copy of a Greek original by Parthenius of Nicaea, a distinguished +man of letters of this period who taught Virgil Greek; nor is there any +grave improbability in supposing that the _Moretum_ is really one of the +early exercises in verse over which Virgil must have spent years of his +laborious apprenticeship, saved by some accident from the fate to which +his own rigorous judgment condemned the rest. + +So far the whole of the poetry attributed to Virgil is in the single form +of hexameter verse, to the perfecting of which his whole life was +devoted. The other little pieces in elegiac and lyric metres require but +slight notice. Some are obviously spurious; others are so slight and +juvenile that it matters little whether they are spurious or not. One +elegiac piece, the _Copa,_ is of admirable vivacity and grace, and the +touch in it is so singularly unlike the Virgilian manner as to tempt one +into the paradox of its authenticity. That Virgil wrote much which he +deliberately destroyed is obviously certain; his fastidiousness and his +melancholy alike drove him towards the search after perfection, and his +mercilessness towards his own work may be measured by his intention to +burn the _Aeneid_. Not less by this passionate desire of unattainable +perfection than by the sustained glory of his actual achievement,--his +haunting and liquid rhythms, his majestic sadness, his grace and pity,-- +he embodies for all ages that secret which makes art the life of life +itself. + + + + +II. + +HORACE. + + +In that great turning-point of the world's history marked by the +establishment of the Roman Empire, the position of Virgil is so unique +because he looks almost equally forwards and backwards. His attitude +towards his own age is that of one who was in it rather than of it. On +the one hand is his intense feeling for antiquity, based on and +reinforced by that immense antiquarian knowledge which made him so dear +to commentators, and which renders some of his work so difficult to +appreciate from our mere want of information; on the other, is that +perpetual brooding over futurity which made him, within a comparatively +short time after his death, regarded as a prophet and his works as in +some sense oracular. The _Sortes Vergilianae,_ if we may believe the +confused gossip of the Augustan History, were almost a State institution, +while rationalism was still the State creed in ordinary matters. Thus, +while, in a way, he represented and, as it were, gave voice to the Rome +of Augustus, he did so in a transcendental manner; the Rome which he +represents, whether as city or empire, being less a fact than an idea, +and already strongly tinged with that mysticism which we regard as +essentially mediaeval, and which culminated later without any violent +breach of continuity in the conception of a spiritual Rome which was a +kingdom of God on earth, and of which the Empire and the Papacy were only +two imperfect and mutually complementary phases; _quella Roma onde Cristo +è Romano,_ as it was expressed by Dante with his characteristic width and +precision. + +To this mystical temper the whole mind and art of Virgil's great +contemporary stands in the most pointed contrast. More than almost any +other poet of equal eminence, Horace lived in the present and actual +world; it is only when he turns aside from it that he loses himself. +Certain external similarities of method there are between them--above +all, in that mastery of verbal technique which made the Latin language +something new in the hands of both. Both were laborious and indefatigable +artists, and in their earlier acquaintanceship, at all events, were close +personal friends. But the five years' difference in their ages represents +a much more important interval in their poetical development. The earlier +work of Horace, in the years when he was intimate with Virgil, is that +which least shows the real man or the real poet; it was not till Virgil, +sunk in his _Aeneid,_ and living in a somewhat melancholy retirement far +away from Rome, was within a few years of his death, that Horace, amid +the gaiety and vivid life of the capital, found his true scope, and +produced the work that has made him immortal. + +Yet the earlier circumstances of the two poets' lives had been not +unlike. Like Virgil, Horace sprang from the ranks of the provincial lower +middle class, in whom the virtues of industry, frugality, and sense were +generally accompanied by little grace or geniality. But he was +exceptionally fortunate in his father. This excellent man, who is always +spoken of by his son with a deep respect and affection, was a freedman of +Venusia in Southern Italy, who had acquired a small estate by his +economies as a collector of taxes in the neighbourhood. Horace must have +shown some unusual promise as a boy; yet, according to his own account, +it was less from this motive than from a disinterested belief in the +value of education that his father resolved to give him, at whatever +personal sacrifice, every advantage that was enjoyed by the children of +the highest social class. The boy was taken to Rome about the age of +twelve--Virgil, a youth of seventeen, came there from Milan about the +same time--and given the best education that the capital could provide. +Nor did he stop there; at eighteen he proceeded to Athens, the most +celebrated university then existing, to spend several years in completing +his studies in literature and philosophy. While he was there the +assassination of Caesar took place, and the Civil war broke out. Marcus +Brutus occupied Macedonia, and swept Greece for recruits. The scarcity of +Roman officers was so great in the newly levied legions that the young +student, a boy of barely twenty-one, with no birth or connection, no +experience, and no military or organising ability, was not only accepted +with eagerness, but at once given a high commission. He served in the +Republican army till Philippi, apparently without any flagrant discredit; +after the defeat, like many of his companions, he gave up the idea of +further resistance, and made the best of his way back to Italy. He found +his little estate forfeited, but he was not so important a person that he +had to fear proscription, and with the strong common sense which he had +already developed, he bought or begged himself a small post in the civil +service which just enabled him to live. Three years later he was +introduced by Virgil to Maecenas, and his uninterrupted prosperity began. + +Did we know more of the history of Horace's life in the interval between +his leaving the university and his becoming one of the circle of +recognised Augustan poets, much in his poetical development might be less +perplexing to us. The effect of these years was apparently to throw him +back, to arrest or thwart what would have been his natural growth. No +doubt he was one of the men who (like Caesar or Cromwell in other fields +of action) develop late; but something more than this seems needed to +account for the extraordinary weakness and badness of his first volume of +lyrical pieces, published by him when he was thirty-five. In the first +book of the _Satires,_ produced about five years earlier, he had shown +much of his admirable later qualities,--humour, sense, urbanity, +perception,--but all strangely mingled with a vein of artistic vulgarity +(the worst perhaps of all vulgarities) which is totally absent from his +matured writing. It is not merely that in this earlier work he is often +deliberately coarse--that was a literary tradition, from which it would +require more than ordinary originality to break free,--but that he again +and again allows himself to fall into such absolute flatness as can only +be excused on the theory that his artistic sense had been checked or +crippled in its growth, and here and there disappeared in his nature +altogether. How elaborate and severe the self-education must have been +which he undertook and carried through may be guessed from the vast +interval that separates the spirit and workmanship of the _Odes_ from +that of the _Epodes,_ and can partly be traced step by step in the +autobiographic passages of the second book of _Satires_ and the later +_Epistles_. We are ignorant in what circumstances or under what pressure +the _Epodes_ were published; it is a plausible conjecture that their +faults were just such as would meet the approbation of Maecenas, on whose +favour Horace was at the time almost wholly dependent; and Horace may +himself have been glad to get rid, as it were, of his own bad immature +work by committing it to publicity. The celebrated passage in Keats' +preface to _Endymion,_ where he gives his reasons for publishing a poem +of whose weakness and faultiness he was himself acutely conscious, is of +very wide application; and it is easy to believe that, after the +publication of the _Epodes,_ Horace could turn with an easier and less +embarrassed mind to the composition of the _Odes_. + +Meanwhile he was content to be known as a writer of satire, one whose +wish it was to bring up to an Augustan polish the literary form already +carried to a high degree of success by Lucilius. The second book of +_Satires_ was published not long after the _Epodes_. It shows in every +way an enormous advance over the first. He has shaken himself free from +the imitation of Lucilius, which alternates in the earliest satires with +a rather bitter and self-conscious depreciation of the work of the older +poet and his successors. The prosperous turn Horace's own life had taken +was ripening him fast, and undoing the bad effects of earlier years. We +have passed for good out of the society of Rupilius Rex and Canidia. At +one time Horace must have run the risk of turning out a sort of +ineffectual François Villon; this, too, is over, and his earlier +education bears fruit in a temper of remarkable and delicate gifts. + +This second book of _Satires_ marks in one way the culmination of +Horace's powers. The brilliance of the first years of the Empire +stimulated the social aptitude and dramatic perception of a poet who +lived in the heart of Rome, already free from fear or ambition, but as +yet untouched by the melancholy temper which grew on him in later years. +He employs the semi-dramatic form of easy dialogue throughout the book +with extraordinary lightness and skill. The familiar hexameter, which +Lucilius had left still cumbrous and verbose, is like wax in his hands; +his perfection in this use of the metre is as complete as that of Virgil +in the stately and serious manner. And behind this accomplished literary +method lies an unequalled perception of common human nature, a rich vein +of serious and quiet humour, and a power of language the more remarkable +that it is so unassuming, and always seems as it were to say the right +thing by accident. With the free growth of his natural humour he has +attained a power of self-appreciation which is unerring. The _Satires_ +are full from end to end of himself and his own affairs; but the name of +egoism cannot be applied to any self-revelation or self-criticism which +is so just and so certain. From the opening lines of the first satire, +where he notes the faults of his own earlier work, to the last line of +the book, with its Parthian shot at Canidia and the _jeunesse orageuse_ +that he had so long left behind, there is not a page which is not full of +that self-reference which, in its truth and tact, constantly passes +beyond itself and holds up the mirror to universal human nature. In +reading the _Satires_ we all read our own minds and hearts. + +Nearly ten years elapsed between the publication of the second book of +the _Satires_ and that of the first book of the _Epistles_. Horace had +passed meanwhile into later middle life. He had in great measure retired +from society, and lived more and more in the quietness of his little +estate among the Sabine hills. Life was still full of vivid interest; but +books were more than ever a second world to him, and, like Virgil, he was +returning with a perpetually increasing absorption to the Greek +philosophies, which had been the earliest passion of his youth. Years had +brought the philosophic mind; the more so that these years had been +filled with the labour of the _Odes,_ a work of the highest and most +intricate effort, and involving the constant study of the masterpieces of +Greek thought and art. The "monument more imperishable than bronze" had +now been completed; its results are marked in the _Epistles_ by a new and +admirable maturity and refinement. Good sense, good feeling, good taste, +--these qualities, latent from the first in Horace, have obtained a final +mastery over the coarser strain with which they had at first been +mingled; and in their shadow now appear glimpses of an inner nature even +more rare, from which only now and then he lifts the veil with a sort of +delicate self-depreciation, in an occasional line of sonorous rhythm, or +in some light touch by which he gives a glimpse into a more magical view +of life and nature: the earliest swallow of spring on the coast, the +mellow autumn sunshine on a Sabine coppice, the everlasting sound of a +talking brook; or, again, the unforgettable phrases, the _fallentis +semita vitae,_ or _quod petis hic est,_ or _ire tamen restat,_ that have, +to so many minds in so many ages, been key-words to the whole of life. + +It is in the _Epistles_ that Horace reveals himself most intimately, and +perhaps with the most subtle charm. But the great work of his life, for +posterity as well as for his own age, was the three books of _Odes_ which +were published by him in 23 B.C., at the age of forty-two, and represent +the sustained effort of about ten years. This collection of eighty-eight +lyrics was at once taken to the heart of the world. Before a volume of +which every other line is as familiar as a proverb, which embodies in a +quintessential form that imperishable delight of literature to which the +great words of Cicero already quoted[7] give such beautiful expression, +whose phrases are on all men's lips as those of hardly any other ancient +author have been, criticism is almost silenced. In the brief and graceful +epilogue, Horace claims for himself, with no uncertainty and with no +arrogance, such eternity as earth can give. The claim was completely +just. The school-book of the European world, the _Odes_ have been no less +for nineteen centuries the companions of mature years and the delight of +age--_adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant,_ may be said of them +with as much truth as ever now. Yet no analysis will explain their +indefinable charm. If the so-called "lyrical cry" be of the essence of a +true lyric, they are not true lyrics at all. Few of them are free from a +marked artificiality, an almost rigid adherence to canon. Their range of +thought is not great; their range of feeling is studiously narrow. Beside +the air and fire of a lyric of Catullus, an ode of Horace for the moment +grows pale and heavy, _cineris specie decoloratur_. Beside one of the +pathetic half-lines of Virgil, with their broken gleams and murmurs as of +another world, a Horatian phrase loses lustre and sound. Yet Horace +appeals to a tenfold larger audience than Catullus--to a larger audience, +it may even be said, than Virgil. Nor is he a poets' poet: the refined +and exquisite technique of the _Odes_ may be only appreciable by a +trained artist in language; but it is the untrained mind, on whom other +art falls flat, that the art of Horace, by some unique penetrative power, +kindles and quickens. His own phrase of "golden mediocrity" expresses +with some truth the paradox of his poetry; in no other poet, ancient or +modern, has such studied and unintermitted mediocrity been wrought in +pure gold. By some tact or instinct--the "felicity," which is half of the +famous phrase in which he is characterised by Petronius--he realised +that, limited as his own range of emotion was, that of mankind at large +was still more so, and that the cardinal matter was to strike in the +centre. Wherever he finds himself on the edge of the range in which his +touch is certain, he draws back with a smile; and so his concentrated +effect, within his limited but central field, is unsurpassed, and perhaps +unequalled. + +This may partly explain how it was that with Horace the Latin lyric stops +dead. His success was so immediate and so immense that it fixed the +limit, so to speak, for future poets within the confined range which he +had chosen to adopt; and that range he had filled so perfectly that no +room was left for anything but imitation on the one hand, or, on the +other, such a painful avoidance of imitation as would be equally +disastrous in its results. With the principal lyric metres, too, the +sapphic and alcaic, he had done what Virgil had done with the dactylic +hexameter, carried them to the highest point of which the foreign Latin +tongue was capable. They were naturalised, but remained sterile. When at +last Latin lyric poetry took a new development, it was by starting afresh +from a wholly different point, and by a reversion to types which, for the +culture of the early imperial age, were obsolete and almost non-existent. + +The phrase, _verbis felicissime audax,_ used of Horace as a lyric poet by +Quintilian, expresses, with something less than that fine critic's usual +accuracy, another quality which goes far to make the merit of the _Odes_. +Horace's use of words is, indeed, remarkably dexterous; but less so from +happy daring than from the tact which perpetually poises and balances +words, and counts no pains lost to find the word that is exactly right. +His audacities--if one cares to call them so--in the use of epithet, in +Greek constructions (which he uses rather more freely than any other +Latin poet), and in allusive turns of phrase, are all carefully +calculated and precisely measured. His unique power of compression is not +that of the poet who suddenly flashes out in a golden phrase, but more +akin to the art of the distiller who imprisons an essence, or the gem- +engraver working by minute touches on a fragment of translucent stone. +With very great resources of language at his disposal, he uses them with +singular and scrupulous frugality; in his measured epithets, his curious +fondness for a number of very simple and abstract words, and the studious +simplicity of effect in his most elaborately designed lyrics, he reminds +one of the method of Greek has-reliefs, or, still more (after allowing +for all the difference made by religious feeling), of the sculptured work +of Mino of Fiesole, with its pale colours and carefully ordered outlines. +Phrases of ordinary prose, which he uses freely, do not, as in Virgil's +hands, turn into poetry by his mere use of them; they give rather than +receive dignity in his verses, and only in a few rare instances, like the +stately _Motum ex Metello consule civicum,_ are they completely fused +into the structure of the poem. So, too, his vivid and clearly-cut +descriptions of nature in single lines and phrases stand out by +themselves like golden tesserae in a mosaic, each distinct in a +glittering atmosphere--_qua tumidus rigat arva Nilus; opacam porticus +excipiebat Arcton; nec prata canis albicant pruinis_--a hundred phrases +like these, all exquisitely turned, and all with the same effect of +detachment, which makes them akin to sculpture, rather than painting or +music. Virgil, as we learn from an interesting fragment of biography, +wrote his first drafts swiftly and copiously, and wrought them down by +long labour into their final structure; with Horace we may rather imagine +that words came to the surface slowly and one by one, and that the _Odes_ +grew like the deposit, cell by cell, of the honeycomb to which, in a +later poem, he compares his own work. In some passages where the _Odes_ +flag, it seems as though material had failed him before the poem was +finished, and he had filled in the gaps, not as he wished, but as he +could, yet always with the same deliberate gravity of workmanship. + +_Horatii curiosa felicitas_--this, one of the earliest criticisms made on +the _Odes,_ remains the phrase which most completely describes their +value. Such minute elaboration, on so narrow a range of subject, and +within such confined limits of thought and feeling, could only be +redeemed from dulness by the perpetual felicity--something between luck +and skill--that was Horace's secret. How far it was happy chance, how far +deliberately aimed at and attained, is a question which brings us before +one of the insoluble problems of art; we may remind ourselves that, in +the words of the Greek dramatist Agathon, which Aristotle was so fond of +quoting, skill and chance in all art cling close to one another. "Safe in +his golden mediocrity," to use the words of his own counsel to Licinius, +Horace has somehow or another taken deep hold of the mind, and even the +imagination, of mankind. This very mediocrity, so fine, so chastened, so +certain, is in truth as inimitable as any other great artistic quality; +we must fall back on the word genius, and remember that genius does not +confine itself within the borders of any theory, but works its own will. + +With the publication of the three books of the _Odes,_ and the first book +of the _Epistles,_ Horace's finest and maturest work was complete. In the +twelve years of his life which were still to run he published but little, +nor is there any reason to suppose that he wrote more than he published. +In 17 B.C., he composed, by special command, an ode to be sung at the +celebration of the Secular Games. The task was one in which he was much +hampered by a stringent religious convention, and the result is +interesting, but not very happy. We may admire the skill with which +formularies of the national worship are moulded into the sapphic stanza, +and prescribed language, hardly, if at all, removed from prose, is made +to run in stately, though stiff and monotonous, verse; but our admiration +is of the ingenuity, not of the poetry. The _Jubilee Ode_ written by Lord +Tennyson is curiously like the _Carmen Seculare_ in its metrical +ingenuities, and in the way in which the unmistakeable personal note of +style sounds through its heavy and formal movement. + +Four years later a fourth book of _Odes_ was published, the greater part +of which consists of poems less distinctly official than the _Secular +Hymn,_ but written with reference to public affairs by the direct command +of the Emperor, some in celebration of the victories of Drusus and +Tiberius on the north-eastern frontier, and others in more general praise +of the peace and external prosperity established throughout Italy under +the new government. Together with these official pieces he included some +others: an early sketch for the _Carmen Seculare,_ a curious fragment of +literary criticism in the form of an ode addressed to one of the young +aristocrats who followed the fashion of the Augustan age in studying and +writing poetry, and eight pieces of the same kind as his earlier odes, +written at various times within the ten years which had now passed since +the publication of the first three books. An introductory poem, of +graceful but half-ironical lamentation over the passing of youth, seems +placed at the head of the little collection in studious depreciation of +its importance. Had it not been for the necessity of publishing the +official odes, it is probable enough that Horace would have left these +few later lyrics ungathered. They show the same care and finish in +workmanship as the rest, but there is a certain loss of brilliance; +except one ode of mellow and refined beauty, the famous _Diffugere +nives,_ they hardly reach the old level. The creative impulse in Horace +had never been very powerful or copious; with growing years he became +less interested in the achievement of literary artifice, and turned more +completely to his other great field, the criticism of life and +literature. To the concluding years of his life belong the three +delightful essays in verse which complete the list of his works. Two of +these, which are placed together as a second book of _Epistles_, seem to +have been published at about the same time as the fourth book of the +_Odes_. The first, addressed to the Emperor, contains the most matured +and complete expression of his views on Latin poetry, and is in great +measure a vindication of the poetry of his own age against the school +which, partly from literary and partly from political motives, persisted +in giving a preference to that of the earlier Republic. In the second, +inscribed to one of his younger friends belonging to the circle of +Tiberius, he reviews his own life as one who was now done with literature +and literary fame, and was giving himself up to the pursuit of wisdom. +The melancholy of temperament and advancing age is subtly interwoven in +his final words with the urbane humour and strong sense that had been his +companions through life:-- + + _Lusisti satis, edisti satis atque bibisti, + Tempus abire tibi est, ne potum largius acquo + Rideat et pulset lasciva decentius aetas._ + +A new generation, clever, audacious, and corrupt, had silently been +growing up under the Empire. Ovid was thirty, and had published his +_Amores_. The death of Virgil had left the field of serious poetry to +little men. The younger race had learned only too well the lesson of +minute care and formal polish so elaborately taught them by the earlier +Augustan poets, and had caught the ear of the town with work of +superficial but, for the time, captivating brilliance. Gloom was already +beginning to gather round the Imperial household; the influence of +Maecenas, the great support of letters for the last twenty years, was +fast on the wane. In the words just quoted, with their half-sad and half- +mocking echo of the famous passage of Lucretius,[8] Horace bids farewell +to poetry. + +But literary criticism, in which he had so fine a taste, and on which he +was a recognised authority, continued to interest him; and the more +seriously minded of the younger poets turned to him for advice, which he +was always willing to give. The _Epistle to the Pisos,_ known more +generally under the name of the _Art of Poetry,_ seems to have been +composed at intervals during these later years, and was, perhaps, not +published till after his death in the year 8 B.C. It is a discussion of +dramatic poetry, largely based on Greek textbooks, but full of Horace's +own experience and of his own good sense. Young aspirants to poetical +fame regularly began with tragedies; and Horace, accepting this as an +actual fact, discusses the rules of tragedy with as much gravity as if he +were dealing with some really living and national form of poetry. This +discursive and fragmentary essay was taken in later ages as an +authoritative treatise; and the views expressed by Horace on a form of +poetical art with which he had little practical acquaintance had, at the +revival of literature, and even down to last century, an immense +influence over the structure and development of the drama. Just as modern +comedy based itself on imitation of Plautus and Terence, and as the +earliest attempts at tragedy followed haltingly in the steps of Seneca, +so as regards the theory of both, Horace, and not the Greeks, was the +guiding influence. + +Among the many amazing achievements of the Greek genius in the field +of human thought were a lyrical poetry of unexampled beauty, a refined +critical faculty, and, later than the great thinkers and outside of the +strict schools, a temperate philosophy of life such as we see afterwards +in the beautiful personality of Plutarch. In all these three Horace +interpreted Greece to the world, while adding that peculiarly Roman +urbanity--the spirit at once of the grown man as distinguished from +children, of the man of the world, and of the gentleman--which up till +now has been a dominant ideal over the thought and life of Europe. + + + + +III + +PROPERTIUS AND THE ELEGISTS. + + +Those years of the early Empire in which the names of Virgil and Horace +stand out above all the rest were a period of large fertility in Latin +poetry. Great poets naturally bring small poets after them; and there was +no age at Rome in which the art was more assiduously practised or more +fashionable in society. The Court set a tone which was followed in other +circles, and more especially among the younger men of the old +aristocracy, now largely excluded from the public life which had +engrossed their parents under the Republic. The influence of the +Alexandrian poets, so potent in the age of Catullus, was not yet +exhausted; and a wider culture had now made the educated classes familiar +with the whole range of earlier Greek poetry as well. Rome was full of +highly educated Greek scholars, some of whom were themselves poets of +considerable merit. It was the fashion to form libraries; the public +collection formed by Augustus, and housed in a sumptuous building on the +Palatine, was only the largest among many others in the great houses of +Rome. The earlier Latin poets had known only a small part of Greek +literature, and that very imperfectly; their successors had been +trammelled by too exclusive an admiration of the Greek of the decadence. +Virgil and Horace, though professed students of the Alexandrians, had +gone back themselves, and had recalled the attention of the public, to +the poets of free Greece, and had stimulated the widely felt longing to +conquer the whole field of poetry for the Latin tongue. + +For this attempt, tradition and circumstance finally proved too strong; +and Augustan poetry, outside of a few definite forms, is largely a +chronicle of failure. This was most eminently so in the drama. Augustan +tragedy seems never to have risen for a moment beyond mere academic +exercises. Of the many poets who attempted it, nothing survives beyond a +string of names. Lucius Varius Rufus, the intimate friend of both Virgil +and Horace, and one of the two joint-editors of the _Aeneid_ after the +death of the former, wrote one tragedy, on the story of Thyestes, which +was acted with applause at the games held to celebrate the victory of +Actium, and obtained high praise from later critics. But he does not +appear to have repeated the experiment like so many other Latin poets, he +turned to the common path of annalistic epic. Augustus himself began a +tragedy of _Ajax,_ but never finished it. Gaius Asinius Pollio, the first +orator and critic of the period, and a magnificent patron of art and +science, also composed tragedies more on the antique model of Accius and +Pacuvius, in a dry and severe manner. But neither in these, nor in the +work of the young men for whose benefit Horace wrote the _Epistle to the +Pisos,_ was there any real vitality; the precepts of Horace could no more +create a school of tragedians than his example could create a school of +lyric poets. + +The poetic forms, on the other hand, used by Virgil were so much more on +the main line of tendency that he stands among a large number of others, +some of whom might have had a high reputation but for his overwhelming +superiority. Of the other essays made in this period in bucolic poetry we +know too little to speak with any confidence. But both didactic poetry +and the little epic were largely cultivated, and the greater epic itself +was not without followers. The extant poems of the _Culex_ and _Ciris_ +have already been noted as showing with what skill and grace unknown +poets, almost if not absolutely contemporary with Virgil, could use the +slighter epic forms. Varius, when he abandoned tragedy, wrote epics on +the death of Julius Caesar, and on the achievements of Agrippa. The few +fragments of the former which survive show a remarkable power and +refinement; Virgil paid them the sincerest of all compliments by +conveying, not once only but again and again, whole lines of Varius into +his own work. Another intimate friend of Virgil, Aemilius Macer of +Verona, wrote didactic poems in the Alexandrian manner on several +branches of natural history, which were soon eclipsed by the fame of the +_Georgics_, but remained a model for later imitators of Nicander. One of +these, a younger contemporary of Virgil called Gratius, or Grattius, was +the author of a poem on hunting, still extant in an imperfect form. In +its tame and laboured correctness it is only interesting as showing the +early decay of the Virgilian manner in the hands of inferior men. + +A more interesting figure, and one the loss of whose works leaves a real +gap in Latin literature, is Gaius Cornelius Gallus, the earliest and one +of the most brilliant of the Augustan poets. Like Varro Atacinus, he was +born in Narbonese Gaul, and brought into Roman poetry a new touch of +Gallic vivacity and sentiment. The year of his birth was the same as that +of Virgil's, but his genius matured much earlier, and before the +composition of the _Eclogues_ he was already a celebrated poet, as well +as a distinguished man of action. The story of his life, with its swift +rise from the lowest fortune to the splendid viceroyalty of Egypt, and +his sudden disgrace and death at the age of forty-three, is one of the +most dramatic in Roman history. The translations from Euphorion, by which +he first made his reputation, followed the current fashion; but about the +same time he introduced a new kind of poetry, the erotic elegy, which had +a swift and far-reaching success. To Gallus, more than to any other +single poet, is due the naturalisation in Latin of the elegiac couplet, +which, together with the lyrics of Horace and the Virgilian hexameter, +makes up the threefold poetical achievement of the Augustan period, and +which, after the Latin lyric had died out with Horace himself, halved the +field with the hexameter. For the remaining literature of the Empire, for +that of the Middle Ages so far as it followed classical models, and even +for that of the Renaissance, which carries us down to within a measurable +distance of the present day, the hexameter as fixed by Virgil, and the +elegiac as popularised by Gallus and rapidly brought to perfection by his +immediate followers, are the only two poetical forms of real importance. + +The elegiac couplet had, of course, been in use at Rome long before; +Ennius himself had employed it, and in the Ciceronian age Catullus had +written in it largely, and not without success. But its successful use +had been hitherto mainly confined to short pieces, such as would fall +within the definition of the Greek epigram. The four books of poems in +which Gallus told the story of his passion for the courtesan Cytheris +(the Lycoris of the tenth Eclogue) showed the capacities of the metre in +a new light. The fashion they set was at once followed by a crowd of +poets. The literary circles of Maecenas and Messalla had each their +elegiac poet of the first eminence; and the early death of both +Propertius and Tibullus was followed, amid the decline of the other forms +of the earlier Augustan poetry, by the consummate brilliance of Ovid. + +Of the Augustan elegiac poets, Sextus Propertius, a native of Assisi in +Umbria, and introduced at a very early age to the circle of Maecenas, is +much the most striking and interesting figure, not only from the formal +merit of his poetry, but as representing a type till then almost unknown +in ancient literature. Of his life little is known. Like Virgil, he lost +his patrimonial property in the confiscations which followed the Civil +war, but he was then a mere child. He seems to have been introduced to +imperial patronage by the publication of the first book of his _Elegies_ +at the age of about twenty. He died young, before he was thirty-five, if +we may draw an inference from the latest allusions in his extant poems; +he had then written four other books of elegiac pieces, which were +probably published separately at intervals of a few years. In the last +book there is a noticeable widening of range of subject, which +foreshadows the further development that elegiac verse took in the hands +of Ovid soon after his death. + +In striking contrast to Virgil or Horace, Propertius is a genius of great +and, indeed, phenomenal precocity. His first book of _Elegies,_ the +_Cynthia monobiblos_ of the grammarians, was a literary feat comparable +to the early achievements of Keats or Byron. The boy of twenty had +already mastered the secret of elegiac verse, which even Catullus had +used stiffly and awkwardly, and writes it with an ease, a colour, a +sumptuousness of rhythm which no later poet ever equalled. The splendid +cadence of the opening couplet-- + + _Cynthia prima suis miserum me cepit ocellis + Contactum nullis ante cupidinibus--_ + +must have come on its readers with the shock of a new revelation. Nothing +like it had ever been written in Latin before: itself and alone it +assures a great future to the Latin elegiac. His instinct for richness of +sound is equally conspicuous where it is found in purely Latin phrases, +as in the opening of the sixteenth elegy-- + + _Quae fueram magnis olim patefacta triumphis + Ianua Tarpeiae nota pudicitiae + Cuius inaurati celebrarunt limina currus + Captorum lacrimis umida supplicibus,_ + +and where it depends on a lavish use of Greek ornament, as in the opening +of the third-- + + _Qualis Thesea iacuit cedente carina + Languida desertis Gnosia litoribus, + Qualis et accubuit primo Cepheia somno + Libera iam duris cotibus Andromede,_ + +Even when one comes to them fresh from Virgil, lines like these open a +new world of sound. The Greek elegiac, as it is known to us by the finest +work of the epigrammatists, had an almost unequalled flexibility and +elasticity of rhythm; this quality Propertius from the first seized, and +all but made his own. By what course of reasoning he was led in his later +work to suppress this large and elastic treatment, and approximate more +and more closely to the fine but somewhat limited and metallic rhythm +which has been perpetuated by the usage of Ovid, we cannot guess. In this +first book he ends the pentameter freely with words of three, four, and +five syllables; the monotony of the perpetual disyllabic termination, +which afterwards became the normal usage, is hardly compensated by the +increased smoothness which it gives the verse. + +But this new power of versification accompanied a new spirit even more +remarkable, which is of profound import as the precursor of a whole +school of modern European poetry. The _Cynthia_ is the first appearance +in literature of the neurotic young man, who reappeared last century in +Rousseau's _Confessions_ and Goethe's _Werther,_ and who has dominated +French literature so largely since Alfred de Musset. The way had been +shown half a century before by that remarkable poet, Meleager of Gadara, +whom Propertius had obviously studied with keen appreciation. Phrases in +the _Cynthia_, like-- + + _Tum mihi constantis deiecit lumina fastus + Et caput impositis pressit Amor pedibus,_ + +or-- + + _Qui non ante patet donec manus attigit ossa,_ + +are in the essential spirit of Meleager, and, though not verbally copied +from him, have the precise quality of his rhythms and turns of phrase. +But the abandonment to sensibility, the absorption in self-pity and the +sentiment of passion, are carried by Propertius to a far greater length. + +The abasement of a line like-- + + Sis quodcunque voles, non aliena tamen,_ + +is in the strongest possible contrast to that powerful passion which +fills the poetry of Catullus, or to the romantic tenderness of the +_Eclogues_; and in the extraordinary couplet-- + + _Me sine, quem semper voluit fortuna iacere, + Hanc animam extremae reddere nequitiae,_ + +"the expense of spirit in a waste of shame" reaches its culminating +point. This tremulous self-absorption, rather than any defect of eye or +imagination, is the reason of the extraordinary lapses which now and then +he makes both in description and in sentiment. The vivid and picturesque +sketches he gives of fashionable life at watering-places and country- +houses in the eleventh and fourteenth elegies, or single touches, like +that in the remarkable couplet-- + + _Me mediae noctes, me sidera prona iacentem, + Frigidaque Eoo me dolet aura gelu,_ + +show that where he was interested neither his eye nor his language had +any weakness; but, as a rule, he is not interested either in nature or, +if the truth be told, in Cynthia, but wholly in himself. He ranks among +the most learned of the Augustan poets; but, for want of the rigorous +training and self-criticism in which Virgil and Horace spent their lives, +he made on the whole but a weak and ineffective use of a natural gift +perhaps equal to either of theirs. Thus it is that his earliest work is +at the same time his most fascinating and brilliant. After the _Cynthia_ +he rapidly became, in the mordant phrase used by Heine of Musset, _un +jeune homme d'un bien beau passé_. Some premonition of early death seems +to have haunted him; and the want of self-control in his poetry may +reflect actual physical weakness united with his vivid imagination. + +The second and third books of the _Elegies_,[9] though they show some +technical advance, and are without the puerilities which here and there +occur in the _Cynthia,_ are on the whole immensely inferior to it in +interest and charm. There is still an occasional line of splendid beauty, +like the wonderful-- + + _Sunt apud infernos tot milia formosarum;_ + +an occasional passage of stately rhythm, like the lines beginning-- + + _Quandocunque igitur nostros mors clausit ocellos;_ + +but the smooth versification has now few surprises; the learning is +becoming more mechanical; there is a tendency to say over again what he +had said before, and not to say it quite so well. + +Through these two books Cynthia is still the main subject. But with the +advance of years, and his own growing fame as a poet, his passion--if +that can be called a passion which was so self-conscious and so +sentimental--fell away from him, and left his desire for literary +reputation the really controlling motive of his work. In the introductory +poem to the fourth book there is a new and almost aggressive tone with +regard to his own position among the Roman poets, which is in strong +contrast to the modesty of the epilogue to the third book. The inflated +invocation of the ghost of Callimachus laid him fatally open to the +quietly disdainful reference by which, without even mentioning Propertius +by name, Horace met it a year or two later in the second book of the +_Epistles_. But even Horace is not infallible; and Propertius was, at all +events, justified in regarding himself as the head of a new school of +poetry, and one which struck its roots wide and deep. + +In the fourth and fifth books of the _Elegies_ there is a wide range of +subject; the verse is being tested for various purposes, and its +flexibility answers to almost every demand. But already we feel its fatal +facility. The passage beginning _Atque ubi iam Venerem,_ in the poem +where he contrasts his own life with those of the followers of riches and +ambition, is a dilution into twelve couplets of eight noble lines of the +_Georgics,_ with an effect almost as feeble, if not so grotesque, as that +of the later metaphrasts, who occupied themselves in turning heroic into +elegiac poems by inserting a pentameter between each two lines. The sixth +elegy of the same book is nothing but a cento of translations from the +_Anthology,_ strung together and fastened up at the end by an original +couplet in the worst and most puerile manner of his early writing. On the +other hand, these books include fresh work of great merit, and some of +great beauty. The use of the elegiac metre to tell stories from Graeco- +Roman mythology and legendary Roman history is begun in several poems +which, though Propertius has not the story-telling gift of Ovid, showed +the way to the delightful narratives of the _Fasti_. A few of the more +personal elegies have a new and not very agreeable kind of realism, as +though Musset had been touched with the spirit of Flaubert. In one, the +ninth of the fourth book, the realism is in a different and pleasanter +vein; only Herrick among English poets has given such imaginative charm +to straightforward descriptions of the ordinary private life of the +middle classes. The fifth book ends with the noble elegy on Cornelia, the +wife of Paulus Aemilius Lepidus, in which all that is best in Propertius' +nature at last finds splendid and memorable expression. It has some of +his common failings,--passages of inappropriate learning, and a little +falling off towards the end. But where it rises to its height, in the +lines familiar to all who know Latin, it is unsurpassed in any poetry for +grace and tenderness. + + _Nunc tibi commendo communia pignora natos; + Haec cura et cineri spirat inusta meo. + Fungere maternis vicibus pater: illa meorum + Omnis erit collo turba fovenda tuo. + Oscula cum dederis tua flentibus, adice matris; + Tota domus coepit nunc onus esse tuum. + Et siquid doliturus eris, sine testibus illis! + Cum venient, siccis oscula falle genis: + Sat tibi sint noctes quas de me, Paule, fatiges, + Somniaque in faciem reddita saepe meam._ + +In these lines, hardly to be read without tears, Propertius for once +rises into that clear air in which art passes beyond the reach of +criticism. What he might have done in this new manner had he lived longer +can only be conjectured; at the same age neither Virgil nor Horace had +developed their full genius. But the perpetual recurrence in the later +poems of that brooding over death, which had already marked his juvenile +work, indicates increasing exhaustion of power. Even the sparkling elegy +on the perils of a lover's rapid night journey from Rome to Tibur passes +at the end into a sombre imagination of his own grave; and the fine and +remarkable poem (beginning with the famous _Sunt aliquid Manes_) in which +the ghost of Cynthia visits him, is full of the same morbid dwelling on +the world of shadows, where the "golden girl" awaits her forgetful lover. +_Atque hoc sollicitum vince sopore caput_ had become the sum of his +prayers. But a little while afterwards the restless brain of the poet +found the sleep that it desired. + +At a time when literary criticism was so powerful at Rome, and poetry was +ruled by somewhat rigid canons of taste, it is not surprising that more +stress was laid on the defects than on the merits of Propertius' poetry. +It evidently annoyed Horace; and in later times Propertius remained the +favourite of a minority, while general taste preferred the more +faultless, if less powerfully original, elegiacs of his contemporary, +Albius Tibullus. This pleasing and graceful poet was a few years older +than Propertius, and, like him, died at the age of about thirty-five. He +did not belong to the group of court poets who formed the circle of +Maecenas, but to a smaller school under the patronage of Marcus Valerius +Messalla, a distinguished member of the old aristocracy, who, though +accepting the new government and loyal in his service to the Emperor, +held somewhat aloof from the court, and lived in a small literary world +of his own. Tibullus published in his lifetime two books of elegiac +poems; after his death a third volume was published, containing a few of +his posthumous pieces, together with poems by other members of the same +circle. Of these, six are elegies by a young poet of the upper class, +writing under the name of Lygdamus, and plausibly conjectured to have +been a near relative of Tibullus. One, a panegyric on Messalla, by an +unknown author, is without any poetical merit, and only interesting as an +average specimen of the amateur verse of the time when, in the phrase of +Horace-- + + _Populus calet uno + Scribendi studio; pueri patresque severi + Fronde comas vincti cenant et carmina dictant._ + +The curious set of little poems going under the name of Sulpicia, and +included in the volume, will be noticed later. + +Tibullus might be succinctly and perhaps not unjustly described as a +Virgil without the genius. The two poets died in the same year, and a +contemporary epigram speaks of them as the recognised masters of heroic +and elegiac verse; while the well known tribute of Ovid, in the third +book of the _Amores,_ shows that the death of Tibullus was regarded as an +overwhelming loss by the general world of letters. "Pure and fine," the +well-chosen epithets of Quintilian, are in themselves no slight praise; +and the poems reveal a gentleness of nature and sincerity of feeling +which make us think of their author less with admiration than with a sort +of quiet affection. No two poets could be more strongly contrasted than +Tibullus and Propertius, even when their subject and manner of treatment +approximate most closely. In Tibullus the eagerness, the audacity, the +irregular brilliance of Propertius are wholly absent; as are the feverish +self-consciousness and the want of good taste and good sense which are +equally characteristic of the latter. Poetry is with him, not the +outburst of passion, or the fruit of high imagination, but the refined +expression of sincere feeling in equable and melodious verse. The +delightful epistle addressed to him by Horace shows how high he stood in +the esteem and affection of a severe critic, and a man whose friendship +was not lightly won or lavishly expressed. He stands easily at the head +of Latin poets of the second order. In delicacy, in refinement, in grace +of rhythm and diction, he cannot be easily surpassed; he only wants the +final and incommunicable touch of genius which separates really great +artists from the rest of the world. + + + + +IV. + +OVID. + + +The Peace of the Empire, secured by the victory of Actium, and fully +established during the years which followed by Augustus and his +lieutenants, inaugurated a new era of social life in the capital. The +saying of Augustus, that he found Rome brick and left it marble, may be +applied beyond the sphere of mere architectural decoration. A French +critic has well observed that now, for the first time in European +history, the Court and the City existed in their full meaning. Both had +an organised life and a glittering external ease such as was hardly known +again in Europe till the reign of the Grand Monarque. The enormous wealth +of the aristocracy was in the mass hardly touched by all the waste and +confiscations of the civil wars; and, in spite of a more rigorous +administration, fresh accumulations were continually made by the new +official hierarchy, and flowed in from all parts of the Empire to feed +the luxury and splendour of the capital. Wealth and peace, the increasing +influence of Greek culture, and the absence of political excitement, +induced a period of brilliant laxity among the upper classes. The severe +and frugal morals of the Republic still survived in great families, as +well as among that middle class, from which the Empire drew its solid +support; but in fashionable society there was a marked and rapid +relaxation of morals which was vainly combated by stringent social and +sumptuary legislation. The part taken by women in social and political +life is among the most powerful factors in determining the general aspect +of an age. This, which had already been great under the later Republic, +was now greater than ever. The Empress Livia was throughout the reign of +Augustus, and even after his death, one of the most important persons in +Rome. Partly under her influence, partly from the temperament and policy +of Augustus himself, a sort of court Puritanism grew up, like that of the +later years of Louis Quatorze. The aristocracy on the whole disliked and +despised it; but the monarchy was stronger than they. The same gloom +overshadows the end of these two long reigns. Sentences of death or +banishment fell thick among the leaders of that gay and profligate +society; to later historians it seemed that all the result of the +imperial policy had been to add hypocrisy to profligacy, and incidentally +to cripple and silence literature. + +Of this later Augustan period Ovid is the representative poet. The world +in which he lived may be illustrated by a reference to two ladies of his +acquaintance, both in different ways singularly typical of the time. +Julia, the only daughter of Augustus, still a mere child when her father +became master of the world, was brought up with a strictness which +excited remark even among those who were familiar with the strict +traditions of earlier times. Married, when a girl of fourteen, to her +cousin, Marcus Claudius Marcellus; after his death, two years later, to +the Emperor's chief lieutenant, Marcus Agrippa; and a third time, when he +also died, to the son of the Empress Livia, afterwards the Emperor +Tiberius,--she was throughout treated as a part of the State machinery, +and as something more or less than a woman. But she turned out to be, in +fact, a woman whose beauty, wit, and recklessness were alike +extraordinary, and who rose in disastrous revolt against the system in +which she was forced to be a pivot. Alike by birth and genius she easily +took the first place in Roman society; and under the very eyes of the +Emperor she multiplied her lovers right and left, and launched out into a +career that for years was the scandal of all Rome. When she had reached +the age of thirty-seven, in the same year when Ovid's _Art of Love_ was +published, the axe suddenly fell; she was banished, disinherited, and +kept till her death in rigorous imprisonment, almost without the +necessaries of life. Such were the first-fruits of the social reform +inaugurated by Augustus and sung by Horace. + +In the volume of poems which includes the posthumous elegies of Tibullus, +there is also contained a group of short pieces by another lady of high +birth and social standing, a niece of Messalla and a daughter of Servius +Sulpicius, and so belonging by both parents to the inner circle of the +aristocracy. Nothing is known of her life beyond what can be gathered +from the poems. But that they should have been published at all, still +more that they should have been published, as they almost certainly were, +with the sanction of Messalla, is a striking instance of the unique +freedom enjoyed by Roman women of the upper classes, and of their +disregard of the ordinary moral conventions. The only ancient parallel is +in the period of the Aeolic Greek civilisation which produced Sappho. The +poems are addressed to her lover, who (according to the fashion of the +time--like Catullus' Lesbia or Propertius' Cynthia) is spoken of by a +Greek name, but was most probably a young Roman of her own circle. The +writer, a young, and apparently an unmarried woman, addresses him with a +frankness of passion that has no idea of concealment. She does not even +take the pains to seal her letters to him, though they contain what most +women would hesitate to put on paper. They have all the same directness, +which sometimes becomes a splendid simplicity. One note, reproaching him +for a supposed infidelity-- + + _Si tibi cura togae potior pressumque quasillo + Scortum quam Servi filia Sulpicia--_ + +has all the noble pride of Shakespeare's Imogen. Of the world and its +ways she has no girlish ignorance; but the talk of the world, as a motive +for reticence, simply does not exist for her. + +Where young ladies of the upper classes had such freedom as is shown in +these poems, and used it, the ordinary lines of demarcation between +respectable women and women who are not respectable must have largely +disappeared. It has been much and inconclusively debated whether the +Hostia and Plania, to whom, under assumed names, the amatory poems of +Propertius and Tibullus were addressed, were more or less married women +(for at Rome there were degrees of marriage), or women for whom marriage +was a remote and immaterial event. The same controversy has raged over +Ovid's Corinna, who is variously identified as Julia the daughter of the +Emperor herself, as a figment of the imagination, or as an ordinary +courtesan. The truth is, that in the society so brilliantly drawn in the +_Art of Love_, such distinctions were for the time suspended, and we are +in a world which, though for the time it was living and actual, is as +unreal to us as that of the Restoration dramatists. + +The young lawyer and man of fashion, Publius Ovidius Naso, who was the +laureate of this gay society, was a few years younger than Propertius, +with whom he was in close and friendly intimacy. The early death of both +Propertius and Tibullus occurred before Ovid published his first volume; +and Horace, the last survivor of the older Augustans, had died some years +before that volume was followed by any important work. The period of +Ovid's greatest fertility was the decade immediately following the +opening of the Christian era; he outlived Augustus by three years, and so +laps over into the sombre period of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which +culminated in the reign of Nero. + +As the eldest surviving son of an opulent equestrian family of Upper +Italy, Ovid was trained for the usual career of civil and judicial +office. He studied for the bar at Rome, and, though he never worked hard +at law, filled several judicial offices of importance. But his interest +was almost wholly in the rhetorical side of his profession; he "hated +argument;" and from the rhetoric of the schools to the highly rhetorical +poetry which was coming into fashion there was no violent transition. An +easy fortune, a brilliant wit, an inexhaustible memory, and an unfailing +social tact, soon made him a prominent figure in society; and his genuine +love of literature and admiration for genius--unmingled in his case with +the slightest trace of literary jealousy or self-consciousness--made him +the friend of the whole contemporary world of letters. He did not begin +to publish poetry very early; not because he had any delicacy about doing +so, nor because his genius took long to ripen, but from the good-humoured +laziness which never allowed him to take his own poetry too seriously. +When he was about thirty he published, to be in the fashion, a volume of +amatory elegiacs, which was afterwards re-edited and enlarged into the +existing three books of _Amores_. Probably about the same time he +formally graduated in serious poetry with his tragedy of _Medea_. For ten +or twelve years afterwards he continued to throw off elegiac poems, some +light, others serious, but all alike in their easy polish, and written +from the very first with complete and effortless mastery of the metre. To +this period belong the _Heroides,_ the later pieces in the _Amores,_ the +elaborate poem on the feminine toilet called _De Medicamine Faciei,_ and +other poems now lost. Finally, in 2 or 1 B.C., he published what is +perhaps on the whole his most remarkable work, the three books _De Arte +Amatoria_. + +Just about the time of the publication of the _Art of Love,_ the exile of +the elder Julia fell like a thunderbolt on Roman society. Staggered for a +little under the sudden blow, it soon gathered itself together again, and +a perpetual influx of younger men and women gathered round her daughter +and namesake, the wife of Lucius Aemilius Paulus, into a circle as +corrupt, if not so accomplished, as that of which Ovid had been a chief +ornament. He was himself now forty; though singularly free from literary +ambition, he could not but be conscious of his extraordinary powers, and +willing to employ them on larger work. He had already incidentally proved +that he possessed an instinct for narrative such as no Roman poet had +hitherto had--such, indeed, as it would be difficult to match even in +Greek poetry outside Homer. A born story-teller, and an accomplished +master of easy and melodious verse, he naturally turned for subjects to +the inexhaustible stores of the Graeco-Roman mythology, and formed the +scheme of his _Metamorphoses_ and _Fasti_. Both poems were all but +complete, but only the first half of the latter had been published, when, +at the end of the year 8, his life and work were suddenly shattered by a +mysterious catastrophe. An imperial edict ordered him to leave Rome on a +named day, and take up his residence at the small barbarous town of Tomi, +on the Black Sea, at the extreme outposts of civilisation. No reason was +assigned, and no appeal allowed. The cause of this sudden action on the +part of the Emperor remains insoluble. The only reason ever officially +given, that the publication of the _Art of Love_ (which was already ten +years old) was an offence against public morals, is too flimsy to have +been ever meant seriously. The allusions Ovid himself makes to his own +"error" or "crime" are not meant to be intelligible, and none of the many +theories which have been advanced fully satisfies the facts. But, +whatever may have been the cause--whether Ovid had become implicated in +one of those aristocratic conspiracies against which Augustus had to +exercise constant vigilance, or in the intrigues of the younger Julia, or +in some domestic scandal that touched the Emperor even more personally-- +it brought his literary career irretrievably to the ground. The elegies +which he continued to pour forth from his place of exile, though not +without their grace and pathos, struggle almost from the first under the +crowning unhappiness of unhappiness, that it ceases to be interesting. +The five books of the _Tristia,_ written during the earlier years of his +banishment, still retain, through the monotony of their subject, and the +abject humility of their attitude to Augustus, much of the old dexterity. +In the four books of _Epistles from Pontus,_ which continue the +lamentation over his calamities, the failure of power is evident. He went +on writing profusely, because there was nothing else to do; panegyrics on +Augustus and Tiberius alternated with a natural history of fish--the +_Halieutica_--and with abusive poems on his real or fancied enemies at +Rome. While Augustus lived he did not give up hopes of a remission, or at +least an alleviation, of his sentence; but the accession of Tiberius, who +never forgot or forgave anything, must have extinguished them finally; +and he died some three years later, still a heart-broken exile. + +Apart from his single tragedy, from a few didactic or mock-didactic +pieces, imitated from Alexandrian originals, and from his great poem of +the _Metamorphoses,_ the whole of Ovid's work was executed in the elegiac +couplet. His earliest poems closely approximate in their management of +this metre to the later work of Propertius. The narrower range of cadence +allowed by the rule which makes every couplet regularly end in a +disyllable, involves a monotony which only Ovid's immense dexterity +enabled him to overcome. In the _Fasti_ this dexterity becomes almost +portentous: when his genius began to fail him, the essential vice of the +metre is soon evident. But the usage was stereotyped by his example; all +through the Empire and through the Middle Ages, and even down to the +present day, the Ovidian metre has been the single dominant type: and +though no one ever managed it with such ingenuity again, he taught enough +of the secret to make its use possible for almost every kind of subject. +His own elegiac poetry covers an ample range. In the impassioned rhetoric +of the _Heroides,_ the brilliant pictures of life and manners in the _De +Arte Amatoria,_ or the sparkling narratives of the _Fasti,_ the same sure +and swift touch is applied to widely diverse forms and moods. Ovid was a +trained rhetorician and an accomplished man of the world before he began +to write poetry; that, in spite of his worldliness and his glittering +rhetoric, he has so much of feeling and charm, is the highest proof of +his real greatness as a poet. + +But this feeling and charm are the growth of more mature years. In his +early poetry there is no passion and little sentiment. He writes of love, +but never as a lover; nor, with all his quickness of insight and +adroitness of impersonation, does he ever catch the lover's tone. From +the amatory poems written in his own person one might judge him to be +quite heartless, the mere hard and polished mirror of a corrupt society; +and in the _Art of Love_ he is the keen observer of men and women whose +wit and lucid common sense are the more insolently triumphant because +untouched by any sentiment or sympathy. We know him from other sources to +have been a man of really warm and tender feeling; in the poetry which he +wrote as laureate of the world of fashion he keeps this out of sight, and +outdoes them all in cynical worldliness. It is only when writing in the +person of a woman--as in the Phyllis or Laodamia of the _Heroides_--that +he allows himself any approach to tenderness. The _Ars Amatoria,_ full as +it is of a not unkindly humour, of worldly wisdom and fine insight, is +perhaps the most immoral poem ever written. The most immoral, not the +most demoralizing: he wrote for an audience for whom morality, apart from +the code of good manners which society required, did not exist; and +wholly free as it is from morbid sentiment, the one great demoralizing +influence over men and women, it may be doubted whether the poem is one +which ever did any reader serious harm, while few works are more +intellectually stimulating within a certain limited range. To readers for +whom its qualities have exhausted or have not acquired their stimulating +force, it merely is tiresome; and this, indeed, is the fate which in the +present age, when wit is not in vogue, has very largely overtaken it. + +Interspersed in the _Art of Love_ are a number of stories from the old +mythology, introduced to illustrate the argument, but set out at greater +length than was necessary for that purpose, from the active pleasure it +always gives Ovid to tell a story. When he conceived the plan of his +_Metamorphoses,_ he had recognised this narrative instinct as his special +gift. His tragedy of _Medea_ had remained a single effort in dramatic +form, unless the _Heroides_ can be classed as dramatic monologues. The +_Medea,_ but for two fine single lines, is lost; but all the evidence is +clear that Ovid had no natural turn for dramatic writing, and that it was +merely a clever _tour de force_. In the idea of the _Metamorphoses_ he +found a subject, already treated in more than one Alexandrian poem, that +gave full scope for his narrative gift and his fertile ingenuity. The +result was a poem as long, and almost as unflagging, as the _Odyssey_. A +vast mass of multifarious stories, whose only connection is the casual +fact of their involving or alluding to some transformation of human +beings into stones, trees, plants, beasts, birds, and the like, is cast +into a continuous narrative. The adroitness with which this is done makes +the poem rank as a masterpiece of construction. The atmosphere of +romantic fable in which it is enveloped even gives it a certain +plausibility of effect almost amounting to epic unity. In the fabulous +superhuman element that appears in all the stories, and in their natural +surroundings of wood, or mountain, or sea--always realised with fresh +enjoyment and vivid form and colour--there is something which gives the +same sort of unity of effect as we feel in reading the _Arabian Nights_. +It is not a real world; it is hardly even a world conceived as real; but +it is a world so plausible, so directly appealing to simple instincts and +unclouded senses, above all so completely taken for granted, that the +illusion is, for the time, all but complete. For later ages, the +_Metamorphoses_ became the great textbook of classical mythology; the +legends were understood as Ovid had told them, and were reproduced (as, +for instance, throughout the whole of the painting of the Renaissance) in +the spirit and colour of this Italian story-teller. + +For the metre of the _Metamorphoses_ Ovid chose the heroic hexameter, but +used it in a strikingly new and original way. He makes no attempt, as +later poets unsuccessfully did, at reproducing the richness of tone and +intricacy of modulation which it had in the hands of Virgil. Ovid's +hexameter is a thing of his own. It becomes with him almost a new metre-- +light, brilliant, and rapid, but with some monotony of cadence, and +without the deep swell that it had, not in Virgil only, but in his +predecessors. The swift, equable movement is admirably adapted to the +matter of the poem, smoothing over the transitions from story to story, +and never allowing a story to pause or flag halfway. Within its limits, +the workmanship is faultless. The style neither rises nor sinks with the +variation of subject. One might almost say that it was without moral +quality. Ovid narrates the treachery of Scylla or the incestuous passion +of Myrrha with the same light and secure touch as he applies to the +charming idyl of Baucis and Philemon or the love-tale of Pyramus and +Thisbe; his interest is in what happened, in the story for the story's +sake. So, likewise, in the rhetorical evolution of his thought, and the +management of his metre, he writes simply as the artist, with the +artistic conscience as his only rule. The rhetorician is as strong in him +as it had been in the _Amores;_ but it is under better control, and +seldom leads him into excesses of bad taste, nor is it so overmastering +as not to allow free play to his better qualities, his kindliness, his +good-humour, his ungrudging appreciation of excellence, in his evolution +of thought--or his play of fancy, if the expression be preferred--he has +an alertness and precision akin to great intellectual qualities; and it +is this, perhaps, which has made him a favourite with so many great men +of letters. Shakespeare himself, in his earlier work, alike the plays and +the poems, writes in the Ovidian manner, and often in what might be +direct imitation of Ovid; the motto from the _Amores_ prefixed to the +_Venus and Adonis_ is not idly chosen. Still more remarkable, because +less superficially evident, is the affinity between Ovid and Milton. At +first sight no two poets, perhaps, could seem less alike. But it is known +that Ovid was one of Milton's favourite poets; and if one reads the +_Metamorphoses_ with an eye kept on _Paradise Lost_, the intellectual +resemblance, in the manner of treatment of thought and language, is +abundantly evident, as well in the general structure of their rhetoric as +in the lapses of taste and obstinate puerilities (_non ignoravit vitia +sua sed amavit_ might be said of Milton also), which come from time to +time in their maturest work. + +The _Metamorphoses_ was regarded by Ovid himself as his masterpiece. In +the first impulse of his despair at leaving Rome, he burned his own copy +of the still incomplete poem. But other copies were in existence; and +though he writes afterwards as though it had been published without his +correction and without his consent, we may suspect that it was neither +without his knowledge nor against his will; when he speaks of the _manus +ultima_ as wanting, it is probably a mere piece of harmless affectation +to make himself seem liker the author of the _Aeneid_. The case was +different with the _Fasti_, the other long poem which he worked at side +by side with the _Metamorphoses_. The twelve books of this work, dealing +with the calendar of the twelve months, were also all but complete when +he was banished, and the first six, if not actually published, had, at +all events, got into private circulation. At Tomi he began a revision of +the poem which, apparently, he never completed. The first half of the +poem, prefaced by a fresh dedication to Germanicus, was published, or +republished, after the death of Augustus, to whom, in its earlier form, +it had been inscribed; the second half never reached the public. It +cannot be said that Latin poetry would be much poorer had the first six +books been suppressed also. The student of metrical forms would, indeed, +have lost what is metrically the most dexterous of all Latin poems, and +the archaeologist some curious information as to Roman customs; but, for +other readers, little would be missed but a few of the exquisitely told +stories, like that of Tarquin and Lucretia, or of the Rape of Proserpine, +which vary the somewhat tedious chronicle of astronomical changes and +national festivals. + +The poems of the years of Ovid's exile, the _Tristia_ and the _Letters +from Pontus_, are a melancholy record of flagging vitality and failing +powers. His adulation of the Emperor and the imperial family passes all +bounds; it exhausts what would otherwise seem the inexhaustible +copiousness of his vocabulary. The long supplication to Augustus, which +stands by itself as book ii. of the _Tristia_, is the most elaborate and +skilful of these pieces; but those which may be read with the most +pleasure are the letters to his wife, for whom he had a deep affection, +and whom he addresses with a pathos that is quite sincere. As hope of +recall grew fainter, his work failed more and more; the incorrect +language and slovenly versification of some of the _Letters from Pontus_ +are in sad contrast to the Ovid of ten years before, and if he went on +writing till the end, it was only because writing had long been a second +nature to him. + +Of the extraordinary force and fineness of Ovid's natural genius, there +never have been two opinions; had he but been capable of controlling it, +instead of indulging it, he might have, in Quintilian's opinion, been +second to no Roman poet. In his _Medea_, the critic adds, he did show +some of this self-control; its loss is the more to be lamented. But the +easy good-nature of his own disposition, no less than the whole impulse +of the literary fashion then prevalent, was fatal to the continuous +exercise of such severe self-education: and the man who was so keen and +shrewd in his appreciation of the follies of lovers had all the weakness +of a lover for the faults of his own poetry. The delightful story of the +three lines which his critical friends urged him to erase proves, if +proof were needed, that this weakness was not blindness, and that he was +perfectly aware of the vices of his own work. The child of his time, he +threw all his brilliant gifts unhesitatingly into the scale of new ideas +and new fashions; his "modernity," to use a current term of the present +day, is greater than that of any other ancient author of anything like +his eminence. + + _Prisca iuvent alios, ego me nunc denique natum + Gratulor: haec aetas moribus apta meis--_ + +this is his deliberate attitude throughout his life. + +Such a spirit has more than once in the history of the arts marked the +point from which their downward course began. _I do not sing the old +things, for the new are far better_, the famous Greek musician Timotheus +had said four centuries earlier, and the decay of Greek music was dated +from that period. But to make any artist, however eminent, responsible +for the decadence of art, is to confuse cause with effect; and the note +of ignominy affixed by Augustus to the _Art of Love_ was as futile as the +action of the Spartan ephor when he cut the strings away from the cithara +of Timotheus. The actual achievement of Ovid was to perfect and +popularise a poetical form of unusual scope and flexibility; to throw a +vivid and lasting life into the world of Graeco-Roman mythology; and, +above all, to complete the work of Cicero and Horace in fixing a certain +ideal of civilised manners for the Latin Empire and for modern Europe. He +was not a poet of the first order; yet few poets of the first order have +done a work of such wide importance. + + + + +V. + +LIVY. + + +The Ciceronian age represents on the whole the culmination of Latin +prose, as the Augustan does the culmination of Latin poetry. In the +former field, the purity of the language as it had been used by Caesar +and Cicero could hardly be retained in a period of more diffused culture; +and the influence of the schools of rhetoric, themselves based on +inferior Greek models, became more and more marked. Poetry, too, was for +the time more important than prose, and one result was that prose became +infected with certain qualities of poetical style. The reign of Augustus +includes only one prose writer of the first rank, the historian Titus +Livius. + +Though not living like Virgil or Horace in the immediate circle of +Augustus and under direct court patronage, Livy was in friendly relations +with the Emperor and his family, and accepted the new rule with +cordiality, if without much enthusiasm. Of his life, which seems to have +been wholly spent in literary pursuits, little is known. He was born at +Padua in the year of Julius Caesar's first consulship, and had survived +Augustus by three years when he died at the age of seventy-five. In +earlier life he wrote some philosophical dialogues and treatises on +rhetoric which have not been preserved. An allusion in the first book of +his history shows that it was written, or at all events published, after +the first and before the second closing of the temple of Janus by +Augustus, in the years 29 and 25 B.C. For forty years thereafter he +continued this colossal task, which, like the _Decline and Fall_, was +published in parts from time to time. He lived to bring it down as far as +the death of Drusus, the younger son of the Empress Livia, in the year 9 +B.C. The division into books, of which there were one hundred and forty- +two in the whole work, is his own; these again were arranged in +_volumina_, or sections issued as separate volumes, and containing a +varying number of books. The division of the work into decads was made by +copyists at a much later period, and was no part of the author's own +plan. Only one-fourth of the whole history has survived the Middle Ages. +This consists of the first, the third, the fourth, and half of the fifth +decad, or books i.-x. and xxi.-xlv. of the work; of the rest we only +possess brief tables of contents, drawn up in the fourth century, not +from the original work but from an abridgment, itself now lost, which was +then in use. The scale of the history is very different in the two +surviving portions. The first decad carries it from the foundation of the +city through the Regal and early Republican periods down to the third +Samnite war, a period of four centuries and a half. The twenty-five +extant books of the third, fourth, and fifth decads cover a period of +fifty years, from the beginning of the second Punic to the conclusion of +the third Macedonian war. This half century, it is true, was second in +importance to none in Roman history. But the scale of the work had a +constant tendency to expand as it approached more modern times, and more +abundant documents; and when he reached his own time, nearly a book was +occupied with the events of each year. + +Founded as it was, at least for the earlier periods, upon the works of +preceding annalists, the history of Livy adopted from them the +arrangement by years marked by successive consulates, which was familiar +to all his readers. He even speaks of his own work as _annales_, though +its formal title seems to have been _Histori'_ (or _Libri Historiarum_) +_ab Urbe Condita_. There is no reason to suppose that he intended to +conclude it at any fixed point In a preface to one of the later volumes, +he observed with justifiable pride that he had already satisfied the +desire of fame, and only went on writing because the task of composition +had become a fixed habit, which he could not discontinue without +uneasiness. His fame even in his lifetime was unbounded. He seems to have +made no enemies. The acrid criticism of Asinius Pollio, a purist by +profession, on certain provincialities of his style, was an insignificant +exception to the general chorus of praise. In treading the delicate +ground of the Civil wars his attitude towards the Republican party led +Augustus to tax him half jestingly as a Pompeian; yet Livy lost no favour +either with him or with his more jealous successor. The younger Pliny +relates how a citizen of Cadiz was so fired by his fame that he travelled +the whole way to Rome merely to see him, and as soon as he had seen him +returned home, as though Rome had no other spectacles to offer. + +Roman history had hitherto been divided between the annalists and the +writers of personal and contemporary memoirs. Sallust was almost the only +example of the definite historical treatment of a single epoch or episode +of the past. As a rule each annalist set himself the same task, of +compiling, from the work of his predecessors, and such additional +information as he found accessible to him, a general history of the Roman +people from its beginnings, carried down as far towards his own day as he +found time or patience to continue it. Each successive annalist tried to +improve upon previous writers, either in elegance of style or in +copiousness of matter, and so far as he succeeded in the double task his +work replaced those already written. It was not considered unfair to +transcribe whole passages from former annalists, or even to copy their +works with additions and improvements, and bring them out as new and +original histories. The idea of literary property seems, in truth, to be +very much a creation of positive law. When no copyright existed, and when +the circulation of any book was confined within very small limits by the +cost and labour of transcription, the vaguest ideas prevailed, not at +Rome alone, on what we should now regard as the elementary morality of +plagiarism. Virgil himself transferred whole lines and passages, not +merely from earlier, but even from contemporary poets; and in prose +writing, one annalist cut up and reshaped the work of another with as +little hesitation as a mediaeval romance-writer. + +In this matter Livy allowed himself full liberty; and his work absorbed, +and in a great measure blotted out, those of his predecessors. In his +general preface he speaks of the two motives which animate new +historians, as the hope that they will throw further light on events, or +the belief that their own art will excel that of a ruder age. The former +he hardly professes to do, at least as regards times anterior to his own; +his hope is that by his pen the great story of the Republic will be told +more impressively, more vividly, in a manner more stimulating to the +reader and more worthy of the subject, than had hitherto been done. This +purpose at least he amply and nobly carried out; nor can it be said to be +a low ideal of the function of history. So far, however, as the office of +the historian is to investigate facts, to get at the exact truth of what +physically happened, or to appreciate the varying degrees of probability +with which that truth can be attained, Livy falls far short of any +respectable ideal. His romantic temper and the ethical bent of his mind +alike indisposed him to set any very great value on facts as such. His +history bears little trace of any independent investigation. Sources for +history lay round him in immense profusion. The enormous collections made +by Varro in every field of antiquarian research were at his hand, but he +does not seem to have used them, still less to have undertaken any +similar labour on his own account. While he never wilfully distorts the +truth, he takes comparatively little pains to disengage it from fables +and inaccuracies. In his account of a battle in Greece he finds that +Valerius Antias puts the number of the enemy killed as inside ten +thousand, while Claudius Quadrigarius says forty thousand. The +discrepancy does not ruffle him, nor even seem to him very important; he +contents himself with an expression of mild surprise that Valerius for +once allows himself to be outstripped in exaggerating numbers. Yet where +Valerius is his only authority or is not contradicted by others, he +accepts his statements, figures and all, without uneasiness. This +instance is typical of his method as a critical--or rather an uncritical +--historian. When his authorities do not disagree, he accepts what they +say without much question. When they do disagree, he has several courses +open to him, and takes one or another according to his fancy at the +moment. Sometimes he counts heads and follows the majority of his +authors; sometimes he adopts the account of the earliest; often he tries +to combine or mediate between discordant stories; when this is not easy, +he chooses the account which is most superficially probable or most +dramatically impressive. He even bases a choice on the ground that the +story he adopts shows Roman statesmanship or virtue in a more favourable +light, though he finds some of the inventions of Roman vanity too much +for him to swallow. Throughout he tends to let his own preferences decide +whether or not a story is true. _In rebus tam antiquis si quae similia +veri sint pro veris accipiantur_ is the easy canon which he lays down for +early and uncertain events. Even when original documents of great value +were extant, he refrains from citing them if they do not satisfy his +taste. During the second Punic war a hymn to Juno had been written by +Livius Andronicus for a propitiatory festival. It was one of the most +celebrated documents of early Latin; but he refuses to insert it, on the +ground that to the taste of his own day it seemed rude and harsh. Yet as +a historian, and not a collector of materials for history, he may plead +the privilege of the artist. The modern compromise by which documents are +cited in notes without being inserted in the text of histories had not +then been invented; and notes, even when as in the case of Gibbon's they +have a substantive value as literature, are an adjunct to the history +itself, rather than any essential part of it. A more serious charge is, +that when he had trustworthy authorities to follow, he did not appreciate +their value. In his account of the Macedonian wars, he often follows +Polybius all but word for word, but apparently without realising the +Greek historian's admirable accuracy and judgment. Such appreciation only +comes of knowledge; and Livy lacked the vast learning and the keen +critical insight of Gibbon, to whom in many respects he has a strong +affinity. His imperfect knowledge of the military art and of Roman law +often confuses his narrative of campaigns and constitutional struggles, +and gives too much reason to the charge of negligence brought against him +by that clever and impudent critic, the Emperor Caligula. + +Yet, in spite of all his inaccuracies of detail, and in spite of the +graver defect of insufficient historical perspective, which makes him +colour the whole political development of the Roman state with the ideas +of his own time, the history of Rome as narrated by Livy is essentially +true and vital, because based on a large insight into the permanent +qualities of human nature. The spirit in which he writes history is well +illustrated by the speeches. These, in a way, set the tone of the whole +work. He does not affect in them to reproduce the substance of words +actually spoken, or even to imitate the tone of the time in which the +speech is laid. He uses them as a vivid and dramatic method of portraying +character and motive. The method, in its brilliance and its truth to +permanent facts, is like that of Shakespeare's _Coriolanus_. Such truth, +according to the celebrated aphorism in Aristotle's _Poetics_, is the +truth of poetry rather than of history: and the history of Livy, in this, +as in his opulent and coloured diction, has some affinity to poetry. Yet, +when such insight into motive and such vivid creative imagination are +based on really large knowledge and perfect sincerity, a higher +historical truth may be reached than by the most laborious accumulation +of documents and sifting of evidence. + +Livy's humane and romantic temper prevented him from being a political +partisan, even if political partisanship had been consistent with the +view he took of his own art. In common with most educated Romans of his +time, he idealised the earlier Republic, and spoke of his own age as +fatally degenerate. But this is a tendency common to writers of all +periods. He frequently pauses to deplore the loss of the ancient +qualities by which Rome had grown great--simplicity, equity, piety, +orderliness. In his remarkable preface he speaks of himself as turning to +historical study in order to withdraw his mind from the evils of his own +age, and the spectacle of an empire tottering to the fall under the +weight of its own greatness and the vices of its citizens. "Into no +State," he continues, "were greed and luxury so long in entering; in +these late days avarice has grown with wealth, and the frantic pursuit of +pleasure leads fast towards a collapse of the whole social fabric; in our +ever-accelerating downward course we have already reached a point where +our vices and their remedies are alike intolerable." But his idealisation +of earlier ages was that of the romantic student rather than the +reactionary politician. He is always on the side of order, moderation, +conciliation; there was nothing politically dangerous to the imperial +government in his mild republicanism. He shrinks instinctively from +violence wherever he meets it, whether on the side of the populace or of +the governing class; he cannot conceive why people should not be +reasonable, and live in peace under a moderate and settled government. +This was the temper which was welcome at court, even in men of Pompeian +sympathies. + +So, too, Livy's attitude towards the established religion and towards the +beliefs of former times has the same sentimental tinge. The moral reform +attempted by Augustus had gone hand in hand with an elaborate revival and +amplification of religious ceremony. Outward conformity at least was +required of all citizens. _Expedit esse deos, et ut expedit esse +putemus;_ "the existence of the gods is a matter of public policy, and we +must believe it accordingly," Ovid had said, in the most daring and +cynical of his poems. The old associations, the antiquarian charm, that +lingered round this faded ancestral belief, appealed strongly to the +romantic patriotism of the historian. His own religion was a sort of mild +fatalism; he pauses now and then to draw rather commonplace reflections +on the blindness of men destined to misfortune, or the helplessness of +human wisdom and foresight against destiny. But at the same time he +gravely chronicles miracles and portents, not so much from any belief in +their truth as because they are part of the story. The fact that they had +ceased to be regarded seriously in his own time, and were accordingly in +a great measure ceasing to happen, he laments as one among many +declensions from older and purer fashions. + +As a master of style, Livy is in the first rank of historians. He marks +the highest point which the enlarged and enriched prose of the Augustan +age reached just before it began to fall into decadence. It is no longer +the famous _urbanus sermo_ of the later Republic, the pure and somewhat +austere language of a governing class. The influence of Virgil is already +traceable in Livy, in actual phrases whose use had hitherto been confined +to poetry, and also in a certain warmth of colouring unknown to earlier +prose. To Augustan purists this relaxation of the language seemed +provincial and unworthy of the severe tradition of the best Latin; and it +was this probably, rather than any definite novelties in grammar or +vocabulary, that made Asinius Pollio accuse Livy of "Patavinity." But in +the hands of Livy the new style, by its increased volume and flexibility, +is as admirably suited to a work of great length and scope as the older +had been for the purposes of Caesar or Sallust. It is drawn, so to speak, +with a larger pattern; and the added richness of tone enables him to +advance without flagging through the long and intricate narrative where a +simpler diction must necessarily have grown monotonous, as one more +florid would be cloying. In the earlier books we seem to find the manner +still a little uncertain and tentative, and a little trammelled by the +traditional manner of the older annalists; as he proceeds in his work he +falls into his stride, and advances with a movement as certain as that of +Gibbon, and claimed by Roman critics as comparable in ease and grace to +that of Herodotus. The periodic structure of Latin prose which had been +developed by Cicero is carried by him to an even greater complexity, and +used with a greater daring and freedom; a sort of fine carelessness in +detail enhancing the large and continuous excellence of his broad effect. +Even where he copies Polybius most closely he invariably puts life and +grace into his cumbrous Greek. For the facts of the war with Hannibal we +can rely more safely on the latter; but it is in the picture of Livy that +we see it live before us. His imagination never fails to kindle at great +actions; it is he, more than any other author, who has impressed the +great soldiers and statesmen of the Republic on the imagination of the +world. + + _Quin Decios Drusosque procul, saevumque securi + Aspice Torquatum, et referentem signa Camilium.... + Quis te, magne Cato, tacitum, aut te, Cosse, relinquat? + Quis Gracchi genus, aut geminos, duo fulmina belli. + Scipiadas, cladem Libyae, parvoque potentem + Fabricium, vel te sulco, Serrane, serentem?-- + +his whole work is a splendid expansion of that vision of Rome which +passes before the eyes of Aeneas in the Fortunate Fields of the +underworld. In the description of great events, no less than of great +characters and actions, he rises and kindles with his subject. His eye +for dramatic effect is extraordinary. The picture of the siege and +storming of Saguntum, with which he opens the stately narrative of the +war between Rome and Hannibal, is an instance of his instinctive skill; +together with the masterly sketch of the character of Hannibal and the +description of the scene in the Carthaginian senate-house at the +reception of the Roman ambassadors, it forms a complete prelude to the +whole drama of the war. His great battle-pieces, too, in spite of his +imperfect grasp of military science, are admirable as works of art. Among +others may be specially instanced, as masterpieces of execution, the +account of the victory over Antiochus at Magnesia in the thirty-seventh +book, and, still more, that in the forty-fourth of the fiercely contested +battle of Pydna, the desperate heroism of the Pelignian cohort, and the +final and terrible destruction of the Macedonian phalanx. + +Yet, with all his admiration for great men and deeds, what most of all +kindles Livy's imagination and sustains his enthusiasm is a subject +larger, and to him hardly more abstract, the Roman Commonwealth itself, +almost personified as a continuous living force. This is almost the only +matter in which patriotism leads him to marked partiality. The epithet +"Roman" signifies to him all that is high and noble. That Rome can do no +wrong is a sort of article of faith with him, and he has always a +tendency to do less than justice to her enemies. The two qualities of +eloquence and candour are justly ascribed to him by Tacitus, but from the +latter some deduction must be made when he is dealing with foreign +relations and external diplomacy. Without any intention to falsify +history, he is sometimes completely carried away by his romantic +enthusiasm for Roman statesmanship. + +This canonisation of Rome is Livy's largest and most abiding achievement. +The elder Seneca, one of his ablest literary contemporaries, observes, in +a fine passage, that when historians reach in their narrative the death +of some great man, they give a summing-up of his whole life as though it +were an eulogy pronounced over his grave. Livy, he adds, the most candid +of all historians in his appreciation of genius, does this with unusual +grace and sympathy. The remark may bear a wider scope; for the whole of +his work is animated by a similar spirit towards the idealised +Commonwealth, to the story of whose life he devoted his splendid literary +gifts. As the title of _Gesta Populi Romani_ was given to the _Aeneid_ on +its appearance, so the _Historiae ab Urbe Condita_ might be called, with +no less truth, a funeral eulogy--_consummatio totius vitae et quasi +funebris laudatio_--delivered, by the most loving and most eloquent of +her children, over the grave of the great Republic. + + + + +VI. + +THE LESSER AUGUSTANS. + + +The impulse given to Latin literature by the great poets and prose +writers of the first century before Christ ebbed slowly away. The end of +the so-called Golden Age may be conveniently fixed in the year which saw +the death of Livy and Ovid; but the smaller literature of the period +suffered no violent breach of continuity, and one can hardly name any +definite date at which the Silver Age begins. Until the appearance of a +new school of writers in the reign of Nero, the history of Roman +literature is a continuation of the Augustan tradition. But it is +continued by feeble hands, and dwindles away more and more under several +unfavourable influences. Among these influences may be specially noted +the growing despotism of the Empire, which had already become grave in +the later years of Augustus, and under his successors reached a point +which made free writing, like free speech, impossible; the perpetually +increasing importance of the schools of declamation, which forced a +fashion of overstrained and unnatural rhetoric on both prose and verse; +and the paralysing effect of the great Augustan writers themselves, which +led poetry at all events to lose itself in imitations of imitations +within an arbitrary and rigid limit of subjects and methods. + +In mere amount of production, however, literature remained active during +the first half-century of the Christian era. That far the greater part of +it has perished is probably a matter for congratulation rather than +regret; even of what survives there is a good deal that we could well do +without, and such of it as is valuable is so rather from incidental than +essential reasons. _Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim_, Horace +had written in half-humorous bitterness; the crowd of names that flit +like autumn leaves through the pages of Ovid represent probably but a +small part of the immense production. Among the works of Ovid himself +were included at various times poems by other contemporary hands--some, +like the _Consolatio ad Liviam_, and the elegy on the _Nut-tree_, without +any author's name; others of known authorship, like the continuation by +Sabinus of Ovid's _Heroides_, in the form of replies addressed to the +heroines by their lovers. Heroic poetry, too, both on mythological and +historical subjects, continued to be largely written; but few of the +writers are more than names. Cornelius Severus, author of an epic on the +civil wars, gave in his earlier work promise of great excellence, which +was but imperfectly fulfilled. The fine and stately passage on the death +of Cicero, quoted by Seneca, fully reaches the higher level of post- +Virgilian style. Two other poets of considerable note at the time, but +soon forgotten after their death, were Albinovanus Pedo and Rabirius. The +former, besides a _Theseid_, wrote a narrative and descriptive poem in +the epic manner, on the northern campaigns of Germanicus, the latter was +the author of an epic on the conflict with Antonius, which was kept alive +for a short time by court favour; the stupid and amiable aide-de-camp of +Tiberius, Velleius Paterculus, no doubt repeating what he heard in +official circles, speaks of him and Virgil as the two most eminent poets +of the age! Tiberius himself, though he chiefly wrote in Greek, +occasionally turned off a copy of Latin verses; and his nephew +Germanicus, a man of much learning and culture, composed a Latin version +of the famous _Phaenomena_ of Aratus, which shows uncommon skill and +talent. Another, and a more important work of the same type, but with +more original power, and less a mere adaptation of Greek originals, is +the _Astronomica,_ ascribed on doubtful manuscript evidence to an +otherwise unknown Gaius or Marcus Manilius. This poem, from the allusions +in it to the destruction of the three legions under Varus, and the +retirement of Tiberius in Rhodes, must have been begun in the later years +of Augustus, though probably not completed till after his death. As +extant it consists of five books, the last being incomplete; the full +plan seems to have included a sixth, and would have extended the work to +about five thousand lines, or two-thirds of the length of the _De Rerum +Natura_. Next to the poem of Lucretius it is, therefore, much the largest +in bulk of extant Latin didactic poems. The oblivion into which it has +fallen is, perhaps, a little hard if one considers how much Latin poetry +of no greater merit continues to have a certain reputation, and even now +and then to be read. The author is not a great poet; but he is a writer +of real power both in thought and style. The versification of his +_Astronomica_ shows a high mastery of technique. The matter is often +prosaically handled, and often seeks relief from prosaic handling in ill- +judged flights of rhetoric; but throughout we feel a strong and original +mind, with a large power over lucid and forcible expression. In the +prologue to the third book he rejects for himself the common material for +hexameter poems, subjects from the Greek heroic cycle, or from Roman +history. His total want of narrative gift, as shown by the languor and +flatness of the elaborate episode in which he attempts to tell the story +of Perseus and Andromeda, would have been sufficient reason for this +decision; but he justifies it, in lines of much grace and feeling, as due +to his desire to take a line of his own, and make a fresh if a small +conquest for Latin poetry. + + _Omnis ad accessus Heliconis semita trita est, + Et iam confusi manant de fonitibus amnes + Nec capiunt haustum, turbamque ad nota ruentem: + Integra quaeramus rorantes prata per herbas + Undamque occultis meditantem murmur in antris._ + +In a passage of nobler and more sincere feeling, he breaks off his +catalogue of the signs of the Zodiac to vindicate the arduous study of +abstract science-- + + _"Multum" inquis "tenuemque iubes me ferre laborem + Cernere cum facili lucem ratione viderer." + Quod quaeris, Deus est. Coneris scandere caelum + Fataque fatali genitus cognoscere lege + Et transire tuum pectus, mundoque potiri: + Pro pretio labor est, nec sunt immunia tanta._ + +Wherever one found this language used, in prose or verse, it would be +memorable. The thought is not a mere text of the schools; it is strongly +and finely conceived, and put in a form that anticipates the ardent and +lofty manner of Lucan, without his perpetual overstrain of expression. +Other passages, showing the same mental force, occur in the +_Astronomica_; one might instance the fine passage on the power of the +human eye to take in, within its tiny compass, the whole immensity of the +heavens; or another, suggested by the mention of the constellation Argo, +on the influence of sea-power on history, where the inevitable and well- +worn instances of Salamis and Actium receive a fresh life from the +citation of the destruction of the Athenian fleet in the bay of Syracuse, +and the great naval battles of the first Punic war. Or again, the lines +with which he opens the fourth book, weakened as their effect is by what +follows them, a tedious enumeration of events showing the power of +destiny over human fortunes, are worthy of a great poet:-- + + _Quid tam sollicitis vitam consumimus annis, + Torquemurque metu caecaque cupidine rerum? + Acternisque senes curis, dum quaerimus aevum + Perdimus, et nullo votorum fine beati + Victuros agimus semper, nec vivimus unquam?_ + +These passages have been cited from the _Astronomica_ because, to all but +a few professional students of Latin, the poem is practically unknown. +The only other poet who survives from the reign of Tiberius is in a very +different position, being so well known and so slight in literary quality +as to make any quotations superfluous. Phaedrus, a Thracian freedman +belonging to the household of Augustus, published at this time the well- +known collection of _Fables_ which, like the lyrics of the pseudo- +Anacreon, have obtained from their use as a school-book a circulation +much out of proportion to their merit. Their chief interest is as the +last survival of the _urbanus sermo_ in Latin poetry. They are written in +iambic senarii, in the fluent and studiously simple Latin of an earlier +period, not without occasional vulgarisms, but with a total absence of +the turgid rhetoric which was coming into fashion. The _Fables_ are the +last utterance made by the speech of Terence: it is singular that this +intimately Roman style should have begun and ended with two authors of +servile birth and foreign blood. But the patronage of literature was now +passing out of the hands of statesmen. Terence had moved in the circle of +the younger Scipio; one book of the _Fables_ of Phaedrus is dedicated to +Eutychus, the famous chariot-driver of the Greens in the reign of +Caligula. It was not long before Phaedrus was in use as a school-book; +but his volume was apparently regarded as hardly coming within the +province of serious literature. It is ignored by Seneca and not mentioned +by Quintilian. But we must remind ourselves that the most celebrated +works, whether in prose or verse, do not of necessity have the widest +circulation or the largest influence. Among the poems produced in the +first ten years of this century the _Original Poems_ of Jane and Ann +Taylor are hardly if at all mentioned in handbooks of English literature; +but to thousands of readers they were more familiar than the contemporary +verse of Wordsworth or Coleridge or even of Scott. In their terse and +pure English, the language which is transmitted from one generation to +another through the continuous tradition of the nursery, they may remind +us of the _Fables_ of Phaedrus. + +The collection, as it has reached us, consists of nearly a hundred +pieces. Of these three-fourths are fables proper; being not so much +translations from the Greek of Aesop as versions of the traditional +stories, written and unwritten, which were the common inheritance of the +Aryan peoples. Mixed up with these are a number of stories which are not +strictly fables; five of them are about Aesop himself, and there are also +stories told of Simonides, Socrates, and Menander. Two are from the +history of his own time, one relating a grim jest of the Emperor +Tiberius, and the other a domestic tragedy which had been for a while the +talk of the town in the previous reign. There are also, besides the +prologues and epilogues of the several books, a few pieces in which +Phaedrus speaks in his own person,[10] defending himself against +detractors with an acrid tone which recalls the Terentian prologues. The +body of fables current in the Middle Ages is considered by the most +recent investigators to descend from the collection of Phaedrus, though +probably supplemented from the Greek collection independently formed by +Babrius about the same period. + +Though Livy is the single great historian of the Augustan age, there was +throughout this period a profuse production of memoirs and commentaries, +as well as of regular histories. Augustus wrote thirteen books of memoirs +of his own life down to the pacification of the Empire at the close of +the Cantabrian war. These are lost; but the _Index Rerum a se Gestarum,_ +a brief epitome of his career, which he composed as a sort of epitaph on +himself, is extant. This document was engraved on plates of bronze +affixed to the imperial mausoleum by the Tiber, and copies of it were +inscribed on the various temples dedicated to him in many provincial +cities after his death. It is one of these copies, engraved on the +vestibule wall of the temple of Augustus and Rome at Ancyra in Galatia, +which still exists with inconsiderable gaps. His two principal ministers, +Maecenas and Agrippa, also composed memoirs. The most important work of +the latter hardly, however, falls within the province of literature; it +was a commentary on the great geographical survey of the Empire carried +out under his supervision. + +Gaius Asinius Pollio, already mentioned as a critic and tragedian, was +also the author of the most important historical work of the Augustan age +after Livy's. This was a _History of the Civil Wars,_ in seventeen books, +from the formation of the first triumvirate in 60 B.C. to the battle of +Philippi. Though Pollio was a practised rhetorician, his narrative style +was simple and austere. The fine ode addressed to him by Horace during +the composition of this history seems to hint that in Horace's opinion-- +or perhaps, rather, in that of Horace's masters--Pollio would find a +truer field for his great literary ability in tragedy. But apart from its +artistic quality, the work of Pollio was of the utmost value as giving +the view held of the Civil wars by a trained administrator of the highest +rank. It was one of the main sources used by Appian and Plutarch, and its +almost total loss is matter of deep regret. + +An author of less eminence, and belonging rather to the class of +encyclopedists than of historians, is Pompeius Trogus, the descendant of +a family of Narbonese Gaul, which had for two generations enjoyed the +Roman citizenship. Besides works on zoology and botany, translated or +adapted from the Greek of Aristotle and Theophrastus, Trogus wrote an +important _History of the World_, exclusive of the Roman Empire, which +served as, and may have been designed to be, a complement to that of +Livy. The original work, which extended to forty-four books, is not +extant; but an abridgment, which was executed in the age of the Antonines +by one Marcus Junianus Justinus, and has fortunately escaped the fate +which overtook the abridgment of Livy made about the same time, preserves +the main outlines and much of the actual form of the original. Justin, +whose individual talent was but small, had the good sense to leave the +diction of his original as far as possible unaltered. The pure and +vivacious style, and the evident care and research which Trogus himself, +or the Greek historians whom he follows, had bestowed on the material, +make the work one of very considerable value. Its title, _Historiae +Philippicae_, is borrowed from that of a history conceived on a somewhat +similar plan by Theopompus, the pupil of Isocrates, in or after the reign +of Alexander the Great; and it followed Theopompus in making the +Macedonian Empire the core round which the history of the various +countries included in or bordering upon it was arranged. + +Gaius Velleius Paterculus, a Roman officer, who after passing with credit +through high military appointments, entered the general administrative +service of the Empire, and rose to the praetorship, wrote, in the reign +of Tiberius, an abridgment of Roman history in two books, which hardly +rises beyond the mark of the military man who dabbles in letters. The +pretentiousness of his style is partly due to the declining taste of the +period, partly to an idea of his own that he could write in the manner of +Sallust. It alternates between a sort of laboured sprightliness and a +careless conversational manner full of endless parentheses. Yet Velleius +had two real merits; the eye of the trained soldier for character, and an +unaffected, if not a very intelligent, interest in literature. Where he +approaches his own times, his servile attitude towards all the members of +the imperial family, and towards Sejanus, who was still first minister to +Tiberius when the book was published, makes him almost valueless as a +historian; but in the earlier periods his observations are often just and +pointed; and he seems to have been almost the first historian who +included as an essential part of his work some account of the more +eminent writers of his country. A still lower level of aim and attainment +is shown in another work of the same date as that of Velleius, the nine +books of historical anecdotes, _Facta et Dicta Memorabilia,_ by Valerius +Maximus, whose turgid and involved style is not redeemed by any +originality of thought or treatment. + +The study of archaeology, both on its linguistic and material sides, was +carried on in the Augustan age with great vigour, though no single name +is comparable to that of Varro for extent and variety of research. One of +the most eminent and copious writers on these subjects was Gaius Julius +Hyginus, a Spanish freed man of Augustus, who made him principal keeper +of the Palatine library. He was a pupil of the most learned Greek +grammarian of the age, Cornelius Alexander Polyhistor, and an intimate +acquaintance of Ovid. Of his voluminous works on geography, history, +astrology, agriculture, and poetry, all are lost but two treatises on +mythology, which in their present form are of a much later date, and are +at best only abridged and corrupted versions, if (as many modern critics +are inclined to think) they are not wholly the work of some author of the +second or third century. Hyginus was also one of the earliest +commentators on Virgil; he possessed among his treasures a manuscript of +the _Georgics,_ which came from Virgil's own house, though it was not +actually written by his hand; and many of his annotations and criticisms +on the _Aeneid_ are preserved by Aulus Gellius and later commentators. A +little later, in the reigns of Tiberius and Claudius, Virgilian criticism +was carried on by Quintus Remmius Palaemon of Vicenza, the most +fashionable teacher in the capital, and the author of a famous Latin +grammar on which all subsequent ones were more or less based. Perhaps the +most distinguished of Augustan scholars was another equally celebrated +teacher, Marcus Verrius Flaccus, who was chosen by Augustus as tutor for +his two grandsons, and thenceforward held his school in the imperial +residence on the Palatine. His lexicon, entitled _De Verborum +Significatu_, was a rich treasury of antiquarian research: such parts of +it as survive in the abridgments made from it in the second and eighth +centuries, by Sextus Pompeius Festus and Paulus Diaconus, are still among +our most valuable sources for the study of early Latin language and +institutions. The more practical side of science in the same period was +ably represented by Aulus Cornelius Celsus, the compiler of an +encyclopedia which included comprehensive treatises not only on oratory, +jurisprudence, and philosophy, but on the arts of war, agriculture, and +medicine. The eight books dealing with this last subject are the only +part of the work that has been preserved. This treatise, which is written +in a pure, simple, and elegant Latin, became a standard work. It was one +of the earliest books printed in the fifteenth century, and remained a +text-book for medical students till within living memory. Medical science +had then reached, in the hands of its leading professors, a greater +perfection than it regained till the eighteenth century. Celsus, though +not, so far as is known, the author of any important discovery or +improvement, had fully mastered a system which even then was highly +complicated, and takes rank by his extensive and accurate knowledge, as +well as by his rare literary skill, with the highest names in his +profession. That with his eminent medical acquirement he should have been +able to deal adequately with so many other subjects as well, has long +been a subject of perplexity. The cold censure of Quintilian, who refers +to him slightly as "a man of moderate ability," may be principally aimed +at the treatise on rhetoric, which formed a section of his encyclopedia. +Columella, writing in the next age, speaks of him as one of the two +leading authorities on agriculture; and he is also quoted as an authority +of some value on military tactics. Yet we cannot suppose that the +encyclopedist, however adequate his treatment of one or even more +subjects, would not lay himself open in others to the censure of the +specialist. It seems most reasonable to suppose that Celsus was one of a +class which is not, after all, very uncommon--doctors of eminent +knowledge and skill in their own art, who at the same time are men of +wide culture and far-ranging practical interests. + +In striking contrast to Celsus as regards width of knowledge and literary +skill, though no less famous in the history of his own art, is his +contemporary, the celebrated architect Vitruvius Pollio. The ten books +_De Architectura,_ dedicated to Augustus about the year 14 B.C., are the +single important work on classical architecture which has come down from +the ancient world, and, as such, have been the object of continuous +professional study from the Renaissance down to the present day. But +their reputation is not due to any literary merit. Vitruvius, however +able as an architect, was a man of little general knowledge, and far from +handy with his pen. His style varies between immoderate diffuseness and +obscure brevity; sometimes he is barely intelligible, and he never writes +with grace. Where in his introductory chapters or elsewhere he ventures +beyond his strict province, his writing is that of a half-educated man +who has lost simplicity without acquiring skill. + +Among the innumerable rhetoricians of this age one only requires formal +notice, Lucius Annaeus Seneca of Cordova, the father of the famous +philosopher, and the grandfather of the poet Lucan. His long life reached +from before the outbreak of war between Caesar and Pompeius till after +the death of Tiberius. His only extant work, a collection of themes +treated in the schools of rhetoric, was written in his old age, after the +fall of Sejanus, and bears witness to the amazing power of memory which +he tells us himself was, when in its prime, absolutely unique. How much +of his life was spent at Rome is uncertain. As a young man he had heard +all the greatest orators of the time except Cicero; and up to the end of +his life he could repeat word for word and without effort whole passages, +if not whole speeches, to which he had listened many years before. His +ten books of _Controversiae_ are only extant in a mutilated form, which +comprises thirty-five out of seventy-four themes; to these is prefixed a +single book of _Suasoriae_, which is also imperfect. The work is a mine +of information for the history of rhetoric under Augustus and Tiberius, +and incidentally includes many interesting quotations, anecdotes, and +criticisms. But we feel in reading it that we have passed definitely away +from the Golden Age. Yet once more "they have forgotten to speak the +Latin tongue at Rome." The Latinity of the later Empire is as distinct +from that of the Augustan age as this last is from the Latinity of the +Republic. Seneca, it is true, was not an Italian by birth; but it is just +this influx of the provinces into literature, which went on under the +early Empire with continually accelerating force, that determined what +type the new Latinity should take. Gaul, Spain, and Africa are henceforth +side by side with Italy, and Italy herself sinks towards the level of a +province. Within thirty years of the death of the elder Seneca "the fatal +secret of empire, that Emperors could be made elsewhere than at Rome," +was discovered by the Spanish and German legions; of hardly less moment +was the other discovery, that Latin could be written in another than the +Roman manner. In literature no less than in politics the discovery meant +the final breaking up of the old world, and the slow birth of a new one +through alternate torpors and agonies. It might already have been said of +Rome, in the words of a poet of four hundred years later, that she had +made a city of what had been a world. But in this absorption of the world +into a single citizenship, the city itself was ceasing to be a world of +its own; and with the self-centred _urbs_ passed away the _urbanus +sermo,_ that austere and noble language which was the finest flower of +her civilisation. + + + + + +III + +THE EMPIRE. + + + + +I + +THE ROME OF NERO: SENECA, LUCAN, PETRONIUS + + +The later years of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, while they brought about +the complete transformation of the government into an absolute monarchy, +also laid the foundations for that reign of the philosophers which had +been dreamed of by Plato, and which has never been so nearly realised as +it was in Rome during the second century after Christ. The Stoical +philosophy, passing beyond the limits of the schools to become at once a +religious creed and a practical code of morals for everyday use, +penetrated deeply into the life of Rome. At first associated with the +aristocratic opposition to the imperial government, it passed through a +period of persecution which only strengthened and consolidated its +growth. The final struggle took place under Domitian, whose edict of the +year 94, expelling all philosophers from Rome, was followed two years +afterwards by his assassination and the establishment, for upwards of +eighty years, of a government deeply imbued with the principles of +Stoicism. + +Of the men who set this revolution in motion by their writings, the +earliest and the most distinguished was Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the son of +the rhetorician. Though only of the second rank as a classic, he is a +figure of very great importance in the history of human thought from the +work he did in the exposition of the new creed. As a practical exponent +of morals, he stands, with Plutarch, at the head of all Greek and Roman +writers. + +The life of Seneca was one of singularly dramatic contrasts and +vicissitudes. He was born in the year 4 B.C., at Cordova, where, at a +somewhat advanced age, his father had married Helvia, a lady of high +birth, and brought up in the strictest family traditions. Through the +influence of his mother's family (her sister had married Vitrasius +Pollio, who for sixteen years was viceroy of Egypt), the way was easy to +him for advancement in the public service. But delicate health, which +continued throughout his life, kept him as a young man from taking more +than a nominal share in administrative work. He passed into the senate +through the quaestorship, and became a well-known figure at court during +the reign of Caligula. On the accession of Claudius, he was banished to +Corsica at the instance of the Empress Messalina, on the charge of being +the favoured lover of Julia Livilla, Caligula's youngest sister. Whether +the scandal which connected his name with hers, or with that of her +sister Agrippina, had any other foundation than the prurient gossip which +raged round all the members of the imperial family, may well be doubted; +but when Agrippina married Claudius, after the downfall and execution of +Messalina seven years later, she recalled him from exile, obtained his +nomination to the quaestorship, and appointed him tutor to her son +Domitius Nero, then a boy of ten. The influence gained by Seneca, an +accomplished courtier and a clever man of the world, as well as a +brilliant scholar, over his young pupil was for a long time almost +unbounded; and when Nero became Emperor at the age of seventeen, Seneca, +in conjunction with his close friend, Afranius Burrus, commander of the +imperial guards, became practically the administrator of the Empire. His +philosophy was not one which rejected wealth or power; a fortune of three +million pounds may have been amassed without absolute dishonesty, or even +forced upon him, as he pleads himself, by the lavish generosity of his +pupil; but there can be no doubt that in indulging the weaknesses and +passions of Nero, Seneca went far beyond the limits, not only of honour, +but of ordinary prudence. The mild and enlightened administration of the +earlier years of the new reign, the famous _quinquennium Neronis_, which +was looked back to afterwards as a sort of brief golden age, may indeed +be ascribed largely to Seneca's influence; but this influence was based +on an excessive indulgence of Nero's caprices, which soon worked out its +own punishment. His consent to the murder of Agrippina was the death-blow +to his influence for good, or to any self-respect that he may till then +have retained; the death of Burrus left him without support; and, by +retiring into private life and formally offering to make over his whole +fortune to the Emperor, he did not long delay his fate. In the year 65, +on the pretext of complicity in the conspiracy of Piso, he was commanded +to commit suicide, and obeyed with that strange mixture of helplessness +and heroism with which the orders of the master of the world were then +accepted as a sort of inevitable law of nature. + +The philosophical writings of Seneca were extremely voluminous; and +though a large number of them are lost, he is still one of the bulkiest +of ancient authors. They fall into three main groups: formal treatises on +ethics; moral letters (_epistolae morales_), dealing in a less continuous +way with the same general range of subjects; and writings on natural +philosophy, from the point of view of the Stoical system. The whole of +these are, however, animated by the same spirit; to the Stoical +philosophy, physics were merely a branch of ethics, and a study to be +pursued for the sake of moral edification, not of reaching truth by +accurate observation or research. The discussions of natural phenomena +are mere texts for religious meditations; and though the eight books of +_Naturales Quaestiones_ were used as a text-book of physical science in +the Middle Ages, they are totally without any scientific value. So, too, +the twenty books of moral letters, nominally addressed to Lucilius, the +procurator of Sicily, merely represent a slight variation of method from +the more formal treatises, _On Anger, On Clemency, On Consolation, On +Peace of Mind, On the Shortness of Life, On Giving and Receiving +Favours_, which are the main substance of Seneca's writings. + +As a moral writer, Seneca stands deservedly high. Though infected with +the rhetorical vices of the age, his treatises are full of striking and +often gorgeous eloquence, and in their combination of high thought with +deep feeling, have rarely, if at all, been surpassed. The rhetorical +manner was so essentially part of Seneca's nature, that the warm +colouring and perpetual mannerism of his language does not imply any +insincerity or want of earnestness. In spite of the laboured style, there +is no failure either in lucidity or in force, and even where the rhetoric +is most profuse, it seldom is without a solid basis of thought. "It would +not be easy," says a modern scholar, who was himself averse to all +ornament of diction, and deeply penetrated with the spirit of Stoicism, +"to name any modern writer who has treated on morality and has said so +much that is practically good and true, or has treated the matter in so +attractive a way." + +In the moral writings we have the picture of Seneca the philosopher; +Seneca the courtier is less attractively presented in the curious +pamphlet called the _Apocolocyntosis_, a silly and spiteful attack on the +memory of the Emperor Claudius, written to make the laughter of an +afternoon at the court of Nero. The gross bad taste of this satire is +hardly relieved by any great wit in the treatment, and the reputation of +the author would stand higher if it had not survived the occasion for +which it was written. + +Among Seneca's extant works are also included nine tragedies, composed in +imitation of the Greek, upon the well-worn subjects of the epic cycle. At +what period of his life they were written cannot be ascertained. As a +rule, only young authors had courage enough to attempt the discredited +task of flogging this dead horse; but it is not improbable that these +dramas were written by Seneca in mature life, in deference to his +imperial pupil's craze for the stage. All the rhetorical vices of his +prose are here exaggerated. The tragedies are totally without dramatic +life, consisting merely of a series of declamatory speeches, in correct +but monotonous versification, interspersed with choruses, which only +differ from the speeches by being written in lyric metres instead of the +iambic. To say that the tragedies are without merit would be an +overstatement, for Seneca, though no poet, remained even in his poetry an +extremely able man of letters and an accomplished rhetorician. His +declamation comes in the same tones from all his puppets; but it is often +grandiose, and sometimes really fine. The lines with which the curtain +falls in his _Medea_ remind one, by their startling audacity, of Victor +Hugo in his most Titanic vein. As the only extant Latin tragedies, these +pieces had a great effect upon the early drama of the sixteenth century +in England and elsewhere. In the well-known verses prefixed to the first +folio Shakespeare, Jonson calls on "him of Cordova dead," in the same +breath with Aeschylus and Euripides; and long after the Jacobean period +the false tradition remained which, by putting these lifeless copies on +the same footing as their great originals, perplexed and stultified +literary criticism, much as the criticism of classical art was confused +by an age which drew no distinction between late Graeco-Roman sculpture +and the finest work of Praxiteles or Pheidias. + +By far the most brilliant poet of the Neronian age was Seneca's nephew, +Marcus Annaeus Lucanus. His father, Annaeus Mela, the younger brother of +the philosopher, is known chiefly through his more distinguished son; an +interesting but puzzling notice in a life of Lucan speaks of him as +famous at Rome "from his pursuit of the quiet life." This may imply +refusal of some great office when his elder brother was practically ruler +of the Empire; whatever stirrings of ambition he suppressed broke out +with accumulated force in his son. Lucan's short life was one of feverish +activity. At twenty-one he made his first public sensation by the +recitation, in the theatre of Pompeius, of a panegyric on Nero, who had +already murdered his own mother, but had not yet broken with the poet's +uncle. Soon afterwards, he was advanced to the quaestorship, and a seat +in the college of Augurs: but his brilliant poetical reputation seems to +have excited the jealousy of the artist-emperor; a violent quarrel broke +out between them, and Lucan, already in theory an ardent republican, +became one of the principal movers in the conspiracy of Piso. The plan +discussed among the conspirators of assassinating Nero while in the act +of singing on the stage would, no doubt, commend itself specially to the +young poet whom the Emperor had forbidden to recite in public. When the +conspiracy was detected, Lucan's fortitude soon gave way; he betrayed one +accomplice after another, one of the first names he surrendered being +that of his mother, Acilia. The promise of pardon, under which his +confessions were obtained, was not kept after they were completed; and +the execution of Lucan, at the age of twenty-six, while it cut short a +remarkable poetical career, rid the world of a very poor creature. Yet +the final spasm of courage with which he died, declaiming a passage from +his own epic, has gained him, in the noblest of English elegies, a place +in the same verse with Sidney and Chatterton. + +But the _Pharsalia_, the only large work which Lucan left complete, or +all but complete, among a number of essays in different styles of poetry, +and the only work of his which has been preserved, is a poem which, in +spite of its immaturity and bad taste, compels admiration by its +elevation of thought and sustained brilliance of execution. Pure rhetoric +has, perhaps, never come quite so near being poetry; and if the perpetual +overstraining of both thought and expression inevitably ends by fatiguing +the reader, there are at least few instances of a large work throughout +which so lofty and grandiose a style is carried with such elasticity and +force. The _Pharsalia_ is full of quotations, and this itself is no small +praise. Lines like _Nil actum credens dum quid superesset agendum,_ or +_Nec sibi, sed toti gentium se credere mundo_, or _Iupiter est quodcunque +vides quocunque moveris,_ or the sad and noble + + _Victurosque dei celant, ut vivere durent, + Felix esse mori--_ + +are as well known and have sunk as deep as the great lines of Virgil +himself; and not only in single lines, but in longer passages of lofty +thought or sustained imagination, as in his description of the dream of +Pompeius, at the beginning of the seventh book; or the passage on the +extension of the Roman Empire, later in the same book; or the magnificent +speech of Cato when he refuses to seek counsel of the oracle of Ammon, +Lucan sometimes touches a point where he challenges comparison with his +master. In these passages, without any delicacy of modulation, with a +limited range of rhythm, his verse has a metallic clangour that stirs the +blood like a trumpet-note. But his range of ideas is as limited as that +of his rhythms; and the thought is not sustained by any basis of +character. His fierce republicanism sits side by side with flattery of +the reigning Emperor more gross and servile than had till then been known +at Rome. He makes no attempt to realise his persons or to grasp the +significance of events. Caesar, Pompeius, Cato himself--the hero of the +epic--are not human beings, but mere lay-figures round which he drapes +his gorgeous rhetoric. The Civil wars are alternately regarded as the +death-agony of freedom and as the destined channel through which the +world was led to the blessings of an uncontrolled despotism. His ideas +are borrowed indifferently from the Epicurean and Stoical philosophies +according to the convenience of the moment. Great events and actions do +not kindle in him any imaginative sympathy; they are greedily seized as +opportunities for more and more immoderate flights of extravagant +embellishment. He "prates of mountains;" his "phrase conjures the +wandering stars, and makes them stand like wonder-wounded hearers;" +freedom, virtue, fate, the sea and the sun, gods and men before whom the +gods themselves stand abased, hurtle through the poem in a confused +thunder of sonorous phrase. Such brilliance, in the exact manner that was +then most admired, dazzled his contemporaries and retained a permanent +influence over later poets. Statius, himself an author of far higher +poetical gifts, speaks of him in terms of almost extravagant admiration; +with a more balanced judgment Quintilian sums him up in words which may +be taken as on the whole the final criticism adopted by the world; +_ardens et concitatus et sententiis clarissimus, et, ut dicam quod +sentio, magis oratoribus quam poetis imitandus_. + +One of Lucan's intimate friends was a young man of high family, Aulus +Persius Flaccus of Volaterrae in Etruria, a near relation of the +celebrated Arria, wife of Paetus. Through his kinswoman he was early +introduced to the circle of earnest thinkers and moralists among whom the +higher life was kept up at Rome amid the corruption of the Neronian age. +The gentle and delicate boy won the hearts of all who knew him. When he +died, at the age of twenty-eight, a little book of six satires, which he +had written with much effort and at long intervals, was retouched by his +master, the Stoic philosopher Cornutus, and published by another friend, +Caesius Bassus, himself a poet of some reputation. Several other writings +which Persius left were destroyed by the advice of Cornutus. The six +pieces--only between six and seven hundred lines in all--were at once +recognised as showing a refined and uncommon literary gift. Persius, we +are informed, had no admiration for the genius of Seneca; and, indeed, no +two styles, though both are deeply artificial, could be more unlike one +another. With all his moral elevation, Seneca was a courtier, an +opportunist, a man of the world: Stoicism took a very different colour in +the boy "of maidenly modesty," as his biographer tells us, who lived in a +household of devoted female relations, and only knew the world as a +remote spectator. Though within the narrow field of his own experience he +shows keen observation and delicate power of portraiture, the world that +he knows is mainly one of books; his perpetual imitations of Horace are +not so much plagiarisms as the unaffected outcome of the mind of a very +young student, to whom the _Satires_ of Horace were more familiar than +the Rome of his own day. So, too, the involved and obscure style which +has made him the paradise of commentators is less a deliberate literary +artifice than the natural effect of looking at everything through a +literary medium, and choosing phrases, not for their own fitness, but for +the associations they recall. His deep moral earnestness, his gentleness +of nature, and, it must be added, his want of humour, made him a +favourite author beyond the circles which were merely attracted by his +verbal obscurities and the way in which he locks up his meaning in hints +and allusions. His unquestionable dramatic power might, in later life, +have ripened into higher achievement; as it is, he lives to us chiefly in +the few beautiful passages where he slips into being natural, and draws, +with a grace and charm that are strikingly absent from the rest of his +writing, the picture of his own quiet life as a student, and of the +awakening of his moral and intellectual nature at the touch of +philosophy. + +Lucan and Persius represent the effect which Roman Stoicism had on two +natures of equal sensibility but widely different quality and taste. +Among the many other professors or adherents of the Stoic school in the +age of Nero, a considerable number were also authors, but the habit of +writing in Greek, which a hundred years later grew to such proportions as +to threaten the continued existence of Latin literature, had already +taken root. The three most distinguished representatives of the stricter +Stoicism, Cornutus, Quintus Sextius, and Gaius Musonius Rufus (the first +and last of whom were exiled by Nero), wrote on philosophy in Greek, +though they seem to have written in Latin on other subjects. Musonius +was, indeed, hardly more Roman than his own most illustrious pupil, the +Phrygian Epictetus. Stoicism, as they understood it, left no room for +nationality, and little for writing as a fine art. + +This growing prevalence of Greek at Rome combined with political reasons +to check the production of important prose works. History more especially +languished under the jealous censorship of the government. The only +important historical work of the period is one of which the subject could +hardly excite suspicion, the _Life of Alexander the Great_, by Quintus +Curtius Rufus. The precise date is uncertain, and different theories have +assigned it to an earlier or later period in the reign of Augustus or of +Vespasian. The subject is one which hardly any degree of dulness in the +writer could make wholly uninteresting. But the clear and orderly +narrative of Curtius, written in a style studied from that of Livy, but +kept within simpler limits, has real merit of its own; and against his +imperfect technical knowledge of strategy and tactics must be set the +pains he took to consult the best Greek authorities. + +Memoirs were written in the Neronian age by numbers both of men and +women. Those of the Empress Agrippina were used by Tacitus; and we have +references to others by the two great Roman generals of the period, +Suetonius Paulinus and Domitius Corbulo. The production of scientific or +technical treatises, which had been so profuse in the preceding +generation, still went on. Only two of any importance are extant; one of +these, the _Chorographia_ of Pomponius Mela, a geographical manual based +on the best authorities and embellished with descriptions of places, +peoples, and customs, is valuable as the earliest and one of the most +complete systems of ancient geography which we possess; but in literary +merit it falls far short of the other, the elaborate work on agriculture +by Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella. Both Mela and Columella were +natives of Spain, and thus belong to the Spanish school of Latin authors, +which begins with the Senecas and is continued later by Martial and +Quintilian. But while Mela, in his style, followed the new fashion, +Columella, an enthusiast for antiquity and a warm admirer of the Augustan +writers, reverts to the more classical manner, which a little later +became once more predominant in the writers of the Flavian period. His +simple and dignified style is much above the level of a mere technical +treatise. His prose, indeed, may be read with more pleasure than the +verse in which, by a singular caprice, one of the twelve books is +composed. In one of the most beautiful episodes of the _Georgics_, Virgil +had briefly touched on the subject of gardening, and left it to be +treated by others who might come after him: _praetereo atque aliis post +me memoranda relinquo_. At the instance, he says, of friends, Columella +attempts to fill up the gap by a fifth Georgic on horticulture. He +approaches the task so modestly, and carries it out so simply, that +critics are not inclined to be very severe; but he was no poet, and the +book is little more than a cento from Virgil, carefully and smoothly +written, and hardly if at all disfigured by pretentiousness or rhetorical +conceits. + +The same return upon the Virgilian manner is shown in the seven +_Eclogues,_ composed in the early years of Nero's reign, by Titus +Calpurnius Siculus. These are remarkable rather as the only specimens for +nearly three hundred years of a direct attempt to continue the manner of +Virgil's _Bucolics_ than for any substantive merit of their own. That +manner, indeed, is so exceptionally unmanageable that it is hardly +surprising that it should have been passed over by later poets of high +original gift; but that even poets of the second and third rate should +hardly ever have attempted to imitate poems which stood in the very first +rank of fame bears striking testimony to Virgil's singular quality of +unapproachableness. The _Eclogues_ of Calpurnius (six of them are +Eclogues within the ordinary meaning, the seventh rather a brief Georgic +on the care of sheep and goats, made formally a pastoral by being put +into the mouth of an old shepherd sitting in the shade at midday) are, +notwithstanding their almost servile imitation of Virgil, written in such +graceful verse, and with so few serious lapses of taste, that they may be +read with considerable pleasure. The picture, in the sixth Eclogue, of +the fawn lying among the white lilies, will recall to English readers one +of the prettiest fancies of Marvell; that in the second, of Flora +scattering her tresses over the spring meadow, and Pomona playing under +the orchard boughs, is at least a vivid pictorial presentment of a +sufficiently well-worn theme. A more normal specimen of Calpurnius's +manner may be instanced in the lines (v. 52-62) where one of the most +beautiful passages in the third _Georgic,_ the description of a long +summer day among the Italian hill-pastures, is simply copied in different +words. + +The didactic poem on volcanoes, called _Aetna,_ probably written by the +Lucilius to whom Seneca addressed his writings on natural philosophy, +belongs to the same period and shows the same influences. Of the other +minor poetical works of the time the only one which requires special +mention is the tragedy of _Octavia,_ which is written in the same style +as those of Seneca, and was long included among his works. Its only +interest is as the single extant specimen of the _fabula praetexta,_ or +drama with a Roman subject and characters. The characters here include +Nero and Seneca himself. But the treatment is as conventional and +declamatory as that of the mythological tragedies among which it has been +preserved, and the result, if possible, even flatter and more tedious. + +One other work of extreme and unique interest survives from the reign of +Nero, the fragments of a novel by Petronius Arbiter, one of the Emperor's +intimate circle in the excesses of his later years. In the year 66 he +fell a victim to the jealousy of the infamous and all but omnipotent +Tigellinus; and on this occasion Tacitus sketches his life and character +in a few of his strong masterly touches. "His days were passed," says +Tacitus, "in sleep, his nights in the duties or pleasures of life; where +others toiled for fame he had lounged into it, and he had the reputation +not, like most members of that profligate society, of a dissolute wanton, +but of a trained master in luxury. A sort of careless ease, an entire +absence of self-consciousness, added the charm of complete simplicity to +all he said and did. Yet, as governor of Bithynia, and afterwards as +consul, he showed himself a vigorous and capable administrator; then +relapsing into the habit or assuming the mask of vice, he was adopted as +Arbiter of Elegance into the small circle of Nero's intimate companions; +no luxury was charming or refined till Petronius had given it his +approval, and the jealousy of Tigellinus was roused against a rival and +master in the science of debauchery." + +The novel written by this remarkable man was in the form of an +autobiography narrating the adventures, in various Italian towns, of a +Greek freedman. The fragments hardly enable us to trace any regular plot; +its interest probably lay chiefly in the series of vivid pictures which +it presented of life among all orders of society from the highest to the +lowest, and its accurate reproduction of popular language and manners. +The hero of the story uses the ordinary Latin speech of educated persons, +though, from the nature of the work, the style is much more colloquial +than that of the formal prose used for serious writing. But the +conversation of many of the characters is in the _plebeius sermo,_ the +actual speech of the lower orders, of which so little survives in +literature. It is full of solecisms and popular slang; and where the +scene lies, as it mostly does in the extant fragments, in the semi-Greek +seaports of Southern Italy, it passes into what was almost a dialect of +its own, the _lingua franca_ of the Mediterranean under the Empire, a +dialect of mixed Latin and Greek. The longest and most important fragment +is the well-known _Supper of Trimalchio_. It is the description of a +Christmas dinner-party given by a sort of Golden Dustman and his wife, +people of low birth and little education, who had come into an enormous +fortune. Trimalchio, a figure drawn with extraordinary life, is +constantly making himself ridiculous by his blunders and affectations, +while he almost wins our liking by his childlike simplicity and good +nature. The dinner itself, and the conversation on literature and art +that goes on at the dinner-table, are conceived in a spirit of the +wildest humour. Trimalchio, who has two libraries, besides everything +else handsome about him, is anxious to air his erudition. "Can you tell +us a story," he asks a guest, "of the twelve sorrows of Hercules, or how +the Cyclops pulled Ulysses' leg? I used to read them in Homer when I was +a boy." After an interruption, caused by the entrance of a boar, roasted +whole and stuffed with sausages, he goes on to talk of his collection of +plate; his unique cups of Corinthian bronze (so called from a dealer +named Corinthus; the metal was invented by Hannibal at the capture of +Troy), and his huge silver vases, "a hundred of them, more or less," +chased with the story of Daedalus shutting Niobe into the Trojan horse, +and Cassandra killing her sons--"the dead children so good, you would +think they were alive; for I sell my knowledge in matters of art for no +money." Presently there follow the two wonderful ghost stories--that of +the wer-wolf, told by one of the guests, and that of the witches by +Trimalchio himself in return--both masterpieces of vivid realism. As the +evening advances the fun becomes more fast and furious. The cook, who had +excelled himself in the ingenuity of his dishes, is called up to take a +seat at table, and after favouring the company with an imitation of a +popular tragedian, begins to make a book with Trimalchio over the next +chariot races. Fortunata, Trimalchio's wife, is a little in liquor, and +gets up to dance. Just at this point Trimalchio suddenly turns +sentimental, and, after giving elaborate directions for his own +obsequies, begins to cry. The whole company are in tears round him when +he suddenly rallies, and proposes that, as death is certain, they shall +all go and have a hot bath. In the little confusion that follows, the +narrator and his friend slip quietly away. This scene of exquisite +fooling is quite unique in Greek or Latin literature: the breadth and +sureness of touch are almost Shakespearian. Another fragment relates the +famous story of the _Matron of Ephesus_, one of the popular tales which +can be traced back to India, but which appears here for the first time in +the Western world. Others deal with literary criticism, and include +passages in verse; the longest of these, part of an epic on the civil +wars in the manner of Lucan, is recited by one of the principal +characters, the professional poet Eumolpus, to exemplify the rules he has +laid down for epic poetry in a most curious discussion that precedes it. +That so small a part of the novel has been preserved is most annoying; it +must have been comparable, in dramatic power and (notwithstanding the +gross indecency of many passages) in a certain large sanity, to the great +work of Fielding. In all the refined writing of the next age we never +again come on anything at once so masterly and so human. + + + + +II. + +THE SILVER AGE: STATIUS, THE ELDER PLINY, MARTIAL, QUINTILIAN. + + +To the age of the rhetoricians succeeded the age of the scholars. +Quintilian, Pliny, and Statius, the three foremost authors of the Flavian +dynasty, have common qualities of great learning and sober judgment which +give them a certain mutual affinity, and divide them sharply from their +immediate predecessors. The effort to outdo the Augustan writers had +exhausted itself; the new school rather aimed at reproducing their +manner. In the hands of inferior writers this attempt only issued in tame +imitations; but with those of really original power it carried the Latin +of the Silver Age to a point higher in quality than it ever reached, +except in the single case of Tacitus, a writer of unique genius who +stands in a class of his own. + +The reigns of the three Flavian emperors nearly occupy the last thirty +years of the first century after Christ. The "year of four Emperors" +which passed between the downfall of Nero and the accession of Vespasian +had shaken the whole Empire to its foundations. The recovery from that +shock left the Roman world established on a new footing. In literature, +no less than in government and finance, a feverish period of inflated +credit had brought it to the verge of ruin. At the beginning of his reign +Vespasian announced a deficit of four hundred million pounds (a sum the +like of which had never been heard of before) in the public exchequer; +some similar estimate might have been formed by a fanciful analogy of the +collapse that had to be made good in literature, when style could no +longer bear the tremendous overdrafts made on it by Seneca and Lucan. And +in the literary as in the political world there was no complete recovery: +throughout the second century we have to trace the gradual decline of +letters going on alongside of that mysterious decay of the Empire itself +before which a continuously admirable government was all but helpless. + +Publius Papinius Statius, the most eminent of the poets of this age, was +born towards the end of the reign of Tiberius, and seems to have died +before the accession of Nerva. His poetry can all be assigned to the +reign of Domitian, or the few years immediately preceding it. As to his +life little is known, probably because it passed without much incident. +He was born at Naples, and returned to it in advanced age after the +completion of his _Thebaid_; but the greater part of his life was spent +at Rome, where his father was a grammarian of some distinction who had +acted for a time as tutor to Domitian. He had thus access to the court, +where he improved his opportunities by unstinted adulation of the Emperor +and his favourite eunuch Earinus. The curious mediaeval tradition of his +conversion to Christianity, which is so finely used by Dante in the +_Purgatorio_, cannot be traced to its origin, and does not appear to have +any historical foundation. + +Twelve years were spent by Statius over his epic poem on the War of +Thebes, which was published about the year 92, with a florid dedication +to Domitian. After its completion he began another epic, on an even more +imposing scale, on the life of Achilles and the whole of the Trojan war. +Of this _Achilleid_ only the first and part of the second book were ever +completed; had it continued on the same scale it would have been the +longest of Greek or Latin epics. At various times after the publication +of the _Thebaid_ appeared the five books of _Silvae_, miscellaneous and +occasional poems on different subjects, often of a personal nature. +Another epic, on the campaign of Domitian in Germany, has not been +preserved. + +The _Thebaid_ became very famous; later poets, like Ausonius or Claudian, +constantly imitate it. Its smooth versification, copious diction, and +sustained elegance made it a sort of canon of poetical technique. But, +itself, it rises beyond the merely mechanical level. Without any quality +that can quite be called genius, Statius had real poetical feeling. His +taste preserves him from any great extravagances; and among much tedious +rhetoric and cumbrous mythology, there is enough of imagination and +pathos to make the poem interesting and even charming. At a time when +Guercino and the Caracci were counted great masters in the sister art, +the _Thebaid_ was also held to be a masterpiece. Besides complete +versions by inferior hands, both Pope and Gray took the pains to +translate portions of it into English verse, and it is perpetually quoted +in the literature of the eighteenth century. It is, indeed, perhaps its +severest condemnation that it reads best in quotations. Not only the more +highly elaborated passages, but almost any passage taken at random, may +be read with pleasure and admiration; those who have had the patience to +read it through, however much they may respect the continuous excellence +of its workmanship, will (as with the _Gierusalemme Liberata_ of Tasso) +feel nearly as much respect for their own achievement as for that of the +poet. + +The _Silvae_, consisting as they do of comparatively short pieces, +display the excellences of Statius to greater advantage. Of the thirty- +two poems, six are in lyric metres, the rest being all written in the +smooth graceful hexameters of which the author of the _Thebaid_ was so +accomplished a master. The subjects, for the most part of a familiar +nature, are very various. A touching and affectionate poem to his wife +Claudia is one of the best known. Several are on the death of friends; +one of very great beauty is on the marriage of his brother poet, +Arruntius Stella, to a lady with the charming name of Violantilla. The +descriptive pieces on the villas of acquaintances at Tivoli and Sorrento, +and on the garden of another in Rome, are full of a genuine feeling for +natural beauty. The poem on the death of his father, though it has +passages of romantic fancy, is deformed by an excess of literary +allusions; but that on the death of his adopted son (he had no children +of his own), which ends the collection, is very touching in the sincerity +of its grief and its reminiscences of the dead boy's infancy. Perhaps the +finest, certainly the most remarkable of all these pieces is the short +poem (one might almost call it a sonnet) addressed to Sleep. This, though +included in the last book of the _Silvae_, must have been written in +earlier life; it shows that had Statius not been entangled in the +composition of epics by the conventional taste of his age, he might have +struck out a new manner in ancient poetry. The poem is so brief that it +may be quoted in full:-- + + _Crimine quo merui iuvenis, placidissime divom, + Quove errore miser, donis ut solus egerem, + Somne, tuis? Tacet omne pecus, volueresque, feraeque, + Et simulant fessos curvata cacumina somnos; + Nec trucibus fluviis idem sonus; occidit horror + Aequoris, et terris maria inclinata quiescunt. + Septima iam rediens Phoebe mihi respicit aegras + Stare genas, totidem Oeteae Paphiaeque revisunt + Lampades, et toties nostros Tithonia questus + Praeterit et gelido spargit miserata flagello. + Unde ego sufficiam? Non si mihi lumina mille + Quae sacer alterna tantum statione tenebat + Argus, et haud unquam vigilabat corpore toto. + At nunc, heu, aliquis longa sub nocte puellae + Brachia nexa tenens, ultra te, Somne, repellit: + Inde veni: nec te totas infundere pennas + Luminibus compello meis: hoc turba precatur + Laetior; extremae me tange cacumine virgae, + Sufficit, aut leviter suspenso poplite transi._ + +Were the three lines beginning _Unde ego sufficiam_ struck out--and one +might almost fancy them to have been inserted later by an unhappy second +thought--the remainder of this poem would be as perfect as it is unique. +The famous sonnet of Wordsworth on the same subject must at once occur to +an English reader; but the poem in its manner, especially in the dying +cadence of the last two lines, recalls even more strongly some of the +finest sonnets of Keats. "Had Statius written often thus," in the words +Johnson uses of Gray, "it had been vain to blame, and useless to praise +him." + +The two other epic poets contemporary with Statius whose works are +extant, Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus, belong generally to the +same school, but stand on a much lower level of excellence. The former is +only known as the author of the _Argonautica_. An allusion in the proem +of his epic to the recent destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year +70, and another in a later book to the great eruption of Vesuvius in 79, +fix the date of the poem; and Quintilian, writing in the later years of +Domitian, refers to the poet's recent death. From another passage in the +_Argonautica_ it has been inferred that Flaccus was one of the college of +quindecemvirs, and therefore of high family. The _Argonautica_ follows +the well-known poem of Apollonius Rhodius, but by his diffuse rhetorical +treatment the author expands the story to such a length that in between +five and six thousand lines he has only got as far as the escape of Jason +and Medea from Colchos. Here the poem breaks off abruptly in the eighth +book; it was probably meant to consist of twelve, and to end with the +return of the Argonauts to Greece. In all respects, except the choice of +subject, Valerius Flaccus is far inferior to Statius. He cannot indeed +wholly destroy the perennial charm of the story of the Golden Fleece, but +he comes as near doing so as is reasonably possible. His versification is +correct, but without freedom or variety; and incidents and persons are +alike presented through a cloud of monotonous and mechanical rhetoric. + +If Valerius Flaccus to some degree redeemed his imaginative poverty by +the choice of his subject, the other epic poet of the Flavian era, +Tiberius Catius Silius Italicus, chose a subject which no ingenuity could +have adapted to epic treatment. His _Punic War_ may fairly contend for +the distinction of being the worst epic ever written; and its author is +the most striking example in Latin literature of the incorrigible +amateur. He had, in earlier life, passed through a distinguished official +career; he was consul the year before the fall of Nero, and in the +political revolutions which followed conducted himself with such prudence +that, though an intimate friend of Vitellius, he remained in favour under +Vespasian. After a term of further service as proconsul of Asia, he +retired to a dignified and easy leisure. His love of literature was +sincere; he prided himself on owning one of Cicero's villas, and the land +which held Virgil's grave, and he was a generous patron to men of +letters. The fulsome compliments paid to him by Martial (who has the +effrontery to speak of him as a combined Virgil and Cicero) are, no +doubt, only an average specimen of the atmosphere which surrounded so +munificent a patron; but the admiration which he openly expressed for the +slave Epictetus does him a truer honour. The _Bellum Punicum_, in +seventeen books, is longer than the _Odyssey_. It closely follows the +history as told by Livy; but the elements of almost epic grandeur in the +contest between Rome and Hannibal all disappear amid masses of tedious +machinery. Without any invention or constructive power of his own, Silius +copies with tasteless pedantry all the outworn traditions of the heroic +epic. What Homer or Virgil has done, he must needs do too. The Romans are +the Dardanians or the Aeneadae: Juno interferes in Hannibal's favour, and +Venus, hidden in a cloud, watches the battle of the Trebia from a hill. +Hannibal is urged to war by a dream like that of Agamemnon in the +_Iliad_; he is equipped with a spear "fatal to many thousands" of the +enemy, and a shield, like that of Aeneas, embossed with subjects from +Carthaginian history, and with the river Ebro flowing round the edge as +an ingenious variant of the Ocean-river on the shield of Achilles. A +Carthaginian fleet cruising off the coast of Italy falls in with Proteus, +who takes the opportunity of prophesying the course of the war. Hannibal +at Zama pursues a phantom of Scipio, which flies before him and +disappears like that of Aeneas before Turnus. Such was the degradation to +which the noble epic machinery had now sunk. Soon after the death of +Silius the poem seems to have fallen into merited oblivion; there is a +single reference to it in a poet of the fifth century, and thereafter it +remained unknown or unheard of until a manuscript discovered by Poggio +Bracciolini brought it to light again early in the fifteenth century. + +The works of the other Flavian poets, Curiatius Maternus, Saleius Bassus, +Arruntius Stella, and the poetess Sulpicia, are lost; all else that +survives of the verse of the period is the work of a writer of a +different order, but of considerable importance and value, the +epigrammatist Martial. By no means a poet of the first rank, hardly +perhaps a poet at all according to any strict definition, he has yet a +genius of his own which for many ages made him the chief and almost the +sole model for a particular kind of literature. + +Marcus Valerius Martialis was born at Augusta Bilbilis in Central Spain +towards the end of the reign of Tiberius. He came to Rome as a young man +during the reign of Nero, when his countrymen, Seneca and Lucan, were at +the height of their reputation. Through their patronage he obtained a +footing, if not at court, yet among the wealthy amateurs who extended a +less dangerous protection to men of letters. For some thirty-five years +he led the life of a dependant; under Domitian his assiduous flattery +gained for him the honorary tribunate which conferred equestrian rank, +though not the rewards of hard cash which he would probably have +appreciated more. The younger Pliny, who speaks of him with a slightly +supercilious approval, repaid with a more substantial gratification a +poem comparing him to Cicero. Martial's gift for occasional verse just +enabled him to live up three pair of stairs in the city; in later years, +when he had an income from booksellers as well as from private patrons, +he could afford a tiny country house among the Sabine hills. Early in the +reign of Domitian he began to publish regularly, bringing out a volume of +epigrams every year. After the accession of Trajan he returned to his +native town, from which, however, he sent a final volume three years +afterwards to his Roman publishers. There his talent for flattery at last +bore substantial fruit; a rich lady of the neighbourhood presented him +with a little estate, and though the longing for the country, which had +grown on him in Rome, was soon replaced by a stronger feeling of regret +for the excitement of the capital, he spent the remainder of his life in +material comfort. + +The collected works of Martial, as published after his death, which +probably took place about the year 102, consist of twelve books of +miscellaneous _Epigrams,_ which are prefaced by a book of pieces called +_Liber Spectaculorum,_ upon the performances given by Titus and Domitian +in the capital, especially in the vast amphitheatre erected by the +former. At the end are added two books of _Xenia_ and _Apophoreta,_ +distichs written to go with the Christmas presents of all sorts which +were interchanged at the festival of the Saturnalia. These last are, of +course, not "distinguished for a strong poetic feeling," any more than +the cracker mottoes of modern times. But the twelve books of _Epigrams_, +while they include work of all degrees of goodness and badness, are +invaluable from the vivid picture which they give of actual daily life at +Rome in the first century. Few writers of equal ability show in their +work such a total absence of character, such indifference to all ideas or +enthusiasms; yet this very quality makes the verse of Martial a more +perfect mirror of the external aspects of Roman life. A certain +intolerance of hypocrisy is the nearest approach Martial ever makes to +moral feeling. His perpetual flattery of Domitian, though gross as a +mountain--it generally takes the form of comparing him with the Supreme +Being, to the disadvantage of the latter--has no more serious political +import than there is serious moral import in the almost unexampled +indecency of a large proportion of the epigrams. The "candour" noted in +him by Pliny is simply that of a sheet of paper which is indifferent to +what is written upon it, fair or foul. He may claim the merit--nor is it +an inconsiderable one--of being totally free from pretence. In one of the +most graceful of his poems, he enumerates to a friend the things which +make up a happy life: "Be yourself, and do not wish to be something +else," is the line which sums up his counsel. To his own work he extends +the same easy tolerance with which he views the follies and vices of +society. "A few good, some indifferent, the greater number bad"--so he +describes his epigrams; what opening is left after this for hostile +criticism? If elsewhere he hints that only indolence prevented him from +producing more important work, so harmless an affectation may be passed +over in a writer whose clearness of observation and mastery of slight but +lifelike portraiture are really of a high order. + +By one of the curious accidents of literary history Martial, as the only +Latin epigrammatist who left a large mass of work, gave a meaning to the +word epigram from which it is only now beginning to recover. The art, +practised with such infinite grace by Greek artists of almost every age +between Solon and Justinian, was just at this period sunk to a low ebb. +The contemporary Greek epigrammatists whose work is preserved in the +Palatine Anthology, from Nicarchus and Lucilius to Strato, all show the +same heaviness of handling and the same tiresome insistence on making a +point, which prevent Martial's epigrams from being placed in the first +rank. But while in any collection of Greek epigrammatic poetry these +authors naturally sink to their own place, Martial, as well by the mere +mass of his work--some twelve hundred pieces in all, exclusive of the +cracker mottoes--as by his animation and pungent wit, set a narrow and +rather disastrous type for later literature. He appealed strongly to all +that was worst in Roman taste--its heavy-handedness, its admiration of +verbal cleverness, its tendency towards brutality. Half a century later, +Verus Caesar, that wretched creature whom Hadrian had adopted as his +successor, and whose fortunate death left the Empire to the noble rule of +Antoninus Pius, called Martial "his Virgil:" the incident is highly +significant of the corruption of taste which in the course of the second +century concurred with other causes to bring Latin literature to decay +and almost to extinction. + +Among the learned Romans of this age of great learning, the elder Pliny, +_aetatis suae doctissimus_, easily took the first place. Born in the +middle of the reign of Tiberius, Gaius Plinius Secundus of Comum passed +his life in high public employments, both military and civil, which took +him successively over nearly all the provinces of the Empire. He served +in Germany, in the Danubian provinces, in Spain, in Gaul, in Africa, and +probably also in Syria, on the staff of Titus, during the Jewish war. In +August of the year 79 he was in command of the fleet stationed at Misenum +when the memorable eruption of Vesuvius took place. In his zeal for +scientific investigation he set sail for the spot in a man-of-war, and, +lingering too near the zone of the eruption, was suffocated by the rain +of hot ashes. The account of his death, given by his nephew in a letter +to the historian Tacitus, is one of the best known passages in the +classics. + +By amazing industry and a most rigid economy of time, Pliny combined with +his continuous official duties an immense reading and a literary +production of great scope and value. A hundred and sixty volumes of his +extracts from writers of all kinds, written, we are told, on both sides +of the paper in an extremely small hand, were bequeathed by him to his +nephew. Besides works on grammar, rhetoric, military tactics, and other +subjects, he wrote two important histories--one, in twenty books, on the +wars on the German frontier, the other a general history of Rome in +thirty-one books, from the accession of Nero to the joint triumph of +Vespasian and Titus after the subjugation of the Jewish revolt. Both +these valuable works are completely lost, nor is it possible to determine +how far their substance reappears in Tacitus and Suetonius; the former, +however, in both _Annals_ and _Histories_, repeatedly cites him as an +authority. But we fortunately possess the most important of his works, +the thirty-seven books of his _Natural History_. This is not, indeed, a +great work of literature, though its style, while sometimes heavy and +sometimes mannered, is on the whole plain, straightforward, and +unpretentious; but it is a priceless storehouse of information on every +branch of natural science as known to the ancient world. It was published +with a dedication to Titus two years before Pliny's death, but continued +during the rest of his life to receive his additions and corrections. It +was compiled from a vast reading. Nearly five hundred authors (about a +hundred and fifty Roman, the rest foreign) are cited in his catalogue of +authorities. The plan of this great encyclopedia was carefully thought +out before its composition was begun. It opens with a general system of +physiography, and then passes successively to geography, anthropology, +human physiology, zoology and comparative physiology, botany, including +agriculture and horticulture, medicine, mineralogy, and the fine arts. + +After being long held as an almost infallible authority, Pliny, in more +recent times, fell under the reproach of credulity and want of sufficient +discrimination in the value of his sources. Further research has gone +some way to reinstate his reputation. Without having any profound +original knowledge of the particular sciences, he had a naturally +scientific mind. His tendency to give what is merely curious the same +attention as what is essentially important, has incidentally preserved +much valuable detail, especially as regards the arts; and modern research +often tends to confirm the anecdotes which were once condemned as plainly +erroneous and even absurd. Pliny has, further, the great advantage of +being shut up in no philosophical system. His philosophy of life, and his +religion so far as it appears, is that of his age, a moderate and +rational Stoicism. Like his contemporaries, he complains of the modern +falling away from nature and the decay of morals. But it is as the +conscientious student and the unbiassed observer that he habitually +appears. In diligence, accuracy, and freedom from preconception or +prejudice, he represents the highest level reached by ancient science +after Aristotle and his immediate successors. + +Of the more specialised scientific treatises belonging to this period, +only two are extant, the three books on _Strategy_ by Sextus Julius +Frontinus, and a treatise by the same author on the public water-supply +of Rome; both belong to strict science, rather than to literature. The +schools of rhetoric and grammar continued to flourish: among many +unimportant names that of Quintilian stands eminent, as not only a +grammarian and rhetorician, but a fine critic and a writer of high +substantive value. + +Marcus Fabius Quintilianus of Calagurris, a small town on the Upper Ebro, +is the last, and perhaps the most distinguished of that school of Spanish +writers which bulks so largely in the history of the first century. He +was educated at Rome, and afterwards returned to his native town as a +teacher of rhetoric. There he made, or improved, the acquaintance of +Servius Sulpicius Galba, proconsul of Tarraconensian Spain in the later +years of Nero. When Galba was declared Emperor by the senate, he took +Quintilian with him to Rome, where he was appointed a public teacher of +rhetoric, with a salary from the privy purse. He retained his fame and +his favour through the succeeding reigns. Domitian made him tutor to the +two grand-nephews whom he destined for his own successors, and raised him +to consular rank. For about twenty years he remained the most celebrated +teacher in the capital, combining his professorship with a large amount +of actual pleading in the law-courts. His published works belong to the +later years of his life, when he had retired from the bar and from public +teaching. His first important treatise, on the decay of oratory, _De +Causis Corruptae Eloquentiae_, is not extant. It was followed, a few +years later, in or about the year 93, by his great work, the _Institutio +Oratoria_, which sums up the teaching and criticism of his life. + +The contents of this work, which at once became the final and standard +treatise on the theory and practice of Latin oratory, are very elaborate +and complete. In the first book, Quintilian discusses the preliminary +training required before the pupil is ready to enter on the study of his +art, beginning with a sketch of the elementary education of the child +from the time he leaves the nursery, which is even now of remarkable +interest. The second book deals with the general principles and scope of +the art of oratory, and continues the discussion of the aims and methods +of education in its later stages. The five books from the third to the +seventh are occupied with an exhaustive treatment of the matter of +oratory, under the heads of what were known to the Roman schools by the +names of _invention_ and _disposition_. The greater part of these books +is, of course, highly technical. The next four books, from the eighth to +the eleventh, treat of the manner of oratory, or all that is included in +the word _style_ in its widest signification. It is in this part of the +treatise that Quintilian, in relation to the course of general reading +both in Greek and Latin that should be pursued by the young orator, gives +the masterly sketch of Latin literature which is the most famous portion +of the whole work. The twelfth book, which concludes the work, reverts to +education in the highest and most extended sense, that of the moral +qualifications of the great orator, and the exhaustive discipline of the +whole nature throughout life which must be continued unfalteringly to the +end. + +Now that the formal study of rhetoric has ceased to be a part of the +higher education, the more strictly technical parts of Quintilian's work, +like those of the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, have, in a great measure, lost +their relevance to actual life, and with it their general interest to the +world at large. Both the Greek and the Roman masterpiece are read now +rather for their incidental observations upon human nature and the +fundamental principles of art, than for instruction in a particular form +of art which, in the course of time, has become obsolete. These +observations, in Quintilian no less than in Aristotle, are often both +luminous and profound, A collection of the memorable sentences of +Quintilian, such as has been made by his modern editors, is full of +sayings of deep wisdom and enduring value. _Nulla mansit ars qualis +inventa est, nec intra initium stetit; Plerumque facilius est plus +facere, quam idem; Nihil in studiis parvum est; Cito scribendo non fit ut +bene scribatur, bene scribendo fit ut cito; Omnia nostra dum nascuntur +placent, alioqui nec scriberentur_;--such sayings as these, expressed +with admirable terseness and lucidity, are scattered all over the work, +and have a value far beyond the limits of any single study. If they do +not drop from Quintilian with the same curious negligence as they do from +Aristotle (whose best things are nearly always said in a parenthesis), +the advantage is not wholly with the Greek author; the more orderly and +finished method of the Roman teacher marks a higher constructive literary +power than that of Aristotle, whose singular genius made him indeed the +prince of lecturers, but did not place him in the first rank of writers. + +Beyond these incidental touches of wisdom and insight, which give an +enduring value to the whole substance of the work, the chief interest for +modern readers in the _Institutio Oratoria_, lies in three portions which +are, more or less, episodic to the strict purpose of the book, though +they sum up the spirit in which it is written. These are the discussions +on the education of children in the first, and on the larger education of +mature life in the last book, and the critical sketch of ancient +literature up to his own time, which occupies the first chapter of the +tenth. Almost for the first time in history--for the ideal system of +Plato, however brilliant and suggestive, stands on quite a different +footing--the theory of education was, in this age, made a subject of +profound thought and study. The precepts of Quintilian, if taken in +detail, address themselves to the formation of a Roman of the Empire, and +not a citizen of modern Europe. But their main spirit is independent of +the accidents of any age or country. In the breadth of his ideas, and in +the wisdom of much of his detailed advice, Quintilian takes a place in +the foremost rank of educational writers. The dialogue on oratory written +a few years earlier by Tacitus names, as the main cause of the decay of +the liberal arts, not any lack of substantial encouragement, but the +negligence of parents and the want of skill in teachers. To leave off +vague and easy declamations against luxury and the decay of morals, and +to fix on the great truth that bad education is responsible for bad life, +was the first step towards a real reform. This Quintilian insists upon +with admirable clearness. Nor has any writer on education grasped more +firmly or expressed more lucidly the complementary truth that education, +from the cradle upwards, is something which acts on the whole +intellectual and moral nature, and whose object is the production of what +the Romans called, in a simple form of words which was full of meaning, +"the good man." It would pass beyond the province of literary criticism +to discuss the reasons why that reform never took place, or, if it did, +was confined to a circle too small to influence the downward movement of +the Empire at large. They belong to a subject which is among the most +interesting of all studies, and which has hardly yet been studied with +adequate fulness or insight, the social history of the Roman world in the +second century. + +One necessary part of the education of the orator was a course of wide +and careful reading in the best literature; and it is in this special +connection that Quintilian devotes part of his elaborate discussion on +style to a brief critical summary of the literature of Greece and that of +his own country. The frequent citations which have already been made from +this part of the work may indicate the very great ability with which it +is executed. Though his special purpose as a professor of rhetoric is +always kept in view, his criticism passes beyond this formal limit. He +expresses, no doubt, what was the general opinion of the educated world +of his own time; but the form of his criticism is so careful and so +choice, that many of his brief phrases have remained the final word on +the authors, both in prose and verse, whom he mentions in his rapid +survey. His catalogue is far from being, as it has been disparagingly +called, a mere "list of the best hundred books." It is the deliberate +judgment of the best Roman scholarship, in an age of wide reading and +great learning, upon the masterpieces of their own literature. His own +preference for certain periods and certain manners is well marked. But he +never forgets that the object of criticism is to disengage excellences +rather than to censure faults: even his pronounced aversion from the +style of Seneca and the authors of the Neronian age does not prevent him +from seeing their merits, and giving these ungrudging praise. + +It is, indeed, in Quintilian that the reaction from the early imperial +manner comes to its climax. Statius had, to a certain degree, gone back +to Virgil; Quintilian goes back to Cicero without hesitation or reserve. +He is the first of the Ciceronians; Lactantius in the fourth century, +John of Salisbury in the twelfth, Petrarch in the fourteenth, Erasmus in +the sixteenth, all in a way continue the tradition which he founded; nor +is it surprising that the discovery of a complete manuscript of the +_Institutio Oratoria_, early in the fifteenth century was hailed by +scholars as one of the most important events of the Renaissance. He is +not, however, a mere imitator of his master's style; indeed, his style +is, in some features and for some purposes, a better one than his +master's. It is as clear and fluent, and not so verbose. He cannot rise +to the great heights of Cicero; but for ordinary use it would be +difficult to name a manner that combines so well the Ciceronian dignity +with the rich colour and high finish added to Latin prose by the writers +of the earlier empire. + +The body of criticism left by Quintilian in this remarkable chapter is +the more valuable because it includes nearly all the great Latin writers. +Classical literature, little as it may have seemed so at the time, was +already nearing its end. With the generation which immediately followed, +that of his younger contemporaries, the Silver Age closes, and a new age +begins, which, though full of interest in many ways, is no longer +classical. After Tacitus and the younger Pliny, the main stream dwindles +and loses itself among quicksands. The writers who continue the pure +classical tradition are few, and of inferior power; and the chief +interest of Latin literature becomes turned in other directions, to the +Christian writers on the one hand, and on the other to those authors in +whom we may trace the beginning of new styles and methods, some of which +bore fruit at the time, while others remained undeveloped till the later +Middle Ages. Why this final effort of purely Roman culture, made in the +Flavian era with such sustained energy and ability, on the whole scarcely +survived a single generation, is a question to which no simple answer can +be given. It brings us once more face to face with the other question, +which, indeed, haunts Latin literature from the outset, whether the +conquest and absorption of Greece by Rome did not carry with it the seeds +of a fatal weakness in the victorious literature. Up to the end of the +Golden Age fresh waves of Greek influence had again and again given new +vitality and enlarged power to the Latin language. That influence had now +exhausted itself; for the Latin world Greece had no further message. That +Latin literature began to decline so soon after the stimulating Greek +influence ceased to operate, was partly due to external causes; the +empire began to fight for its existence before the end of the second +century, and never afterwards gained a pause in the continuous drain of +its vital force. But there was another reason more intimate and inherent; +a literature formed so completely on that of Greece paid the penalty in a +certain loss of independent vitality. The gap between the literary Latin +and the actual speech of the mass of Latin-speaking people became too +great to bridge over. Classical Latin poetry was, as we have seen, +written throughout in alien metres, to which indeed the language was +adapted with immense dexterity, but which still remained foreign to its +natural structure. To a certain degree the same was even true of prose, +at least of the more imaginative prose which was developed through a +study of the great Greek masters of history, oratory, and philosophy. In +the Silver Age Latin literature, feeling a great past behind it, +definitely tried to cut itself away from Greece and stand on its own +feet. Quintilian's criticism implies throughout that the two literatures +were on a footing of substantial equality; Cicero is sufficient for him, +as Virgil is for Statius. Even Martial, it has been noted, hardly ever +alludes to Greek authors, while he is full of references to those of his +own country. The eminent grammarians of the age, Aemilius Asper, Marcus +Valerius Probus, Quintus Asconius Pedianus, show the same tendency; their +main work was in commenting on the great Latin writers. The elaborate +editions of the Latin poets, from Lucretius to Persius, produced by +Probus, and the commentaries on Terence, Cicero, Sallust, and Virgil by +Asconius and Asper, were the work of a generation to whom these authors +had become in effect the classics. But literature, as the event proved +not for the first or the last time, cannot live long on the study of the +classics alone. + + + + +III. + +TACITUS. + + +The end, however, was not yet; and in the generation which immediately +followed, the single imposing figure of Cornelius Tacitus, the last of +the great classical writers, adds a final and, as it were, a sunset +splendour to the literature of Rome. The reigns of Nerva and Trajan, +however much they were hailed as the beginning of a golden age, were +really far less fertile in literary works than those of the Flavian +Emperors; and the boasted restoration of freedom of speech was almost +immediately followed by an all but complete silence of the Latin tongue. +When to the name of Tacitus are added those of Juvenal and the younger +Pliny, there is literally almost no other author--none certainly of the +slightest literary importance--to be chronicled until the reign of +Hadrian; and even then the principal authors are Greek, while mere +compilers or grammarians like Gellius and Suetonius are all that Latin +literature has to show. The beginnings of Christian literature in +Minucius Felix, and of mediaeval literature in Apuleius and the author of +the _Pervigilium Veneris,_ rise in an age scanty in the amount and below +mediocrity in the substance of its production. + +Little is known of the birth and parentage of Tacitus beyond the mere +fact that he was a Roman of good family. Tradition places his birth at +Interamna early in the reign of Nero; he passed through the regular +stages of an official career under the three Flavian Emperors. His +marriage, towards the end of the reign of Vespasian, to the daughter and +only surviving child of the eminent soldier and administrator, Gnaeus +Julius Agricola, aided him in obtaining rapid promotion; he was praetor +in the year in which Domitian celebrated the Secular Games, and rose to +the dignity of the consulship during the brief reign of Nerva. He was +then a little over forty. When still quite a young man he had written the +dialogue on oratory, which is one of the most interesting of Latin works +on literary criticism; but throughout the reign of Domitian his pen was +wholly laid aside. The celebrated passage of the _Agricola_ in which he +accounts for this silence may or may not give an adequate account of the +facts, but at all events gives the keynote of the whole of his subsequent +work, and of that view of the imperial government of the first century +which his genius has fixed ineradicably in the imagination of the world. +Under Domitian a servile senate had ordered the works of the two most +eminent martyrs of reactionary Stoicism, Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius +Senecio, to be publicly burned in the forum; "thinking that in that fire +they consumed the voice of the Roman people, their own freedom, and the +conscience of mankind. Great indeed," he bitterly continues, "are the +proofs we have given of what we can endure. The antique time saw to the +utmost bounds of freedom, we of servitude; robbed by an inquisition of +the common use of speech and hearing, we should have lost our very memory +with our voice, were it as much in our power to forget as to be dumb. Now +at last our breath has come back; yet in the nature of human frailty +remedies are slower than their diseases, and genius and learning are more +easily extinguished than recalled. Fifteen years have been taken out of +our lives, while youth passed silently into age; and we are the wretched +survivors, not only of those who have been taken away from us, but of +ourselves." Even a colourless translation may give some idea of the +distilled bitterness of this tremendous indictment. We must remember that +they are the words of a man in the prime of life and at the height of +public distinction, under a prince of whose government he speaks in terms +of almost extravagant hope and praise, to realise the spirit in which he +addressed himself to paint his lurid portraits of Tiberius or Nero or +Domitian. + +The exquisitely beautiful memoir of his father-in-law, in the +introduction to which this passage occurs, was written by Tacitus in the +year which succeeded his own consulship, and which saw the accession of +Trajan. He was then already meditating a large historical work on the +events of his own lifetime, for which he had, by reading and reflection, +as well as by his own administrative experience, accumulated large +materials. The essay _De Origine Situ Moribus ac Populis Germaniae_ was +published about the same time or a little later, and no doubt represents +part of the material which he had collected for the chapters of his +history dealing with the German wars, and which, as much of it fell +outside the scope of a general history of Rome, he found it worth his +while to publish as a separate treatise. The scheme of his work became +larger in the course of its progress. As he originally planned it, it was +to begin with the accession of Galba, thus dealing with a period which +fell entirely within his own lifetime, and indeed within his own +recollection. But after completing his account of the six reigns from +Galba to Domitian, he did not, as he had at first proposed, go on to +those of Nerva and Trajan, but resumed his task at an earlier period, and +composed an equally elaborate history of the empire from the death of +Augustus down to the point where his earlier work began. He still +cherished the hope of resuming his history from the accession of Nerva, +but it is doubtful whether he lived long enough to do so. Allusions to +the Eastern conquests of Trajan in the _Annals_ show that the work cannot +have been published till after the year 115, and it would seem--though +nothing is known as to the events or employments of his later life--that +he did not long survive that date. But the thirty books of his _Annals_ +and _Histories,_ themselves splendid work for a lifetime, gave the +continuous history of the empire in the most crucial and on the whole the +most remarkable period of its existence, the eighty-two years which +succeeded the death of its founder. + +As in so many other cases, this memorable work has only escaped total +loss by the slenderest of chances. As it is, only about one-half of the +whole work is extant, consisting of four large fragments. The first of +these, which begins at the beginning, breaks off abruptly in the +fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius. A gap of two years follows, and +the second fragment carries on the history to Tiberius' death. The story +of the reign of Caligula is wholly lost; the third fragment begins in the +seventh year of Claudius, and goes on as far as the thirteenth of Nero. +The fourth, consisting of the first four and part of the fifth book of +the earlier part of the work, contains the events of little more than a +year, but that the terrible "year of Emperors" which followed the +overthrow of Nero and shook the Roman world to its foundations. A single +manuscript has preserved the last two of these four fragments; to the +hand of one nameless Italian monk of the eleventh century we owe our +knowledge of one of the greatest masterpieces of the ancient world. + +Not the least interesting point in the study of the writings of Tacitus +is the way in which we can see his unique style gradually forming and +changing from his earlier to his later manner. The dialogue _De +Oratoribus_ is his earliest extant work. Its scene is laid in or about +the year 75. But Tacitus was then little if at all over twenty, and it +may have been written some five or six years later. In this book the +influence of Quintilian and the Ciceronian school is strongly marked; +there is so much of Ciceronianism in the style that many scholars have +been inclined to assign it to some other author, or have even identified +it with the lost treatise of Quintilian himself, on the _Causes of the +Decay of Eloquence_. But its style, while it bears the general colour of +the Silver Age, has also large traces of that compressed and allusive +manner which Tacitus later carried to such an extreme degree of +perfection. Full as it is of the _ardor iuvenilis,_ page after page +recalling that Ciceronian manner with which we are familiar in the +_Brutus_ or the _De Oratore_ by the balance of the periods, by the +elaborate similes, and by a certain fluid and florid evolution of what is +really commonplace thought, a touch here and there, like _contemnebat +potius literas quam nesciebat_, or _vitio malignitatis humanae vetera +semper in laude, praesentia in fastidio esse_, or the criticism on the +poetry of Caesar and Brutus, _non melius quam Cicero, sed felicius, quia +illos fecisse pauciores sciunt_, anticipates the author of the _Annals,_ +with his mastery of biting phrase and his unequalled power of innuendo. +The defence and attack of the older oratory are both dramatic, and to a +certain extent unreal; it is probable that the dialogue does in fact +represent the matter of actual discussions between the two principal +interlocutors, celebrated orators of the Flavian period, to which as a +young student Tacitus had himself listened. One phrase dropped by Aper, +the apologist of the modern school, is of special interest as coming from +the future historian; among the faults of the Ciceronian oratory is +mentioned a languor and heaviness in narration--_tarda et iners structura +in morem annalium_. It is just this quality in historical composition +that Tacitus set himself sedulously to conquer. By every artifice of +style, by daring use of vivid words and elliptical constructions, by +studied avoidance of the old balance of the sentence, he established a +new historical manner which, whatever may be its failings--and in the +hands of any writer of less genius they become at once obvious and +intolerable--never drops dead or says a thing in a certain way because it +is the way in which the ordinary rules of style would prescribe that it +should be said. A comparison has often been drawn between Tacitus and +Carlyle in this matter. It may easily be pressed too far, as in some +rather grotesque attempts made to translate portions of the Latin author +into phrases chosen or copied from the modern. But there is this +likeness: both authors began by writing in the rather mechanical and +commonplace style which was the current fashion during their youth; and +in both the evolution of the personal and inimitable manner from these +earlier essays into the full perfection of the _Annals_ and the _French +Revolution_ is a lesson in language of immense interest. + +The fifteen silent years of Tacitus followed the publication of the +dialogue on oratory. In the _Agricola_ and _Germania_ the distinctively +Tacitean style is still immature, though it is well on the way towards +maturity. The _Germania_ is less read for its literary merit than as the +principal extant account, and the only one which professes to cover the +ground at all systematically, of Central Europe under the early Roman +Empire. It does not appear whether, in the course of his official +employments, Tacitus had ever been stationed on the frontier either of +the Rhine or of the Danube. The treatise bears little or no traces of +first-hand knowledge; nor does he mention his authorities, with the +single exception of a reference to Caesar's _Gallic War_. We can hardly +doubt that he made free use of the material amassed by Pliny in his +_Bella Germaniae,_ and it is quite possible that he really used few other +sources. For the work, though full of information, is not critically +written, and the historian constantly tends to pass into the moralist. +His Ciceronianism has now completely worn away, but his manner is still +as deeply rhetorical as ever. What he has in view throughout is to bring +the vices of civilised luxury into stronger relief by a contrast with the +idealised simplicity of the German tribes; and though his knowledge and +his candour alike make him stop short of falsifying facts, his selection +and disposition of facts is guided less by a historical than by an +ethical purpose. His lucid and accurate description of the amber of the +Baltic seems merely introduced in order to point a sarcastic reference to +Roman luxury; and the whole of the extremely valuable account of the +social life of the Western German tribes is drawn in implicit or +expressed contrast to the elaborate social conventions of what he +considers a corrupt and degenerate civilisation. The exaggeration of the +sentiment is more marked than in any of his other writings; thus the fine +outburst, _Nemo illic vitia ridet, nec corrumpere et corrumpi seculum +vocatur,_ concludes a passage in which he gravely suggests that the +invention of writing is fatal to moral innocence; and though he is candid +enough to note the qualities of laziness and drunkenness which the +Germans shared with other half-barbarous races, he glosses over the other +quality common to savages, want of feeling, with the sounding and +grandiose commonplace, expressed in a phrase of characteristic force and +brevity, _feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse_. + +The _Agricola,_ perhaps the most beautiful piece of biography in ancient +literature, stands on a much higher level than the _Germania,_ because +here his heart was in the work. The rhetorical bent is now fully under +control, while his mastery over "disposition" (to use the term of the +schools), or what one might call the architectural quality of the book, +could only have been gained by such large and deep study of the art of +rhetoric as is inculcated by Quintilian. The _Agricola_ has the +stateliness, the ordered movement, of a funeral oration; the peroration, +as it might not unfairly be called, of the two concluding chapters, +reaches the highest level of the grave Roman eloquence, and its language +vibrates with a depth of feeling to which Lucretius and Virgil alone in +their greatest passages offer a parallel in Latin. The sentence, with its +subtle Virgilian echoes, in which he laments his own and his wife's +absence from Agricola's death-bed--_omnia sine dubio, optime parentum, +adsidente amantissima uxore superfuere honori tuo; paucioribus tamen +lacrimis comploratus es, et novissima in luce desideraverunt aliquid +oculi tui_--shows a new and strange power in Latin. It is still the +ancient language, but it anticipates in its cadences the language of the +Vulgate and of the statelier mediaeval prose. + +Together with this remarkable power over new prose rhythms, Tacitus shows +in the _Agricola_ the complete mastery of mordant and unforgettable +phrase which makes his mature writing so unique. Into three or four +ordinary words he can put more concentrated meaning than any other +author. The likeness and contrast between these brief phrases of his and +the "half-lines" of Virgil might repay a long study. They are alike in +their simple language, which somehow or other is charged with the whole +personality of the author; but the personality itself is in the sharpest +antithesis. The Virgilian phrases, with their grave pity, are steeped in +a golden softness that is just touched with a far-off trouble, a pathetic +waver in the voice as if tears were not far below it. Those of Tacitus +are charged with indignation instead of pity; "like a jewel hung in +ghastly night," to use Shakespeare's memorable simile, or like the red +and angry autumnal star in the _Iliad_, they quiver and burn. Phrases +like the famous _ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant_, or the _felix +opportunitate mortis_, are the concentrated utterance of a great but +deeply embittered mind. + +In this spirit Tacitus set himself to narrate the history of the first +century of the Empire. Under the settled equable government of Trajan, +the reigns of the Julio-Claudian house rapidly became a legendary epoch, +a region of prodigies and nightmares and Titanic crimes. Even at the time +they happened many of the events of those years had thrown the +imagination of their spectators into a fever. The strong taint of +insanity in the Claudian blood seemed to have communicated itself to the +world ruled over by that extraordinary series of men, about whom there +was something inhuman and supernatural. Most of them were publicly +deified before their death. The _Fortuna Urbis_ took in them successive +and often monstrous incarnations. Augustus himself was supposed to have +the gift of divination; his foreknowledge overleapt the extinction of his +own house, and foresaw, across a gap of fifty years, the brief reign of +Galba. Caligula threw an arch of prodigious span over the Roman Forum, +above the roofs of the basilica of Julius Caesar, that from his house on +the Palatine he might cross more easily to sup with his brother, Jupiter +Capitolinus. Nero's death was for years regarded over half the Empire as +incredible; men waited in a frenzy of excited terror for the reappearance +of the vanished Antichrist. Even the Flavian house was surrounded by much +of the same supernatural atmosphere. The accession of Vespasian was +signalised by his performing public miracles in Egypt; Domitian, when he +directed that he should be formally addressed as _Our Lord God_ by all +who approached him, was merely settling rules for an established practice +of court etiquette. In this thunderous unnatural air legends of all sorts +sprung up right and left; foremost, and including nearly all the rest, +the legend of the Empire itself, which (like that of the French +Revolution) we are only now beginning to unravel. The modern school of +historians find in authentic documents, written and unwritten, the story +of a continuous and able administration of the Empire through all those +years by the permanent officials, and traces of a continuous personal +policy of the Emperors themselves sustaining that administration against +the reactionary tendencies of the Senate. Even the massacres of Nero and +Domitian are held to have been probably dictated by imperious public +necessity. The confidential advisers of the Emperors acted as a sort of +Committee of Public Safety, silent and active, while the credit or +obloquy was all heaped on a single person. It took three generations to +carry the imperial system finally out of danger; but when this end was at +last attained, the era of the Good Emperors succeeded as a matter of +course; much as in France, the success of the Revolution once fairly +secured, the moderate government of the Directory and Consulate quietly +succeeded to the Terror and the Revolutionary Tribunal. + +Such is one view now taken of the early Roman Empire. Its weakness is +that it explains too much. How or why, if the matter was really as simple +as this, did the traditional legend of the Empire grow up and extinguish +the real facts? Is it possible that the malignant genius of a single +historian should outweigh, not only perishable facts, but the large body +of imperialist literature which extends from the great Augustans down to +Statius and Quintilian? Even if we set aside Juvenal and Suetonius as a +rhetorician and a gossipmonger, that only makes the weight Tacitus has to +sustain more overwhelming. It is hardly possible to overrate the effect +of a single work of great genius; but the more we study works of great +genius the more certain does it appear that they are all founded on real, +though it may be transcendental, truth. Systems, like persons, are to be +known by their fruits. The Empire produced, as the flower of its culture +and in the inner circle of its hierarchy, the type of men of whom Tacitus +is the most eminent example; and the indignant hatred it kindled in its +children leaves it condemned before the judgment of history. + +The surviving fragments of the _Annals_ and _Histories_ leave three great +pictures impressed upon the reader's mind: the personality of Tiberius, +the court of Nero, and the whole fabric and machinery of empire in the +year of the four Emperors. The lost history of the reigns of Caligula and +Domitian would no doubt have added two other pictures as memorable and as +dramatic, but could hardly make any serious change in the main structure +of the imperial legend as it is successively presented in these three +imposing scenes. + +The character and statesmanship of Tiberius is one of the most vexed +problems in Roman history; and it is significant to observe how, in all +the discussions about it, the question perpetually reverts to another-- +the view to be taken of the personality of the historian who wrote nearly +a century after Tiberius' accession, and was not born till long after his +death. In no part of his work does Tacitus use his great weapon, +insinuation of motive, with such terrible effect. All the speeches or +letters of the Emperor quoted by him, almost all the actions he records, +are given with this malign sidelight upon them: that, in spite of it, we +lose our respect for neither Emperor nor historian is strong evidence +both of the genius of the latter and the real greatness of the former. +The case of Germanicus Caesar is a cardinal instance. In the whole +account of the relations of Tiberius to his nephew there is nothing in +the mere facts as stated inconsistent with confidence and even with +cordiality. Tiberius pronounces a long and stately eulogy on Germanicus +in the senate for his suppression of the revolt of the German legions. He +recalls him from the German frontier, where the Roman supremacy was now +thoroughly re-established, and where the hot-headed young general was on +the point of entangling himself in fresh and dangerous conquests, in +order to place him in supreme command in the Eastern provinces; but first +he allows him the splendid pageant of a Roman triumph, and gives an +immense donative to the population of the capital in his nephew's name. +Germanicus is sent to the East with _maius imperium_ over the whole of +the transmarine provinces, a position more splendid than any that +Tiberius himself had held during the lifetime of Augustus, and one that +almost raised him to the rank of a colleague in the Empire. Then +Germanicus embroils himself hopelessly with his principal subordinate, +the imperial legate of Syria, and his illness and death at Antioch put an +end to a situation which is rapidly becoming impossible. His remains are +solemnly brought back to Rome, and honoured with a magnificent funeral; +the proclamation of Tiberius fixing the termination of the public +mourning is in its gravity and good sense one of the most striking +documents in Roman history. But in Tacitus every word and action of +Tiberius has its malignant interpretation or comment. He recalls +Germanicus from the Rhine out of mingled jealousy and fear; he makes him +viceroy of the East in order to carry out a diabolically elaborate scheme +for bringing about his destruction. The vague rumours of poison or magic +that ran during his last illness among the excitable and grossly +superstitious populace of Antioch are gravely recorded as ground for the +worst suspicions. That dreadful woman, the elder Agrippina, had, even in +her husband's lifetime, made herself intolerable by her pride and +jealousy after her husband's death she seems to have become quite insane, +and the recklessness of her tongue knew no bounds. To Tacitus all her +ravings, collected from hearsay or preserved in the memoirs of her +equally appalling daughter, the mother of Nero, represent serious +historical documents; and the portrait of Tiberius is from first to last +deeply influenced by, and indeed largely founded on, the testimony of a +madwoman. + +The three books and a half of the _Annals_ which contain the principate +of Nero are not occupied with the portraiture of a single great +personality, nor are they full, like the earlier books, of scathing +phrases and poisonous insinuations. The reign of Nero was, indeed, one +which required little rhetorical artifice to present as something +portentous. The external history of the Empire, till towards its close, +was without remarkable incident. The wars on the Armenian frontier hardly +affected the general quiet of the Empire; the revolt of Britain was an +isolated occurrence, and soon put down. The German tribes, engaged in +fierce internal conflicts, left the legions on the Rhine almost +undisturbed. The provinces, though suffering under heavy taxation, were +on the whole well ruled. Public interest was concentrated on the capital; +and the startling events which took place there gave the fullest scope to +the dramatic genius of the historian. The court of Nero lives before us +in his masterly delineation. Nero himself, Seneca and Tigellinus, the +Empress-mother, the conspirators of the year 65, form a portrait-gallery +of sombre magnificence, which surpasses in vivid power the more elaborate +and artificial picture of the reign of Tiberius. With all his immense +ability and his deep psychological insight, Tacitus is not a profound +political thinker; as he approaches the times which fell within his own +personal knowledge he disentangles himself more and more from the +preconceptions of narrow theory, and gives his dramatic gift fuller play. + +It is for this reason that the _Histories_, dealing with a period which +was wholly within his own lifetime, and many of the main actors in which +he knew personally and intimately, are a greater historical work than +even the _Annals_. He moves with a more certain step in an ampler field. +The events of the year 69, which occupy almost the whole of the extant +part of the _Histories_, offer the largest and most crowded canvas ever +presented to a Roman historian. And Tacitus rises fully to the amplitude +of his subject. It is in these books that the material greatness of the +Empire has found its largest expression. In the _Annals_ Rome is the core +of the world, and the provinces stretch dimly away from it, shaken from +time to time by wars or military revolts that hardly touch the great +central life of the capital. Here, though the action opens indeed in the +capital in that wet stormy January, the main interest is soon transferred +to distant fields; the life of the Empire still converges on Rome as a +centre, but no longer issues from it as from a common heart and brain. +The provinces had been the spoil of Rome; Rome herself is now becoming +the spoil of the provinces. The most splendid piece of narration in the +_Histories,_ and one of the finest in the work of any historian, is the +story of the second battle of Bedriacum, and the storm and sack of +Cremona by the Moesian and Pannonian legions. This is the central thought +which makes it so tragical. The little vivid touches in which Tacitus +excels are used towards this purpose with extraordinary effect; as in the +incident of the third legion saluting the rising sun--_ita in Suria mos +est_--which marks the new and fatal character of the great provincial +armies, or the casual words of the Flavian general, _The bath will soon +be heated,_ which were said to have given the signal for the burning of +Cremona. In these scenes the whole tragedy of the Empire rises before us. +The armies of the Danube and Rhine left the frontiers defenceless while +they met in the shock of battle on Italian soil, still soaking with Roman +blood and littered with unburied Roman corpses; behind them the whole +armed strength of the Empire--_immensa belli moles_--was gathering out of +Gaul, Spain, Syria, and Hungary; and before the year was out, the Roman +Capitol itself, in a trifling struggle between small bodies of the +opposing forces, went up in flame at the hands of the German troops of +Vitellius. + +This great pageant of history is presented by Tacitus in a style which, +in its sombre yet gorgeous colouring, is unique in literature. In mere +grammatical mechanism it bears close affinity to the other Latin writing +of the period, but in all its more intimate qualities it is peculiar to +Tacitus alone; he founded his own style, and did not transmit it to any +successor. The influence of Virgil over prose reaches in him its most +marked degree. Direct transferences of phrase are not infrequent; and +throughout, as one reads the _Histories,_ one is reminded of the +_Aeneid,_ not only by particular phrases, but by a more indefinable +quality permeating the style. The narrative of the siege and firing of +the Capitol, to take one striking instance, is plainly from the hand of a +writer saturated with the movement and language of Virgil's _Sack of +Troy_. A modern historian might have quoted Virgil in a note; with +Tacitus the Virgilian reminiscences are interwoven with the whole +structure of his narrative. The whole of the three fine chapters will +repay minute comparison; but some of the more striking resemblances are +worth noting as a study in language. _Erigunt aciem_, says the historian, +_usque ad primas Capitolinae arcis fores ... in tectum egressi saxis +tegulisque Vitellianos obruebant ... ni revolsas undique statuas, decora +maiorum, in ipso aditu obiecissent ... vis propior atque acrior ingruebat + ... quam non Porsena dedita urbe neque Galli temerare potuissent ... +inrumpunt Vitelliani et cuncta sanguine ferro flammisque miscent_. We +seem to be present once more at that terrible night in Troy-- + + _Vestibulum ante ipsum primoque in limine Pyrrhus ... + Evado ad summi fastigia culminis ... + ... turres ac tecta domorum Culmina convellunt ... + ... veterum decora alia parentum + Devolvunt ... nec saxa, nec ullum Telorum interea cessat genus ... + ... armorumque ingruit horror ... + ... et iam per moenia clarior ignis + Auditur, propiusque aestus incendia volvunt ... + Quos neque Tydides, nec Larissaeus Achilles, + Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinae ... + Fit via vi; rumpunt aditus primosque trucidant + Inmissi Danai, et late loca milite complent._ + +These quotations indicate strikingly enough the way in which Tacitus is +steeped in the Virgilian manner and diction. The whole passage must be +read continuously to realise the immense skill with which he uses it, and +the tragic height it adds to the narrative. + +Nor is the deep gloom of his history, though adorned with the utmost +brilliance of rhetoric, lightened by any belief in Providence or any +distinct hope for the future. The artificial optimism of the Stoics is +alien from his whole temper; and his practical acquiescence in the +existing system under the reign of Domitian only added bitterness to his +inward revolt from it. The phrases of religion are merely used by him to +darken the shades of his narrative; _Deum ira in rem Romanam,_ one of the +most striking of them, might almost be taken as a second title for his +history. On the very last page of the _Annals_ he concludes a brief +notice of the ruin and exile of Cassius Asclepiodotus, whose crime was +that he had not deserted an unfortunate friend, with the striking words, +"Such is the even-handedness of Heaven towards good and evil conduct." +Even his praises of the government of Trajan are half-hearted and +incredulous; "the rare happiness of a time when men may think what they +will, and say what they think," is to his mind a mere interlude, a brief +lightening of the darkness before it once more descends on a world where +the ambiguous power of fate or chance is the only permanent ruler, and +where the gods intervene, not to protect, but only to avenge. + + + + +IV. + +JUVENAL, THE YOUNGER PLINY, SUETONIUS: DECAY OF CLASSICAL LATIN. + + +From the name of Tacitus that of Juvenal is inseparable. The pictures +drawn of the Empire by the historian and the satirist are in such +striking accordance that they create a greater plausibility for the +common view they hold than could be given by any single representation; +and while Juvenal lends additional weight and colour to the Tacitean +presentment of the imperial legend, he acquires from it in return an +importance which could hardly otherwise have been sustained by his +exaggerated and glaring rhetoric. + +As regards the life and personality of the last great Roman satirist we +are in all but total ignorance. Several lives of him exist which are +confused and contradictory in detail. He was born at Aquinum, probably in +the reign of Nero; an inscription on a little temple of Ceres, dedicated +by him there, indicates that he had served in the army as commander of a +Dalmatian cohort, and was superintendent (as one of the chief men of the +town) of the civic worship paid to Vespasian after his deification. The +circumstance of his banishment for offence given to an actor who was high +in favour with the reigning Emperor is well authenticated; but neither +its place nor its time can be fixed. It appears from the _Satires_ +themselves that they were written late in life; we are informed that he +reached his eightieth year, and lived into the reign of Antoninus Pius. +Martial, by whom he is repeatedly mentioned, alludes to him only as a +rhetorician, not as a satirist. The sixteen satires (of which the last +is, perhaps, not genuine) were published at intervals under Trajan and +Hadrian. They fall into two groups; the first nine, which are at once the +most powerful and the least agreeable, being separated by a considerable +interval of years from the others, in which a certain softening of tone +and a tendency to dwell on the praise of virtue more than on the ignoble +details of vice is united with a failing power that marks the approach of +senility. + +Juvenal is the most savage--one might almost say the most brutal--of all +the Roman satirists. Lucilius, when he "scourged the town," did so in the +high spirits and voluble diction of a comparatively simple age. Horace +soon learned to drop the bitterness which appears in his earlier satires, +and to make them the vehicle for his gentle wisdom and urbane humour. The +writing of Persius was that of a student who gathered the types he +satirised from books rather than from life. Juvenal brought to his task +not only a wide knowledge of the world--or, at least, of the world of the +capital--but a singular power of mordant phrase, and a mastery over crude +and vivid effect that keeps the reader suspended between disgust and +admiration. In the commonplaces of morality, though often elevated and +occasionally noble, he does not show any exceptional power or insight; +but his graphic realism, combined (as realism often is) with a total +absence of all but the grimmest forms of humour, makes his verses cut +like a knife. _Facit indignatio versum_, he truly says of his own work; +with far less flexibility, he has all the remorselessness of Swift. That +singular product of the last days of paganism, the epigrammatist Palladas +of Alexandria, is the only ancient author who shows the same spirit. Of +his earlier work the second and ninth satires, and a great part of the +sixth, have a cold prurience and disgustingness of detail, that even +Swift only approaches at his worst moments. Yet the sixth satire, at all +events, is an undeniable masterpiece; however raw the colour, however +exaggerated the drawing, his pictures of Roman life have a force that +stamps them permanently on the imagination; his _Legend of Bad Women,_ as +this satire might be called, has gone far to make history. + +It is in the third satire that his peculiar gift of vivid painting finds +its best and easiest scope. In this elaborate indictment of the life of +the capital, put into the mouth of a man who is leaving it for a little +sleepy provincial town, he draws a picture of the Rome he knew, its +social life and its physical features, its everyday sights and sounds, +that brings it before us more clearly and sharply than even the Rome of +Horace or Cicero. The drip of the water from the aqueduct that passed +over the gate from which the dusty squalid Appian Way stretched through +its long suburb; the garret under the tiles where, just as now, the +pigeons sleeked themselves in the sun and the rain drummed on the roof; +the narrow crowded streets, half choked with builders' carts, ankle-deep +in mud, and the pavement ringing under the heavy military boots of +guardsmen; the tavern waiters trotting along with a pyramid of hot dishes +on their head; the flowerpots falling from high window ledges; night, +with the shuttered shops, the silence broken by some sudden street brawl, +the darkness shaken by a flare of torches as some great man, wrapped in +his scarlet cloak, passes along from a dinner-party with his long train +of clients and slaves: these scenes live for us in Juvenal, and are +perhaps the picture of ancient Rome that is most abidingly impressed on +our memory. The substance of the satire is familiar to English readers +from the fine copy of Johnson, whose _London_ follows it closely, and is +one of the ablest and most animated modern imitations of a classical +original. The same author's noble poem on the _Vanity of Human Wishes_ is +a more free, but equally spirited rendering of the tenth satire, which +stands at the head of the later portion of Juvenal's work. In this, and +in those of the subsequent satires which do not show traces of declining +power, notably the eleventh and thirteenth, the rhetoric is less gaudy +and the thought rises to a nobler tone. The fine passage at the end of +the tenth satire, where he points out what it is permitted mankind to +pray for, and that in the thirteenth, where he paints the torments of +conscience in the unpunished sinner, have something in them which +combines the lofty ardour of Lucretius with the subtle psychological +insight of Horace, and to readers in all ages have been, as they still +remain, a powerful influence over conduct. Equally elevated in tone, and +with a temperate gravity peculiar to itself, is the part of the +fourteenth satire which deals with the education of the young. We seem to +hear once more in it the enlightened eloquence of Quintilian; in the +famous _Maxima debetur puero reverentia_ he sums up in a single memorable +phrase the whole spirit of the instructor and the moralist. The allusions +to childhood here and elsewhere show Juvenal on his most pleasing side; +his rhetorical vices had not infected the real simplicity of his nature, +or his admiration for goodness and innocence. In his power over trenchant +expression he rivals Tacitus himself. Some of his phrases, like the one +just quoted, have obtained a world-wide currency, and even reached the +crowning honour of habitual misquotation; his _Hoc volo sic iubeo_, his +_Mens Sana in corpore sano_, his _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ are +more familiar than all but the best-known lines of Virgil and Horace. But +perhaps his most characteristic lines are rather those where his moral +indignation breaks forth in a sort of splendid violence quite peculiar to +himself; lines like-- + + _Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas,_ + +or-- + + _Magnaque numinibus vota exaudita malignis,_ + +in which the haughty Roman language is still used with unimpaired weight +and magnificence. + +To pass from Juvenal to the other distinguished contemporary of Tacitus, +the younger Pliny, is like exchanging the steaming atmosphere and +gorgeous colours of a hot-house for the commonplace trimness of a +suburban garden. The nephew and adopted son of his celebrated uncle, +Pliny had received from his earliest years the most elaborate training +which ever fell to the lot of mediocrity. His uncle's death left him at +the age of seventeen already a finished pedant. The story which he tells, +with obvious self-satisfaction, of how he spent the awful night of the +eruption of Vesuvius in making extracts from Livy for his commonplace +book, sets the whole man before us. He became a successful pleader in the +courts, and passed through the usual public offices up to the consulate. +At the age of fifty he was imperial legate of Bithynia: the extant +official correspondence between him and the Emperor during this +governorship shows him still unchanged; upright and conscientious, but +irresolute, pedantic, and totally unable to think and act for himself in +any unusual circumstances. The contrast between Pliny's fidgety +indecision and the quiet strength and inexhaustible patience of Trajan, +though scarcely what Pliny meant to bring out, is the first and last +impression conveyed to us by this curious correspondence. The nine books +of his private letters, though prepared, and in many cases evidently +written for publication, give a varied and interesting picture of the +time. Here, too, the character of the writer in its virtues and its +weakness is throughout unmistakable. Pliny, the patriotic citizen,-- +Pliny, the munificent patron,--Pliny, the eminent man of letters,--Pliny, +the affectionate husband and humane master,--Pliny, the man of principle, +is in his various phases the real subject of the whole collection. His +opinions are always just and elegant; few writers can express truisms +with greater fervour. The letters to Tacitus with whom he was throughout +life in close intimacy, are among the most interesting and the fullest of +unintentional humour. Tacitus was the elder of the two; and Pliny, "when +very young"--the words are his own,--had chosen him as his model and +sought to follow his fame. "There were then many writers of brilliant +genius; but you," he writes to Tacitus, "so strong was the affinity of +our natures, seemed to me at once the easiest to imitate and the most +worthy of imitation. Now we are named together; both of us have, I may +say, some name in literature, for, as I include myself, I must be +moderate in my praise of you." This to the author who had already +published the _Histories!_ Before so exquisite a self-revelation +criticism itself is silenced. + +The cult of Ciceronianism established by Quintilian is the real origin of +the collection of Pliny's _Letters_. Cicero and Pliny had many weaknesses +and some virtues in common, and the desire of emulating Cicero, which +Pliny openly and repeatedly expresses, had a considerable effect in +exaggerating his weaknesses. Cicero was vain, quick-tempered, excitable; +his sensibilities were easily moved, and found natural and copious +expression in the language of which he was a consummate master. Pliny, +the most steady-going of mankind, sets himself to imitate this excitable +temperament with the utmost seriousness; he cultivates sensibility, he +even cultivates vanity. His elaborate and graceful descriptions of +scenery--the fountain of Clitumnus or the villa overlooking the Tiber +valley--are no more consciously insincere than his tears over the death +of friends, or the urgency with which he begs his wife to write to him +from the country twice a day. But these fine feelings are meant primarily +to impress the public; and a public which could be impressed by the +spectacle of a man giving a dinner-party, and actually letting his +untitled guests drink the same wine that was being drunk at the head of +the table, put little check upon lapses of taste. + +Yet with all his affectations and fatuities, Pliny compels respect, and +even a measure of admiration, by the real goodness of his character. +Where a good life is lived, it hardly becomes us to be too critical of +motives and springs of action; and in Pliny's case the practice of +domestic and civic virtue was accompanied by a considerable literary +gift. Had we a picture drawn with equal copiousness and grace of the Rome +of Marcus Aurelius half a century later, it would be a priceless addition +to history. Pliny's world--partly because it is presented with such rich +detail--reminds us, more than that of any other period of Roman history, +of the society of our own day. To pass from Cicero's letters to his is +curiously like passing from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century. In +other respects, indeed, they have what might be called an eighteenth +century flavour. Some of the more elaborate of them would fall quite +naturally into place among the essays of the _Spectator_ or the +_Rambler;_ in many others the combination of thin and lucid common-sense +with a vein of calculated sensibility can hardly be paralleled till we +reach the age of Rousseau. + +Part of this real or assumed sensibility was the interest in scenery and +the beauties of nature, which in Pliny, as in the eighteenth century +authors, is cultivated for its own sake as an element in self-culture. In +the words with which he winds up one of the most elaborate of his +descriptive pieces, that on the lake of Vadimo in Tuscany--_Me nihil +aeque ac naturae opera delectant_--there is an accent which hardly recurs +till the age of the _Seasons_ and of Gray's _Letters_. Like Gray, Pliny +took a keen pleasure in exploring the more romantic districts of his +country; his description of the lake in the letter just mentioned is +curiously like passages from the journal in which Gray records his +discovery--for it was little less--of Thirlmere and Derwentwater. He +views the Clitumnus with the eye of an accomplished landscape-gardener; +he notes the cypresses on the hill, the ash and poplar groves by the +water's edge; he counts the shining pebbles under the clear ice-cold +water, and watches the green reflections of the overhanging trees; and +finally, as Thomson or Cowper might have done, mentions the abundance of +comfortable villas as the last charm of the landscape. + +The munificent benefactions of Pliny to his native town of Comum, and his +anxiety that, instead of sending its most promising boys to study at +Milan--only thirty miles off--it should provide for them at home what +would now be called a university education, are among the many +indications which show us how Rome was diffusing itself over Italy, as +Italy was over the Latin-speaking provinces. Under Hadrian and the +Antonines this process went on with even growing force. Country life, or +that mixture of town and country life afforded by the small provincial +towns, came to be more and more of a fashion, and the depopulation of the +capital had made sensible progress long before the period of renewed +anarchy that followed the assassination of Commodus. Whether the rapid +decay of Latin literature which took place after the death of Pliny and +Tacitus was connected with this weakening of the central life of Rome, is +a question to which we hardly can hazard a definite answer. Under the +three reigns which succeeded that of Trajan, a period of sixty-four years +of internal peace, of beneficent rule, of enlightened and humane +legislation, the cultured society shown to us in Pliny's _Letters_ as +diffused all over Italy remained strangely silent. Of all the streams of +tradition which descended on this age, the schools of law and grammar +alone kept their course; the rest dwindle away and disappear. Sixty years +pass without a single poet or historian, even of the second rate; one or +two eminent jurists share the field with one or two inconsiderable +extract-makers and epitomators, who barely rise out of the common herd of +undistinguished grammarians. Among the obscure poets mentioned by Pliny, +the name of Vergilius Romanus may excite a momentary curiosity; he was +the author of Terentian comedies, which probably did not long survive the +private recitations for which they were composed. The epitome of the +_History_ of Pompeius Trogus, made by the otherwise unknown Marcus +Junianus Justinus, has been already mentioned; like the brief and poorly +executed abridgment of Livy by Julius or Lucius Annaeus Florus (one of +the common text-books of the Middle Ages), it is probably to be placed +under Hadrian. Javolenus Priscus, a copious and highly esteemed juridical +writer, and head of one of the two great schools of Roman jurisprudence, +is best remembered by the story of his witty interruption at a public +recitation, which Pliny (part of whose character it was to joke with +difficulty) tells with a scandalised gravity even more amusing than the +story itself. His successor as head of the school, Salvius Julianus, was +of equal juristic distinction; his codification of praetorian law +received imperial sanction from Hadrian, and became the authorised civil +code. He was one of the instructors of Marcus Aurelius. The wealth he +acquired by his profession was destined, in the strange revolutions of +human affairs, to be the purchase-money of the Empire for his great- +grandson, Didius Julianus, when it was set up at auction by the +praetorian guards. More eminent as a man of letters than either of these +is their contemporary Gaius, whose _Institutes of Civil Law_, published +at the beginning of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, have ever since +remained one of the foremost manuals of Roman jurisprudence. + +But the literary poverty of this age in Latin writing is most strikingly +indicated by merely naming its principal author. At any previous period +the name of Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus would have been low down in the +second rank: here it rises to the first; nor is there any other name +which fairly equals his, either in importance or in interest. The son of +an officer of the thirteenth legion, Suetonius practised in early life as +an advocate, subsequently became one of Hadrian's private secretaries, +and devoted his later years to literary research and compilation, +somewhat in the manner, though without the encyclopedic scope, of Varro. +In his youth he had been an intimate friend of the younger Pliny, who +speaks in high terms of his learning and integrity. The greater part of +his voluminous writings are lost; they included many works on grammar, +rhetoric, and archaeology, and several on natural history and physical +science. Fragments survive of his elaborate treatise _De Viris +Illustribus,_ an exhaustive history of Latin literature up to his own +day: excerpts made from it by St. Jerome in his _Chronicle_ are the +source from which much of our information as to Latin authors is derived, +and several complete lives have been prefixed to manuscripts of the works +of the respective authors, and thus independently preserved. But his most +interesting, and probably his most valuable work, the _Lives of the +Twelve Caesars_, has made him one of the most widely known of the later +classical writers. It was published under Hadrian in the year 120, and +dedicated to his praetorian prefect, Septicius Clarus. Tacitus (perhaps +because he was still alive) is never mentioned, and not certainly made +use of. Both authors had access, in the main, to the same materials; but +the confidential position of Suetonius as Hadrian's secretary no doubt +increased his natural tendency to collect stories and preserve all sorts +of trivial or scandalous gossip, rather than make any attempt to write +serious history. It is just this, however, which gives unique interest +and value to the _Lives of the Caesars_. We can spare political insight +or consecutive arrangement in an author who is so lavish in the personal +detail that makes much of the life of history; who tells us the colour of +Caesar's eyes, who quotes from a dozen private letters of Augustus, who +shows us Caligula shouting to the moon from his palace roof, and Nero +lecturing on the construction of the organ. There perhaps never was a +series of biographies so crammed with anecdote. Nor is the style without +a certain sort of merit, from its entire and unaffected simplicity. After +all the fine writing of the previous century it is, for a little while, +almost a relief to come on an author who is frankly without style, and +says what he has to say straightforwardly. But it is only the absorbing +interest of the matter which makes this kind of writing long endurable. +It is, in truth, the beginning of barbarism; and Suetonius measures more +than half the distance from the fine familiar prose of the Golden Age to +the base jargon of the authors of the _Augustan History_ a century and a +half later, under Diocletian. + +Amid the decay of imagination and of the higher qualities of style, the +tradition of industry and accuracy to some degree survived. The +biographies of Suetonius show considerable research and complete honesty; +and the same qualities, though united with a feebler judgment, appear in +the interesting miscellanies of his younger contemporary, Aulus Gellius. +This work, published under the fanciful title of _Noctes Atticae_, is +valuable at once as a collection of extracts from older writers and as a +source of information regarding the knowledge and studies of his own age. +Few authors are more scrupulously accurate in quotation; and by this +conscientiousness, as well as by his real admiration for the great +writers, he shows the pedantry of the time on its most pleasing side. + +The twenty books of the _Noctes Atticae_ were the compilation of many +years; but the title was chosen from the fact of the work having been +begun during a winter spent by the author at Athens, when about thirty +years of age. He was only one among a number of his countrymen, old as +well as young, who found the atmosphere of that university town more +congenial to study than the noisy, unhealthy, and crowded capital, or +than the quiet, but ill-equipped, provincial towns of Italy. Athens once +more became, for a short time, the chief centre of European culture. +Herodes Atticus, that remarkable figure who traced his descent to the +very beginnings of Athenian history and the semi-mythical Aeacidae of +Aegina, and who was consul of Rome under Antoninus Pius, had taken up his +permanent residence in his native town, and devoted his vast wealth to +the architectural embellishment of Athens, and to a munificent patronage +of letters. Plutarch and Arrian, the two most eminent authors of the age, +both spent much of their time there; and the Emperor Hadrian, by his +repeated and protracted visits--he once lived at Athens for three years +together--established the reputation of the city as a fashionable resort, +and superintended the building of an entirely new quarter to accommodate +the great influx of permanent residents. The accident of imperial +patronage doubtless added force to the other causes which made Greek take +fresh growth, and become for a time almost the dominant language of the +Empire. Though two centuries were still to pass before the foundation of +Constantinople, the centre of gravity of the huge fabric of government +was already passing from Italy to the Balkan peninsula, and Italy itself +was becoming slowly but surely one of the Western provinces. Nature +herself seemed to have fixed the Eastern limit of the Latin language at +the Adriatic, and even in Italy Greek was equally familiar with Latin to +the educated classes. Suetonius, Fronto, Hadrian himself, wrote in Latin +and Greek indifferently. Marcus Aurelius used Greek by preference, even +when writing of his predecessors and the events of Roman history. From +Plutarch to Lucian the Greek authors completely predominate over the +Latin. In the sombre century which followed, both Greek and Latin +literature were all but extinguished; the partial revival of the latter +in the fourth century was artificial and short-lived; and though the +tradition of the classical manner took long to die away, the classical +writers themselves completely cease with Suetonius. A new Latin, that of +the Middle Ages, was already rising to take the place of the speech +handed down by the Republic to the Empire. + + + + +V. + +THE _ELOCUTIO NOVELLA_. + + +Though the partial renascence in art and letters which took place in the +long peaceful reign of Hadrian was on the whole a Greek, or, at all +events, a Graeco-Roman movement, an attempt at least towards a +corresponding movement in purely Latin literature, both in prose and +verse, was made about the same time, and might have had important results +had outward circumstances allowed it a reasonable chance of development. +As it is, Apuleius and Fronto in prose, and the new school of poets, of +whom the unknown author of the _Pervigilium Veneris_ is the most striking +and typical, represent not merely a fresh refinement in the artificial +management of thought and language, but the appearance on the surface of +certain native qualities in Latin, long suppressed by the decisive +supremacy of the manner established as classical under the Republic, but +throughout latent in the structure and temperament of the language. Just +when Latin seemed to be giving way on all hands to Greek, the signs are +first seen of a much more momentous change, the rise of a new Latin, +which not only became a common speech for all Europe, but was the +groundwork of the Romance languages and of half a dozen important +national literatures. The decay of education, the growth of vulgarisms, +and the degradation of the fine, but extremely artificial, literary +language of the classical period, went hand in hand towards this change +with the extreme subtleties and refinements introduced by the ablest of +the new writers, who were no longer content, like Quintilian and Pliny, +to rest satisfied with the manner and diction of the Golden Age. The work +of this school of authors is therefore of unusual interest; for they may +not unreasonably be called a school, as working, though unconsciously, +from different directions towards the same common end. + +The theory of this new manner has had considerable light thrown upon it +by the fragments of the works of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, recovered early +in the present century by Angelo Mai from palimpsests in the Vatican and +Ambrosian libraries at Rome and Milan. Fronto was the most celebrated +rhetorician of his time, and exercised a commanding influence on literary +criticism. The reign of the Spanish school was now over; Fronto was of +African origin; and though it does not follow that he was not of pure +Roman blood, the influence of a semi-tropical atmosphere and African +surroundings altered the type, and produced a new strain, which we can +trace later under different forms in the great African school of +ecclesiastical writers headed by Tertullian and Cyprian, and even to a +modified degree in Augustine himself. He was born in the Roman colony of +Cirta, probably a few years after the death of Quintilian. He rose to a +conspicuous position at Rome under Hadrian, and was highly esteemed by +Marcus Antoninus, who not only elevated him to the consulship, but made +him one of the principal tutors of the joint-heirs to the Empire, Marcus +Aurelius and Lucius Verus. He died a few years before Marcus Aurelius. +The recovered fragments of his writings, which are lamentably scanty and +interrupted, are chiefly from his correspondence with his two imperial +pupils. With both of them, and Marcus Aurelius especially, he continued +in later years to be on the most intimate and affectionate relations. The +elderly rhetorician, a martyr, as he keeps complaining, to gout, and the +philosophic Emperor write to each other with the effusiveness of two +school-girls. It is impossible to suspect Marcus Aurelius of insincerity, +and it is easy to understand what a real fervour of admiration his +saintly character might awaken in any one who had the privilege of +watching and aiding its development; but the endearments exchanged in the +letters that pass between "my dearest master" and "my life and lord" are +such as modern taste finds it hard to sympathise with, or even to +understand. + +The single cause for complaint that Fronto had against his pupil was +that, as he advanced in life, he gradually withdrew from the study of +literature to that of philosophy. To Fronto, literature was the one +really important thing in the world; and in his perpetual recurrence to +this theme, he finds occasion to lay down in much detail his own literary +theories and his canons of style. The _Elocutio Novella_, which he +considered it his great work in life to expound and to practise, was +partly a return upon the style of the older Latin authors, partly a new +growth based, as theirs had been, on the actual language of common life. +The prose of Cato and the Gracchi had been, in vocabulary and structure, +the living spoken language of the streets and farms, wrought into shape +in the hands of men of powerful genius. To give fresh vitality to Latin, +Fronto saw, and saw rightly, that the same process of literary genius +working on living material must once more take place. His mistake was in +fancying it possible to go back again to the second century before +Christ, and make a fresh start from that point as though nothing had +happened in the meantime. In our own age we have seen a somewhat similar +fallacy committed by writers who, in their admiration of the richness and +flexibility of Elizabethan English, have tried to write with the same +copiousness of vocabulary and the same freedom of structure as the +Elizabethans. Between these and their object lies an insuperable barrier, +the formed and finished prose of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; +between Fronto and his lay the whole mass of what, in the sustained and +secure judgment of mankind, is the classical prose of the Latin language, +from Cicero to Tacitus. In the simplicity which he pursued there was +something ineradicably artificial, and even unnatural, and the fresh +resources from which he attempted to enrich the literary language and to +form his new Latin resembled, to use his own striking simile, the +exhausted and unwilling population from which the legions could only now +be recruited by the most drastic conscription. + +Yet if Fronto hardly succeeded in founding a new Latin, he was a powerful +influence in the final collapse and disappearance of the old. His +reversion to the style and language of pre-Ciceronian times was only a +temporary fashion; but in the general decay of taste and learning it was +sufficient to break the continuity of Latin literature. The bronze age of +Ennius and Cato had been succeeded, in a broad and stately development, +by the Golden and Silver periods. Under this fresh attack the Latin of +the Silver Age breaks up and goes to pieces, and the failure of Fronto +and his contemporaries to create a new language opens the age of the base +metals. The collapse of the imperial system after the death of Marcus +Aurelius is not more striking or more complete than the collapse of +literature after that of his tutor. + +Of the actual literary achievement of this remarkable critic, when he +turned from criticism and took to construction, the surviving fragments +give but an imperfect idea. Most of the fragments are from private +letters; the rest are from rhetorical exercises, including those of the +so-called _Principia Historiae_, a panegyric upon the campaigns and +administration of Verus in the Asiatic provinces. But among the letters +there are some of a more studied eloquence, which show pretty clearly the +merits and defects of their author as a writer. In narrative he is below +mediocrity: his attempt, for instance, to tell the story of the ring of +Polycrates is incredibly languid and tedious. Where his style reaches its +highest level of force and refinement is in the more imaginative +passages, and in the occasional general reflections where he makes the +thought remarkable by an unexpected cadence of language. A single +characteristic passage may be quoted, the allegory of the Creation of +Sleep. It occurs in a letter urging the Emperor to take a brief rest from +the cares of government during a few days that he was spending at a +little seaside town in Etruria. The admirably sympathetic rendering given +by the late Mr. Pater in _Marius the Epicurean_ will show more clearly +than abstract criticism the distinctively romantic or mediaeval note +which, except in so far as it had been anticipated by the genius of Plato +and Virgil, appears now in literature almost for the first time. + +"They say that our father Jupiter, when he ordered the world at the +beginning, divided time into two parts exactly equal; the one part he +clothed with light, the other with darkness; he called them Day and +Night; and he assigned rest to the night and to the day the work of life. +At that time Sleep was not yet born, and men passed the whole of their +lives awake: only, the quiet of the night was ordained for them, instead +of sleep. But it came to pass, little by little, being that the minds of +men are restless, that they carried on their business alike by night as +by day, and gave no part at all to repose. And Jupiter, when he perceived +that even in the night-time they ceased not from trouble and disputation, +and that even the courts of law remained open, resolved to appoint one of +his brothers to be the overseer of the night and have authority over +man's rest. But Neptune pleaded in excuse the gravity of his constant +charge of the seas, and Father Dis the difficulty of keeping in +subjection the spirits below: and Jupiter, having taken counsel with the +other gods, perceived that the practice of nightly vigils was somewhat in +favour. It was by night, for the most part, that Juno gave birth to her +children; Minerva, the mistress of all art and craft, loved the midnight +lamp; Mars delighted in the night for his plots and sallies; and the +favour of Venus and Bacchus was with those who roused by night. Then it +was that Jupiter formed the design of creating Sleep; and he added him to +the number of the gods, and gave him the charge over night and rest, +putting into his hands the keys of human eyes. With his own hands he +mingled the juices wherewith Sleep should soothe the hearts of mortals-- +herb of Enjoyment and herb of Safety, gathered from a grove in Heaven; +and, from the meadows of Acheron, the herb of Death; expressing from it +one single drop only, no bigger than a tear that one might hide. 'With +this juice,' he said, 'pour slumber upon the eyelids of mortals. So soon +as it hath touched them they will lay themselves down motionless, under +thy power. But be not afraid: they will revive, and in a while stand up +again upon their feet.' After that, Jupiter gave wings to Sleep, +attached, not to his heels like Mercury's, but to his shoulders like the +wings of Love. For he said, 'It becomes thee not to approach men's eyes +as with the noise of a chariot and the rushing of a swift courser, but +with placid and merciful flight, as upon the wings of a swallow--nay! not +so much as with the fluttering of a dove.'" + +Alike in the naïve and almost childlike simplicity of its general +structure, and in its minute and intricate ornament, like that of a +diapered wall or a figured tapestry, where hardly an inch of space is +ever left blank--this new style is much more akin to the manner of the +thirteenth or fourteenth century than to that of the classical period. A +similar quality is shown, not more strikingly, but on a larger scale and +with a more certain touch, in the celebrated prose romance of Fronto's +contemporary, Lucius Apuleius. + +Like Fronto, Apuleius was of African origin. He was born at the Roman +colony of Madaura in Numidia, and educated at Carthage, from which he +proceeded afterwards to the university of Athens. The epithets of _semi- +Numida_ and _semi-Gaetulus_, which he applies to himself, indicate that +he fully felt himself to belong to a civilisation which was not purely +European. Together with the Graeco-Syrian Lucian, this Romano-African +represents the last extension which ancient culture took before finally +fading away or becoming absorbed in new forms. Both were by profession +travelling lecturers; they were the nearest approach which the ancient +world made to what we should now call the higher class of journalist. +Lucian, in his later life--like a journalist nowadays who should enter +Parliament--combined his profession with high public employment; but +Apuleius, so far as is known, spent all his life in writing and +lecturing. Though he was not strictly either an orator or a philosopher, +his works include both speeches and philosophical treatises; but his +chief distinction and his permanent interest are as a novelist both in +the literal and in the accepted sense of the word--a writer of prose +romances in which he carried the _novella elocutio_ to the highest point +it reached. He was born about the year 125; the _Metamorphoses_, his most +famous and his only extant romance, was written at Rome before he was +thirty, soon after he had completed his course of study at Athens. The +philosophical or mystical treatises of his later life, _On the Universe, +On the God of Socrates, On Plato and his Doctrine_, do not rise above the +ordinary level of the Neo-Platonist school, Platonism half understood, +mixed with fanciful Orientalism, and enveloped in a maze of verbiage. +That known as the _Apologia_, an elaborate literary amplification of the +defence which he had to make before the proconsul of Africa against an +accusation of dealing in magic, is the only one which survives of his +oratorical works; and his miscellaneous writings on many branches of +science and natural history, which are conjectured to have formed a sort +of encyclopedia like those of Celsus and Pliny, are all but completely +lost: but the _Florida_, a collection, probably made by himself, of +twenty-four selected passages from the public lectures which he delivered +at Carthage, give an idea of his style as a lecturer, and of the scope +and variety of his talent. The Ciceronian manner of Quintilian and his +school has now completely disappeared. The new style may remind one here +and there of Seneca, but the resemblance does not go far. Fronto, who +speaks of Cicero with grudging and lukewarm praise, regards Seneca as on +the whole the most corrupt among Roman writers, and Apuleius probably +held the same view. He produces his rhetorical effects, not by daring +tropes or accumulations of sonorous phrases, but by a perpetual +refinement of diction which keeps curiously weighing and rejecting words, +and giving every other word an altered value or an unaccustomed setting. +The effect is like that of strange and rather barbarous jewellery. A +remarkable passage, on the power of sight possessed by the eagle, may be +cited as a characteristic specimen of his more elaborate manner. _Quum se +nubium tenus altissime sublimavit_, he writes, _evecta alis totum istud +spatium, qua pluitur et ningitur, ultra quod cacumen nec fulmini nec +fulguri locus est, in ipso, ut ita dixerim, solo aetheris et fastigio +hiemis ... nutu clementi laevorsum vel dextrorsum tota mole corporis +labitur ... inde cuncta despiciens, ibidem pinnarum eminus indefesso +remigio, ac paulisper cunctabundo volatu paene eodem loco pendula +circumtuetur et quaerit quorsus potissimum in praedam superne se proruat +fulminis vice, de caelo improvisa simul campis pecua, simul montibus +feras, simul urbibus homines, uno obtutu sub eodem impetu cernens_. The +first thing that strikes a reader accustomed to classical Latin in a +passage like this is the short broken rhythms, the simple organism of +archaic prose being artificially imitated by carefully and deliberately +breaking up all the structure which the language had been wrought into +through the handling of centuries. The next thing is that half the +phrases are, in the ordinary sense of the word, barely Latin. Apuleius +has all the daring, though not the genius, of Virgil himself in inventing +new Latin or using old Latin in new senses. But Virgil is old Latin to +him no less than Ennius or Pacuvius; in this very passage, with its +elaborate archaisms, there are three phrases taken directly from the +first book of the _Aeneid_. + +In the _Metamorphoses_ the elaboration of the new style culminates. In +its main substance this curious and fantastic romance is a translation +from a Greek original. Its precise relation to the version of the same +story, extant in Greek under the name of Lucian, has given rise to much +argument, and the question cannot be held to be conclusively settled; but +the theory which seems to have most in its favour is that both are +versions of a lost Greek original. Lucian applied his limpid style and +his uncommon power of narration to rewrite what was no doubt a ruder and +more confused story. Apuleius evidently took the story as a mere +groundwork which he might overlay with his own fantastic embroidery. He +was probably attracted to it by the supernatural element, which would +appeal strongly to him, not merely as a professed mystic and a dabbler in +magic, but as a _décadent_ whose art sought out strange experiences and +romantic passions no less than novel rhythms and exotic diction. Under +the light touch of Lucian the supernaturalism of the story is merely that +of a fairy-tale, not believed in or meant to be believed; in the +_Metamorphoses_ a brooding sense of magic is over the whole narrative. In +this spirit he entirely remodels the conclusion of the story. The whole +of the eleventh book, from the vision of the goddess, with which it +opens, to the reception of the hero at the conclusion into the fellowship +of her holy servants, is conceived at the utmost tension of mystical +feeling. "With stars and sea-winds in her raiment," flower-crowned, shod +with victorious palm, clad, under the dark splendours of her heavy pall, +in shimmering white silk shot with saffron and rose like flame, an awful +figure rises out of the moonlit sea: _En adsum_, comes her voice, _rerum +natura parens, elementorum omnium domina, seculorum progenies initialis, +summa numinum, regina manium, prima caelitum, deorum dearumque facies +uniformis, quae caeli luminosa culmina, maris salubria flamina, inferorum +deplorata silentia nutibus meis dispenso_. It was in virtue of such +passages as that from which these words are quoted that Apuleius came to +be regarded soon after his death as an incarnation of Antichrist, sent to +perplex the worshippers of the true God. Already to Lactantius he is not +a curious artist in language, but a magician inspired by diabolical +agency; St. Augustine tells us that, like Apollonius of Tyana, he was set +up by religious paganism as a rival to Jesus Christ. + +Of the new elements interwoven by Apuleius in the story of the +transformations and adventures of Lucius of Patrae (Lucius of Madaura, he +calls him, thus hinting, to the mingled awe and confusion of his readers, +that the events had happened to himself), the fervid religious enthusiasm +of the conclusion is no doubt historically the most important; but what +has made it immortal is the famous story of Cupid and Psyche, which fills +nearly two books of the _Metamorphoses_. With the strangeness +characteristic of the whole work, this wonderful and exquisitely told +story is put in the mouth of a half crazy and drunken old woman, in the +robbers' cave where part of the action passes. But her first half-dozen +words, the _Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina_, lift it in a moment +into the fairy world of pure romance. The story itself is in its +constituent elements a well-known specimen of the _märchen,_ or popular +tale, which is not only current throughout the Aryan peoples, but may be +traced in the popular mythology of all primitive races. It is beyond +doubt in its essential features of immemorial antiquity; but what is +unique about it is its sudden appearance in literature in the full flower +of its most elaborate perfection. Before Apuleius there is no trace of +the story in Greek or Roman writing; he tells it with a daintiness of +touch and a wealth of fanciful ornament that have left later story- +tellers little or nothing to add. The version by which it is best known +to modern readers, that in the _Earthly Paradise_, while, after the +modern poet's manner, expanding the descriptions for their own sake, +follows Apuleius otherwise with exact fidelity. + +In the more highly wrought episodes, like the _Cupid and Psyche_, the new +Latin of Apuleius often approximates nearly to assonant or rhymed verse. +Both rhyme and assonance were to be found in the early Latin which he had +studied deeply, and may be judged from incidental fragments of the +popular language never to have wholly disappeared from common use during +the classical period. Virgil, in his latest work, as has been noticed, +shows a tendency to experiment in combining their use with that of the +Graeco-Latin rhythms. The combination, in the writing of the new school, +of a sort of inchoate verse with an elaborate and even pedantic prose was +too artificial to be permanent; but about the same time attempts were +made at a corresponding new style in regular poetry. Rhymed verse as such +does not appear till later; the work of the _novelli poetae_, as they +were called by the grammarians, partly took the form of reversion to the +trochaic metres which were the natural cadence of the Latin language, +partly of fresh experiments in hitherto untried metres, in both cases +with a large employment of assonance, and the beginnings of an accentual +as opposed to a quantitative treatment. Of these experiments few have +survived; the most interesting is a poem of remarkable beauty preserved +in the Latin Anthology under the name of the _Pervigilium Veneris_. Its +author is unknown, nor can its date be determined with certainty. The +worship of Venus Genetrix, for whose spring festival the poem is written, +had been revived on a magnificent scale by Hadrian; and this fact, +together with the internal evidence of the language, make it assignable +with high probability to the age of the Antonines. The use of the +preposition _de_, almost as in the Romance languages, where case- +inflexions would be employed in classical Latin, has been held to argue +an African origin; while its remarkable mediaevalisms have led some +critics, against all the other indications, to place its date as low as +the fourth or even the fifth century. + +The _Pervigilium Veneris_ is written in the trochaic septenarian verse +which had been freely used by the earliest Roman poets, but had since +almost dropped out of literary use. With the revival of the trochaic +movement the long divorce between metrical stress and spoken accent +begins to break down. The metre is indeed accurate, and even rigorous, in +its quantitative structure; but instead of the prose and verse stresses +regularly clashing as they do in the hexameter or elegiac, they tend +broadly towards coinciding, and do entirely coincide in one-third of the +lines of the poem. We are on the very verge of the accentual Latin poetry +of the Middle Ages, and the affinity is made closer by the free use of +initial and terminal assonances, and even of occasional rhyme. The use of +stanzas with a recurring refrain was not unexampled; Virgil, following +Theocritus and Catullus, had employed the device with singular beauty in +the eighth _Eclogue_; but this is the first known instance of the refrain +being added to a poem in stanzas of a fixed and equal length;[11] it is +more than halfway towards the structure of an eleventh-century Provençal +_alba_. The keen additional pleasure given by rhyme was easily felt in a +language where accidental rhymes come so often as they do in Latin, but +the rhyme here, so far as there is any, is rather incidental to the way +in which the language is used, with its silvery chimes and recurrences, +than sought out for its own sake; there is more of actual rhyming in some +of the prose of Apuleius. The refrain itself- + + _Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet--_ + +has its internal recurrence, the folding back of the musical phrase upon +itself; and as it comes over and over again it seems to set the whole +poem swaying to its own music. In one of the most remarkable of his +lyrics (like this poem, a song of spring), Tennyson has come very near, +as near perhaps as it is possible to do in words, towards explaining the +actual process through which poetry comes into existence: _The fairy +fancies range, and lightly stirr'd, Ring little bells of change from word +to word_. In the _Pervigilium Veneris_ with its elaborate simplicity-- +partly a conscious literary artifice, partly a real reversion to the +childhood of poetical form--this process is, as it were, laid bare before +our eyes; the ringing phrases turn and return, and expand and interlace +and fold in, as though set in motion by a strain of music. + + _Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet; + Ver novum, ver iam canorum, ver renatus orbis est; + Vere concordant amores, vere nubunt alites + Et nemus comam resolvit de maritis imbribus: + Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet--_ + +in these lines of clear melody the poem opens, and the rest is all a +series of graceful and florid variations or embroideries upon them; the +first line perpetually repeating itself through the poem like a thread of +gold in the pattern or a phrase in the music. In the soft April night the +tapering flame-shaped rosebud, soaked in warm dew, swells out and breaks +into a fire of crimson at dawn. + + _Facta Cypridis de cruore deque Amoris osculo + Deque gemmis deque flammis deque solis purpuris + Cras ruborem qui latebat veste tectus ignea + Unico marita nodo non pudebit solvere. + Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet._ + +Flower-garlanded and myrtle-shrouded, the Spring worshippers go dancing +through the fields that break before them into a sheet of flowers; among +them the boy Love goes, without his torch and his arrows; amid gold- +flowered broom, under trees unloosening their tresses, in myrtle-thicket +and poplar shade, the whole land sings with the voices of innumerable +birds. Then with a sudden sob the pageant ceases:-- + + _Ilia cantat, nos tacemus: quando ver venit meum? + Quando fiam uti chelidon ut tacere desinam?_ + +A second spring, in effect, was not to come for poetry till a thousand +years later; once more then we hear the music of this strange poem, not +now in the bronze utterance of a mature and magnificent language, but +faintly and haltingly, in immature forms that yet have notes of new and +piercing sweetness. + + _Bels dous amicx, fassam un joc novel + Ins el jardi on chanton li auzel--_ + +so it rings out in Southern France, "in an orchard under the whitethorn +leaf;" and in England, later, but yet a century before Chaucer, the same +clear note is echoed, _bytuene Mershe ant Averil, whan spray bigineth to +spring._ + +But in the Roman Empire under the Antonines the soil, the race, the +language, were alike exhausted. The anarchy of the third century brought +with it the wreck of the whole fabric of civilisation; and the new +religion, already widely diffused and powerful, was beginning to absorb +into itself on all sides the elements of thought and emotion which tended +towards a new joy and a living art. + + + + +VI. + +EARLY LATIN CHRISTIANITY: MINUCIUS FELIX, TERTULLIAN, LACTANTIUS. + + +The new religion was long in adapting itself to literary form; and if, +between the era of the Antonines and that of Diocletian, a century passes +in which all the important literature is Christian, this is rather due to +the general decay of art and letters, than to any high literary quality +in the earlier patristic writing. Christianity began among the lower +classes, and in the Greek-speaking provinces of the Empire; after it +reached Rome, and was diffused through the Western provinces, it remained +for a long time a somewhat obscure sect, confined, in the first instance, +to the small Jewish or Graeco-Asiatic colonies which were to be found in +all centres of commerce, and spreading from them among the uneducated +urban populations. The persecution of Nero was directed against obscure +people, vaguely known as a sort of Jews, and the martyrdom of the two +great apostles was an incident that passed without remark and almost +without notice. Tacitus dismisses the Christians in a few careless words, +and evidently classes the new religion with other base Oriental +superstitions as hardly worth serious mention. The well-known +correspondence between Pliny and Trajan, on the subject of the repressive +measures to be taken against the Christians of Bithynia, indicates that +Christianity had, by the beginning of the second century, taken a large +and firm footing in the Eastern provinces; but it is not till a good many +years later that we have any certain indication of its obtaining a hold +on the educated classes. The legend of the conversion of Statius seems to +be of purely mediaeval origin. Flavius Clemens, the cousin of the Emperor +Domitian, executed on the ground of "atheism" during the year of his +consulship, is claimed, though without certainty, as the earliest +Christian martyr of high rank. Even in the middle of the second century, +the Church of Rome mainly consisted of people who could barely speak or +write Latin. The Muratorian fragment, the earliest Latin Christian +document, which general opinion dates within a few years of the death of +Marcus Aurelius, and which is part of an extremely important official +list of canonical writings issued by the authority of the Roman Church, +is barbarous in construction and diction. It is in the reign of Commodus, +amid the wreck of all other literature, that we come on the first +Christian authors. Victor, Bishop of Rome from the year 186, is mentioned +by Jerome as the first author of theological treatises in Latin; taken +together with his attempt to excommunicate the Asiatic Churches on the +question, already a burning one, of the proper date of keeping Easter, +this shows that the Latin Church was now gaining independent force and +vitality. + +Two main streams may be traced in the Christian literature which begins +with the reign of Commodus. On the one hand, there is what may be called +the African school, writing in the new Latin; on the other, the Italian +school, which attempted to mould classical Latin to Christian use. The +former bears a close affinity in style to Apuleius, or, rather, to the +movement of which Apuleius was the most remarkable product; the latter +succeeds to Quintilian and his contemporaries as the second impulse of +Ciceronianism. The two opposing methods appear at their sharpest contrast +in the earliest authors of each, Tertullian and Minucius Felix. The vast +preponderance of the former, alike in volume of production and fire of +eloquence, offers a suggestive parallel to the comparative importance of +the two schools in the history of ecclesiastical Latin. Throughout the +third and fourth centuries the African school continues to predominate, +but it takes upon itself more of the classical finish, and tames the +first ferocity of its early manner. Cyprian inclines more to the style of +Tertullian; Lactantius, "the Christian Cicero," reverts strongly towards +the classical forms: and finally, towards the end of the fourth century, +the two languages are combined by Augustine, in proportions which, +throughout the Middle Ages, form the accepted type of the language of +Latin Christianity. + +In a fine passage at the opening of the fifth book of his _Institutes of +Divinity,_ Lactantius regrets the imperfect literary support given to +Christianity by his two eminent predecessors. The obscurity and harshness +of Tertullian, he says (and to this may be added his Montanism, which +fluctuated on the edge of heresy), prevent him from being read or +esteemed as widely as his great literary power deserves; while Minucius, +in his single treatise, the _Octavius,_ gave a brilliant specimen of his +grace and power as a Christian apologist, but did not carry out the task +to its full scope. This last treatise is, indeed, of unique interest, not +only as a fine, if partial, vindication of the new religion, but as the +single writing of the age, Christian or pagan, which in style and diction +follows the classical tradition, and almost reaches the classical +standard. As to the life of its author, nothing is known beyond the +scanty indications given in the treatise itself. Even his date is not +wholly certain, and, while the reign of Commodus is his most probable +period, Jerome appears to allude to him as later than Tertullian, and +some modern critics incline to place the work in the reign of Alexander +Severus. The _Octavius_ is a dialogue in the Ciceronian manner, showing +especially a close study of the _De Natura Deorum_. A brief and graceful +introduction gives an account of the scene of the dialogue. The narrator, +with his two friends, Octavius and Caecilius, the former a Christian, the +latter a somewhat wavering adherent of the old faith, are taking a walk +on the beach near Ostia on a beautiful autumn morning, watching the +little waves lapping on the sand, and boys playing duck-and-drake with +pieces of tile, when Caecilius kisses his hand, in the ordinary pagan +usage, to an image of Serapis which they pass. The incident draws them on +to a theological discussion. Caecilius sets forth the argument against +Christianity in detail, and Octavius replies to him point by point; at +the end, Caecilius professes himself overcome, and declares his adhesion +to the faith of his friend. Both in the attack and in the defence it is +only the rational side of the new doctrine which is at issue. The unity +of God, the resurrection of the body, and retribution in a future state, +make up the sum of Christianity as it is presented. The name of Christ is +not once mentioned, nor is his divinity directly asserted. There is no +allusion to the sacraments, or to the doctrine of the Redemption; and +Octavius neither quotes from nor refers to the writings of either Old or +New Testament. Among early Christian writings, this method of treatment +is unexampled elsewhere. The work is an attempt to present the new +religion to educated opinion as a reasonable philosophic system; as we +read it, we might be in the middle of the eighteenth century. With this +temperate rationalism is combined a clearness and purity of diction, +founded on the Ciceronian style, but without Cicero's sumptuousness of +structure, that recalls the best prose of the Silver Age. + +The author of the _Octavius_ was a lawyer, who practised in the Roman +courts. The literary influence of Quintilian no doubt lasted longer among +the legal profession, for whose guidance he primarily wrote, than among +the grammarians and journalists, who represent in this age the general +tendency of the world of letters. But even in the legal profession the +new Latin had established itself, and, except in the capital, seems to +have almost driven out the classical manner. Its most remarkable exponent +among Christian writers was, up to the time of his conversion, a pleader +in the Carthaginian law-courts. + +Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus was born at Carthage towards the +end of the reign of Antoninus Pius. When he was a young man, the fame of +Apuleius as a writer and lecturer was at its height; and though +Tertullian himself never mentions him (as Apuleius, on his side, never +refers in specific terms to the Christian religion), they must have been +well known to each other, and their antagonism is of the kind which grows +out of strong similarities of nature. Apuleius passed for a magician: +Tertullian was a firm believer in magic, and his conversion to +Christianity was, he himself tells us, very largely due to confessions of +its truth extorted from demons, at the strange spiritualistic séances_ +which were a feature of the time among all classes. His conversion took +place in the last year of Commodus. The tension between the two +religions--for in Africa, at all events, the old and the new were +followed with equally fiery enthusiasm--had already reached breaking +point. A heathen mob, headed by the priestesses of the _Mater et Virgo +Caelestis,_ the object of the ecstatic worship afterwards transferred to +the mother of Christ, had two or three years before besieged the +proconsul of Africa in his own house because he refused to order a +general massacre of the Christians. In the anarchy after the +assassination of Commodus, the persecution broke out, and continued to +rage throughout the reign of Septimius Severus. It was in these years +that Tertullian poured forth the series of apologetic and controversial +writings whose fierce enthusiasm and impetuous eloquence open the history +of Latin Christianity. The _Apologeticum,_ the greatest of his earlier +works, and, upon the whole, his masterpiece, was composed towards the +beginning of this persecution, in the last years of the second century. +The terms in which its purport is stated, _Quod religio Christiana +damnanda non sit, nisi qualis sit prius intelligatur,_ might lead one to +expect a grave and reasoned defence of the new doctrine, like that of the +_Octavius_. But Tertullian's strength is in attack, not in defence; and +his apology passes almost at once into a fierce indictment of paganism, +painted in all the gaudiest colours of African rhetoric. Towards the end, +he turns violently upon those who say that Christianity is merely a +system of philosophy: and writers like Minucius are included with the +eclectic pagan schoolmen in his condemnation. Here, for the first time, +the position is definitely taken which has since then had so vast and +varied an influence, that the Holy Scriptures are the source of all +wisdom, and that the poetry and philosophy of the Graeco-Roman world were +alike derived or perverted from the inspired writings of the Old +Testament. Moses was five hundred years before Homer; and therefore, runs +his grandiose and sweeping fallacy, Homer is derived from the books of +Moses. The argument, strange to say, has lived almost into our own day. + +In thus breaking with heathen philosophy and poetry, Tertullian +necessarily broke with the literary traditions of Europe for a thousand +years. The Holy Scriptures, as a canon of revealed truth, became +incidentally but inevitably a canon of literary style likewise. Writings +soaked in quotations from the Hebrew poets and prophets could not but be +affected by their style through and through. A current Latin translation +of the Old and New Testament--the so-called _Itala,_ which itself only +survives as the ground-work of later versions--had already been made, and +was in wide use. Its rude literal fidelity imported into Christian Latin +an enormous mass of Grecisms and Hebraisms--the latter derived from the +original writings, the former from the Septuagint version of the Old +Testament--which combined with its free use of popular language and its +relaxed grammar to force the new Latin further and further away from the +classical tradition. The new religion, though it met its educated +opponents in argument and outshone them in rhetorical embellishment, +still professed, after the example of its first founders, to appeal +mainly to the simple and the poor. "Stand forth, O soul!" cries +Tertullian in another treatise of the same period; "I appeal to thee, not +as wise with a wisdom formed in the schools, trained in libraries, or +nourished in Attic academy or portico, but as simple and rude, without +polish or culture; such as thou art to those who have thee only, such as +thou art in the crossroad, the highway, the dockyard." + +In the ardour of its attacks upon the heathen civilisation, the rising +Puritanism of the Church bore hard upon the whole of culture. As against +the theatre and the gladiatorial games, indeed, it occupied an +unassailable position. There is a grim and characteristic humour in +Tertullian's story of the Christian woman who went to the theatre and +came back from it possessed with a devil, and the devil's crushing reply, +_In meo eam inveni,_ to the expostulation of the exorcist; a nobler +passion rings in his pleading against the butcheries of the amphitheatre, +"Do you wish to see blood? Behold Christ's!" His declamations against +worldly luxury and ornament in the sumptuous pages of the _De Cultu +Feminarum_ are not more sweeping or less sincere than those of Horace or +Juvenal; but the violent attack made on education and on literature +itself in the _De Idololatria_ shows the growth of that persecuting +spirit which, as it gathered material force, destroyed ancient art and +literature wherever it found them, and which led Pope Gregory, four +hundred years later, to burn the magnificent library founded by Augustus. +_Nos sumus in quos decucurrerunt fines seculorum,_ "upon us the ends of +the world are come," is the burden of Tertullian's impassioned argument. +What were art and letters to those who waited, from moment to moment, for +the glory of the Second Coming? Yet for ten years or more he continued to +pour forth his own brilliant essays; and while the substance of his +teaching becomes more and more harsh and vindictive, the force of his +rhetoric, his command over irony and invective, the gorgeous richness of +his vocabulary, remain as striking as ever. In the strange and often +romantic psychology of the _De Anima,_ and in the singular clothes- +philosophy of the _De Pallio,_ he appears as the precursor of Swedenborg +and Teufelsdrückh. A remarkable passage in the former treatise, in which +he speaks of the growing pressure of over-population in the Empire, +against which wars, famines, and pestilences had become necessary if +unwelcome remedies, may lead us to reconsider the theory, now largely +accepted, that the Roman Empire decayed and perished for want of men. +With the advance of years his growing antagonism to the Catholic Church +is accompanied by a further hardening of his style. The savage Puritanism +of the _De Monogamia_ and _De Ieiunio_ is couched in a scholastic diction +where the tradition of culture is disappearing; and in the gloomy +ferocity of the _De Pudicitia,_ probably the latest of his extant works, +he comes to a final rupture alike with Catholicism and with humane +letters. + +The African school of patristic writers, of which Tertullian is at once +the earliest and the most imposing figure, and of which he was indeed to +a large degree the direct founder, continued for a century after his +death to include the main literary production of Latin Christianity. +Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, Bishop of Carthage from the year 248, +though a pupil and an admirer of Tertullian, reverts in his own writings +at once to orthodoxy and to an easy and copious diction. In earlier youth +he had been a professor of rhetoric; after his conversion in mature life, +he gave up all his wealth to the poor, and devoted his great literary +gifts to apologetic and hortatory writings. He escaped the Decian +persecution by retiring from Carthage; but a few years later he was +executed in the renewed outbreak of judicial massacres which sullied the +short and disastrous reign of Valerian. Forty years after Cyprian's death +the rhetorician Arnobius of Sicca in Numidia renewed the attack on +paganism, rather than the defence or exposition of Christianity, in the +seven books _Adversus Nationes_, which he is said to have written as a +proof of the sincerity of his conversion. "Uneven and ill-proportioned," +in the phrase of Jerome, this work follows neither the elaborate rhetoric +of the early African school, nor the chaster and more polished style of +Cyprian, but rather renews the inferior and slovenly manner of the +earlier antiquarians and encyclopedists. A free use of the rhetorical +figures goes side by side with a general want of finish and occasional +lapses into solecism. His literary gift is so small, and his knowledge of +the religion he professes to defend so slight and so excessively +inaccurate, that theologians and men of letters for once agree that his +main value consists in the fragments of antiquarian information which he +preserves. But he has a further claim to notice as the master of a +celebrated pupil. + +Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius, a name eminent among patristic +authors, and not inconsiderable in humane letters, had, like Cyprian, +been a professor of rhetoric, and embraced Christianity in mature life. +That he was a pupil of Arnobius is established by the testimony of +Jerome; his African birth is only a doubtful inference from this fact. +Towards the end of the third century he established a school at +Nicomedia, which had practically become the seat of empire under the rule +of Diocletian; and from there he was summoned to the court of Gaul to +superintend the education of Crispus, the ill-fated son of Constantine. +The new religion had passed through its last and sharpest persecution +under Diocletian; now, of the two joint Emperors Constantine openly +favoured the Christians, and Licinius had been forced to relax the +hostility towards them which he had at first shown. As it permeated the +court and saw the reins of government almost within its grasp, the Church +naturally dropped some of the anathematising spirit in which it had +regarded art and literature in the days of its earlier struggles. +Lactantius brought to its service a taste trained in the best literary +tradition; and while some doubt was cast on his dogmatic orthodoxy as +regards the precise definition of the Persons of the Trinity, his pure +and elegant diction was accepted as a model for later writers. His +greatest work, the seven books of the _Institutes of Divinity_, was +published a few years before the victory of Constantine over Maxentius +outside the walls of Rome, which was the turning-point in the contest +between the two religions. It is an able exposition of Christian doctrine +in a style which, for eloquence, copiousness, and refinement, is in the +most striking contrast to the wretched prose produced by contemporary +pagan writers. The influence of Cicero is obvious and avowed throughout; +but the references in the work show the author to have been familiar with +the whole range of the Latin classics, poets as well as prose writers. +Ennius, the comedians and satirists, Virgil and Horace, are cited by him +freely; he even dares to praise Ovid. In his treatise _On Gods +Workmanship_--_De Opificio Dei_--the arguments are often borrowed with +the language from Cicero, but Lucretius is also quoted and combated. The +more fanatical side of the new religion appears in the curious work, _De +Mortibus Persecutorum_, written after Constantine had definitely thrown +in his lot with Christianity. It is famous as containing the earliest +record of the vision of Constantine before the battle of the Mulvian +Bridge; and its highly coloured account of the tragical fates of the +persecuting Emperors, from Nero to Diocletian, had a large effect in +fixing the tradition of the later Empire as viewed throughout the Middle +Ages. The long passionate protest of the Church against heathen tyranny +breaks out here into equally passionate exultation; the Roman Empire is +already seen, as it was later by St. Augustine, fading and crumbling away +with the growth of the new and imperial City of God. + +Besides the large and continuous volume of its prose production, the +Latin Church of the third century also made its first essays in poetry. +They are both rude and scanty; it was not till late in the fourth century +that Christian poetry reached its full development in the hymns of +Ambrose and Prudentius, and the hexameter poems of Paulinus of Nola. The +province of Africa, fertile as it was in prose writers, never produced a +poet of any eminence. The pieces in verse--they can hardly be called +poems--ascribed to Tertullian and Cyprian are forgeries of a late period. +But contemporary with them is an African verse-writer of curious +linguistic interest, Commodianus. A bishop of Marseilles, who wrote, late +in the fifth century, a continuation of St. Jerome's catalogue of +ecclesiastical writers, mentions his work in a very singular phrase: +"After his conversion," he says, "Commodianus wrote a treatise against +the pagans in an intermediate language approximating to verse," _mediocri +sermone quasi versu_. This treatise, the _Carmen Apologeticum adversus +Iudaeos et Gentes_, is extant, together with other pieces by the same +author. It is a poem of over a thousand lines, which the allusions to the +Gothic war and the Decian persecution fix as having been written in or +very near the year 250. It is written in hexameters, composed on a system +which wavers between the quantitative and accentual treatment. These are +almost evenly balanced. The poem is thus a document of great importance +in the history of the development of mediaeval out of classical poetry. +Though not, of course, without his barbarisms, Commodianus was obviously +neither ignorant nor careless of the rules of classical versification, +some of which--for instance, the strong caesura in the middle of the +third foot--he retains with great strictness. His peculiar prosody is +plainly deliberate. Only a very few lines are wholly quantitative, and +none are wholly accentual, except where accent and quantity happen to +coincide. Much of the pronunciation of modern Italian may be traced in +his remarkable accentuation of some words; like Italian, he both throws +back the accent off a long syllable and slides it forward upon a short +one. Assonance is used freely, but there is not more rhyming than is +usual in the poetry of the late empire. Not only in pronunciation, but in +grammatical inflexion, the beginnings of Italian here and there appear. +The case-forms of the different declensions are beginning to run into one +another: the plural, for example, of _insignis_ is no longer _insignes_, +but, as in Italian, _insigni_; and the case-inflexions themselves are +dwindling away before the free use of prepositions, which was already +beginning to show itself in the _Pervigilium Veneris_. + +Popular poetry was now definitely asserting itself alongside of book- +poetry formed on the classical model. But authors who kept up a high +literary standard in prose continued to do so in verse also. The poem _De +Ave Phoenice_, found in early mediaeval collections under the name of +Lactantius, and accepted as his by recent critics, is written in accurate +and graceful elegiac couplets, which are quite in accordance with the +admiration Lactantius, in his work _On the Wrath of God_, expresses for +Ovid. It is perhaps the earliest instance outside the field of prose of +the truce or coalition which was slowly forming itself between the new +religion and the old culture. Beyond a certain faint and almost +impalpable mysticism, which hints at the legend of the Phoenix as +symbolical of the doctrine of the Resurrection, there is nothing in the +poem which is distinctively Christian. Phoebus and the lyre of Cyllene +are invoked, as they might be by a pagan poet. But the language is from +beginning to end full of Christian or, at least, scriptural +reminiscences, which could only be possible to a writer familiar with the +Psalter. The description with which the poem opens of the Earthly +Paradise, a "land east of the sun," where the bird has its home, has +mingled touches of the Elysium of Homer and Virgil, and the New Jerusalem +of the Revelation; as in the Psalms, the sun is a bridegroom coming out +of his chamber, and night and day are full of a language that is not +speech. + +In the literary revival of the latter half of the fourth century these +tendencies have developed themselves, and taken a more mature but a less +interesting form. After Christianity had become formally and irrevocably +the State religion, it took over what was left of Latin culture as part +of the chaotic inheritance which it had to accept as the price for civil +establishment. A heavy price was paid on both sides when Constantine, in +Dante's luminous phrase, "turned the eagle." The Empire definitively +parted with the splendid administrative and political tradition founded +on the classical training and the Stoic philosophy; though shattered as +it had been in the anarchy of the third century, that was perhaps in any +case irrecoverable. The Church, on its side, drew away in the persons of +its leaders from its earlier tradition, with all that it involved in the +growth of a wholly new thought and art, and armed or hampered itself with +that classicalism from which it never again got quite free. It is in the +century before Constantine, therefore, when old and new were in the +sharpest antagonism, and yet were both full of a strange ferment--the +ferment of dissolution in the one case, in the other that of quickening-- +that the end of the ancient world, and with it the end of Latin +literature as such, might reasonably be placed. But the first result of +the alliance between the Empire and the Church was to give added dignity +to the latter and renewed energy to the former. The partial revival of +letters in the fourth century may induce us to extend our survey so far +as to include Ausonius and Claudian as legitimate, though remote, +successors of the Augustan poets. + + + + +VII + +THE FOURTH CENTURY: AUSONIUS AND CLAUDIAN. + + +For a full century after the death of Marcus Aurelius, Latin literature +was, apart from the Christian writers, practically extinct. The authors +of the least importance, or whose names even are known to any but +professional scholars, may be counted on the fingers of one hand. The +stream of Roman law, the one guiding thread down those dark ages, +continued on its steady course. Papinian and Ulpian, the two foremost +jurists of the reigns of Septimius and Alexander Severus, bear a +reputation as high as that of any of their illustrious predecessors. Both +rose to what was in this century the highest administrative position in +the Empire, the prefecture of the praetorian guards. Papinian, a native +it seems of the Syrian town of Emesa, and a kinsman of the Syrian wife of +Septimius Severus, was the author of numerous legal works, both in Greek +and Latin. Under Severus he was not only commander of the household +troops, but discharged what we should now call the duties of Home +Secretary. His genius for law was united with an independence of judgment +and a sense of equity which rose beyond the limits of formal +jurisprudence, and made him one of the great humanising influences of his +profession. He was murdered, with circumstances of great brutality, by +the infamous Caracalla, almost immediately after his accession to sole +power. Domitius Ulpianus, Papinian's successor as the head of Latin +jurists, was also a Syrian by birth. Already an assessor to Papinian, and +a member of the imperial privy council, he was raised to the praetorian +prefecture and afterwards removed from it by his countryman, the Emperor +Heliogabalus, but reinstated by Alexander Severus, under whom he was +second ruler of the Empire till killed in a revolt of the praetorian +guards in the year 228. He was succeeded in the prefecture by Julius +Paulus, a jurist of almost equal eminence, though inferior to Ulpian in +style and literary grace. Roman law practically remained at the point +where these three eminent men left it, or only followed in their +footsteps, until its final systematisation under Justinian. + +Beyond the field of law, such prose as was written in this century was +mainly Greek. The historical works of Herodian and Dio Cassius, poor in +quality as they are, seem to have excelled anything written at the same +time in Latin. Their contemporary, Marius Maximus, continued the series +of biographies of the Emperors begun by Suetonius, carrying it down from +Nerva to Heliogabalus; but the work, such as it was, is lost, and is only +known as the main source used by the earlier compilers of the _Augustan +History_. Verse-making had fallen into the hands of inferior grammarians. +Of their numerous productions enough survives to indicate that a certain +technical skill was not wholly lost. The metrical treatises of +Terentianus Maurus, a scholar of the later years of the second century, +show that the science of metre was studied with great care, not only in +its common forms, but in the less familiar lyric measures. The didactic +poem on the art of medicine by Quintus Sammonicus Serenus, the son of an +eminent bibliophile, and the friend of the Emperor Alexander Severus, +though of little poetical merit, is written in graceful and fluent verse. +If of little merit as poetry, it is of even less as science. Medicine had +sunk lower towards barbarism than versification, when a sovereign remedy +against fevers was described in these polished lines:-- + + _Inscribis chartae quod dicitur Abracadabra, + Saepius et subter repetis, sed detrahe summam + Et magis atque magis desint elemenfa figuris, + Singula quae semper rapies et cetera figes + Donec in augustum redigatur litera conum: + His lino nexis collum redimire memento_. + +Nor is his alternative remedy of a piece of coral hung round the +patient's neck much more rational. The drop from the science of Celsus is +much more striking here than the drop from the art of Celsus' +contemporary Manilius. An intermittent imperial patronage of letters +lingered on. The elder and younger Gordian (the latter a pupil of +Sammonicus' father, who bequeathed his immense library to him) had some +reputation as writers. Clodius Albinus, the governor of Britain who +disputed the empire with Septimius Severus, was a devoted admirer of +Apuleius, and wrote romances in a similar manner, which, according to his +biographer, had no inconsiderable circulation. + +Under Diocletian and his successors there was a slight and partial +revival of letters, which chiefly showed itself on the side of verse. The +_Cynegetica_, a didactic poem on hunting, by the Carthaginian poet Marcus +Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus, is, together with four bucolic pieces by +the same author, the chief surviving fragment of the main line of +Virgilian tradition. The _Cynegetica_, in spite of its good taste and its +excellent versification, is on the whole a dull performance; but in the +other pieces, the pastoral form gives the author now and then an +opportunity of introducing a little touch of the romantic tone which is +partly imitated from Virgil, but partly natural to the new Latin. + + _Perdit spina rosas nec semper lilia candent + Nec longum tenet uva comas nec populus umbras, + Donum forma breve est, nec se quod commodet annis:--_ + +in these graceful lines the copied Virgilian cadence is united with the +directness and the real or assumed simplicity which belongs to the second +childhood of Latin literature, and which is so remarkable in the authors +who founded the new style. The new style itself was also largely +practised, but only a few scattered remnants survive. Tiberianus, Count +of Africa, Vicar of Spain, and praetorian prefect of Gaul (the whole +nomenclature of the Empire is now passing from the Roman to the mediaeval +type) under Constantine the Great, is usually identified with the author +of some of the most strikingly beautiful of these fragmentary pieces. A +descriptive passage, consisting of twenty lines of finely written +trochaics, reminds one of the _Pervigilium Veneris_ in the richness of +its language and the delicate simplicity of its style. The last lines may +be quoted for their singular likeness to one of the most elaborately +beautiful stanzas of the _Faerie Queene_, that which describes the sounds +"consorted in one harmony" which Guyon hears in the gardens of Acrasia:-- + +_Has per umbras omnis ales plus canora quam putes +Cantibus vernis strepebat et susurris dulcibus: +Hic loquentis murmur amnis concinebat frondibus +Quas melos vocalis aurae, musa Zephyri, moverat: +Sic euntem per virecta pulcra odora et musica +Ales amnis aura lucus flos et umbra iuverat._ + +The principal prose work, however, which has come down from this age, +shows a continued and even increased degradation of style. The so-called +_Historia Augusta_, a series of memoirs, in continuation of Suetonius' +_Lives of the Twelve Caesars_, of the Roman Emperors from Hadrian to +Numerian (A.D. 117-284), was begun under Diocletian and finished under +Constantine by six writers--Aelius Spartianus, Julius Capitolinus, +Vulcacius Gallicanus, Trebellius Pollio, Aelius Lampridius, and Flavius +Vopiscus. Most of them, if not all, were officials of the imperial court, +and had free access to the registers of the senate as well as to more +private sources of information. The extreme feebleness of the contents of +this curious work is only exceeded by the poverty and childishness of the +writing. History had sunk into a collection of trivial gossip and details +of court life, couched in a language worthy of a second-rate chronicler +of the Dark Ages. The mere outward circumstances of the men whose lives +they narrated--the _purpurati Augusti,_ as one of the authors calls them +in a romantically sonorous phrase--were indeed of world-wide importance, +and among the masses of rubbish of which the memoirs chiefly consist +there is included much curious information and striking incident. But +their main interest is in the light they throw on the gradual sinking of +the splendid administrative organisation of the second century towards +the sterile Chinese hierarchy of the Byzantine Empire, and the concurrent +degradation of paganism, both as a political and a religious system. + +Vopiscus, the last of the six authors, apologises, in drawing the work to +a close, for his slender literary power, and expresses the hope that his +material at least may be found useful to some "eloquent man who may wish +to unlock the actions of princes." What he had in his mind was probably +not so much regular history as the panegyrical oratory which about this +same time became a prominent feature of the imperial courts, and gave +their name to a whole school of writers known as the Panegyrici. Gaul, +for a long time the rival of Africa as the nurse of judicial oratory, was +the part of the Empire where this new form of literature was most +assiduously cultivated. Up to the age of Constantine, it had enjoyed +practical immunity from barbarian invasion, and had only had a moderate +share of the civil wars which throughout the third century desolated all +parts of the Empire. In wealth and civilisation, and in the arts of +peace, it probably held the foremost place among the provinces. +Marseilles, Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Autun, Rheims, and Trèves all +possessed famous and flourishing schools of oratory. The last-named town +was, after the supreme power had been divided among two or more Augusti, +a frequent seat of the imperial government of the Western provinces, and, +like Milan, became a more important centre of public life than Rome. Of +the extant collection of panegyrics, two were delivered there before +Diocletian's colleague, the Emperor Maximianus. A florid Ciceronianism +was the style most in vogue, and the phraseology, at least, of the old +State religion was, until the formal adoption of Christianity by the +government, not only retained, but put prominently forward. Eumenius of +Autun, the author of five or more pieces in the collection, delivered at +dates between the years 297 and 311, is the most distinguished figure of +the group. His fluent and ornate Latin may be read with some pleasure, +though the purpose of the orations leaves them little value as a record +of facts or a candid expression of opinions. Under the influence of these +nurseries of rhetoric a new Gallic school of Christian writers rose and +flourished during the fourth century. Hilarius of Poitiers, the most +eminent of the Gallic bishops of this period, wrote controversial and +expository works in the florid involved style of the neo-Ciceronian +orators, which had in their day a high reputation. As the first known +author of Latin hymns, he is the precursor of Ambrose and Prudentius. +Ambrose himself, though as Bishop of Milan he belongs properly to the +Italian school of theological writers, was born and probably educated at +Trèves. But the literature of the province reached its highest point +somewhat later, in one of the most important authors of the century, +Decimus Magnus Ausonius of Bordeaux. + +Ausonius was of Gallic blood by both parents; he was educated in grammar +and rhetoric at the university of Bordeaux, and was afterwards for many +years professor of both subjects at that of Trèves. As tutor to Gratian, +son and successor of the Emperor Valentinian, he established himself in +court favour, and fulfilled many high State offices. After Gratian was +succeeded by Theodosius he retired to a lettered ease near his native +town, where he lived till nearly the end of the century. His numerous +poetical works are of the most miscellaneous kind, ranging from Christian +hymns and elegies on deceased relations to translations from the Greek +Anthology and centos from Virgil. Among them the volume of _Idyllia_ +constitutes his chief claim to eminence, and gives him a high rank among +the later Latin poets. The gem of this collection is the famous +_Mosella,_ written at Trèves about the year 370. The most beautiful of +purely descriptive Latin poems, it is unique in the felicity with which +it unites Virgilian rhythm and diction with the new romantic sense of the +beauties of nature. The feeling for the charm of landscape which we had +occasion to note in the letters of the younger Pliny is here fully +developed, with a keener eye and an enlarged power of expression. Pliny's +description of the Clitumnus may be interestingly compared with the +passage of this poem in which Ausonius recounts, with fine and observant +touches, the beauties of his northern river--the liquid lapse of waters, +the green wavering reflections, the belt of crisp sand by the water's +edge and the long weeds swaying with the stream, the gleaming gravel-beds +under the water with their patches of moss and the quick fishes darting +hither and thither over them; or the oftener-quoted and not less +beautiful lines where he breaks into rapture over the sunset colouring of +stream and bank, and the glassy water where, at evening, all the hills +waver and the vine-tendril shakes and the grape-bunches swell in the +crystal mirror. In virtue of this poem Ausonius ranks not merely as the +last, or all but the last, of Latin, but as the first of French poets. +His feeling for the country of his birth has all the romantic patriotism +which we are accustomed to associate with a much earlier or a much later +age. The language of Du Bellay in the sixteenth century-- + + _Plus que le marbre dur me plaist l'ardoise fine, + Plus mon Loire Gaulois que le Tybre Latin--_ + +is anticipated here. The softer northern loveliness, _la douceur +Angevine_, appeals to Ausonius more than all the traditional beauties of +Arcadia or Sicily. It is with the Gallic rivers that he compares his +loved Moselle: _Non tibi se Liger anteferet, non Axona praeceps ... te +sparsis incerta Druentia ripis._ + + _O lordly flow the Loire and Seine + And loud the dark Durance!--_ + +we seem to hear the very words of the modern ballad: and at the end of +the poem his imagination returns, with the fondness of a lover, to the +green lakes and sounding streams of Aquitaine, and the broad sea-like +reaches of his native Garonne. + +In this poem, alike by the classic beauty of his language and the +modernism of his feeling, Ausonius marks one of the great divisions in +the history of poetry. He is the last of the poets of the Empire which +was still nominally co-extensive with the world, which held in itself +East and West, the old and the new. The final division of the Roman +world, which took place in the year 395 between the two sons of +Theodosius, synchronises with a division as definite and as final between +classical and mediaeval poetry; and in the last years of the fourth +century the parting of the two streams, the separation of the dying from +the dawning light, is placed in sharp relief by the works of two +contemporary poets, Claudian and Prudentius. The singular and isolated +figure of Claudian, the posthumous child of the classical world, stands +alongside of that of the first great Christian poet like the figures +which were fabled to stand, regarding the rising and setting sun, by the +Atlantic gates where the Mediterranean opened into the unknown Western +seas. + +Claudius Claudianus was of Asiatic origin, and lived at Alexandria until, +in the year of the death of Theodosius, he passed into Italy and became +the laureate of the court of Milan. Till then he had, according to his +own statement, written in Greek, his life having been passed wholly in +the Greek-speaking provinces. But immediately on his arrival at the seat +of the Western or Latin Empire he showed himself a master of the language +and forms of Latin poetry such as had not been known since the end of the +first century. His poems, so far as they can be dated, belong entirely to +the next ten years. He is conjectured not to have long survived the +downfall of his patron Stilicho, the great Vandal general who, as +guardian of the young Emperor Honorius, was practically ruler of the +Western Empire. He was the last eminent man of letters who was a +professed pagan. + +The historical epics which Claudian produced in rapid succession during +the last five years of the fourth and the first five of the fifth century +are now little read, except by historians who refer to them for details +of the wars or court intrigues of the period. A hundred years ago, when +Statius and Silius Italicus formed part of the regular course of +classical study, he naturally and properly stood alongside of them. His +Latin is as pure as that of the best poets of the Silver Age; in wealth +of language and in fertility of imagination he is excelled, if at all, by +Statius alone. Alone in his age he inherits the scholarly tradition which +still lingered among the libraries of Alexandria. Nonnus, the last and +not one of the least learned and graceful of the later Greek epicists, +who probably lived not long after Claudian, was also of Egyptian birth +and training, and he and Claudian are really the last representatives of +that Alexandrian school which had from the first had so large and deep an +influence over the literature of Rome. The immense range of time covered +by Greek literature is brought more vividly to our imagination when we +consider that this single Alexandrian school, which began late in the +history of Greek writing and came to an end centuries before its +extinction, thus completely overlaps at both ends the whole life of the +literature of Rome, reaching as it does from before Ennius till after +Claudian. + +These historical epics of Claudian's--_On the Consulate of Stilicho, On +the Gildonic War, On the Pollentine War, On the Third, Fourth, and Sixth +Consulates of Honorius_--are accompanied by other pieces, written in the +same stately and harmonious hexameter, of a more personal interest: +invectives against Rufinus and Eutropius, the rivals of his patron; a +panegyric on Stilicho's wife, Serena, the niece of Theodosius; a fine +epithalamium on the marriage of Honorius with Maria, the daughter of +Stilicho and Serena; and also by a number of poems in elegiac metre, in +which he wrote with equal grace and skill, though not with so singular a +mastery. Among the shorter elegiac pieces, which are collected under the +title of _Epigrams,_ one, a poem on an old man of Verona who had never +travelled beyond his own little suburban property, is among the jewels of +Latin poetry. The lines in which he describes this quiet garden life-- + + _Frugibus alternis, non consule computat annum; + Auctumnum pomis, ver sibi flore notat; + Idem condit ager soles idemque reducit, + Metiturque suo rusticus orbe diem, + Ingentem meminit parvo qui germine quercum + Aequaevumque videt consenuisse nemus--_ + +are in grace and feeling like the very finest work of Tibullus; and the +concluding couplet-- + + _Erret, et extremos alter scrutetur Hiberos, + Plus habet hic vitae, plus habet ille viae--_ + +though, in its dependence on a verbal point, it may not satisfy the +purest taste, is not without a dignity and pathos that are worthy of the +large manner of the classical period. + +Claudian used the heroic hexameter for mythological as well as historical +epics. Of his _Gigantomachia_ we possess only an inconsiderable fragment; +but the three books of the unfinished _Rape of Proserpine_ are among the +finest examples of the purely literary epic. The description of the +flowery spring meadows where Proserpine and her companions gather +blossoms for garlands is a passage perpetually quoted. It is interesting +to note how the rising tide of romanticism has here, as elsewhere, left +Claudian wholly untouched. The passage, though elaborately ornate, is +executed in the clear hard manner of the Alexandrian school; it has not a +trace of that sensitiveness to nature which vibrates in the _Pervigilium +Veneris_. We have gone back for a moment to that poetical style which +perpetually reminds us of the sculptured friezes of Greek art, severe in +outline, immensely adroit and learned in execution, but a little chilly +and colourless except in the hands of its greatest masters. After paying +to the full the tribute of admiration which is due to Claudian's refined +and dignified workmanship, we are still left with the feeling that this +kind of poetry was already obsolete. It is not only that, as has been +remarked with truth of his historical epics, the elaboration of the +treatment is disproportionate to the importance or interest of the +subject. _Materiam superabat opus_ might be said with equal truth of much +of the work of his predecessors. But a new spirit had by this time +penetrated literature, and any poetry wholly divorced from it must be not +only artificial--for that alone would prove nothing against it--but +unnatural. Claudian is a precursor of the Renaissance in its narrower +aspect; the last of the classics, he is at the same time the earliest, +and one of the most distinguished, of the classicists. It might seem a +mere chance whether his poetry belonged to the fourth or to the sixteenth +century. + +In Claudian's distinguished contemporary, the Spanish poet Aurelius +Prudentius Clemens, Christian Latin poetry reached complete maturity. His +collected poems were published at Rome in 404, the year celebrated by +Claudian as that of the sixth consulship of Honorius. Before Prudentius, +Christian poetry had been slight in amount and rude or tentative in +manner. We have already had occasion to notice its earliest efforts in +the rude verses of Commodianus. The revival of letters in the fourth +century, so far as it went, affected Christian as well as secular poetry. +Under Constantine, a Spanish deacon, one Gaius Vettius Aquilinus +Juvencus, put the Gospel narrative into respectable hexameters, which are +still extant. The poems and hymns which have come down under the name of +Bishop Hilary of Poitiers are probably spurious, and a similar doubt +attaches to those ascribed to the eminent grammarian and rhetorician, +Gaius Marius Victorinus, after his conversion. Before Prudentius +published his collection, the hymns of St. Ambrose had been written, and +were in use among the Western Churches. But these, though they formed the +type for all later hymn-writers, were few in number. Out of the so-called +Ambrosian hymns a rigorous criticism only allows five or six as +authentic. These, however, include two world-famed pieces, still in daily +use by the Church, the _Aeterne rerum Conditor_ and the _Deus Creator +omnium,_ and the equally famous _Veni Redemptor_. + +To the form thus established by St. Ambrose, Prudentius, in his two books +of lyrical poems, gave a larger volume and a more sustained literary +power. The _Cathemerina,_ a series of poems on the Christian life, and +the _Peristephanon,_ a book of the praise of Christian martyrs--St. +Lawrence, St. Vincent, St. Agnes, among other less celebrated names--at +once represent the most substantial addition made to Latin lyrical poetry +since Horace, and the complete triumph of the new religion. They are not, +like the Ambrosian hymns, brief pieces meant for actual singing in +churches. Out of the twenty-six poems only three are under one hundred +lines in length, and that on the martyrdom of St. Romanus of Antioch runs +to no less than eleven hundred and forty, almost the proportions of a +small epic. But in the brilliance and vigour of their language, their +picturesque style, and the new joy that, in spite of their asceticism, +burns throughout them, they gave an impulse of immense force towards the +development of Christian literature. In merely technical quality they are +superior to any poetry of the time, Claudian alone excepted; in their +fullness of life, in the exultant tone which kindles and sustains them, +they make Claudian grow pale like a candle-flame at dawn. + +With Prudentius, however, as with Claudian, we have almost passed beyond +the strict limit of a history of ancient Latin literature: and any fuller +discussion, either of these remarkable lyrical pieces, or of his more +voluminous expository or controversial treatises in hexameter, properly +belongs to a history of the Christian Church. The two most eminent and +copious prose writers of the later fourth century, Jerome and Augustine, +occupy the same ambiguous position. Apart from them, and from the less +celebrated Christian writers who were their predecessors or +contemporaries, the prose of the fourth century is both small in amount +and insignificant in quality. The revival in verse composition which +followed the settlement of the Empire under Constantine scarcely spread +to the less imitable art of prose. The school of eminent Roman +grammarians who flourished about the middle of the century, and among +whom Servius and Donatus are the leading names, while they commented on +ancient masterpieces with inexhaustible industry, and often with really +sound judgment, wrote themselves in a base and formless style. A few +authors of technical manuals and epitomes of history rise a little above +the common level, or have a casual importance from the contents of their +works. The treatises on husbandry by Palladius, and on the art of war by +Flavius Vegetius Renatus, became, to a certain degree, standard works; +the little handbooks of Roman history written in the reigns of +Constantius and Valens by Aurelius Victor and Eutropius are simple and +unpretentious, but have little positive merit, The age produced but one +Latin historian, Ammianus Marcellinus. Like Claudian, he was of Asiatic +origin, and Greek-speaking by birth, but, in the course of his service on +the staff of the captain-general of the imperial cavalry, had spent much +of his life in the Latin provinces of Gaul and Italy; and his history was +written at Rome, where he lived after retiring from active service. The +task he set himself, a history of the Empire, in continuation of that of +Tacitus, from the accession of Nerva to the death of Valens, was one of +great scope and unusual complexity. He brought to it some at least of the +gifts of the historian: intelligence, honesty, tolerance, a large amount +of good sense. But his Latin, which he never came to write with the ease +of a native, is difficult and confused; and to this, probably, should be +ascribed the early disappearance of the greater part of his history. The +last eighteen books, containing the history of only five and twenty +years, have survived. The greater part of the period which they cover is +one of decay and wretchedness; but the account they give of the reign of +Julian (whom Ammianus had himself accompanied in his Persian campaign) is +of great interest, and his portrait of the feeble incapable rule of +Julian's successors, distracted between barbarian inroads and theological +disputes, is drawn with a firm and almost a masterly hand. + +The Emperor Valens fell, together with nearly the whole of a great Roman +army, in the disastrous battle of Adrianople. A Visigothic horde, to the +number of two hundred thousand fighting men, had crossed the Danube; and +the Huns and Alans, names even more terrible, joined the standards of +Fritigern with a countless host of Mongolian cavalry. The heart of the +Empire lay helpless; Constantinople itself was besieged by the +conquerors. The elevation of Theodosius to the purple bore back for a +time the tide of disaster; once more the civilised world staggered to its +feet, but with strength and courage fatally broken. At this dramatic +moment in the downfall of the Roman Empire the last of the Latin +historians closes his narrative. + + + + +VIII. + +THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MIDDLE AGES. + + +In August 410, while the Emperor Honorius fed his poultry among the +impenetrable marshes of Ravenna, Rome was sacked by a mixed army of Goths +and Huns under the command of Alaric. Eight hundred years had elapsed +since the imperial city had been in foreign possession; and, though it +had ceased to be the actual seat of government, the shock spread by its +capture through the entire Roman world was of unparalleled magnitude. Six +years later, a wealthy and distinguished resident, one Claudius Rutilius +Namatianus, was obliged to take a journey to look after the condition of +his estates in the south of France, which had been devastated by a band +of wandering Visigoths. A large portion is extant of the poem in which he +described this journey, one of the most charming among poems of travel, +and one of the most interesting of the fragments of early mediaeval +literature. Nowhere else can we see portrayed so strongly the fascination +which Rome then still possessed for the whole of Western Europe, and the +adoration with which she was still regarded as mother and light of the +world. The magical statue had been cast away, with other heathen idols, +from the imperial bedchamber; but the _Fortuna Urbis_ itself, the +mystical divinity which the statue represented, still exercised an +overwhelming influence over men's imagination. After all the praises +lavished on her for centuries by so many of her illustrious children, it +was left for this foreigner, in the age of her decay, to pay her the most +complete and most splendid eulogy:-- + + _Quod regnas minus est quam quod regnare mereris; + Excedis factis grandia fata tuis: + Nam solis radiis aequalia munera tendis, + Qua circumfusus fluctuat oceanus. + Fecisti patriam diversis gentibus unam: + Profuit invitis te dominante capi; + Dumque offers victis proprii consortia iuris, + Urbem fecisti quod prius orbis erat._ + +In this noble apostrophe Rutilius addressed the fading mistress of the +world as he passed lingeringly through the Ostian gate. Far away in +Northern Africa, the most profound thinker and most brilliant writer of +the age, as deeply but very differently moved by the ancestral splendours +of the city and the tragedy of her fall, was then composing, with all the +resources of his vast learning and consummate dialectical skill, the +epitaph of the ancient civilisation. It was the capture of Rome by Alaric +which induced St. Augustine to undertake his work on the _City of God_. +"In this middle age," he says,--_in hoc interim seculo_--the two cities +with their two citizenships, the earthly and the heavenly, are +inextricably enwound and intermingled with each other. Not until the Last +Judgment will they be wholly separated; but the philosophy of history is +to trace the steps by which the one is slowly replaced by, or transformed +into, the other. The earthly Empire, all the splendid achievement in +thought and arts and deeds of the Roman civilisation, already fades away +before that City of God on which his eyes are fixed--_gloriosissimam +Civitatem Dei, sive in hoc temporum cursu cum inter impios peregrinatur +ex fide vivens, sive in illa stabililate sedis aeternae, quam nunc +exspectat per patientiam, quoadusque iustitia convertatur in iudicium._ + +The evolution of this change was, even to the impassioned faith of +Augustine, slow, intermittent, and fluctuating: nor, among many landmarks +and turning-points, is it easy to fix any single one as definitely +concluding the life of the ancient world, and marking the beginning of +what St. Augustine for the first time called by the name, which has ever +since adhered to it, of the Middle Age. The old world slid into the new +through insensible gradations. In nearly all Latin literature after +Virgil we may find traces or premonitions of mediaevalism, and after +mediaevalism was established it long retained, if it ever wholly lost, +traces of the classical tradition. Thus, while the beginning of Latin +literature may be definitely placed in a particular generation, and +almost in a single year, there is no fixed point at which it can be said +that its history concludes. Different periods have been assigned from +different points of view. In the year 476, Romulus Augustulus, the last +of the Western Emperors, handed over the name as well as the substance of +sole power to the Herulian chief Odoacer, the first King of Italy; and +the Roman Senate, still in theory the supreme governing body of the +civilised world, formally renounced its sovereignty, and declared its +dominions a diocese of the Byzantine Empire. This is the date generally +adopted by authors who deal with literature as subordinate to political +history. But the writer of the standard English work on Latin grammar +limits his field to the period included between Plautus and Suetonius; +while another scholar, extending his scope three centuries and a half +further, has written a history of Latin literature from Ennius to +Boethius. Suetonius and Boethius probably represent the extreme variation +of limit which can be reasonably adopted; but between them they leave +room for many points of pause. Up to the end of the fourth century we +have followed a stream of tendency, not, indeed, continuous, but yet +without any absolute rupture. Between the writers of the fourth century +and their few successors of the fifth there is no marked change in +language or manner. Sidonius Apollinaris continues more feebly the style +of poetry initiated a century before him by Ausonius. Boethius wrote his +fine treatise _On the Consolation of Philosophy_ half a century after the +extinction of the Empire of the West. By a strange freak of history, it +was at the Greek capital that Latin scholarship finally faded away. +Priscian and Tribonian wrote at Constantinople; and the Western world +received its most authoritative works on Latin grammar and Roman law, not +from the Latin Empire, nor from one of the Latin-speaking kingdoms which +rose on its ruins, but from the half-oriental courts of Anastasius and +Justinian. + +The two long lives of the great Latin fathers, Jerome and Augustine, +cover conjointly a space of just a century. Jerome was born probably a +few months after the main seat of empire was formally transferred to New +Rome by Constantine. Augustine, born twenty-three years later, died in +his cathedral city of Hippo during its siege by Genseric in the brief war +which transformed Africa from a Roman province to a Vandal kingdom. The +_City of God_ had been completed four years previously. A quarter of a +century before the death of Augustine, Jerome issued, from his monastery +at Bethlehem, the Latin translation of the Bible which, on its own +merits, and still more if we give weight to its overwhelming influence on +later ages, is the greatest literary masterpiece of the Lower Empire. Our +own Authorised Version has deeply affected all post-Shakespearian +English; the _Vulgate_ of Jerome, which was from time to time revised in +detail, but still remains substantially as it issued from his hands, had +an equally profound influence over a vastly greater space and time. It +was for Europe of the Middle Ages more than Homer was to Greece. The year +405, which witnessed its publication and that of the last of the poems of +Claudian to which we can assign a certain date, may claim to be held, if +any definite point is to be fixed, as marking the end of ancient and the +complete establishment of mediaeval Latin. + +In the six and a half centuries which had passed since the Greek prisoner +of war from Tarentum produced the first Latin play in the theatre of the +mid-Italian Republic which was celebrating her victories over the +formidable sea-power of Carthage, Latin literature had shared the +vicissitudes of the Roman State; and the successive stages of its +development and decay are intimately connected with the political and +social changes which are the matter of Roman history. A century passed +between the conclusion of the first Punic war and the tribunate of +Tiberius Gracchus. It was a period for the Republic of internal +tranquillity and successful foreign war. At its conclusion, Italy was +organised under Roman control. Greece, Macedonia, Spain, and Africa had +become subject provinces; a Roman protectorate was established in Egypt, +and the Asiatic provinces of the Macedonian Empire only preserved a +precarious and partial independence. During this century, Latin +literature had firmly established itself in a broad and vigorous growth. +Dramatic and epic poetry, based on diligent study of the best Greek +models, formed a substantial body of actual achievement, and under Greek +impulse the Latin language was being wrought into a medium of expression +at once dignified and copious, a substance capable of indefinite +expansion and use in the hands of trained artists. Prose was rapidly +overtaking verse. The schools of law, and the oratory of the senate-house +and the forum, were developing national forms of literature on +distinctively Roman lines: a beginning had been made in the more +difficult field of history; and the invention and popularisation of the +satire, or mixed form of familiar prose and verse, began to enlarge the +scope of literature over a broader field of life and thought, while +immensely adding to the flexibility and range of the written language. + +A century followed during which Roman rule was extended and consolidated +over the whole area of the countries fringing the Mediterranean, while +concurrently a long series of revolutions and counter-revolutions ended +in the overthrow of the republican oligarchy, and the establishment of +the imperial government. Beginning with the democratic movement of the +Gracchi, this century includes the civil wars of Marius and Sulla, the +temporary reconstitution of the oligarchy, the renewed outbreak of war +between Julius Caesar and the senate, and the confused period of +administrative anarchy which was terminated by the rise of Augustus to a +practical dictatorship, and the arrangement by him of a working +compromise between the two great opposing forces. During this century of +revolution the whole attitude of Rome towards the problems both of +internal and of foreign politics was forced through a series of important +changes. The revolt of Italy, which, after bringing Rome to the verge of +destruction, was finally crushed by the Asiatic legions of Sulla, was +almost immediately followed by the unification of Italy, and her +practical absorption into the Roman citizenship. With renewed and +enlarged life, Rome then entered on a second extension of her dominions. +The annexation of Syria and the conquest of Gaul completed the circle of +her empire; the subjugation of Spain was completed, and the Eastern +frontier pushed towards Armenia and the Euphrates; finally Egypt, the +last survivor of the kingdoms founded by Alexander's generals, passed +wholly into Roman hands with the extinction of its own royal house. + +During this period of perpetual excitement and high political tension, +literature, in the forms both of prose and verse, rapidly grew towards +maturity, and, in the former field at least, reached its perfection. +Oratory, the great weapon of politicians under the unique Republican +constitution, was in its golden age. Greek culture had permeated the +governing class. History began to be written by trained statesmen, whose +education for the command of armies and the rule of provinces had been +based on elaborate linguistic and rhetorical study. Alongside of grammar +and rhetoric, poetry and philosophy took a place as part of the higher +education of the citizen. The habit and capacity of abstract thought +reached Rome from the schools of Athens; with the growing power of +expression and the increased tension of actual life, the science of +politics and the philosophy of life and conduct became the material of a +new and splendid literature. Along with the world of ideas diffused by +Athens there arrived the immense learning and high technical skill of the +Alexandrian scholars and poets. Roman poetry set itself anew to learn the +Greek lesson of exquisite form and finish. In the hands of two poets of +the first order, and of a crowd of lesser students, the conquest of +poetical form passed its crucial point, and the way was prepared for the +consummation of Latin poetry in the next age. + +Another century carries us from the establishment of the Empire by +Augustus to the extinction of his family at the death of Nero. At the +opening of this period the Empire was exhausted by civil war, and +welcomed any form of settled rule. The settlement of the constitution, +based as it was on a number of elaborate legal fictions meant to combine +republican forms with the reality of a strong monarchical government, +left the political situation in a state of very unstable equilibrium; all +through the century the government was in an uncertain or even a false +position, and, when Nero's misrule had made it intolerable, it collapsed +with a crash which almost shivered the Empire into fragments. But it had +lasted long enough to lay the foundations of the new and larger Rome +broadly and securely. The provinces, while still in a sense subordinate +to Italy, had already become organic parts of the Empire, instead of +subject countries. The haughty and obstinate Roman oligarchy was tamed by +long years of proscription, confiscation, perpetual surveillance, careful +exclusion from great political power. The municipal institutions and +civic energy of Rome were multiplied in a thousand centres of local life. +Internal peace allowed commerce and civilisation to spread; in spite of +the immense drain caused by the extravagance of the capital and the +expense of the great frontier armies, the provinces generally rose to a +higher state of material welfare than they had enjoyed since their +annexation. + +The earlier years of this century are the most brilliant in the history +of Latin literature. During the last fifty years of the Republic a series +of Roman authors of remarkable genius had gradually met and mastered the +technical problems of both prose and verse. The new generation entered +into their labours. In prose there was little, if any, advance remaining +to be made. In the fields of oratory and philosophy it had already +reached its perfection; in that of history it acquired further amplitude +and colour. But the achievement of the new age was mainly in verse. +Profound study of the older poetry, and the laborious training learned +from the schools of Alexandria, now bore fruit in a body of poetry which, +in every field except that of the drama, excelled what had hitherto been +known, and was at once the model and the limit for succeeding +generations. Latin poetry, like the Empire itself, took a broader basis; +the Augustan poets are still Romans, but this is because Rome had +extended itself over Italy, The copious and splendid production of the +earlier years of the principate of Augustus was followed by an almost +inevitable reaction. The energy of the Latin speech had for the time +exhausted itself; and the political necessities of the uneasy reigns +which followed set further barriers in the way of a weakening literary +impulse. Then begins the movement of the Latin-speaking provinces. Rome +had absorbed Italy; Italy in turn begins to absorb and coalesce with +Gaul, Spain, and Africa. The first of the provinces in the field was +Spain, which had become Latinised earlier than either of the others. At +the court of Nero a single brilliant Spanish family founded a new and +striking style, which for the moment eclipsed that formed by a purer +taste amid a graver and a more exclusive public. + +A hundred years from the downfall of Nero carry us down to the reign of +Marcus Aurelius. The Empire, when it recovered from the collapse of the +year 69, assumed a settled and stable organisation. Traditions of the old +jealousies and discontents lingered during the reigns of the three +Flavian Emperors; but the imperial system had now got into permanent +working order. The cataclysm which followed the deposition of Nero is in +the strongest contrast to the ease and smoothness, only broken by a +trifling mutiny of the praetorian guards, with which the principate +passed into the hands of Nerva after the murder of Domitian. + +This century is what is properly known as the Silver Age. A school of +eminent writers, in whom the provincial and the Italian quality are now +hardly to be distinguished, produced during its earlier years a large +body of admirable prose and not undistinguished verse. But before the +century was half over, the signs of decay began to appear. A mysterious +languor overcame thought and art, as it did the whole organism of the +Empire. The conquests of Trajan, the peace and material splendour of the +reign of Hadrian, were followed by a series of years almost without +events, suddenly broken by the appalling pestilence of the year 166, and +the outbreak, at the same time, of a long and desperate war on the +northern frontiers. During these eventless years Latin literature seemed +to die away. The classical impulse was exhausted; the attempts made +towards founding a new Latin bore, for the time, little fruit. Before +this period of exhaustion and reaction could come to a natural end, two +changes of momentous importance had overtaken the world. The imperial +system broke down under Commodus. All through the third century the civil +organisation of the Empire was at the mercy of military adventurers. +Twenty-five recognised Emperors, besides a swarm of pretenders, most of +them raised to the purple by mutinous armies, succeeded one another in +the hundred years between Commodus and Diocletian. At the same time the +Christian religion, already recognised under the Antonines as a grave +menace to the very existence of the Empire, was extending itself year by +year, rising more elastic than ever from each fresh persecution, and +attracting towards itself all the vital forces which go to make +literature. + +The coalition between the Empire and the Church, which, after various +tentative preliminaries, was finally effected by Constantine, launched +the world upon new paths: and his transference of the main seat of empire +to the shores of the Bosporus left Western Europe to pursue fragmentary +and independent courses. The Latin-speaking provinces were falling away +in great lumps. An independent empire of Britain had already existed for +six or seven years under the usurper Carausius. After the middle of the +fourth century Gaul was practically in possession of the Visigoths and +the Salian Franks. During the reign of Honorius mixed hordes of Vandals, +Suabians, and Alans poured through Gaul across the Pyrenees, and divided +Spain into barbarian monarchies. A few years later the Vandals, called +across the Straits of Gibraltar by the treachery of Count Boniface, +overran the province of Africa, and established a powerful kingdom, whose +fleets, issuing from the port of Carthage, swept the Mediterranean and +sacked Rome itself. Rome had, by the famous edict of Antoninus Caracalla, +given the world a single citizenship; to give organic life to that +citizenship, and turn her citizens into a single nation, was a task +beyond her power. So long as the Latin-speaking world remained nominally +subject to a single rule, exercised in the name of the Senate and People +of Rome, Latin literature had some slight external bond of unity; after +the Western Empire was shattered into a dozen independent kingdoms, the +phrase almost ceases to have any real meaning. Latin, in one form or +another, remained an almost universal language; but we must speak +henceforth of the literatures of France or Spain or Britain, whether the +work produced be written in a provincial dialect or in the international +language handed down from the Empire and preserved by the Church. + +For the Catholic Church now became the centre of European cohesion, and +gave continuity and common life to the scattered remains of the ancient +civilisation. Already, in the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great is a more +important figure than his contemporary, Valentinian the Second, for +thirty years the shadowy and impotent Emperor of the West. Christian +literature had taken firm root while the classical tradition was still +strong; in the hands of men like Jerome and Augustine that tradition was +caught up from the wreck of the Empire and handed down, not unimpaired, +yet still in prodigious force and vitality, to the modern world. + +Latin is now no longer a universal language; and the direct influence of +ancient Rome, which once seemed like an immortal energy, is at last, like +all energies, becoming slowly absorbed in its own results. Yet the Latin +language is still the necessary foundation of one half of human +knowledge, and the forms created by Roman genius underlie the whole of +our civilisation. So long as mankind look before and after, the name of +Rome will be the greatest of those upon which their backward gaze can be +turned. In Greece men first learned to be human: under Rome mankind first +learned to be civilised. Law, government, citizenship, are all the +creations of the Latin race. At a thousand points we still draw directly +from the Roman sources. The codes of Latin jurists are the direct source +of all systems of modern law. The civic organisation which it was the +great work of the earlier Roman Empire to spread throughout the provinces +is the basis of our municipal institutions and our corporate social life. +The names of our months are those of the Latin year, and the modern +calendar is, with one slight alteration, that established by Julius +Caesar. The head of the Catholic Church is still called by the name of +the president of a Republican college which goes back beyond the +beginnings of ascertained Roman history. The architecture which we +inherit from the Middle Ages, associated by an accident of history with +the name of the Goths, had its origin under the Empire, and may be traced +down to modern times, step by step, from the basilica of Trajan and the +palace of Diocletian. These are but a few instances of the inheritance we +have received from Rome. But behind the ordered structure of her law and +government, and the majestic fabric of her civilisation, lay a vital +force of even deeper import; the strong grave Roman character, which has +permanently heightened the ideal of human life. It is in their literature +that the inner spirit of the Latin race found its most complete +expression. In the stately structure of that imperial language they +embodied those qualities which make the Roman name most abidingly great-- +honour, temperate wisdom, humanity, courtesy, magnanimity; and the +civilised world still returns to that fountain-head, and finds a second +mother-tongue in the speech of Cicero and Virgil. + + + + +INDEX OF AUTHORS + + +Accius, L. ... 12 + +Aelius, P. ... 29 + +Aelius, Sex. ... 29 + +Aemilianus, Palladius Rutilius Taurus ... 272 + +Afranius, L. ... 15 + +Africanus, P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus ... 33 + +Agrippa, M. ... 162 + +Albinus, Clodius ... 262 + +Alimentus, L. Cincius ...28 + +Ambrosius ... 265, 271 + +Andronicus, L. Livius ... 4 + +Antias, Valerius ... 37 + +Antipater, L. Caelius ... 33 + +Antonius, M. ... 36 + +Apollinaris, _see_ Sidonius. + +Apuleius, L. ... 238 + +Arbiter, Petronius ... 183 + +Arnobius ... 255 + +Asconius, _see_ Pedianus. + +Asper, Aemilius ... 204 + +Atta, Quinctius ... 15 + +Atticus, T. Pomponius ... 74, 86 + +Augustus, G. Julius Caesar Octavianus ... 121, 162 + +Ausonius, Dec. Magnus ... 265 + +Bassus, Caesius ... 178 + +Bassus, Saleius ... 192 + +Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus ... 278 + +Brutus, M. Junius ... 30 + +Caecilius, Statius ... 16 + +Caecus, Ap. Claudius ... 30 + +Caelius, _see_ Antipater. + +Caelius, _see_ Rufus. + +Caesar, G. Julius ... 78 + +Caesar, Tib. Claudius Drusus Nero ... 157 + +Calpurnius, _see_ Siculus. + +Calvus, G. Licinius Macer ... 53 + +Capitolinus, Julius ... 263 + +Carus, T. Lucretius ... 39 + +Cassius, _see_ Hemina. + +Cato, M. Porcius ... 30 + +Catullus, G. Valerius ... 53 + +Celsus, A. Cornelius ... 165 + +Cicero, M. Tullius ... 62 + +Cicero, Q. Tullius ... 86 + +Cincius, _see_ Alimentus. + +Cinna, G. Helvius ... 52 + +Claudianus, Claudius ... 267 + +Claudius, _see_ Caecus. + +Clemens, Aurelius Prudentius ... 270 + +Columella, L. Junius Moderatus ... 181 + +Commodianus ... 257 + +Corbulo, Domitius ... 180 + +Cornificius ... 36 + +Crassus, L. Licinius ... 36 + +Crispus, G. Sallustius ... 82 + +Curtius, _see_ Rufus. + +Cyprianus, Thascius Caecilius ... 254 + + +Donatus, Aelius ... 272 + + +Ennius, Q ... 7 + +Eumenius ... 265 + +Eutropius ... 273 + + +Fabius, _see_ Pictor. + +Fannius, G. ... 33 + +Felix, Minucius ... 249 + +Festus, Sex. Pompeius ... 165 + +Flaccus, Q. Horatius ... 106 + +Flaccus, A. Persius ... 178 + +Flaccus, G. Valerius ... 190 + +Flaccus, M. Verrius ... 165 + +Florus, Julius (_or_ Lucius) Annaeus ... 229 + +Frontinus, Sex. Julius ... 197 + +Fronto, M. Cornelius ... 234 + +Frugi, L. Calpurnius Piso ... 28 + + +Gaius ... 229 + +Gallicanus, Vulcacius ... 263 + +Gallus, G. Cornelius ... 122 + +Gellius, A. ... 231 + +Germanicus ... 157 + +Gordianus, M. Antonius ... 262 + +Gracchus, G. Sempronius ... 36 + +Gratius (_or_ Grattius) ... 122 + + +Hemina, L. Cassius ... 28 + +Hilarius ... 265, 271 + +Hirtius, A. ... 81 + +Honoratus, Marius (_or_ Maurus) Servius ... 272 + +Horace, _see_ Flaccus. + +Hortalus, Q. Hortensius ... 65, 86 + +Hortensius, _see_ Hortalus. + +Hyginus, G. Julius ... 164 + + +Italicus, Tib. Catius Silius ... 191 + + +Javolenus, _see_ Priscus. + +Julianus, Salvius ... 229 + +Junior, Lucilius ... 182 + +Justinus, M. Junianus ... 163, 229 + +Juvenalis, D. Junius ... 221 + +Juvencus, G. Vettius Aquilinus ... 271 + + +Laberius, Dec. ... 87 + +Lactantius, L. Caecilius Firmianus ... 255, 258 + +Laelius, G. ... 33 + +Lampridius, Aelius ... 263 + +Livius, _see_ Andronicus, + +Livius, T. ... 145 + +Lucanus, M. Annaeus ... 175 + +Lucilius, G. ... 33 + +Lucilius, _see_ Junior. + +Lucretius, _see_ Carus. + +Lygdamus ... 130 + + +Macer, Aemilius ... 122 + +Macer, G. Licinius ... 37 + +Macer, _see_ Calvus. + +Maecenas, G. Cilnius ... 162 + +Manilius, G. (_or_ M.). ... 158 + +Manilius, M. ... 30 + +Marcellinus, Aramianus ... 273 + +Marius, _see_ Maximus. + +Marius, _see_ Victorinus. + +Maro, P. Vergilius ... 91 + +Martialis, M. Valerius ... 192 + +Maternus, Curiatius ... 192 + +Matius, Gn. ... 38 + +Maurus, Terentianus ... 261 + +Maximus, Marius ... 261 + +Maximus, Valerius ... 164 + +Mela, Pomponius ... 180 + +Melissus, Laevius ... 38 + +Minucius, _see_ Felix. + + +Naevius, Gn. ... 5 + +Namatianus, Claudius Rutilius ... 275 + +Naso, P. Ovidius ... 135 + +Nemesianus, M. Aurelius Olympius ... 262 + +Nepos, Cornelius ... 84 + + +Oppius, G. ... 81 + +Ovid, _see_ Naso. + + +Pacuvius, M. ... 11 + +Palaemon, Q. Remmius ... 165 + +Palladius, _see_ Aemilianus. + +Papinianus, Aemilius ... 260 + +Paterculus, G. Velleius ... 163 + +Paulinus, G. Suetonius ... 180 + +Paulinus, Meropius Pontius Anicius ... 257 + +Paulus (Diaconus) ... 165 + +Paulus, Julius ... 261 + +Pedianus, Q. Asconius ... 204 + +Pedo, Albinovanus ... 157 + +Persius, _see_ Flaccus. + +Petronius, _see_ Arbiter. + +Phaedrus ... 160 + +Philus, L. Furius ... 33 + +Pictor, Q. Fabius ... 28 + +Piso, _see_ Frugi. + +Plautus, T. Maccius ... 17 + +Pliny, _see_ Secundus. + +Pollio, G. Asinius ... 121, 162 + +Pollio, Trebellius ... 263 + +Pollio, Vitruvius ... 166 + +Priscianus ... 278 + +Priscus, Javolenus ... 229 + +Probus, M. Valerius ... 204 + +Propertius, Sex. ... 123 + +Prudentius, _see_ Clemens. + +Publilius, _see_ Syrus. + + +Quadrigarius, Q. Claudius ... 36 + +Quintilianus, M. Fabius ... 197 + + +Rabirius ... 157 + +Renatus, Flavius Vegetius ... 273 + +Rufus, M. Caelius ... 75 + +Rufus, Q. Curtius ... 180 + +Rufus, Ser. Sulpicius ... 75 + +Rufus, L. Varius ... 121, 122 + +Rutilius, _see_ Namatianus. + + +Sabinus ... 157 + +Sallust, _see_ Crispus. + +Sammonicus, _see_ Serenus. + +Scaevola, Q. Mucius ... 29 + +Scipio, _see_ Africanus. + +Secundus, G. Plinius (major) ... 195 + + " " (minor) ... 225 + +Seneca, L. Annaeus (major) ... 167 + + " " (minor) ... 171 + +Serenus, Q. Sammonicus ... 261 + +Servius, _see_ Honoratus. + +Severus, Cornelius ... 157 + +Siculus, T. Calpurnius ... 181 + +Sidonius, G. Sollius Apollinaris ... 278 + +Silius, _see_ Italicus. + +Sisenna, L. Cornelius ... 37 + +Spartianus, Aelius ... 263 + +Statius, P. Papinius ... 187 + +Stella, L. Arruntius ... 192 + +Suetonius, _see_ Tranquillus. + +Sulla, L. Cornelius ... 36 + +Sulpicia (major) ... 130, 134 + +Sulpicia (minor) ... 192 + +Sulpicius, _see_ Rufus. + +Syrus, Publilius ... 87 + + +Tacitus, Cornelius ... 205 + +Terentianus, _see_ Maurus. + +Terentius, P. ... 22 + +Tertullianus, Q. Septimius Florens ... 251 + +Tiberianus ... 263 + +Tiberius, _see_ Caesar. + +Tibullus, Albius ... 130 + +Tiro, M. Tullius ... 87 + +Titinius ... 15 + +Tranquillus, G. Suetonius ... 229 + +Tribonianus ... 278 + +Trogus, Gn. Pompeius ... 163 + +Turpilius ... 16 + + +Ulpianus, Domitius ... 260 + + +Valerius, _see_ Antias. + +Valerius, _see_ Flaccus. + +Valerius, _see_ Maximus. + +Varius, _see_ Rufus. + +Varro, M. Terentius ... 85 + +Varro, P. Terentius (Atacinus) ... 87 + +Vegetius, _see_ Renatus. + +Verrius, _see_ Flaccus. + +Victor, Aurelius ... 273 + +Victor (Pope) ... 248 + +Victorinus, G. Marius ... 271 + +Virgil, _see_ Maro. + +Vitruvius, _see_ Pollio. + +Vopiscus, Flavius ... 263 + + + +FOOTNOTES: + + +1. One of the great speeches in this play was probably made use of by +Livy in his account of the address of Paulus to the people after his +triumph in 167 B.C., which has again been turned into noble tragic verse +by Fitzgerald, _Literary Remains_, vol. ii. p. 483. + +2. The repetition of this word from the lovely lyric, _Ille mi par esse_, +where it occurs in the same place of the verse, is a stroke of subtle and +daring art. + +3. The subject was a quite usual one among the Alexandrian poets whom +Catullus read and imitated. Cf. _Anthologia Palatina_, vi. 51, 217-220. + +4. _Confess_., III. iv. + +5. _Historia scribitur ad narrandum non ad probandum:_ Inst. Or., +X. i. 31. + +6. _Confess._, I. xiii. + +7. _Supra,_ p. 68. + +8. _Supra,_ p. 48. + +9. These are the two parts of what the MSS. and the older editions give +as Book ii. The division was made, on somewhat inconclusive grounds, by +Lachmann. + +10. It is one of these which opens with the two sonorous lines-- + + _Aesopi statuam ingentem posuere Attici + Servumque aeterna collocarunt in basi_, + +which so powerfully affected the imagination of De Quincey. + +11. In the poem as it has come down to us the refrain comes in at +irregular intervals; but the most plausible reconstitution of a somewhat +corrupt and disordered text makes it recur after every fourth line, thus +making up the twenty-two stanzas mentioned in the title. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Latin Literature, by J. W. Mackail + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LATIN LITERATURE *** + +This file should be named 8894-8.txt or 8894-8.zip + +Produced by Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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