FOOTNOTES

All his leaves, fall’n at length,

while the bacchiac rhythm is, if pronounced with care, conveyed by Arnold’s

Ye storm-winds, of autumn

These brief experiments on the part of English poets, which show an observance of word-stress and also of quantity, will indicate the nature of the difficult task which Latin poetry had to face in taking over meters native to the Greek language, except that the Latin poet, conversely, must place his verse ictus on a long syllable and secondarily, if possible, observe the word stress as well. That was a difficulty with which classical Greek did not have to contend, since its word accent was musical and could easily be slighted. German and English poetry—except in learned experiments—has refused to face the double task, a task which has fortunately never been compulsory.

If we keep these facts in mind I think we may be willing to concede that the Latin poets of the early time may have called in the extended aid of the flute and of melody partly in order to obscure the occasionally inevitable conflict between the word accent and verse ictus. The point can be illustrated by a simple example. In Tennyson’s song “Blow, bugle, blow,” the line

And the wild cataract leaps in glory,

which falls unrhythmically in the midst of an iambic system, hides its confusion when sung in regular three-fourths time. The flute or violin, unlike any of the percussion instruments, does not convey a stressing tone, it measures notes and carries a quantitative rhythm readily, thereby obscuring any word accents that fall irregularly.

It is my belief that when the drama came into Rome and found the language just at the point where the quantitative principle was having its conflict for dominance with the accentual factor, a moment when the task of shaping adequate rhythms for new forms would be very difficult, it did the natural thing, accepted quantity as dominant, attempted at the same time to observe the word stress, and then hid occasional discrepancies by using song and recitative freely. And this, it seems to me, is one of the reasons why Roman tragedy was the more willing to go in the direction of modern opera.

If a recent theory concerning French verse be true, we may find there an instructive parallel. It has been suggested that when medieval Latin verse floundered between quantity and accent, early French verse, unable to find usable quantitative distinctions and hampered by a monotonous word accent, hesitated for a dominant principle, and allowed the singing line with its counted notes to assume control. Whether or not this is the reason, at any rate the French lyric emerged with its isosyllabic lines and fluid ictus, and in so far provides a partial parallel to what happened in Latin verse.

It is not improbable that, if the Romans had come in contact with culture a century later than they did, so that the Latin accent might have affected colloquial morphology unhindered by literature and sophistication for another century, native poetry might have abandoned its quantitative basis and frankly accepted word accent as the most vital factor of its rhythm. It would perhaps have been a liberating influence had this happened. As it was, by their use of music and by their reasonable compromise with Greek meters, the early poets accustomed the Roman ear to slight the claims of accent, and Ennius was able to compose spoken lines in hexameters which almost entirely followed the dictates of quantity. Once completely naturalized, this method was no longer questioned, and Lucretius, Horace, and Vergil—except at line ends—could safely disregard the word accents. It was the musical part of the drama that had naturalized such principles of rhythm.

After Accius the writing of tragedy fell off as rapidly at Rome as it had in Greece after the conquests of Alexander. How is this to be explained? Why did not England produce great tragedies after the successes of the Elizabethan stage, or France for a long time after the classical period, or why did not America during the two centuries of play-writing before 1900 beget a single great dramatist? Recently there was published a list of the American plays copyrighted in Washington between 1870 and 1920; it contains over 60,000 titles. How many of these have become a part of the world’s literature? Probably not one in 10,000. Can we explain why?

It is not well to be dogmatic in discussing the reasons for such a phenomenon as the decline of tragedy at Rome, but we may be permitted perhaps to repeat some conjectures. We have already remarked[18]that the second century B.C. was a period of striking social changes, of a decrease in the middle class native stock and a very remarkable increase in the slave population, and from this slave population there grew up at Rome the new generation of proletariat citizens that had to be amused at festival seasons. It was a population that was probably as intelligent as the old, but it had hitherto been brought up in slavery and in the devotion to material advancement that slavery implies. These new Romans could hardly be expected to concern themselves with the quality of the entertainment provided, with civic ideals and artistic standards. In Cicero’s day the games at festivals were more frequently gladiatorial shows and wild beast hunts. To freedmen and freedmen’s sons these seemed to provide what Aristotle called tragic purgation somewhat more effectively than did representations of theMedea,Orestes, andOedipus. It is apparent that if society was to continue in its course of degeneration the exacting tragedy of the old type was doomed.

Nevertheless, the old plays were being revived by men who were interested in high standards, and when a famous actor played a part he would draw large audiences. Aesopus and Roscius, the best actors of Cicero’s day, were in great demand and both grew rich at their profession. Though referencesto dramatic performances in Cicero’s day are casual, we hear of not a few. We know, for instance, that there were reproductions of Ennius’ plays a century after his death, and we find in the list hisAndromache,Telamo,Thyestes, theAlcumeo, theIphigeniaand theHector. Of Pacuvius’ plays Cicero had seen theAntiope, theIliona, and a play about Orestes which he describes as a favorite of the gallery. Accius was even more popular. Aesopus produced hisAtreusrepeatedly. HisEurysaceswas given in 57 B.C., theClytemestrain 55, and theTereusin 44 after the authorities had suppressed theBrutusbecause of its political significance. And there were many more.

This success of the old plays—artificial though it may have been in some instances—shows that respectable audiences could still be reckoned on so long as the Republic lasted, and that the plays were attractive enough to justify the aediles in presenting them. With the Empire, however, the decline was rapid; the populace found the tragedies tedious, and when in Horace’s day a popular actor discovered a way of cutting the plays and presenting the more effective scenes in pantomime, with a lavish amount of music and a gorgeous setting, legitimate tragedy gave way to something resembling a Russian ballet. Old tragedies were cut and adapted for this new kind of presentation and new ones were written that consisted chiefly of scenarios and monologues. Even closet plays, like Seneca’s, were shaped into a succession of recitations in the hope that they might sell to the new industry. Literary tragedy, however, had come to its end at Rome.

This process of decay was natural enough and was only to be expected, given the changes in Rome’s society and with them the decline of Roman ideals. But it is still somewhat of a riddle why at Rome as well as at Athens good playwrights ceased to write a hundred years before tragedy ceased to attract respectable audiences. It would seem as if the art of writing plays lost its stimulus even before the plays themselves ceased to please. The reason for this may well be that tragedy kept too long to its convention of interpreting sacred myths. The themes were outworn, and each myth had had every human interest exploited by the time that several writers had given it their several interpretations.

Today it would seem quite the obvious thing to have dramatized fictitious experience, even as comedy had long ago learned to do. But a moment’s reflection will show that to assume that this might have been done involves an anachronism. Greece did not take this step after Euripides, for Agathon’s experiment was not followed, nor France for some time after the classical period, nor England after the Elizabethan successes, and conditions at Rome in the days of Accius were in many respects analogous to those in the countries named. Though the dramatic instinct seems always to be presumable, the drama depends upon social conditions and must draw its life from that which society provides. Its evolution has accordingly been a fairly consistent story. Early tragedy assumes the rôle of interpreting the most sacred and time-honored of a nation’s stories. The sufferings, thoughts, emotions of the great—heroes, demigods, and kings—areworthy of presentation, and these alone. At first the tale must not be altered, it must be told as nearly as possible in the way that tradition has hallowed. As time goes on, however, and men have changed, the tale thus told will seem inconsonant with human nature; then the dramatist may re-tell it, suppressing what has grown obsolete, emphasizing the elements that still seem true to experience. A very daring realist will venture to present Telephus in tatters, but the critics will be upon his heels immediately. For the hero will remind you of a beggar, and it would be desecration to set mere man upon the stage made for the demigods. Common man belongs in comedy; you may laugh at him and with him, but life’s great lessons are illustrated only in the characters of the great. And that is where Euripides stopped—was doubtless compelled to stop. And it is nearly where Shakespeare found the outward boundary of his tragedies. His tragic plots derive from old Chronicles or from Ancient Rome, or from foreign lands sufficiently removed from his audience by mists of unknown space to make them suitably heroic. His tragic characters never represent the men of contemporary England. They are as real and human as the man of the street, to be sure; but that is after all not the same thing. Try to imagine the heroines of Ibsen or Pinero or O’Neill upon the stage of the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare’s day! The Elizabethan conception of the function of tragedy makes such heroines unthinkable except in comic rôles.

Realistic tragedy is of course a thing of slow growth, or perhaps we should say that a nation fitsitself slowly for the reception of it. Comedy paves the way somewhat. When the great may not be laughed at, it is well that comedy should present the foibles and deformities of the common man, if it be merely for ridicule. Slaves served the purpose of comedy for Menander and Plautus, though they were careful not to compromise the dignity of their art by giving title rôles to such humble fellows. Yet as a matter of fact the study of mean subjects contributed directly and very largely to the understanding of the ordinary character as material for tragedy. Shakespeare’s portraiture of Shylock, for example, carried him so far that modern critics do not know where comedy ends and tragedy begins. In theAndria, theHecyra, and theHeautonof Terence the emotion shifts more than once from laughter to deep sympathy. But something more was needed than the dramatist’s study of the man of the street. Human society must itself change. It is not an accident that genuine realistic tragedy failed to find its fully accepted place upon the stage till the nineteenth century, in a word not till thoroughgoing democracy, by preaching the equality of men, had persuaded us of the dignity of the mere human being, and through the prose novel taught the man on the street to concern himself with his fellows as worthy themes of art. That was a stage of democratic realism which Rome did not reach while the literary art was still creative. And therein probably lies the final explanation of the slow failure of Roman tragedy.

FOOTNOTES[1]Am. Jour. Phil., 1927, 105.[2]Livius and Naevius were both very fond of the septenarii; the iambic tetrameter appears in the tragic fragments of Naevius once; cretics are found in theEquos Trojanus, and bacchiacs apparently in Naevius’Danaeand in hisLycurgus. Fraenkel,Hermes(1927), 357 ff., has shown that the trochaic septenarius (quadratus) was an old Latin meter. We need not, however, assume with him that it was derived from the Greek. As a marching rhythm it is too natural to require explanation. The assumption of an Indo-EuropeanUrversneeds to be exiled from our books. Song and dance are very old.[3]SeeCambridge Ancient History, VII, 644.[4]See Duckett,Studies in Ennius, 56, who revises the views of Leo,De Tragoedia Romana(Göttingen, 1910).[5]For a strophic system in Ennius, see Crusius,Philologus, Supp. XXI, 114.[6]Gram. Lat. Keil, VI, 77, 7; Vollmer,Röm. Metrik, in Gercke’sEinleitung, I, 8, p. 6; however among the preserved fragments of Pacuvius there are several anapaests that resemble those of Ennius.[7]Ennius, ed. Vahlen,Scaenica, 272.[8]SeeAm. Jour. Phil.1913, 326.[9]Leo,Die plautinischen Cantica(1897).[10]Fraenkel,Plautinisches im Plautus(1922), criticized by Immisch,Sitz. Heid. Akad.1923.[11]Milne,Cat. of lit. pap. in British Mus.1927 (no. 52); cf. Wuest and Croenert,Philol.1928, 153 ff.[12]See Marx’s ed. ofRudens, 254 ff.[13]Crusius,Die Responsion in den plaut. Cantica(1929).[14]See Bieber,Denkmäler d. Theaterwesenand Bulle,Abh. Bayer. Akad.1928.[15]If Horace’s strictures on the new music of the drama in theArs Poet.200-15 took a hint from Neoptolemus, we may suppose that Hellenistic critics had objected to this change.[16]Robert Bridges,Ibant Obscuri. Such hexameters asThey were amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscureWalking forth i’ the void and vasty dominyon of Ades:As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin’d—do not represent what happened to Latin in Ennius, for the reason that in Latin pronunciation the quantity was the dominant element controlling even the accent. In English the reverse is true. Fraenkel,Iktus und Akzent, has recently committed a similar mistake in judgment, influenced apparently by the high respect that speakers of German must necessarily have for stress. He has resorted to daring hypotheses in trying to prove that Plautus always correctly observes a species of stress (see Sonnenschein inClass. Quart., 1929, 81). It is significant that the French, who feel little stress in their diction, go to the other extreme and find stress insignificant in Latin. Latin in fact was like neither; it resembled Hungarian in being primarily quantitative, and in its word accent had a moderate stress not without a rather noticeable pitch such as is found in some parts of Sweden.[17]See Lindsay,Early Latin Verse, Leo,Geschichte Lat. Lit., p. 68. Fraenkel,Iktus und Akzent, seems to me only to have confused the results that have been summarized with consummate skill and good sense by Lindsay.[18]In chap. I.

[1]Am. Jour. Phil., 1927, 105.

[2]Livius and Naevius were both very fond of the septenarii; the iambic tetrameter appears in the tragic fragments of Naevius once; cretics are found in theEquos Trojanus, and bacchiacs apparently in Naevius’Danaeand in hisLycurgus. Fraenkel,Hermes(1927), 357 ff., has shown that the trochaic septenarius (quadratus) was an old Latin meter. We need not, however, assume with him that it was derived from the Greek. As a marching rhythm it is too natural to require explanation. The assumption of an Indo-EuropeanUrversneeds to be exiled from our books. Song and dance are very old.

[3]SeeCambridge Ancient History, VII, 644.

[4]See Duckett,Studies in Ennius, 56, who revises the views of Leo,De Tragoedia Romana(Göttingen, 1910).

[5]For a strophic system in Ennius, see Crusius,Philologus, Supp. XXI, 114.

[6]Gram. Lat. Keil, VI, 77, 7; Vollmer,Röm. Metrik, in Gercke’sEinleitung, I, 8, p. 6; however among the preserved fragments of Pacuvius there are several anapaests that resemble those of Ennius.

[7]Ennius, ed. Vahlen,Scaenica, 272.

[8]SeeAm. Jour. Phil.1913, 326.

[9]Leo,Die plautinischen Cantica(1897).

[10]Fraenkel,Plautinisches im Plautus(1922), criticized by Immisch,Sitz. Heid. Akad.1923.

[11]Milne,Cat. of lit. pap. in British Mus.1927 (no. 52); cf. Wuest and Croenert,Philol.1928, 153 ff.

[12]See Marx’s ed. ofRudens, 254 ff.

[13]Crusius,Die Responsion in den plaut. Cantica(1929).

[14]See Bieber,Denkmäler d. Theaterwesenand Bulle,Abh. Bayer. Akad.1928.

[15]If Horace’s strictures on the new music of the drama in theArs Poet.200-15 took a hint from Neoptolemus, we may suppose that Hellenistic critics had objected to this change.

[16]Robert Bridges,Ibant Obscuri. Such hexameters asThey were amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscureWalking forth i’ the void and vasty dominyon of Ades:As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin’d—do not represent what happened to Latin in Ennius, for the reason that in Latin pronunciation the quantity was the dominant element controlling even the accent. In English the reverse is true. Fraenkel,Iktus und Akzent, has recently committed a similar mistake in judgment, influenced apparently by the high respect that speakers of German must necessarily have for stress. He has resorted to daring hypotheses in trying to prove that Plautus always correctly observes a species of stress (see Sonnenschein inClass. Quart., 1929, 81). It is significant that the French, who feel little stress in their diction, go to the other extreme and find stress insignificant in Latin. Latin in fact was like neither; it resembled Hungarian in being primarily quantitative, and in its word accent had a moderate stress not without a rather noticeable pitch such as is found in some parts of Sweden.

[16]Robert Bridges,Ibant Obscuri. Such hexameters as

They were amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscureWalking forth i’ the void and vasty dominyon of Ades:As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin’d—

They were amid the shadows by night in loneliness obscure

Walking forth i’ the void and vasty dominyon of Ades:

As by an uncertain moonray secretly illumin’d—

do not represent what happened to Latin in Ennius, for the reason that in Latin pronunciation the quantity was the dominant element controlling even the accent. In English the reverse is true. Fraenkel,Iktus und Akzent, has recently committed a similar mistake in judgment, influenced apparently by the high respect that speakers of German must necessarily have for stress. He has resorted to daring hypotheses in trying to prove that Plautus always correctly observes a species of stress (see Sonnenschein inClass. Quart., 1929, 81). It is significant that the French, who feel little stress in their diction, go to the other extreme and find stress insignificant in Latin. Latin in fact was like neither; it resembled Hungarian in being primarily quantitative, and in its word accent had a moderate stress not without a rather noticeable pitch such as is found in some parts of Sweden.

[17]See Lindsay,Early Latin Verse, Leo,Geschichte Lat. Lit., p. 68. Fraenkel,Iktus und Akzent, seems to me only to have confused the results that have been summarized with consummate skill and good sense by Lindsay.

[18]In chap. I.

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