It is improbable, however, that the drama of Seneca occupied an important position in the literature of their day. The golden age of tragedy was past, and it is hard to believe that these plays are favourable specimens even of their own age. The authors of the Silver Age virtually ignore their existence, and, with the exception of two references in Tertullian and one in Apollinaris Sidonius, they are quoted only by scholars and grammarians.
They have small intrinsic value: but they afford interesting evidence for the taste[209] of their own day, and their influence on modern drama has been enormous. In the Renaissance at the dawn of the drama's revival, Seneca was regarded as a dramatist of the first order. Scaliger ranked him above Euripides: it was to him men turned to find models for tragedy. Everywhere we see traces of the Senecan drama.[210] It is a tribute to the dexterity of his rhetoric that his influence should have been so enormous, but it is to be regretted in the interests of the drama. For to Seneca more than to any other man is due the excessive prominence of declamatory rhetoric, which has characterized the drama throughout Western Europe from the Renaissance down to the latter half of the nineteenth century, and has proved a blemish to the work of all save a few great writers who recognized the value of rhetoric, but never mistook the shadow for the substance.
A tragedy with this title is included by the MSS. among the plays of Seneca. Its chief interest lies in the fact that it is the one surviving example of afabula praetexta, or tragedy, drawn from Roman life. It deals with a tragic incident of Nero's reign, the final extinction of the Claudian house. Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina, is the heroine. Her life was one long tragedy. Her childhood was darkened by the disaster that befell her unworthy mother, her maturer years by her marriage to Nero. She was a mere pawn in the game of politics. The marriage was brought about by the designs of Agrippina, to render Nero secure of the principate. To effect this end her betrothed Silanus was killed, Claudius, her father, and Britannicus, her brother, dispatched by poison. Soon her own wedded life turned to tragedy. Nero fell madly in love with Poppaea, and resolved to put away Octavia. At Poppaea's instigation she was accused of a base intrigue. The plot failed; the false charge could not be pressed home; she was divorced on the ground of sterility, and imprisoned in a town of Campania. A rumour arose that she was to be reinstated; the mob of Rome declared itself in her favour and gave wild expression to its joy. Poppaea's statues were cast down, Octavia's replaced. Poppaea was furious. She laid siege to Nero and won him to her will. The old false charge of adultery was trumped up; a complaisant freed man was found to confess himself Octavia's lover. She was banished to Pandataria and slain (June 9, 62 A.D.).
The play gives us a compressed version of the tragedy. It opens with a speech by Octavia's nurse, setting forth the sorrows of her young mistress. The speech over, she leaves the stage to be succeeded by Octavia, who, in a lament closely modelled on the lament of the Sophoclean Electra,[211] bewails the sorrows of her house, the deaths of Messalina, Claudius, and Britannicus. The nurse reappears, attempts to console her, and counsels submission to fate. Octavia changes her strain and prays for death. After a lament from the chorus, Nero and Seneca enter on the scene. Seneca urges moderation and sets forth his ideal of monarchy. Nero is quite his match in argument, rejects his advice, and, concluding with the words
desiste tandem, iam gravis nimium mihi, instare: liceat facere quod Seneca improbat (588).
Have done at last,For wearisome has thine insistence grown;One still may do what Seneca condemns …MILLER.
declares his intention of marrying Poppaea without delay. An interesting chorus follows, describing how Rome of old expelled the kings for their crimes. Nero has sinned even more than they. Has he not slain even his mother? There follows a long and interesting description of the murder,[212] which serves as an introduction to the entrance of the ghost of Agrippina in the guise of an avenging fury, prophesying the dethronement and death of her unnatural son. She is succeeded on the stage by Octavia, resigned to the surrender of her position and content to be no more than Nero's sister; once more the chorus bewail her fate. At last her rival Poppaea appears in conversation with her nurse. The nurse congratulates her, but Poppaea has been terrified by visions of the night and is ill at ease. Her rival is not yet removed and her own place is still insecure. At this point comes the one ray of hope that illumines this sombre drama. A messenger arrives with the news that the people have risen in Octavia's favour. But the reader is not left in suspense for a moment. Nero appears and orders the suppression of theémeuteand the execution of Octavia. The chorus mourn the fate of the beloved of the Roman people. Their power and splendour is but brief: Octavia perishes untimely, like Gracchus and Livius Drusus. She herself appears in the hands of soldiers, being dragged off to execution and death. Like Cassandra,[213] she compares her fate with that of the nightingale, to whom the gods gave a new life of peace full of sweet lamentation as a close to her troubled human existence. One more song of condolence from the chorus, one more song of sorrow from Octavia, and she is taken from our sight, and the play closes with a denunciation by the chorus of the hardness of heart and the insatiate cruelty of Rome.
It is not hard to summarize the general effect of this curious drama. Its author has read the Greek tragedians carefully and to some purpose; he has studied the characters of Electra, Cassandra, and Antigone with diligence, if without insight. He clearly feels deep sympathy for Octavia, and to some extent succeeds in communicating this sympathy to the audience. His heroine speaks in character: she is never a male Stoic, flaunting in female garb, she is a genuine woman, a gentle, lovable creature broken down by misfortune. The other characters are uninteresting. Nero is an academic tyrant, Seneca an academic adviser, Poppaea is little more than a lay figure. The most that can be said for them is that they do not rant. The chorus are on the whole a fairly satisfactory imitation of a chorus of sympathetic Greek women.[214] There is nothing forced or unnatural about them; they are real human beings; their sympathy is genuine, and its expression appropriate. But they are dull; monotonous lamentation in monotonous anapaests is the height of their capacity. The play is a failure: the subject is not in itself dramatic; if it had been, it would have been spoiled by the treatment it receives. We are never in suspense; Octavia has never the remotest chance of escape; our pity for her is genuine enough, but her character lacks both grandeur and psychological interest: the pathos of her situation will not compensate us for the absence of a dramatic plot. The fall of the house of Claudius compares ill with the tragedy of the Pelopidae. And the treatment of the story, from the dramatic standpoint, is childish. The play is scarcely more than a series of melancholy monologues interspersed with not less melancholy dirges from the chorus. The most we can say of it is that it is simple and unaffected: if it lacks brilliance, it also lacks exaggeration. Thought and diction are commonplace and uninspired, but they are never absurd—an extraordinary merit in a poet of the Silver Age.
It will have been sufficiently evident from this brief sketch that theOctaviais in all respects very different indeed from the other plays that claim Seneca for their author. It is free from their faults and their merits alike. It never sinks to their depths, but it never rises to their heights. Apart, however, from these general considerations,[215] there is evidence amounting almost to certainty that theOctaviais not by Seneca. The tragedy takes place in the lifetime of Seneca. Seneca himself figures in the play. The story is of such a nature that it could hardly have been written, much less published, in the reign of Nero. Yet more conclusive is the fact that the ghost of Agrippina prophesies the fate of Nero in such a way as to make it certain that the author outlived the emperor and was acquainted with the facts of his death.[216]
Who then was the author? When did he write? Evidence is almost absolutely lacking. From its comparative sanity and simplicity and its intense hatred of Nero it may reasonably be conjectured that it is the work of the Flavian age; the age of the anti-Neronian reaction and of the return to saner models in life and literature. But there is no certainty; it may have been written under Nerva, Trajan, or Hadrian. It stands detached and aloof from the literature of its age.
It is possible to form a clearer picture of the personality of Aulus Persius Flaccus, the satirist, than of any other poet of the Silver Age. Not only are the essential facts of his brief career preserved for us in a concise, but extremely relevant biography taken from the commentary of the famous critic Valerius Probus, but there are few poets whose works so clearly reveal the character of their author.
Persius was born at the lofty hill-town of Volaterrae, in Tuscany, on the 4th of December, 34 A.D.[217] He was scarcely six years old when he lost his father, a wealthy Roman knight, named Flaccus. His mother, Fulvia Sisennia, married again, but her second husband, a knight named Fusius, died after a few years of wedded life. Persius was educated at home up to the age of twelve, when he was taken to Rome to be taught literature by Remmius Palaemon and rhetoric by Verginius Flavus. Of the latter nothing is known save that he wrote a much-approved textbook on rhetoric and was exiled by Nero;[218] the former was a freedman whose remarkable talents were only equalled by his gross vices; he had a prodigious memory, was a skilfulimprovvisatore, and the most distinguished teacher of the day.[219] At the age of sixteen, shortly after his assumption of thetoga virilis, the young Persius made the friendship which was to be the ruling influence of his life. He learned to know and love the great Stoic teacher, Cornutus, with an attachment that was broken only by death. It was from Cornutus that he imbibed the principles of Stoicism, and at his house that he met the Greek philosophers, Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia and the Lacedaemonian physician, Claudius Agathurnus, whose influence upon his character was only less than that of Cornutus. Among his intimates he counted Calpurnius Statura, who died in early youth, and the famous lyric poet, Caesius Bassus,[220] who was destined long to survive his friend and to do him the last service of editing the satires, which his premature death left unpublished and unfinished. Lucan also was one of his fellow students in the house of Cornutus,[221] while at a later date he made the acquaintance of Seneca, the leading writer of the day, although he never felt the seductive attractions of his fluent style and subtle intellect. More important influences were his almost filial respect and affection for the distinguished orator,[222] M. Servilius Nonianus, and his close companionship with Thrasea Paetus, the leader of the Stoic opposition.[223] At one time Persius, if the scholiast may be believed,[224] contemplated a military career. The statement is scarcely probable in view of the contempt and dislike with which he invariably speaks of soldiers, nor is it easy to conceive a profession less suited to the temperament of the quiet and retiring poet. Whatever his original intentions may have been, he actually chose the secluded life of study, thevita umbratilis, as the Romans called it, remote from the dust and heat of the great world. That he was wise we cannot doubt. It was the only life possible in those days for a man of his character. 'Fuit morum lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, pietatis erga matrem et sororem et amitam exemplo sufficientis: fuit frugi, pudicus.' Even in a saner, purer, and less turbulent age, such a one would have been more fitted for the paths of study than for any branch of public life. He died of a disease of the stomach on the 24th of November, 62 A.D., in his villa on the Appian Way, some eight miles south of Rome,[225] leaving behind him a valuable library, a small amount of unpublished verse, and a considerable fortune, amounting to 2,000,000 sesterces. The whole of this fortune he bequeathed to his mother and sister, only begging them to give to his friend Cornutus a sum of 100,000 sesterces, twenty pounds weight of silver plate, and the whole of his library, containing no less than 700 volumes by the Stoic Chrysippus. Cornutus accepted the books, but refused the rest, showing that indifference to wealth that was to be looked for, though not always to be found, in professors of the Stoic philosophy. The literary work left by the dead poet was submitted by his mother to the judgement of Cornutus, himself a poet.[226] The bulk of the work was not great. Persius had in his boyhood written apraetextaor tragedy with a Roman plot, a book of poems describing his journeys with Thrasea,[227] and a few verses on his kinswoman Arria, the wife of Caecina Paetus, immortalized by her devotion to her husband and her heroic death.[228] As the work of his maturer years he left his satires. Cornutus recommended that all save the satires should be destroyed; they alone, unfinished though they might be, were worthy of the memory of his dead friend. He began the task of correcting them for publication, but transferred it to Caesius Bassus, at the latter's earnest entreaty. Of the nature of the correction and editing required we are ignorant, save for the statement of Probus that a few lines were removed from the end of the book to give it an appearance of completion.[229] The poems met with instant success;[230] they excited both wonder and criticism; that they continued to be read is shown by the existence of copious scholia, which must, indeed, have been almost necessary for such continuance of their popularity.[231]
The slender volume of Persius' works is composed of six satires in hexameter verse and a prologue written in choliambi. The first deals with the corruption of literature; the second, addressed to Macrinus on his birthday, treats of the right and wrong objects of prayer; the third is an appeal to an indolent young man for energy and earnestness; the fourth, almost a continuation of the third, attacks the lack of 'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control', in public men; the fifth, addressed to his friend and teacher Cornutus, maintains the Stoic doctrine that all the world are slaves; only the righteous man attains to freedom; in the sixth, addressed to Caesius Bassus, the poet claims the right to spend his wealth in reasonable enjoyment, and denounces the grasping and unseemly selfishness of an imaginary heir to his fortune. In the prologue—or epilogue as it is sometimes regarded[232]—he sarcastically disclaims any pretensions to poetic inspiration, and hints ironically that, in view of the number of poets who write merely to win their bread, inspiration may be regarded as unnecessary.
The ambition to win fame as a satirist was first fired in Persius by his reading the tenth book of the satires of Lucilius. If we may believe Probus, he imitated the opening of that book in his first satire, beginning like Lucilius by detracting from himself and proceeding to attack other authors indiscriminately.[233] Not enough of the tenth book of Lucilius has survived to enable us to check the accuracy of this statement, though it finds independent testimony in a remark of the scholiast on Horace, that the tenth book of Lucilius contained free criticisms of the early poets of Rome.[234] Further, the third satire is said by the scholiast to have been modelled on the fourth book of Lucilius, and there is a certain amount of evidence for supposing the choliambi of the epilogue to be an imitation of a Lucilian model.[235] We have, however, no means of testing the truth of these assertions: the debt of Persius to Lucilius must be taken on trust. Of his enormous indebtedness to Horace we have, on the other hand, the clearest evidence. It is hard to conceive two poets with less in common as regards ideals, temperament, and technique; and yet throughout Persius we are startled by strange, though unmistakable, echoes of Horace.
He knows his Horace by heart, and Horace has become a veritable obsession. He is not content with giving his characters Horatian names.[236] That might be convention, not plagiarism. But phrase after phrase calls up the Horatian original. He runs through the whole gamut of plagiarism. There is plagiarism, simple and direct.
O si sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria, dextro Hercule! (2. 10)
O that I could hear a crock of silver chinking under my harrow, by the blessing of Hercules. CONINGTON.
is undisguisedly copied from Horace (Sat.ii. 6. 10).
O si urnam argenti fors quae mihi monstret, ut illi, thesauro invento, qui mercennarius agrum ilium ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico Hercule!
But as a rule, since he cannot keep Horace out, he strives to disguise him. The familiar
si vis me flere, dolendum est primum ipsi tibi
of theArs Poetica(102) reappears in the far less natural
verum nec nocte paratum plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela (Pers. i. 91).
A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON.
He speaks of his verses so finely turned and polished—
ut per leve severos effundat iunctura unguis (i. 64).
So that the critical nail runs glibly along even where theparts join. CONINGTON.
In this fantastically contorted and affected phrase we may espy an ingenious blending of two Horatian phrases,
totus teres atque rotundus, externi ne quid valeat per leve morari (Sat.ii. 7. 86),
and the simple
ad unguem factus
fSat.i. 5. 32.[237]
There is no need to multiply instances. Horace appears everywhere, butquantum mutatus ab illo!As the result of this particular method of borrowing, assisted by affectations and obscurities which are all his own, Persius attains to a kind of spurious originality of diction, which often degenerates into sheer eccentricity. In spite of the fact that the original text can almost everywhere be reconstructed with certainty, he is almost the most obscure of Latin poets to the modern reader. A few instances will suffice. There were, it appears, three ways of mocking a person behind his back: one might tap the fingers against the lower portion of the hand in imitation of a stork's beak, one might imitate a donkey's ears, or one might put out one's tongue. When Persius wishes to say 'Janus, I envy you your luck, for no one can mock at you behind your back!' he writes (i. 58):
O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit, nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas, nec linguae, quantum sitiat canis Apula, tantae.
Happy Janus, whom no stork's bill batters from behind, no nimble hand quick to imitate the ass's white ears, no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch.
The obscurity of the first line springs in part from the fact that the custom is not elsewhere spoken of. The second line may pass. The third defies literal translation. It means 'no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch'. But the omission of all mention both of 'protrusion' and of the 'dog days' makes the Latin almost without meaning. The epithetApulabecomes absurd. A 'thirsty Apulian dog' is barely sufficient to suggest the midsummer drought of Apulia. This is an extreme case; it is perhaps fairer to quote lines such as
si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas (iv. 49),
'if in your zeal for the main chance you flog the exchange with many a stripe,' a mysterious passage generally supposed to mean 'if you exact exorbitant usury'. A little less enigmatic, but fully as forced and unnatural is
dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (v. 92),
'while I pull your old grandmotherly views from your heart,' or the extraordinarily harsh metaphor of the first satire (24)—
quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?
What is the good of past study, unless this leaven—unless the wild fig-tree which has once struck its root into the breast, break through and come out? CONINGTON.
which means nothing more than 'What is the good of study unless a man brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity, however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the passage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This Persius refuses us. The difficulties which he presents are—as in the case of Robert Browning—in part due to his adoption of the traditional dramatic form in satire, a form in which clearness of expression is as difficult as it is desirable. But we cannot excuse his obscurity as we sometimes can in Browning—either as being to some extent a realistic representation of the discursiveness and lack of method that characterize the reasonings of the average intelligent man, or on the other hand as springing from the intensity of the poet's thought. It is not the case with Persius that his thoughts press so thick and quick upon him, or are of so deep and complicated a character, as to be incapable of simple and lucid expression. It is sheer waywardness and perversity springing from the absence of true artistic feeling to which we must attribute this cardinal defect. For his thought is commonplace, and his observation of the minds and ways of men is limited.
The qualities that go to the making of the true satirist are many. He must be dominated by a moral ideal, not necessarily of the highest kind, but sufficiently exalted to lend dignity to his work and sufficiently strongly realized to permeate it. He must have a wide and comprehensive knowledge of his fellow men. A knowledge of the broad outlines of the cardinal virtues and of the deadly sins is not sufficient. The satirist must know them in their countless manifestations in the life of man, as they move our awe or our contempt, our admiration or our terror, our love or our loathing, our laughter or our tears. He must be able to paint society in all its myriad hues. He must have a sense of humour, even if he lacks the sense of proportion; he must have the gift of laughter, even though his laughter ring harsh and painful. He must have the gift of mordant speech, of epigram, and of rhetoric. He must drive his points home with directness and lucidity. Mere denunciation of vice is not enough. Few prophets are satirists; few satirists are prophets.
Of these qualities Persius has all too few. The man who has become the pupil of a Cornutus at the age of sixteen, who has shunned a public career, and is characterized by avirginalis verecundia, is not likely, even in a long life, to acquire the knowledge of the world required for genuine satire. The satirist, it might almost be said, must not only have walked abroad in the great world, but must have passed through the fire himself, and in some sense experienced the vices he has set himself to lash. But Persius is young and, as far as might be in that age, innocent. His outlook is from the seclusion of literary and philosophic circles, and his satire lacks the peculiar vigour that can only be got from jostling one's way in the wider world. In consequence the picture of life which he presents lacks vividness. A few brilliant sketches there are; but they are drawn from but a narrow range of experience. There is nothing better of its kind than the description in the first satire of the omnipresent poetaster of the reign of Nero, with his affected recitations of tawdry, sensuous, and soulless verse (15):
Scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur mobile conlueris, patranti fractus ocello. tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.
Yes—you hope to read this out some day, got up sprucely with a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last, perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is tickled by the ripple of the measure. CONINGTON.
A few lines later comes a similar and equally vivid picture (30):
ecce inter pocula quaerunt Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent. hic aliquis, cui circum umeros hyacinthina laena est, rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus, Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile siquid, cliquat ac tenero subplantat verba palato.
Listen. The sons of Rome are sitting after a full meal, and inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles, or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled, filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the roof of his delicate mouth. CONINGTON.
Here the poet is describing what he has seen; in the world of letters he is at home. He can laugh pungently enough at the style of oratory prevailing in the courts—
nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire 'decenter'. 'fur es', ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis librat in antithetis, doctas posuisse figuras laudatur, 'bellum hoc?' (i. 83).
Are you not ashamed not to be able to plead against perils threatening your grey hairs, but you must needs be ambitious of hearing mawkish compliments to your 'good taste'? The accuser tells Pedius point blank, 'You are a thief.' What does Pedius do? Oh, he balances the charges in polished antitheses— he is deservedly praised for the artfulness of his tropes. Monstrous fine that! CONINGTON.
He can parody the decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary of the genius of Lucilius and Horace—
secuit Lucilius urbem, te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit, callidus excusso populum suspendere naso (i. 114).
Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue, manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it. CONINGTON.
But the first satire stands alonequasatire. It is not, perhaps, the most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead, he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a certain violence and even coarseness[241] of description which does duty for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit, the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal. We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same subject (Sat.ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure; and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal.
But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal, that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine. Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the conclusion of the second satire (61):
O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes, quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa? haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo et Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit. peccat et haec, peccat, vitio tamen utitur. at vos dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum? nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance non possit magni Messalae lippa propago? compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto: haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo.
O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it—to steep Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins—yes, it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you, reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young girl offers to Venus. Givewerather to the gods such an offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no means of giving, even out of his great dish—duty to God and man well blended in the mind—purity in the shrine of the heart, and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall win me acceptance. CONINGTON.
This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes straight to the point without obscurity or circumlocution. Here alone does the second satire of Persius surpass the more famous tenth satire of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpassed by the deservedly well-known passage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and strenuously (23):
udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum (quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est. hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis, stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis, censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas? ad populum phaleras, ego te intus et in cute novi. non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae. sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda. magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno: virtutem videant intabescantque relicta. anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci, et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus, imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor?
You are moist soft earth, you ought to be taken instantly,instantly, and fashioned without end by the rapid wheel. But youhave a paternal estate with a fair crop of corn, a salt-cellarof unsullied brightness (no fear of ruin surely!), and a snugdish for fireside service. Are you to be satisfied with this? orwould it be decent to puff yourself and vapour because your branchis connected with a Tuscan stem, and you are thousandth in the line,or because you wear purple on review days and salute your censor?Off with your trappings to the mob! I can look under them and seeyour skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But heis paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat;he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in thedepth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of theGods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monstersof tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, thathas the taint of fiery poison—let them look upon virtue and pine thatthey have lost her for ever! Were the groans from the brazen bull ofSicily more terrible, or did the sword that hung from the gilded cornicestrike more dread into the princely neck beneath it, than the voicewhich whispers to the heart, 'We are going, going down a precipice,' andthe ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of ourheart? CONINGTON.
The man who wrote this has 'loved righteousness and hated iniquity'. In the work of Persius' rivals it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it is the hatred of iniquity that is most prominent; the love of righteousness holds but a secondary place.
Persius is uncompromising; he is the true Stoic with the motto 'all or nothing'. But he has nothing of the stilted Stoicism that is such a painful feature of the plays of Seneca; nor, however perverse and affected he may be in diction, do we ever feel that his Stoicism is in some respects no better than a moral pose, a distressing feeling that sometimes afflicts as we read Seneca's letters or consolatory treatises. He speaks straight from the heart. His faults are more often the faults of the school of philosophy than of the schools of rhetoric. The young Lucan is said to have exclaimed, after hearing a recitation given by Persius:[243] 'That is real poetry, my verses are merejeux d'esprit.'
If we take Persius at his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and dignity, together with a variety, that can hardly be found in any other poetry of the Silver Age. It is the existence of passages such as these, and the high unswerving moral enthusiasm characterizing all his work, that have made Persius live through the centuries. It is fashionable for the critic to say, 'We lay down Persius with a sigh of relief.' That is true, but we feel the better for reading him. He is one of the few writers of Rome whose personality awakens a feeling of warm affection. He was a rigid Stoic, yet not proud or cold. In an age of almost universal corruption he kept himself unspotted from the world. He had a rare capacity for whole-hearted friendship. If his teacher Cornutus had never made another convert, and his preaching had been vain, it would have been ample reward to have won such a tribute of affection and gratitude as the lines in which Persius pours forth his soul to him (v. 21):
tibi nunc hortante Camena excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice, ostendisse iuvat. pulsa dinoscere cautus quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae. hic ego centenas ausim deposcere fauces, ut quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi, voce traham pura, totumque hoc verba resignent, quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra. cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit bullaque subcinctis Laribus donata pependit, cum blandi comites totaque inpune Subura permisit sparsisse oculos iam candidus umbo, cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes, me tibi supposui. teneros tu suscipis annos Socratico, Cornute, sinu. tune fallere sollers adposita intortos extendit regula mores, et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum. tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles, et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes. unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo, atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa. non equidem hoc dubites, amborum foedere certo consentire dies et ab uno sidere duci: nostra vel aequali suspendit tempora libra Parca tenax veri, seu nata fidelibus hora dividit in geminos concordia fata duorum, Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una: nescio quod certe est quod me tibi temperat astrum.
It is to you, at the instance of the muse within me, that I would offer my heart to be sifted thoroughly; my passion is to show you, Cornutus, how large a share of my inmost being is yours, my beloved friend; strike it, use every test to tell what rings sound, and what is the mere plaster of a varnished tongue. An occasion indeed it is for which I may well venture to ask a hundred voices, that I may bring out in clear utterance how thoroughly I have lodged you in the very corners of my breast, and unfold in words all the unutterable feelings which lie entwined deep down among my heart-strings. When first the guardianship of the purple ceased to awe me and the band of boyhood was hung up as an offering to the quaint old household gods, when my companions made themselves pleasant, and the folds of my gown, now white, the stripe of purple gone, left me free to cast my eyes at will over the whole Subura—just when the way of life begins to be uncertain, and the bewildered mind finds that its ignorant ramblings have brought it to a point where roads branch off—then it was that I made myself your adopted child. You at once received the young foundling into the bosom of a second Socrates; and soon your rule, with artful surprise, straightens the moral twists that it detects, and my spirit becomes moulded by reason and struggles to be subdued, and assumes plastic features under your hand. Aye, I mind well how I used to wear away long summer suns with you, and with you pluck the early bloom of the night for feasting. We twain have one work and one set time for rest, and the enjoyment of a moderate table unbends our gravity. No, I would not have you doubt that there is a fixed law that brings our lives into one accord, and one star that guides them. Whether it be in the equal balance that truthful Destiny hangs our days, or whether the birth-hour sacred to faithful friends shares our united fates between the Heavenly Twins, and we break the shock of Saturn together by the common shield of Jupiter, some star, I am assured, there is which fuses me with you. CONINGTON.
There is a sincerity about these beautiful lines that is as rare as it is welcome in the poetry of this period. Much may be forgiven to the poet who could write thus, even though rarely. And it must be remembered that Persius is free from the worst of the besetting sins of his age, the love of rhetorical brilliance at the expense of sense, a failing that he criticizes with no little force in his opening satire. His harshness and obscurity are due in part to lack of sufficient literary skill, but still more to his attempt to assert his originality against the insistent obsession of the satires of Horace. As in the case of so many of his contemporaries, his literary fame must depend in the main on his 'purple patches'.
But he does what few of his fellow poets do; he leaves a vivid impression of his personality, and reveals a genuine moral ardour and nobility of character that refuse to be clouded or hidden by his dark sayings and his perverse obscurity.
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus,[244] the poet who more than any other exhibits the typical excellences and defects of the Silver Age, was born at Cordova on November 3, in the year 39 A.D.[245] He came of a distinguished line. He was the son of M. Annaeus Mela, brother of Seneca the philosopher and dramatist, and son of Seneca the rhetorician. Mela was a wealthy man,[246] and in 40 A.D. removed with his family to Rome. His son (whose future as a great poet is said to have been portended by a swarm of bees that settled on the cradle and the lips of the bard that was to be[247]) received the best education that Rome could bestow. He showed extraordinary precocity in all the tricks of declamatory rhetoric, soon equalling his instructors in skill and far out-distancing his fellow pupils.[248] Among his preceptors was his kinsman, the famous Stoic, L. Annaeus Cornutus, well known as the friend and teacher of Persius.[249] His first appearance before the public was at the Neronia in 60 A.D., when he won the prize for Latin verse with a poem in praise of Nero.[250] Immediately afterwards he seems to have proceeded to Athens. But his talents had attracted the attention and patronage of Nero. He was recalled to Rome,[251] and at the nomination of the princeps became Quaestor, although he had not yet attained the requisite age of twenty-five.[252] He was also admitted to the College of Augurs, and for some time continued to enjoy Nero's friendship. But it was not to last. Lucan had been educated in Stoic surroundings. Though his own relatives managed to combine the service of the emperor with their Stoic principles, Lucan had not failed to imbibe the passionate regret for the lost liberty of the republic that was so prominent a feature in Stoic circles. It was not a mere pose that led him to select the civil war as the subject of his poem. His enthusiasm for liberty may have been literary rather than political in character. But when we are dealing with an artistic temperament we must bear in mind that the ideals which were primarily inspiration for art may on slight provocation become incentives to action. And in the case of Lucan that provocation was not lacking. As his fame increased, Nero's friendship was replaced by jealousy. The protégé had become too serious a rival to the patron.[253] Lucan's vanity was injured by Nero's sudden withdrawal from a recitation.[254] From servile flattery he turned to violent criticism: he spared his former patron neither in word nor deed. He turned the sharp edge of his satire against him in various pungent epigrams, and was forbidden to recite poetry or to plead in the law courts.[255] But it would be unjust to Lucan to attribute his changed attitude purely to wounded vanity. Seneca was at this very moment attempting to retire from public life. The court of Nero had become no place for him. Lucan cannot have been unaffected by the action of his uncle, and it is only just to him to admit the possibility that the change in his attitude may have been due, at any rate in part, to a change in character, an awakening to the needs of the State and the needs of his own soul. There is no need to question the genuineness of his political enthusiasm, even though it tended to be theatrical and may have been largely kindled by motives not wholly disinterested. The Pisonian conspiracy found in him a ready coadjutor. He became one of the ringleaders of the plot ('paene signifer coniurationis'), and in a bombastic vein would promise Nero's head to his fellow-conspirators.[256] On the detection of the plot, in 65 A. D., he, with the other chiefs of the conspiracy, was arrested. For long he denied his complicity; at last, perhaps on the threat or application of torture, his nerve failed him; he descended to grovelling entreaties, and to win himself a reprieve accused his innocent mother, Acilia, of complicity in the plot.[257] His conduct does not admit of excuse. But it is not for the plain, matter-of-fact man to pass judgement lightly on the weakness of a highly-strung, nervous, artistic temperament; the artist's imagination may transmute pain such as others might hope to bear, to anguish such as they cannot even imagine. There lies the palliation, if palliation it be, of Lucan's crime. But it availed him nothing: the reprieve was never won; he was condemned to die, the manner of his death being left to his free choice. He wrote a few instructions for his father as to the editing of his poems, partook of a sumptuous dinner, and then, adopting the fashionable form of suicide, cut the arteries of his arms and bled to death. He died declaiming a passage from his own poetry in which he had described the death of a soldier from loss of blood.[258] It was a theatrical end, and not out of keeping with his life.
He lived but a little over twenty-five years and five months, but he left behind him a vast amount of poetry and an extraordinary reputation. His earliest work[259] seems to have been theIliacon, describing the death of Hector, his ransom and burial. Next came theCatachthonion, a short work on the underworld. This was followed by thelaudes Neronis, to which reference has already been made, and theOrpheus, which was extemporized in a competition with other poets.[260] If we follow the order given by Statius, his next work was the prose declamation on the burning of the city (64 A.D.) and a poem addressed to his wife Polla (adlocutio ad Pollam). Then comes hischef d'oeuvre, thePharsalia, to which we shall return. Of the other works mentioned by Vacca, theSilvaemust have been, like theSilvaeof Statius, trifles thrown off hurriedly for the gratification of friends or for the celebration of some great occasion.[261] Thesalticae fabulaewerelibrettiwritten for thepantomimus,[262] while theSaturnaliawere light verse sent as presents to friends on the festival of Saturn.[263] Of these works nothing has come down to us save a few scanty fragments, not in any way calculated to make us regret their loss.[264] Even Vacca can find no very high praise for them. Judging alike from the probabilities of the case and from thePharsaliaitself, they must have suffered from Lucan's fatal gift of fluency.
It was thePharsaliathat won Lucan undying fame. Three books of this ambitious historical epic were finished and given to the world during the poet's lifetime.[265] These the poet had, at any rate in part, recited in public, calling attention, with a vanity worthy of himself and of the age, to his extreme youth; he was younger than Vergil when he composed theCulex![266] The remaining seven books never had the benefit of revision, owing to the poet's untimely end,[267] though curiously enough they show no special signs of lack of finish, and contain some of the finest passages in the whole work. The composition of all ten books falls between 60 and 65 A.D. Lucan had chosen for his theme the death-struggle of the republic. It was a daring choice for more reasons than one. There were elements of danger in singing the praises of Pompey and Cato under the principate. To that the fate of Cremutius Cordus bore eloquent testimony.[268] But Nero was less sensitive about the past than Tiberius. The republic had never become officially extinct. Tyrannicide was a licensed and hackneyed theme of the schools of rhetoric; in skilful hands it might be a subtle instrument of flattery. Moreover, Nero was descended in direct line from Domitius Ahenobarbus, who had fought and died for Pompey on the field of Pharsalus. In the books published during Lucan's lifetime there is not a line that could have given personal offence to the princeps, while the fulsome dedication would have covered a multitude of indiscretions.[269] Far more serious were the difficulties presented by the nature of the story itself. Historical epic rarely admits of artistic treatment, and the nearer the date of the events described, the more insoluble is the problem.
Two courses were open to Lucan: he might treat the story with comparative fidelity to truth, avoiding all supernatural machinery, save such as was justified by historical tradition; on the other hand he might adopt the course subsequently pursued by Silius Italicus in his poem on the Punic War, and introduce all the hackneyed interventions of Olympus, sanctioned by Vergil and followed by many a poet since. The latter method is obviously only suited for a purely legendary epic, though even the legendary epic can well dispense with it, and it might have been supposed that an age so sceptical and careless of the orthodox theology, as that into which Lucan was born, would have felt the full absurdity of applying such a device to historical epic. Lucan was wise in his choice, and left Olympus severely alone. But his choice roused contemporary criticism. In theSatyriconof Petronius we find a defence of the old conventional mechanism placed in the mouth of a shabby and disreputable poet named Eumolpus (118). He complains 'that young men plunge headlong into epic verse thinking that it requires no more skill than a showy declamation at the school of rhetoric. They do not realize that to be a successful poet one must be steeped in the great ocean of literature. They do not recognize that there is such a thing as a special poetic vocabulary,[270] or that the commonplaces of rhetoric require to be interwoven with, not merely tacked on to, the fabric of their verse, and so it comes about that the writer who would turn the Civil War into an epic is apt to stumble beneath the burden he takes upon his shoulders, unless indeed he is permeated through and through with literature. You must not simply turn history into verse: historians do it better in prose. Rather the poet should sweep on his way borne by the breath of inspiration and untrammelled by hard fact, making use of cunning artifice and divine intervention, and interfusing his "commonplaces" with legendary lore; only so will his work seem to be the fine frenzy of an inspired bard rather than the exactitude of one who is giving sworn evidence before a judge'. He then proceeds in 295 verses to deal, after the manner he has prescribed, with the events contained in the first three books of thePharsalia, the only books that had been made public at the time when Petronius' romance was composed. Pluto inspires Caesar to the crime of civil war. Peace, Fidelity, and Concord fly from the earth at his approach. The gods range themselves on this side and on that. Discord perched high on Apennine incites the peoples of Italy to war. The verse is uninspired, the method is impossible, the remedy is worse than the disease. The last hope of our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history doesnotadmit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and 'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns.[27l] Petronius sees the weakness of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent in the subject chosen; they will stand out clearly as we review the structure and style of the work.
In taking the whole of the Civil War for his subject Lucan was confronted with a somewhat similar problem to that which faced Shakespeare in hisJulius Caesar. The problem that Shakespeare had to meet was how to prolong and sustain the interest of the play after the death of Caesar and the events that centre immediately round it. The difficulty was surmounted triumphantly. The obstacles in Lucan's path were greater. The poem is incomplete, and there must be some uncertainty as to its intended scope. That it was planned to include the death of Cato is clear from the importance assigned him in the existing books. But could the work have concluded on such a note of gloom as the death of the staunchest champion of the republic? The whole tone of the poem is republican in the extreme. If the republic must perish, it should not perish unavenged. There are, moreover, many prophetic allusions to the death of Caesar,[272] which point conclusively to Lucan's intention to have made the vengeance of Brutus and Cassius the climax of his poem. The problem which the poet had to resolve was how to prevent the interest from nagging, as his heroes were swept away before the triumphant advance of Caesar. He concentrates our attention at the outset on Pompey. Throughout the first eight books it is for him that he claims our sympathy. And then he is crushed by his rival and driven in flight to die an unheroic death. It is only at this point that Cato leaps into prominence. But though he has a firmness of purpose and a grandeur of character that Lucan could not give Pompey, he never has the chance to become the protagonist. Both Pompey and Cato, for all the fine rhetoric bestowed on them, fail to grip the reader, while from the very facts of history it is impossible for either of them to lend unity to the plot. Both are dwarfed by the character of Caesar. Caesar is the villain of the piece; he is a monster athirst for blood, he will not permit the corpses of his enemies (over which he is made to gloat) to be buried after the great battle, and when on his coming to Egypt the head of his rival is brought him, his grief and indignation are represented as being a mere blind to conceal his real joy. The successes are often merely the result of good fortune. Lucan is loth to admit even his greatness as a general. And yet, blacken his character as he may, he feels that greatness. From the moment of his brilliant characterization of Caesar in the first book[273] we feel we have a man who knows what he desires and will shrink from nothing to attain his ends; he 'thinks naught yet done while aught remains to do',[274] he 'strikes fear into men's hearts because he knows not the meaning of fear',[275] and through all the melodramatic rhetoric with which he addresses his soldiers, there shines clear the spirit of a great leader of men. Whoever was intended by the poet for his hero, the fact remains that Caesar dominates the poem as none save the hero should do. He is the hero of thePharsaliaas Satan is the hero ofParadise Lost.[276] It is through him above all that Lucan retains our interest. The result is fatal for the proper proportion of the plot. Lucan does not actually alienate our sympathies from the republic, but, whatever our moral judgement on the conflict may be, our interest centres on Caesar, and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the true tragedy of the epic would have come with his death. ThePharsaliafails of its object as a republican epic; its success comes largely from an unintended quarter.
What the exact scale of the poem was meant to be it is hard to say. Vergil had set the precedent for an epic of twelve books, and it is not improbable that Lucan would have followed his example. On the other hand, if Cato and Caesar had both to be killed in the last two books, great compression would have been necessary. In view of the diffuseness of Lucan's rhetoric, and the rambling nature of his narrative, it is more than probable that the epic would have exceeded the limit of twelve books and been a formidable rival in bulk to thePunicaof Silius Italicus. On the other hand, the last seven books of the existing poem are unrevised, and may have been destined for abridgement. There is so much that is irrelevant that the task would have been easy.
But it is not for the plot that Lucan's epic is read. It has won immortality by the brilliance of its rhetoric, its unsurpassed epigrams, its clear-cut summaries of character, its biting satire, and its outbursts of lofty political enthusiasm. These features stand out pre-eminent and atone for its astounding errors of taste, its strained hyperbole, its foolish digression. Lucan fails to make his actors live as they move through his pages; their actions and their speeches are alike theatrical; he has no dramatic power. But he can sum up their characters in burning lines that live through all time and have few parallels in literature. And these pictures are in all essentials surprisingly just and accurate. His affection for Pompey and the demands of his plot presented strong temptations to exalt his character at the expense of historical truth. Yet what can be more just than the famous lines of the first book, where his character is set against Caesar's? (129):
vergentibus annis in senium longoque togae tranquillior usu dedidicit iam pace ducem: famaeque petitor multa dare in volgus; totus popularibus auris inpelli plausuque sui gaudere theatri; nec reparare novas vires, multumque priori credere fortunae, stat magni nominis umbra: qualis frugifero querens sublimis in agro exuvias veteres populi sacrataque gestans dona ducum: nec iam validis radicibus haerens pondere fixa suo est, nudosque per aera ramos effundens trunco non frondibus efficit umbram.
One aged grownHad long exchanged the corselet for the gown:In peace forgotten the commander's art,And learned to play the politician's part,—To court the suffrage of the crowd, and hearIn his own theatre the venal cheer;Idly he rested on his ancient fame,And was the shadow of a mighty name.Like the huge oak which towers above the fieldsDecked with ancestral spoils and votive shields.Its roots, once mighty, loosened by decay,Hold it no more: weight is its only stay;Its naked limbs bespeak its glories past,And by its trunk, not leaves, a shade is cast.PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.
Even the panegyric pronounced on him by Cato on hearing the news of his death is as moderate as it is true and dignified (ix. 190):
civis obit, inquit, multum maioribus inpar nosse modum iuris, sed in hoc tamen en utilis aevo, cui non ulla fuit iusti reverentia; salva libertate potens, et solus plebe parata privatus servire sibi, rectorque senatus, sed regnantis, erat. … invasit ferrum, sed ponere, norat; praetulit arma togae, sed pacem armatus amavit: iuvit sumpta ducem iuvit dimissa potestas.
A man, he said, is gone, unequal farTo our good sires in reverence for the law,Yet useful in an age that knew not right,One who could power with liberty unite,Uncrowned 'mid willing subjects could remain,The Senate rule, yet let the Senate reign.* * * * *He drew the sword, but he could sheathe it too,War was his trade, yet he to peace inclined,Gladly command accepted-and resigned.—PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.
Elsewhere he is as one of the 'strengthless dead', here he lives. Elsewhere he may be invested with the pathos that must cling to the shadow of a mighty name, but he is too weak and ineffective to be interesting. His wavering policy in his last campaign is unduly emphasized.[277] When he is face to face with Caesar at Pharsalus and exhorts his men, he can but boast, he cannot inspire.[278] When the battle turns against him he bids his men cease from the fight, and himself flies, that he may not involve them in his own disaster.[279] No less convincing portrait could be drawn. The material was unpromising, but Lucan emphasizes all his weaknesses and wholly fails to bring out his nobler elements. He is unworthy of the line
nec cinis exiguus tantam compescuit umbram.
So, too, in a lesser degree with Caesar. For a moment in the first book he flashes upon us in his full splendour (143):
sed non in Caesare tantum nomen erat nec fama ducis: sed nescia virtus stare loco, solusque pudor non vincere bello. acer et indomitus, quo spes quoque ira vocasset. ferre manum et numquam temerando parcere ferro, successus urgere suos, instare fauori numinis, inpellens quidquid sibi summa petenti obstaret, gaudensque viam fecisse ruina.
Not such the talisman of Caesar's name,But Caesar had, in place of empty fame.The unresting soul, the resolution highThat shuts out every thought but victory.Whate'er his goal, nor mercy nor dismayHe owned, but drew the sword and cleft his way:Pressed each advantage that his fortune gave;Constrained the stars to combat for the brave;Swept from his path whate'er his rise delayed,And marched triumphant through the wreck he made.PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.
Here at any rate is Caesar the general: in such a poem there is no room for Caesar the statesman. But from this point onward we see no true Caesar. Henceforward, save for a few brief moments, he is a figure for the melodramatic stage alone, a 'brigand chief', a master hypocrite, the favourite of fortune. And yet, for all his unreality, Lucan has endowed him with such impetuous vigour and such a plenitude of power that he dwarfs the other puppets that throng his pages even more, if possible, than in real life he overtopped his contemporaries.
Cato, the third great figure of thePharsalia, was easier to draw. Unconsciously stagey in life, he is little stagier in Lucan. And yet, in spite of his absurdity, he has a nobility and a sincerity of purpose which is without parallel in that corrupt age. He was the hero of the Stoic republicans[280] of the early principate, the man of principle, stern and unbending. He requires no fine touches of light and shade, for he is the perfect Stoic. But from the very rigidity of his principles he was no statesman and never played more than a secondary part in politics.
Lucan's task is to exalt him from the second rank to the first. But it is no easy undertaking, since it was not till after the disaster of Pharsalus that he played any conspicuous part in the Civil War. He first appears as warrant for the justice of the republican cause (i. 128). We next see him as the hope of all true patriots at Rome (ii. 238). Pompey has fled southward. Cato alone remains the representative of all that is noblest and best in Rome. He has no illusions as to Pompey's character. He is not the leader he would choose for so sacred a cause; but between Pompey and Caesar there can be no wavering. He follows Pompey. Not till the ninth book does he reappear in the action. Pompey is fallen, and all turn to Cato as their leader. The cause is lost, and Cato knows it well; but he obeys the call of duty and undertakes the hopeless enterprise undismayed. He is a stern leader, but he shares his men's hardships to the full, and fortifies them by his example. He is in every action what the real Cato only was at Utica. On him above all others Lucan has lavished all his powers; and he has succeeded in creating a character of such real moral grandeur that, in spite of its hardness and austerity, it almost succeeds in winning our affection (ii. 380):
hi mores, haec duri inmota Catonis secta fuit, servare modum finesque tenere naturamque sequi patriaeque inpendere vitam nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.
'Twas his ruleInflexible to keep the middle pathMarked out and bounded; to observe the lawsOf natural right; and for his country's sakeTo risk his life, his all, as not for selfBrought into being, but for all the world.SIR E. RIDLEY.
Here is a man indeed worthy to be the hero of a republican epic, did history permit it. Our chief reason—at moments there is a temptation to say 'our only reason'—for regretting the incompletion of thePharsaliais that Lucan did not live to describe Cato's death.Therewas a subject which was worthy of his pen and would have been a labour of love. With what splendour of rhetoric he might have invested it can only be conjectured from the magnificent passage where Cato refuses to inquire into his fate at Ammon's oracle (ix. 566):
quid quaeri, Labiene, iubes? an liber in armis occubuisse velim potius quam regna videre? an sit vita nihil, sed longa? an differat aetas? an noceat vis ulla bono, fortunaque perdat opposita virtute minas, laudandaque velle sit satis, et numquam successu crescat honestum? scimus, et hoc nobis non altius inseret Hammon. haeremus cuncti superis, temploque tacente nil facimus non sponte dei; nec vocibus ultis numen eget, dixitque semel nascentibus auctor quidquid scire licet, steriles nec legit harenas, ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum. estque dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aer et caelum et virtus? superos quid quaerimus ultra? Iuppiter est quodcumque vides quodcumque moveris. sortilegis egeant dubii semperque futuris casibus ancipites; me non oracula certum, sed mors certa facit. pavido fortique cadendum est; hoc satis est dixisse Iouem.
What should I ask? Whether to live a slaveIs better, or to fill a soldier's grave?What life is worth drawn to its utmost span,And whether length of days brings bliss to man?Whether tyrannic force can hurt the good,Or the brave heart need quail at Fortune's mood?Whether the pure intent makes righteousness,Or virtue needs the warrant of success?All this I know: not Ammon can impartForce to the truth engraven on my heart.All men alike, though voiceless be the shrine,Abide in God and act by will divine.No revelation Deity requires,But at our birth, all men may know, inspires.Nor is truth buried in this desert sandAnd doled to few, but speaks in every land.What temple but the earth, the sea, the sky,And heaven and virtuous hearts, hath deity?As far as eye can range or feet can roveJove is in all things, all things are in Jove.Let wavering souls to oracles attend,The brave man's course is clear, since sure his end.The valiant and the coward both must fallThis when Jove tells me, he has told me all.PROF. GOLDWIN SMITH.
One Cato will not lend life to an epic, and history, to the great loss of art, forbids him to play a sufficiently important role. It is unnecessary to comment on the lesser personages of the epic; if the leading characters lack life, the minor characters lack individuality as well.[281] Lucan has nothing of the dramatic vitalising power that is so necessary for epic.
He is equally defective in narrative power. He can give us brilliant pictures as in the lines describing the vision of Caesar at the Rubicon[282] or Pompey's last sight of Italy.[283] But such passages are few and far between. Of longer passages there are not perhaps more than three in the whole work where we get any sustained beauty of narrative-the parting of Pompey and his wife,[284] Pompey's dream before Pharsalus,[285] and a description of a Druid grove in Southern Gaul.[286] The first of these is noticeable as being one of the few occasions on which Lucan shows any command of simple pathos unmarred by tricks of tawdry rhetoric. The whole episode is admirably treated. The speeches of both husband and wife are commendably and unusually simple and direct, but the climax comes after Cornelia's speech, where the poet describes the moment before they part. With the simplest words and the most severe economy of diction, he produces an effect such as Vergil rarely surpassed, and such as was never excelled or equalled again in the poetry of Southern Europe till Dante told the story of Paolo and Francesca (v. 790):
sic fata relictis exsiluit stratis amens tormentaque nulla vult differre mora. non maesti pectora Magni sustinet amplexu dulci, non colla tenere, extremusque perit tam longi fructus amoris, praecipitantque sues luctus, neuterque recedens sustinuit dixisse 'vale', vitamque per omnem nulla fuit tarn maesta dies; nam cetera damna durata iam mente malis firmaque tulerunt.
So spake she, and leaped frenzied from the couch, loth to put off the pangs of parting by the least delay. She cannot bear to cast her arms about sad Magnus' bosom, or clasp his neck in a last sweet embrace; and thus the last delight, such long love as theirs might know, is cast away: they hasten their own agony; neither as they parted had the heart to say farewell; and while they lived they knew no sadder day than this. All other losses they bore with hearts hardened and steeled by misery.
It is faulty and monotonous in rhythm, but one would gladly have more from Lucan of the same poetic quality, even at the expense of the same blemishes. The dream of Pompey is scarcely inferior (vii. 7):
at nox, felicis Magno pars ultima vitae, sollicitos vana decepit imagine somnos. nam Pompeiani visus sibi sede theatri innumeram effigiem Romanae cernere plebis attollique suum laetis ad sidera nomen vocibus et plausu cuneos certare sonantes; qualis erat populi facies clamorque faventis, olim cum iuvenis primique aetate triumphi * * * * * sedit adhuc Romanus eques; seu fine bonorum anxia venturis ad tempera laeta refugit, sive per ambages solitas contraria visis vaticinata quies magni tulit omina planctus. seu vetito patrias ultra tibi cernere sedes sic Romam fortuna dedit. ne rumpite somnos, castrorum vigiles, nullas tuba verberet aures. crastina dira quies et imagine maesta diurna undique funestas acies feret, undique bellum.