It may be said of pastoral poetry, without undue disrespect, that it is the most artificial and the least in touch with reality of all the more important forms of poetic art. Even in the hands of a master like Theocritus, invested as it is with an incomparable charm, and distinguished in many respects by an astonishing truth and fidelity, it is never other than highly artificial. For its birth an age was required in which the class whence the majority of poets and their audience are drawn had largely lost touch with country life, or had at any rate developed ideals that can only spring up in town society. This does not imply that men have ceased altogether to appreciate the value of the country life or the beauty of country surroundings, only that they have lost much of their understanding of them; and so their appreciation takes new forms. They love the country as a half-forgotten paradise, they fly back to it as a refuge from the artificiality of town life, but they take much of that artificiality with them. From the time of Theocritus pastoral poetry pure and simple has steadily declined. Great poems have been written with exquisite pastoral elements or even cast in pastoral form. But they have never owed their greatness entirely, or even chiefly, to the pastoral element. That element has merely provided a charming setting for scenes or thoughts that have nothing genuinely pastoral about them.
Of the small amount of pastoral poetry extant in Latin it need hardly be said that theBucolicaof Vergil stand in a class by themselves. And yet for all their beauty they are unsatisfactory to those who know and love Theocritus. Their charm is undeniable, but they are immature and too obviously imitative. But Vergil was at least country-born and had a deep sympathy for country life. When we come to the scanty relics of his successors and imitators we are conscious of a lamentable falling away. If Vergil's imitations of Theocritus fail to ring as true as their original, what shall be said of the imitators of Vergil's imitations? Even if they had been true poets, their verse must have rung false. But the poets with whom we have to deal, Calpurnius Siculus and the anonymous author of two poems known as the Einsiedeln fragments, were not genuine poets. They had little of the intimacy with nature and unsophisticated man that was demanded by their self-chosen task. That they possessed some real affection for the country is doubtless true, but it was not the prime inspiration of their verse. They had the ambition to write poetry rather than the call; a slight bent towards the country, heightened by a vague dissatisfaction and weariness with the artificial luxury of Rome, led them to choose pastoral poetry. They make up for depth of observation by a shallow minuteness. In the seven eclogues of Calpurnius may be found a larger assortment of vegetables, of agricultural implements and operations, than in theBucolicsof Vergil, but there is little poetry, pastoral or otherwise. The 'grace of all the Muses' and the breath of the country are fled for ever; the dexterous phrasing of a laborious copyist reigns in their stead.
Of the life of Calpurnius Siculus nothing is known and but little can be conjectured. Of his date there can be little doubt. We learn from the evidence of the poems themselves that they were written in the principate of a youthful Caesar (i. 44; iv. 85, 137; vii. 6), beautiful to look upon (vii. 84), the giver of splendid games (vii. 44), the inaugurator of an age of peace, liberty and plenty (i. 42-88; ivpassim). This points strongly to the opening of Nero's reign. The young Nero was handsome and personally popular, and the opening years of his reign (quinquennium Neronis) were famous for good government and prosperity. But there are two further pieces of internal evidence which clinch the argument. A comet is mentioned (i. 77) as appearing in the autumn, an appearance which would tally with that of the comet observed shortly before the death of Claudius in 54 A.D., while the line
maternis causam qui vicit Iulis (i. 45)
seems clearly to refer to the speech delivered by the young Nero for the people of Ilium,[378] from whom the Iuli, Nero's ancestors on the mother's side, claimed to trace their descent. It may therefore safely be assumed that the poems were written early in the reign of Nero. A most ingenious attempt has been made to throw some light on the identity of their author.[379] He speaks of himself as Corydon, and he has a patron whom he styles Meliboeus. He prays that Meliboeus may bring him before Caesar's notice as Pollio brought Vergil (iv. 157 sqq.; also i. 94). It has been suggested with some plausibility that Meliboeus is no other than C. Calpurnius Piso, the distinguished noble round whom in 65 A.D. centred the great conspiracy against Nero. The evidence rests on the existence of a poem entitledpanegyricus in Pisonem,[380] in which a nameless poet seeks by his laudations to win Piso for a patron. The style of the poem has a marked resemblance to that of Calpurnius. If, as is possible, it should be assigned to his authorship, it becomes fairly certain that he was a dependent of Piso, and the name Calpurnius would suggest that he may have been the son of one of his freedmen.
The eclogues of Calpurnius are seven in number.[381] The first is in praise of the Golden Age, with special reference to the advent of the young princeps. Though given a different setting it is clearly modelled on the fourth eclogue of Vergil. The second, describing a contest of song between two shepherds before a third as judge, follows Vergil even more closely.[382] Parallels might be further elaborated, but it is sufficient to say here that only two of the poems show any originality, namely, the fifth and the seventh. In the former we have the advice given by an aged farmer to his son, to whom he is handing over his farm. It is inclined to be prosy, but is simple and pleasing in tone, and the old countryman may be forgiven if he sometimes seems to be quoting the Georgics. The seventh is a more ambitious effort. A rustic describes the great games that he has seen given in the amphitheatre at Rome. The language, though characteristically decadent in its elaboration, shows considerable originality. The amphitheatre is, for instance, thus described (vii. 30):
qualiter haec patulum concedit vallis in orbem et sinuata latus resupinis undique silvis inter continuos curvatur concava montes, sic ibi planitiem curvae sinus ambit arenae et geminis medium se molibus alligat ovum. * * * * * balteus en gemmis, en illita porticus auro certatim radiant; nec non, ubi finis arenae proxima marmoreo praebet spectacula muro, sternitur adiunctis ebur admirabile truncis et coit in rotulum, tereti qui lubricus axe impositos subita vertigine falleret ungues excuteretque feras. auro quoque torta refulgent retia, quae totis in arenam dentibus extant, dentibus aequatis: et erat (mihi crede, Lycota, si qua fides) nostro dens longior omnis aratro.
Even as this vale rounds to a wide circle, and with bending sides and slanting woods on every side makes a curved hollow amid the unbroken hills, so there the circle of the curving arena surrounds its level plain and locks either side of its towering structure into an oval about itself…. See how the gangway's parapet studded with gems and the colonnade plated with gold vie with each other's brightness; nay more, where the arena's bound sets forth its shows close to the marble wall, ivory is overlaid in wondrous wise on jointed beams and is bent into a cylinder, which, turning nimbly on its trim axle, may cheat with sudden whirl the wild beast's claws and cast them from it. Nets, too, of twisted gold gleam forth, hung out into the arena on tusks in all their length and of equal size, and—believe me, Lycotas, if you can—each tusk was longer than our ploughshare.
In its defence it may be urged that the very nature of the subject demands elaboration, and that the resulting picture has the merit of being vivid despite its elaborate ingenuity. It is in this poem that Calpurnius is seen at his best. Elsewhere his love for minute and elaborate description is merely wearisome. It would be hard, for instance, to find a more tiresomely circuitous method of claiming to be an authority on sheep-breeding than (ii. 36)—
me docet ipsa Pales cultum gregis, ut niger albae terga maritus ovis nascenti mutet in agna quae neque diversi speciem servare parentis possit et ambiguo testetur utrumque colore.
Pales herself teaches me how to breed my flocks and tells me how the black ram transforms the fleece of the white ewe in the lamb that comes to birth, that cannot reproduce the colour of its sire, so different from that of its dam, and by its ambiguous hue testifies to either parent.
It is difficult to give a poetic description of the act of rumination, but
et matutinas revocat palearibus herbas (iii. 17)
And recalls to its dewlaps the grass of its morning's meal.
is needlessly grotesque. And the vain struggle to give life to old and outworn themes leads to laboured lines such as (iii. 48)—
non sic destricta marcescit turdus oliva, non lepus extremas legulus cum sustulit uvas, ut Lycidas domina sine Phyllide tabidus erro.
Not so does the thrush pine when the olives are plucked, not so does the hare pine when the vintager has gathered the last grapes, as I, Lycidas, droop while I roam apart from my mistress Phyllis.
Calpurnius yields little to compensate for such defects. He meanders on through hackneyed pastoral landscapes haunted by hackneyed shepherds. It is only on rare occasions that a refreshing glimmer of poetry revives the reader. In lines such as (ii. 56)—
si quis mea vota deorum audiat, huic soli, virides qua gemmeus undas fons agit et tremulo percurrit lilia rivo inter pampineas ponetur faginus ulmos;
If any of the gods hear my prayer, to his honour, and his alone, shall his beechwood statue be planted amid my vine-clad elms, where the jewelled stream rolls its green wave and with rippling water runs through the lilies.
or, in the pleasant description of the return of spring (v. 16),
vere novo, cum iam tinnire volueres incipient nidosque reversa lutabit hirundo, protinus hiberno pecus omne movebis ovili. tune etenim melior vernanti germine silva pullat et aestivas reparabilis incohat umbras, tune florent saltus viridisque renascitur annus,[383]
When spring is young and the birds begin to pipe once more, and the swallow returns to plaster its nest anew, then move all your flock from its winter fold. For then the wood sprouts in fresh glory with its spring shoots and builds anew the shades of summer, then all the glades are bright with flowers and the green year is born again.
we seem to catch a glimpse of the real countryside; but for the most part Calpurnius paints little save theatrical andmaniéréminiatures. Of such a character is the clever and not unpleasing description of the tame stag in the sixth eclogue (30). He shows a pretty fancy and no more.
The metre is like the language, easy, graceful, and correct. But the pauses are poorly managed; the rhythm is unduly dactylic; the verse trips all too lightly and becomes monotonous.
The total impression that we receive from these poems is one of insignificance and triviality. The style is perhaps less rhetorical and obscure than that of most writers of the age; as a result, these poems lack what is often the one saving grace of Silver Latin poetry, its extreme cleverness. To find verse as dull and uninspired, we must turn to Silius Italicus or theAetna.
* * * * *
The two short poems contained in a MS. at Einsiedeln and distinguished by the name of their place of provenance are also productions of the Neronian age. The first, in the course of a contest of song between Thamyras and Ladas, with a third shepherd, Midas, as arbiter, sets forth the surpassing skill of Nero as a performer on thecithara.[384] The second celebrates the return of the Golden Age to the world now under the beneficent guidance of Nero. Neither poem possesses the slightest literary importance; both are polished but utterly insipid examples of foolish court flattery. The author is unknown. An ingenious suggestion[385] has been made that he is no other than Calpurnius Piso, the supposed Meliboeus of Calpurnius Siculus. The second of these eclogues begins, 'Quid tacitus, Mystes?' The fourth eclogue of Calpurnius Siculus begins (Meliboeus loquitur), 'Quid tacitus, Corydon?' Is Meliboeus speaking in person and quoting his own poem? It may be so, but the evidence is obviously not such as to permit any feeling of certainty.
But it is at least probable that the poet had access to the court and had been praised by Nero. Such is the most plausible interpretation of a passage in the first eclogue, where Ladas, in answer to Thamyras, who claims the prize on the ground that his song shall be of Caesar, replies (16, 17):
et me sidereo respexit Cynthius ore laudatamque chelyn iussit variare canendo.[386]
On me, too, has the Cynthian god cast his starry glance andbidden me accompany the lyre he praised with diverse song.
Whether the author be Piso or another, the poems do him small credit.
ThePanegyricus in Pisonemremains to be considered. Attributed to Vergil by one MS.,[387] to Lucan by another,[388] the poem is certainly by neither. Quite apart from stylistic evidence, which is convincing against its attribution to Lucan, it is almost certain that the name of Lucan has been wrongly inserted for that of Vergil. That it is not by Vergil would be clear from the very inferior nature of the verse, but it can further be shown that the Piso addressed is the Calpurnius Piso of the reigns of Claudius and Nero to whom we have alluded above. If the account of Piso given by Tacitus be compared with the characteristics described in thePanegyricus, it will be found that both alike refer in strong terms to his eloquence in the law courts so readily exercised in defence of accused persons, and also to his affability and capacity for friendship.[389] Further, we have the evidence of a scholium on Juvenal as to his skill in the game of draughts.[390] He played so well that crowds would throng to see him. One of the chief points mentioned in thePanegyricusis the skill of Piso at the same game.[391] Nor is it a mere casual allusion; on the contrary, the writer treats this portion of his eulogy with even greater elaboration than the rest. There can, therefore, be little doubt as to the date of the poem. It is addressed to Calpurnius Piso after his rise to fame (i.e. during the latter portion of the principate of Claudius, or during the earlier part of the reign of Nero). The poet prays that Piso may be to him what Maecenas was to Vergil. It is hardly possible for a poem of this type to possess any real interest for others than the recipient of the flattery and its author. But in this case the poet has done his work well. The flattery never becomes outrageous and is expressed in easy flowing verse and graceful diction. At times the language is genuinely felicitous. Any great man might be proud to receive such a tribute as (129)—
tu mitis et acri asperitate carens positoque per omnia fastu inter ut aequales unus numeraris amicos, obsequiumque doces et amorem quaeris amando.
Mild is thy temper and free from sharp harshness. Thou layest aside thy pride in thy every act, and among thy friends thou art counted a friend and equal, thou teachest men to follow thee and seekest to be loved by loving.
There is, moreover, little straining after effect and little real obscurity. The difficulties of the description of Piso's draught-playing are due to our ignorance of the exact nature of the game.[392] The actual language is at least as lucid as Pope's famous description of the game of ombre inThe Rape of the Lock. The verse is of the usual post-Augustan type, showing strongly the primary influence of Vergil modified by the secondary influence of Ovid. It is light and easy and not ill-suited to its subject. It has distinct affinities, both in metre and diction, with the verse of Calpurnius Siculus, and may be by the same hand; but the resemblance is not so close as to afford anything approaching positive proof. Minor poets, lacking all individuality, the victims and not the controlling forces of the tendencies of the age, are apt to resemble one another. There are, however, two noteworthy passages which point strongly to the identity of the author of thePanegyricuswith the Bucolic poet. The former, addressing Piso as his patron (246), says:
mea vota si mentem subiere tuam, memorabilis olim tu mihi Maecenas tereti cantaberé versu.
If my prayers reach thy mind, thou shalt be sung of as Maecenas in my slender verse, and future ages shall tell of thy glory.
The latter, addressing his patron Meliboeus and begging him to commend him to Caesar, exclaims (iv. 152):
o mihi quae tereti decurrent carmina versu tunc, Meliboee, meum si quando montibus istis (i.e. at Rome) dicar habere larem.
O how shall my songs trip in slender verse then, Meliboeus, if ever men shall say of me 'He has a house on yonder mountain'.
Is it a mere coincidence, a plagiarism, or a direct allusion? There is no certainty, but the coincidence is—to say the least—suggestive. If the identity of authorship be assumed as correct, it is probable that the eclogues are the later production. To place one's patron among thedramatis personaeof an eclogue argues a nearer intimacy than the writing of a formal panegyric. That the poet is more at home as a panegyrist than as a writer of idylls does not affect the question. In such an age such a result was to be expected.
Latin poetry may almost be said to have begun with Livius Andronicus' translation of theOdysseyinto the rude Saturnian metre. This translation had great vogue as a school book. But theIliadremained untranslated, and it was only natural that later authors should try their hand upon it. Translations were produced in Republican times by Cn. Matius[393] and Ninnius Crassus,[394] but neither work attained to any popularity.
With the growth of the knowledge of Greek and its increasing use as a medium of instruction in the schools on the one hand, and the appearance of Vergil and the rise of the Aeneas saga on the other, the demand for a translation of theIliadnaturally became less. The Silver Age arrived with the problem unsolved. It was a period when writers abounded who would have been better employed on translation than on any attempt at original work. Further, in spite of the general knowledge of Greek, a translation of Homer would have its value in the schools both as a handbook for the subject-matter and as a 'crib '.
Three works of the kind seem to have been produced between the reigns ofTiberius and Nero.
Attius Labeo[395] translated not only theIliadbut also theOdysseyinto hexameters. But it was a poor performance. It was a baldly literal translation, paying small attention to the meaning of the original.[396] Persius pours scorn upon it, and one verse has survived to confirm our worst suspicions[397]—
crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos.
Polybius, the well-known freedman of Claudius, also produced a work, which is praised by Seneca as having introduced Homer and Vergil to a yet larger public than they already enjoyed, and as preserving the charm of the original in an altered form.[398] As Polybius had dealt with Vergil as well as Homer, it may be conjectured that the work praised by Seneca was a prose paraphrase. Lastly, there is theIlias Latina, which has been preserved to the present day. It is written in graceful hexameter verse, and is an abridgement rather than a translation. It consists of 1,070 lines, of which the first five books in fact claim a little more than half. The author wearied of his task and finished off the remaining nineteen books in summary fashion. While the twenty-second occupies as much as sixty lines, the abridgements of the thirteenth and seventeenth are reduced to a meagre seven and three lines respectively.
That such work is of small importance is obvious. It must have been useless from its birth save as a handbook for the schools, and even for this purpose its value must have been greatly impaired by its lack of proportion. Its survival can only be accounted for on the assumption that it was written and employed as a textbook. In fact, during the Middle Ages, when the original was a sealed book, there is definite evidence that it was so used.[399] The work is trivial, but might well have been worse. The language is clear and often vigorous, and there is an easy grace about the verse which shows that the author was a man of culture, knowing his Vergil well and his Ovid better. The date cannot be proved with certainty, but there can be no doubt that it was written before the death of Nero.
The lines (899),
quem (Aenean) nisi servasset magnarum rector aquarum ut profugus laetis Troiam repararet in arvis, augustumque genus claris submitteret astris, non carae gentis nobis mansisset origo,
Unless the ruler of the mighty deep had preserved Aeneas to found in exile a new Troy in happier fields, and beget a line of princes to shine among the stars, the stock of the race we love would not have endured to bless us.
can only have been written under the Julian Dynasty.
The work is clearly post-Ovidian and must therefore be attributed to the principates of Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, or Nero. Further evidence of date is entirely wanting. No meaning can be attached to the heading Pindarus found in certain MSS.[400] There is, however, an interesting though scarcely more fruitful problem presented by the possible existence of two acrostics in the course of the poem.[401] The initial letters of the first nine lines spell the name 'Italices', while the last eight lines yield the word 'scqipsit'. Baehrens, by a not very probable alteration in the eighth line, procures the name 'Italicus', while a slighter and more natural change yields 'scripsit' at the close.[402] Further, a late MS. gives Bebius Italicus as the name of the author.[403] On these grounds the poem has been attributed to Silius Italicus. But Martial makes no reference to the existence of this work in any of his references to Silius, and indeed suggests that Silius only took to writing poetry after his withdrawal from public life.[404] This would make the poem post-Neronian, which, as we have seen, is most improbable. Further, the style of the verse is very different from that of thePunica. When, over and above these considerations, it is remembered that the acrostics can only be produced by emendation of the text, the critic has no course open to him but to abandon the attribution to Silius and to give up the problem of the acrostics as an unprofitable curiosity of literature.
In addition to the poets of whom we have already treated as writing under the Julian Dynasty there must have been many others of whom chance or their own insignificance has deprived us. But few names have survived,[405] and only two of these lost poets merit mention here, the erotic poet Lentulus Gaetulicus and the lyric writer Caesius Bassus.
Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus Gaetulicus was consul in 26 A.D.,[406] and for ten years was legatus in Upper Germany, where his combination of firmness and clemency won him great popularity.[407] He conspired against Caligula while holding this command, and was put to death.[408] Pliny the younger speaks of him as the writer of sportive and lascivious erotic verse, and Martial writes of him in very similar terms.[409] His mistress was named Caesennia, and was herself a poetess.[410] It is possible that the poems in the Greek Anthology under the title [Greek: Gaitoulikou][411] may be from his pen, but the only fragment of his Latin poems which survives is from a work in hexameters, and describes the geographical situation of Britain.[412]
More important is the lyric poet Caesius Bassus,[413] whose loss is the more to be regretted because of the very scanty remains of Roman lyric verse that have survived to modern times. Statius attempted with but indifferent success to imitate the Sapphics and Alcaics of Horace, while the plays of Seneca provide a considerable quantity of lyric choruses of varying degrees of merit. But of lyric writers pure and simple there is scarcely a trace. That they existed we know from Quintilian. If we may trust him, certain of his contemporaries[414] attained to considerable distinction in this branch of poetry—that is to say, they surpassed all Roman lyric poets subsequent to Horace. But when all is said, it is scarcely possible to go beyond Quintilian's emphatic statement, that of Roman lyricists Horace alone repays reading. If any other name deserves mention it is that of Caesius Bassus, but he is inferior to Quintilian's own contemporaries. Caesius Bassus is best known to us as the editor of the satires of Persius. The sixth satire is actually addressed to him:
admovit iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino? iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae? mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senex.[415]
Has winter made you move yet to your Sabine fireside, dear Bassus? Are your lyre and its strings and the austere quill that runs over them yet in force? Marvellous artist as you are at setting to music the primitive antiquities of our language, the manly utterance of the Latian harp, and then showing yourself excellent in your old age at wakening young loves and frolicking over the chords with a virtuous touch. CONINGTON.
The only information yielded by this passage is that Bassus had a Sabine villa, that he was already advanced in years, that he affected 'the simple and manly versification of antiquity', and that he dealt also with erotic themes. But few other facts are known to us. He wrote a treatise on metre—a portion of which has been preserved to the present day,[416] and he perished at his Campanian villa in 79 A.D., during the great eruption of Vesuvius.[417] The fragments of verse enshrined in his metrical treatise suggest that he wrote in a large variety of metres,[418] but they may be no more than examples invented solely to illustrate metres unfamiliar in Latin. The one quotation that is explicitly made from his lyrical poems is, curiously enough, a hexameter line. As to his literary merits or defects, it is now impossible even to guess.
After the death of Nero and the close of the Civil War a happier era, both for literature and the world at large, was inaugurated by the accession of Vespasian in 69 A.D. A man of low birth and of little culture, he yet had a true appreciation of art and literature. Of his own writing we know nothing save that he left behind him memoirs.[419] But we have abundant evidence that he showed himself a liberal patron of the arts. He gave rich rewards to poets and sculptors,[420] effected all that was possible to repair the great loss of works of art occasioned by the burning of the Capitol,[421] and did what he could for the stage, perhaps even attempting to revive the legitimate drama.[422] Above all, he set aside a large sum annually for the support of Greek and Latin professors of rhetoric,[423] the first instance in the history of Rome of State endowment of education. Against this we must set his expulsion from Italy of philosophers and astrologers, an intemperate and presumably ineffective act, prompted by reasons of State and probably without any appreciable influence on literature.[424] His sons, however, had received all the advantages of the highest education. Of Titus' (79-81 A.D.) achievements in literature we have no information save that he aspired to be both orator and poet. The language used in praise of his efforts by Pliny the elder, our one authority on this point, is so extravagant as to be virtually meaningless.[425] Of the literary exploits of his brother Domitian (81-96 A.D.) there is more to be said. It pleased him to lay claim to distinction both in prose and verse.[426] His only prose work of which any record remains was a treatise on the care of the hair;[427] his own baldness rankled in his mind and turned thecalvus Neroof Juvenal into a hair specialist. As to his poems it is almost doubtful if he ever wrote any. He professed an enthusiasm for poetry, an art which, according to Suetonius, he had neglected in his youth and despised when he came to the throne. But Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Martial[428] all load him with praise of various degrees of fulsomeness, though, reading between the lines of Quintilian, it is easy to see that Domitian's output must have been exceedingly small. The evidence of these three authors goes to show that he had contemplated, perhaps even begun, an epic on the achievements of his brother Titus in the Judaic War. Whether thesecaelestia carmina belli, as Martial calls them, ever existed, save in the imagination of courtiers and servile poets, there is nothing to show. If they did exist there seems no reason to regret their loss.
Domitian's chief service to literature, if indeed it was a true service, was the establishment of the Agon Capitolinus in 86, a quinquennial festival at which prizes were awarded not only for athletics and chariot-racing, but for declamations in verse and prose,[429] and the institution of a similar, though annual, contest at his own palace on the Alban Mount, which took place as often as the great festival of Minerva, known as the Quinquatria, came round.[430] But his interest in literature was only superficial; he had no originality and read nothing save the memoirs and edicts of Tiberius.[431] His capricious cruelty extended itself to artists and authors;[432] twice (in 89 and 93 A.D.), following his father's example, he banished philosophers and astrologers from Rome;[433] the crime of having written laudatory biographies of the Stoics Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus brought Arulenus Rusticus and Herennius Senecio to their deaths.[434] But Domitian's tyranny had little effect onbelles-lettres, however adverse it may have been to free-spoken philosophy, rhetoric, or history. Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Statius, and Martial, all wrote during his reign, and the works of the last-named poet and Quintilian give ample evidence of widespread literary activity. The minor poet replenished the earth, and the prizes for literature awarded at the Agon Capitolinus and the festival of the Alban Mount must have been a real stimulus to writing, even though the type of literature produced by such a stimulus may have been scarcely worth producing. The worst feature of the poetry of the time is the almost incredibly fulsome flattery to which the tyranny of Domitian gave rise. As a compensation we have in the two succeeding reigns the biting satire of Juvenal and Tacitus, rendered all the keener by its long suppression under the last of the Flavian dynasty.
But, however impossible it may have been to write really effective satire during the Flavian dynasty, of poets there was no lack. It was, moreover, under the Flavians that there sprang up that reaction towards a saner style to which we have already referred as finding its expression in the Ciceronianism of Quintilian, and to a lesser degree in the Vergilianism of Valerius, Statius, and Silius. Of lesser luminaries there were enough and to spare. Serranus and Saleius Bassus are both warmly commended by Quintilian for their achievements in Epic. The former died young, before his powers had ripened to maturity, but showed great soundness of style and high promise.[435] Of Saleius Quintilian[436] says, 'He had a vigorous and poetic genius, but it was not mellowed by age.' That is to say, he died young, like Serranus. In theDialogusof Tacitus he is spoken of as the best of men and the most finished of poets. He won Vespasian's favour and received a gift from him of five hundred thousand sesterces. His poems brought him no material profit; both Tacitus and Juvenal emphasize this point:
contentus fama iaceat Lucanus in hortis marmoreis; at Serrano tenuique Saleio gloria quantalibet quid erit, si gloria tantum est.[437]
Statius' father, a distinguished teacher of rhetoric at Naples, had written a poem on the burning of the Capitol in 69 A.D., and was only prevented by death[438] from singing the great eruption of Vesuvius. Arruntius Stella of Patavium,[439] the friend of Statius and Martial, wrote elegies to his wife Violentilla. Turnus,[440] like Juvenal the son of a freedman, attained considerable success as a satirist, while the two distinguished soldiers, Verginius Rufus[441] and Vestricius Spurinna,[442] wrote light erotic verse and lyrics respectively. In addition to these there are a whole host of minor poets mentioned by Statius and Martial. In fact the writing of verse was the most fashionable occupation for the leisure time of a cultivated gentleman.
With Nerva and Trajan the happiest epoch of the principate set in. Nerva (96-98 A.D.) sprung from a line of distinguished jurists, was celebrated by Martial as the Tibullus of his time,[443] and is praised by the younger Pliny for the excellence of his light verses.[444] Trajan, his successor (98-117 A.D.), though a man of war, rather than a man of letters, wrote a history of the Dacian wars,[445] and possessed—as his letters to Pliny testify—a remarkable power of expressing himself tersely and clearly. He was, like Vespasian, a generous patron to rhetoric and education,[446] and the founder of the important library known as theBibliotheca Ulpia.[447] But the great service which he and his predecessor rendered to literature was, as Pliny and Tacitus bear eloquent witness, the gift of freedom. This did more for prose than for poetry, save for one important fact—it was the means of enriching the world with the satires of Juvenal. If the quantity of the literature surviving from the principates of Nerva and Trajan is small, its quality is unmistakable. Pliny the younger, Tacitus, and Juvenal form a trio whose equal is to be found at no other period of the post-Augustan principate, while the letters of Pliny give proof of the existence of a highly cultivated society devoted to literature of all kinds. Poets were numerous even if they were not good. Few names, however, survive, and those have but the slightest interest for us. It will suffice to mention three of them: Passennus Paulus, Sentius Augurinus, and the younger Pliny. With the dramatic poets, Pomponius Bassulus and Vergilius Romanus, we have already dealt.[448] Pliny shall speak for himself and his friends.
'Passennus Paulus,' he writes,[449] 'a distinguished Roman knight of great learning, is a writer of elegies. This runs in the family; for he is a fellow townsman of Propertius and indeed counts him among his ancestors.' In a later letter[450] he speaks with solicitude of his failing health, and goes on to describe the characteristics of his work. 'In his verse he imitates the ancients, paraphrases them, and reproduces them, above all Propertius, from whom he traces his descent. He is a worthy scion of the house, and closely resembles his great ancestor in that sphere in which he of old excelled. If you read his elegies you will find them highly polished, possessed of great sensuous charm, and quite obviously written in the house of Propertius. He has lately betaken himself to lyric verse, and imitates Horace with the same skill with which he has imitated Propertius. Indeed, if kinship counts for anything in the world of letters, you would deem him Horace's kinsman as well.' Pliny concludes with a warm tribute to Passennus' character. The picture is a pleasant one, but it is startling and significant to find Pliny awarding such praise to one who was frankly imitative, if he was not actually a plagiarist.[451]
Pliny is not less complimentary to Sentius Augurinus. 'I have been listening,' he writes,[452] 'to a recitation given by Sentius Augurinus. It gave me the greatest pleasure, and filled me with the utmost admiration for his talent. He calls his verses "trifles" (poematia). Much is written with great delicacy, much with great elevation of style; many of the poems show great charm, many great tenderness; not a few are honey-sweet, not a few bitter and mordant. It is some time since anything so perfect has been produced.' The next clause, however, betrays the reason, in part at any rate, for Pliny's admiration. In the course of his recitation he had produced a small hendecasyllabic poem in praise of Pliny's own verses. Pliny proceeds to quote it with every expression of gratification and approval. It is certainly neatly turned and well expressed, but it is such as any cultivated gentleman who had read his Catullus and Martial might produce, and can hardly have been of interest to any one save Augurinus and Pliny. Pliny was, in fact, with all his admirable gifts, one of the principal and most amiable members of a highly cultivated mutual admiration society. He was a poet himself, though only a few lines of the poems praised by Augurinus have survived to undergo the judgement of a more critical age. Pliny has, however, given an interesting little sketch of his poetical career in the fourth letter of the seventh book. 'I have always had a taste for poetry,' he tells his friend Pontius; 'nay, I was only fourteen when I composed a tragedy in Greek. What was it like? you ask. I know not; it was called a tragedy. Later, when returning from my military service, I was weather-bound in the island of Icaria, and wrote elegiac poems in Latin about that island and the sea, which bears the same name. I have occasionally attempted heroic hexameters, but it is only quite recently that I have taken to writing hendecasyllables. You shall hear of their origin and of the occasion which gave them birth. Some writings of Asinius Gallus were being read aloud to me in my Laurentine villa; in these works he was comparing his father with Cicero; we came upon an epigram of Cicero dedicated to his freedman Tiro. Shortly after, about noon—for it was summer—I retired to take my siesta, and finding that I could not sleep, I began to reflect how the very greatest orators have taken delight in composing this style of verse, and have hoped to win fame thereby. I set my mind to it, and, quite contrary to my expectations after so long desuetude, produced in an extremely short space of time the following verses on that very subject which had provoked me to write.'
Thirteen hexameter verses follow of a mildly erotic character. They are not peculiarly edifying, and are certainly very far from being poetry. He continues:
'I then turned my attention to expressing the same thoughts in elegiac verse; I rattled these off at equal speed, and wrote some additional lines, being beguiled into doing so by the fluency with which I wrote the metre. On my return to Rome I read the verses to my friends. They approved. Then in my leisure moments, especially when travelling, I attempted other metres. Finally, I resolved to follow the example of many other writers and compose a whole separate volume in the hendecasyllabic metre; nor do I regret having done so. For the book is read, copied, and even sung; even Greeks chant my verses to the sound of thecitharaor the lyre; their passion for the book has taught them to use the Latin tongue.' It was this volume of hendecasyllables about which Pliny displays such naïve enthusiasm that led Augurinus to compare Pliny to Calvus and Catullus. Pliny's success had come to him comparatively late in life; but it emboldened him to the composition of another volume of poems[453] in various metres, which he read to his friends. He cites one specimen in elegiacs[454] which awakens no desire for more, for it is fully as prosy as the hexameters to which we have already referred. Of the hendecasyllables nothing survives, but Pliny tells us something as to their themes and the manner of their composition.[455] 'I amuse myself by writing them in my leisure moments at the bath or in my carriage. I jest in them and make merry, I play the lover, I weep, I make lamentation, I vent my anger, or describe something or other now in a pedestrian, now in a loftier vein.' As this little catalogue would suggest, these poems were not always too respectable. The good Pliny, like Martial, thinks it necessary to apologize[456] for his freedom in conforming to the fashionable licence of his age by protesting that his muse may be wanton, but his life is chaste. We can readily believe him, for he was a man of kindly heart and high ideals, whose simple vanity cannot obscure his amiability. But it is difficult to believe that the loss of his poetry is in any way a serious loss to the world.[457] We have given Pliny the poet more space than is his due; our excuse must be the interest of his engaging self-revelations.
In spite of Pliny's enthusiasm for his poet friends, there is no reason to suppose that the reign of Trajan saw the production of any poetry, save that of Juvenal, which even approached the first rank. With the accession of Hadrian we enter on a fresh era, characterized by the rise of a new prose style and the almost entire disappearance of poetry. Rome had produced her last great poet. ThePervigilium Venerisand a few slight but beautiful fragments of Tiberianus are all that illumine the darkness till we come upon the interesting but uninspired elegiacs of Rutilius Namatianus, the curiously uneven and slipshod poetry of Ausonius, and the graceful, but cold and lifeless perfection of the heroic hexameters of Claudian.
Poetesses were not rare at Rome during the first century of our era; thescribendi cacoethesextended to the fair sex sufficiently, at any rate, to evoke caustic comment both from Martial[458] and Juvenal.[459] By a curious coincidence, the only poetesses of whose work we have any record are both named Sulpicia. The elder Sulpicia belongs to an earlier age; she formed one of the Augustan literary circle of which her uncle Messala was the patron, and left a small collection of elegiac poems addressed to her lover, and preserved in the same volume as the posthumous poems of Tibullus, to whose authorship they were for long attributed.[460]
The younger Sulpicia was a contemporary of the poet Martial, and, like her predecessor, wrote erotic verse. Frank and outspoken as was the earlier poetess, in this respect at least her namesake far surpassed her. For the younger Sulpicia's plain-speaking, if we may judge from the comments of ancient writers[461] and the one brief fragment of her love-poems that has survived,[462] was of a very different character and must at least have bordered on the obscene. But her work attracted attention; her fame is associated with her love for Calenus, a love that was long[463] and passionate. She continued to be read even in the days of Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris. Martial compares her with Sappho, and her songs of love seem to have rung true, even though their frankness may have been of a kind generally associated with passions of a looser character.[464] If, as a literal interpretation of Martial[465] would lead us to infer, Calenus was her husband, the poems of Sulpicia confront us with a spectacle unique in ancient literature—a wife writing love-poems to her husband. Her language came from the heart, not from book-learning; she was a poetess such as Martial delighted to honour.
omnes Sulpiciam legant puellae, uni quae cupiunt viro placere; omnes Sulpiciam legant mariti, uni qui cupiunt placere nuptae. non haec Colchidos adserit furorem, diri prandia nec refert Thyestae; Scyllam, Byblida nec fuisse credit: sed castos docet et probos amores, lusus delicias facetiasque. cuius carmina qui bene aestimarit, nullam dixerit esse nequiorem, nullam dixerit esse sanctiorem[466].
Read your Sulpicia, maidens all,Whose husband shall your sole love be;Read your Sulpicia, husbands all,Whose wife shall reign, and none but she.No theme for her Medea's fire,Nor orgy of Thyestes dire;Scylla and Byblis she'd deny,Of love she sang and purity,Of dalliance and frolic gay;Who should have well appraised her layHad said none were more chaste than she,Yet fuller none of amorous glee.A. E. STREET.
Although the thought of whatprocacitas[467] may have meant in a lady of Domitian's reign raises something of a shudder, and although it is to be feared that Martial, when he goes on to say (loc. cit.)
tales Egeriae iocos fuisse udo crediderim Numae sub antro,
Such sport I ween Egeria gaveTo Numa in his spring-drenched cave.A. E. STREET.
had that in his mind which would have scandalized the pious lawgiver of Rome, we may yet regret the loss of poems which, if Martial's language is not merely the language of flattery, may have breathed a fresher and freer spirit than is often to be found in the poets of the age. Catullus and Sappho would seem to have been Sulpicia's models, but her poems have left so little trace behind them that it is impossible to speak with certainty. As to their metre we are equally ill-informed. The fragment of two lines quoted above is in iambicsenarii. If we may believe the evidence[468] of a satirical hexameter poem attributed to Sulpicia, she also wrote in hendecasyllables and scazons. The genuineness of this poem is, however, open to serious doubt. It consists of seventy hexameters denouncing the expulsion of the philosophers by Domitian, and is known by the title ofSulpiciae satira.[469] That it purports to be by the poetess beloved of Calenus is clear from an allusion to their passion.[470] Serious doubts have, however, been cast upon its genuineness. It is urged that the work is ill-composed, insipid, and tasteless, and that it contains not a few marked peculiarities in diction and metre, together with more than one historical inaccuracy. The inference suggested is that the poem is not by Sulpicia, but at least two centuries later in date. It may readily be admitted that the poem is almost entirely devoid of any real merit, that its diction is obscure and slovenly, its metre lame and unimpressive. But the critics of the poem are guilty of great exaggeration.[471] Many of its worst defects are undoubtedly due to the exceedingly corrupt state of the text; further, it is hard to see what interest a satire directed against Domitian would possess centuries after his death, nor is it easy to imagine what motive could have led the supposed forger to attribute his work to Sulpicia. The balance of probability inclines, though very slightly, in favour of the view that the work is genuine. This is unfortunate; for the perusal of this curious satire on the hypothesis of its genuineness appreciably lessens our regret for the loss of Sulpicia's love poetry and arouses serious suspicion as to the veracity of Martial. It must, however, in justice be remembered that it does not follow that Sulpicia was necessarily a failure as a lyric writer because she had not the peculiar gift necessary for satire. The absence of the training of the rhetorical schools from a woman's education might well account for such a failure. At the worst, Sulpicia stands as an interesting example of the type of womanhood at which Juvenal levelled some of his wildest and most ill-balanced invective.
The political tendency towards retrenchment and reform that marks the reign of Vespasian finds its literary parallel in a reaction against the rhetoric of display that culminated in Seneca and Lucan. This movement is most strongly marked in the prose of Quintilian and theDialogusof Tacitus, but finds a faint echo in the world of poets as well. The three epic poets of the period—Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Silius Italicus—though they, too, have suffered much from their rhetorical training, are all clear followers of Vergil. They, like their predecessors, find it hard to say things naturally, but they do not to the same extent go out of their way with the deliberate intention of saying things unnaturally.[472] We may condemn them as phrase-makers, though many a modern poet of greater reputation is equally open to the charge. But their phrase-making has not the flamboyant quality of the Neronian age. If it is no less wearisome, it is certainly less offensive. They do not lack invention; their mere technical skill is remarkable; they fail because they lack the supreme gifts of insight and imagination.
Valerius Flaccus chose a wiser course than Lucan and Silius Italicus. He turned not to history, but to legend, for his theme; and the story of the Argonauts, on which his choice lighted, possessed one inestimable advantage. Well-worn and hackneyed as it was, it possessed the secret of eternal youth. 'Age could not wither it nor custom stale its infinite variety.' The poorest of imitative poetasters could never have made it wholly dull, and Valerius Flaccus was more than a mere poetaster.
Of his life and position little is known. His name is given by the MSS. as Gaius Valerius Flaccus Setinus Balbus.[473] The name Setinus suggests that he may have been a native of Setia. As there were three Setias, one in Italy and two in Spain, this clue gives us small help. It has been suggested[474] that the peculiarities of his diction are due to his being of Spanish origin. But we have no evidence as to the nature of Spanish Latin, while the authors of known Spanish birth, who found fame in the Silver Age—Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Quintilian, Columella—show no traces of their provenance. No more helpful is the view that he is one Flaccus of Patavium, the poet-friend to whom two of Martial's epigrams are addressed.[475] For Martial's acquaintance was poor and is exhorted to abandon poetry as unlucrative, whereas Valerius Flaccus had some social standing and, not improbably, some wealth. From the opening of theArgonauticawe learn that he held the post ofquindecimvir sacris faciundis.[476] But there our knowledge of the poet ends, save for one solitary allusion in Quintilian, the sole reference to Valerius in any ancient writer. In his survey of Latin literature[477] he saysmultum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus. The work of Quintilian having been published between the years 93 and 95 A.D., the death of Valerius Flaccus may be placed about 90 A.D.
The poem seems to have been commenced shortly after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. At the opening of the first book[478] Valerius addresses Vespasian in the conventional language of courtly flattery with appropriate reference to his voyages in northern seas during his service in Britain, a reference doubly suitable in a poem which is largely nautical and geographical. He excuses himself from taking the obvious subject of the Jewish war on the ground that that theme is reserved for the inspired pen of Domitian. It is for him to describe Titus, his brother, dark with the dust of war, launching the fires of doom and dealing destruction from tower to tower along the ramparts of Jerusalem.[479] The progress of the work was slow. By the time the third book is reached we find references to the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D.,[480] while in the two concluding books there seem to be allusions to Roman campaigns in the Danube lands, perhaps those undertaken by Domitian in 89 A.D.[481] At line 468 of the eighth book the poem breaks off suddenly. It is possible that this is due to the ravages of time or to the circumstances of the copyist of our archetype, but consideration of internal evidence points strongly to the conclusion that Valerius died with his work uncompleted.
Not only do the words of Quintilian (l.c.) suggest a poet who left a great work unfinished, but the poem itself is full of harshnesses and inconsistencies of a kind which so slow and careful a craftsman would assuredly have removed had the poem been completed and received its final revision.[482] These blemishes leave us little room for doubt. The poem that has come down to us is a fragment lacking thelimae labor. Like theThebaisof Statius and theAeneiditself, the work was probably planned to fill twelve books. The poem breaks off with the marriage of Medea and Jason on the Isle of Peuce at the mouth of the Danube, where they are overtaken by Medea's brother Absyrtus, who has come in anger to reclaim his sister and take vengeance on the stranger who has beguiled her. It is clear that the Argonauts[483] were, as in Apollonius Rhodius, to escape up the Danube and reach another sea. In Apollonius they descended from the head waters of the Danube by some mythical river to the Adriatic; it is in the Adriatic that Absyrtus is encountered and slain; it is in Phaeacia that Jason and Medea are married. In Valerius both these incidents take place in the Isle of Peuce, at the Danube's mouth. The inference is that Valerius contemplated a different scheme for his conclusion. It has been pointed out[484] that a mere 'reproduction of Apollonius' episodes could not have occupied four books'; and it is suggested that Valerius definitely brought his heroes into relation to the various Italian places[485] connected with the Argonautic legend, while he may even, as a compliment to Vespasian,[486] have brought them back 'by way of the North Sea past Britain and Gaul'. This ingenious conjectural reconstruction has some probability, slight as is the evidence on which it rests. Valerius was almost bound to give his epic a Roman tinge. More convincing, however, is the suggestion of the same critic[487] that the poem was designed to exceed the scope of the epic of Apollonius and to have included the death of Pelias, the malignant and usurping uncle, who, to get rid of Jason, compels him to the search of the golden fleece. To the retribution that came upon him there are two clear references[488] and only the design to describe it could justify the introduction of the suicide of Jason's parents at the outset of the first book, a suicide to which they are driven to avoid death at the hands of Pelias.
The scope of the unwritten books is, however, of little importance in comparison with the execution of the existing portion of the poem. The Argonaut Saga has its weaknesses as a theme for epic. It is too episodic, it lacks unity and proportion. Save for the struggle in Colchis and the loves of Jason and Medea, there is little deep human interest. These defects, however, find their compensation in the variety and brilliance of colour, and, in a word, the romance that is inseparable from the story. The scene is ever changing, each day brings a new marvel, a new terror. Picturesqueness atones for lack of epic grandeur. For that reason the theme was well suited to the Silver Age, when picturesqueness and rich invention of detail predominated at the expense of poetic dignity and kindling imagination. In many ways Valerius does justice to his subject, in spite of the initial difficulty with which he was confronted. Apollonius Rhodius had made the story his own; Varro of Atax had translated Apollonius: both in its Greek and Latin forms the story was familiar to Roman readers. It was hard to be original.
Much as Valerius owes to his greater predecessor, he yet succeeds in showing no little originality in his portrayal of character and incident, and in a few cases in his treatment of plot.[489] In one particular indeed he has markedly improved on his model; he has made Jason, the hero of his epic, a real hero; conventional he may be, but he still is a leader of men. In Apollonius, on the other hand, he plays a curiously inconspicuous part; he is, in fact, the weakest feature of the poem; he is in despair from the outset, and at no point shows genuine heroic qualities; he is at best a peerless wooer and no more. Here, however, he is exalted by the two great battles of Cyzicus and Colchis; it is in part his prowess in the latter battle that wins Medea's heart. In this connexion we may also notice a marked divergence from Apollonius as regards the plot. Aeetes has promised Jason the fleece if he will aid him against his brother Perses, who is in revolt against him with a host of Scythians at his back. Jason aids him, does prodigies of valour, and wins a glorious victory. Aeetes refuses the reward. This act of treachery justifies Jason in having recourse to Medea's magic arts and in employing her to avenge him on her father. In Apollonius we find a very different story. The sons of Phrixus, who, to escape the wrath of Aeetes, have thrown in their lot with the Argonauts, urge Jason to approach Medea; they themselves work upon the feelings of their mother, Chalciope, till she seeks her sister Medea—already in love with Jason and only too ready to be persuaded—and induces her to save her nephews, whose fate is bound up with that of the strangers. This incident is wholly absent from Valerius Flaccus, with the result that the loves of Jason and Medea assume a somewhat different character. Jason's conduct becomes more natural and dignified. Medea, on the other hand, is shown in a less favourable light. In the Greek poet she has for excuse the desire to save her sister from the loss of her sons, which gives her half a right to love Jason. In the Latin epic she is without excuse, unless, indeed, the hackneyed supernatural machinery,[490] put in motion to win her for Jason, can be called an excuse. This crude employment of the supernatural leaves Valerius small room for the subtle psychological analysis wherein the Greek excels, and this, coupled with the love of the Silver Age for art magic, tends to make Medea—as in Seneca—a sorceress first, a woman after. In Apollonius she is barbaric, unsophisticated, a child of nature; in Valerius she is a figure of the stage, not without beauty and pathos, but essentially melodramatic.
But Apollonius had concentrated all his powers upon Medea, and dwarfs all his other characters, Jason not excepted. It is Medea alone that holds our interests. The little company of heroes embarked on unsailed seas and beset with strange peril are scarcely more than a string of names, that drop in and out, as though the work were a ship's log rather than an epic. In Valerius, though he attempts no detailed portraiture, they are men who can at least fight and die. He has, in a word, a better general conception as to how the story should be told; he is less perfunctory, and strives to fill in his canvas more evenly, whereas Apollonius, although by no means concise, leaves much of his canvas covered by sketches of the slightest and most insignificant character. In the Greek poem, though half the work is consumed in describing the voyage to Colchis, the first two books contain scarcely anything of real poetic interest, if we except the story of Phineus and the Harpies, a few splendid similes, and two or three descriptive passages, as brief as they are brilliant. In Valerius, on the contrary, there is abundance of stirring scenes and rich descriptive passages before the Argonauts reach their goal. His superiority is particularly noticeable at the outset of the poem. Apollonius plungesin medias resand fails to give an adequate account of the preliminaries of the expedition. He has no better method of introducing us to his heroes than by giving us a dreary catalogue of their names. Valerius, too, has his catalogue, but later; we are not choked with indigestible and unpalatable fare at the very opening of the feast. And though both authors take five hundred lines to get their heroes under way, Valerius tells us far more and in far better language; Apollonius does not find his stride till the second book, and forgets that it is necessary to interest the reader in his characters from the very beginning.
But though in these respects Valerius has improved on his predecessor, and though his work lacks the arid wastes of his model, he is yet an author of an inferior class, and comes ill out of the comparison. For he has little of the rich, almost oriental, colouring of Apollonius at his best, lacks his fire and passion, and fails to cast the same glamour of romance about his subject. While the Dido and Aeneas of Vergil are in some respects but a pale reflection of the Medea and Jason of Apollonius, the loves of Jason and Medea in Valerius are fainter still. His heroine is not the tragic figure that stands out in lines of fire from the pages of Apollonius. His lovers' speeches have a certain beauty and tenderness of their own, but they lack the haunting melody and the resistless passion that make the Rhodian's lines immortal. And while to a great extent he lacks the peculiar merits of the Greek,[491] he possesses his most serious blemish, the blemish that is so salient a characteristic of both Alexandrian and Silver Latin literature, the passion for obscure learning. A good example is the huge, though most ingenious, catalogue of the tribes of Scythia at the opening of the sixth book, with its detailed inventory of strange names and customs, and its minute descriptions of barbaric armour. His love of learning lands him, moreover, in strange anachronisms. We are told that the Colchians are descended from Sesostris;[492] the town of Arsinoe is spoken of as already in existence; Egypt is already connected with the house of Lagus.[493]
In addition, Valerius possesses many of the faults from which Apollonius is free, but with which the post-Augustan age abounds. The dangerous influence of Seneca has, it is true, decayed; we are no longer flooded with epigram or declamatory rhetoric. Rhetoric there is, and rhetoric that is not always effective;[494] but it is rather a perversion of the rhetoric of Vergil than the descendant of the brilliant rant of Lucan and Seneca. From the gross lack of taste and humour that characterizes so many of his contemporaries he is comparatively free, though his description of the historic 'crab' caught by Hercules reaches the utmost limit of absurdity:
laetus et ipse Alcides: Quisnam hos vocat in certamina fluctus? dixit, et, intortis adsurgens arduus undis, percussit subito deceptum fragmine pectus, atque in terga ruens Talaum fortemque Eribotem et longe tantae securum Amphiona molis obruit, inque tuo posuit caput, Iphite, transtro. (iii. 474-80.)
Alcides gladdened in his heart and cried: 'Who challenges these waves to combat?' and as he rose against those buffeting waves, sudden with broken oar he smote his baffled breast, and, falling headlong back, o'erthrows Talaus and brave Eribotes and far-off Amphion, that never feared so vast a bulk should fall on him, and laid his head against thy thwart, O Iphitus.
This unheroic episode is a relic of the comic traditions associated with Hercules, traditions which obtrude themselves from time to time in serious and even tragic surroundings.[495] Apollonius describes the same incident[496] with the quiet humour that so strangely tinges the works of the pedants of Alexandria. Valerius, on the other hand, has lost touch with the broad comedy of these traditions, and his attempt to be humorous only succeeds in making him ridiculous.[497]
His worst fault, however, lies in his obscurity and preciosity of diction. The error lies not so much in veiling simple facts under an epigram, as in a vain attempt to imitate the 'golden phrases' of Vergil. The strange conglomeration of words with which Valerius so often vexes his readers resembles the 'chosen coin of fancy' only as the formless designs of the coinage of Cunobelin resemble the exquisite staters of Macedon from which they trace their descent. It requires more than a casual glance to tell that (i. 411)
it quem fama genus non est decepta LyaeiPhlias inmissus patrios de vertice crines
means that Phlias was 'truly reported the son of Bacchus with streaming locks like to his sire's'; or that (vi. 553)
Argus utrumque ab equis ingenti porrigit arvo
signifies no more than that the victims of Argus covered a large space of ground when they fell.[498] How miserable is such a phrase compared with the [Greek: keito megas megal_osti] of Homer! And though there is less serious obscurity, nothing can be more awkward than the not infrequent inversion of the natural order of words that we find in phrases such asnec pereat quo scire malo(vii. 7).[499]
Of mere preciosity and phrase-making without any special obscurity examples abound.[500] Pelion sinks below the horizon (ii. 6)—
iamque fretis summas aequatum Pelion ornos.
A fight at close quarters receives the following curious description (ii. 524)—
iam brevis et telo volucri non utilis aer.
A spear flying through the air and missing its mark is avolnus raptum per auras(iii. 196). More startling than these is the picture of a charge of trousered barbarians (vi. 702)—
improba barbaricae procurrunt tegmina plantae.
One more peculiarity remains to be noticed. Here and there in theArgonauticawe meet with a strange brevity and compression resulting not from the desire to produce phrases of curious and original texture, but rather from a praiseworthy though misdirected endeavour to be concise. The most remarkable example is found in the first book, where Mopsus, the official prophet of the expedition, falls into a trance and beholds a vision of the future (211):
heu quaenam aspicio! nostris modo concitus ausis aequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingens concilium. fremere et legem defendere cuncti hortantur. sic amplexu, sic pectora fratris, Iuno, tene; tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas: nunc patrui nunc flecte minas. cessere ratemque accepere mari. per quot discrimina rerum expedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crines velat Hylas? unde urna umeris niueosque per artus caeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi volnera, Pollux? quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis! tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastae et iam iamque umeri. quem circum vellera Martem aspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser eripe parvos, Aesonide. cerno et thalamos ardere iugales.
Alas! what do I see! Even now, stirred by our daring, lo! Neptune calls the gods to a vast conclave. They murmur, and one and all urge him to defend his rights. Hold as thou holdest now, Juno, hold thy brother in thine embrace: and thou, Pallas, forsake not our ship: now, even now, appease thy brother's threats. They have yielded: they give Argo entrance to the sea. Through what perils am I whirled along! Why does fair Hylas veil his locks with a sudden crown of reeds? Whence comes the pitcher on his shoulder and the azure raiment on his limbs of snow? Whence, Pollux, come these wounds of thine? Ah! what a flame streams from the widespread nostrils of the bulls. Helmets and spears rise from every furrow, and now see! shoulders too! What warfare for the fleece do I see? Who is it cleaves the air with winged snakes, reeking with slaughter? Whom smites she with the sword? Ah! son of Aeson, hapless man, save thy little ones. I see, too, the bridal chamber all aflame.
These lines form a kind of abridgement orprécisof the wholeArgonautica, or even more, for we can hardly believe that the scheme of it included the murder of Medea's children and her vengeance on the house of Creon[501]. They are also far too obscure to be interesting to any save a highly-trained literary audience, while their extreme compression could only be justified by their having been primarily designed for recitation in a dramatic and realistic manner with suitable pauses between the different visions.[502] A yet worse and less excusable example of this peculiar brevity is the jerky and prosaic enumeration of Medea's achievements in the black art (vi. 442)—
mutat agros fluviumque vias; suus alligat ingens cuncta sopor, recoquit fessos aetate parentes, datque alias sine lege colus.
She changes crops of fields and course of rivers. [At her bidding] deep clinging slumber binds all things; fathers outworn with age she seethes to youth again, and to others she gives new span of life against fate's ordinance.
The attempt to be concise and full[503] at one and the same time fails, and fails inevitably.
But for all these faults Valerius Flaccus offends less than any of the Silver Latin writers of epic. He rants less and he exaggerates less; above all, he has much genuine poetic merit. He has been strangely neglected, both in ancient[504] and modern times, and unduly depreciated in the latter. There has been a tendency to rank him with Silius Italicus, whereas it would be truer criticism to place him close to Statius, and not far below Lucan. He is more uneven than the former, has a far less certain touch, and infinitely less command of his instrument. He has less mastery of words, but a more kindling and penetrating imagination. His outlines are less clear, but more suggestive. He has less rhetoric; beneath an often obscure diction he reveals a greater simplicity and directness of thought, and he has been infinitely more happy in his theme. Only the greatest of poets could achieve a genuine success with the Theban legend, only the worst of poets could reduce the voyage of the Argonauts to real dullness. On the other hand, in an age ofbelles-lettressuch as the Silver Age, and by the majority of scholars, whose very calling leads them to set a perhaps abnormally high value on technical skill, Statius is almost certain to be preferred to Valerius. About the relative position of Lucan there is no doubt. He is incomparably the superior of Valerius, both in genius and intellect. But Valerius never sins against taste and reason to the same extent, and though he has less fire, possesses a finer ear for music and rhythm, and more poetic feeling as distinct from rhetoric. Vergil was his master; it has been said with a little exaggeration that Valerius stands in the same relation to Vergil as Persius to Horace. This statement conveys but a half-truth. Valerius is as superior to Persius in technique as he is inferior in moral force and intellectual power. He is, however, full of echoes from Vergil,[505] and if his verse has neither the 'ocean roll' of the greater poets, nor the same tenderness, he yet has something of the true Vergilian glamour. But he has weakened his hexameter by succumbing to the powerful influence of Ovid. His verse is polished and neat to the verge of weakness. Like Ovid, he shows a preference for the dactyl over the spondee, shrinks from elision, and does not understand how to vary his pauses.[506] Too many lines close with a full-stop or colon, and where the line is broken, the same pause often recurs again and again with wearisome monotony. In this respect Valerius, though never monotonously ponderous like Lucan, compares ill with Statius. As a compensation, his individual lines have a force and beauty that is comparatively rare in theThebais. The poet who could describe a sea-cave thus (iv. 179)—
non quae dona die, non quae trahat aetheris ignem; infelix domus et sonitu tremibunda profundi,
That receiveth never daylight's gifts nor the light of the heavenly fires, the home of gloom all a-tremble with the sound of the deep.