Porcius Latro.—This then is what we have waited for, to collect a band of runaways. You flee from a rumour; let us at least know of what sort it is. Our dishonour can hardly be wiped out even by victory; bravely as we may fight, successful as we may be, much of our renown is already lost; for Spartans have debated whether or not to flee. O that we may die! For myself, after this discussion, the only thing I fear is to return home. Old women's tales have shaken the arms out of our hands. Now, now, let us fight, among the thirty thousand our valour might have lain hid. The rest have fled. If you ask my opinion, which I utter for the honour of ourselves and Greece, I say they have not deserted us, they have chosen us as their champions.
Marillus.—This was our reason for remaining, that we might not be hidden among the crowd of fugitives. The army has a good excuse to offer for its conduct: "We knew Thermopylae would be safe since we left Spartans to guard it."
Cestius Pius.—You have shown, Spartans, how base it were to fly by so long remaining still. All have their privilege. The glory of Athens is speech, of Thebes religion, of Sparta arms. 'Tis for this Eurotas flows round our state that its stream may inure our boys to the hardships of future war; 'tis for this we have our peaks of Taygetus inaccessible but to Spartans; 'tis for this we boast of a Hercules who has won heaven by merit; 'tis for this that arms are our only walls. O deep disgrace to our ancestral valour! Spartans are counting their numbers, not their manhood. Let us see how long the list is, that Sparta may have, if not brave soldiers, at least true messengers. Can it be that we are vanquished, not by war, but by reports? that man, i' faith, has a right to despise everything at whose very name Spartans are afraid. If we may not conquer Xerxes, let us at least be allowed to see him; I would know what it is I flee from. As yet I am in no way like an Athenian, either in seeking culture, or in dwelling behind a wall; the last Athenian quality that I shall imitate will be cowardice.
Pompeius Silo.—Xerxes leads many with him, Thermopylae can hold but few. We shall be the most timid of the brave, the slowest of cowards. No matter how great nations the East has poured into our hemisphere, how many peoples Xerxes brings with him; as many as this place will hold, with those is our concern.
Cornelius Hispanus.—We have come for Sparta; let us stay for Greece; let us vanquish the foe as we have already vanquished our friends; let this arrogant barbarian learn that nothing is so difficult as to cut an armed Spartan down. For my part, I am glad the rest have gone; they have left Thermopylae for us; there will now be nothing to mingle or compare itself with our valour; no Spartan will be hidden in the crowd; wherever Xerxes looks he will see none but Spartans.
Blandus.—Shall I remind you of your mother's command—"Either with your shield or on it?" and yet to return without arms is far less base than to flee under arms. Shall I remind you of the words of the captive?—"Kill me, I am no slave!" To such a man to escape would not have been to avoid capture. Describe the Persian terrors! We heard all that when we were first sent out. Let Xerxes see the three hundred, and learn at what rate the war is valued, what number of men the place is calculated to hold. We will not return even as messengers except after the fight is over. Who has fled I know not; these men Sparta has given me for comrades. I am thankful that the host has fled; they had made the pass of Thermopylae too narrow for me to move in.
§On the other side.
Cornelius Hispanus.—I hold it a great disgrace to our state if Xerxes see no Greeks before he sees the Spartans. We shall not even have a witness of our valour; the enemy's account of us will be believed. You have my counsel, it is the same as that of all Greece. If any one advise differently, he wishes you to be not brave men but ruined men.
Claudius Marcellus.—They will not conquer us; they will overwhelm us. We have been true to our renown, we have waited till the last. Nature herself has yielded before we.
The aboveSuasoriais by no means one of the most brilliant; on the contrary, it is a decidedly a tame one, but it is a good instance of an ordinary declamation of the better sort, and gives passages from most of the rhetoricians to whom reference is made in the text.
NOTE II.—A few Observations on the Treatment of Rhetorical Questions, taken from the Third Book of Quintilian.
"The division of the departments of rhetoric, or to use a more correct term, the classification of causes, is three-fold: They are either laudatory, deliberative, or judicial. This is a division according to the subject matter, not according to the artistic treatment. Correspondingly, there are three requisites for pleading well, nature, art, and practice; and three objects which the orator must set before him, to teach, to move, and to delight. Every question turns either on things or on words; or as it may be expressed in other language, is either indefinite or definite. Theindefiniteis in the form of a universal proposition (Oesis) which Cicero callspropositum, othersquaestio universalis civilis, othersquaestio philosopho conveniens, and Athenaeuspars causae. This again is divided under the heads of knowledge and action respectively; of knowledge,e.g. Is the world ruled by Providence?of action,e.g., Is political activity a duty?Thedefinitequestion regards things, persons, times, circumstances: it is calledupothesisin Greek,causain Latin. It always depends on an indefinite question,e.g., Ought Cato to marry?depends on the wider one,is marriage desirable?Hence it may be asuasoria. And this is true even of cases in which no person is specially mentioned,e.g., the question,Ought a man to hold office under a tyranny?depends on the wider one,Ought a man to hold office at all?And this question refers of necessity to some special tyrant, though it may not mention him by name. This is the same division as that intogeneralandspecialquestions. Thus every special includes a general. It is true that generals often bear only remotely on practice, and sometimes are altogether neutralised by peculiar circumstances,e.g., the question,Is political activity a duty?becomes inapplicable to a chronic invalid. Still, all are not of this kind,e.g., Is virtue the end of man?is equally applicable to every human being, whatever his capacity. Cicero in his earlier treatises disapproved of these questions being discussed by the orator; he wished to leave them to the philosopher; but as he grew in experience he changed his mind.
"A cause is defined by Valgius, after Apollodorus, asnegotium omnibus suis partibus spectans ad quaestionem, or asnegotium cuius finis est controversia. Thenegotium(or business in hand) is thus defined,congregatio personarum locorum temporum causarum modorum casuum factorum instrumentorum sermonum scriptorum et non scriptorum. The cause, therefore, corresponds to the Greekupostasis(subject), thenegotiumtoperistasis(surroundings). These are of course closely connected; and many have defined the cause as though it were identical with its surroundings or conditions.
"In every discussion three things are the objects of inquiry,an sit, Is it so?quid sit, If so, what is it?quale sit, of what kind is it? For first, there mustbesomething, about which the discussion has arisen. Till this is made clear no discussion as to what it is can arise; far less can we determine what its qualities are, until this second point is ascertained. These three objects of inquiry are exhaustive; on them every question, whether definite or indefinite, depends. The accuser will try to establish, first, the occurrence of the act in dispute, then its character; and, lastly, its criminality. The advocate will, if possible, deny the fact; if he cannot do that he will prove that it is not what the accuser states it to be; or, thirdly, he may contend—and this is the most honourable kind of defence—that it was rightly done. As a fourth alternative, he may take exception to the legality of the prosecution. All these, and every other conceivable division of questions, come under the two general heads (status) ofrationalandlegal. The rational is simple enough, depending only on the contemplation of nature; thus it is content with exhibiting conjecture, definition, and quality. The legal is extremely complex, laws being infinite in number and character. Sometimes the letter is to be observed, sometimes the spirit. Sometimes we get at its meaning by comparison, or induction; sometimes its meaning is open to the most contradictory interpretations. Hence there is room for a far greater display of diverse kinds of excellence in thelegalthan in therationaldepartment. Thus the declamatory exercises calledsuasoriae, which are confined torationalconsiderations, are fittest for young students whose reasoning powers are acute, but who have not the knowledge of law necessary for enabling them to treatcontroversiaewhich hinge on legal questions. These last are intended as a preparation for the pleading of actual causes in court, and should be regularly practised even by the most accomplished pleader during the spare moments that his profession allows him."
Augustus was not more unlike his gloomy successor than were the writers who flourished under him to those that now come before us. The history of literature presents no stronger contrast than between the rich fertility of the last epoch and the barrenness of the present one. The age of Tiberius forms an interval of silence during which the dead are buried, and the new generation prepares itself to appear. Under Nero it will have started forth in all its panoply of tinsel armour; at present the seeds that will produce it are being sown by the hand of despotism. [1]
The sudden collapse of letters on the death of Augustus is easily accounted for. As long as the chief of the state encouraged them labourers in every field were numerous. When his face was withdrawn the stimulus to effort was removed. Thus, even in Augustus's time, when ill health and disappointment had soured his nature and disposed him to arbitrary actions, literature had felt the change. The exile of Ovid was a blow to the muses. We have seen how it injured his own genius, a decline over which he mourns, knowing the cause but impotent to overcome it. [2] We have seen also how it was followed up by other harsh measures, stifling the free voice of poets and historians. And when we reflect how the despotism was entwining itself round the entire life of the nation, gathering by each new enactment food for future aggression, and only veiled as yet by the mildness or caution of a prince whose one object was to found a dynasty, our surprise is lessened at the spectacle of literature prostrate and dumb, threatened by the hideous form of tyranny now no longer in disguise, offering it with brutal irony the choice between submission, hypocrisy, and death. Tiberius (whose portrait drawn by Tacitus in colours almost too dark for belief, is nevertheless rendered credible by the deathlike silence in which his reign was passed) had in his youth shown both taste and proficiency in liberal studies. He had formed his style on that of Messala, but the gloomy bent of his mind led him to contract and obscure his meaning to such a degree that, unlike most Romans, he spoke better extempore [3] than after preparation. In the art of perplexing by ambiguous phrases, of indicating intentions without committing himself to them, he was without a rival. In point of language he was a purist like Augustus; but unlike him he mingled archaisms with his diction. While at Rhodes he attended the lectures of Theodorus; and the letters or speeches of his referred to by Tacitus indicate a nervous and concentrated style. Poetry was alien from his stern character. Nevertheless, Suetonius tells us he wrote a lyric poem and Greek imitations of Euphorion, Rhianus, and Parthenius; but it was the minute questions of mythology that chiefly attracted him, points of useless erudition like those derided by Juvenal: [4]
"Nutricem Anchisae, nomen patriamque novercaeAnchemoli, dicat quot Acestes vixerit annos,Quot Siculus Phrygibus vini donaverit urnas."
In maturer life he busied himself with writing memoirs, which formed the chief, almost the only study of Domitian, and of which we may regret that time has deprived us. The portrait of this arch dissembler by his own able hand would be a good set off to the terrible indictment of Tacitus. Besides the above he was the author of funeral speeches, and, according to Suidas, of a work on the art of rhetoric.
With these literary pretensions it is clear that his discouragement of letters as emperor was due to political reasons. He saw in the free expression of thought or fancy a danger to his throne. And as the abominable system ofdelationsmade every chance expression penal, and found treason to the present in all praise of the past, the only resource open to men of letters was to suppress every expression of feeling, and, by silent brooding, to keep passion at white heat, so that when it speaks at last it speaks with the concentrated intensity of a Juvenal or a Tacitus.
We might ask how it was that authors did not choose subjects outside the sphere of danger. There were still forms of art and science which had not been worked out. TheNatural Historyof Pliny shows how much remained to be done in fields of great interest. Neither philosophy nor the lighter kinds of poetry could afford matter for provocation. But the answer is easy. The Roman imagination was so narrow, and their constructive talent so restricted, that they felt no desire to travel beyond the regular lines. It seemed as if all had been done that could be done well. History, national and universal, [5] science [6] and philosophy, [7] Greek poetry in all its varied forms, had been brought to perfection by great masters whom it was hopeless to rival. The age of literary production seemed to have been rounded off, and the self-consciousness that could reflect on the new era had not yet had time to arise. Rhetoric, as applied to the expression of political feeling, was the only form which literature cared to take, and that was precisely the form most obnoxious to the government.
Thus it is possible that even had Tiberius been less jealously repressive letters would still have stagnated. The severe strain of the Augustan age brought its inevitable reaction. The simultaneous appearance of so many writers of the first rank rendered necessary an interval during which their works were being digested and their spirit settling down into an integral constituent of the national mind. By the time thought reawakens, Virgil, Horace, and Livy are already household words, and their works the basis of all literary culture.
In reading the lives of the chief post-Augustan writers we are struck by the fact that many, if not most of them, held offices of state. The desire for peaceful retirement, characteristic of the early Augustans, the contentment with lettered leisure that signalises the poetry of the later Augustans, have both given place to a restless excitement, and to a determination to make the most of literature as an aid to a successful career. Hitherto we have observed two distinct classes of writers, and a corresponding double relation of politics and literature. The early poets, and again those of Augustus's era, were not men of affairs, they belonged to the exclusively literary class. The great prose writers on the contrary rose to political eminence by political conduct. Literature was with them a relaxation, and served no purpose of worldly aggrandisement. Now, however, an unhealthy confusion between the two provinces takes place. A man rises to office through his poems or rhetorical essays. The acquirements of a professor become a passport to public life. Seneca and Quintilian are striking and favourable instances of the school door opening into the senate:
"Si fortuna volet fies de rhetore consul." [8]
But nearly all the chief writers carried their declamatory principles into the serious business of life. This double aspect of their career produced two different types of talent, under one or other of which the great imperial writers may be ranged. Excluding men of the second rank, we have on the one side Lucan, Juvenal, and Tacitus, all whose minds have a strong political bias, the bias of old Rome, which makes them the most powerful though the most prejudiced exponents of their times. Of another kind are Persius, Seneca, and Pliny the elder. Their genius is contemplative and philosophical; and though two of them were much mixed in affairs, their spirit is cosmopolitan rather than national, and their wisdom, though drawn from varied sources, cannot be called political. These six are the representative minds of the period on which we are now entering, and between them reflect nearly all the best and worst features of their age. Quintilian, Statius, and Pliny the younger, represent a more restricted development; the first of them is the typical rhetorician, but of the better class; the second is the brilliant improvisatore and ingenious word-painter; the third the cultivated and amiable but vain, common-place, and dwarfed type of genius which under the Empire took the place of the "fine gentlemen" of the free Republic.
Writers of this last stamp cannot be expected to show any independent spirit. They are such as in every age would adopt the prevalent fashion, and theorise within the limits prescribed by respectability. While a bad emperor reigns they flatter him; when a good emperor succeeds they flatter him still more by abusing his predecessor; at the same time they are genial, sober, and sensible, adventuring neither the safety of their necks nor of their intellectual reputation.
Such an author comes before us in M. VELLEIUS PATERCULUS, the court historian of Tiberius. This well-intentioned but loquacious writer gained his loyalty from an experience of eight years' warfare under Tiberius in various parts of Europe, and the flattery of which he is so lavish was probably sincere. His birth may perhaps be referred to 18 B.C., since his first campaign, under M. Vinicius, to whose son he dedicated his work, took place in the year 1 B.C. Tiberius's sterling qualities as a soldier gained him the friendship of many of his legati, and Velleius was fortunate enough to secure that of Tiberius in return. By his influence he rose through the minor offices to the praetorship (14 A.D.), and soon after set himself to repair the deficiencies of a purely military education by systematic study. The fruit of this labour is theAbridgment of Roman History, in two books, a mere rapid survey of the early period, becoming more diffuse as it nears his own time, and treating the life of Tiberius and the events of which he was the centre with considerable fulness. The latter part is preserved entire; of the first book, which closes with the destruction of Carthage, a considerable portion has been lost. As, however, he is not likely to have followed in it any authorities inaccessible to us, the loss is unimportant. For his work generally the authorities he quotes are good—Cato'sOrigines, theAnnalesof Hortensius, and probably Atticus's abridgment; Cornelius Nepos, and Trogus for foreign, Livy and Sallust (of whom he was a great admirer) for national, history. As a recipient and expectant of court favour, he naturally echoed the language of the day. Brutus and Cassius are for him parricides; Caesar, the divine founder of an era which culminates in the divine Tiberius. [9] So full was he of his master's praises that he intended to write a separate book on the subject, but was prevented by his untimely death. This took place in 31 A.D., when the discovery of Sejanus's conspiracy caused many suspected to be put to death, and it seems that Velleius was among the number.
His blind partisanship naturally obscures his judgment; but, making allowance for a defect which he does not attempt to conceal, the reader may generally trust him for all matters of fact. His studies were not as a rule deep; but an exception must be made in the case of his account of the Greek colonies in Italy, the dates at which they were founded, and their early relations with Rome. These had never been so clearly treated by any writer, at least among those with whom we are familiar. His mind is not of a high order; he can neither sift evidence nor penetrate to causes; his talents lie in the biographical department, and he has considerable insight into character. His style is not unclassical so far as the vocabulary goes, but the equable moderation of the Golden Age is replaced by exaggeration, and like all who cultivate artificial brilliancy, he cannot maintain his ambitious level of poetical and pretentious ornament. The last year referred to in the book is 30 A.D. The dearth of other material gives him additional value. As a historian he takes a low rank; as an abridger he is better, but best of all as a rhetorical anecdotist and painter of character in action.
A better known writer (especially during the Middle Ages) is VALERIUS MAXIMUS, author of theFacta et Dicta Memorabilia, in nine books, addressed to Tiberius in a dedication of unexampled servility, [10] and compiled from few though good sources. The object of the work is stated in the preface. It was to save labour for those who desired to fortify their minds with examples of excellence, or increase their knowledge of things worth knowing. The methodical arrangement by subjects,e.g., religion, which is divided into religion observed and religion neglected, and instances of both given, first from Roman, then from foreign, history, and so on with all the other subjects, makes Teuffel's suggestion extremely probable, namely, that it was intended for the use of young declaimers, who were thus furnished with instances for all sorts of themes. The constant tendency in the imperial literature to exhaust a subject by a catalogue of every known instance may be traced to these pernicious rhetorical handbooks. If a writer praises temperance, he supplements it by a list of temperate Romans; if he describes a storm, heputs downall he knows about the winds. Uncritical as Valerius is, and void of all thought, he is nevertheless pleasant enough reading for a vacant hour, and if we were not obliged to rate him by a lofty standard, would pass muster very well. But he is no fit company for men of genius; our only wonder is he should have so long survived. His work was a favourite school-book for junior classes, and was epitomised or abridged by Julius Paris in the fourth or fifth century. At the time of this abridgment the so-called tenth book must have been added. Julius Paris's words in his preface to it are,Liber decimus de praenominibus et similibus: but various considerations make it certain that Valerius was not the author. [11] Many interesting details were given in it, taken chiefly from Varro; and it is much to be regretted that the entire treatise is not preserved. Besides Paris one Titius Probus retouched the work in a still later age, and a third abstract by Januarius Nepotianus is mentioned. This last writer cut out all the padding which Valerius had so largely used ("dum se ostentat sententiis, locis iactat, fundit excessibus"), and reduced the work to a bare skeleton of facts.
A much more important writer, one of whose treatises only has reached us, was A. CORNELIUS CELSUS. He stood in the first rank of Roman scientists, was quite encyclopaedic in his learning, and wrote, like Cato, on eloquence, law, farming, medicine, and tactics. There is no doubt that the work on medicine (extending over Books VI.-XIII. of his Encyclopaedia) which we possess, was the best of his writings, but the chapters on agriculture also are highly praised by Columella.
At this time, as Des Etangs remarks, nearly all the knowledge and practice of medicine was in the hands of Greek physicians, and these either freedmen or slaves. Roman practitioners seem to have inspired less confidence even when they were willing to study. Habits of scientific observation are hereditary; and for centuries the Greeks had studied the conditions of health and the theory of disease, as well as practised the empirical side of the art, and most Romans were well content to leave the whole in their hands.
Celsus tried to attract his countrymen to the pursuit of medicine by pointing out its value and dignity. He commences his work with a history of medical science since its first importation into Greece, and devotes the rest of Book I. to a consideration of dietetics and other prophylactics of disease; the second book treats of general pathology, the third and fourth of special illnesses, the fifth gives remedies and prescriptions, the sixth, seventh, and eighth—the most valuable part of the book—apply themselves chiefly to surgical questions. The value of his work consists in the clear, comprehensive grasp of his subject, and the systematic way in which he expounds its principles. The main points of his theory are still valid; very few essentials need to be rejected; it might still be taken as a popular handbook on the subject. He writes for Roman citizens, and is therefore careful to avoid abstruse terms where plain ones will do, and Greek words where Latin are to be had. The style is bare, but pure and classical. An excellent critic says [12]—"Quo saepius eum perlegebam, eo magis me detinuit cum dicendi nitor et brevitas tum perspicacitas iudicii sensusque vorax et ad agendum accommodatus, quibus omnibus genuinam repraesentat nobis civis Romani imaginem." The text as we have it depends on a single MS. and sadly needs a careful revision; it is interpolated with numerous glosses, both Greek and Latin, which a skilful editor would detect and remove. Among the other treatises in hisEncyclopaedia, next to that on farming, those on rhetoric and tactics were most popular. The former, however, was superseded by Quintilian, the latter by Vegetius. In philosophy he did not so much criticise other schools as detail his own views with concise eloquence. These views were almost certainly Eclectic, though we know on Quintilian's authority that he followed the two Sextii in many important points. [13]
The other branches of prose composition were almost neglected in this reign. Even rhetoric sank to a low level; the splendid displays of men like Latro, Arellius, and Ovid gave place to the flimsy ostentation of REMMIUS PALAEMON. This dissolute man, who combined the professions of grammarian and rhetorician, possessed an extraordinary aptitude for fluent harangue, but soon confined his attention to grammatical studies, in which he rose to the position of an authority. Suetonius says he was born a slave, and that while conducting his young master to school he learnt something of literature, was liberated, and set up a school in Rome, where he rose to the top of his profession. Although infamous for his abandoned profligacy, and stigmatized by Tiberius and Claudius as utterly unfit to have charge of the young, he managed to secure a very large number of pupils by his persuasive manner, and the excellence of his tutorial method. His memory was prodigious, his eloquence seductive, and a power of extempore versification in the most difficult metres enhanced the charm of his conversation. He is referred to by Pliny, Quintilian, and Juvenal, and for a time superintended the studies of the young satirist Persius.
Oratory, as may easily be supposed, had well nigh ceased. VOTIENUS MONTANUS, MAMERCUS SCAURUS, and P. VITELLIUS, all held high positions in the state. Scaurus, in particular, was also of noble lineage, being the great-grandson of the celebrated chief of the senate. His oratory was almost confined to declamation, but was far above the general level of the time. Careless, and often full of faults, it yet carried his hearers away by its native power and dignity. [14] ASINIUS GALLUS, the son of Pollio, so far followed his father as to take a strong interest in politics, and with filial enthusiasm compared him favourably with Cicero. DOMITIUS AFER also is mentioned by Tacitus as an able but dissolute man, who under a better system might have been a good speaker. A writer of some mark was CREMUTIUS CORDUS, whose eloquent account of the rise of the Empire cost him his life: in direct defiance of the fashionable cant of the day he had called Cassius "the last of the Romans." The higher spirits seemed to take a gloomy pleasure in speaking out before the tyrant, even if it were only with their last breath; more than one striking instance of this is recorded by Tacitus; and though he questions the wisdom of relieving personal indignation by a vain invective, which must bring death and ruin on the speaker and all his family, and in the end only tighten the yoke it tries to shake, yet the intractable pride of these representatives of the old families has something about it to which, human as we are, we cannot refuse our sympathy. The only other prose-writer we need mention is AUFIDIUS BASSUS, who described the Civil Wars and the German expeditions, and is mentioned with great respect by Tacitus.
Poetry is represented by the fifth book of Manilius, by Phaedrus'sFables, and perhaps by the translation of Aratus ascribed to GERMANICUS, the nephew and adopted son of Tiberius. This translation, which is both elegant and faithful, and superior to Cicero's in poetical inspiration, has been claimed, but with less probability, for Domitian, who, as is well known, affected the title of Germanicus. [15] But the consent of the most ancient critics tends to restore Germanicus Drusus as the author, the titlegenitorapplied to Tiberius not being proof positive the other way.
The only writer who mentions PHAEDRUS is Martial, [16] and he only in a single passage. The Aesopian beast-fable was a humble form of art peculiarly suited to a period of political and literary depression. Seneca in hisConsolatio ad Polybiumimplies that that imperial favourite had cultivated it with success. Apparently he did not know of Phaedrus; and this fact agrees with the frequent complaints that Phaedrus makes to the effect that he is not appreciated. Of his life we know only what we can gather from his own book. He was born in Pieria, and became the slave of Augustus, who set him free, and seems to have given him his patronage. The poet was proud of his Greek birth, but was brought to Rome at so early an age as to belong almost equally to both nationalities. His poverty [17] did not secure him from persecution, Sejanus, ever suspicious and watchful, detected the political allusions veiled beneath the disguise of fable, and made the poet feel his auger. The duration of Phaedrus's career is uncertain. The first two books were all that he published in Tiberius's reign; the third, dedicated to Eutychus, and the fourth to Particulo, Claudius's favourite, clearly show that he continued to write over a considerable time. The date of Book V. is not mentioned, but it can hardly be earlier than the close of Claudius's reign. Thus we have a period of nearly thirty years during which these five short books were produced.
Like all who con over their own compositions, Phaedrus had an unreasonably high opinion of their merit. Literary reputation was his chief desire, and he thought himself secure of it. He echoes the boast so many greater men have made before him, that he is the first to import a form of Greek art; but he limits his imitation to the general scope, reserving to himself the right to vary the particular form in each fable as he thinks fit. [18] The careful way in which he defines at what point his obligations to Aesop cease and his own invention begins, shows him to have had something of the trifler and a great deal of the egotist. His love of condensation is natural, for a fabulist should be short, trenchant, and almost proverbial in his style; but Phaedrus carries these to the point of obscurity and enigma. It seems as if at times he did not see his drift himself. To this fault is akin the constant moralising tone which reflects rather than paints, enforces rather than elicits its lesson. He is himself a small sage, and all his animals are small sages too. They have not the life-like reality of those of Aesop; they are mere lay figures. His technical skill is very considerable; the iambic senarius becomes in his hands an extremely pleasing rhythm, though the occurrence of spondees in the second and fourth place savours of archaic usage. His diction is hardly varied enough to admit of clear reference to a standard, but on the whole it may be pronounced nearer to the silver than the golden Latinity, especially in the frequent use of abstract words. His confident predictions of immortality were nearly being falsified by the burning, by certain zealots, of an abbey in France, where alone the MS. existed (1561 A.D.); but Phaedrus, in common with many others, was rescued from the worthy Calvinists, and has since held a quiet corner to himself in the temple of fame.
A poet whose misfortunes were of service to his talent, was POMPONIUS SECUNDUS. His friendship with Aelius Gallus, son to Sejanus, caused him to be imprisoned during several years. While in this condition he devoted himself to literature, and wrote many tragedies which are spoken well of by Quintilian: "Eorum (tragic poets) quos viderim longe princeps Pomponius Secundus." [19] He was an acute rhetorician, and a purist in language. The extant names of his plays areAeneas, and perhapsArmorum JudiciumandAtreus, but these last two are uncertain. Tragedy was much cultivated during the imperial times; for it formed an outlet for feeling not otherwise safe to express, and it admitted all the ornaments of rhetoric. Those who regard the tragedies of Seneca as the work of the father, would refer them to this reign, to the end of which the old man's activity lasted, though his energies were more taken up with watching and guiding the careers of his children than with original composition. When Tiberius died (37 A.D.) literature could hardly have been at a lower ebb; but even then there were young men forming their minds and imbibing new canons of taste, who were destined before long—for almost all wrote early—to redeem the age from the charge of dulness, perhaps at too great a sacrifice.
We have grouped these three emperors under a single heading because the shortness of the reigns of the two former prevented the formation of any special school of literature. It is otherwise with the reign of Nero. To this belongs a constellation of some of the most brilliant authors that Rome ever produced. And they are characterised by some very special traits. Instead of the depression we noticed under Tiberius we now observe a forced vivacity and sprightliness, even in dealing with the most awful or serious subjects, which is unlike anything we have hitherto met with in Roman literature. It is quite different from the natural gaiety of Catullus; equally so from the witty frivolity of Ovid. It is not in the least meant to be frivolous; on the contrary it arises from an overstrained earnestness, and a desire to say everything in the most pointed and emphatic form in which it can be said. To whatever school the writers belong, this characteristic is always present. Persius shows it as much as Seneca; the historians as much as the rhetors. The only one who is not imbued with it is the professed wit Petronius. Probably he had exhausted it in conversation; perhaps he disapproved of it as a corrupt importation of the Senecas.
The emperors themselves were allliterati. CALIGULA, it is true, did not publish, but he gave great attention to eloquence, and was even more vigorous as an extempore speaker than as a writer. His mental derangement affected his criticism. He thought at one time of burning all the copies of Homer that could be got at; at another of removing all the statues of Livy and Virgil, the one as unlearned and uncritical, the other as verbose and negligent. One is puzzled to know to which respectively these criticisms refer. We do not venture to assign them, but translate literally from Suetonius. [1]
CLAUDIUS had a brain as sluggish as Caligula's was over-excitable; nevertheless he prosecuted literature with care, and published several works. Among these was a history, beginning with the death of Julius Caesar, in forty-three volumes, [2] an autobiography in eight, [3] "magis inepte quam ineleganter scriptum;" a learned defence of Cicero against Asinius Gallus's invective, besides several Greek writings. His philological studies and the innovations he tried to introduce have been referred to in a former chapter. [4]
NERO, while a young man before his accession, tried his powers in nearly every department of letters. He approached philosophy, but his prudent mother deterred him from a study which might lead him to views "above his station as a prince." He next turned to the old orators, but here his preceptor Seneca intervened, Tacitus insinuates, with the motive of turning him from the best models to an admiration of his own more seductive style. Nero declaimed frequently in public, and his poetical effusions seem to have possessed some real merit. At the first celebration of the festival calledNeronianahe was crowned with the wreath of victory. His most celebrated poem, the one that drew down on him the irony of Juvenal, was theTroica, in which perhaps occurred theTroiae Halosiswhich this madman recited in state over the burning ruins of Rome, and which is parodied with subtle mockery in Petronius. Other poems were of a lighter cast and intended to be sung to the accompaniment of the harp. These were the crowning scandal of his imperial vagaries in the eyes of patriotic Romans. "With our prince a fiddler," cries Juvenal, "what further disgrace remains?" King Lewis of Bavaria and some other great personages of our era would perhaps object to Juvenal's conclusion. With all these accomplishments, however, Nero either could not or would not speak. He had not the vigour of mind necessary for eloquence. Hence he usually employed Seneca to dress up speeches for him, a task which that polite minister was not sorry to undertake.
The earliest poet who comes before us is the unknown author of the panegyric on Calpurnius Piso. It is an elegant piece of versification with no particular merit or demerit. It takes pains to justify Piso for flute- playing in public, and as Nero's example is not alleged, the inference is natural that it was written before his time. There is no independence of style, merely a graceful reflection from that of the Augustan poets.
We must now examine the circumstances which surrounded or produced the splendid literature of Nero's reign. Such persons as from political hostility to the government, or from disgust at the flagitious conduct by which alone success was to be purchased, lived apart in a select circle, stern and defiant, unsullied by the degradation round them, though helpless to influence it for good. They consisted for the most part of virtuous noblemen such as Paetus Thrasea, Barea, Rubellius Plautus, above all, Helvidius Priscus, on whose uncompromising independence Tacitus loves to dwell; and of philosophers, moral teachers and literati, who sought after real excellence, not contemporary applause. The members of this society lived in intimate companionship, and many ladies contributed their share to its culture and virtuous aspirations. Such were Arria, the heroic wife of Paetus, Fannia, the wife of Helvidius, and Fulvia Sisenna, the mother of Persius. These heldréunionsfor literary or philosophical discussions which were no mere conversational displays, but a serious preparation for the terrible issues which at any time they might be called upon to meet. It had long been the custom for wealthy Romans of liberal tastes to maintain a philosopher as part of their establishment. Laelius had shown hospitality both to Panaetius and Polybius; Cicero had offered a home to Diodotus for more than twenty years, and Catulus and Lucullus had both recognised the temporal needs of philosophy. Under the Empire the practice was still continued, and though liable to the abuse of charlatanism or pedantry, was certainly instrumental in familiarising patrician families (and especially their lady members) with the great thoughts and pure morality of the best thinkers of Greece. From scattered notices in Seneca and Quintilian, we should infer that the philosopher was employed as a repository of spiritual confidences—almost a father- confessor—at least as much as an intellectual teacher. When Kanus Julius was condemned to death, his philosopher went with him to the scaffold and uttered consoling words about the destiny of the soul; [5] and Seneca's own correspondence shows that he regarded this relation as the noblest philosophy could hold. Of such moral directors the most influential was ANNAEUS CORNUTUS, both from his varied learning and his consistent rectitude of life. Like all the higher spirits he was a Stoic, but a genial and wise one. He neither affected austerity nor encouraged rash attacks on power. His advice to his noble friends generally inclined towards the side of prudence. Nevertheless he could not so far control his own language as to avoid the jealousy of Nero. [6] He was banished, it is not certain in what year, and apparently ended his days in exile. He left several works, mostly written in Greek; some on philosophy, of which that on the nature of the gods has come down to us in an abridged form, some on rhetoric and grammar; besides these he is said to have composed satires, tragedies, [7] and a commentary on Virgil. But his most important work was his formation of the character of one of the three Roman satirists whose works have come down to us.
Few poets have been so differently treated by different critics as A. PERSIUS FLACCUS, for while some have pronounced him to be an excellent satirist and true poet, others have declared that his fame is solely owing to the trouble he gives us to read him. He was born at Volaterrae, 34 A.D., of noble parentage, brought to Rome as a child, and educated with the greatest care. His first preceptor was the grammarian Virginius Flavus, an eloquent man endued with strength of character, whose earnest moral lectures drew down the displeasure of Caligula. He next seems to have attended a course under Remmius Palaemon; but as soon as he put on the manly gown he attached himself to Cornutus, whose intimate friend he became, and of whose ideas he was the faithful exponent. The love of the pupil for his guide in philosophy is beautiful and touching; the verses in which it is expressed are the best in Persius: [8]
"Secreti loquimur: tibi nunc hortante CamenaExcutienda damus praecordia: quantaque nostraePars tua sit Cornute animae, tibi, dulcis amice,Ostendisse iuvat … Teneros tu suscipis annosSocratico Cornute sino. Tune fallere sollersApposita intortos extendit regula mores,Et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat,Artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum."
Moulded by the counsels of this good "doctor," Persius adopted philosophy with enthusiasm. In an age of licentiousness he preserved a maiden purity. Though possessing in a pre-eminent degree that gift of beauty which Juvenal declares to be fatal to innocence, Persius retained until his death a moral character without a stain. But he had a nobler example even than Cornutus by his side. He was tenderly loved by the great Thrasea, [9] whose righteous life and glorious death form perhaps the richest lesson that the whole imperial history affords. Thrasea was a Cato in justice, but more than a Cato in goodness, inasmuch as his lot was harder, and his spirit gentler and more human. Men like these clenched the theories of philosophy by that rare consistency which puts them into practice; and Persius, with all his literary faults, is the sole instance among Roman writers of a philosopher whose life was in accordance with the doctrines he professed.
Yet on opening his short book of satires, one is strongly tempted to ask, What made the boy write them? He neither knew nor cared to know anything of the world, and, we fear, cannot he credited with a philanthropic desire to reform it. The answer is given partly by himself, that he was full of petulant spleen, [10]—an honest confession,—partly is to be found in the custom then becoming general for those who wished to live well to write essays on serious subjects for private circulation among their friends, pointing out the dangers that lay around, and encouraging them to persevere in the right path. Of this kind are several of Seneca's treatises, and we have notices of many others in the biographers and historians. And though Persius may have intended to publish his book to the world, as is rendered probable by the prologue, this is not absolutely certain. At any rate it did not appear until after his death, when his friend Caesius Bassus [11] undertook to bring it out; so that we may fairly regard it as a collection of youthful reflections as to the advisability of publishing which the poet had not yet made up his mind, and perhaps had he lived would have suppressed.
Crabbed and loaded with obscure allusions as they are to a degree which makes most of them extremely unpleasant reading, they obtained a considerable and immediate reputation. Lucan is reported to have declared that his own works were bagatelles in comparison. [12] Quintilian says that he has gained much true glory in his single book; [13] Martial, that he is oftener quoted than Domitius Marsus in all his longAmazonis. [14] He is affirmed by his biographer to have written seldom and with difficulty. All his earlier attempts were, by the advice of Cornutus, destroyed. They consisted of aPraetexta, namedVescia, of one book of travels, and a few lines to the elder Arria. Among his predecessors his chief admiration was reserved for Horace, whom he imitates with exaggerated fidelity, recalling, but generally distorting, nearly a hundred well-known lines. The six poems we possess are not all, strictly speaking, satires. The first, with the prologue, may be so considered. It is devoted to an attack upon the literary style of the day. Persius sees that the decay of taste is intimately joined with the decay of morals, and the subtle connections he draws between the two constitute the chief merit of the effusion. Like Horace, but with even better reason, he bewails the antiquarian predilections of the majority of readers. Accius and Pacuvius still hold their ground, while Virgil and Horace are considered rough and lacking delicacy! [15] If this last be a true statement, it testifies to the depraved criticism of a luxurious age which alternates between meretricious softness and uncouth disproportion, just as in life the idle and effeminate, who shrink from manly labour, take pleasure in wild adventure and useless fatigue. In this satire, which is the most condensed of all, the literary defects of the author are at their height. His moral taste is not irreproachable; in his desire not to mince matters he offends needlessly against propriety. [16] The picture he draws of the fashionable rhetorician with languishing eyes and throat mellowed by a luscious gargle, warbling his drivelling ditties to an excited audience, is powerful and lifelike. From assemblies like these he did well to keep himself. We can imagine the effect upon their used-up emotions of a fresh and fiery spirit like that of Lucan, whose splendid presence and rich enthusiasm threw to the winds these tricks of the reciter's art.
The second, third, and fourth poems are declamatory exercises on the dogmas of stoicism, interspersed with dramatic scenes. The second has for its subject the proper use of prayer. The majority, says Persius, utterbuyingpetitions (prece emaci), and by no means as a rule innocent ones. Few dare to acknowledge their prayers (aperto vivere voto). After sixty lines of indignant remonstrance, he closes with a noble apostrophe, in which some of the thoughts rise almost to a Christian height—"O souls bent to earth, empty of divine things! What boots it to import these morals of ours into the temples, and to imagine what is good in God's sight from the analogies of this sinful flesh?… Why do we not offer Him something which Messala's blear-eyed progeny with all his wealth cannot offer, a spirit at one with justice and right, holy in its inmost depths, and a heart steeped in nobleness and virtue? Let me but bring these to the altar, and a sacrifice of meal will be accepted!" In the third and fourth Satires he complains of the universal ignorance of our true interests, the ridicule which the world heaps on philosophy, and the hap-hazard way in which men prepare for hazardous duties. The contemptuous disgust of the brawny centurion at the (to him) unmeaning problems which philosophy starts, is vigorously delineated; [17] but some of histableauxborder on the ridiculous from their stilted concision and over-drawn sharpness of outline. The undeniable virtue of the poet irritates as much as it attracts, from its pert precocity and obtrusiveness. What he means for pathos mostly chills instead of warming: "Ut nemo in se curat descendere, nemo!" [18] The poet who penned this line must surely have been tiresome company. Persius is at his best when he forgets for a moment the icy peak to which as a philosopher he has climbed, and suns himself in the valley of natural human affections—a reason why the fifth and sixth Satires, which are more personal than the rest, have always been considered greatly superior to them. The last in particular runs for more than half its length in a smooth and tolerably graceful stream of verse, which shows that Persius had much of the poetic gift, had his warped taste allowed him to give it play.
We conclude with one or two instances of his language to justify our strictures upon it. Horace had used the expressionnaso suspendis adunco, a legitimate and intelligible metaphor; Persius imitates it,excusso populum suspendere naso, [19] thereby rendering it frigid and weak. Horace had saidclament periisse pudorem Cuncti paene patres; [20] Persius caricatures him,exclametMelicertaperisseFrontemde rebus. [21] Horace had saidsi vis me flere, dolendum est Primum ipsi tibi; [22] Persius distorts this intoplorabit qui me voletincurvassequerela. [23] Other expressions more remotely modelled on him areiratum Eupoliden praegrandi cum sene palles, [24] and perhaps the very harsh use of the accusative,linguae quantum sitiat canis, [25] "as long a tongue as a thirsty dog hangs out."
Common sense is not to be looked for in the precepts of so immature a mind. Accordingly, we find the foolish maxim that a man not endowed with reason (i.e.stoicism) cannot do anything aright: [26] that every one should live up to his yearly income regardless of the risk arising from a bad season; [27] extravagant paradoxes reminding us of some of the less educated religious sects of the present day; with this difference, that in Rome it was the most educated who indulged in them. A good deal of the obscurity of these Satires was forced upon the poet by the necessity of avoiding everything that could be twisted into treason. We read in Suetonius that Nero is attacked in them; but so well is the battery masked that it is impossible to find it. Some have detected it in the prologue, others in the opening lines of the first Satire, others, relying on a story that Cornutus made him alter the line—
"Auriculas asini Mida rex habet,"
toquis non habet? have supposed that the satire lies there. But satire so veiled is worthless. The poems of Persius are valuable chiefly as showing a goodnaturelamid corrupt surroundings, and forming a striking comment on the change which had come over Latin letters.
Another Stoic philosopher, probably known to Persius, was C. MUSONIUS RUFUS, like him an Etruscan by birth, and a successful teacher of the young. Like almost all independent thinkers he was exiled, but recalled by Titus in his old age. The influence of such men must have extended far beyond their personal acquaintance; but they kept aloof from the court. This probably explains the conspicuous absence of any allusion to Seneca in Persius's writings. It is probable that his stern friends, Thrasea and Soranus disapproved of a courtier like Seneca professing stoicism, and would show him no countenance. He was not yet great enough to compel their notice, and at this time confined his influence to the circle of Nero, whose tutor he was, and to those young men, doubtless numerous enough, whom his position and seductive eloquence attracted by a double charm. Of these by far the most illustrious was his nephew Lucan.
M. ANNAEUS LUCANUS, the son of Annaeus Mela and Acilia, a Spanish lady of high birth, was born at Corduba, 39 A.D. His grandfather, therefore, was Seneca the elder, whose rhetorical bent he inherited. Legend tells of him, as of Hesiod, that in his infancy a swarm of bees settled upon the cradle in which he lay, giving an omen of his future poetic glory. Brought to Rome, and placed under the greatest masters, he soon surpassed all his young competitors in powers of declamation. He is said, while a boy, to have attracted large audiences, who listened with admiration to the ingenious eloquence that expressed itself with equal ease in Greek or Latin. His uncle soon introduced him to Nero; and he at once recognised in him a congenial spirit. They became friendly rivals. Lucan had the address to conceal his superior talent behind artful flattery, which Nero for a time believed sincere. But men, and especially young men of genius, cannot be always prudent. And if Lucan had not vaunted his success, Rome at least was sure to be less reticent. Nero saw that public opinion preferred the young Spaniard to himself. The mutual ill-feeling that had already long smouldered was kindled into flame by the result of a poetical contest, at which Lucan was declared victorious. [28] Nero, who was present, could not conceal his mortification. He left the hall in a rage, and forbade the poet to recite in public, or even to plead in his profession. Thus debarred from the successes which had so long flattered his self-love, Lucan gave his mind to worthier subjects. He composed, or at least finished, thePharsaliain the following year (65 B.C.); but with the haste and want of secrecy which characterised him, not only libelled the emperor, but joined the conspiracy against him, of which Piso was the head. This gave Nero the opportunity he desired. In vain the unhappy young man abased himself to humble flattery, to piteous entreaty, even to the incrimination of his own mother, a base proceeding which he hoped might gain him the indulgence of a matricide prince. All was useless. Nero was determined that he should die, and he accordingly had his veins opened, and expired amid applauding friends, while reciting those verses of his epic which described the death of a brave centurion. [29]
The genius and sentiments of Lucan were formed under two different influences. Among the adherents of Caesarism, none were so devoted as those provincials or freedmen who owed to it their wealth and position. Lucan, as Seneca's nephew, naturally attached himself from the first to the court party. He knew of the Republic only as a name, and, like Ovid, had no reason to be dissatisfied with his own time. Fame, wealth, honours, all were open to him. We can imagine the feverish delight with which a youth of three and twenty found himself recognised as prince of Roman poets. But Lucan had a spirit of truthfulness in him that pined after better things. At the lectures of Cornutus, in the company of Persius, he caught a glimpse of this higher life. And so behind the showy splendours of his rhetoric there lurks a sadness which tells of a mind not altogether content, a brooding over man's life and its apparent uselessness, which makes us believe that had he lived till middle life he would have struck a lofty vein of noble and earnest song. At other times, at the banquet or in the courts, he must have met young men who lived in an altogether different world from his, a world not of intoxicating pleasures but of gloomy indignation and sullen regret; to whom the Empire, grounded on usurpation and maintained by injustice, was the quintessence of all that was odious; to whom Nero was an upstart tyrant, and Brutus and Cassius the watchwords of justice and right. Sentiments like these could not but be remembered by one so impressionable. As soon as the sunshine of favour was withdrawn, Lucan's ardent mind turned with enthusiasm towards them. ThePharsalia, and especially the closing books of it, show us Lucan as the poet of liberty, the mourner for the lost Republic. The expression of feeling may be exaggerated, and little consistent with the flattery with which the poem opens; yet even this flattery, when carefully read, seems fuller of satire than of praise: [30]
"Quod si non aliam venturo fata NeroniInvenere viam, magnoque aeterna paranturRegna deis, caelumque suo servire TonantiNon nisi saevorum potuit post bella Gigantum;Iam nihil O superi querimur! Scelera ipsa nefasqueHac mercede placent!"
ThePharsalia, then, is the outcome of a prosperous rhetorical career on the one hand, and of a bitter disappointment which finds its solace in patriotic feeling on the other. It is difficult to see how such a poem could have failed to ruin him, even if he had not been doomed before. The loss of freedom is bewailed in words, which, if declamatory, are fatally courageous, and reflect perilous honour on him that used them: [31]
"Fugiens civile nefas redituraque nunquamLibertas ultra Tigrim Rhenumque [32] recessit,Ac toties nobis iugulo quaesita, vagatur,Germanum Scythicumque bonum, nec respicit ultraAusoniam."
It is true that his love for freedom, like that of Virgil, was based on an idea, not a reality. But it none the less required a great soul to utter these stirring sentiments before the very face of Nero, the "vultus instantis tyranni" of which Horace had dreamed.
On the fitness or unfitness of his theme for epic treatment no more need be added here than was said in the chapter on Virgil. It is, however, difficult to see what subject was open to the epicist after Virgil except to narrate the actual account of what Virgil had painted in ideal colours. The calm march of government under divine guidance from Aeneas to Augustus was one side of the picture. The fierce struggles and remorseless ambition of the Civil Wars is the other. Which is the more true? It would be fairer to ask, which is the more poetical? It was Lucan's misfortune that the ideal side was already occupied; he had no power to choose. Few who have read thePharsaliawould wish it unwritten. Some critics have denied that it is poetry at all. [33] Poetry of the first order it certainly is not, but those who will forgive artistic defects for energy of thought and strength of feeling must always retain a strong admiration for its noble imperfections.
We shall offer a few critical remarks on thePharsalia, referring our readers for an exhaustive catalogue of its defects to M. Nisard's second volume of thePoètes de la Décadence, and confining ourselves principally to such points as he has not dwelt upon. In the first place we observe a most unfortunate attitude towards the greatest problem that can exercise man's mind, his relation to the Superior Power. Lucan has neither the reverence of Virgil, the antagonism of Lucretius, nor the awful doubt of Greek tragedy. His attitude is one of pretentious rebellion and flippant accusation, except when Stoic doctrines raise him for a time above himself. He goes on every occasion quite out of his way to assail the popular ideas of providence. To Lucretius this is a necessity entailed upon him by his subject; to Lucan it is nothing but petulant rhetorical outburst. For instance, he calls PtolemyFortunae pudor crimenque deorum; [34] he arraigns the gods as caring more for vengeance than liberty; [35] he calls Septimius a disgrace to the gods, [36] the death of Pompey a tale at which heaven ought to blush; [37] he speaks of the expression on Pompey's venerable face as one of anger against the gods, [38] of the stone that marks his tomb as an indictment against heaven, [39] and hopes that it may soon be considered as false a witness of his death as Crete is to that of Jove; [40] he makes young Pompey, speaking of his father's death, say: "Whatever insult of fate has scattered his limbs to the winds, I forgive the gods that wrong, it is of what they have left that I complain;" [41] saddest of all, he gives us that tremendous epigram: [42]
"Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni."
We recognise here a noble but misguided spirit, fretting at the dispensations it cannot approve, because it cannot understand them. Bitterly disgusted at the failure of the Empire to fulfil all its promise, the writers of this period waste their strength in unavailing upbraidings of the gods. There is a retrograde movement of thought since the Augustan age. Virgil and Horace take substantially the same view of the Empire as that which the philosophy of history has taught us is the true one; they call it a necessity, and express that belief by deifying its representative. Contrast the spirit of Horace in the third Ode of the third book:
"Hac arte Pollux hac vagus HerculesEnisus arces attigit igneas;Quos inter Augustus recumbensPurpureo bibit ore nectar,"
with the fierce irony of Lucan: [43]
"Mortalis nulliSunt curata deo; cladis tamen huius habemusVindictam, quantam terris dare numina fas est.Bella pares superis faciunt civilia divos;Fulminibus manes radiisque ornabit et astris,Inque Deum templis iurabit Roma perumbras."
Here is the satire of Cicero's second Philippic reappearing, but with added bitterness. [44] Being thus without belief in a divine providence, how does Lucan govern the world? By blind fate, or blinder caprice!Fortuna, whom Juvenal ridicules, [45] is the true deity of Lucan. As such she is directly mentioned ninety-one times, besides countless others where her agency is implied. A useful belief for a man like Caesar who fought his way to empire; a most unfortunate conception for an epic poet to build a great poem on.
Lucan's scepticism has this further disadvantage that it precludes him from the use of the supernatural. To introduce the council of Olympus as Virgil does would in him be sheer mockery, and he is far too honest to attempt it. But as no great poet can dispense with some reference to the unseen, Lucan is driven to its lower and less poetic spheres. Ghosts, witches, dreams, visions, and portents, fill with their grisly catalogue a disproportionate space of the poem. The sibyl is introduced as in Virgil, but instead of giving her oracle with solemn dignity, she first refuses to speak at all, then under threats of cruel punishment she submits to the influence of the god, but in the midst of the prophetic impulse, Apollo, for some unexplained reason, compels her to stop short and conceal the gist of her message. [46] Even more unpleasant is the description of Sextus Pompeius's consultation of the witch Erichtho; [47] horror upon horror is piled up until the blood curdles at the sickening details, which even Southey'sThalabadoes not approach—and, after all, the feeling produced is not horror but disgust.
It is pleasant to turn from his irreligion to his philosophy. Here he appears as an uncertain but yet ardent disciple of the Porch. His uncertainty is shown by his inability to answer many grave doubts, as: Why is the future revealed by presages? [48] why are the oracles, once so vocal, now silent? [49] his enthusiasm by his portraiture of Cato, who was regarded by the Stoics as coming nearest of all men to their ideal Wise Man. Cato is to him a peg on which to hang the virtues and paradoxes of the school. But none the less is the sketch he gives a truly noble one: [50]
"Hi mores, haec duri immota CatonisSecta fuit, servare modum finemque tenere,Naturamque sequi, patriaeque impendere vitam,Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo."
Nothing in all Latin poetry reaches a higher pitch of ethical sublimity than Cato's reply to Labienus when entreated to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon: [51] "What would you have me ask? whether I ought to die rather than become a slave? whether life begins here or after death? whether evil can hurt the good man? whether it be enough to will what is good? whether virtue is made greater by success? All this I know already, and Hammon's voice will not make it more sure. We all depend on Heaven, and though oracles be silent we cannot act without the will of God. Deity needs no witness: once for all at our birth he has given us all needful knowledge, nor has he chosen barren sands accessible to few, or buried truth in a desert. Where earth, sea, sky, and virtue exist, there is God. Why seek we Heaven outside?" These, and similar other sentiments scattered throughout the poem, redeem it from the charge of wanton disbelief, and show a largeness of soul that only needed experience to make it truly great.
In discussing political and social questions Lucan shows considerable insight. He could not, any more than his contemporaries, understand that the old oligarchy was an anachronism; that the stubborn pride of its votaries needed the sword to break it. But the influence of individual genius is well pourtrayed by him, and he seizes character with a vigorous grasp. As a partisan of the senate, he felt bound to exalt Pompey; but if we judge by his own actions and his own words, not by the encomiums heaped on him by the poet, Lucan's Pompey comes very near the genuine historical man. So the Caesar sketched by Lucan, though meant to be a villain of the blackest dye—if we except some blood-thirsty speeches—stands out as a true giant of energy, neither meaner nor more unscrupulous than the Caesar of history. Domitius, Curio, and Lentulus, are vigorous though somewhat defective portraits. Cornelia is the only female character that calls for notice. She is drawn with breadth and sympathy, and bears all the traits of a great Roman matron. The degradation of the people is a constant theme of lamentation. It is wealth, luxury, and the effeminacy that comes with them that have softened the fibre of Rome, and made her willing to bear a master. This is indeed a common-place of the schools, but it is none the less a gloomy truth, and Lucan would have been no Roman had he omitted to complain of it. Equally characteristic is his contempt for the lower orders [52] and the influx of foreigners, of whom Rome had become the common sink. Juvenal, who evidently studied Lucan, drew from him the picture of the Tiber soiled by Orontes's foul stream, and of the Bithynian, Galatian, and Cappadocian knights. [53]
With regard to the artistic side of the poem the first and most obvious criticism is that it has no hero. But if this be a fault, it is one which it shares with theDivina CommediaandParadise Lost. As Satan has been called the hero of the latter poem, so Caesar, if not the hero, is the protagonist of thePharsalia. But Cato, Pompey, and the senate as a body, have all competed for this honour. The fact is this: that while the primitive epic is altogether personal, the poem whose interest is national or human cannot always find a single hero. It is after all a narrow criticism that confines the poet's art within such strict limits. A great poet can hardly avoid changing or at least modifying the existing canons of art, and Lucan should at least be judged with the same liberality as the old annalists who celebrated the wars of the Republic.
In description Lucan is excellent, both in action and still life, but more in brilliancy of detail than in broad effects. His defect lies in the tone of exaggeration which he has acquired in the schools, and thinks it right to employ in order not to fall below his subject. He has a true opinion of the importance of the Civil War, which he judges to be the final crisis of Rome's history, and its issues fraught with superhuman grandeur. The innate materialism of his mind, however, leads him to attachoutwardmagnitude to all that is connected with it. Thus Nero, the offspring of its throes, is entreated by the poet to be careful, when he leaves earth to take his place among the immortals, not to seat himself in a quarter where his weight may disturb the just equilibrium of the globe! [54] And, similarly, all the incidents of the Civil War exceed the parallel incidents of every other war in terror and vastness. Do portents presage a combat? they are such as defy all power to conceive. Pindus mounts upon Olympus, [55] and others of a more ordinary but still amazing character follow. [56] Does a naval conflict take place? the horrors of all the elements combine to make it the most hideous that the mind can imagine. Fire and water vie with each other in devising new modes of death, and where these are inactive, it is only because a land-battle with all its carnage is being enacted on the closely-wedged ships. [57] Has the army to march across a desert? the entire race of venomous serpents conspires to torture and if possible extirpate the host! [58] This is a very inartistic mode of heightening effect, and, indeed, borders closely on that pursued in the modernsensationnovel. It is beyond question the worst defect of thePharsalia, and the extraordinary ingenuity with which it is done only intensifies the misconduct of the poet.
Over and above this habitual exaggeration, Lucan has a decided love for the ghastly and revolting. The instances to which allusion has already been made, viz. the Thessalian sorceress and the dreadful casualties of the sea-fight, show it very strikingly, but the account of the serpents in the Libyan desert, if possible, still more. The episode is of great length, over three hundred lines, and contains much mythological knowledge, as well as an appalling power of description. It begins with a discussion of the question, Why is Africa so full of these plagues? After giving various hypotheses he adopts the one which assigns their origin to Medusa's hairs which fell from Perseus's hand as he sailed through the air. In order not to lure people to certain death by appearing in an inhabited country, he chose the trackless wastes of Africa over which to wing his flight. The mythological disquisition ended, one on natural history follows. The peculiar properties of the venom of each species are minutely catalogued, first in abstract terms, then in the concrete by a description of their effects on some of Cato's soldiers. The first bitten was the standard-bearer Aulus, by a dipsas, which afflicted him with intolerable thirst; next Sabellus by a seps, a minute creature whose bite was followed by an instantaneous corruption of the whole body; [59] then Nasidius by a prester which caused his form to swell to an unrecognisable size, and so on through the list of serpents, each episode closing with a brilliant epigram which clenches the effect. [60] Trivialities like these would spoil the greatest poem ever penned. It need not be said that they spoil thePharsalia.
Another subject on which Lucan rings the changes is death. The wordmorshas an unwholesome attraction to his ear. Death is to him the greatest gift of heaven; the only one it cannot take away. It is sad indeed to hear the young poet uttering sentiments like this: [61]
"Scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima cogi,"
and again [62]—
"Victurosque dei celant, ut vivere durent,Felix esse mori."
So in cursing Crastinus, Caesar's fierce centurion, he wishes him not to die, but to retain sensibility after death, in other words to be immortal. The sentiment occurs, not once but a hundred times, that of all pleasures death is the greatest. He even plays upon the word, using it in senses which it will hardly bear.Libycae mortesare serpents;Accessit morti Libye, "Libya added to the mortality of the army;"nulla cruentae tantum mortis habet; "no other reptile causes a death so bloody." To one so unhealthily familiar with the idea, the reality, when it came, seems to have brought unusual terrors.
The learning of Lucan has been much extolled, and in some respects not without reason. It is complex, varied, and allusive, but its extreme obscurity makes us suspect even when we cannot prove, inaccuracy. He is proud of his manifold acquirements. Nothing pleases him more than to have an excuse for showing his information on some abstruse subject. The causes of the climate of Africa, the meteorological conditions of Spain, the theory of the globes, the geography of the southern part of our hemisphere, the wonders of Egypt and the views about the source of the Nile, are descanted on with diffuse erudition. But it is evidently impossible that so mere a youth could have had a deep knowledge of so many subjects, especially as his literary productiveness had already been very great. He had written anIliaconaccording to Statius, [63] a book ofSaturnalia, ten books ofSilvae, aCatachthonion, an unfinished tragedy calledMedea, fourteenSalticae fabulae(no doubt out of compliment to Nero), a prose essay against Octavius Sagitta, another in favour of him, a poemDe Incendio Urbis, in which Nero was satirised, akatakausmos(which is perhaps different from the latter, but may be only the same under another title), a series of letters from Campania, and an address to his wife, Polla Argentaria.
A peculiar, and to us offensive, exhibition of learning consists in those tirades on common-place themes, embodying all the stock current of instances, of which the earliest example is found in the catalogue of the dead in Virgil'sCulex. Lucan, as may be supposed, delights in dressing up these well-worn themes, painting them with novel splendour if they are descriptive, thundering in fiery epigrams, if they are moral. Of the former class are two of the most effective scenes in the poem. The first is Caesar's night voyage in a skiff over a stormy sea. The fisherman to whom he applies is unwilling to set sail. The night, he says, shows many threatening signs, and, by way of deterring Caesar, he enumerates the entire list of prognostics to be found in Aratus, Hesiod, and Virgil, with great piquancy of touch, but without the least reference to the propriety of the situation. [64] Nothing can be more amusing, or more out of place, than the old man's sudden erudition. The second is the death of Scaeva, who for a time defended Caesar's camp single-handed. The poet first remarks that valour in a bad cause is a crime, and then depicts that of Scaeva in such colossal proportions as almost pass the limits of burlesque. After describing him as pierced with so many spears that they served himas armour, he adds: [65]