As the Italian talent for impromptu buffoonery might perhaps have in time created a genuine native comedy, so the powerful and earnest rhetoric in which the deeper feelings of the Roman always found expression, might have assumed the tragic garb and woven itself into happy and original alliance with the dramatic instinct. But what actually happened was different. Tragedy, as well as comedy, took its subjects from the Greek; but though comedy had the advantage of a far greater popularity, and also of a partially native origin, there is reason to believe that tragedy came the nearer of the two to a really national form of art. In the fullest and noblest sense of the word Rome had indeed no national drama; for a drama, to be truly representative, must be based on the deepest chords of patriotic and even religious feeling. And that golden age of a people's history when Patriotism and Religion are still wedded together, seeming but varying reflections from the mirror of national life, is the most favourable of all to the birth of dramatic art. In Greece this was pre- eminently the case. The spirit of patriotism is ever present—rarely, indeed, suggesting, as in thePersaeof Aeschylus, the subject of the play, but always supplying a rich background of common sympathy where poet and people can feel and rejoice together. Still more, if possible, is the religious spirit present, as the animating influence which gives the drama its interest and its vitality. The great moral and spiritual questions which occupy the soul of man, in each play or series of plays, try to work out their own solution by the natural human action of the characters, and by those reflections on the part of the chorus to which the action naturally gives rise. But with the transplanted tragedy of the Romans this could no longer be the case. The religious ideas which spoke straight to the Athenian's heart, spoke only to the acquired learning of the Roman. The idea of man, himself free, struggling with a destiny which he could not comprehend or avert, is foreign to the Roman conception of life. As Schlegel has observed, a truly Roman tragic drama would have found an altogether different basis. The binding force of "Religio," constraining the individual to surrender himself for the good of the Supreme State, and realising itself in acts of patriotic self-devotion; such would have been the shape we should have expected Roman tragedy to take, and if it failed to do this, we should not expect it in other respects to be a great success.
The strong appreciation which, notwithstanding its initial defects, tragedy did meet with and retain for many generations, is a striking testimony to the worth and talent of the men who introduced it. Their position as elevators of the popular taste was not the less real because they themselves were men of provincial birth, and only partially polished minds. Both in the selection of their models and in the freedom of treating them they showed that good sense which was characteristic of the nation. As a rule, instead of trying to familiarise the people with Aeschylus and Sophocles, poets who are essentially Athenian, they generally chose the freethinking and cosmopolitan Euripides, who was easily intelligible, and whose beauties did not seem so entirely to defy imitation. What Euripides was to Greek tragedy Menander was to comedy. Both denationalised their respective fields of poetry; both thereby acquired a vast ascendancy over the Roman mind, ready as it was to be taught, and only awaiting a teacher whose views it could understand. Now although Livius actually introduced, and Naevius continued, the translation of tragedies from the Greek, it was Ennius who first rendered them with a definitely conceived purpose. This purpose was—to raise the aesthetic sense of his countrymen, to set before them examples of heroic virtue, and, above all, to enlighten their minds with what he considered rational views on subjects of morals and and religion; though, after all, the fatal facility with which the sceptical theories of Euripides were disseminated and embraced was hardly atoned for by the gain to culture which undoubtedly resulted from the tragedian's labours. Mommsen says with truth that the stage is in its essence anti-Roman, just as culture itself is anti-Roman; the one because it consumes time and interest on things that interfere with the serious business of life, the other because it creates degrees of intellectual position where the constitution intended that all should be alike. But amid the vast change that came over the Roman habits of thought, which men like Cato saw, resisted, and bewailed, it mattered little whether old traditions were violated. The stage at once became a powerful engine of popular education; and it rested with the poet to decide whether it should elevate or degrade. Political interests, it is true, were carefully guarded. The police system, with which senatorial narrowness environed the stage as it did all corporations or voluntary societies, rigidly repressed and made penal anything like liberty of speech. But it was none the less possible to inculcate the stern Roman virtues beneath the mask of an Ajax or Ulysses; and Sellar has brought out with singular clearness in his work on the poets of the Republic the national features which are stamped on this early tragedy, making it in spite of its imperfections worthy of the great Republic.
The oratorical mould in which all Latin poetry except satire and comedy is to a great extent cast, is visible from the beginning in tragedy. Weighty sentences follow one another until the moral effect is reached, or the description fully turned. The rhythm seems to have been much more often trochaic [1] than iambic, at least than trimeter iambic, for the tetrameter is more frequently employed. This is not to be wondered at, since even in comedy, where such high-flown cadences are out of place, the people liked to hear them, measuring excellence by stateliness of march rather than propriety of diction.
The popular demand for grandiloquence ENNIUS (209-169 B.C.) was well able to satisfy, for he had a decided leaning to it himself, and great skill in attaining it. Moreover he had a vivid power of reproducing the original emotion of another. That reflected fervour which draws passion, not direct from nature, but from nature as mirrored in a great work of art, stamps Ennius as a genuine Roman in talent, while it removes him from the list of creative poets. The chief sphere of his influence was epic poetry, but in tragedy he founded a school which only closed when the drama itself was silenced by the bloody massacres of the civil wars. Born at Rudiae in Calabria, and so half Greek, half Oscan, he served while a young man in Sardinia, where he rose to the rank of centurion, and was soon after brought to Rome by Cato. There is something striking in the stern reactionist thus introducing to Rome the man who was more instrumental than any other in overthrowing his hopes and fixing the new culture beyond possibility of recall. When settled at Rome, Ennius gained a living by teaching Greek, and translating plays for the stage. He also wrote miscellaneous poems, and among them a panegyric on Scipio which brought him into favourable notice. His fame must have been established before B.C. 189, for in that year Fulvius Nobilior took him into Aetolia to celebrate his deeds a proceeding which Cato strongly but ineffectually impugned. In 184 B.C., the Roman citizenship was conferred on him. He alluded to this with pride in his annals—
"Nos sumus Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini."
During the last twenty years of his life his friendship with Scipio and Fulvius must have ensured him respect and sympathy as well as freedom from distasteful labour. But he was never in affluent circumstances; [2] partly through his own fault, for he was a free liver, as Horace tells us [3]—
"Ennius ipse pater nunquam nisi potus ad armaProsiluit dicenda;"
and he himself alludes to his lazy habits, saying that he never wrote poetry unless confined to the house by gout. [4] He died in the seventieth year of his age and was buried in the tomb of the Scipios, where a marble statue of him stood between those of P. and L. Scipio.
Ennius is not merely "the Father of Roman Poetry;" he held also as a man a peculiar and influential position, which we cannot appreciate, without connecting him with his patron and friend, the great Scipio Africanus. Nearly of an age, united by common tastes and a common spiritual enthusiasm, these two distinguished men wrought together for a common object. Their familiarity with Greek culture and knowledge of Greek religious ideas seem to have filled both with a high sense of their position as teachers of their countrymen. Scipio drew around him a circle of aristocratic liberals. Ennius appealed rather to the people at large. The policy of the elder Scipio was continued by his adopted son with far less breadth of view, but with more refined taste, and more concentrated effort. Where Africanus would have sought his inspiration from the poetry, Aemilianus went rather to the philosophy, of Greece; he was altogether of a colder temperament, just as his literary friends Terence and Lucilius were by nature less ardent than Ennius. Between them they laid the foundation of that broader conception of civilisation which is expressed by the significant wordhumanitas, and which had borne its intellectual fruit when the whole people raised a shout of applause at the line in theHautontimorumenos—
"Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto."
This conception, trite as it seems to us, was by no means so when it was thus proclaimed: if philosophers had understood it (apas anthropos anthropo oikeion kai philon.—Ar. Eth. N.lib. 9), they had never made it a principle of action; and the teachers who had caused even the uneducated Roman populace to recognise its speculative truth must be allowed to have achieved something great. Some historians of Rome have seen in this attitude a decline from old Roman exclusiveness, almost a treasonable conspiracy against the Roman idea of the State. Hence they have regarded Ennius with something of that disfavour which Cato in his patriotic zeal evinced for him. The justification of the poet's course, if it is to be sustained at all, must be sought in the necessity for an expansion of national views to meet the exigences of an increasing foreign empire. External coercion might for a time suffice to keep divergent nationalities together; but the only durable power would be one founded on sympathy with the subject peoples on the broad ground of a common humanity. And for this the poet and his patron bore witness with a consistent and solemn, though often irreverent, earnestness. Ennius had early in life shown a tendency towards the mystic speculations of Pythagoreanism: traces of it are seen in his assertion that the soul of Homer had migrated into him through a peacock, [5] and that he had three souls because he knew three languages; [6] while the satirical notice of Horace seems to imply that he, like Scipio, regarded himself as specially favoured of heaven—
"Leviter curare videturQuo promissa caadant et somnia Pythagorea." [7]
At the same time he studied the Epicurean system, and in particular, the doctrines of Euhemerus, whose work on the origin of the gods he translated. His denial of Divine Providence is well known [8]—
"Ego deum genus esse dixi et dicam semper caelitum:Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus.Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest."
Of these two inconsistent points of view, the second, as we should expect in a nature so little mystical, finally prevailed, so that Ennius may well be considered the preacher of scepticism or the bold impugner of popular superstition according to the point of view which we assume. In addition to these philosophic aspirations he had a strong desire to reach artistic perfection, and to be the herald of a new literary epoch. Conscious of his success and proud of the power he wielded over the minds of the people, he alludes more than once to his performances in a self-congratulatory strain—
"Enni poeta salve, qui mortalibusVersus propinas flammeos medullitus."
"Hail! poet Ennius, who pledgest mankind in verses fiery to the heart's core." And with even higher confidence in his epitaph—
"Aspicite, o cives, senis Enni imagini' formam:Hic vostrum panxit maxima faeta patrum.Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletuFaxit. Cur? volito vivu' per ora virum."
We shall illustrate the above remarks by quoting one or two passages from the fragments of his tragedies, which, it is true, are now easily accessible to the general reader, but nevertheless will not be out of place in a manual like the present, which is intended to lead the student to study historically for himself the progress of the literature. The first is a dialogue between Hecuba and Cassandra, from theAlexander. Cassandra feels the prophetic impulse coming over her, the symptoms of which her mother notices with alarm:
"HEC."Sed quid oculis rabere visa es derepente ar dentibus?Ubi tua illa paulo ante sapiens virginali' modestia?
CAS.Mater optumarum multo mulier melior mulierum,Missa sum superstitiosis ariolationibus.Namque Apollo fatis fandis dementem invitam ciret:Virgines aequales vereor, patris mei meum factmn pudet,Optimi viri. Mea mater, tui me miseret, me piget:Optumam progeniem Priamo peperisti extra me: hoc dolet:Men obesse, illos prodesse, me obstare, illos obsequi!"
She then sees the vision—
* * * * *"Adest adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio!Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite!Iamque mari magno classis citaTexitur: exitium examen rapit:Advenit, et fera velivolantibusNavibus complebit manus litora."
This is noble poetry. Another passage from theTelamois as follows:—
"Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.De his divitiis sibi deducant drachumam, reddant cetera."
Here he shows, like so many of his countrymen, a strong vein of satire. The metre is trochaic, scanned, like these of Plautus and Terence, by accent as much as by quantity, and noticeable for the careless way in which whole syllables are slurred over. In the former fragment the fourth line must be scanned—
___ ___ ____ "Vírgi | nés ae | qúales | vércor | pátris mei | meúm fac | túm pudet."
Horace mentions the ponderous weight of his iambic lines, which were loaded with spondees. The anapaestic measure, of which he was a master, has an impetuous swing that carries the reader away, and, while producing a different effect from its Greek equivalent, in capacity is not much inferior to it. Many of his phrases and metrical terms are imitated in Virgil, though such imitation is much more frequently drawn from his hexameter poems. He wrote onePraetextaand several comedies, but these latter were uncongenial to his temperament, and by no means successful. He had little or no humour. His poetical genius was earnest rather than powerful; probably he had less than either Naevius or Plautus; but his higher cultivation, his serious view of his art, and the consistent pursuit of a well-conceived aim, placed him on a dramatic level nearly as high as Plautus in the opinion of the Ciceronian critics. His literary influence will be more fully discussed under his epic poems.
His sister's son PACUVIUS (220-132 B.C.), next claims our attention. This celebrated tragedian, on whom the complimentary epithetdoctus[9] was by general consent bestowed, was brought up at Brundisium, where amid congenial influences he practised with success the art of a painter. At what time he came to Rome is not known, but he gained great renown there by his paintings before attaining the position of chief tragic poet. Pliny tells us of a picture in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium, which was considered as only second to that of Fabius Pictor. With the enthusiasm of the poet he united that genial breadth of temper which among artists seems peculiarly the painter's gift. Happy in his twofold career (for he continued to paint as well as to write), [10] free from jealousy as from want, successful as a poet and as a man, he lived at Rome until his eightieth year, the friend of Laelius and of his younger rival Accius, and retired soon after to his native city where he received the visits of younger writers, and died at the great age of eighty-eight (132 B.C.). His long career was not productive of a large number of works. We know of but twelve tragedies and onepraetextaby him. The latter was calledPaullus, and had for its hero the conqueror of Perseus, King of Macedonia, but no fragments of it survive. The great authority which the name of Pacuvius possessed was due to the care with which he elaborated his writings. Thirteen plays and a fewsaturaein a period of at least thirty years [11] seems but a small result; but the admirable way in which he sustained the dramatic situations made every one of them popular with the nation. There were two, however, that stood decidedly above the rest— theAntiopaand theDulorestes. Of the latter Cicero tells the anecdote that the people rose as one man to applaud the noble passage in which Pylades and Orestes contend for the honour of dying for one another. [12] Of the former he speaks in the highest terms, though it is possible that in his admiration for the severe and truly Roman sentiments it inculcated, he may have been indulgent to its artistic defects. The few lines that have come down to us resemble that ridiculed by Persius [13] for its turgid mannerisms. A good instance of the excellences which a Roman critic looked for in tragedy is afforded by the praise Cicero bestows on theNiptra, a play imitated from Sophocles. The passage is so interesting that it may well be added here. [14] Cicero's words are—
"The wise Greek (Ulysses) when severely wounded does not lament overmuch; he curbs the expression of his pain. 'Forward gently,' he says, 'and with quiet effort, lest by jolting me you increase the pangs of my wound.' Now, in this Pacuvius excels Sophocles, who makes Ulysses give way to cries and tears. And yet those who are carrying him, out of consideration for the majesty of him they bear, do not hesitate to rebuke even this moderate lamentation. 'We see indeed, Ulysses, that you have suffered grievous hurt, but methinks for one who has passed his life in arms, you show too soft a spirit.' The skilful poet knows that habit is a good teacher how to bear pain. And so Ulysses, though in extreme agony, still keeps command over his words. 'Stop! hold, I say! the ulcer has got the better of me. Strip off my clothes. O, woe is me! I am in torture.' Here he begins to give way; but in a moment he stops—'Cover me; depart, now leave me in peace; for by handling me and jolting me you increase the cruel pain.' Do you observe how it is not the cessation of bodily anguish, but the necessity of chastening the expression of it that keeps him silent? And so, at the close of the play, while himself dying, he has so far conquered himself that he can reprove others in words like these,—'It is meet to complain of adverse fortune, but not to bewail it. That is the part of a man; but weeping is granted to the nature of woman.' The softer feelings here obey the other part of the mind, as a dutiful soldier obeys a stern commander."
We can go with Cicero in admiring the manly spirit that breathes through these lines, and feel that the poet was justified in so far leaving the original as without prejudice to the dramatic effect to inculcate a higher moral lesson.
As to the treatment of his models we may say, generally, that Pacuvius used more freedom than Ennius. He was more of an adapter and less of a translator. Nevertheless this dependence on his own resources for description appears to have cramped rather than freed his style. The early Latin writers seem to move more easily when rendering the familiar Greek originals than when essaying to steer their own path. He also committed the mistake of generally imitating Sophocles, the untransplantable child of Athens, instead of Euripides, to whom he could do better justice, as the success of his Euripidean plays prove. [15] His style, though emphatic, was wanting in naturalness. The author of the treatise to Herennius contrasts thesententiaeof Ennius with theperiodiof Pacuvius; and Lucilius speaks of a word "contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio."
Quintilian [16] notices the inelegance of his compounds, and makes the just remark that the old writers attempted to reproduce Greek analogies without sufficient regard for the capacities of their language; thus while the wordkyrtauchaenis elegant and natural, its Latin equivalentincurvicervicus, borders on the ludicrous. [17] Some of his fragments show the same sceptical tendencies that are prominent in Ennius. One of them contains a comprehensive survey of the different philosophic systems, and decides in favour of blind chance (temeritas) as the ruling power, on the ground of sudden changes in fortune like that of Orestes, who in one day was metamorphosed from a king into a beggar. Pacuvius either improved his later style, or else confined its worst points to his tragedies, for nothing can be more classical and elegant than his epitaph, which is couched in diction as refined as that of Terence—
Adulescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum vocatUt sese aspicias, delude quod scriptumst legas.Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sitaOssa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.
When Pacuvius retired to Brundisium he left a worthy successor in L. ATTIUS or ACCIUS (170-94 B.C.), whom, as before observed, he had assisted with his advice, showing kindly interest as a fellow-workman rather than jealousy as a rival. Accius's parents belonged to the class oflibertini; they settled at Pisaurum. The poet began his dramatic career at the age of thirty with theAtreus, and continued to exhibit until his death. He forms the link between the ante-classical and Ciceronian epochs; for Cicero when a boy [18] conversed with him, and retained always a strong admiration for his works. [19] He had a high notion of the dignity of his calling. There is a story told of his refusing to rise to Caesar when he entered the Collegium Poetarum; but if by this Julius be meant, the chronology makes the occurrence impossible. Besides thirty-seven tragedies, he wroteAnnales(apparently mythological histories in hexameters, something of the character of Ovid'sFasti),Didascalia, or a history of Greek and Roman poetry, and other kindred works, as well as twoPraetextae.
The fragments that have reached us are tolerably numerous, and enable us to select certain prominent characteristics of his style. The loftiness for which he is celebrated seems to be of expression rather than of thought,e.g.
"Quid? quod videbis laetum in Parnasi iugoBicipi inter pinos tripudiantem in circulisConcutere thyrsos ludo, taedis fulgere;"
but sometimes a noble sentiment is simply and emphatically expressed—
"Non genus virum ornat, generi vir fortis loco." [20]
He was a careful chooser of words,e.g.
"Tupertinaciamesse, Antiloche, hanc praedicas,Egopervicaciamaio et ea me uti volo:Haec fortis sequitur, illam indocti possident….Nam pervicacem dici me esse et vincerePerfacile patior, pertinaciam nil moror." [21]
These distinctions, obvious as they are to us, were by no means so to the early Romans. Close resemblance in sound seemed irresistibly to imply some connexion more than that of mere accident; and that turning over the properties of words, which in philosophy as well as poetry seems to us to have something childish in it, had its legitimate place in the development of each language. Accius paints action with vigour. We have the following spirited fragment—
"Constituit, cognovit, sensit, conlocat sese in locumCelsum: hinc manibus rapere raudus saxeum et grave."
and again—
"Heus vigiles properate, expergite,Pectora tarda, sopore exsurgite!"
He was conspicuous among tragedians for a power of reasoned eloquence of the forensic type; and delighted in making two rival pleaders state their case, some of his most successful scenes being of this kind. His opinions resembled those of Ennius, but were less irreverent. He acknowledges the interest of the gods in human things—
"Nam non facile sine deum opera humana propria [22] sunt bona,"
and in a fragment of theBrutushe enforces the doctrine that dreams are often heaven-sent warnings, full of meaning to those that will understand them. Nevertheless his contempt for augury was equal to that of his master—
"Nil credo auguribus qui auris verbis divitantAlienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos."
The often-quoted maxim of the tyrantoderint dum metuantis first found in him. Altogether, he was a powerful writer, with less strength perhaps, but more polish than Ennius; and while manipulating words with greater dexterity, losing but little of that stern grandeur which comes from the plain utterance of conviction. His general characteristics place him altogether within the archaic age. In point of time little anterior to Cicero, in style he is almost a contemporary of Ennius. The very slight increase of linguistic polish during the century and a quarter which comprises the tragic art of Rome, is somewhat remarkable. The old- fashioned ornaments of assonance, alliteration, and plays upon words are as frequent in Accius as in Livius, or rather more so; and the number of archaic forms is scarcely smaller. We see words likenoxitudo, honestitudo, sanctescat, topper, domuitio, redhostire, and wonder that they could have only preceded by a few years the Latin of Cicero, and were contemporary with that of Gracchus. Accius, like so many Romans, was a grammarian; he introduced certain changes into the received spelling,e.g.he wroteaa, ee, etc. when the vowel was long, reserving the singlea, e, etc. for the short quantity. It was in acknowledgment of the interest taken by him in these studies that Varro dedicated to him one of his many philological treatises. The date of his death is not quite certain; but it may be safely assigned to about 90 B.C. With him died tragic writing at Rome: scarcely a generation after we find tragedy has donned the form of the closet drama, written only for recitation. Cicero and his brother assiduously cultivated this rhetorical art. When writing failed, however, acting rose, and the admirable performances of Aesopus and Roscius did much to keep alive an interest in the old works. Varius and Pollio seem for a moment to have revived the tragic muse under Augustus, but their works had probably nothing in common with this early but interesting drama; and in Imperial times tragedy became more and more confused with rhetoric, until delineation of character ceased to be an object, and declamatory force or fine point was the chief end pursued.
We must now retrace our steps, and consider Ennius in the capacity of epic poet. It was in this light that he acquired his chief contemporary renown, that he accredits himself to posterity in his epitaph, and that he obtained that commanding influence over subsequent poetic literature, which, stereotyped in Virgil, was never afterwards lost. The merit of discerning the most favourable subject for a Roman epic belongs to Naevius; in this department Ennius did but borrow of him; it was in the form in which he cast his poem that his originality was shown. The legendary history of Rome, her supposed connection with the issues of the Trojan war, and her subsequent military achievements in the sphere of history, such was the groundwork both of Naevius's and Ennius's conception. And, however unsuitable such a consecutive narrative might be for a heroic poem, there was something in it that corresponded with the national sentiment, and in a changed form it re-appears in theAeneid. Naevius had been contented with a single episode in Rome's career of conquest. Ennius, with more ambition but less judgment, aspired to grasp in an epic unity the entire history of the nation; and to achieve this, no better method occurred to him than the time-honoured and prosaic system of annals. The difficulty of recasting these in a poetic mould might well have staggered a more accomplished master of song; but to the enthusiastic and laborious bard the task did not seem too great. He lived to complete his work in accordance with the plan he had proposed, and though, perhaps, themanus ultimamay have been wanting, there is nothing to show that he was dissatisfied with his results. We may perhaps smile at the vanity which aspired to the title of Roman Homer, and still more at the partiality which so willingly granted it; nevertheless, with all deductions on the score of rude conception and ruder execution, the fragments that remain incline us to concur with Scaliger in wishing that fate had spared us the whole, and denied us Silius, Statius, Lucan, "et tous ces garçons là." The whole was divided into eighteen books, of which the first contained the introduction, the earliest traditions, the foundation of Rome, and the deification of Romulus; the second and third contained the regal period; the fourth began the history of the Republic and carried it down to the burning of the city by the Gauls; the fifth comprised the Samnite wars; the sixth, that with Pyrrhus; the seventh, the first Punic war; the eighth and ninth, the war with Hannibal; the tenth and eleventh, that with Macedonia; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth, that with Syria; the fifteenth, the campaign of Fulvius Nobilior in Aetolia, and ended apparently with the death of the great Scipio. The work then received a new preface, and continued the history down to the poet's last years, containing many personal notices, until it was finally brought to a close in 172 B.C. after having occupied its author eighteen years. [1] "The interest of this last book," says Conington, [2] "must have centred, at least to us, in the discourse about himself, in which the old bard seems to have indulged in closing this his greatest poem. Even now we may read with sympathy his boastful allusion to his late enrolment among the citizens of the conquering city; we may be touched by the mention he appears to have made of the year of his age in which he wrote, bordering closely on the appointed term of man's life; and we may applaud as the curtain falls on his grand comparison of himself to a victorious racer laden with Olympian honours, and now at last consigned to repose:—
'Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremoVicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectus quiescit.'"
He was thus nearly fifty when he began to write, a fact which strikes us as remarkable. We are accustomed to associate the poetic gift with a highly-strung nervous system, and unusual bodily conditions not favourable to long life, as well as with a precocious special development which proclaims unmistakably in the boy the future greatness of the man. None of these conditions seem to have been present in the early Roman school. Livius was a quiet schoolmaster, Naevius a vigorous soldier, Ennius a self-indulgent but hard-workinglitterateur, Plautus an active man, whose animal spirits not even the flour-mill could quench, Pacuvius a steady but genial student, Accius and Terence finished men of the world; and all, except Terence (and he probably met his early death through an accident), enjoyed the full term of man's existence. Moreover, few of them began life by being poets, and some, as Ennius and Plautus, did not apply themselves to poetry until they had reached mature years. With these facts the character of their genius as a rule agrees. We should not expect in such men the fine inspiration of a Sophocles, a Goethe, or a Shelley, and we do not find it. The poetic frenzy, so magnificently described in thePhaedrusof Plato, which caused the Greeks to regard the poet in his moments of creation as actually possessed by the god, is nowhere manifest among the early Romans; and if it claims to appear in their later literature, we find it after all a spurious substitute, differing widely from the emotion of creative genius. It is not mere accident that Rome is as little productive in the sphere of speculative philosophy as she is in that of the highest poetry, for the two endowments are closely allied. The problem each sets before itself is the same; to arrest and embody in an intelligible shape the idea that shall give light to the dark questionings of the intellect, or the vague yearnings of the heart. To Rome it has not been given to open a new sphere of truth, or to add one more to the mystic voices of passion; her epic mission is the humbler but still not ignoble one of bracing the mind by her masculine good sense, and linking together golden chains of memory by the majestic music of her verse.
There were two important elements introduced into the mechanism of the story by Ennius; the Olympic Pantheon, and the presentation of the Roman worthies as heroes analogous to those of Greece. The latter innovation was only possible within narrow limits, for the idea formed by the Romans even of their greatest heroes, as Romulus, Numa, or Camillus was different in kind from that of the Greek hero-worshipper. Thus we see that Virgil abstains from applying the name to any of his Italian characters, confining it to such as are mentioned in Homer, or are connected with the Homeric legends. Still we find at a later period Julius Caesar publicly professing his descent on both sides from a superhuman ancestor, for such he practically admits Ancus Martius to be. [3] And in the epic of Silius Italicus the Roman generals occupy quite the conventional position of the hero-leader.
The admission of the Olympic deities as a kind of divine machinery for diversifying and explaining the narrative was much more pregnant with consequences. Outwardly, it is simply adopted from Homer, but the spirit which animates it is altogether different. The Greek, in spite of his intellectual scepticism, retained an aesthetic and emotional belief in his national gods, and at any rate it was natural that he should celebrate them in his verse; but the Roman poet claimed to utilize the Greek Pantheon for artistic purposes alone. He professed no belief in the beings he depicted. They were merely an ornamental, supernatural element, either introduced at will, as in Horace, or regulated according to traditional conceptions, as in Ennius and Virgil. Apollo, Minerva, and Bacchus, were probably no more to him than they are to us. They were names, consecrated by genius and convenient for art, under which could be combined the maximum of beautiful associations with the minimum of trouble to the poet. The custom, which perpetuated itself in Latin poetry, revived again with the rise of Italian art; and under a modified form its influence may be seen in the grand conceptions of Milton. The true nature of romantic poetry is, however, alien to any such mechanical employment of the supernatural, and its comparative infrequency in the highest English and German poetry, stamps these as products of the modern spirit. Had the Romans left Olympus to itself, and occupied themselves only with the rhetorical delineation of human action and feeling, they would have chosen a less ambitious but certainly more original path. Lucretius struggles against the prevailing tendency; but so unable were the Romans to invest their finer fancies with any other shape, that even while he is blaming the custom he unawares falls into it.
It was in the metrical treatment that Ennius's greatest achievement lay. For the first time in any consecutive way he introduced the hexameter into Latin poetry. It is true that Plautus had composed his epitaph in that measure, if we may trust Varro's judgment on its genuineness. [4] And the Marcian oracles, though their rhythm has been disputed, were in all probability written in the same. [5] But these last were translations, and were in no sense an epoch in literature. Ennius compelled the intractable forms of Latin speech to accommodate themselves to the dactylic rhythm. Difficulties of two kinds met him, those of accent and those of quantity. The former had been partially surmounted by the comic writers, and it only required a careful extension of their method to render the deviations from the familiar emphasis of daily life harmonious and acceptable. In respect of quantity the problem was more complex. Plautus had disregarded it in numerous instances (e.g. dari), and in others had been content to recognize the natural length or shortness of a vowel (e.g. senex ipse), neglecting the subordinate laws of position, &c. This custom had, as far as we know, guided Ennius himself in his dramatic poems; but for the epos he adopted a different principle. Taking advantage of the tendency to shorten final vowels, he fixed almost every doubtful case as short,e.g. musa, patre, dare, omnibus, amaveris, pater, only leaving the long syllable where the metre required it, ascondiderit. By this means he gave a dactylic direction to Latin prosody which it afterwards, though only slightly, extended. At the same time he observed carefully the Greek laws of position and the doubled letters. He admitted hiatus, but not to any great extent, and chiefly in the caesura. The lengthening of a short vowel by the ictus occurs occasionally in his verses, but almost always in words where it was originally by nature long. In such words the lengthening may take place even in the thesis of the foot, as in—
"non enim rumores ponebat ante salutem."
Elision played a prominent part in his system. This was natural, since with all his changes many long or intractable terminations remained,e.g. enim, quidem, omnium, &c. These were generally elided, sometimes shortened as in the line quoted, sometimes lengthened as in the comedians,—
"inimicitiam agitantes."
Very rarely does he improperly shorten a naturally long vowel,e.g. contra(twice); terminations inohe invariably retains, exceptegoandmodo. The finalsis generally elided before a consonant when in the thesis of the foot, but often remains in the arsis (e.g. plenu' fidei, Isque dies). The two chief blots on his versification are his barbarous examples of tmesis,—saxo cere comminuit brum: Massili portant invenes ad litora tanas(= cerebrum, Massilitanas), and his quaint apocope,cael, gau, do(caelum, gaudium, domum), probably reflected from the Homericdo, kri, in which Lucilius imitates him,e.g. nol.(fornolueris). The caesura, which forms the chief feature in each verse, was not understood by Ennius. Several of his lines have no caesura at all; and that delicate alternation of its many varieties which charms us in Homer and Virgil, is foreign to the conception, as it would have been unattainable by the efforts, of the rugged epic bard. Nevertheless his labour achieved a great result. He stamped for centuries the character and almost the details of subsequent versification. [6] If we study the effect of his passages, we shall observe far greater power in single lines or sentences than in a continuous description. The solemn grandeur of some of his verses is unsurpassable, and, enshrined in the Aeneid, their dignity seems enhanced by their surroundings. Such are—
"Tuque pater Tiberine tuo cum ilumino sancto."
"Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem."
"Quae neque Dardaniis campis potuere perireNec quom capta capi, nec quom combusta cremari,Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est."
On the other hand he sometimes falls into pure prose;
"Cives Romani tum facti sunt Campani,"
and the like, are scarcely metre, certainly not poetry. Later epicists in their desire to avoid this fault over elaborate their commonplace passages. Ennius tries, however clumsily, to copy Homer in dismissing them without ornament. The one or two similes that are preserved are among his least happy efforts. [7] Among battle scenes he is more at home, and these he paints with reality and strength. There are three passages of considerable length, which the reader who desires to judge of his narrative power should study. They are the dream of Ilia and the auspices of Romulus in the first book, and the description of the friend of Servilius in the seventh. This last is generally thought to be a picture of the poet himself, and to intimate in the most pleasing language his relations to his great patron. For a singularly appreciative criticism of these fragments the student is referred to Sellar'sPoets of the Republic. The massive Roman vigour of treatment which shone forth in theAnnalsand made them as it were a rock-hewn monument of Rome's glory, secured to Ennius a far greater posthumous renown than that of any of the other early poets. Cicero extols him, and has no words too contemptuous for those who despise him, Lucretius praises him in the well known words—
"Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoenoDetulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret." [8]
Virgil, it is true, never mentions him, but he imitates him continually. Ovid, with generous appreciation, allows the greatness of his talent, though he denies him art; [9] and the later imperial writers are even affected in their admiration of him. He continued to be read through the Middle Ages, and was only lost as late as the thirteenth century.
Ennius produced a few scattered imitators, but not until upwards of two generations after his death, if we except the doubtful case of Accius. The first is MATIUS, who translated the Iliad into hexameters. This may be more properly considered as the sequel to Livius, but the few fragments remaining show that his versification was based on that of Ennius. Gellius, with his partiality for all that was archaic, warmly praises this work.
HOSTIUS wrote theBellum Istricumin three books. This was no doubt a continuation of the great master'sAnnales. What the war was is not quite certain. Some fix it at 178 B.C.; others as late as 129 B.C. The earlier date is the more probable. We then have to ask when Hostius himself lived. Teuffel inclines to place him before Accius; but most commentators assign him a later date. A few lines are preserved in Macrobius, [10] which seem to point to an early period,e.g.
"non si mihi linguae Centum atque ora sient totidem vocesque liquatae,"
and again,
"Dia Minerva, semol autem tu invictus ApolloArquitenens Latonius."
His object in quoting these is to show that they were copied by Virgil. A passage in Propertius has been supposed to refer to him, [11]
"Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo,"
where he would presumably be the grandfather of that Hostia whom under the name of Cynthia so many of Propertius's poems celebrate. Another poet of whom a few lines are preserved in Gellius and Macrobius is A. FURIUS of Antium, which little town produced more than one well-known writer. His work was entitledAnnals. Specimens of his versification are—
"Interea Oceani linquens Aurora cubile."
"Quod genus hoc hominum Saturno sancte create?"
"Pressatur pede pes, mucro mucrone, viro vir." [12]
Satire, as every one knows, is the one branch of literature claimed by the Romans as their own. [1] It is, at any rate, the branch in which their excellence is most characteristically displayed. Nor is the excellence confined to the professed satirists; it was rather inherent in the genius of the nation. All their serious writings tended to assume at times a satirical spirit. Tragedy, so far as we can judge, rose to her clearest tones in branding with contempt the superstitions of the day. The epic verses of Ennius are not without traces of the same power. The prose of Cato abounds with sarcastic reflections, pointedly expressed. The arguments of Cicero's theological and moral treatises are largely sprinkled with satire. The whole poem of Lucretius is deeply imbued with it: few writers of any age have launched more fiery sarcasm upon the fear of death, or the blind passion of love than he has done in his third and fourth books. Even the gentle Virgil breaks forth at times into earnest invective, tipped with the flame of satire: [2] Dido's bitter irony, Turnus' fierce taunts, show that he could wield with stern effect this specially Roman weapon. Lucan and Seneca affect a style which, though grotesque, is meant to be satirical; while at the close of the classical period, Tacitus transforms the calm domain of history into satire, more burning because more suppressed than that of any of his predecessors. [3]
The claim to an independent origin advanced by Quintilian has been more than once disputed. The nameSatirehas been alleged as indicative of a Greek original (Satyrion). [4] It is true this can no longer be maintained. Still some have thought that the poems of Archilochus or theSillimay have suggested the Roman form of composition. But the former, though full of invective, were iambic or personal, not properly satirical. And theSilli, of which examples are found in Diogenes Laertius and Dio Chrysostom, were rather patched together from the verses of serious writers, forming a kind ofCentolike theCarmen Nuptialeof Ausonius, than original productions. The Roman Satire differed from these in being essentiallydidactic. Besides ridiculing the vices and absurdities of individuals or of society, it had a serious practical purpose, viz. the improvement of public culture or morals. Thus it followed the old Comedy of Athens in its plain speaking, and the method of Archilochus in its bitter hostility to those who provoked attack. But it differed from the former in its non-political bias, as well as its non-dramatic form: and from the latter in its motive, which is not personal enmity, but public spirit. Thus the assertion of Horace, that Lucilius is indebted to the old comedians, [5] must be taken in a general sense only, and not be held to invalidate the generally received opinion that, in its final and perfected form, Satire was a genuine product of Rome.
The metres adopted by Satire was originally indifferent. TheSaturaeof Ennius were composed in trochaics, hexameters, and iambics; those of Varro (calledMenippean, from Menippus of Gadara), mingled together prose and verse. [6] But from Lucilius onwards, Satire, accurately so called, was always treated in hexameter verse. [7]
Nevertheless, Horace is unquestionably right in saying that it had more real affinity for prose than for poetry of any kind—
"Primum ego me illorum, dederim quibus esse poetis,Excerpam numero: neque enim concludere versumDixeris esse satis; neque si quis scribat, uti nos,Sermoni propiora, pates hunc esse poetam." [8]
The essence of satiric talent is that it should be able to understand the complexities of real life, that it should penetrate beneath the surface to the true motives of action, and if these are bad, should indicate by life- like touches their ridiculous or contemptible nature. There is room here for great variety of treatment and difference ofpersonnel. One may have a broad and masculine grasp of the main outlines of social intercourse; another with subtler analysis may thread his way through the intricacies of dissimulation, and lay bare to the hypocrite secrets which he had concealed even from himself; a third may select certain provinces of conduct or thought, and by a good-humoured but discriminating portraiture, throw them into so new and clear a light, as to enable mankind to look at them, free from the prejudices with which convention so often blinds our view.
The qualifications for excelling in this kind of writing are clearly such as have no special connection with poetry. Had the modern prose essay existed at Rome, it is probable the satirists would have availed themselves of it. From the fragments of Lucilius we should judge that he found the trammels of verse somewhat embarrassing. Practice had indeed enabled him to write with unexampled fluency; [9] but except in this mechanical facility he shows none of the characteristics of a poet. The accumulated experience of modern life has pronounced in favour of abandoning the poetic form, and including Satire in the domain of prose. No doubt many celebrated poets in France and England have cultivated verse satire; but in most cases they have merely imitated, whereas the prose essay is a true formation of modern literary art. Conington, in an interesting article, [10] regards the progressive enlargement of the sphere of prose composition as a test of a nation's intellectual advance. Thus considered, poetry is the imperfect attempt to embody in vivid language ideas which have themselves hardly assumed definite form, and necessarily gives way to prose when clearness of thought and sequence of reasoning have established for themselves a more perfect vehicle. However inadequate such a view may be to explain the full nature of poetry, it is certainly true so far as concerns the case at present before us. The assignment of each special exercise of mind to its proper department of literature is undoubtedly a late growth of human culture, and such nations as have not attained to it, whatever may be the splendour of their literary creations, cannot be said to have reached the full maturity of intellectual development.
The conception of Satire by the ancients is illustrated by a passage in Diomedes: [11] "Satira dicitur carmen apud Romanos nunc quidem maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia archaeae comoediae charactere compositum, quale scripserunt Lucilius et Horatius et Persius; at olim carmen quod ex variis poematibus constabat satira cocabatur, quale scripserunt Pacuvius et Ennius." This old-fashionedsaturaof Ennius may be considered as half-way between the early semi-dramatic farce and the classical Satire. It was a genuine medley, containing all kinds of subjects, often couched in the form of dialogue, but intended for recitation, not for action. The poem on Scipio was classed with it, but what this poem was is not by any means clear; from the fragment that remains, describing a calm after storm in sonorous language, we should gather that Scipio's return voyage from Africa may have formed its theme. [12] Other subjects, included in theSaturaeof Ennius, were theHedyphagetica, a humorous didactic poem on the mysteries of gastronomy, which may have suggested similar effusions by Lucilius and Horace; [13] theEpicharmusandEuhemerus, both in trochaics, the latter a free translation of theiera anagraphae, or explanation of the gods as deified mortals; and theEpigrams, among which two on the great Scipio are still preserved, the first breathing the spirit of the Republic, the second asserting with some arrogance the exploits of the hero, and his claims to a place among the denizens of heaven. [14]
Of theSaturaeof Pacuvius nothing is known. C. LUCILIUS (148-103 B.C.), the founder of classical Satire, was born in the Latin town of Suessa Aurunca in Campania. He belonged to an equestrian family, and was in easy circumstances. [15] He is supposed to have fought under Scipio in the Numantine war (133 B.C.) when he was still quite a youth; and it is certain from Horace that he lived on terms of the greatest intimacy, both with him, Laelius, and Albinus. He is said to have possessed the house which had been built at the public expense for the son of King Antiochus, and to have died at Naples, where he was honoured with a public funeral, in the forty-sixth year of his age. His position, at once independent and unambitious (for he could not hold office in Rome), gave him the best possible chance of observing social and political life, and of this chance he made the fullest use. He lived behind the scenes: he saw the corruption prevalent in high circles; he saw also the true greatness of those who, like Scipio, stood aloof from it, and he handed down to imperishable infamy each most signal instance of vice, whether in a statesman, as Lupus, [16] Metellus, or Albucius, or in a private person, as the glutton Gallonius.
It is possible that he now and then misapplied his pen to abuse his own enemies or those of his friends, for we know that the honourable Mucius Scaevola was violently attacked by him; [17] and there is a story that being once lampooned in the theatre in a libellous manner, the poet sued his detractor, but failed in obtaining damages, on the ground that he himself had done the same to others. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt whatever that on the whole he nobly used the power he possessed, that his trenchant pen was mainly enlisted on the side of patriotism, virtue, and enlightenment, and that he lashed without mercy corruption, hypocrisy, and ignorance. The testimony of Horace to his worth, coming from one who himself was not easily deceived, is entitled to the highest consideration; [18] that of Juvenal, though more emphatic, is not more weighty, [19] and the opinion, blamed by Quintilian, [20] that he should be placed above all other poets, shows that his plain language did not hinder the recognition of his moral excellence.
Although a companion of the great, he was strictly popular in his tone. He appealed to the great public, removed on the one hand from accurate learning, on the other from indifference to knowledge. "Nec doctissimis," he says, [21] "Manium Persium haec legere nolo, Junium Congum volo." And in another passage quoted by Cicero, [22] he professes to desire that his readers may be the Tarentines, Consentines, and Sicilians,—those, that is, whose Latin grammar and spelling most needed improvement. But we cannot extend this humility [23] to his more famous political allusions. Those at any rate would be nothing if not known to the parties concerned; neither the poet's genius nor the culprit's guilt could otherwise be brought home to the individual.
In one sense Lucilius might be called a moderniser, for he strove hard to enlarge the people's knowledge and views; but in another and higher sense he was strictly national: luxury, bribery, and sloth, were to him the very poison of all true life, and cut at the root of those virtues by which alone Rome could remain great. This national spirit caused him to be preferred to Horace by conservative minds in the time of Tacitus, but it probably made his critics somewhat over-indulgent. Horace, with all his admiration for him, cannot shut his eyes to his evident faults, [24] the rudeness of his language, the carelessness of his composition, the habit of mixing Greek and Latin words, which his zealous admirers construed into a virtue, and, last but not least, the diffuseness inseparable from a hasty draft which he took no trouble to revise. Still his elegance of language must have been considerable. Pliny speaks of him as the first to establish a severe criticism of style, [25] and the fragments reveal beneath the obscuring garb of his uncouth hexameters, a terse and pure idiom not unlike that of Terence. His faults are numerous, [26] but do not seriously detract from his value. The loss of his works must be considered a serious one. Had they been extant we should have found useful information in his pictures of life and manners in a state of moral transition, amusement in such pieces as his journal of a progress from Rome to Capua, [27] and material for philological knowledge in his careful distinctions of orthography and grammar.
As a favourable specimen of his style, it will be sufficient to quote his definition of virtue:
"Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verumQuis in versamur, quis vivimus rebus potesse.Virtus est homini scire id quod quaeque habeat res.Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum.Virtus, quaerendae finem rei scire modumque;Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse.Virtus, id dare quod reipsa debetur honori,Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorumContra, defensorem hominum morumque bonorum;Magnificare hos, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare,Deinde parentum, tertia iam postremaque nostra."
We see in these lines a practical and unselfish standard—that of the cultivated but still truly patriotic Roman, admitting the necessity of knowledge in a way his ancestors might have questioned, but keeping steadily to the main points of setting a true price upon all human things, and preferring the good of one's country to personal advantage. This is a morality intelligible to all, and if it falls below the higher enlightenment of modern, knowledge, it at least soars above the average practice. We are informed [28] that Lucilius did not spare his immediate predecessors and contemporaries in literature any more than in politics. He attacked Accius for his unauthorised innovations in spelling, Pacuvius and Ennius for want of a sustained level of dignity. His satire seems to have ranged over the whole field of life, so far as it was known to him; and though his learning was in no department deep, [29] it was sound so far as it went, and was guided by natural good taste. He will always retain an interest for us from the charming picture given by Horace of his daily life; how he kept his books beside him like the best of friends, as indeed they were, and whatever he felt, thought, or saw, intrusted to their faithful keeping, whence it comes that the man's life stands as vividly before one's eyes as if it had been painted on a votive tablet. Then the way in which Laelius and Scipio unbent in his company, mere youth as he was compared to them, gives us a pleasing notion of his social gifts; he who could make the two grave statesmen so far forget their decorum as to romp in the manner Horace describes, must at least have been gifted with contagious light-heartedness. This genial humour Horace tried with success to reproduce, but he is conscious of inferiority to the master. In English literature Dryden is the writer who most recalls him, though rather in his higher than in his more sportive moods.
The last class of dramatic poets whom we shall mention in the first period are the writers ofAtellanae. These entertainments originated at the little town of Atella, now St Arpino, between Capua and Naples in the Oscan territory, and were at first composed in the Oscan dialect. Their earliest cultivation at Rome seems to date not long after 360 B.C., in which year the Etruscan histriones were first imported into Rome. The novelty of this amusement attracted the Roman youths, and they began to imitate both the Etruscan dancers and the Oscan performers, who had introduced the Atellane fables into Rome. After the libellous freedom of speech in which they at first indulged had been restrained by law, the Atellanae seem to have established themselves as a privileged form of pleasantry, in which the young nobles could, without incurring the disgrace of removal from their tribe or incapacity for military service, indulge their readiness of speech and impromptu dramatic talent. [1] During rather more than two centuries this custom continued, the performance consisting of detached scenes without any particular connection, but full of jocularity, and employing a fixed set of characters. The language used may have been the Oscan, but, considering the fact that a knowledge of that dialect was not universal at Rome, [2] it was more probably the popular or plebeian Latin interspersed with Oscan elements. No progress towards a literary form is observable until the time of Sulla, but they continued to receive a countenance from the authorities that was not accorded to other forms of the drama. We find, for example, that when theatrical representations were interdicted, an exception was made in their favour. [3] Though coarse and often obscene, they were considered as consistent with gentlemanly behaviour; thus Cicero, in a well-known passage in one of his letters, [4] contrasts them with the Mimes,secundum Oenomaum Accii non, ut olim solebat, Atellanam, sed, ut nunc fit, mimum introduxisti; and Valerius Maximus implies that they did not carry their humour to extravagant lengths, [5] but tempered it with Italian severity. From the few fragments that remain to us we should be inclined to form a different opinion, and to suspect that national partiality in contrasting them with the Graecized form of the Mimi kept itself blind to their more glaring faults. The characters that oftenest reappear in them are Maccus, Bucco, and Pappus; the first of these is prefixed to the special title,e.g. Maccus miles, Maccus virgo. He seems to have been a personage with an immense head, who, corresponding to our clown or harlequin, came in for many hard knocks, but was a general favourite. Pappus took the place of pantaloon, and was the general butt.
NOVIUS (circ. 100 B.C.), whom Macrobius [6] callsprobatissimus Atellanarum scriptor, was the first to reduce this species to the rules of art, giving it a plot and a written dialogue. Several fragments remain, but for many centuries they were taken for those of Naevius, whence great confusion ensued. A better known writer is L. POMPONIUS (90 B.C.) of Bononia, who flourished in the time of Sulla, and is said to have persuaded that cultured sensualist to compose Atellanae himself. Upwards of thirty of his plays are cited; [7] but although a good many lines are preserved, no fragments are long enough to give a good notion of his style. The commendations, however, with which Cicero, Seneca, Gellius, and Priscian load him, prove that he was classed with good writers. From the list given below, it will be seen that the subjects were mostly, though not always, from low life; some remind us of the regular comedies, as theSyriandDotata. The old-fashioned ornaments of puns and alliteration abound in him, as well as extreme coarseness. The fables, which were generally represented after the regular play as an interlude or farce, are mentioned by Juvenal in two of his satires: [8]
"Urbicus exodio risum movet Atellanae Gestibus Autonoes;"
and in his pretty description of a rustic fete—
"Ipsa dierumFestorum herboso colitur si quando theatroMaiestas, tandemque redit ad pulpita notumExodium, cum personae pallentis hiatumIn gremio matris formidat rusticus infans;Aequales habitus illic, similemque videbisOrchestram et populum…."
They endured a while under the empire, when we hear of a composer named MUMMIUS, of some note, but in the general decline they became merged in the pantomime, into which all kinds of dramatic art gradually converged.
If the Atellanae were the most indigenous form of literature in which the young nobles indulged, the different kinds of love-poem were certainly the least in accordance with the Roman traditions of art. Nevertheless, unattainable as was the spontaneous grace of the Greek erotic muse, there were some who aspired to cultivate her.
Few kinds of verse more attracted the Roman amateurs than the Epigram. There was something congenial to the Roman spirit in the pithy distich or tetrastich which formed so considerable an element in the "elegant extracts" of Alexandria. The termepigramhas altered its meaning with the lapse of ages. In Greek it signified merely an inscription commemorative of some work of art, person, or event; its virtue was to be short, and to be appropriate. The most perfect writer of epigrams in the Greek sense was Simonides,—nothing can exceed the exquisite simplicity that lends an undying charm to his effusions. The epigrams on Leonides and on Marathon are well known. The metre selected was the elegiac, on account of its natural pause at the close of the second line. The nearest approach to such simple epigrams are the epitaphs of Naevius, Ennius, and especially Pacuvius, already quoted. This natural grace, however, was, even in Greek poetry, superseded by a more artificial style. The sparkling epigram of Plato addressed to a fair boy has been often imitated, and most writers after him are not satisfied without playing on some fine thought, or turning some graceful point; so that the epigram by little and little approached the form which in its purest age the Italian sonnet possessed. In this guise it was cultivated with taste and brilliancy at Alexandria, Callimachus especially being a finished master of it. The first Roman epigrammatists imitate the Alexandrine models, and, making allowance for the uncouth hardness of their rhythm, achieve a fair success. Of the epigrams of Ennius, only the three already quoted remain. [9] Three authors are mentioned by Aulus Gellius [10] as having raised the Latin Epigram to a level with Anacreon in sweetness, point, and neatness. This is certainly far too high praise. Nor, even if it were so, can we forget that the poems he quotes (presumably the best he could find) are obvious imitations, if not translations, from the Greek. The first is by Q. LUTATIUS CATULUS, and dates about 100 B.C. It is entitledAd Theotimum:
"Aufugit mi animus; credo, ut solet, ad TheotimumDevenit: sic est: perfugium illud habet.Quid si non interdixem ne illuc fugitivumMitteret ad se intro, sed magis eiiceret?Ibimus quaesitum: verum ne ipsi teneamurFormido: quid ago? Da, Venus, consilium."
A more pleasing example of his style, and this time perhaps original, is given by Cicero. [11] It is on the actor Roscius, who, when a boy, was renowned for his beauty, and is favourably compared with the rising orb of day:
"Constiteram exorientem Auroram forte salutans,Cum subito e laeva Roscius exoritur.Pace mihi liceat, caelestes, dicere vestra:Mortalis visust pulcrior esse deo."
This piece, as may be supposed, has met with imitators both in French and Italian literature. A very similarjeu d'espritof PORCIUS LICINUS is quoted:
"Custodes ovium, teneraeque propaginis agnûm,Quaeritis ignem? ite huc: Quaeritis? ignis homo est.Si digito attigero, incendam silvam simul omnem,Omne pecus: flamma est omnia quae video."
This Porcius wrote also on the history of literature. Some rather ill- natured lines on Terence are preserved in Suetonius. [12] He there implies that the young poet, with all his talent, could not keep out of poverty, a taunt which we have good reason for disbelieving as well as disapproving. Two lines on the rise of poetry at Rome deserve quotation—
"Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato graduIntulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram."
A certain POMPILIUS is mentioned by Varro as having epigrammatic tastes; one distich that is preserved gives us no high notion of his powers—
"Pacvi [13] discipulus dicor: porro is fuit Enni:Ennius Musarum: Pompilius clueor."
Lastly, VALERIUS AEDITUUS, who is only known by the short notices in Varro and Gellius, wrote similar short pieces, two of which are preserved.
"Dicere cum conor curam tibi, Pamphila, cordis,Quid mi abs te quaeram? verba labris abeuntPer pectus miserum manat subito mihi sudor.Si tacitus, subidus: duplo ideo pereo."
"Quid faculam praefers, Phileros, qua nil opus nobis?Ibimus, hoc lucet pectore flamma satis.Illam non potis est vis saeva exstinguere venti,Aut imber caelo candidus praecipitans.At contra, hunc ignem Veneris, si non Venus ipsa,Nulla est quae possit vis alia opprimare."
We have quoted these pieces, not from their intrinsic merit, for they have little or none, but to show the painful process by which Latin versification was elaborated. All these must be referred to a date at least sixty years after Ennius, and yet the rhythm is scarcely at all improved. The great number of second-rate poets who wrought in the same laboratory did good work, in so far that they made the technical part less wearisome for poets like Lucretius and Catullus. With mechanical dexterity taste also slowly improved by the competing effort of many ordinary minds; but it did not make those giant strides which nothing but genius can achieve. The later developments of the Epigram will be considered in a subsequent book.