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Title: The Roman Poets of the Republic
Author: W. Y. Sellar
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THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC
BY
W. Y. SELLAR, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
AND FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
RE-ISSUE OF THE THIRD EDITION
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCCC V
HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
PUBLISHER TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH
NEW YORK AND TORONTO
[_Dedication of the Edition of 1881._]
TO
J. C. SHAIRP, M.A., LL.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS,
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF MUCH ACTIVE AND GENEROUS KINDNESS,
AND OF
A LONG AND STEADY FRIENDSHIP,
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In preparing a second edition of this volume, which has been for some
years out of print, I have, with the exception of a few pages added to
Chapter IV, retained the first five chapters substantially unchanged.
Chapters VI and VII, on Roman Comedy, are entirely new. I have
enlarged the account formerly given of Lucilius in Chapter VIII, and
modified the Review of the First Period, contained in Chapter IX.
The short introductory chapter to the Second Period is new. The four
chapters on Lucretius have been carefully revised, and, in part,
re-written. The chapter on Catullus has been re-written and enlarged,
and the views formerly expressed in it have been modified.
In the preface to the first edition I acknowledged the assistance I
had derived from the editions of the Fragments of the early writers
by Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach; from the Histories of Roman
Literature by Bernhardy, Bähr, and Munk, and from the chapters on
Roman Literature in Mommsen's Roman History; from a treatise on the
origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen; from Sir G. C. Lewis's work on
'The Credibility of Early Roman History'; from the Articles on
the Roman Poets by the late Professor Ramsay, contained in Smith's
'Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'; and from
Articles by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Classical and Sacred
Philology.' In addition to these I have, in the present edition, to
acknowledge my indebtedness to the History of Roman Literature by W.
S. Teuffel, to Ribbeck's 'Römische Tragödie,' to Ritschl's 'Opuscula,'
to the editions of some of the Plays of Plautus by Brix and Lorenz, to
that of the Fragments of Lucilius by L. Müller, to the Thesis of M. G.
Boissier, entitled 'Quomodo Graecos Poetas Plautus Transtulerit,' to
Articles on Lucilius by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Philology,' and
to the edition of Lucretius, and the 'Criticisms and Elucidations of
Catullus' by the same writer, to Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,'
to Mr. Ellis's 'Commentary on Catullus,' to R. Westphal's 'Catull's
Gedichte,' and to M. A. Couat's 'Étude sur Catulle.' I have more
especially to express my sense of obligation to Mr. Munro's writings
on Lucretius and Catullus. In so far as the chapters on these poets in
this edition may be improved, this will, in a great measure, be due to
the new knowledge of the subject I have gained from the study of his
works.
I have retained, with some corrections, the translations of the longer
quotations, contained in the first edition, and have added a literal
prose version of some passages quoted from Plautus and Terence.
Instead of offering a prose version of the longer passages quoted from
Catullus, I have again availed myself of the kind permission formerly
given me by Sir Theodore Martin to make use of his translation.
EDINBURGH, _Dec. 1880_.
PREFATORY NOTE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
In revising this work for a new edition the most important change I
have made is in the account of Terence, contained in Chapter VII. I
have to acknowledge the kind permission of Messrs. A. & C. Black to
make use of the article on Terence which I wrote for the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, in which I first expressed the modification of my views
on that author. I have added some notes to the Chapter on Catullus,
suggested by the opinions expressed in the Prolegomena to the Edition
of B. Schmidt. In the Chapter on Naevius I have availed myself of a
suggestion contained in a paper by Prof. A. F. West, 'On a Patriotic
Passage in the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus,' which appeared in the
American Journal of Philology, for my knowledge of which I am indebted
to his courtesy in sending the article to me. I have introduced
various verbal changes in different parts of the book, implying some
slight modification of the opinions originally expressed. Several of
these were suggested by critics who noticed the earlier editions of
the book, to whom I beg to express my thanks.
W. Y. S.
_January, 1889._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
PAGE
Recent change in the estimate of Roman Poetry 1
Want of originality 2
As compared with Greek Poetry 2
" " with Roman Oratory and History 3
The most complete literary monument of Rome 5
Partly imitative, partly original 6
Imitative in forms 7
" in metres 8
Imitative element in diction 9
" " in matter 11
Original character, partly Roman, partly Italian 13
National spirit 14
Imaginative sentiment 15
Moral feeling 16
Italian element in Roman Poetry 17
Love of Nature 17
Passion of Love 19
Personal element in Roman Poetry 20
Four Periods of Roman Poetry 23
Character of each 24
Conclusion 26
CHAPTER II.
VESTIGES OF INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY.
Niebuhr's theory of a Ballad-Poetry 28
The Saturnian metre 29
Ritual Hymns 31
Prophetic verses 33
Fescennine verses 34
Saturae 36
Gnomic verses 37
Commemorative verses 37
Inferences as to their character 38
" from early state of the language 39
No public recognition of Poetry 40
Roman story result of tradition and reflection 41
Inferences from the nature of Roman religion 43
" from the character and pursuits of the people 44
Roman Poetry of Italian rather than Roman origin 45
FIRST PERIOD.
FROM LIVIUS ANDRONICUS TO LUCILIUS.
CHAPTER III.
BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS,
CN. NAEVIUS, 240-202 B.C.
Contact with Greece after capture of Tarentum 47
First period of Roman literature 49
Forms of Poetry during this period 50
Livius Andronicus 51
Cn. Naevius, his life 52
Dramas 55
Epic poem 57
Style 59
Conclusion 60
CHAPTER IV.
Q. ENNIUS, 239-170 B.C., LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
VARIOUS WORKS. GENIUS AND INTELLECT.
Importance of Ennius 62
Notices of his life 63
Influences affecting his career 64
Italian birth-place 64
Greek education 65
Service in Roman army 66
Historical importance of his age 68
Intellectual character of his age 69
Personal traits 71
Description of himself in the Annals 72
Intimacy with Scipio 74
His enthusiastic temperament 75
Religious spirit and convictions 77
Miscellaneous works 79
Saturae 81
Dramas 83
Annals 88
Outline of the Poem 89
Idea by which it is animated 92
Artistic defects 93
Roman character of the work 94
Contrast with the Greek Epic 96
Contrast in its personages 96
Contrast in supernatural element 97
Oratory in the Annals 98
Description and imagery 100
Rhythm and diction 102
Chief literary characteristics of Ennius 106
Energy of conception 107
Patriotic and imaginative sentiment 110
Moral emotion 112
Practical understanding 113
Estimate in ancient times 116
Disparaging criticism of Niebuhr 118
CHAPTER V
EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY. M. PACUVIUS, 219-129 B.C.
L. ACCIUS, 170-ABOUT 90 B.C.
Popularity of early Roman Tragedy 120
Partial adaptation of Athenian drama 121
Inability to reproduce its pure Hellenic character 123
Nearer approach to the spirit of Euripides than of Sophocles 125
Grounds of popularity of Roman Tragedy 126
Moral tone and oratorical spirit 129
Causes of its decline 131
M. Pacuvius, notices of his life 133
Ancient testimonies 135
His dramas 136
Passages illustrative of his thought 137
" " of his moral and oratorical spirit 139
Descriptive passages 141
Drama on a Roman subject 142
Character 142
L. Accius, notices of his life 143
His various works 145
Fragments illustrative of his oratorical spirit 147
" " of his moral fervour 148
" " of his sense of natural beauty 149
Conclusion as to character of Roman Tragedy 150
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN COMEDY. T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C.
Flourishing era of Roman Comedy 153
How far any claim to originality? 154
Disparaging judgment of later Roman critics 155
Connection with earlier Saturae 156
Naevius and Plautus popular poets 157
Facts in the life of Plautus 158
Attempt to fill up the outline from his works 160
Familiarity with town-life 161
Traces of maritime adventure 162
Life of the lower and middle classes represented in his plays 163
Love of good living 164
Love of money 166
Artistic indifference 166
Knowledge of Greek 167
Influence of the spirit of his age 167
Dramas adaptations of outward conditions of Athenian New Comedy 169
Manner and spirit, Roman and original 172
Indications of originality in his language 173
" " in his Roman allusions and national characteristics 174
Favourite plots of his plays 178
Pseudolus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria 179
Aulularia, Trinummus, Menaechmi, Rudens, Captivi, Amphitryo 182
Mode of dealing with his characters 191
Moral and political indifference of his plays 192
Value as a poetic artist 195
Power of expression by action, rhythm, diction 200
CHAPTER VII.
TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS.
Comedy between the time of Plautus and Terence 204
Caecilius Statius 204
Scipionic Circle 206
Complete Hellenising of Roman Comedy 207
Conflicting accounts of life of Terence 207
Order in which his Plays were produced 209
His 'prologues' as indicative of his individuality 210
'Dimidiatus Menander' 212
Epicurean 'humanity' chief characteristic 213
Sentimental motive of his pieces 214
Minute delineations of character 215
Diction and rhythm 217
Influence on the style and sentiment of Horace 218
Modern estimates of Terence 220
Comoedia Togata, Atellanae, Mimus 220
CHAPTER VIII.
EARLY ROMAN SATIRE. C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.
Independent origin of Roman satire 222
Essentially Roman in form and spirit 224
" " in its political and censorial function 225
Personal and miscellaneous character of early satire 227
Critical epoch at which Lucilius appeared 229
Question as to the date of his birth 229
Fragments chiefly preserved by grammarians 232
Miscellaneous character and desultory treatment of subjects 233
Traces of subjects treated in different books 234
Impression of the author's personality 236
Political character of Lucilian satire 238
Social vices satirised in it 239
Intellectual peculiarities 243
Literary criticism 245
His style 246
Grounds of his popularity 249
CHAPTER IX.
REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.
Common aspects in the lives of poets in the second century B.C. 253
Popular and national character of their works 256
Political condition of the time reflected in its literature 257
Defects of the poetic literature in form and style 259
Other forms of literature cultivated in that age 260
Oratory and history 260
Familiar letters 262
Critical and grammatical studies 263
Summary of character of the first period 264
SECOND PERIOD.
THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER X.
TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS.
Dearth of poetical works during the next half century 269
Literary taste confined to the upper classes 271
Great advance in Latin prose writing 272
Influence of this on the style of Lucretius and Catullus 273
Closer contact with the mind and art of Greece 273
Effects of the political unsettlement on the contemplative life
and thought 275
" on the life of pleasure, and the art founded on it 277
The two representatives of the thought and art of the time 278
CHAPTER XI.
LUCRETIUS. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Little known of him from external sources 280
Examination of Jerome's statement 284
Inferences as to his national and social position 287
Relation to Memmius 288
Impression of the author to be traced in his poem 290
Influence produced by the action of his age 290
Minute familiarity with Nature and country life 292
Spirit in which he wrote his work 294
His consciousness of power and delight in his task 295
His polemical spirit 298
Reverence for Epicurus 299
Affinity to Empedocles 300
Influence of other Greek writers 302
" of Ennius 303
His interests speculative, not national 304
His Roman temperament 305
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.
Three aspects of the poem 307
General scope of the argument 308
Analysis of the poem 308
Question as to its unfinished condition 321
What is the value of the argument? 324
Weakness of his science 329
Interest of the work as an exposition of ancient physical enquiry 331
" from its bearing on modern questions 332
Power of scientific reasoning, observation, and expression 335
Connecting links between his philosophy and poetry 340
Idea of law 341
" of change 344
" of the infinite 347
" of the individual 348
" of the subtlety of Nature 349
" of Nature as a living power 350
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS.
General character of Greek epicureanism 356
Prevalence at Rome in the last age of the Republic 358
New type of epicureanism in Lucretius 360
Forms of evil against which his teaching was directed 363
Superstition 364
Fear of death 369
Ambition 374
Luxury 375
Passion of love 376
Limitation of his ethical views 378
His literary power as a moralist 381
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.
Artistic defects of the work 384
" arising from the nature of the subject 385
" from inequality in its execution 387
Intensity of feeling pervading the argument 388
Cumulative force in his rhythm 389
Qualities of his style 390
Freshness and sincerity of expression 392
Imaginative suggestiveness and creativeness 394
Use of analogies 395
Pictorial power 397
Poetical interpretation of Nature 398
Energy of movement in his descriptions 400
Poetic aspect of Nature influenced by his philosophy 402
Poetical interpretation of life 403
Modern interest of his poem 406
CHAPTER XV.
CATULLUS.
Contrast to the poetry of Lucretius 408
The poetry of youth 409
Accidental preservation of the poems 410
Principle of their arrangement 412
Vivid personal revelation afforded by them 413
Uncertainty as to the date of his birth 414
Birth-place and social standing 417
Influences of his native district 419
Identity of Lesbia and Clodia 422
Poems written between 61 and 57 B.C. 425
Poems connected with his Bithynian journey 429
Poems written between 56 and 54 B.C. 433
Character of his poems, founded on the passion of love 436
" " " on friendship and affection 439
His short satirical pieces 444
Other poems expressive of personal feeling 450
Qualities of style in these poems 452
" of rhythm 453
" of form 454
The Hymn to Diana 455
His longer and more purely artistic pieces 456
His Epithalamia 457
His Attis 461
The Peleus and Thetis 462
The longer elegiac poems 469
Rank of Catullus among the poets of the world 472
THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
A great fluctuation of opinion has taken place, among scholars and
critics, in regard to the worth of Latin Poetry. From the revival of
learning till the end of last century, the poets of ancient Rome, and
especially those of the Augustan age, were esteemed the purest models
of literary art, and were the most familiar exponents of the life and
spirit of antiquity. Their works were the chief instruments of the
higher education. They were studied, imitated, and translated by
some of the greatest poets of modern Europe; and they supplied their
favourite texts and illustrations to moralists and humourists, from
Montaigne to the famous English essayists who flourished during the
last century. Up to a still later period, their words were habitually
used in political debate to add weight to argument and point to
invective. Perhaps no other writers, during so long a period,
exercised so powerful an influence, not on literary style and taste
only, but on the character and understanding, of educated men in the
leading nations of the modern world.
It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should
be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern
poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They
have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change
in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present
century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of
the great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They were thus,
for some time, the objects of undue disparagement rather than of undue
admiration. The perception of the large debt which they owed to their
Greek masters, led to some forgetfulness of their original merits.
Their Roman character and Italian feeling were insufficiently
recognised under the foreign forms and metres in which these
qualities were expressed. It used to be said, with some appearance of
plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only much inferior in
interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a work of cultivated
imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of literature were
the true expression of the genius of the Roman people; that their
poets brought nothing new into the world; that they enriched the life
of after times with no pure vein of native feeling, nor any impressive
record of national experience.
It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed
glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the
genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be
applied,
[Greek:
autodidaktos d' eimi, theos de moi en phresin oimas
pantoias enephysen[1].]
Besides possessing the charm of poetical feeling and artistic form in
unequalled measure, Greek poetry is to modern readers the immediate
revelation of a new world of thought and action, in all its lights and
shadows and moving life. Like their politics, the poetry of the Greeks
sprang from many independent centres, and renewed itself in every
epoch of the national civilisation. Roman poetry, on the other hand,
has neither the same novelty nor variety of matter; nor did it, like
the epic, lyric, dramatic, and idyllic poetry of Greece, adapt itself
to the changing phases of human life in different generations and
different States. But the poets of Rome have another kind of value.
There is a charm in their language and sentiment distinct from that
which is found in any other literature of the world. Certain deep
and abiding impressions are stamped upon their works, which have
penetrated into the cultivated sentiment of modern times. If, as we
read them, the imagination is not so powerfully stimulated by the
revelation of a new world, yet, in the elevated tones of Roman poetry,
there is felt to be a permanent affinity with the strength and dignity
of man's moral nature; and, in the finer and softer tones, a power
to move the heart to sympathy with the beauty, the enjoyment, and the
natural sorrows of a bygone life. If we are no longer moved by the
eager hopes and buoyant fancies of the youthful prime of the ancient
world, we seem to gather up, with a more sober sympathy, the fruits of
its mature experience and mellowed reflexion.
While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown
to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical
composition; they preserved some knowledge of their history in various
kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some
skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice
of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men.
But they cannot be said to have produced spontaneously any works of
literary art. Their oratory, history, poetry, and philosophy owed
their first impulse to their intellectual contact with Greece. And
while the form and expression of all Roman literature were moulded
by the teaching of Greek masters and the study of Greek writings, the
debt incurred by the poetry and philosophy of Rome was greater than
that incurred by her oratory and history. The two latter assumed
a more distinct type, and adapted themselves more naturally to the
genius of the people and the circumstances of the State. They were
the work of men for the most part eminent in the State; and they
bore directly on the practical wants of the times in which they were
cultivated. Even the structure of the Latin language testifies to the
oratorical force and ardour by which it was moulded into symmetry; as
the language of Greece betrays the plastic and harmonising power of
her early poetry. There is no improbability in the supposition that,
if Greek literature had never existed, or had remained unknown to the
Romans, the political passions and necessities of the Republic would
have called forth a series of powerful orators; and that the national
instinct, which clung with such strong tenacity to the past, would,
with the advance of power and civilisation, have produced a type of
history, capable of giving adequate expression to the traditions and
continuous annals of the commonwealth.
But their poetry, on the other hand, came to the Romans after their
habits were fully formed[2], as an ornamental addition to their
power,--[Greek: kêpion kai enkallôpisma ploytou]. Unlike the poetry
of Greece, it was not addressed to the popular ear, nor was it an
immediate emanation from the popular heart. The poets who commemorated
the greatness of Rome, or who sang of the passions and pleasures
of private life, in the ages immediately before and after the
establishment of the Empire, were, for the most part, men born in the
provinces of Italy, neither trained in the formal discipline of Rome,
nor taking any active part in practical affairs. Their tastes and
feelings are, in some ways, rather Italian than purely Roman; their
thoughts and convictions are rather of a cosmopolitan type than
moulded on the national traditions. They drew the materials of their
art as much from the stores of Greek poetry as from the life and
action of their own times. Their art is thus a composite structure,
in which old forms are combined with altered conditions; in which the
fancies of earlier times reappear in a new language, and the spirit of
Greece is seen interpenetrating the grave temperament of Rome, and the
genial nature of Italy.
But, although oratory and history may have been more essential to the
national life of the Romans, and more adapted to their genius, their
poetry still remains their most complete literary expression. Of the
many famous orators of the Republic one only has left his speeches
to modern times. The works of the two greatest Roman historians have
reached us in a mutilated shape; and the most important periods in the
later history of the Republic are not represented in what remains of
the works of any Latin writer. Tacitus records only the sombre and
monotonous annals of the early Empire; and the extant books of Livy
contain the account of times and events from which he himself was
separated by many generations. Roman poetry, on the other hand, is the
contemporary witness of several important eras in the history of the
Republic and the Empire. It includes many authentic and characteristic
fragments from the great times of the Scipios,--the complete works of
the two poets of finest genius, who flourished in the last days of the
Republic,--the masterpieces of the brilliant Augustan era;--and, of
the works of the Empire, more than are needed to exemplify the decay
of natural feeling and of poetical inspiration under the deadening
pressure of Imperialism. And, besides illustrating different eras, the
Roman poets throw light on the most various aspects of Roman life and
character. They are the most authentic witnesses both of the national
sentiment and ideas, and of the feelings and interests of private
life. They stamp on the imagination the ideal of Roman majesty; and
they bring home to modern sympathies the charm and the pathos of the
old Italian life, and the activities and humours of society in the
great capital of pleasure and business.
Roman poetry was the living heir, not the lifeless reproduction of
the genius of Greece. If it seems to have been a highly-trained
accomplishment rather than the irrepressible outpouring of a natural
faculty, still this accomplishment was based upon original gifts of
feeling and character, and was marked by its own peculiar features.
The creative energy of the Greeks died out with Theocritus; but their
learning and taste, surviving the decay of their political existence,
passed into the education of a kindred race, endowed, above all other
races of antiquity, with the capacity of receiving and assimilating
alien influences, and of producing, alike in action and in literature,
great results through persistent purpose and concentrated industry.
It was owing to their gifts of appreciation and their capacity for
labour, that the Roman poets, in the era of the transition from
the freedom and vigour of the Republic to the pomp and order of the
Empire, succeeded in producing works which, in point of execution,
are not much inferior to the masterpieces of Greece. It was due to the
spirit of a new race,--speaking a new language, living among different
scenes, acting their own part in the history of the world,--that the
ancient inspiration survived the extinction of Greek liberty, and
reappeared, under altered conditions, in a fresh succession of
powerful works, which owe their long existence as much to the vivid
feeling as to the artistic perfection by which they are characterised.
From one point of view, therefore, Roman poetry may be regarded as an
imitative reproduction, from another, as a new revelation of the human
spirit. For the form, and for some part of the substance, of their
works, the Roman poets were indebted to Greece: the spirit and
character, and much also of the substance of their poetry, are native
in their origin. They betray their want of inventiveness chiefly
in the forms of composition and the metres which they employed;
occasionally also in the cast of their poetic diction, and in their
conventional treatment of foreign materials. But, in even the least
original aspects of their art, they still bear the impress of their
nationality. Although, with the exception of Satire and the poetic
Epistle, they struck out no new forms of poetic composition, yet those
adopted by them assumed something of a new type, owing to the weight
of their contents, the massive structure of the Roman language, the
fervour and gravity of the Roman temperament, the practical bent and
logical mould of the Roman understanding, the strong vitality and the
emotional susceptibility of the Italian race.
They were not equally successful in all the forms which they attempted
to reproduce. They were especially inferior to their masters in
tragedy. They betray the inferiority of their dramatic genius also in
other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic poetry, and
in philosophical dialogues. They express passion and feeling either
directly from their own hearts and experience, or in great rhetorical
passages, attributed to the imaginary personages of their story--to
Ariadne or Dido, to Turnus or Mezentius. But this occasional
utterance of passion and sentiment is not united in them with a vivid
delineation of the complex characters of men; and it is only in their
comic poetry that they are quite successful in reproducing the natural
and lively interchange of speech. There is thus, as compared with
Homer and Theocritus, some want of personal interest in the epic,
descriptive, and idyllic poetry of Virgil. The natural play of
characters, acting and reacting upon one another, enlivens the
divinely-appointed action of the Aeneid, only in such exceptional
passages as the episode of Dido; nor does it add the charm of human
associations to the poet's deep and quiet pictures of rural beauty,
and to his graceful expression of pensive and tender feeling.
The Romans, as a race, were wanting in speculative capacity; and
thus their poetry does not rise, or rises only in Lucretius, to those
imaginative heights from which the great lyrical and dramatic poets of
Greece contemplated the spectacle of human life in all its wonder and
solemnity. Yet both the epic and the lyrical poetry of Rome have
a character and perfection of their own. The Aeneid, with many
resemblances in points of detail to the poems of Homer, is yet, in
design and execution, a true national monument. The lyrical poetry of
Rome, if inferior to the choral poetry of Greece in range of thought
and in ethereal grace of expression, and, apparently, to the early
Iambic and Melic poetry of Greece in the range of the emotions to
which it appeals, is yet an instrument of varied power, capable of
investing the more serious or more transient joys and sorrows of life
with an unfading charm, and rising into fuller and more commanding
tones to express the national sentiment and moral dignity of Rome.
Didactic poetry obtained in Lucretius and Virgil ampler volume and
profounder meaning than in their Greek models, Empedocles and Hesiod.
It was by the skill of the two great Latin poets that poetic art
was made to embrace within its province the treatment of a great
philosophical argument, and of a great and ancient form of human
industry. The Satires and Epistles of Horace showed, for the first
time, how the didactic spirit could deal in poetry with the whole
conduct and familiar experience of life. The elegiac poets of the
Augustan age, while borrowing the metre of their compositions from the
early poets of Ionia and the later writers at the court of Alexandria,
have taken the substance of their poetry to a great extent from their
own lives and interests; and have treated their materials with a
fluent and varied brilliancy of style, and often with a graceful
tenderness and sincerity of feeling, unborrowed from any foreign
source. It may thus be generally affirmed that the Roman poets,
although adding little to the great discoveries or inventions
in literature, and although not equally successful in all their
adaptations of the inventions of their predecessors, have yet left
the stamp of their own genius and character on some of the great forms
which poetry has assumed.
The metres of Roman poetry are also adaptations to the Latin language
of the metres previously employed in the epic, lyrical, dramatic and
elegiac poetry of Greece. The Italian race had, in earlier times,
struck out a native measure, called the Saturnian,--of a rapid and
irregular movement,--in which their religious emotions, their festive
and satiric raillery, and their commemorative instincts found a rude
expression. But after this measure had been rejected by Ennius,
as unsuited to the gravity of his greatest work, the Roman poets
continued to imitate the metres of their Greek predecessors. But, in
their hands, these became characterised by a slower, more stately,
and regular movement, not only differing widely from the ring of the
native Saturnian rhythm, but also, with every improvement in poetic
accomplishment, receding further and further from the freedom and
variety of the Greek measures. The comic and tragic measures, in which
alone the Roman writers observed a less strict rule than their models,
never attained among them to any high metrical excellence. The rhythm
of the Greek poets, owing in a great measure to the frequency of
vowel sounds in their language, is more flowing, more varied, and more
richly musical than that of Roman poetry. Thus, although their verse
is constructed on the same metrical laws, there is the most marked
contrast between the rapidity and buoyancy of the Iliad or
the Odyssey, and the stately and weighty march of the Aeneid.
Notwithstanding their outward conformity to the canons of a foreign
language, the most powerful and characteristic measures of Roman
poetry,--such as the Lucretian and the Virgilian hexameter, and
the Horatian alcaic,--are distinguished by a grave, orderly, and
commanding tone, symbolical of the genius and the majesty of Rome. In
such cases, as the Horatian sapphic and the Ovidian elegiac, where
the structure of the verse is too slight to produce this impressive
effect, there is still a remarkable divergence from the freedom
and manifold harmony of the early Greek poets to a more uniform and
monotonous cadence.
The diction also of Roman poetry betrays many traces of imitation.
Some of the early Latin tragedies were literal translations from the
works of the Athenian dramatists; and fragments of the rude Roman copy
may still be compared with the polished expression of the original.
Some familiar passages of the Iliad may be traced among the rough-hewn
fragments of the Annals of Ennius. Even Lucretius, whose diction,
more than that of most poets, produces the impression of being the
immediate creation of his own mind, has described outward objects, and
clothed his thoughts, in language borrowed from Homer, Empedocles,
and Euripides. The short volume of Catullus contains translations from
Sappho and Callimachus, and frequent imitations of other Greek poets;
and, from the extant fragments of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others of
the Greek lyric poets, it may be seen how frequently Horace availed
himself of some turn of their expression to invest his own experience
with old poetic associations. Virgil, whose great success is, in no
slight measure, due to the skill and taste with which he used the
materials of earlier Greek and native writers, has reproduced
the heroic tones of Homer in his epic, and the mellow cadences of
Theocritus in his pastoral poems; and has blended something of the
antique quaintness and oracular sanctity of Hesiod with the golden
perfection of his Georgics.
But besides the direct debt which each Roman poet owed to the Greek
author or authors whom he imitated, it is difficult to estimate
the extent to which the taste of the later Romans was formed by the
familiar study of Greek literature. The habitual study of any foreign
language has an influence not on style only, but even on the structure
of thought and the development of emotion. The Roman poets first
learned, from the study of Greek poetry, to feel the graceful
combinations and the musical power of expression, and were thus
stimulated and trained to elicit similar effects from their native
language. It is for this gift, or power over language, that Lucretius
prays in his invocation to the creative power of Nature,--
Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem;
and those who came after him devoted still greater study to attain
perfection in the diction and rhythm of poetry. But their success was
gained with some loss of direct force and freshness in the expression
of feeling. In Virgil and in Horace words are combined in a less
natural order than in Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language
does not strike the mind with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry,
nor does it seem equally capable of gaining and retaining the ear of a
popular audience. Catullus alone among the great Roman poets combines
in those short poems, which are the direct expression of his feeling,
perfect grace with the happiest freedom and simplicity. Yet the
studied and compact diction of Latin poetry, if wanting in fluency,
ease, and directness, lays a strong hold upon the mind, by its power
of marking with emphasis what is most essential and prominent in
the ideas and objects presented to the imagination. The thought and
sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved on her poetical literature,
in deep and enduring characters. And, notwithstanding all manifest
traces of imitation, the diction of the greatest Roman poets attests
the presence of genuine creative power. A strong vital force is
recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of Ennius and Lucretius;
and, though more latent, it is felt no less really to pervade
the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and the subtle
moderation of Horace.
Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its substance to Greek
thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that
conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of
the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome and
Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian Gods;
the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected with
the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late
civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised
features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling,
experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from
earlier representations. Hence a good deal of Latin poetry appears to
fit less closely to the facts of human life, than the best poetry of
Greece and of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship
is more apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance
and thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they
reproduce Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own
feeling than the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The
beautiful and stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second
life in the young imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and
conventional to Virgil:--
Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes,
Omnia jam vulgata.
The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized
with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in
the episode of the 'Pastor Aristaeus' in the Georgics. Not only are
the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but
the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with
the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is
a religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed
which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of
Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy. The
manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and of
the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists
of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek
traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world,
and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted
itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil.
Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the
great Roman epics, bears the mark of the artificial construction of
a late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative
legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of
poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes of
Horace, yet the reproduction of Greek mythology which plays so large a
part in many of them is a result of his artistic sympathy, and has not
any vital root in his own belief or the beliefs of his age.
Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek
art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the
civilised world, after it had been leavened by Greek thought, taste,
and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a living power,
after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so that, were it
nothing more, that literature would still be valuable as the fruit of
the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the earliest poet of the
ancient world, there is a kind of promise of the great life that
was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a retrospective
contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art of the past,--a
gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the Roman poets had
also a strong vein of original character and feeling, and many phases
of national and personal experience to reveal. They had to give a
permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to perpetuate the charm
of the land and life of Italy. In their highest tones, they give
utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified and commanding
attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial Republic. But
other elements in their art proclaim their large inheritance of the
receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient as in modern times,
has characterised the Southern nations. As the patrician and plebeian
orders were united in the imperial greatness of the commonwealth, as
the energy of Rome and of the other Italian communities was welded
together to form a mighty national life, so these apparently
antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty and beauty of
Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself have been
unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was too
austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create and
foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the south,
when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and the
elevation of higher ideals, tended to degenerate into licentious
effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier
tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and
the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the
exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand,
gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight
restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline.
In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of
character are most happily combined with susceptibility to the
charm and the power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the
Augustan age abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their
lives, under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue
of their forefathers. Their faults and weaknesses are of a type
apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman
character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect
testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very
coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which the
freedom and energy of the Republic had been developed. Ovid, in
his libertinism, displays his vigorous and ardent vitality. The
indifference of Tibullus and Propertius to the graver duties and
interests of life, looks like a reaction from a standard of manliness
too high to be permanently upheld.
Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national
and patriotic sentiment is conspicuous. Among the poets of the
Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by political as well
as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to the
commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions, the
advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the
works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the
whole plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell
exercised over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the
great destiny of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of
Italy, and his pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of
men. Horace rises above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the
imperial majesty of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the
Sabine households, and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of
Roman character. The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing
its existence to the renewed interest imparted to the mythical and
early story of Rome by the establishment of the Empire. The other
elegiac poets, though they devote much less of their writings to the
subject, yet betray a graver and deeper feeling in the rare passages
in which they appeal to patriotic memories.
The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little
sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they
flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to
political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated
him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the
lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage
in the strife of personal ambition:--
Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.
Catullus, while eagerly enjoying his life, seems, in regard to the
political turmoil of his time, to 'daff the world aside, and bid it
pass': yet there is, as has been well said[3], a rough republican
flavour in his careless satire; and he retained to the last, and
boldly asserted, what was the earliest, as well as the latest,
instinct of ancient liberty--the spirit of resistance to the arbitrary
rule of any single man.
Roman poetry is pervaded also by a peculiar vein of imaginative
emotion. There is no feeling so characteristic of the higher works of
Roman genius as the sense of majesty. This feeling is called forth by
the idea or outward manifestation of strength, stability, vastness,
and order; by whatever impresses the imagination as the symbol of
power and authority, whether in the aspect of Nature, or in the works,
actions, and institutions of man. It is in their most serious and
elevated writings, and chiefly in their epic and didactic poetry,
that the Romans show their peculiar susceptibility to this grave and
dignified emotion. Even the plain and rude diction of Ennius rises
into rugged grandeur when he is moved by the vastness or massive
strength of outward things, by 'the pomp and circumstance' of war, or
by the august forms and symbols of government. The majestic tones of
Lucretius seem to give a voice to the deep feeling of the order and
immensity of the universe which possessed him. The sustained dignity
of the Aeneid, and the splendour of some of its finest passages--such
for instance as that which brings before us the solemn and magnificent
spectacle of the fall of Troy--attest how the imagination of Virgil
was moved to sympathy with the attributes of ancient and powerful
sovereignty.
Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman
poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is more
authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry. They
speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom that
has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry
strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful
representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry
appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous
impulses of our nature. This glow of moral emotion pervades not the
poetry only, but the oratory, history, and philosophy of Rome. It has
cast a kind of religious solemnity around the fragments of the early
epic, tragic, and satiric poetry: it has given an intenser fervour
to the stern consistency and desperate fortitude of Lucretius: it has
added the element of strength to the pathos and fine humanity in the
Aeneid. It is by his moral, as well as his national enthusiasm, that
Horace reveals the Roman gravity that tempered his genial nature. The
language of Lucan, Persius, and Juvenal still breathed the same spirit
in the deadening atmosphere of the Empire. Of the greater poets
of Rome, Catullus alone shows little trace of this grave ardour of
feeling, the more usual accompaniment of the firm temper of manhood
than of the prodigal genius of youth.
There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in
Roman poetry, more akin to modern sympathies. In no other branch of
ancient literature is so much prominence given to the enjoyment
of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows, tastes, and
pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity of the old Roman
life, and the predominance of public over private interest in the best
days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather than to foster, the
birth of these new modes of emotion. They are like the flower of
that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life which spread itself
abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and came to a rapid
maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the accumulated
treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons ample
leisure to enjoy them.
The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more
prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed,
among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true
description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and
the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly,
affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of
Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the
Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and
to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs
and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature
as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era.
The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the
thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much
on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of
beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they
breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do
not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from
contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the
happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful
security of the country. The difference between the two nations in
social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their
aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his
leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his
constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition
which made the [Greek: leschê] a favourite resort so early as the
time of Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most
typical representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman
statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy
repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and
self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with
his household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and
retirement was one great element in the Roman taste for country
life;--a taste which was manifested among the foremost public men,
such as the Scipios and Laelius, long before any trace of it is
betrayed in Roman poetry. But, as the practice of spending the
unhealthy months of autumn away from Rome became general among the
wealthier classes, and as new modes of sentiment were fostered
by greater leisure and finer cultivation, a genuine love of
Nature,--taking the form either of attachment to particular places,
or of enjoyment in the life and beautiful spectacle of the outward
world,--was gradually awakened in the more refined spirits of the
Italian race.
The poetry of the Augustan age and of that immediately preceding it
is deeply pervaded by this new sentiment. Each of the great poets
manifests the feeling in his own way. Lucretius, while contemplating
the majesty of Nature's laws, and the immensity of her range, is at
the same time powerfully moved to sympathy with her ever-varying life.
He feels the charm of simply living in fine weather, and looking
on the common aspects of the world,--such as the sea-shore, fresh
pastures and full-flowing rivers, or the new loveliness of the early
morning. He represents the punishment of the Danaides as a symbol of
the incapacity of the human spirit to enjoy the natural charm of the
recurring seasons of the year. Catullus, too, although his active
social temper did not respond to the spell which Nature exercised over
the contemplative and pensive spirits of Lucretius and Virgil, has
many fine images from the outward world in his poems. He delights in
comparing the grace and the passion of youth with the bloom of flowers
and the stateliness of trees; he associates the beauty of Sirmio with
his bright picture of the happiness of home; he feels the return of
the genial breezes of spring as enhancing his delight in leaving the
dull plains of Phrygia, and in hastening to visit the famous cities of
Asia. Virgil's early art was characterised by his friend and brother
poet in the lines,--
Molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camenae[4].
The love of natural, and especially of Italian, beauty blends with all
his patriotic memories, and with the charm which he has cast around
the common operations of rustic industry. The freedom and peace of his
country life, among the Sabine hills, kept the heart of Horace fresh
and simple, in spite of all the pleasures and flatteries to which he
was exposed; and enabled him, till the end of his course, to mingle
the clear fountain of native poetry,--'ingeni benigna vena,'--with the
stiller current of his meditative wisdom.
The passion of love was a favourite theme both of the early lyrical
poets of Greece, and of the courtly writers of Alexandria; but the
works of the former have reached us only in inconsiderable fragments;
and the latter, with the exception of Theocritus, are much inferior to
the Roman poets who made them their models. It is in Latin literature
that we are brought most near to the power of this passion in the
ancient world. Few among the poets who have recorded their own
experience of love, in any age, have expressed a feeling so true or so
intense as Catullus. He has all the ardent, self-forgetful devotion,
if he wants the chivalry and purity, of modern sentiment. He has
painted the love of others also with grateful fidelity. He has shown
the finest sense in discerning, and the finest power in delineating
the charm of youthful passion, when first awakening into life, or
first unfolding into true affection. It is by his delineation of the
agony of Dido that Virgil has imparted the chief personal interest
to the story of the Aeneid; and the love which finds a voice in his
pastoral poems is as ideal as that which has found its truest voice in
some of our great modern poets. Horace is the poet of the lighter and
gayer moods of the passion. Without ever becoming a slave to it, he
experienced enough of its pains and pleasures to enable him to paint
the fascination or the waywardness of a mistress with the equable
feeling of an epicurean, but, at the same time, with the refined
observation of a poet. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, making
pleasure the chief pursuit of their lives, have made the more sensuous
phases of this passion the predominant motive of their poetry. Yet
the tenderness of Tibullus is as genuine as that of Virgil; there is
ardent emotion expressed by Propertius for his living mistress, and
deep feeling in the lines in which he recalls her memory after death;
the license of Ovid is, if not redeemed, at least relieved, by his
buoyant wit and his brilliant fancy.
Roman poetry is also interesting as the revelation of personal
experience and character. The biographies of ancient authors are,
for the most part, meagre and untrustworthy; and thus it is chiefly
through the conscious or unconscious self-portraiture in their
writings that the actual men of antiquity are brought into close
contact with the modern world. Few men of any age or country are
so well known to us as Horace; and it is from his own writings,
exclusively, that this intimate knowledge has been obtained. The lines
in which he describes Lucilius are more applicable to himself than to
any extant writer of Greece or Rome,--
Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat, unquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis[5].
He has described himself, his tastes and pursuits, his thoughts and
convictions, with perfect frankness and candour, and without any of
the triviality or affectation of literary egotism. Catullus, although
sometimes wanting in proper reticence, and altogether devoid of that
meditative art with which Horace transmutes his own experience into
the common experience of human nature, is known also as a familiar
friend, from the force of feeling with which he realised, and the
transparent sincerity with which he recorded, all the pain and the
pleasure of his life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age have
written, neither from so strong a heart as that of Catullus, nor with
the self-restraint and self-respect of Horace; but yet one of the
chief sources of interest in their poetry, as of that of Martial in
a later age, arises from their strong realisation of life, their
unreserved communicativeness, and the light they thus throw on one
phase of personal and social manners in ancient times.
Nor are these indications of individual character confined to the
poets who profess to communicate their own feelings, and to record
their own fortunes. All the works of Roman poetry bear emphatically
the impress of their authors. While the finest Greek poetry seems like
an almost impersonal emanation of genius, Roman poetry is, to a much
greater extent, the impression of character. The great Roman writers
manifest that kind of self-consciousness which accompanies
resolute and successful effort; while the Greeks enjoy that happy
self-forgetfulness which attends the unimpeded exercise of a natural
gift. The epitaphs composed for themselves by Naevius, Plautus,
Ennius, and Pacuvius, and the assertion of their own originality
and of their hopes of fame which occurs in the poetry of Lucretius,
Virgil, and Horace, were dictated by a strong sense of their own
personality, and of the importance of the task on which they were
engaged. Catullus, although he is much preoccupied with, and most
frank in communicating his feelings and pursuits, has much less of the
consciousness of genius, is much more humble in his aspirations, and
more modest in his estimate of himself. In this, as in other respects,
he approaches nearer to the type of Greek art than any of his
brother-poets of Rome.
It is a common remark that the very greatest poets are those about
whose personal characteristics least is known. It is impossible
in their case to determine how far they have expressed their real
sympathies or convictions. They rise above the prejudices of their
country and the accidents of their time, and can see the good and
evil inseparably mixed in all human action. No criticism can throw any
trustworthy light on the personal position, the pursuits and aims, the
outward and inward experience of Homer. It cannot even be determined
with certainty how much of the poetry which bears his name is the
creation of one, seemingly, inexhaustible genius; and how much is the
'divine voice' of earlier singers still 'floating around him.' Such
inquiries are ever attracting and ever baffling a high curiosity. They
leave the mind perplexed with the doubt whether it is discerning,
in the far distance, the outline of solid mountain-land, or only the
transient shapes of the clouds. Hesiod, on the other hand, a poet of
perhaps equal antiquity, but of an infinitely lower order of genius,
has left his own likeness graphically delineated on his remains. There
is much to interest a reader in the old didactic poem, 'The Works
and Days,' but it is not the interest of studying a work of art or of
creative genius. The charm of the book consists partly in its power
of calling up the ideas of a remote antiquity and of human life in its
most elemental conditions; partly in the distinct impression which
it bears of a character of an antique and primitive and yet not
unfamiliar type;--a character of deep natural piety and righteousness,
but with a quaint intermixture of other qualities;--homespun sagacity
and worldly wisdom; genuine thrift, and horror of idleness, of war,
of seafaring enterprise;--sardonic dislike of the airs and vices of
women, and a grim discontent with his own condition, and with the poor
soil which it was his lot to till[6]. It is through his want of those
gifts of genius which have made Homer immortal as a poet, and a mere
name as a man, that Hesiod has left so distinct a picture of himself
to the latest times. In like manner Roman poetry, while never rising
to the heights of purely creative and impersonal genius, from this
very defect, is a truer revelation of the poets themselves. The
Aeneid supplies ample materials for understanding the affections and
convictions of Virgil. Lucretius makes his personal presence felt
through the whole march of his argument, and supports every position
of his system not with his logic only, but with the whole force of his
nature. The fragments of Ennius and of Lucilius afford ample evidence
by which we may judge what kind of men they were.
It thus appears that, over and above their higher and finer
excellences, the Roman poets have this additional source of interest,
that, more than any other authors in the vigorous times of antiquity,
they satisfy the modern curiosity in regard to personal character
and experience. These poets have themselves left the most trustworthy
record of their happiest hours and most real interests; of their
standard of conduct, their personal worth, and their strength of
affection; of the studies and the occupations in which they passed
their lives, and of the spirit in which they awaited the certainty of
their end.
It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of
this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided
into four great periods:--
I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about
B.C. 240 till about B.C. 100:
II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical career
belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the
outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey:
III. The Augustan age:
IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus.
The poetry of each of these periods is distinctly marked in form,
style, and character. There is evidently a great advance in artistic
accomplishment and in poetical feeling, from the rude cyclopean
remains of the annals of Ennius to the stately proportions and
elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid. Yet this advance was attended
with some loss as well as gain. With infinitely less accomplishment
and less variety, the older writers show signs of a robuster life and
a more vigorous understanding than some at least of those who adorn
the Augustan era. They endeavoured to work in the spirit of the
great masters, who had made the most heroic passions and most serious
interests of men the subject of their art. They were men also of the
same fibre as the chief actors on the stage of public affairs, living
with them in familiar friendship, while at the same time maintaining
a close sympathy with popular feeling and the national life. Their
fragments are thus, apart from their intrinsic merits, especially
valuable as the contemporary language of that great time, and as
giving some expression to the strength, the dignity, and the freedom
which were stamped upon the old Republic.
For more than a generation after the death of Accius and Lucilius, no
new poet of any eminence appeared at Rome. The vivid enjoyment of
life and the sense of security which usually accompany and foster
the successful cultivation of art had been rudely interrupted by
the convulsions of the State. A new birth of Roman poetry took place
during the brief lull between the storms of the first and second civil
wars. The new poets arose independently of the old literature. They
appealed not to popular favour, but to the tastes of the few and
the educated; they gave expression not to any public or national
sentiment, but to their individual thought and feeling. Their works
reflect the restless agitation of a time of revolution; but they show
also all the vigour and sincerity of republican freedom. While greatly
superior to the fragments of the older poetry in refinement of style,
and in depth and variety of poetical feeling, they want the simple
strength of moral conviction, and the interest in great practical
affairs, which characterised their predecessors. They are inferior to
the poets of the Augustan age in artistic skill; but they show
more force of thought, or more intensity of passion, a stronger and
livelier inspiration, a bolder and more independent character.
The short interval between the death of Catullus and the appearance of
the Bucolics of Virgil marks the beginning of a new era in literature
and in history:
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Catullus, dying only a few years before the extinction of popular
freedom, is, in every nerve and fibre, the poet of a republic. Virgil,
even before the final success of Augustus, proclaimed the advent of
the new Empire; and he became the sincere admirer and interpreter
of its order and magnificence. Most of the other poets of that age,
though born before the overthrow of the Republic, show the influence
of their time, not only by sympathy with or acquiescence in the new
order of things, but by a perceptible lowering in the higher energies
of life. Still, the poetry of the Augustan age, if inferior in natural
force to that of the Republic, is the culmination of all the previous
efforts of Roman art; and presents at the same time the most complete
and elaborate picture of Roman and Italian life.
The chief interest of Roman poetry, considered as the work of men of
natural genius and cultivated taste, and as the expression of great
national ideas or of individual thought and impulse, ceases with the
end of the Augustan age. Under the continued pressure of the Empire,
true poetical inspiration and pure feeling for art were lost. One
certain test of this decay is the absence of musical power and
sweetness from the verse of the later poets. Yet some of the poets of
the Empire have their own peculiar value. Lucan and Juvenal recall in
their vigorous rhetoric the masculine tone and fervid feeling of
the old Roman character, liberalised by the progress of thought and
education. In the Satires of Persius, there is an atmosphere of purer
morality than in any earlier Roman writer, with the exception of
Cicero. There is much vigour, sense, wit, and a keen appreciation of
life, intermingled with the coarseness of Martial. Yet it is owing
rather to their rhetorical or their intellectual ability and to their
historical interest, than to their poetical genius, that these writers
are still read and admired. If good taste, culture, and devotion to
the Muses could make a man a poet in an unpoetical age, Statius would
be counted among the great poets of Rome. The artificial epics of
Silius Italicus and Valerius Flaccus may be occasionally read in the
interests of learning: but it is hardly probable that they will, or
desirable that they should, ever be permanently restored from the
neglect and oblivion into which they have long been sinking.
This review of Roman poetry will bring before us the origin and
progressive growth of a branch of literature, moulded, indeed, on
the forms of a foreign art, but executed with native energy, and
expressive of native character. In this poetry not the genius only,
but the whole nature and sympathies of some of the more interesting
men of antiquity are displayed. It throws light on the impulses of
thought and feeling which influenced the action of different epochs
in Roman history. The great qualities of Rome are seen to mould and
animate her poetry. These qualities are found in harmonious union with
the spirit of enjoyment and the sense of exuberant life, fostered by
the genial air of Italy; and with a refinement of taste drawn from the
purest source of human culture which the world has ever enjoyed. After
all deductions have been made for their want of inventiveness, it
still remains true, that the Roman poets of the last days of the
Republic and of the Augustan age have added to the masterpieces of
literature some great works of native feeling as well as of finished
execution.
[Footnote 1: Hom. Od. xxii. 347.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 2, 3. Sero igitur a
nostris poetae vel cogniti vel recepti. At contra oratorem
celeriter complexi sumus: nec cum primo eruditum, aptum tamen
ad dicendum.]
[Footnote 3: Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography, art.
Catullus.]
[Footnote 4: Horace, Sat. i. 10. 45.]
[Footnote 5: 'He used from time to time to intrust all his
secret thoughts to his books, as to trusty friends; it was to
them only he turned in evil fortune or in good; and thus it
is, that the whole life of the old poet lies before our eyes,
as if it were portrayed on a votive picture.'--Sat. ii. 1.
30.]
[Footnote 6: The parallel which Mr. Ruskin draws (Modern
Painters, vol. iii. p. 194) between an ancient Greek and 'a
good, conscientious, but illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border
farmer of a century or two back,' becomes intelligible if we
regard Hesiod as a normal type of the Greek mind.]
CHAPTER II.
VESTIGES OF EARLY INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME AND ANCIENT ITALY.
The Romans themselves traced the origin of their poetry, as of all
their literary culture, to their contact with the mind of Greece.
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
The first productive literary impulse was communicated to the Roman
mind by the Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who, in the year B.C.
240--one year after the end of the First Punic War--brought out,
before a Roman audience, a drama translated or imitated from the
Greek. From this time Roman poetry advanced along the various channels
which the creative energy of Greek genius had formed.
But it has been maintained, in recent times, that this was but
the second birth of Roman poetry, and that a golden age of native
minstrelsy had preceded this historical development of literature.
The most distinguished supporters of this theory were Niebuhr and
Macaulay. In the preface to his _Lays of Rome_, Macaulay says that
'this early literature abounded with metrical romances, such as are
found in every country where there is much curiosity and intelligence,
but little reading and writing.' Niebuhr went so far as to assert that
the Romans in early times possessed epic poems, 'which in power and
brilliance of imagination leave everything produced by the Romans in
later times far behind them.' He held that the flourishing period of
this native poetry was the fifth century after the foundation of
the city. He supposed that the early lays were of plebeian origin,
strongly animated by plebeian sentiment, and familiarly known among
the mass of the people; that they disappeared after the ascendency of
the new literature, chiefly through the influence of Ennius; and that
his immediate predecessor, Naevius, was the last of the genuine native
minstrels. He professed to find clear traces of these ballads and
epic poems in the fine legends of early Roman history. His theory was
supported by arguments founded on the testimony of ancient writers, on
indications of the early recognition of poetry by the Roman State (as,
for instance, the worship of the Camenae), on the poetical character
of early Roman story, and on the analogy of other nations.
Although there may be no more ground for believing in a golden age of
early Roman poetry than in a golden age of innocence and happiness,
yet the question raised by Niebuhr deserves attention, not only on
account of the celebrity which it obtained, but also as opening up
an inquiry into the nature and value of the rude germs of literature
which the Latin soil spontaneously produced. Though there is no
substantial evidence of the existence among the Romans of anything
corresponding to the modern ballad or the early epic of Greece, yet
certain kinds of metrical composition did spring up and flourish among
the Italians, previous to and independent of their knowledge of
Greek literature. It is worth while to ascertain what these kinds of
composition were, as they throw light on some natural tendencies of
the race, which ultimately obtained their adequate expression, and
helped to impart a native and original character to Latin literature.
It was observed in the former chapter that while the metres of all the
great Roman poets were founded on the earlier metres of Greece, there
was a native Italian metre, called the Saturnian, which was employed
apparently in various kinds of composition, and was quite different in
character from the heroic and lyric measures adopted by the
cultivated poets of a later age. This metre was used not only in rude
extemporaneous effusions, but also in the long poem of Naevius, on
the First Punic War. Horace indicates his sense of the roughness and
barbarism of the metre, in the lines,
Sic horridus ille
Defluxit numerus Saturnius, et grave virus
Munditiae pepulere[1].
Ennius speaks contemptuously of the verse of Naevius, as that employed
by the old prophetic bards, before any of the gifts of poetry had been
received or cultivated--
Quum neque musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
Nec dicti studiosus erat.
The irregularity of the metre may be inferred from a saying of an
ancient grammarian, that, in the long epic of Naevius he could find no
single line to serve as a normal specimen of its structure. From the
few Saturnian lines remaining, it may be inferred that the verse had
an irregular trochaic movement; and it seems first to have come into
use as an accompaniment to the beating of the foot in a primitive
rustic dance. The name, connected with Saturnus, the old Land-God of
Italy, points to the rustic origin of the metre. It was known also by
the name Faunian, derived from another of the Divinities worshipped in
the rural districts of Italy. It seems first to have been employed in
ritual prayers and thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth, and in
the grotesque raillery accompanying the merriment and license of the
harvest-home. It is of the Saturnian verse that Virgil speaks in the
lines of the second Georgic--
Nec non Ausonii, Troja gens missa, coloni
Versibus incomptis ludunt risuque soluto[2].
As the long roll of the hexameter and the stately march of the alcaic
were expressive of the gravity and majesty of the Roman State, so the
ring and flow of the Saturnian verse may be regarded as indicative
of the freedom and genial enjoyment of life, characterising the old
Italian peasantry.
The most important kinds of compositions produced in this metre, under
purely native influences, may be classed as,
1. Hymns or ritual verses.
2. Prophetic verses.
3. Festive and satiric verses, uttered in dialogue or in rude mimetic
drama.
4. Short gnomic or didactic verses.
5. Commemorative odes sung or recited at banquets and funerals.
1. The earliest extant specimen of the Latin language is a fragment of
the hymn of the Fratres Arvales, a priestly brotherhood, who offered,
on every 15th of May, public sacrifices for the fertility of the
fields. This fragment is variously written and interpreted, but there
can be no doubt that it is the expression of a prayer for protection
against pestilence, addressed to the Lares and the god Mars, and that
it was uttered with the accompaniment of dancing. The following is the
reading of the fragment, as given by Mommsen:--
Enos, Lases, juvate.
Ne veluerve, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores.
Satur fu, fere Mars.
Limen sali.
Sta berber.
Semunis alternis advocapit conctos.
Enos, Marmar, juvato.
Triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe, triumpe[3].
The address to Mars 'Satur fu,' or, according to another reading,
'Satur furere,' 'be satisfied or done with raging,' probably refers
to the severity of the winter and early spring[4]. The words have
reference to the attributes of the God in the old Italian religion,
in which the powers of Nature were deified and worshipped long before
Mars was identified with the Greek Ares. The other expressions in the
prayer appear to be, either directions given to the dancers, or the
sounds uttered as the dance proceeded.
Another short fragment has been preserved from the hymn of the Salii,
also an ancient priesthood, supposed to date from the times of
the early kings. The hymn is characterised by Horace, among other
specimens of ancient literature, as equally unintelligible to himself
and to its affected admirers[5].
From the extreme antiquity of these ceremonial chants it may be
inferred that metrical expression among the Romans, as among the
Greeks and other ancient nations, owed its origin to a primitive
religious worship. But while the early Greek hymns or chants in
honour of the Gods soon assumed the forms of pleasant tales of
human adventure, or tragic tales of human suffering, the Roman hymns
retained their formal and ritual character unchanged among all the
changes of creed and language. In the lines just quoted there is no
trace of creative fancy, nor any germ of devotional feeling, which
might have matured into lyrical or contemplative poetry. They sound
like the words of a rude incantation. They are the obscure memorial
of a primitive, agricultural people, living in a blind sense of
dependence on their gods, and restrained by a superstitious formalism
from all activity of thought or fancy. Such compositions cannot be
attributed to the inspiration or skill of any early poet, but seem to
have been copied from the uncouth and spontaneous shouts of a simple,
unsophisticated priesthood, engaged in a rude ceremonial dance.
If these hymns stand in any relation to Latin literature, they
may perhaps be regarded as springing from the same vein of public
sentiment, as called forth the hymn composed by Livius Andronicus
during the Second Punic War, and as rude precursors of those composed
by Catullus and Horace, and chanted by a chorus of youths and maidens
in honour of the protecting Deities of Rome.
2. The verses of the Fauns and Vates spoken of by Ennius, with
allusion to the poem of Naevius, in the lines,
Scripsere alii rem,
Versibu' quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
were probably as far removed from poetry as the ritual chants of the
Salii and the Fratres Arvales. The Fauni were the woodland gods of
Italy, and were, besides their other functions, supposed to be endowed
with prophetic power[6]. The word _Vates_, till the Augustan age,
meant not a poet but a soothsayer. The Camenae or Casmenae (another
form of which word appears in Carmenta, the prophetic mother of
Evander) were worshipped, not as the inspirers of poetry, but as the
foretellers of future events[7]. Both Greeks and Romans sought to
obtain a knowledge of the future, either through the interpretation of
omens, or through the voice of persons supposed to be divinely endowed
with foresight. But the Greeks, even in the regard which they paid
to auguries and oracles, were influenced, for the most part, by their
lively imagination; while the Romans, from the earliest to the latest
eras of their history, in all their relations to the supernatural
world, adhered to a scrupulous and unimaginative ceremonialism. The
notices in Latin literature of the functions of these early Vates--as,
for instance, the counsel of the Etrurian seer to drain the Alban Lake
during the war with Veii, and the prophecy of Marcius uttered during
the Second Punic War,
Amnem Trojugena Cannam Romane fuge, etc.[8],
suggest no more idea of poetical inspiration than the occasional
notices, in Latin authors, of the oracles of the Sibylline books. The
language of prophecy naturally assumes a metrical or rhythmical form,
partly as an aid to the memory, partly, perhaps, as a means of giving
to the words uttered the effect of a more solemn intonation. In
Greece, the oracles of the Delphian priestess, and the predictions
of soothsayers, collected in books or circulating orally among the
people, were expressed in hexameter verse and in the traditional
diction of epic poetry; but they were never ranked under any form of
poetic art. The verses of the Vates, so far as any inference can be
formed as to their nature, appear to have been products and proofs
of unimaginative superstition or imposture, rather than of any
imaginative inspiration among the early inhabitants of Latium.
3. Another class of metrical compositions, of native origin, but of a
totally opposite character, was known by the name of the 'Fescennine
verses.' These arose out of a very different class of feelings and
circumstances. Horace attributes their origin to the festive meetings
and exuberant mirth of the harvest-home among a primitive, strong, and
cheerful race of husbandmen. He points out how this rustic raillery
gradually assumed the character of fierce lampoons, and had to be
restrained by law:--
Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit;
Libertasque recurrentes accepta per annos
Lusit amabiliter, donec jam saevus apertam
In rabiem coepit verti jocus et per honestas
Ire domos impune minax. Doluere cruento
Dente lacessiti; fuit intactis quoque cura
Conditione super communi; quin etiam lex
Poenaque lata, malo quae nollet carmine quemquam
Describi; vertere modum, formidine fustis
Ad bene dicendum delectandumque redacti[9].
The change in character, here described, from coarse and good-humoured
bantering to libellous scurrility, may be conjectured to have taken
place when the Fescennine freedom passed from villages and country
districts to the active social and political life within the city.
That this change had taken place in Rome at an early period, is proved
by the fact that libellous verses were forbidden by the laws of the
Twelve Tables[10]. The original Fescennine verse appears, from the
testimony of Horace, to have been in metrical dialogue. This rude
amusement, in which a coarse kind of banter was interchanged during
their festive gatherings, was in early times characteristic of the
rural populations of Greece and Sicily, as well as Italy, and was one
of the original elements out of which Greek comedy and Greek pastoral
poetry were developed. These verses had a kindred origin with that of
the Phallic Odes among the Greeks. They both appear to have sprung out
of the rudest rites and the grossest symbolism of rustic paganism. The
Fescennine raillery long retained traces of this original character.
Catullus mentions the 'procax Fescennina locutio,' among the
accompaniments of marriage festivals; and the songs of the soldiers,
in the extravagant license of the triumphal procession, betrayed
unmistakably this primitive coarseness.
These rude and inartistic verses, which took their name either from
the town of Fescennia in Etruria or from the word fascinum[11], were
the first expression of that aggressive and censorious spirit which
ultimately animated Roman satire. But the original satura, which also
was familiar to the Romans before they became acquainted with Greek
literature, was somewhat different both from the Fescennine verses,
and from the lampoons which arose out of them. The more probable
etymology[12] of the word _satura_ connects it in origin with the
_satura lanx_, a plate filled with various kinds of fruit offered to
the gods. If this etymology be the true one, the word meant originally
a medley of various contents, like the Italian _farsa_[13], and it
evidently had not lost this meaning when first employed in regular
literature by Ennius and Lucilius. The original satura was a kind of
dramatic entertainment, accompanied with music and dancing, differing
from the Fescennine verses in being regularly composed and not
extemporaneous, and from the drama, in being without a connected
plot. The origin of this composition is traced by Livy[14] to the
representation of Etrurian dancers, who were brought to Rome during a
pestilence. The Roman youth, according to his account, being moved to
imitation of these representations, in which there was neither acting
nor speaking, added to them the accompaniment of verses of a humorous
character; and continued to represent these jocular medleys, combined
with music (_saturas impletas modis_), even after the introduction of
the regular drama.
These scenic saturae, which, from Livy's notice, appear to have been
accompanied with good-humoured hilarity rather than with scurrilous
raillery, prepared the way for the reception of the regular drama
among the Romans, and will, to some extent, account for its early
popularity among them. The later Roman satire long retained traces of
a connexion with this primitive and indigenous satura, evinced both
by the miscellaneous character of its topics, and by its frequent
employment of dramatic dialogue.
4. The didactic tendency which is so conspicuous in the cultivated
literature of Rome manifested itself also in the indigenous
compositions of Italy. The popular maxims and precepts preserved by
the old agricultural writers and afterwards embodied by Virgil in
his Georgics, were handed down from generation to generation in the
Saturnian rhythm. But, apparently, the first metrical composition
committed to writing was a poem of an ethical or didactic character,
written two generations before the first dramatic representation of
Livius Andronicus, by Appius Claudius Caecus, who is also the earliest
known to us in the long line of Roman orators[15].
5. But it was not from any of these sources that Niebuhr supposed the
poetical character of early Roman history to be derived. Nor is there
any analogy between the religious hymns, or the Fescennine verses of
Italy, and the modern ballad. But there is evidence of the existence,
at one time, of other metrical compositions of which scarcely anything
is definitely ascertained, except that they were sung at banquets, to
the accompaniment of the flute, in celebration of the praises of great
men. There is no direct evidence of the time when these compositions,
some of which were believed by Niebuhr to have attained the dimensions
of Epic poems, existed, or when they fell into disuse. Cato, as quoted
by Cicero in the Tusculan Disputations, and in the Brutus[16], is our
earliest authority on the subject. His testimony is to the effect that
many generations before his time, the guests at banquets were in the
habit of singing, in succession, the praises of great men, to the
music of the flute. Cicero, in the Brutus, expresses a wish that these
songs still existed in his own day; 'utinam exstarent illa carmina,
quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a
singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus scriptum
reliquit Cato.' Varro again is quoted, to the effect that boys used
to be present at banquets, for the purpose of singing 'ancient poems,'
celebrating the praises of their ancestors. Valerius Maximus mentions
'that the older men used at banquets to celebrate in song the
illustrious deeds of their ancestors, in order to stimulate the
youth to imitate them.' Passages are quoted also from Horace,
from Dionysius, and from Tacitus, implying a belief in the ancient
existence of these compositions.
Besides the odes sung or recited at banquets, there were certain
funeral poems, called _Naeniae_, originally chanted by the female
relatives of the deceased, but afterwards by hired women. As the
practice of public speaking advanced, these gradually passed into a
mere form, and were superseded by funeral orations.
The facts ascertained about these commemorative poems amount to no
more than this,--that they were sung at banquets and the funerals of
great men--that they were of such length as to admit of several being
sung in succession,--and that they fell into disuse some generations
before the age of Cato. The inferences that may fairly be drawn from
these statements are opposed to some of the conclusions of Niebuhr.
The evidence is all in favour of their having been short lyrical
pieces, and not long narrative poems. As they were sung at great
banquets and funerals, it seems probable that, like the custom of
exhibiting the ancestral images on the same occasions, they owed their
origin to the patrician pride of family, and were not likely to have
been animated by strong plebeian sentiment. If they had been preserved
at all, they were thus more likely to have been preserved by members
of the great houses living within the city walls, than by the
peasantry living among the outlying hills and country districts. If
ever there were any golden age of early Roman poetry, it had passed
away long before the time of Ennius and Cato.
The fact, however, remains, that the Romans did possess, in early
times, some kind of native minstrelsy, in which they honoured the
memory and the exploits of their great men. And this impulse of
hero-worship became in later times an important factor in their epic
poetry. But is there any reason to suppose that these compositions
were of the nature and importance assigned to them by Niebuhr, and had
any value in respect of invention and execution? It is difficult to
believe that such a native force of feeling and imagination, pouring
itself forth in stirring ballads and continuous epic poems, could have
been frozen so near its source; or that a rich, popular poetry, not
scattered through thinly-peopled districts, but the possession of
a great commonwealth--one most tenacious of every national
memorial--could have entirely disappeared, under any foreign
influence, in the course of one or two generations. But even on the
supposition that a great national poetry might have passed from the
memory of men--as, possibly, the poems existing before the time of
Homer may have been lost or merged in the greater glories of the Iliad
and the Odyssey--this early poetry could not have perished without
leaving permanent influence on the Roman language. The growth of
poetical language necessarily accompanies the growth of poetical
feeling and inspiration. The sensuous, passionate, and musical force
by which a language is first moulded into poetry is transmitted from
one generation of poets to another. The language of Homer, by its
natural and musical flow, by its accumulated wealth of meaning, by the
use of traditional epithets and modes of expression, that penetrate
far back into the belief, the feelings, and the life of an earlier
time, implies the existence of a long line of poets who preceded him.
On the other hand, the diction of the fragments of Ennius, in its
strength and in its rudeness, is evidently, in great measure, the
creation of his own time and his own mind. He has no true discernment
of the characteristic difference between the language of prose and of
poetry. The materials of his art had not been smoothed and polished
by any long, continuous stream of national melody, but were rough-hewn
and adapted by his own energy to the rugged structure of his poem.
While, therefore, it appears that the actual notices of the early
commemorative poems do not imply that they were the products of
imagination or poetical feeling, or that they excited much popular
enthusiasm, and were an important element in the early State, their
entire disappearance among a people so tenacious of all their gains,
and, still more, the unformed and prosaic condition of the language
and rhythm used by Naevius, Ennius, and the other early poets, lead to
the presumption, that they were not much valued by the Romans at any
time, and that they were not the creations of poetic genius and art.
This presumption is further strengthened by such indications as there
are of the recognition, or rather the non-recognition, of poets or of
the poetic character at Rome in early times.
The worship of the Camenae was indeed an old and genuine part of the
Roman or Italian religion; but, as was said before, their original
function was to predict future events, and to communicate the
knowledge of divination; not like that of the Greek Muses, to imagine
bright stories of divine and human adventure,--
[Greek: lêsmosynên te kakôn ampauma te mermêraôn.]
Even the names by which two of the Camenae were known--Postvorta and
Antevorta--suggest the prosaic and practical functions which they were
supposed to fulfil. The Romans had no native word equivalent to the
Greek word [Greek: aoidos], denoting the primary and most essential
of all poetical gifts, the power to awaken the music of language. The
word _vates_, as was seen, denoted a prophet. The title of _scriba_
was applied to Livius Andronicus; and Naevius, who has by some been
regarded as the last of the old race of Roman bards, applies to
himself the Greek name of _poeta_,--
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam.
The commemorative odes appear to have been recited or sung at
banquets, not by poets or rhapsodists, but by boys or guests. There is
one notice, indeed, of a class of men who practised the profession of
minstrelsy. This passage, which is quoted by Aulus Gellius from the
writings of Cato, implies the very lowest estimation of the position
and character of the poet, and points more naturally to the composers
of the libellous verses forbidden by the laws of the Twelve Tables,
than to the authors of heroic and national lays:--'Poetry was not held
in honour; if anyone devoted himself to it, or went about to banquets,
he was called a vagabond[17].'
It appears that, on this ground also, there is no reason for believing
in the existence of any golden age of Roman poetry before the time
of Ennius, or in the theory that the legendary tales of Roman history
were created and shaped by native minstrels. To what cause, then, can
we attribute their origin? These tales have a strong human interest,
and represent marked and original types of antique heroism. They have
the elements of true tragic pathos and moral grandeur. They could
neither have arisen nor been preserved except among a people endowed
with strong capacities of feeling and action. But the strength of
the Roman mind consisted more in retentive capacity than in creative
energy. Their art and their religion, their family and national
customs, aimed at preserving the actual memory of men and of their
actions: not like the arts, ceremonies, and customs of the Greeks,
which aimed at lifting the mind out of reality into an ideal world. As
one of the chief difficulties of the Homeric controversy arises from
our ignorance of the power of the memory during an age when poetry
and song were in the fullest life, but the use of letters was either
unknown, or extremely limited; so there is a parallel difficulty in
all attempts to explain the origin of early Roman history, from our
ignorance of the power of oral tradition in a time of long established
order, but yet unacquainted with any of the forms of literature.
The indifference of barbarous tribes to their past history can prove
little or nothing as to the tenacity of the national memory among a
people far advanced towards civilisation like the Romans after the
establishment of their Republican form of government. Nor can the
analogy of early Greek traditions be fairly applied to those of Rome,
owing to the great difference in the circumstances and the genius
of the two nations. Many real impressions of the past might fix
themselves indelibly in the grave and solid temperament of the Romans,
which would have been lost amid the inexhaustible wealth of fancy
that had been lavished upon the Greeks. The strict family life and
discipline of the Romans, the continuity of their religious colleges,
the unity of a single state as the common centre of all their
interests, the slow and steady growth of their institutions, their
strong regard for precedent, were all conditions more favourable
to the preservation of tradition than the lively social life, the
numerous centres of political organisation, and the rapid growth and
vicissitudes of the Greek Republics.
It cannot, indeed, be disputed that although the legendary tales of
Roman history may have drawn more of their colour from life than from
imagination, yet there is no criterion by which the amount of fact
contained in them can be separated from the other elements of which
they were composed. Oral tradition among the Romans, as among other
nations, was founded on impressions originally received without
any careful sifting of evidence; and these first impressions would
naturally be modified in accordance with the feelings and opinions
of each generation, through which they were transmitted. Aetiological
myths, or the attempt to explain some institution or memorial by some
concrete fact, and the systematic reconstruction of forgotten events,
have also entered largely into the composition of Roman history. But
these admissions do not lead to the conclusion that the art or fancy
of any class of early poets was added to the unconscious operation
of popular feeling in moulding the impressive tales of early heroism,
partly out of the memory of real events and personages, partly out
of the ideal of character, latent in the national mind. It has
been remarked by Sir G. C. Lewis that many even of the Greek myths,
abounding 'in striking, pathetic, and interesting events,' existed
as prose legends, and were handed down in the common speech of the
people. In like manner, such tales as those of Lucretia and Virginia,
of Horatius and the Fabii, of Cincinnatus, Coriolanus, and Camillus,
which stand out prominently in the twilight of Roman history, may have
been preserved in _fama vulgaris_, or among the family traditions of
the great houses, till they were gathered into the poem of Ennius and
the prose narratives of the early annalists[18]. In so far as they
are shaped or coloured by imagination, they do not bear traces of the
conscious art of a poet, but rather of an unconscious conformity
to the national ideal of character. The most impressive of these
legendary stories illustrate the primitive virtues of the Roman
character, such as chastity, frugality, fortitude, and self-devotion;
or the national characteristics of patrician pride and a stern
exercise of parental authority. There is certainly no internal
evidence that any of them originated in a pure poetic impulse, or gave
birth to any work of poetic art deserving a permanent existence in
literature.
The analogy of other nations might suggest the inference that a race
which in its maturity produced a genuine poetic literature must,
in the early stages of its history, have given some proof of poetic
inspiration. It is natural to associate the idea of poetry with youth
both in nations and individuals. Yet the evidence of their language,
of their religion, and of their customs, leads to the conclusion that
the Romans, while prematurely great in action and government, were, in
the earlier stages of their national life, little moved by any kind of
poetical imagination. The state of religious feeling or belief which
gives birth to or co-exists with primitive poetry has left no trace
of itself upon the early Roman annals. It is generally found that a
fanciful mythology, of a bright, gloomy, or grotesque character, in
accordance with the outward circumstances and latent spirit or humour
of the particular race among whom it originates, precedes and for a
time accompanies the poetry of romantic action. The creative faculty
produces strange forms and conditions of supernatural life out of its
own mysterious sympathy with Nature, before it learns to invent tales
of heroic action and of tragic calamity out of its sympathy with human
energy and passion, and its interest in marking the course of destiny,
and the vicissitudes of life. The development of the Roman religion
betrays the absence, or at least the weaker influence of that
imaginative power which shaped the great mythologies of different
races out of the primeval worship of nature. The later element
introduced into Roman religion was due not to imagination but to
reflection. The worship of Fides, Concordia, Pudicitia, and the like,
marks a great progress from the early adoration of the sun, the earth,
the vault of heaven, and the productive power of nature; but it is
a progress in understanding and moral consciousness, not in poetical
feeling nor imaginative power. It shows that Roman civilisation
advanced without this vivifying influence,--that the mind of the race
early reached the maturity of manhood, without passing through the
dreams of childhood or the buoyant fancies of youth.
The circumstances of the Romans, in early times, were also different
from those by which the growth of a romantic poetry has usually been
accompanied. Though, like all races born to a great destiny, they had
much latent imaginative ardour of feeling, this was employed by them,
unconsciously, in elevating and purifying the ideal of the State
and the family, as actually realised in experience. Their orderly
organisation,--the early establishment of their civic forms,--the
strict discipline of family life among them,--the formal and
ceremonial character of their national religion,--and their strong
interest in practical affairs,--were not calculated either to kindle
the glow of individual genius, or to dispose the mass of the people to
listen to the charm of musical verse. The wars of the young Republic,
carried on by a well-trained militia, for the acquisition of
new territory, formed the character to solid strength and steady
discipline, but could not act upon the fancy in the same way as the
distant enterprise, the long struggles for national independence, or
the daring forays, which have thrown the light of romance around the
warlike youth of other races. The tillage of the soil, in which
the brief intervals between their wars were passed, was a tame and
monotonous pursuit compared with the maritime adventure which awoke
the energies of Greece, or with the wild and lonely, half-pastoral,
half-marauding life, out of which a true ballad poetry arose in modern
times. Some traces of a wilder life, or some faint memories of their
Sabine forefathers, may be dimly discerned in the earliest traditions
of the Roman people; but their youth was essentially practical,--great
and strong in the virtues of temperance, gravity, fortitude, reverence
for law and the majesty of the State, combined with a strong love
of liberty and sturdy resistance to wrong. These qualities are the
foundations of a powerful and orderly State, not the root or the sap
by which a great national poetry is nourished[19].
If the pure Roman intellect and discipline had spontaneously produced
any kind of literature, it would have been more likely to have taken
the form of history or oratory than of national song or ballad. It
was from men of the Italian provinces, and not from her own sons, that
Rome received her poetry. The men of the most genuinely Roman type and
character long resisted all literary progress. The patrons and friends
of the early poets were the more liberal members of the aristocracy,
in whom the austerity of the national character and narrowness of the
national mind had yielded to new ideas and a wider experience. The
art of Greece was communicated to 'rude Latium,' through the medium of
those kindred races who had come into earlier contact with the Greek
language and civilisation. With less native strength, but with
greater flexibility, these races were more readily moulded by foreign
influences; and, leading a life of greater ease and freedom, they were
more susceptible to all the impulses of Nature. While they were thus
more readily prepared to catch the spirit of Greek culture, they
had learned, through long years of war and subsequent dependence,
to understand and respect the imperial State in which their own
nationality had been merged. It is important to remember that the time
in which Roman literature arose was not only that of the first active
intercourse between Greeks and Romans, but also that in which a great
war, against the most powerful State outside of Italy, had awakened
the sense of an Italian nationality, of which Rome was the centre.
The great Republic derived her education and literature from the
accumulated stores of Greek thought and feeling; but these were made
available to her through the willing service of poets who, though born
in other parts of Italy, looked to Rome as the head and representative
of their common country.
[Footnote 1: Epist. ii. 1. 157.]
[Footnote 2: Georg. ii. 385.]
[Footnote 3: It is thus interpreted by the same author:--Nos, lares,
juvate. Ne malam luem, Mamers, sinas incurrere in plures. Satur esto,
fere Mars. In limen insili. Desiste verberare (limen)! Semones
alterni advocate cunctos. Nos, Mamers, juvato. Tripudia.
'Help us, Lares. Suffer not, Mamers, pestilence to fall on
the people. Be satisfied, fierce Mars. Leap on the threshold.
Cease beating it. Call, in turn, on all the demigods. Help us,
Mamers.'--Mommsen, Röm. Geschichte, vol. i. ch. xv.]
[Footnote 4: Such is the interpretation of Corssen, Origines
Poesis Romanae.]
[Footnote 5: Epist. ii. 1. 86.]
[Footnote 6: Cf. Virg. Aen. vii. 81, 82:--
At rex sollicitus monstris oracula Fauni,
Fatidici genitoris, adit.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 24, note 1.]
[Footnote 8: Livy xxv. 12.]
[Footnote 9: 'Through this fashion the Fescennine raillery
arose and poured forth rustic banter in responsive verse; the
spirit of freedom, made welcome, as the season came round,
first played its part genially; but soon the jests grew cruel,
then changed into sheer fury, and began, with impunity, to
threaten and assail honourable households. Men smarted
under the sharp edge of its cruel tooth: even those who were
unassailed felt concern for the common weal. A law was passed,
and a penalty enforced, forbidding any one to be lampooned
in scurrilous verses. Thus they changed their style, and were
brought back to a kindly and pleasant tone, under fear of a
beating.'--Epist. ii. 1. 144-55.]
[Footnote 10: Sei quis ocentasit, casmenue condisit, quod
infamiam faxsit flacitiomque alterei, fuste feritor.]
[Footnote 11: Teuffel quotes from Festus: Fescennini versus
qui canebantur in nuptiis, ex urbe Fescennina dicuntur allati,
sive ideo dicti quia fascinum putabantur arcere. It seems
more natural to connect the name of these verses, which
were especially characteristic of the Latin peasantry, with
fascinum (the phallic symbol) than with any particular town
of Etruria, though the name of that town may perhaps have the
same origin.]
[Footnote 12: Mommsen's explanation, 'the masque of the
full men' ('saturi'), does not seem to meet with general
acceptance.]
[Footnote 13: Cf. Teuffel, vi. 2.]
[Footnote 14: vii. 2.]
[Footnote 15: Cf. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p. 102.]
[Footnote 16: Tusc. Disp. iv. 2; Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 17: Noct. Att. xi. 2. A similar character at one
time attached to minstrels in Scotland.]
[Footnote 18: Some of these tales may have been originally
aetiological, but the human interest even in these was
probably drawn originally from actual incidents and personages
of the Early Republic. Some of the aetiological myths, such as
that of Attus Navius the augur, have no human interest, though
they have an historical interest in connexion with early Roman
religion or institutions.]
[Footnote 19: Cf. Schwegler, Röm. Gesch. i. 1. 24.]
CHAPTER III.
THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS,
B.C. 240-202.
The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar
contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum,
the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies
in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional
communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in
Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of
Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from
Epidaurus in B.C. 293, and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by
the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to
have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either
Greeks or men acquainted with that language[1]. The identification of
the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before Greek
literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius and
Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process. Greek
civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close
relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district,
such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of
by the Romans as 'Semi-Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum,
there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two
great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with
Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was
slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of
Rome began to attract the attention of Greek historians[2], and the
Romans, though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the
language and literature of Greece.
Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed
before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman
audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to
B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not
till the successful close of that war, and the commencement of
the following years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and
instruction was made familiar to the Romans.
Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis;
Et post Punica bella quietus quaerere coepit,
Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[3].
Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the
minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily
had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their
intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities
for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent
opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. There was
a theatre in every important town of Sicily, as may be seen in the
ruins still remaining on the sites of Segesta, Syracuse, Tauromenium,
and Catana; and the enjoyment of the drama entered largely into the
life of the Sicilian, as it had into that of the Italian Greeks. Many
Greeks also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of
Tarentum, and were employed in educating the young among the
higher classes. Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their
circumstances and education, to take interest in the legends and in
the dramatic form of literature introduced from Greece; while the
previous existence of the saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at
Rome, tended to make the new comic drama at least acceptable to the
mass of the population.
The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the
First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During
this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory,
history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of
five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The
whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered
people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved
upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and
great productive energy, but with little sense of art, and endowed
with faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of
life than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle
against the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art
and to the rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to
other disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass
of the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference
of the educated class for the more finished works already existing in
Greek literature.
Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and
such scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected
with the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity.
Naevius, the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native
poet, was actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the
time of his death; about which period his greater successor first
appeared at Rome. For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic
and tragic poetry. The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew,
Pacuvius. He, in the later years of his life, lived in friendly
intercourse with his younger rival Accius, who, again, in his old age,
had frequently conversed with Cicero[4]. The torch, which was first
lighted by Livius Andronicus from the decaying fires of Greece, was
thus handed down by these few men, through this long period, until it
was extinguished during the stormy times which fell in the youth of
the great orator and prose writer of the Republic.
The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the
tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest
introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all
the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the
comic writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and
Ennius. It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both
in form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on
the later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the
time. The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three,
is generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown
earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification
of the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius,
who was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius.
No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern
times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this
long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly
from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been
preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but
by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech
contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to
the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that
which really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting
fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient
poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can
be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity, be
incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a consistent
impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought and
sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic
worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their
antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral
and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the
strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time
when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness.
The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the
literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the
end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius. Of
the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are scanty
and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely as
illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius
and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older
dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are
not worth reading a second time[5].' The importance which attaches
to Livius consists in his being the accidental medium through which
literary art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and,
as is generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. He educated the sons
of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from whom he afterwards received
his freedom. The last thirty years of his life were devoted to
literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the Greek drama in a
Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been founded on Greek
subjects; most of them, probably, were translations. Among the titles,
we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Tereus_,
_Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be popular
with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved sufficient
to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of his general
mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from the scanty
remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and inelegance
of his diction.
In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian
verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is
spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under the
rod of Orbilius[6]. One or two lines of the translation still
remain, and exemplify its rough and prosaic diction, and the extreme
irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[7],
[Greek:
ou gar egôge ti phêmi kakôteron allo thalassês
andra ge syncheuai, ei kai mala karteros eiê],
are thus rendered:--
Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi
Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae.
He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second
Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter
novenae,' which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and
unpolished[8].
Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father
of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original
genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated
man. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign language,
and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to give the
direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a new
interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary that
the Romans should be educated before they could either produce or
appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a
brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study
and imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable
grace and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial
to the better side of Roman character.
Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the
first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of
original power. It has been supposed that he was a Campanian by
birth, on the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous
epitaph as 'plenum superbiae Campanae.' But the phrase 'Campanian
arrogance' seems to have been used proverbially for 'gasconade'; and
as there was a plebeian _Gens Naevia_ in Rome, it is quite as
probable that he was by birth a Roman citizen. The strong political
partisanship displayed in his plays seems favourable to this
supposition, as is also the active interference of the tribunes on his
behalf. Weight must however be given to the remark of Mommsen, 'the
hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a citizen of
Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact
that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of
explanation.' On the other hand it has been observed that had he been
an alien the tribunes could not have interfered on his behalf. He
served either in the Roman army or among the _Socii_ in the First
Punic War, and thus must have reached manhood before the year 241 B.C.
Cicero mentions that he lived to a good old age, and that he died
in exile about the end of the third century B.C.[9]. The date of his
birth may thus be fixed with approximate probability about the year
265 B.C. No particulars of his military service are recorded, but it
is most probable that the scene of his service was the west of Sicily,
on which the struggle was concentrated during the later years of the
war. If we connect the newly developed taste for the drama with the
intercourse of Romans with Sicilian Greeks during the war, we may
connect another important influence on Roman literature and Roman
belief which first appeared in the epic poem of Naevius with the
Phoenician settlements in the west of Sicily. The origin of the
belief in the mythical connexion of Aeneas and his Trojans with
the foundation of Rome may probably be attributed to the Sicilian
historian Timaeus; but the contact of the Romans and the Carthaginians
in the neighbourhood of Mount Eryx, may have suggested that part of
the legend which plays so large a part in the Aeneid, which brings
Aeneas from Sicily to Carthage and back again to the neighbourhood
of Mount Eryx. The actual collision of Roman and Phoenician on the
western shores of Sicily, of which Naevius may well have been a
witness, if it did not originate, gave a living interest to the
mythical origin of that antagonism in the relations of Aeneas and
Dido.
The earliest drama of Naevius was brought out in B.C. 235, five years
after the first representation of Livius Andronicus. The number of
dramas which he is known to have composed affords proof of great
industry and activity, from that time till the time of his banishment
from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than in tragedy, and he
used the stage, as it had been used by the writers of the old Attic
comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political warfare. A keen
partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence some of the
chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had passed into a
proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,--
Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules;
to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian,
Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.
In the year 206 B.C. Q. Caecilius Metellus was Consul, his brother M.
Metellus Praetor Urbanus, an office that held out an almost certain
prospect of the Consulship; and it has been suggested[10], with much
probability, that it was against them that this sneer was directed.
The Metelli carried out their threat, as Naevius was imprisoned, a
circumstance to which Plautus[11] alludes in one of the few passages
in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of Athenian
manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While in
prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which
contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was
liberated through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. But
he was soon after banished, and took up his residence at Utica, where
he is said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have
died, in B.C. 204[12], though the same author adds that Varro,
'diligentissimus investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was
still alive for some time after that date[13]. It is inferred, from
a passage in Cicero[14], that his poem on the First Punic War was
composed in his old age. Probably it was written in his exile, when
removed from the sphere of his active literary efforts. As he served
in that war, some time between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have
been well advanced in years at the time of his death.
The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most
favourable specimen of his style, is his epitaph:--
Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam,
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua.
It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest
against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to
Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the
life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame
and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to
disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly be
regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus, as
from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of
the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and
independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and
somewhat turbulent career.
He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except
the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector
Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as
the Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as
well as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken
in the Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the
Trojan War. The following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as
containing the germs of poetical diction:--
Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[15].
He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays,
founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or
_Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to
him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability,
attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows
considerable power of close satiric observation:--
Quasi pila
In choro ludens datatim dat se, et communem facit:
Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet;
Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem;
Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat;
Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[16].
The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his
dramas is the political spirit by which they were animated. Thus
Cicero[17] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii
ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time,
destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given,
Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[18].
The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him
in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which a
failing of the great Scipio is exposed[19]. Other fragments are
found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of
character:--
Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus[20]?
and this also[21]:--
Semper pluris feci potioremque ego
Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.
He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after
Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of
Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and
aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his
strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit
of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place
in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.
He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the
Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may
be regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the
Roman Senate ruled the world.
But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly
rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The
poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian
metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The
earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and of
Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court
of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the
poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main
substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and
tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from
the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and
literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic
representation.
Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem
of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil
followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius
(as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises,
leaving Troy in the night-time,--
Amborum
Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus
Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.
He represents Aeneas as having only one ship, built by Mercury,--a
limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which
the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the
storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus
complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of
the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's
epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He
speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there is
no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale
of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the
worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great
national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing
Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology
compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the
shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.
Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of
Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was
composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants
of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their
common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas
and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between
Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the
time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius,
that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter, and
promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the Romans
were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny. How
much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of
Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical
part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of
Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention, and
of a real adaptation to his main subject.
The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the
events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among
the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and
of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles
without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the
Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this
respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history,
and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The
slight and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the
poem, are expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with
the fidelity of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and
vigorous, but are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid
and graphic condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of
impetuosity in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and
energetic temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines,
Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram
Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[22].
But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford
ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some
evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was
written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be
inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every
fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old
grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he
could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as
a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong
testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one
place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[23].' In
the dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing
the idiomatic purity which distinguished the conversation of his
mother-in-law, Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of
Plautus and Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius
enim mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum
sermonis expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam
sic audio, ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis
ita recto et simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis
afferre videatur; ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic
majores[24].' Expressions from his plays were, from their weight and
compact brevity, quoted familiarly in the days of Cicero, such as
'sero sapiunt Phryges' and 'laudari a laudato viro,' which, like
so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to express a
distinction that could not be characterised in happier or shorter
terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he assumes to
himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote the Latin
language.
Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and
fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be
gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented
the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman
character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as
a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national
feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a
strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed
great productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and
vigorous lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper
have left their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his
epic poem. Probably his most important service to Roman literature
consisted in the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin
language. But the conception of his epic poem seems to imply some
share of the higher gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head
of the line of Roman poets, distinguished by that force of speech and
vehemence of temper, which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and
Juvenal; distinguished also by that national spirit which moved Ennius
and, after him, Virgil, to employ their poetical faculty in raising a
monument to commemorate the power and glory of Rome.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History,
vol. i. chap. ii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 3: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]
[Footnote 4: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]
[Footnote 5: Brutus, 18.]
[Footnote 6: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]
[Footnote 7: viii. 138.]
[Footnote 8: xxvii. 17.]
[Footnote 9: Brutus 15.]
[Footnote 10: By Prof. A. F. West of Princeton College, U.S.
'On a patriotic passage of the Miles Gloriosus of Plautus.']
[Footnote 11: Plautus, Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]
[Footnote 12: Brutus, 15.]
[Footnote 13: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired
to Utica till after it fell into the possession of the
Romans.]
[Footnote 14: De Senectute, 14.]
[Footnote 15: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king,
hasten straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is
of nature's growth, not planted by man.']
[Footnote 16: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses
about from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she
nods, to another winks; she makes love to one, clasps another.
Her hand is busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring
to look at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with
another corresponds by signs.']
[Footnote 17: The reading of the passage here adopted is that
given by Munk.]
[Footnote 18: De Senectute, 6.]
[Footnote 19:
Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.]
[Footnote 20: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by
the applause given to me, to think that any of these great
people should now dare to interfere with! How much better
thing is the slavery _here_' (_i.e._ represented in this
play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?']
[Footnote 21: 'I have always held liberty to be of more value
and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by
Munk.]
[Footnote 22: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this
poem, the action is generally represented in the _present
tense_.]
[Footnote 23: Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 24: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my
mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure
idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse
with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions),
in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to
Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural
and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or
imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and
her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De
Oratore iii. 12.]
CHAPTER IV.
ENNIUS.
The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two
directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its
subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the
work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his
younger contemporary Plautus; and, in a strictly chronological history
of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in
order. But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of
Roman comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to
direct attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of
Naevius in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.
The fragments of Ennius will repay a more minute examination than
those of any author belonging to the first period of Roman literature.
They are of more intrinsic value, and they throw more light on the
spirit of the age in which they were written. It was to him, not to
Naevius or to Plautus, that the Romans looked as the father of their
literature. He did more than any other man to make the Roman language
a vehicle of elevated feeling, by forcing it to conform to the
metrical conditions of Greek poetry; and he was the first fully
to elicit the deeper veins of sentiment latent in the national
imagination. The versatility of his powers, his large acquaintance
with Greek literature, his sympathy with the practical interests of
his time, the serious purpose and the intellectual vigour with which
he carried out his work, enabled him to be in letters, what Scipio was
in action, the most vital representative of his epoch. It has
happened too that the fragments from his writings and the testimonies
concerning him are more expressive and characteristic than in the
case of any other among the early writers. There are none of his
contemporaries, playing their part in war or politics, and not many
among the writers of later times, of whom we can form so distinct an
image.
I. LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
I. He was born at Rudiae, a town of Calabria, in B.C. 239, the year
after the first representation of a drama on the Roman stage. He first
entered Rome in B.C. 204, in the train of Cato, who, when acting as
quaestor in Sardinia, found the poet in that island serving, with the
rank of centurion, in the Roman army. In the poem of Silius Italicus,
he is fancifully represented as distinguishing himself in personal
combat like one of the heroes of the Iliad. After this time he
resided at Rome, 'living,' according to the statement of Jerome,
'very plainly, on the Aventine' (the Plebeian quarter of the city),
'attended only by a single maid-servant[1],' and supporting himself by
teaching Greek and by his writings. He accompanied M. Fulvius Nobilior
in his Aetolian campaign. Through the influence of his son, he
obtained the honour of Roman citizenship, probably at the time when
the colony of Pisaurum was planted in B.C. 184. This distinction
Ennius has himself recorded in a line of the Annals which indicates
the high value which the Roman allies attached to this privilege:--
Nos sumu' Romani qui fuvimus ante Rudini.
He lived on terms of intimacy with influential members of the noblest
families in Rome, and became the familiar friend of the great Scipio.
When he died at the age of seventy, his bust was believed to be placed
in the tomb of the Scipios, between those of the conqueror of Hannibal
and of the conqueror of Antiochus. He died in the year B.C. 169. The
most famous of his works were his Tragedies and the Annals, a long
historical poem written in eighteen books. But, in addition to these,
he composed several miscellaneous works, of which only very scanty
fragments have been preserved.
Among the circumstances which prepared him to be the principal creator
of the national literature, his birthplace and origin, the kind of
education available to him in his early years, and the experience
which awaited him when first entering on life, had a strong
determining influence. His birthplace, Rudiae, is called by Strabo
'a Greek city'; but it was not a Greek colony, like Tarentum and the
other cities of Magna Graecia, but an old Italian town, (the epithet
_vetustae_ is applied to it by Silius) which had been partially
Hellenised, but still retained its native traditions and the use of
the Oscan language. Ennius is thus spoken of as 'Semi-Graecus.' He
laid claim to be descended from the old Messapian kings, a claim which
Virgil is supposed to acknowledge in the introduction of Messapus
leading his followers in the gathering of the Italian races,
Ibant aequati numero regemque canebant.
This claim to royal descent indicates that the poet was a member
of the better class of families in his native district; and the
consciousness of old lineage, which prompted the claim, probably
strengthened the high self-confidence by which he was animated, and
helped to determine the strong aristocratic bias of his sympathies.
He bore witness to his nationality in the saying quoted by Gellius[2]
that 'in the possession of the Greek, Oscan, and Latin speech, he
possessed three hearts.' Of these three languages the Oscan, as the
one of least value to acquire for the purposes of literature or of
social intercourse, was most likely to have been his inherited tongue.
Rudiae, from its Italian nationality, from its neighbourhood to the
cities of Magna Graecia, and from its relation of dependence on Rome,
must have been in the time of the boyhood of Ennius a meeting-place,
not only of three different languages,--that of common life, that
of culture and education, that of military service--but of the three
different spirits or tendencies which were operative in the creation
of the new literature. To his home among the hills overlooking the
Grecian seas[3]--referred to in the expression of Ovid,--
Calabris in montibus ortus--
and in the phrase of Silius,--
Hispida tellus
Miserunt Calabri; Rudiae genuere vetustae,
the poet owed the 'Italian heart,' the virtue of a race still
uncorrupted and unsophisticated, the buoyant energy and freshness
of feeling which enabled him to apprehend all the novelty and the
greatness of the momentous age through which he lived. The South of
Italy afforded, at this time, means of education, which were denied to
Rome or Latium; and the peace enjoyed by his native district for the
first twenty years of his life granted to Ennius leisure to avail
himself of these means, which he could not have enjoyed had he been
born a few years later. In the short account of his life in Jerome's
continuation of the Eusebian Chronicle, it is stated that he was born
at Tarentum. Though this is clearly an error, it seems probable that
the poet may have spent the years of his education there. Though
Tarentum, since its capture by the Romans, had lost its political
importance, it still continued to be a centre of Greek culture and of
social pleasure. Dramatic representations had been especially popular
among a people who had drifted far away 'ex Spartana dura illa et
horrida disciplina[4]' of their ancestors. From the knowledge of the
Attic tragedians displayed by Ennius in his later career it is likely
that he had witnessed representations of their works on a Greek stage,
before he began, in middle life, to direct his own genius to dramatic
composition. The knowledge and admiration of Homer which stimulated
him to the composition of his greatest work, might have been acquired
in any centre of Greek culture. But the intellectual interests
indicated in some of his miscellaneous writings have a kind of local
character, distinguishing them alike from the older philosophies of
Athens and from the more recent science of Alexandria. His acceptance
of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and the physical
fancies expressed in some of the fragments of the Epicharmus probably
came to him from the teaching of the Neo-Pythagoreans, who were
widely spread among the Greeks of Southern Italy. The rationalistic
speculations of Euhemerus, which appear in strange union with the
'somnia Pythagorea' of the Annals, were of Sicilian origin. The
gastronomic treatise, which Ennius afterwards translated into Latin,
was the work of Archestratus of Gela. The class of persons for whom
such a work would originally be written was likely to be found among
the luxurious livers of Sicily and Magna Graecia. Thus while the
serious poetry of Ennius was inspired by the older and nobler works
of Greek genius, the influence of a more vulgar and prosaic class
of teachers, transmitted by him to Roman thought and literature, was
probably derived from the place of his early education.
His Italian spirit, and the Greek culture acquired by him in early
youth, were two of the conditions out of which the new literature was
destined to arise. The third condition was his steadfast and ardent
Roman patriotism. Born more than a generation after his native
district had ceased to be at war with Rome, he grew up to manhood
during the years of peace between the first and second Carthaginian
wars, when the supremacy of Rome was loyally accepted. Between early
manhood and middle life he was a witness of and an actor in the
protracted and long doubtful struggle between the two great Imperial
States, on the issue of which hung the future destinies of the
world:--
Omnia cum belli trepido concussa tumultu
Horrida contremuere sub altis aetheris oris;
In dubioque fuere utrorum ad regna cadendum
Omnibus humanis esset terraque marique[5].
Though during that struggle the loyalty of some of the Italian
communities was shaken, yet the aristocratic party in every city, and
the Greek States generally, were true to the Roman alliance[6].
Thus his political sympathies, as well as his Greek education, would
incline Ennius to identify himself with the cause of Rome, and his
ardent imagination apprehended the grandeur and majesty with which she
played her part in the contest. It was in the Second Punic War that
the ideal of what was greatest in the character and institutions of
Rome was most fully realised. Her good fortune supplied from among
the contingent furnished to the war by her Messapian allies a man of
a nature so sympathetic with her own and an imagination so vivid as to
gain for the ideal thus created a permanent realisation.
Of the share which Ennius had in the war we know only that he served
in Sardinia with the rank of centurion. That he had become a man of
some note in that capacity is suggested by the fact that he attracted
the attention of the Roman quaestor Cato, and accompanied him to Rome.
A certain dramatic interest attaches to this first meeting of the
typical representative of Roman manners and traditions and great enemy
of foreign innovations, with the man by whom, more than by any one
else, the mind of Rome was enlarged and liberalised, and many of her
most cherished convictions were most seriously undermined. This actual
service in a great war left its impress on the work done by Ennius.
Fragments both of his tragedies and his Annals prove how thoroughly
he understood and appreciated the best qualities of the soldierly
character. This fellowship in hardship and danger fitted him to become
the national poet of a race of soldiers. He has drawn from his own
observation an image of the fortitude and discipline of the Roman
armies, and of the patriotic devotion and resolution of the men
by whom these armies were led. There is a strong realism in the
expression of martial sentiment in Ennius, marking him out as a man
familiar with the life of the camp and the battle-field, and quite
distinct from the idealising enthusiasm of Livy and Virgil[7].
Ennius entered on his career as a writer at a time when the long
strain of a great struggle was giving place to the confidence and
security of a great triumph. He lived for thirty-five years longer,
witnessing the rapid advance of Roman conquest in Greece and Asia,
and over the barbarous tribes of the West. He died one year before
the crowning victory of Pydna. During all his later life his sanguine
spirit and patriotic enthusiasm were buoyed up by the success of the
Roman and Italian arms abroad; while his political sympathies were in
thorough accord with the dominant influences in the government of the
State. At no other period of Roman history was the ascendency of the
Senate and of the great houses more undisputed, or, on the whole, more
wisely and ably exercised. In the lists of those who successively fill
the great curule magistracies, we find almost exclusively the names of
members of the old patrician or of the more recent plebeian nobility.
At no other period does the tribunician opposition to the senatorian
direction of affairs and to the authority of the magistrate appear
weaker or more intermittent. It was not till a generation after the
death of Ennius that the moral corruption and political and social
disorganisation--the ultimate results of the great military successes
gained under the absolute ascendency of the Senate,--became fully
manifest. It is difficult to say how far the aristocratic and
antipopular bias of all Roman literature may have been determined by
the political conditions of the time in which that literature received
the most powerful impulse, and by the personal relations and peculiar
stamp of character of the man by whom that impulse was given.
Along with the military and political activity of the time, during
which Ennius lived in Rome, the stirring of a new intellectual life
was apparent. Even during the war dramatic representations continued
to take place, and the most active part of the career of Naevius, and
a considerable part of that of Plautus, belong to the years during
which Hannibal was still in Italy. After the cessation of the war, we
note in the pages of Livy that much greater prominence is given to
the celebration of public games, of which at this time dramatic
representations formed the chief part. The regular holidays for which
the Aediles provided these entertainments became more numerous; and
the art of the dramatist was employed to enhance the pomp of the
spectacle on the occasion of a great triumph, or of the funeral of an
illustrious man. The death of Livius Andronicus and the banishment of
Naevius, which must have happened about the time that Ennius arrived
at Rome, had deprived the Roman stage of the only writers of any
name, who had attempted to introduce upon it the works of the Greek
tragedians. Ennius had, indeed, rather to create than to revive the
taste for tragedy. The prologue to the Amphitryo[8] shows how much
more congenial the reproduction of the ordinary life of the Greeks
was to the uneducated audiences of Rome than the higher effort to
familiarise them with the personages and adventures of the heroic age.
The great era of Roman comedy was coincident with the literary career
of Ennius. It was then that the best extant plays of Plautus were
produced, and that Caecilius Statius, whom ancient critics ranked as
his superior, flourished. The quality attributed to the latter in the
line of Horace,
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte,
indicates a closer affinity with the spirit of Ennius, than the moral
and political indifference of the older dramatist. The aim of Ennius
was to raise literature from being a mere popular recreation, and to
bring it into accord with the higher mood of the nation; to use it as
a medium both of elevation and enlightenment. In carrying out this
aim he appealed to the temper and to the newly awakened interests of
members of the aristocratic class, who were coming into close contact
with educated Greeks, and were beginning to appreciate the treasures
of art and literature now opened up to them. The career of Q. Fabius
Pictor, the first historian of Rome, and the first who made a name
for himself in painting, who lived at this time, attests this twofold
attraction. The friendly relations which Roman generals, such as T.
Quintius Flamininus, established with the famous Greek cities, in
which they appeared as liberators rather than conquerors, were the
result of intellectual enthusiasm as much as of a definite policy.
With the wars of Pyrrhus and the capture of Tarentum, the first stage
of the process described in the lines of Horace began[9]: the end of
the Second Punic War was the second stage in the process. It is to
this period, rather than to the progress of the war, that the words of
the Grammarian, Porcius Licinus, most truly apply,
Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram.
The more frequent and closer contact with the mind of Greece not only
refined the taste and enlarged the intelligence of those capable of
feeling its influence, but produced at the same time a change in
men's deepest convictions. Though the definite tenets of Stoicism
and Epicureanism did not acquire ascendency till a later time, the
dissolving force of Greek speculative thought and Greek views of life
forced its way into Rome through various channels,--especially through
the adaptations of the tragedies of Euripides and of the comedy
of Menander. All these tendencies of the time acted on Ennius,
stimulating his mental activity in various directions. His natural
temperament and his acquired culture brought him into harmony with
the spirit of his age without raising him too much above it. A poet
of more delicacy of taste and perfection of execution would have been
unintelligible to his contemporaries. A more systematic thinker would
have been out of harmony with the conditions of life by which he was
surrounded. Breadth, vigour, a spirit clinging to what was most vital
in the old state of things, and yet readily adapting itself to what
was new, were the qualities needed to establish a literature true
to the genius of Rome in the second century B.C., and containing the
promise of the more perfect accomplishment of a later age. And these
qualities belonged to Ennius by natural gifts and the experience and
culture of his earlier years.
There is no reason to believe that he had obtained any eminence in
literature before he settled in middle age at Rome. His genius was
of that robust order which grows richer and livelier with advancing
years. The Annals was the work of his old age,--the ripe fruit of
a strong and energetic manhood, prolonged to the last in hopeful
activity. Cicero speaks of 'the cheerfulness with which he bore the
two evils of old age and poverty[10].' Wherever the poet speaks of
himself, his words reveal a sanguine and contented spirit; as, in that
fine simile, where he compares himself, at the close of his active and
successful career, to a brave horse which has often won the prize at
the Olympian games, and in old age obtains his well-deserved repose:--
Sicut fortis equus, spatio qui saepe supremo
Vicit Olimpia, nunc senio confectu' quiescit.
In none of his fragments is there any trace of that melancholy
after-thought which pervades the poetry of his greatest successors,
Lucretius and Virgil. From the humorous exaggeration of Horace,
Ennius ipse pater nunquam, nisi potus, ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda;
and from the poet's own confession,
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager,
it may be inferred that he belonged to the class of poets of a lusty
and social nature, of which Dryden is a type in modern times, who
enjoyed the pleasures of wine and good fellowship. The well-known
anecdote, told by Cicero, of the interchange of visits between Scipio
Nasica and Ennius[11], though not a brilliant specimen of Roman wit,
is interesting from the light which it throws on the easy terms of
intimacy in which the poet lived with the members of the most eminent
Roman families. Such testimonies and traits of personal character make
us think of Ennius as a man of genial and social temper, as well as of
'an intense and glowing mind.'
It was probably through his position as a teacher of Greek that Ennius
first became known to the leading men of Rome. If this position was at
first one of dependence, similar to that in which in earlier times the
client stood to his patron, it soon changed into one of mutual esteem
and admiration. We can best understand the relation in which he stood
to men eminent in the state and in the camp, from a passage from the
seventh book of the Annals quoted by Aulus Gellius. In that passage
the poet is stated, on the authority of L. Aelius Stilo[12] (an early
grammarian, a friend of Lucilius, and one of Cicero's teachers),
to have drawn his own portrait, under an imaginary description of
a confidential friend of the Roman general, Servilius Geminus. The
portrait has the air of being drawn from the life, with a rapid and
forcible hand, and with a minuteness of detail significant of close
personal observation:--
Haece locutu' vocat quocum bene saepe libenter
Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassu' diei
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis
Consilio, indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
Cui res audacter magnas parvasque jocumque
Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque!
Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
Ut faceret facinus levis aut malu', doctu', fidelis,
Suavis homo, facundu', suo contentu', beatus,
Scitu', secunda loquens in tempore, commodu', verbum
Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem,
Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque;
Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.
Hunc inter pugnas Servilius sic compellat[13].
There are many touches in this picture, which suggest the kind of
intimacy in which Ennius may have lived with Fulvius Nobilior when
accompanying him in his Aetolian campaign, or his bearing when taking
part in the light or serious talk of the Scipios. The learning and
power of speech, the knowledge of antiquity and of the manners of the
day, attributed to this friend of Servilius, were gifts which we may
attribute to the poet both on ancient testimony and on the evidence
afforded by the fragments of his writings. The good sense, tact, and
knowledge of the world, the cheerfulness in life and conversation, the
honour and integrity of character represented in the same passage, are
among the personal qualities which, in all ages, form a bond of union
between men eminent in great practical affairs and men eminent in
literature. Such were the qualities which, according to his own
account, recommended Horace to the intimate friendship of Maecenas.
Many expressive fragments from the lost poetry of Ennius give
assurance that he was a man in whom learning and the ardent
temperament of genius were happily united with the worth and sense
described in this nameless portrait.
By his personal merit he broke through the strongest barriers ever
raised by national and family pride, and made the name of poet,
instead of a reproach, a name of honour with the ruling class at Rome.
The favourable impression which he produced on the 'primitive virtue'
of Cato, by whom he was first brought to Rome, was more probably due
to his force of character and social qualities than to his genius and
literary accomplishment,--qualities seemingly little valued by his
earliest patron, who, in one of his speeches, reproached Fulvius
Nobilior with allowing himself to be accompanied by a poet in his
campaign. But the strongest proof of the worth and the wisdom of
Ennius is his intimate friendship with the greatest Roman of the
age, and the conqueror of the greatest soldier of antiquity. It
is honourable to the friendship of generous natures, that the poet
neither sought nor gained wealth from this intimacy, but continued to
live plainly and contentedly on the Aventine. Yet after death it was
believed that the two friends were not divided; and the bust of the
provincial poet found a place among the remains of that time-honoured
family, the record of whose grandeur has been preserved, even to
the present day, in the august simplicity of their monumental
inscriptions.
The elder Africanus may have been attracted to Ennius not only by his
passion for Greek culture, but by a certain community of nature. The
mystical enthusiasm, the high self-confidence, the direct simplicity
combined with majesty of character, impressed on the language of the
poet were equally impressed on the action and bearing of the soldier.
The feeling which Ennius in his turn entertained for Scipio was one
of enthusiastic admiration. While paying due honour to the merits and
services of other famous men, even of such as Cato and Fabius, who
were most opposed to his idol, of Scipio he said that Homer alone
could worthily have uttered his praises[14].
In addition to the part which he assigned to him in the Ninth Book
of the Annals, he devoted a separate poem to commemorate his
achievements. He has left also two short inscriptions, written in
elegiac verse, in which he proclaims in words of burning enthusiasm
the momentous services and transcendent superiority of the 'great
world's victor's victor'--
Hic est ille situs cui nemo civi' neque hostis
Quivit pro factis reddere opis pretium[15];
and this also,
A sole exoriente supra Maeoti' paludes
Nemo est qui factis me aequiperare queat.
Si fas endo plagas caelestium ascendere cuiquam est,
Mi soli caeli maxima porta patet[16].
With many marked differences, which distinguish a man of active,
social, and national sympathies from a student of Nature and a thinker
on human life, there is a certain affinity of character and genius
between Ennius and Lucretius. Enthusiastic admiration of personal
greatness is one prominent feature in which they resemble one another.
But while Lucretius is the ardent admirer of contemplative and
imaginative greatness, it is greatness in action and character which
moves the admiration of Ennius. They resemble each other also in their
strong consciousness of genius and their high estimate of its function
and value. Cicero mentions that Ennius applied the epithet _sanctus_
to poets. Lucretius applies the same epithet to the old philosophic
poets, as in the lines of strong affection and reverence which he
dedicates to Empedocles,
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se,
Nec _sanctum_ magis, et mirum carumque videtur[17].
The inscription which Ennius composed for his own bust directly
expresses his sense of the greatness of his work, and his confident
assurance of fame, and of the lasting sympathy of his countrymen--
Aspicite, O cives, senis Enni imagini' formam,
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum.
Nemo me lacrimis decoret nec funera fletu
Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum[18].
Two lines from one of his satires--
Enni poeta salve qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus[19],
indicate in still stronger terms his burning consciousness of power.
Some of the greatest of modern poets, such as Dante, Milton, and
Wordsworth, have manifested a feeling similar to that expressed by
Ennius and Lucretius. Although appearing in strange contrast with the
self-suppression of the highest creative art (as seen in Homer, in
Sophocles, and in Shakspeare), this proud self-confidence, 'disdainful
of help or hindrance,' is the usual accompaniment of an intense nature
and of a genius exercised with some serious moral, religious, or
political purpose. The least pleasing side of the feeling, even in
men of generous nature, is the scorn,--not of envy, but of imperfect
sympathy,--which they are apt to entertain towards rival genius or
antagonistic convictions. Something of this spirit appears in the
disparaging allusion of Ennius to his predecessor Naevius:--
Scripsere alii rem
Versibu', quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant,
Quum neque Musarum scopulos quisquam superarat
Nec dicti studiosus erat[20].
The contempt here expressed for the metre employed by the older poet
seems to be the counterpart of his own exultation in being the first
to introduce what he called 'the long verses' into Latin literature.
Another point in which there is some affinity between Ennius and
Lucretius is their religious temper and convictions. There is indeed
no trace in Ennius of the rigid intellectual consistency of Lucretius,
nor in Lucretius any sympathy with those mystic speculations which
Ennius derived from the lore attributed to Pythagoras. But in both
deep feelings of awe and reverence are combined with a scornful
disbelief of the superstition of their time. They both apply the
principles of Euhemerism to resolve the bright creations of the old
mythology into their original elements. Ennius, like Lucretius, seems
to deny the providence of the gods. He makes one of the personages of
his dramas give expression to the thought which perplexed the minds
of Thucydides and Tacitus--the thought, namely, of the apparent
disconnexion between prosperity and goodness, as affording proof of
the divine indifference to human well-being--
Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest[21]:
and he exposed, with caustic sense, the false pretences of augurs,
prophets, and astrologers. His translation of the Sacred Chronicle of
Euhemerus exercised a permanent influence on the religious convictions
of his countrymen. But while led to these conclusions by the spirit
of his age, and by the study of the later speculations of Greece, he
believed in the soul's independence of the body, and of its continued
existence, under other conditions, after death. He declared that the
spirit of Homer, after many changes,--at one time having animated a
peacock[22], again, having been incarnate in the sage of Crotona,--had
finally passed into his own body: and he told how the shade--which he
regards as distinct from the soul or spirit--of his great prototype
had appeared to him from the invisible world,--
Quo neque permaneant animae neque corpora nostra
Sed quaedam simulacra modis pallentia miris,
and explained to him the whole plan of nature. These dreams of the
imagination may not have been without effect in enabling Ennius to
escape from the gloom which 'eclipsed the brightness of the world' to
Lucretius. The light in which the world appeared to the older poet was
that of common sense strangely blended with imaginative mysticism.
He thus seems to stand midway between the spiritual aspirations of
Empedocles and the negation of Lucretius. Born in the vigorous prime
of Italian civilisation he came into the inheritance of the bold
fancies of the earlier Greeks and of the dull rationalism of their
later speculation. His ideas on what transcends experience appear thus
to have been without the unity arising from an unreflecting acceptance
of tradition, or from the basis of philosophical consistency.
II. HIS WORKS.--(1) MISCELLANEOUS WORKS.
II. (1) In laying the foundations of Roman literature, Ennius
displayed not only the fervent sympathies and active faculty of
genius, but also great energy and industry, and a many-sided learning.
The composition of his tragedies and of the Annals, while making most
demand on his original gifts, implied also a diligent study of
Homer and of the Greek tragedians, and a large acquaintance with the
traditions and antiquities of Rome. But besides the works on which
his highest poetical faculty was employed, other writings, of a
philosophical, didactic, and miscellaneous character, gave evidence of
the versatility of his powers and interests. It does not appear that
he was the author of any prose writing. His version of the Sacred
Chronicle of Euhemerus was more probably a poetical adaptation than
a literal prose translation of that work. The work of Euhemerus was
conceived in that spirit of vulgar rationalism, which is condemned by
Plato in the Phaedrus. He explained away the fables of mythology,
by representing them as a supernatural account of historical events.
Several extracts of the work quoted by Lactantius, as from the
translation of Ennius, look as if they had been reduced from a form
originally metrical into the prose of a later era[23]. There is thus
no evidence, direct or indirect, to prove that Ennius had any share in
forming the style of Latin prose. But if verse was the sole instrument
which he used, this was certainly not due to the poetical character
of all the topics which he treated, but, more likely, to the fact
that his acquired aptitude, and the state of the Latin language in
his time, made metrical writing more natural and easy than prose
composition.
One of his works in verse was a treatise on good living, called
Hedyphagetica, founded on the gastronomic researches of Archestratus
of Gela,--a sage who is said to have devoted his life to the study of
everything that contributed to the pleasures of the table, and to have
recorded his varied experience and research with the grave dignity of
epic verse. A few lines from this translation or adaptation of Ennius,
giving an account of the coasts on which the best fish are to be
found, have been preserved by Apuleius. The lines are curious as
exemplifying that tone of half-serious enthusiasm, which all who
treat, either in prose or verse, of the pleasures of eating seem
naturally to adopt, as for instance the Catius of Horace in his
discourse on gastronomy[24]. The language in which the _scarus_, a
fish unhappily lost to the modern epicure, is described as 'the brain
almost of almighty Jove,' fits all the requirements of gastronomic
rapture:--
Quid turdum, merulam, melanurum umbramque marinam
Praeterii, atque scarum, cerebrum Jovi' paene supremi?
Nestoris ad patriam hic capitur magnusque bonusque.
He wrote also a philosophical poem in trochaic septenarian verse,
called Epicharmus, founded on writings attributed to the old Sicilian
poet, which appear to have resolved the gods of the Greek mythology
into natural substances[25]. A few slight fragments have been
preserved from this poem. They speak of the four elements or
principles of the universe as 'water, earth, air, the sun'; of 'the
blending of heat with cold, dryness with moisture'; of 'the earth
bearing and supporting all nations and receiving them again back into
herself.' The following is the longest fragment from the poem:--
Istic est is Jupiter quem dico, quem Graeci vocant
Aërem: qui ventus est et nubes; imber postea
Atque ex imbre frigus: ventus post fit, aër denuo,
Haece propter Jupiter sunt ista quae dico tibi,
Quoniam mortalis atque urbes beluasque omnis juvat[26].
These fragments and a passage from the opening lines of the Annals,
where the shade of Homer was introduced as discoursing to Ennius
(like the shade of Anchises to Aeneas), on 'the nature of things,' are
specimens of that vague curiosity about the facts and laws of Nature,
which, in ancient times, supplied the absence of scientific knowledge.
Such physical speculations possessed a great attraction for the
Roman poets. The spirit of the Epicharmus, as well as of the Sacred
Chronicle of Euhemerus, reappears in the poem of Lucretius. Ennius was
the first among his countrymen who expressed that curiosity as to the
ultimate facts of Nature and that sense of the mysterious life of the
universe, which acted as the most powerful intellectual impulse on the
mind of Lucretius, and which fascinated the imagination of Virgil.
Another of his miscellaneous works, probably of a moral and didactic
character, was known by the name of Protreptica. It is possible that
all of these works[27], as well as the Scipio, formed part of the
Saturae, or Miscellanies, under which title Ennius composed four,
or, according to another authority, six books. The Romans looked
upon Lucilius as the inventor of satire in the later sense of that
word[28];--he having been the first to impress upon the satura the
character of censorious criticism, which it has borne since his time.
But there was another kind of satura, of which Ennius and Pacuvius in
early times, and Varro at a somewhat later time, were regarded as the
principal authors. This was really a miscellany treating of various
subjects, in various metres, and, as employed by Varro, was written
partly in prose, partly in verse. This kind of composition, as well
as the Lucilian satire, arose out of the old indigenous satura or
dramatic medley, familiar to the Romans before the introduction of
Greek literature. When the scenic element in the original satura was
superseded by the new comedy introduced from Greece, the old name
was first applied to a miscellaneous kind of composition, in which
ordinary topics were treated in a serious but apparently desultory
way; and even as employed by Lucilius and Horace the satura retained
much of its original character. The satires of Ennius were written
in various metres, iambic, trochaic, and hexameter, and treated of
various topics of personal and public interest. The few passages which
ancient authorities quote as fragments from them are not of much value
in themselves, but when taken in connexion with the testimonies as to
their character, they are of some interest as showing that this kind
of composition was a form intermediate between the old dramatic satura
and the satire of Lucilius and Horace. It is recorded that in one
of these pieces, Ennius introduced a dialogue between Life and
Death;--thus transmitting in the use of dialogue (which appears very
frequently in Horace and Persius) some vestige of the original
scenic medley. Ennius also appears, like Lucilius and Horace, to have
communicated in his satires his own personal feelings and experience,
as in the fragment already quoted:--
Nunquam poetor, nisi si podager.
Further satire, in the hands of its chief masters, aimed at practical
moral teaching, not only by precept, ridicule, and invective, and
by portraiture of individuals and of types, but also by the use of
anecdotes and fables. This last mode of inculcating homely lessons on
the conduct of life is common in Horace. It appears, however, to have
been first used by Ennius. Aulus Gellius mentions that Aesop's fable
of the field-lark and the husbandman 'is very skilfully and gracefully
told by Ennius in his satires'; and he quotes the advice appended to
the fable, 'Never to expect your friends to do for you what you can do
for yourself':
Hoc erit tibi argumentum semper in promptu situm:
Nequid expectes amicos, quod tute agere possies[29].
These miscellaneous works of Ennius were the fruits of his learning
and literary industry, rather than of his genius. Such works might
have been written in prose, if the art of prose composition had been
as familiar as that of verse. It is in the fragments of his dramas,
and still more of the Annals, that his poetic power is most apparent,
and that the influence which he exercised over the Roman mind and
literature is discerned.
(2) DRAMAS.
(2) Before the time of Ennius, the Roman drama, both tragic and comic,
had established itself at Rome, in close imitation of the tragedy
and the new comedy of Athens. The latter had been most successfully
cultivated by Naevius and his younger contemporary, Plautus. The
advancement of tragedy to an equal share of popular favour was due to
the severer genius of Ennius. He appears however to have tried, though
without much success, to adapt himself to the popular taste in favour
of comedy. The names of two of his comedies, viz. _Cupuncula_ and
_Pancratiastae_, have come down to us; but their fragments are too
insignificant to justify the formation of any opinion on their merits.
His admirers in ancient times nowhere advance in his favour any claim
to comic genius. Volcatius Sedigitus, an early critic, who wrote a
work _De Poetis_, and who has already been referred to as assigning
the third rank in the list of comic poets to Naevius, mentions Ennius
as tenth and last, solely 'antiquitatis causa.' Any inference that
might be drawn from the character exhibited in the other fragments of
Ennius, would accord both with the negative and positive evidence
of antiquity, as to his deficiency in comic power. He has nothing in
common with that versatile and dramatic genius, in which occasionally
the highest imagination has been united with the most abundant humour.
The real bent of his mind, as revealed in his higher poetry, is grave
and intense, like that of Lucretius or Milton. Many of the conceits,
strained effects, and play on words, found in his fragments, imply
want of humour as well as an imperfect poetic taste. Thus, in the
following fragment from one of his satires, the meaning of the passage
is more obscured than pointed by the forced iteration and play upon
the word _frustra_:--
Nam qui lepide postulat alterum frustrari,
Quom frustrast, frustra illum dicit frustra esse.
Nam qui se frustrari quem frustra sentit,
Qui frustratur frustrast, si ille non est frustra[30].
The love of alliteration and assonance, which is conspicuous also in
Plautus and in the fragments of Pacuvius and Accius, and which seems
to have been the natural accompaniment of the new formative energy
imparted to the Latin language by the earliest poets and orators,
appears in its most exaggerated form in such lines as the
O Tite tute Tati tibi tanta tiranne tulisti,
quoted from the Annals. Many of his fragments show indeed that he
possessed the caustic spirit of a satirist; but it was in the light
of common sense, not of humour, that he regarded the follies of the
world.
The general character of Roman tragedy, so far as it can be
ascertained from ancient testimony and the extant fragments of the
early tragedians, will be examined in the following chapter. It is not
possible to determine what dramatic power Ennius may have displayed in
the evolution of his plots or the delineation of his characters. His
peculiar genius is more distinctly stamped on his epic than on his
dramatic fragments. Still many of the latter, in their boldness of
conception and expression, and in their strong and fervid morality,
are expressive of the original force of the poet, and of the Roman
temper of his mind. Some of them will be brought forward in
the sequel, along with passages from the Annals, as important
contributions to our estimate of the poet's genius and intellect.
It was certainly due to Ennius that Roman tragedy was first raised to
that pitch of popular favour which it enjoyed till the age of Cicero.
While actively employed in many other fields of literature, he carried
on the composition of his tragedies till the latest period of his
life. Cicero records that the _Thyestes_ was represented at the
celebration of the Ludi Apollinares, shortly before the poet's
death[31]. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are known,
and a few fragments remain from all of them. About one half of these
bear the titles of the heroes and heroines connected with the Trojan
cycle of events, such as the _Achilles_, _Achilles Aristarchi_,
_Ajax_, _Alexander_, _Andromache Aechmalotis_, _Hectoris Lutra_,
_Hecuba_, _Iphigenia_, _Phoenix_, _Telamo_. One at least of his
tragedies, the _Medea_, was literally translated from the Greek of
Euripides, whom he seems to have made his model, in preference to
the older Attic dramatists. Cicero[32] speaks of it, along with the
Antiope of Pacuvius, as being translated word for word from the Greek;
and a comparison of the fragments of the Latin with the passages in
the Medea of Euripides shows how closely Ennius followed his original.
In one place he has mistranslated his author,--the passage (Eur. Med.
215),
[Greek:
oida gar pollous brotôn
semnous gegôtas, tous men ommatôn apo
tous d' en thyraiois],
being thus rendered in Latin,--
Multi suam rem bene gessere et publicam patria procul.
The opening lines of the Medea of Ennius may be quoted as probably a
fair specimen of the degree of faithfulness with which the early Roman
tragedians translated from their originals. There is some nervous
force, but little either of poetical grace or musical flow in the
language:--
Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa cecidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum;
Nam nunquam era errans mea domo ecferret pedem
Medea, animo aegra, amore saevo saucia[33].
In his Hecuba, also, and probably in his Iphigenia, Ennius made free
use of the dramas founded on the same subjects by Euripides. But in
many of his dramatic fragments the sentiment expressed is clearly
that of a Roman, not of a Greek mind[34]. The subjects of many of
his dramas, such as the Achilles, the Ajax, the Hectoris Lutra, the
Telamon, the Iphigenia, afforded scope for the exhibition of the
soldierly character. Cicero[35] adduces the wounded Eurypylus as an
example of the kind of fortitude and superiority to pain produced by
the discipline of the Roman armies. The same author quotes with
great admiration scenes from the Alexander and from the Andromache
Aechmalotis, in which pathos is the predominant sentiment. He adds to
his quotations the comments 'O poema tenerum, et moratum, et molle';
and again, 'O poetam egregium, quamquam ab his cantoribus Euphorionis
contemnitur! Sentit omnia repentina et necopinata esse graviora ...
praeclarum carmen est enim et rebus et verbis et modis lugubre[36].'
In the former of these scenes Cassandra, under the influence of
Apollo, reluctant and _ashamed_ (perhaps in this feeling the hand of a
Roman rather than of a Greek poet may be recognised), yet mastered by
prophetic fury, bursts forth in these wild, agitated tones:--
Adest, adest fax obvoluta sanguine atque incendio:
Multos annos latuit: cives ferte opem et restinguite.
Iamque mari magno classis cita
Texitur: exitium examen rapit.
Advenit, et fera velivolantibus
Navibus complevit manus litora[37].
We see in this passage how the passionate character of the situation
is enhanced by the mysterious power attributed to Cassandra. A similar
excitement of feeling, produced by supernatural terror, appears in a
fragment of the Alcmaeon, quoted also by Cicero, and of another the
motive is the awe associated with the dim and pale realms of
the dead[38]. In these and similar passages we note the power of
expressing the varying moods of passion by varied effects of metre.
Horace characterises his ordinary verse in the line,
In scaenam missos cum magno pondere versus;
and this slow and weighty movement seems to have been the general
character of his metre in the calmer parts of his dramas. But in a
large number of the fragments of the dialogue, where there is any
excitement of feeling or intensity of thought, we find him using
the more rapid trochaic septenarian, with quick transitions to the
anapaestic dimeter, or tetrameter, as the passion passes beyond the
control of the speaker.
In two of his dramas, the Sabinae and Ambracia, he made use of
materials supplied by the early legendary history of Rome, and by
a great contemporary event. The first of these, like the Romulus of
Naevius, belonged to the class of 'fabulae Praetextatae,' and was
founded on the intervention of the Sabine women in the war between
Romulus and Tatius. The second, representing the capture of the town
of Ambracia, in the Aetolian war, may, like the Clastidium of the
older poet (written in celebration of the victory of Marcellus over
the Gauls), have had more of the character of a military pageant
and, in all probability, was composed for representation at the games
celebrated on the triumphal return of M. Fulvius Nobilior from that
war.
(3) THE ANNALS.
(3) But the poem which was the chief result of his life, and made an
epoch in Latin literature, was the Annals. On the composition of this
work he rested his hopes of popular and permanent fame--
Hic vestrum panxit maxima facta patrum:
and again, apparently at the opening of the poem, he wrote,--
Latos per populos terrasque poemata nostra
Clara cluebunt.
At its conclusion, he claimed for his old age the repose due to a
brave and triumphant career. He composed the eighteenth book, the
last, in his sixty-seventh year, three years before his death[39].
The great length to which the poem extended, and the vast amount of
materials which it embraced, imply a long and steady concentration of
his powers on the task. It was one requiring much learning as well
as original conception. The fragments of the poem afford proofs of a
familiarity with Homer, and of acquaintance with the Cyclic poets[40].
It is impossible to say how much of the early Roman history, as it
has come down to modern times, is due to the diligence of Ennius in
collecting, and to his genius in giving life to the traditions and
ancient records of Rome. He was certainly the earliest writer who
gathered them up, and united them in a continuous narrative. The work
accomplished by him required not only the antiquarian lore of a man
Multa tenens, antiqua, sepulta,
and the power of imagination to give a new shape to the past, but an
intimate knowledge of the great events and the great men of his own
time, and a strong sympathy with the best spirit of his age.
The poem was written in eighteen books. Of these books about six
hundred lines have been preserved in fragments, varying from about
twenty lines to half a line in length. From the minuteness with which
comparatively unimportant matters are described, it is inferred that
the separate books extended to a much greater length than those either
of the Iliad or of the Aeneid. Of the first book there remain about
120 lines, including the dream of Ilia in seventeen lines, and the
auspices of Romulus in twenty lines. In it were narrated the mythical
events from the time
Quum veter occubuit Príamus sub marte Pelasgo,
to the death and deification of Romulus;
Romulus in caelo cum dis genitalibus aevum
Degit.
There is no allusion in these fragments to the Carthaginian adventures
of Aeneas, which Naevius had introduced into his poem on the First
Punic War. Aeneas seems at once to have been brought to Hesperia, a
land,
Quam prisci casci populi tenuere Latini.
Ilia is represented as the daughter of Aeneas. The birth and infancy
of Romulus and Remus appear to have been described at great length. In
commenting on Virgil's lines at Aeneid viii. 630--
Fecerat et viridi fetam Mavortis in antro
Procubuisse lupam: geminos huic ubera circum
Ludere pendentes pueros, et lambere matrem
Impavidos; illam tereti cervice reflexam
Mulcere alternos, et corpora fingere lingua,--
Servius says 'Sane totus hic locus Ennianus est.' The second and
third books contained the history of the remaining Roman kings. Virgil
imitated the description given in these books of the destruction of
Alba (the story of which is told by Livy also with much poetic power,
perhaps reproduced from the pages of Ennius), in his account of the
capture of Troy, at Aeneid ii. 486--
At domus interior gemitu miseroque tumultu, etc.
One short fragment of the third book contains a picturesque notice of
the founding of Ostia--
Ostia munita est; idem loca navibu' pulchris
Munda facit; nautisque mari quaesentibu' vitam.
This line also
Postquam lumina sis oculis bonus Ancu' reliquit
is familiar from its reappearance in one of the most impressive
passages of Lucretius.
The fourth and fifth books contained the history of the State from the
establishment of the Republic till just before the beginning of the
war with Pyrrhus. One short fragment is taken from the night attack of
the Gauls upon the Capitol. The sixth book was devoted to the war with
Pyrrhus; the seventh, eighth, and ninth, to the First and Second
Punic Wars. In the fragments of the sixth are found a few lines of the
speeches of Pyrrhus, and of Appius Claudius Caecus. In the account of
the First Punic War, the disparaging allusion to Naevius occurs--
Scripsêre alii rem, etc.
It is mentioned by Cicero that Ennius borrowed much from the work of
Naevius; and also that he passed over (_reliquisse_) the First Punic
War, as it had been treated by his predecessor. Several fragments
however must certainly refer to this war; but it is probable that that
part of the subject was treated more cursorily than either the war
with Pyrrhus, or the later wars. The passage in which the poet is
supposed to have painted his own character, under the form of a friend
of Servilius Geminus, occurred in the seventh book. Two well-known
passages have been preserved from the ninth book--viz. that
characterising the 'sweet-speaking' orator, M. Cornelius Cethegus--
Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla,
and the lines in honour of Q. Fabius Maximus,
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem, etc.
The tenth and eleventh books, beginning with a new invocation to the
muse--
Insece Musa manu Romanorum induperator
Quod quisque in bello gessit cum rege Philippo,
treated of the Macedonian war, and of the deeds of T. Quintius
Flamininus. In the later books, Ennius told the history of the war
with Antiochus, of the Aetolian War carried on by his friend, M.
Fulvius Nobilior, of the exploits of L. Caecilius Denter and his
brother (of whom scarcely anything is known except that the sixteenth
book of the Annals was written in consequence of the poet's especial
admiration for them), and lastly, of the Istrian War, which took place
within a few years of the author's death.
Neither in general design nor in detail could the Annals be regarded
as a pure epic poem. Like the Aeneid, which connects the mythical
story of Aeneas with the glories of the Julian line and the great
destiny of Rome, the poem of Ennius treated of fabulous tradition,
of historical fact, and of great contemporary events; but it did not,
like the Aeneid, unite these varied materials in the representation of
the fortunes of one individual hero. The action of the poem,
instead of being limited to a few days or months, extended over
many generations. Nor could the poem terminate with any critical
catastrophe, as its object was to unfold the continuous, still
advancing progress of the State. From the name it might be inferred
that the Annals must have been more like a metrical chronicle than
like an epic poem; yet, as being inspired and pervaded by a grand and
vital idea, the work was elevated above the level of matter of fact
into the region of poetry. The idea of a high destiny, unfolding
itself under the old kingly dynasty and the long line of
consuls,--through the successive wars with the Italian races, with
Pyrrhus and the Carthaginians,--rapidly advancing, though not fully
accomplished in the age when the poem was written,--gave unity of plan
and consistency of form to its rude and colossal structure. The word
Annales, as applied to Roman story, suggests something more than the
mere record of events in regular annual sequence. It involves also
the idea of unbroken continuity. In the Roman Republic, the unity
and vital action of the State were maintained and manifested by the
delegation of the functions of government on magistrates appointed
from year to year, just as the life of a monarchical state is
maintained and manifested in its line of kings. In the spirit
animating the work,--in the conception of a past history, stretching
back in unbroken grandeur until it is lost in fable, but yet vitally
linked to the interests of the present time,--the Annals of Ennius may
be compared with the dramas in which Shakspeare has represented the
national life of England--in all its greatness and vicissitudes--with
the glory and splendour as well as the dark and tragic colours with
which that story is inwoven.
The poem, although laying no claim to the perfection of epic form, had
thus something of the genuine epic inspiration. While treating both
of a mythical past and of real historical events, it was pervaded by a
living and popular idea,--faith in the destiny of Rome. It was through
the power and presence of that same idea in his own age, that
Virgil was able to impart a vital and enduring meaning to a fabulous
tradition, and to create, out of the imaginary fortunes of a Trojan
hero, a poem most truly representative of his age and country. It is
the absence of any such living idea which renders the artificial
epics of refined and civilised eras,--such poems, for instance, as the
_Thebais_ of Statius, or the _Argonautics_ of Valerius Flaccus,--in
general so flat and unprofitable. Regarded, on the other hand, as
a historical poem, the Annals was written under more favourable
conditions than the _Pharsalia_ of Lucan, or the _Punic Wars_ of
Silius Italicus--in being the work of an age to which the past
had come down as popular tradition, not as recorded history. The
imagination of the poet employs itself more happily and legitimately
in filling up or modifying a story that has been shaped by the fancies
and feelings of successive generations, than in venturing to recast
the facts that stand out prominently in the actual march of human
affairs. By treating of contemporary events, the poem must have
receded still further from the pure type of epic poetry; yet the later
fragments of the work, while written with something of the minute
and literal fidelity of a chronicle, may yet lay claim to poetic
inspiration. They prove that the author was no unconcerned spectator
and reporter of the events going on around him, but that his
imagination was fired and his sympathies keenly interested by
whatever, in speech or action, was worthy to live in the memory of the
world.
There must have been many drawbacks to the popularity of the poem in
a more critical time, when strong enthusiasm and forcible conception
fail to interest, unless they are combined with the harmonious
execution of a work of art. Even from the extant fragments the
rude proportions and the unwieldy mass of the original work may be
inferred. It is still possible to note the bare, annalistic style
of many passages which sink below the level of dignified prose, the
barbarisms of taste shown by a fondness for alliterative lines
and plays upon words, the more common faults of careless haste and
redundance of expression, and of a rugged and irregular cadence. There
must have been some peculiar excellences or adaptation to the Roman
taste, through which, in spite of these defects, the popularity of
the poem was sustained far into the times of the Empire. This
late popularity may have been due in part to antiquarian zeal or
affectation, but some degree of it, as well as the favour of the
age in which the poem was written, must have been founded on more
substantial grounds. Apart from other literary interest, this poem
first drew forth and established, for the contemplation of after
times, the ideal latent in the national mind. The patriotic tones of
Virgil have the same kind of ring as these in the older poet--
Audire est operae pretium procedere recte
Qui rem Romanam Latiumque augescere vultis,
and this other line which Cicero compared to the utterance of an
oracle--
Moribus antiquis stat res Romana virisque.
While in his other works Ennius was the teacher of an alien culture to
his countrymen, in his Annals he represented them. He set before them
an image of what was most real in themselves;--an image combining
the strength and commanding features of his own time, with the proud
memories and traditional traits of the past. As it is by sympathy with
what is most vital and of deepest meaning in actual experience that a
great poet forms his ideal of what transcends experience, so it is by
a vivid apprehension of the present that he is able to re-animate the
past. Dante and Milton gained their vision of other worlds through
their intense feeling of the spiritual meaning of this life; and, in
another sphere of art, Scott was enabled to immortalise the romance
and humour of past ages, partly through the chivalrous and adventurous
spirit which he inherited from them, partly through the strong
interest and enjoyment with which he entered into the actual life and
pursuits of his contemporaries. It is in ages of transition, such as
were the ages of Sophocles, of Shakspeare, and of Scott, in which the
traditions of the past seem to blend with and colour the activity and
enjoyment of a new time of great issues, that representative works of
genius are produced. Living in such an era, deeply moved by all
the memories, the hopes, and the impulses which acted upon his
contemporaries, living his own life happily and vigorously in the
chief centre of the world's activity, Ennius was enabled to gather the
life of centuries into one representation, and to tell the story
of Rome, if without the accomplished art, yet with something of
the native force and spirit of early Greece; to fix in language
the patriotic traditions which had hitherto been kept alive by the
statues, monuments, and commemorative ceremonies of earlier times; to
uphold the standard of national character with a fervent enthusiasm;
and to address the understanding of his contemporaries with a
practical wisdom like their own, and a large knowledge both of 'books
and men':--
Vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem.
The manifest defects, as well as the peculiar power of the poem, show
how widely it departed from the standard of the Greek epic which it
professed to imitate. Its vast dimensions and solid structure are
proofs of that capacity of long labour and concentrated interest
on one great object, which was the secret of Roman success in other
spheres of action. So large a mass of materials held in union only by
a pervading national enthusiasm would have been utterly repugnant
to Greek taste, intolerant above all things of monotony, and most
exacting in its demands of artistic unity and completeness. The
fragments of the poem give no idea of careful finish; they produce
the impression of massiveness and energy, strength and uniformity of
structure, unaccompanied by beauty, grace, or symmetry. The creation
of an untutored age may be recognised in the rudeness of design,--of
a Roman mind in the national spirit, the colossal proportions, and the
strong workmanship of the poem.
The originality of the Roman epic will be still more apparent if we
compare the fragments of the Annals, in some points of detail, with
the complete works of the poet, whom Ennius regarded as his prototype.
There was, in the first place, a marked difference between Homer
and the Roman poet in their modes of representing human life and
character. The personages of the Iliad and of the Odyssey are living
and forcible types of individual character. In Achilles, in Hector,
and in Odysseus,--in Helen, Andromache, and Nausicaa, we recognise
embodiments the most real, yet the most transcendent, of the grandeur,
the heroism, the courage, and strong affection of manhood, and of the
grace, the gentleness, and the sweet vivacity of woman. The work of
Ennius, on the other hand, instead of presenting varied types of human
nature, appears to have unfolded a long gallery of national portraits.
The fragments of the poem still afford glimpses of the 'good Ancus';
'of the man of the great heart, the wise Aelius Sextus'; 'of the sweet
speaking orator,' Cethegus, 'the marrow of persuasion.' The stamp of
magnanimous fortitude is impressed on the fragmentary words of Appius
Claudius Caecus; and sagacity and resolution are depicted in the lines
which have handed down the fame of Fabius Maximus. This idea of the
poem, as unfolding the heroes of Roman story in regular series, may be
gathered also from the language of Cicero: 'Cato, the ancestor of our
present Cato, is extolled by him to the skies; the honour of the
Roman people is thereby enhanced: finally all those Maximi,
Fulvii, Marcelli, are celebrated with a glory in which we all
participate[41].' This portraiture of the kings and heroes of the
early time, of the orators, soldiers, and statesmen of the Republic,
could not have exhibited the variety, the energy, the passion, and all
the complex human attributes of Homer's personages. The men who stand
prominently out in the annals of Rome were of a more uniform type.
They were men of one common aim,--the advancement of Rome; animated
with one sentiment,--devotion to the State. All that was purely
personal in them seems merged in the traditional pictures which
express only the fortitude, dignity, and sagacity of the Republic.
Ennius also followed Homer in introducing the element of supernatural
agency into his poem. The action of the Annals, as well as of the
Iliad, was made partially dependent on a divine interference with
human affairs, though exercised less directly, and, as it were, from
a greater distance. Yet how great is the difference between the
life-like representation of the eager, capricious, and passionate
deities of Homer's Olympus and that outline which may still be traced
in Ennius, and which is seen filled up in Virgil and Horace, of the
gods assembled, like a grave council of state, to deliberate on the
destiny of Rome. In one fragment, containing the familiar line,--
Unus erit quem tu tolles in caerula caeli
Templa,--
they are introduced as debating, 'tectis bipatentibus,' on the
admission of Romulus into heaven. Again, in the account of the Second
Punic War, Jupiter is introduced as promising to the Romans the
destruction of Carthage; and Juno abandons her resentment against the
descendants of the Trojans,--
Romanis coepit Juno placata favere.
It may be remarked, as a strong proof of the hold which their
mythology had on the minds of the ancients, that men so sincere as
Ennius and Lucretius, while openly expressing opposition to that
system of religious belief, cannot separate themselves from its
influence and associations in their poetry. But it is not to be
supposed that Ennius, in the passages just referred to, was merely
using an artificial machinery to which he attached no meaning. In this
representation of the councils of the gods, he embodies that faith
in the Roman destiny, which was at the root of the most serious
convictions of the Romans, in the most sceptical as well as the most
believing ages of their history. This, too, is the real belief, which
gives meaning to the supernatural agency in the Aeneid. Aeneas is
an instrument in the hands of Fate; Jupiter merely foreknows and
pronounces its decrees; the parts assigned to Juno and Venus, in
thwarting and advancing these decrees, seem to be an artistic
addition to this original conception, suggested perhaps as much by the
experience of female influence and intrigue in the poet's own age as
by the memories of the Iliad.
Homer makes his personages known to us in speech as well as in action.
Among epic poets he alone possessed the finest dramatic genius. But
over and above the natural dialogue or soliloquy, in which every
feeling of his various personages is revealed, he has invested his
heroes with the charm of fluent and powerful oratory, in the council
of chiefs and before the assembled people. The words of his speakers
pour on, as he says of the words of Odysseus,--
[Greek: niphadessin eoikota cheimeriêsi],
in the rapid vehemence of passion or the subtle fluency of persuasion.
The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand, scarcely afford sufficient
ground for attributing to him a genuine dramatic faculty. But, as the
citizen of a republic in which action was first matured in council,
and living in the age when public speech first became a recognised
power in the State, it was incumbent on him to embody in 'his abstract
and chronicle of the time' the speech of the orator no less than the
achievement of the soldier. In his estimate of character this power of
speech is honoured as the fitting accompaniment of the wisdom of
the statesman. In the following lines, for instance, he laments the
substitution of military for civil preponderance in public affairs.
Pellitur e medio sapientia, vi geritur res:
Spernitur orator bonus, horridu' miles amatur:
Haut doctis dictis certantes, sed maledictis
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes;
Non ex jure manu consertum, sed magi' ferro
Rem repetunt, regnumque petunt, vadunt solida vi[42].
Many lines of the Annals are evidently fragments of speeches. The most
remarkable of these passages is one from a speech of Pyrrhus, and
is characterised by Cicero as expressing 'sentiments truly regal
and worthy of the race of the Aeacidae[43].' This fragment, although
evincing nothing of the fluency, the passion, or the argumentative
subtlety of debate, yet suggests the power of a great orator by its
grave authoritative appeal to the moral dignity of man:--
Nec mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium dederitis:
Non cauponantes bellum, sed belligerantes,
Ferro non auro vitam cernamus utrique.
Vosne velit an me regnare era quidve ferat Fors,
Virtute experiamur. Et hoc simul accipe dictum:
Quorum virtutei belli fortuna pepercit,
Eorundem libertati me parcere certum est.
Dono ducite, doque volentibu' cum magnis dis[44].
Of the same severe and lofty tone is that appeal of Appius Claudius,
blind and in extreme old age, to the Senate, when wavering in its
resolution, and inclined to make peace with Pyrrhus:--
Quo vobis mentes rectae quae stare solebant
Antehac, dementes sese flexere viai[45]?
As Milton, in his representation of the great debate in Pandemonium,
idealised and glorified the stately and serious speech of his own
time, so Ennius, in his graphic delineation of the age in which he
lived, gave expression to that high magnanimous mood in accordance
with which the acts of Roman statesmen were assailed or vindicated,
and the policy of the State was shaped before Senate and people--
indu foro lato sanctoque senatu.
The great poets of human action and passion are for the most part to
be ranked among the great poets of the outward world. If they do not
seem to have penetrated with so much personal sympathy into the inner
secret of the life of Nature, as the great contemplative poets of
ancient and modern times, yet they show, in different ways, that their
sense and imagination were powerfully affected both by her outward
beauty and by her manifold energy. Homer, not so much by direct
description of the scenes in which the action of his poems is laid, as
by many indirect touches, by vivid imagery and picturesque epithets,
reveals the openness of his mind to every impression from the outward
world, and the fresh delight with which his imagination reproduced the
impressions immediately received from the 'world of eye and ear.' If
he has left any personal characteristic stamped upon his poetry, it is
the trace of adventure and keen enjoyment in the open air, among the
most stirring sights and sounds and forces of Nature. The imagery of
Virgil is of a more peaceful cast. It seems rather to be 'the harvest
of a quiet eye,' gathered in the conscious contemplation of rural
beauty, and stored up for after use along with the products of his
study and meditation. The fragments of Ennius, on the other hand,
afford few indications either of active toil and unconscious enjoyment
among the solitudes of Nature, or of the luxurious and pensive
susceptibility to beauty by which the poetry of Virgil is pervaded.
He was the poet, not of the woods and rivers, but, essentially, of the
city and the camp. No sentiment could appear less appropriate to him
than that of Virgil's modest prayer,--
Flumina amem silvasque inglorius.
Yet both in his illustrative imagery and in his narrative, he
occasionally reproduces with lively force, if not with much poetical
ornament, some aspects of the outward world, as well as many real
scenes from the world of action.
His imagery is sometimes borrowed from that of Homer; as, for
instance, the following simile, which is also imitated by Virgil:--
Et tum sic ut equus, qui de praesepibu' fartus,
Vincla suis magnis animis abrupit, et inde
Fert sese campi per caerula laetaque prata
Celso pectore, saepe jubam quassat simul altam,
Spiritus ex anima calida spumas agit albas[46].
Other illustrations are taken from circumstances likely to have
been familiar to the men of his own time, but without any apparent
intention of adding poetical beauty to the object he is representing.
Thus the silent expectation with which the assembled people watch the
rival auspices of Romulus and Remus is brought before the mind by an
illustration suggested by, and suggestive of, the passionate eagerness
with which the public games were witnessed by the Romans of his own
age:--
Expectant vel uti consul cum mittere signum
Volt, omnes avidi spectant ad carceris oras,
Quam mox emittat pictis e faucibu' currus[47].
There may be noticed also, in fragments of the narrative, occasional
expressions and descriptive touches implying some sense of what is
sublime or picturesque in the familiar aspects of the outward world.
The sky, with its starry host, is poetically presented in that
expression, which has been adopted by Virgil, 'stellis ingentibus
aptum'; and in the following line,
Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis.
In the description of the auspices of Romulus, the scene is
enlivened by this vivid flash, 'simul aureus exoritur Sol,' following
instantaneously upon the appearance of the first bird of omen. A
lively sense of natural scenery is implied in these lines from the
dream of Ilia--
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
Et ripas raptare locosque novos;
in this description of a river, afterwards imitated both by Lucretius
and Virgil--
Quod per amoenam urbem leni fluit agmine flumen;
and in these lines which recall a familiar passage in the Aeneid:--
Jupiter hic risit tempestatesque serenae
Riserunt omnes risu Jovis omnipotentis.[48]
The rhythm and the diction of these fragments suggest another point
of contrast between the father of Greek and the father of Roman
literature. For the old Saturnian verse of the Fauns and Bards, which
had been employed by Livius Andronicus and Naevius, Ennius substituted
the heroic hexameter, which he moulded to the use of Roman poetry,
with little art and grace, but with much energy and weight. As he
imitated the metre of Homer, he has in several places (as in a simile
already quoted, and again in describing the conduct of a brave tribune
in the Istrian war), attempted to reproduce his language. Nothing,
however, can show more clearly the vast original difference between
the genius of Greece and of Rome than the contrast presented between
the rhythm and style of their earliest epic poets. In regard for law
and civil order, in military and political organisation, in practical
power of understanding, and in the command which that power gave them
over the world, the Romans of the second century B.C. had made a great
and permanent advance beyond the Greeks of the time of Homer. But the
Greeks, when they first become known to us, appear in possession of
a gift to which all later generations have been unable to attain. The
genius of poetry has never, since the time of Homer, appeared in union
with a faculty of expression so true and spontaneous, so faultless in
purity, so inexhaustible in resources. It is difficult to imagine a
greater contrast than that between the varied and harmonious power
of the earliest Greek epic, and the rugged rhythm and diction of
the Annals. Yet the very rudeness of that work is significant of
the energy of a man who had to accomplish a gigantic task by his own
unaided efforts. His ear had not been passively trained by the musical
echoes transmitted by earlier minstrels; nor did he inherit the
fluency and richness of expression which a long line of poets hands on
to their successors. While professing to imitate the structure of the
Homeric verse, he was unable to seize its finer cadences. Nor had
he learned the stricter conditions under which that metre could be
adapted to the powerful and weighty movement of the Latin language.
If he did much to establish Latin prosody on principles deviating
considerably from those observed by the contemporary comic poets,
yet many points which were regulated unalterably for Virgil were
left quite unsettled by Ennius. There are found occasionally in these
fragments lines without any _caesura_ before the fifth foot, as the
following, in one of the longest and least imperfect of his remains--
Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
and this in a passage in which the sound seems intended to imitate the
sense--
Poste recumbite vestraque pectora pellite tonsis.
And though such marked violations of harmony are rare, yet there is a
large proportion of lines in which the laws for the caesura observed
by later poets are violated. Again, while the final 's' is in most
cases not sounded before a word beginning with a consonant (a usage
which finally disappears only in the Augustan poets) the final 'm,' on
the other hand, is sometimes left without elision before a vowel, as
in the following line--
Miscent inter sese inimicitiam agitantes.
The quantity of syllables and the inflexions of words were so far
unsettled, that such lines as the following are read,
Partem fuisset de summis rebu' regendis;
and this,
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem;
and
Volturus in spinis miserum mandebat homonem.
Among the ruder characteristics of his diction, his use of prosaic and
technical terms is especially to be noticed. The following lines, for
instance, read more like the bare statement of a chronicle, or of a
legal document, than an extract from a poetical narrative:--
Cives Romani tunc facti sunt Campani;
and this
Appius indixit Karthaginiensibu' bellum;
and these lines enumerating the various priesthoods established by
Numa,--
Volturnalem Palatualem Furrinalem
Floralemque Falacrem et Pomonalem fecit
Hic idem.
Yet, in spite of these imperfections, both his rhythm and language
produce the impression of power and originality. With all the
roughness and irregularity of his measure, and notwithstanding the
inharmonious structure of continuous passages, his lines often have a
weighty and impressive effect, like that produced by some of the great
passages in Lucretius and Virgil. It is said of the rhetorician Aelian
that he excessively admired in Ennius both 'the greatness of his
mind and the grandeur of his metre[49].' Something of this sonorous
grandeur may be recognised in a fragment descriptive of the havoc made
by woodcutters in a great forest,--a passage in which the language of
Ennius again appears as a connecting link between that of Homer and of
Virgil:--
Incedunt arbusta per alta, securibu' caedunt,
Percellunt magnas quercus, exciditur ilex,
Fraxinu' frangitur, atque abies consternitur alta.
Pinus proceras pervortunt: omne sonabat
Arbustum fremitu siluai frondosai[50].
In the longest consecutive passages,--the dream of Ilia, the auspices
of Romulus, and that from book seventh, already quoted as illustrative
of the poet's character,--there is, notwithstanding the roughness of
the lines, something also of Homeric rapidity;--a quality which the
Latin hexameter never afterwards attained in elevated poetry.
The diction also of the Annals is generally fresh and forcible,
sometimes vividly imaginative. But perhaps the most admirable quality
of its style is a grave simplicity and sincerity of tone. Especially
is this the case in passages expressing appreciation of strength and
grandeur of character, as in those fragments from the speeches of
Pyrrhus and of Appius Claudius Caecus, already quoted, and in the
famous lines commemorative of the resolute character and momentous
services of Fabius Maximus:--
Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem:
Noenum rumores ponebat ante salutem:
Ergo plusque magisque viri nunc gloria claret[51].
These lines leave on the mind the same impression of antique
majesty, as is produced by the unadorned record of character and work
accomplished inscribed on the tombs of the Scipios.
This truly Roman quality of style, depending on a strong imaginative
sense of reality, is one of the great elements of power in the
language of Lucretius.
III. CHIEF CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS GENIUS AND INTELLECT.
III.--From a review of the extant fragments both of the Tragedies and
the Annals of Ennius, it appears that his prominent place in Roman
literature, and influence over his countrymen, were due much more to
a great productiveness and activity, and to an original force of mind
and character, than to any artistic skill displayed in the conception
or execution of his works. A consideration of the spirit and purpose
of his greatest works has led to the conclusion that they were, in a
considerable measure, inspired by the genius of Rome, and were thus
rather the starting-point of a new literature than the mechanical
reproduction of the literature of the Greeks. It remains to consider
what inference may be formed from these fragments as to the character
of his genius, of his imaginative sentiment and moral sympathies, and
of his intellectual power.
The force of many single expressions in these fragments, and the power
with which various incidents, situations, and characters, are brought
before the mind indicate an active imagination. A sense of energy and
life-like movement is the prevailing impression produced by a study
of the language and the longer passages in these remains. Many single
lines and expressions that have been gathered accidentally, as mere
isolated phrases, disjoined from the context in which they originally
occurred, bear traces of the ardour with which they were cast into
shape. In longer passages, the whole heart, sense, and understanding
of the writer seem to be thrown into his narrative. He has not the
eye of a poetic artist who observes, as it were, from a distance,
and fixes as in a picture, some phase of passionate feeling or some
beautiful aspect of repose. He suggests rather the idea of a man of
practical energy, who has been present and taken part in the action
described, who enters with living interest into every detail, and
watches it at the same time with a sagacious discernment and a strong
enthusiasm. His power as a narrative poet is the power of forcibly
reproducing the outward movement and the inward meaning of an action,
and of identifying himself with the hearts and minds of the actors on
the scene. Several passages, wanting altogether in poetical beauty,
yet arrest the attention by this energy and realism of conception;
as, for example, this short and rugged fragment, descriptive of
a commander in the crisis of a battle (probably that of
Cynoscephalae),--
Aspectabat virtutem legioni' suai,
Expectans, si mussaret, quae denique pausa
Pugnandi fieret, aut duri fini' laboris[52].
Even in the abrupt dislocation from their context these lines leave on
the mind an impression of the calm vigilance of a general, and of his
confidence, not unmixed with anxiety, in 'the long-enduring hearts' of
his men. The same truth and energy of conception, with more poetical
accompaniment, may be recognised in the longer passages, from Book
vii. and Book i., already quoted or referred to.
But the imaginative power which gives poetical meaning to familiar
objects and ideas is revealed by the force of many single expressions
and by the delineation of more passionate situations. Such expressions
as the following, most of which reappear with an antique lustre in the
gold of Virgil's diction, are indicative of this higher power:--
Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum.
Transnavit cita per teneras caliginis auras.
Postquam discordia taetra
Belli ferratos postes portasque refregit.
Quem super ingens
Porta tonat caeli.
Spiritus austri imbricitor. Naves velivolae, etc. etc.
These and similar phrases, some of which have already been quoted,
imply poetical creativeness. They tend to justify the estimate of the
genius of Ennius, indicated in the language of high admiration applied
to him by Lucretius,--
Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno
Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
Per gentes Italas hominum quae clara clueret[53];
and in the signs of the careful study of the Annals which may be
traced in the elaborate workmanship of the Aeneid.
The longest specimen of narrative vivified by poetical feeling, from
the hand of Ennius, is the passage in which the vestal Ilia relates to
her sister the dream that portended her great and strange destiny:--
Excita cum tremulis anus attulit artubu' lumen,
Talia commemorat lacrimans, exterrita somno.
Eurudica prognata, pater quam noster amavit,
Vires vitaque corpu' meum nunc deserit omne.
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta
Et ripas raptare locosque novos; ita sola
Postilla, germana soror, errare videbar
Tardaque vestigare et quaerere te neque posse
Corde capessere: semita nulla pedem stabilibat.
Exin compellare pater me voce videtur
His verbis: 'O gnata, tibi sunt ante ferendae
Aerumnae, post ex fluvio fortuna resistet.'
Haec ecfatu' pater, germana, repente recessit
Nec sese dedit in conspectum, corde cupitus,
Quanquam multa manus ad caeli caerula templa
Tendebam lacrimans et blanda voce vocabam:
Vix aegro cum corde meo me somnu' reliquit[54].
Though these lines are rough and inharmonious as compared with the
rhythm of Catullus or Virgil, yet they flow more smoothly and rapidly
than any of the other fragments preserved from Ennius. The impression
of gentleness and tender affection produced by the speech of Ilia,
implies some dramatic skill in the conception of character. And there
is real imaginative power shown in the sense of hurry and surprise, of
vague awe and helplessness conveyed in the lines--
Nam me visus homo pulcher per amoena salicta, etc.
From this passage Virgil has borrowed one of the finest touches in his
delineation of the passion of Dido, the sense of horror and desolation
haunting the Carthaginian queen in her dreams--
Agit ipse furentem
In somnis ferus Aeneas: semperque relinqui
Sola sibi, semper longam incomitata videtur
Ire viam, et Tyrios deserta quaerere terra.
Another of the most impressive passages in the early books of the
Aeneid--the dream in which Hector appears to Aeneas[55]--was evidently
suggested by the description which Ennius gave of the appearance of
the shade of Homer to himself. Some of his dramatic fragments,
also, as for instance the scene between Hecuba and Cassandra already
referred to, show a real power of conceiving and representing
passionate situations.
Among the modes of imaginative sentiment by which the poetry of
Ennius is pervaded, those kindled by patriotic enthusiasm are most
conspicuous. In the manifestation of his enthusiasm, he shows an
affinity to Virgil in ancient, and to Scott in modern times. He
resembles them in their mingled feelings of veneration and affection
which they entertain towards the national heroes of old times, and
the great natural features of their country, associated with historic
memories and legendary renown. Such feelings are shown by Ennius in
the lines of tender regret and true hero-worship, which express the
sorrow of Senate and people at the death of Romulus--
Pectora ... tenet desiderium, simul inter
Sese sic memorant, O Romule, Romule die
Qualem te patriae custodem di genuerunt!
O pater, O genitor, O sanguen dis oriundum!
Tu produxisti nos intra luminis oras[56].
They appear also in the language applied by him to the sacred river
of Rome, which had preserved the founder of the city from his untimely
fate, and which was thus inseparably identified with the national
destiny--
Teque pater Tiberine tuo cum flumine sancto.
and also in this fragment--
Postquam consistit fluvius qui est omnibu' princeps
Qui sub caeruleo.
The enumeration of the great warlike races in the line
Marsa manus, Peligna cohors, Vestina virum vis,
may recall the pride and enthusiasm which are kindled in the heart
of Virgil by the names of the various tribes of Italy, and of
places renowned for their fame in story, or their picturesque
environment[57]. This fond use of proper names recalling old
associations or the charm of natural scenery is also among the most
familiar characteristics of the poetry of Scott.
It was seen in the introductory chapter that the Roman mind was
peculiarly susceptible of that kind of feeling, which perhaps may best
be described as the sense of majesty. This vein of poetical emotion is
also conspicuous in the fragments of Ennius. His language shows a deep
sense of greatness and order, both in the material world and in human
affairs. Thus his style appears animated not only by vital force, but
by an impressive solemnity, befitting the grave and dignified emotion
which responds to such ideas. This susceptibility of his genius
appears in such expressions as these--
Magnum pulsatis Olympum. Indu mari magno.
Litora lata sonant.
Latos per populos terrasque.
Magnae gentes opulentae.
Quis potis ingentis oras evolvere belli?
Vertitur interea caelum cum ingentibu' signis;
and again in the following--
Indu foro lato sanctoque senatu.
Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est.
Omnibu' cura viris uter esset induperator,
and in the epithet which Cicero quotes as applied to cities--
Urbes magnas atque _imperiosas_.
His imagination appears also to have been impressed by that sense of
outward pomp and magnificence which exercised a strong spell on the
Roman mind in all ages, and obtained its most complete and permanent
realisation in the architecture of the Empire. A short passage from
one of his tragedies, the Andromache, may be quoted as illustrative of
this influence, even in the writings of Ennius, though naturally it
is much more apparent in the style of those poets who witnessed the
grandeur of Rome in her later era:--
O pater, O patria, O Priami domus,
Saeptum altisono cardine templum!
Vidi ego te, astante ope barbarica,
Tectis caelatis, lacuatis,
Auro ebore instructum regifice![58]
While his peculiar poetical feeling is present chiefly in the
fragments of the Annals, the moral elements of his poetry may be
gathered both from his epic and dramatic remains. Strength and dignity
of character are the qualities with which his own nature was most
in sympathy. Yet in delineating the agitation of Ilia, the shame
of Cassandra, and the sorrow of Andromache, he reveals also much
tenderness of feeling,--the not unusual accompaniment of the manly
genius of Rome. A similar tenderness is found in union with the grave
tones of Pacuvius and Accius, and in still greater measure with
the fortitude of Lucretius and the majesty of Virgil. The masculine
qualities which most stir his enthusiasm are the Roman virtues of
resolution (constantia), sincerity, magnanimity, capacity for affairs.
Thus a latent glow of feeling may be discerned in the lines which
record the brave resolution of the Roman people during the first
hardships of the war with Pyrrhus--
Ast animo superant atque aspera prima
Volnera belli dispernunt[59];
and in this strong and scornful triumph over natural sorrow, from the
Telamon:--
Ego cum genui tum morituros scivi, et ei rei sustuli:
Praeterea ad Trojam cum misi ob defendendam Graeciam,
Scibam me in mortiferum bellum, non in epulas mittere[60].
The generosity and courage of a magnanimous nature are stamped upon
the kingly speech which he puts into the mouth of Pyrrhus. A frank
sincerity of character reveals itself in such passages as the
following:--
Eo ego ingenio natus sum,
Aeque inimicitiam atque amicitiam in frontem promptam gero[61].
There is no subtlety nor rhetorical point in the expression of his
serious convictions. The very style of the tragedies, which, as Cicero
says[62], 'does not depart from the natural order of the words,' is a
symbol of frankness and straightforwardness.
He shows also, in his delineations of character, high appreciation of
practical wisdom, and of its most powerful instrument in a free State,
the persuasive power of oratory. This appreciation is expressed in
the lines so much admired by Cicero and Aulus Gellius[63], though
ridiculed by the purism of Seneca:--
Is dictus 'st ollis popularibus olim
Qui tum vivebant homines, atque aevum agitabant,
Flos delibatus populi suadaeque medulla[64].
He seems to admire the sterling qualities of character and intellect
rather than the brilliant manifestations of impulse and genius. He
celebrates the heroism of brave endurance rather than of chivalrous
daring[65]: the fortitude that, in the long run, wins success, and
saves the State[66], rather than the impetuous valour which achieves
a barren glory; the sincerity and simplicity which are stronger
than art, yet that know when to speak and when to be silent[67]; the
sagacity which enables men to understand their circumstances, and to
turn them to the best account[68].
Many of his fragments, again, show traces of that just and vigorous
understanding of human life, and that shrewdness of observation, which
constitute a great satirist. The didactic tone of satire appears, for
instance, in the following lines--
Otioso in otio animus nescit quid velit;
Hic itidem est: enim neque domi nunc nos neque militiae sumus,
Imus huc, illuc hinc, cum illuc ventum est, ire illinc lubet;
Incerte errat animus: praeter propter vitam vivitur[69],--
a fragment which might be compared with certain passages in the
Epistles of Horace, which give expression to the _ennui_ experienced
as a result of the inaction and luxurious living of the Augustan age.
But a closer parallel will be found in a passage where Lucretius has
assumed something of the caustic tone of Roman satire--
Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille
Esse domi quem pertaesum 'st subitoque revertit,
Quippe domi nihilo melius qui sentiat esse, etc.[70]
While Ennius, like Lucretius, gives little indication of humour, yet
the folly and superstition of his times provoke him into tones of
contemptuous irony, especially where he has to expose the arts of
false prophets and fortune-tellers. The men of the manliest temper and
the strongest understanding in ancient times were most intolerant of
this mischievous form of imposture and credulity. Thus Thucydides,
in general so reserved in his expression of personal feeling, treats,
with a manifest irony, all supernatural pretences to foresee
or control the future. The tone in which Ennius writes of such
professions reminds us of Milton's grim contempt for
Eremites and friars
White, black, and grey, with all their trumpery.
Thus, in a fragment of Book xi. of the Annals, the fears excited
by the prophets and diviners at the commencement of the war with
Antiochus are encountered with the pertinent question--
Satin' vates verant aetate in agenda?
Thus too the pretensions and the ignorance of astrologers are exposed
in a line of one of the dramas--
Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.
And the following passage may be quoted as applicable to charlatans of
every kind, in every age and country--
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 drachmam ipsi petunt[71].
There are passages of the same spirit to be found among the fragments
of Pacuvius and Accius.
There is not much indication of speculative thought in any of these
fragments. The blunt sentiment which Ennius puts into the mouth of
Neoptolemus probably expressed his own mental attitude towards the
schools of philosophy--
Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis: nam omnino haut placet.
His observations on life are neither of an imaginative, of a deeply
reflective, nor of a purely satiric character. Unlike the thoughts of
the Greek dramatists, they make no attempt to solve the painful riddle
of the world; they want the universality and systematic basis of
philosophical truths; they are expressed neither with the pointed
wit nor with the ironical humour of satire. They are the maxims of
a strong common sense and the dictates of a grave rectitude of will.
They are practical, not speculative. They have their origin in a sense
of duty rather than of consequences. They are in conformity with the
ideal realised in the best types of Roman character; and they bear
witness to the sterling worth combined with the ardent enthusiasm, and
the practical sense united to the strong imagination of the poet.
Such appear to be the chief attributes of genius and imaginative
sentiment, and the chief moral and intellectual features indicated in
the fragments of Ennius. It is not indeed possible, from the tenor of
single passages, to judge of the composition of a whole drama or of
a continuous book of the Annals. No single scene or speech can afford
sufficient grounds for inferring the amount of creative power with
which his characters were conceived and sustained in all their complex
relations. Yet enough has appeared in these fragments, which, from
the accidental mode of their preservation, must be regarded as the
ordinary samples and not chosen specimens of his style, to confirm
the ancient belief in his pre-eminence and to determine the prevailing
characteristics of his genius. There is ample evidence of the great
popularity which he enjoyed among his countrymen, and of the high
estimate which many of the best Roman writers formed of his power. It
is recorded that great crowds ('magna frequentia') attended the public
reading of the Annals. Virgil was said to have introduced many lines
into the Aeneid, with the view of pleasing a public devoted to Ennius
('populus Ennianus'). The title of Ennianista was assumed by a public
reader of the Annals in the time of Hadrian, when there was a strong
revival of admiration for the older literature of Rome[72]. Cicero
often speaks of the poet as 'noster Ennius,' and quotes him with all
the signs of hearty admiration and affection. The numerous references
in his works to the Annals and the Tragedies imply also a thorough
familiarity with these poems on the part of the readers for whom his
philosophical and rhetorical treatises were written. The criticism of
Quintilian, 'Ennium sicut sacros vetustate lucos adoremus, in quibus
grandia et antiqua robora jam non tantam habent speciem quantam
religionem[73],' expresses a sentiment of traditional reverence as
well as of personal appreciation. Aulus Gellius, a writer of the time
of Hadrian, often quotes and comments upon him with hearty and genial
sympathy. The greatest among the Roman poets also, directly and
indirectly, acknowledge their admiration. The strong testimony of
Lucretius is alone sufficient to establish the fame of Ennius as a man
of remarkable force and genius. The spirit of the Annals still lives
in the antique charm and national feeling which make the epic poem
of Virgil the truest representation of Roman sentiment which has come
down to modern times. By Ovid he is characterised as--
Ennius, ingenio maximus, arte rudis.
Horace, although more reluctant and grudging in his admiration, yet
allows the 'Calabrian Muse' to be the best preserver of the fame of
the great Scipio. Even the disparaging lines--
Ennius et sapiens et fortis et alter Homerus,
Ut critici dicunt, leviter curare videtur
Quo promissa cadant et somnia Pythagorea[74],
are a strong testimony in favour of the esteem in which the vigour and
sagacity of Ennius were held by those who had all his works in their
hands. As one of the founders of Roman literature, it was impossible
that he could have rivalled the careful and finished style of the
Augustan poets; but, by his rude and energetic labours, he laid the
strong groundwork on which later poets built their fame.
He has been exposed to more serious detraction in modern times, as
the corrupter of the pure stream of early Roman poetry. It is alleged
against him by Niebuhr, that through jealousy he suppressed the ballad
and epic poetry of the early bards. The answer to this charge has
already been given. There is no evidence to prove that any such poems
were in existence in the time of Ennius. By other modern scholars
he is disadvantageously compared with Naevius, who is held up to
admiration as the last of the genuine Roman minstrels. Naevius appears
indeed to have been a remarkable and original man, yet his very scanty
fragments do not afford sufficient evidence to justify the reversal of
the verdict of antiquity on the relative greatness and importance of
the two poets. The old Roman party, in opposition to whom Ennius
and his friends are supposed to have introduced the new taste and
suppressed the old, never showed any zeal in favour of poetry of any
kind. Cato, their only literary representative, wrote prose treatises
on antiquities and agriculture, and in one of his speeches reproached
Fulvius Nobilior for the consideration which he showed to Ennius. The
evidence of these epic and dramatic fragments which have just been
considered, is all in favour of the high verdict of antiquity on the
importance and pre-eminence of the author of the Annals. Whatever in
the later poets is most truly Roman in sentiment and morality appears
to be conceived in the spirit of Ennius.
[Footnote 1: Parco admodum sumptu contentus et unius ancillae
ministerio.]
[Footnote 2: xvii. 17.]
[Footnote 3: The line--
Ad patrios montes et ad incunabula nostra,
which is quoted by Cicero in a letter to Atticus, and which
Vahlen attributed to Ennius, is now generally assigned to
Cicero himself.]
[Footnote 4: Livy xxxviii. 17.]
[Footnote 5: 'When the Carthaginians were coming from all
sides to the conflict, and all things, beneath high heaven,
confounded by the hurry and tumult of war, shook with alarm:
and men were in doubt to which of the two the empire of the
whole world, by land and sea, should fall.'--Lucret. iii.
834-7.]
[Footnote 6: Mommsen, book iii. ch. 5.]
[Footnote 7: The author of Caesar's Spanish War quotes
Ennius in his account of the critical moment in the Battle
of Munda:--'Hic, ut ait Ennius, "pes pede premitur, armis
teruntur arma."'--Bell. Hisp. xxxi.]
[Footnote 8: Amphit. 52-3--
Quid contraxistis frontem, quia tragoediam
Dixi futuram hanc?]
[Footnote 9: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit, etc.]
[Footnote 10: De Senectute, 5.]
[Footnote 11: De Oratore, ii. 68.]
[Footnote 12: 'L. Aelium Stilonem dicere solitum ferunt Q.
Ennium de semet ipso haec scripsisse, picturamque istam morum
et ingenii ipsius Q. Ennii factam esse.'--Gell. xii. 4.]
[Footnote 13: 'He finished: and summons to him one with whom
often, and right gladly, he shared his table, his talk, and
the whole weight of his business, when weary with debate,
throughout the day, on high affairs of state, within the wide
Forum and the august Senate,--one to whom he could frankly
speak out serious matters, trifles, and jest; to whom he could
pour forth and safely confide, if he wanted to confide in any
one, all that he cared to utter, good or bad; with whom,
in private and in public, he had much entertainment and
enjoyment,--a man of that nature which no thought ever prompts
to baseness through levity or malice: a learned, honest,
pleasant man, eloquent, contented, and cheerful, of much tact,
speaking well in season; courteous and of few words; with much
old buried lore; whom length of years had made versed in old
and recent ways; in the laws of many ancients, divine and
human; one who knew when to speak and when to be silent. Him,
during the battle, Servilius thus addresses.']
[Footnote 14: [Greek: Skipiôna gar adôn kai epi mega ton andra
exarai boulomenos phêsi monon an Homêron epaxious epainous
eipein Skipiônos.]--Aelian, as quoted by Suidas, vol. i. p.
1258. Ed. Gaisford. Cf. Vahlen.]
[Footnote 15: 'Here is he laid, to whom no one, either
countryman or enemy, has been able to pay a due meed for his
services.']
[Footnote 16: 'From the utmost east, beyond the Maeotian
marsh, there is no one who in actions can vie with me. If it
is lawful for any one to ascend to the realms of the gods, to
me alone the vast gate of heaven is opened!']
[Footnote 17: 'Yet nothing more glorious than this man doth it
(the island of Sicily) seem to have contained, nor aught more
holy, nor more wonderful and beloved.']
[Footnote 18: 'Behold, my countrymen, the bust of the old man,
Ennius. He penned the record of your fathers' mighty deeds.
Let no one pay to me the meed of tears, nor weep at my
funeral. And why? because I still live, as I speed to and fro,
through the mouths of men.']
[Footnote 19: 'Hail, poet Ennius, who pledgest to mortals thy
fiery verse from thy inmost marrow.']
[Footnote 20: 'Others have treated the subject in the verses,
which in days of old the Fauns and bards used to sing, before
any one had climbed the cliffs of the Muses, or gave any care
to style.']
[Footnote 21: 'I have always said and will say that the gods
of heaven exist, but I think that they heed not the conduct of
mankind; for, if they did, it would be well with the good and
ill with the bad; and it is not so now.']
[Footnote 22:
Cor jubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
Maeonides, Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.
Persius, vi. 10 (ed. Jahn).]
[Footnote 23: Vahlen.]
[Footnote 24: Horace, Sat. ii. 4.]
[Footnote 25: 'The poetical philosophy, which the later
Pythagoreans had extracted from the writings of the old
Sicilian comedian, Epicharmus of Megara, or rather had, at
least for the most part, circulated under cover of his name,
regarded the Greek gods as natural substances, Zeus as
the atmosphere, the soul as a particle of Sun-dust, and so
forth.'--Mommsen's Hist. of Rome, Book iii. ch. 15. (Dickson's
Translation.)]
[Footnote 26: 'This is that Jupiter which I speak of,
which the Greeks call the air; it is first wind and clouds;
afterwards rain, and after rain, cold; next it becomes wind,
then air again. All those things which I mention to you are
Jupiter, because it is he who supports mortals and cities and
all animals.']
[Footnote 27: Mommsen.]
[Footnote 28: 'Inventore minor.'--Horace.]
[Footnote 29: Another passage, ascribed to Ennius, descriptive
of the greed of a parasite, occupies the ground common to
Roman comedy and to Roman satire:--
Quippe sine cura laetus lautus cum advenis
Insertis malis, expedito bracchio
Alacer, celsus, lupino expectans impetu,
Mox cum alterius obligurias bona,
Quid censes domino esse animi? pro divum fidem!
Ille tristis cibum dum servat, tu ridens voras.]
[Footnote 30: The meaning of the passage amounts to no more
than this, that the man who tries to 'sell' another, and
fails, is himself 'sold.']
[Footnote 31: Brutus, 20.]
[Footnote 32: De Fin. i. 2.]
[Footnote 33: Cf. Eur. Med. 1-8:--
[Greek:
Eith' ôphel' Argous mê diaptasthai skaphos
Kolchôn es aian kyaneas Symplêgadas,
mêd' en napaisi Pêliou pesein pote
tmêtheisa peukê, mêd' eretmôsai cheras
andrôn aristeôn, hoi to panchryson deros
Pelia metêlthon; ou gar an despoin' emê
Mêdeia pyrgous gês epleus' Iôlkias
erôti thymon ekplageis' Iasonos.]]
[Footnote 34: Several of these fragments will be examined
later.]
[Footnote 35: Tusc. Disp. ii. 16.]
[Footnote 36: 'How tender, how true to character, how
affecting!'--De Div. i. 31. 'What a great poet, though he is
despised by those admirers of Euphorion. He understands that
sudden and unlooked-for calamities are more grievous. A noble
poem,--pathetic in its matter, language, and music.'--Tusc.
Disp. iii. 19.]
[Footnote 37: 'Here it is; here, the torch, wrapped in fire
and blood. Many years it hath lain hid; help, citizens, and
extinguish it. For now, on the great sea, a swift fleet is
gathering. It hurries along a host of calamities. They come: a
fierce host lines the shores with sail-winged ships.' Exitium
= exitiorum; cf. Cic. Orator. 46, Itaque idem poeta, qui
inusitatius contraxerat 'Patris mei meum factum pudet' pro
'meorum factorum' et 'Texitur: exitium examen rapit' pro
'exitiorum.']
[Footnote 38: Acad. ii. 28.]
[Footnote 39: Gellius, xvii. 21.]
[Footnote 40: He speaks of Eurydice as the wife of Aeneas.
This statement he is supposed to have derived from the
_Cypria_.]
[Footnote 41: Cicero, Arch. 9.]
[Footnote 42: 'Wisdom is banished from amongst us, violence
rules the day: the good orator is despised, the rough soldier
loved; striving, not with words of learning, but with words of
hate, they get embroiled in feuds, and stir up enmity one with
another. They challenge not their adversaries to contend by
forms of law, but claim their rights by the sword, and aim at
sovereign power, and make their way by sheer force.']
[Footnote 43: Cic. De Off. i. 12.]
[Footnote 44: 'Neither do I ask gold for myself, nor offer ye
to me a ransom. Let us wage the war, not like hucksters, but
like soldiers--with the sword, not with gold, putting our
lives to the issue. Whether our mistress Fortune wills that
you or I should reign, or what her purpose be, let us prove by
valour. And hearken too to this saying,--The brave men, whom
the fortune of battle spares, their liberty I have resolved to
spare. Take my offer, as I grant it, under favour of the great
gods.']
[Footnote 45: 'Whither have your minds, which heretofore were
wont to stand firm, madly swerved from the straight course?']
[Footnote 46: A comparison with the original passage (Iliad
vi. 506) will show that Ennius, while reproducing much, though
not all, of the force and life of Homer's image, has added
also some touches of his own:--
[Greek:
hôs d' hote tis statos hippos, akostêsas epi phatnê,
desmon aporrhêxas theiê pedioio kroainôn,
eiôthôs louesthai eurrheios potamoio,
kydioôn; hypsou de karê echei, amphi de chaitai
ômois aïssontai; ho d' aglaïêphi pepoithôs,
rhimpha he gouna pherei meta t' êthea kai nomon hippôn.]
Cf. Virgil, Aen. xi. 492:--
Qualis ubi abruptis fugit praesepia vinclis
Tandem liber equus, campoque potitus aperto
Aut ille in pastus armentaque tendit equarum,
Aut adsuetus aquae perfundi flumine noto
Emicat, arrectisque fremit cervicibus alte
Luxurians, luduntque jubae per colla, per armos.]
[Footnote 47: 'They watch, as when the consul is going to give
the signal, all look eagerly to the barrier, to see how soon
he may start the chariots from the painted entrance.']
[Footnote 48:
Olli subridens hominum sator atque deorum
Voltu, quo caelum tempestatesque serenat.--Aen. i. 254.]
[Footnote 49: [Greek: Ennios Rhômaios poiêtês; hon Ailianos
epainein axion phêsi.... dêlon de hôs etethêpei tou poiêtou
tên megalonoian kai tôn metrôn to megaleion kai axiagaston.]
Suidas, vol i. p. 1258, ed. Gaisford.]
[Footnote 50: Cf. Iliad xxiii. 114-120; and also Virgil, Aen.
vi. 179:--
Itur in antiquam silvam, stabula alta ferarum,
Procumbunt piceae, sonat icta securibus ilex,
Fraxineaeque trabes cuneis et fissile robur
Scinditur, advolvunt ingentis montibus ornos.]
[Footnote 51: 'One man, by biding his time, restored the
commonwealth. He cared not for what men said of him, as
compared with our safety: therefore now his fame waxeth
brighter day by day.']
[Footnote 52: 'He watched the courage of his army, to see if
any murmur should arise for some pause to the long battle,
some rest from their weary toil.']
[Footnote 53: 'As sang our Ennius, the first who brought down
from beautiful Helicon a chaplet of unfading leaf, the fame
of which should be bruited loud through the nations of Italian
men.']
[Footnote 54: 'When the old dame had risen, and with trembling
limbs had brought the light, thus she (Ilia), roused in
terror from her sleep, with tears tells her tale: "Daughter of
Eurydice, whom our father loved, my strength and life now fail
me through all my frame. For methought that a goodly man was
bearing me off through the pleasant willow-groves, by the
river-banks, and places strange to me. Thereafter, O my
sister, I seemed to be wandering all alone, and with slow
steps to track my way, to be seeking thee, and to be unable
to find thee near; no footpath steadied my step. Afterwards
methought I heard my father address me in these
words--'Daughter, trouble must first be borne by thee;
afterwards thy fortune shall rise up again from the river.'
With these words, O sister, he suddenly departed, nor gave
himself to my sight, though my heart yearned to him, though I
kept eagerly stretching my hands to the blue vault of heaven,
weeping, and calling on him with loving tones. With pain and
weary heart at last sleep left me."']
[Footnote 55: Aen. ii. 270.]
[Footnote 56: 'Regret and sorrow fill their hearts, while
thus they say to one another, O Romulus, God-like Romulus, how
great a guardian of our country did the gods create in thee! O
father, author of our being, O blood sprung from the gods!
it is thou that hast brought us forth within the realms of
light.']
[Footnote 57: E.g. passages such as the following:--
Quique altum Praeneste viri, quique arva Gabinae
Junonis gelidumque Anienem et roscida rivis
Hernica saxa colunt, quos dives Anagnia pascit,
Quos, Amasene pater.--Aen. vii. 682-5.]
[Footnote 58: 'O father! O fatherland! O house of Priam,
palace, closing on high-sounding hinge, I have seen thee,
guarded by a barbaric host, with carved and deep-fretted roof,
with ivory and gold royally adorned.']
[Footnote 59: 'But they rise superior in spirit, and spurn the
first sharp wounds of war.']
[Footnote 60: 'When I begat them, I knew that they must die,
and to that end I bred them. Besides, when I sent them to Troy
to fight for Greece, I was well aware that I was sending them,
not to a feast, but to a deadly war.']
[Footnote 61: 'Such is my nature. Enmity and friendship
equally I bear stamped on my forehead.']
[Footnote 62: 'Ennio delector, ait quispiam, quod non discedit
a communi ordine verborum.'--Orator, 11.]
[Footnote 63: Cicero, Brutus, 15; Aulus Gellius, xii. 2.]
[Footnote 64: 'He was called by those, his fellow-countrymen,
who flourished then and enjoyed their day, the chosen flower
of the people, and the marrow of persuasion.']
[Footnote 65: Compare his account of the Tribune in the
Istrian war:--
'Undique conveniunt velut imber, tela tribuno,' etc.]
[Footnote 66: Cf. 'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem,'
etc.]
[Footnote 67: Cf.
'Ita sapere opino esse optimum, ut pro viribus
Tacere ac fabulare tute noveris;'
also
'Ea libertas est quae pectus purum et firmum gestitat.']
[Footnote 68: 'Egregie cordatus homo catus Aeliu' Sextus.']
[Footnote 69: 'In idleness the mind knows not what it wants.
This is now our case. We are neither now at home nor
abroad. We go hither, back again to the place from which we
came,--when we have reached it we desire to leave it again.
Our mind is all astray--existence goes on outside of real
life.']
[Footnote 70: iii. 1059-67.]
[Footnote 71: 'But your superstitious prophets and impudent
fortune-tellers, idle fellows, or madmen, or the victims of
want, who cannot discern the path for themselves, yet point
the way out to others, and ask a drachma from the very persons
to whom they promise a fortune.']
[Footnote 72: 'And there it is announced to Julianus that
a certain public reader, an accomplished man, with a very
well-trained and musical voice, read the Annals of Ennius
publicly in the theatre. Let us go, says he, to hear this
"Ennianista," whoever he is,--for by that name he chose to be
called.'--Aulus Gellius, xviii. 5.
The following line of Martial (v. 10. 7) implies also his
popularity under the Empire--
'Ennius est lectus, salvo tibi, Roma, Marone.']
[Footnote 73: 'Let us venerate Ennius like the groves, sacred
from their antiquity, in which the great and ancient
oak-trees are invested not so much with beauty as with sacred
associations.'--Inst. Or. x. i. 88.]
[Footnote 74: 'Ennius, the wise and strong, and the second
Homer, as his critics will have it, seems to care little for
the issue of all his promises and Pythagorean dreams.'--Epist.
II. i. 50-2.]
CHAPTER V.
EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY--M. PACUVIUS, B.C. 219-129; L. ACCIUS, B.C.
170--ABOUT B.C. 90.
The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained
till about the beginning of the first century B.C., first by his
nephew M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the
drama during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the
early writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the
Roman stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been
mentioned were not only performed during the lifetime of their
authors, but, as appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they
held their place on the stage with much popular applause, and were
read and admired as literary works till the last days of the Republic.
This popularity implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the
time in which it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening
new interests and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with
literature. Yet, on the other hand, the want of permanence, and the
want of any power of development in the Roman drama, would indicate
that it was less adapted to the genius of the nation than either
the epic or the satiric poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of
Pacuvius and Accius had been as true an expression of the national
mind as either the epic poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius,
it might have been expected that it would have flourished in greater
perfection in the eras of finer literary accomplishment. The efforts
of Naevius and Ennius were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and
the spirit and manner of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace
and Juvenal; but Roman tragedy, notwithstanding the attempt to give
it a new and higher artistic development in the Augustan age, dwindled
away till it became a mere literary exercise of educated men, and
remains only in the artificial and rhetorical compositions attributed
to the philosopher Seneca.
From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is
more difficult to discern its original features and character
than those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further
difficulty arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments.
Isolated passages in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the
conduct of the action, or the force and consistency with which the
leading characters are conceived. There is, moreover, very slight
direct evidence bearing on the dramatic genius of the early tragic
poets. Roman critics seem to have paid little attention to, or
had little perception of this kind of excellence. They quote with
admiration the fervid sentiment and morality--'the rugged maxims hewn
from life'--expressed on the Roman stage; but they have not preserved
the memory of any great typical character, or of any dramatic plot
creatively conceived or powerfully sustained.
The Roman drama was confessedly a reproduction or adaptation of the
drama of Athens. The titles of the great majority of Roman tragedies
indicate that they were translated or copied from Greek originals, or
were at least founded on the legends of Greek poetry and mythology.
The _Medea_ of Ennius and the _Antiope_ of Pacuvius are known, on the
authority of Cicero, to have been directly translated from Euripides.
Other dramas were more or less close adaptations from his works, or
from those of the other Attic tragedians. All of the Roman tragic
poets indeed produced one or more plays founded on Roman history or
legend: but, with the exception of the Brutus of Accius, none of these
seem to have been permanently popular. This failure to establish a
national drama seems to imply a want of dramatic invention in the
conduct of a plot and the exhibition of character on the part of the
poets. As their own history was of supreme interest to the Romans at
all times, it is difficult on any other supposition to explain the
failure of the 'fabula praetextata' in gaining the public ear. There
is, however, distinct evidence that in their adaptations from the
Greek the Roman poets in some cases departed considerably from their
originals. Something of a Roman stamp was perhaps unconsciously
impressed on the Greek personages who were represented. Many of the
extant fragments seem to breathe the spirit of Rome more than of
Athens. They are expressed not with the subtlety and reflective genius
of Greece, but in the plain and straightforward tones of the Roman
Republic. The long-continued popularity of Roman tragedy implies also
that it was something more than an inartistic copy of the masterpieces
of Athenian genius. Mere imitations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides might possibly have obtained some favour with a few men
of literary education, but could never have been listened to with
applause, for more than a century and a half, by miscellaneous
audiences.
The following questions suggest themselves as of most interest in
connexion with the general character of early Roman tragedy:--How far
may it have reproduced not the materials and form only, but the spirit
and ideas of the Greek drama? What was its bearing on the actual
circumstances of Roman life, and what were the grounds of the favour
with which it was received? What cause can be assigned for the
cessation of this favour with the fall of the Republic?
The materials or substance of Roman tragedy were almost entirely
Greek. The stories and characters represented were, save in the few
exceptional cases referred to above, directly derived from the Greek
tragedians or from Homer and the cyclic poets. In point of form also
and some of the metres employed, Roman tragedy endeavoured to imitate
the models on which it was founded, with probably as little perception
of the requirements of dramatic art as of refinement in expression and
harmony in rhythm. But while generally conforming to their models,
the early Roman poets departed in some important respects from their
practice. Thus they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, assigning
to it merely a subsidiary part in the dialogue. Although some simple
lyrical metre, accompanied with music, continued to be employed in the
more rapid and impassioned parts of the dialogue, there was no scope,
on the Roman stage, for the great lyrical poetry of the Greek drama,
and for the nobler functions of the chorus. On the other hand, there
seems to have been more opportunity both for action and for oratorical
declamation. The acting of a Roman play must have been more like that
on a modern stage than the stately movement and the statuesque repose
of the Greek theatre. Again, in imitating the iambic and trochaic
metres of the Greek drama, the Roman poets were quite indifferent to
the laws by which their finer harmony is produced. Any of the feet
admissible in an iambic line might occupy any place in the line, with
the exception of the last. There is thus little metrical harmony in
the fragments of Roman tragedy; but, on the other hand, it may be
remarked that the order of the words in these fragments appears more
natural and direct than in the more elaborate metres of the later
Roman poets.
But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner
spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic
excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely
Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase
through which the human mind has once passed;--a phase in which the
vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with
the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest
era of ancient civilisation. The Athenian dramatists, like the great
dramatists of other times, imparted a new and living interest to
ancient legends; but this was but one part, perhaps not the most
important part, of their functions. They represented before the people
the destiny and sufferings of national heroes and demigods, sanctified
by long association in the feelings of many generations, still
honoured by a vital worship, and appealed to as a present help in
danger. Thus a highly idealised and profoundly religious character was
imparted to the tragic representation of human passion and destiny on
the Athenian stage. This view of life, represented and contemplated
with solemnity of feeling in the age of Pericles, would have been
altogether unmeaning to a Roman of the age of Ennius. Such a one would
understand the natural heroism of a strong will, but not the new force
and elevation imparted to the will by reliance on the hidden powers
and laws overruling human affairs. He might be moved to sympathy
with the sufferers or actors on the scene; but he would be altogether
insensible to the higher consolation which overcomes the natural
sorrow for the mere earthly catastrophe in a great dramatic action.
The inward strength and dignity of a Roman senator might enable him
to appreciate the magnanimity and kingly nature of Oedipus; but the
deeper interest of the great dramas founded on the fortunes of the
Theban king, especially the interest arising from his trust in final
righteousness, his sense of communion with higher powers, from
the thought of his elevation out of the lowest earthly state into
perpetual sanctity and honour, was widely remote from the tangible
objects of a Roman's desire, and the direct motives of his conduct.
Or perhaps a Roman would have a fellow-feeling with the proud and
soldierly bearing of Ajax; but he would be blind to the inward lesson
of self-knowledge and self-mastery, which Sophocles represents as
forced upon the spirit of the Greek hero through the stern visitation
of Athene. Equally remote from the ordinary experience and emotions
of a Roman would be the feeling of awe, gloom, and mystery, diffused
through the great thoughts and imaginations of Aeschylus. Both in
Aeschylus and in Sophocles the light and the gloom cast over the
human story are not of this world. But in the fragments of the Roman
tragedians, though there is often found the expression of magnanimous
and independent sentiment, and of a very dignified and manly morality,
there is little trace of any sense of the relation of the individual
to a Divine power; and there are some indications not only of a scorn
for common superstition, but also of disbelief in the foundations
of personal religion. The thought of the insecurity of life, of the
vicissitudes of human affairs, and of the impotence of man to control
his fate, which forced the Greek poets and historians of the fifth
century B.C. into deeper speculations on the question of Divine
Providence, was utterly alien to the natural temperament of Rome, and
to the confidence inspired by uniform success during the long period
succeeding the Second Punic War.
The contemplative and religious thought of Greek tragedy was thus
as remote from the practical spirit of the Romans as the political
license and the personal humours of the old Athenian comedy were from
the earnestness of public life and the dignity of government in the
great aristocratic Republic. And thus it happened that, as the comic
poets of Rome reproduced the new comedy of Athens, which portrayed the
passions of private not of political life, and the manners rather of a
cosmopolitan than of a purely Greek civilisation, so the tragic poets
found the art of Euripides and of his less illustrious successors more
easy to imitate than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The interest of
tragedy, as treated by Euripides, turns upon the catastrophes produced
by human passion: the religious meaning has, in a great measure,
passed out of it; the characters have dwindled from their heroic
stature to the proportions of ordinary life; his thought is the result
of the analysis of motives, and the study of familiar experience. He
has more affinity with the ordinary thoughts and moods of men than
either of the older poets. The older and the later Greek writers have
a nearer relation to the spirit of other eras of the world's history
than those who represent Athenian civilisation in its maturity. It
requires a longer familiarity with the mind and heart of antiquity
to realise and enjoy the full meaning of Sophocles, Thucydides, or
Aristophanes, than of Homer, Euripides, or Theocritus. Homer is indeed
one of the truest, if not the truest, representative of the genius
of Greece,--the representative also of the ancient world in the same
sense as Shakspeare is of the modern world,--but he is, at the same
time, directly intelligible and interesting to all countries and
times from his being the most natural and powerful exponent of the
elementary feelings and forces of human nature. The later poets, on
the other hand, such as Euripides and the writers of the new comedy,
were not indeed more truly human, but were less distinctively Greek
than their immediate predecessors. They had advanced beyond them
in the analytic knowledge of human nature; but, with the decay of
religious belief and political feeling, they had lost much of the
genius and sentiment by which the old Athenian life was characterised.
Both their gain and their loss bring them more into harmony with
later modes of thought and feeling. Thus it happened that, while the
influence of Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Thucydides and Aristophanes,
is scarcely perceptible in Roman literature, Homer and the early
lyrical poets who flourished before Greek civilisation exhibited
its most special type, and Euripides who, though a contemporary of
Sophocles and Aristophanes, yet belonged in spirit and tone to a
younger generation, the writers of the new comedy, and the Alexandrine
poets who flourished when the purely Greek ideas and character were
being merged in a cosmopolitan civilisation, exercised a direct
influence on Roman taste and opinion in every age of their literature.
The early tragic poets of Rome could not rival or imitate the dramatic
art, the pathetic power, the clear and fluent style, the active and
subtle analysis of Euripides; but they could approach nearer to him
than to any of his predecessors, by treating the myths and personages
of the heroic time apart from the sacred associations and ideal
majesty of earlier art, and as a vehicle for inculcating the lessons
and the experience of familiar life.
The primary attraction, by means of which the tragic drama established
itself at Rome, must have been the power of scenic representations to
convey a story, and to produce novel impressions on a people to whom
reading was quite unfamiliar. In Homer, the cyclic poets, and the
Attic dramatists, there existed for the Romans of the second century
B.C. a new world of incident and human interest quite different
from the grave story of their own annals. This new world, which was
becoming gradually familiar to their eyes through the works of plastic
and pictorial art, was made more living and intelligible to them in
the representations of their tragic poets. It cannot be supposed that
these poets attempted to reproduce the antique Hellenic character of
the legends on which they founded their dramas. In this early stage
of literary culture, the harmonious cadences of rhythm, the fine
and delicate shades of expression, the main requirements of dramatic
art,--such as the skilful construction of a plot, the consistent
keeping of a character, the evolution of a tragic catastrophe through
the meeting of passion and outward accident,--would have been lost
upon the unexacting audiences who thronged the temporary theatres on
occasional holidays. The fragments of the lost dramas indicate that
the matter was presented in a straightforward style, little differing
in sound and meaning from the tone of serious conversation. Although
little can be known or conjectured as to the general conduct of the
action in a Roman drama, yet there are indications that in some
cases a series of adventures, instead of one complete action, were
represented[1]. But while failing, or not attempting to reproduce the
Greek spirit and art of their originals, the Roman poets seem to have
animated the outlines of their foreign story and of their legendary
characters with something of the spirit of their own time and country.
They imparted to their dramas a didactic purpose and rhetorical
character which directly appealed to Roman tastes. The fragments
quoted from their works, the testimonies of later Roman writers, and
the natural inference to be drawn from the moral and intellectual
characteristics of the people, all point to the conclusion that the
long-sustained popularity of tragedy rested mainly on the satisfaction
which it afforded to the ethical sympathies, and to the oratorical
tastes of the audience.
The evidence for this popularity is chiefly to be found in Cicero; and
it is mainly, though not solely, to the popularity which the tragic
drama enjoyed in his own age that he testifies. The loss of the
earlier writings renders it impossible to adduce contemporary evidence
of the immediate success of this form of literature. But the activity
with which tragedy was cultivated for about a century, and the favour
with which Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, were regarded by the leading
men in the State, suggest the inference that the popularity of the
drama in the age of Cicero, after the writers themselves had passed
away, and when more exciting spectacles occupied public attention, was
only a continuation of the general favour which these poets enjoyed in
their lifetime. Cicero in many places mentions the great applause with
which the expression of feeling in different dramas was received,
and speaks of the great crowds ('maximus consessus' or 'magna
frequentia'), including women and children, attending the
representation. Varro states that, in his time, 'the heads of families
had gradually gathered within the walls of the city, having quitted
their ploughs and pruning-hooks, and that they liked to use their
hands in the theatres and circus better than on their crops and
vineyards[2].' The large fortunes amassed and the high consideration
enjoyed by the actors Aesopus and Roscius afford further evidence of
the favour with which the representation of tragedy and comedy was
received in the age of Cicero.
According to his testimony, these lively demonstrations of popular
approbation were chiefly called out by the moral significance or the
political meaning attached to the words, and by the oratorical fervour
and passion with which the actor enforced them. Thus Laelius is
represented, in the treatise _De Amicitia_, as testifying to the
applause with which the mutual devotion of Pylades and Orestes, as
represented in a play of Pacuvius, was received by the audience[3]:
'What shouts of applause were heard lately through the whole body of
the house, on the representation of a new play of my familiar friend,
M. Pacuvius, when, the king being ignorant which of the two was
Orestes, Pylades maintained that it was he, while Orestes persisted,
as was indeed the case, that he was the man! They stood up and
applauded at this imaginary situation.' Again, in his speech in
defence of Sestius[4], the same author says, 'amid a great variety of
opinions uttered, there never was any passage in which anything said
by the poet might seem to bear on our time, which either escaped the
notice of the people, or to which the actor did not give point.' In
a letter to Atticus (ii. 19) he states that the actor Diphilus had
applied to Pompey the phrase 'Miseria nostra tu es magnus,' and that
he was compelled to repeat it a thousand times amid the shouts of
the whole theatre. He mentions further, in the speech in defence of
Sestius[5] that the actor Aesopus had applied to Cicero himself a
passage from a play of Accius (the Eurysaces), in which the Greeks are
reproached for allowing one who had done them great public service
to be driven into exile; and that the same actor, in the Brutus, had
referred to him by name in the words, 'Tullius qui libertatem civibus
stabiliverat'; he adds that these words 'were _encored_ over and over
again,' 'millies revocatum est.' These and similar passages testify
primarily to the intense political excitement of the time at which
they were written, but also to the meaning which was looked for by the
audience in the words addressed to them on the stage, and which was
enforced by the emphasis given to them by the actor.
Besides these and other passages in Cicero, the fragments themselves
of Roman tragedy testify to its moral and didactic tone, and its
occasional appeal to national and political feeling.
In so far as it served any political end we may infer from the
personal relations of the poets, from the approving testimony of
Cicero, and from the personages and the nature of the situations
represented, that, unlike the older comedy of Naevius and Plautus,
it was in sympathy with the spirit of the dominant aristocracy. The
'boni' or 'optimates' regarded themselves as the true guardians of law
and liberty, and it would be to their partisans that the resistance
to, and denunciations of tyrannical rule, expressed in such plays as
the Atreus, the Tereus, and the Brutus of Accius, must have been most
acceptable. Members of the aristocracy, eminent in public life and
accomplished as orators, became themselves authors of tragedies. Of
these two are mentioned by Cicero, C. Julius Caesar, a contemporary
and friend of the orator Crassus, and C. Titius, a Roman Eques, also
distinguished as an orator[6]. These instances, and the comments
Cicero makes upon them, indicate the close affinity of Roman tragedy
to the training and accomplishments which fitted men for public life
at Rome.
Passages already referred to, and others which will be brought forward
later, imply also that the audience were easily moved by the dramatic
art and the elocution of the actor. We hear of the pains which the
best actors took to perfect themselves in their art, and of the
success which they attained in it. Cicero specifies among the
accomplishments of an orator, the 'voice of a tragedian, the gestures
and bearing of a consummate actor.' The stage may be said to have been
to the Romans partly a school of practical life, partly a school of
oratory. Spirited declamation, the expression, by voice and gesture,
of vehement passion, of moral and political feeling, and of practical
wisdom, would gratify the same tastes that were fostered by the
discussions and harangues of the Forum[7].
The testimony of later writers points to the conclusion that the early
Roman tragedy, like Roman oratory, was characterised both by great
moral weight and dignity, and also by fervid and impassioned feeling.
The latter quality is suggested by the line of Horace,
Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet;
and also by the epithets 'altus' and 'animosus' applied by him and
Ovid to the poet Accius. Quintilian describes the ancient tragedies
as superior to those of his own time in the management of their
plots ('oeconomia'), and adds that 'manliness and solemnity of style'
('virilitas et sanctitas')[8], were to be studied in them. He states
also that Accius and Pacuvius were distinguished by 'the earnestness
of their thought, the weight of their language, the commanding bearing
of their personages[9].' The fragments of all the tragic poets bear
further evidence to the union of these qualities in their thought and
style.
These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that the
early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality,
and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman
literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence
than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic. For
more than a century new tragedies were written and represented at
the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious
intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During
the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre,
but merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent
stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the
Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to
dramatic art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a
gorgeous spectacle superseded that afforded by the works of the older
dramatists; and dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in
popular favour which had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the
accomplished Roscius.' The composition of tragedy passed from the
hands of popular poets, and became a kind of literary and rhetorical
exercise of accomplished men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed
four tragedies in sixteen days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and
Horace eulogise the dramatic talent of their friend and patron Asinius
Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica' implies that the composition of tragedy
was the most fashionable form of literary pursuit among the young
aspirants to poetic honour at that time, and the Thyestes of Varius
and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed a great literary reputation. These
were, however, futile attempts to impart artificial life to a withered
branch. Though praised by literary critics, they obtained no general
favour. Of all forms of poetry the drama is most dependent on popular
sympathy and intelligence. With the loss of contact with public
feeling the Roman drama lost its vital power. One cause of the
change in public taste was the passion for more frivolous and coarser
excitement, such as was afforded by the mimes and by gladiatorial
combats and shows of wild beasts to a soldiery brutalised by constant
wars, and to the civic masses degraded by idleness and by intermixture
from all quarters of the world. Other causes may have acted on the
poets themselves, such as the exhaustion of the mine of ancient
stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the truer sense, acquired
through culture, of the bent of Roman genius. But another cause was
the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and the people, arising
from the decay and final extinction of political life. In ancient,
as occasionally also in modern times, the contests and interests of
politics were the means of affording the highest intellectual stimulus
of which they were capable to the large classes on whom literary
influences act only indirectly. So long as the old republican sense of
citizenship remained, there was a bond of common feelings, ideas, and
sympathies between the body of the people and some of the foremost
and most highly educated men in Rome. There was an immediate sympathy
between the political orator and his audiences within the Senate or
in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy, more remote, but still
active, between the poet of the Republic, who had the strong feelings
of a Roman citizen, and the great body of his countrymen. With the
overthrow of free government, this bond of union between the educated
and the uneducated classes was destroyed. The former became more
refined and fastidious, but lost something in breadth and genuine
strength by the want of any popular contact. The latter became more
debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works were more and more
addressed to a small circle of men of rank and education, sharing the
same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus became more finished
as works of art, but had less direct bearing on the passions and great
public interests of their time.
The origin and the earliest stage of the Roman drama have been
examined in a previous chapter. For about a century after the close of
the Second Punic War new tragedies continued to be represented at Rome
with little interruption, first by Ennius, afterwards by his nephew
Pacuvius and by Accius. They devoted themselves more exclusively than
any of their predecessors to the composition of tragedy. While the
fame of Ennius chiefly rested on his epic poem[10], Pacuvius and
Accius are classed together as representatives of the tragic poetry of
the Republic. Though in point of age there was a difference of fifty
years between them, yet Cicero mentions, on the authority of Accius
himself, that they had brought out plays under the same Aediles, when
the one was eighty years of age and the other thirty.
M. Pacuvius, nephew, by the mother's side, of Ennius, was born
at Brundusium, in the south of Italy, about 219 B.C., and died at
Tarentum about 129 B.C., at the age of ninety. He obtained some
distinction as a painter[11], and he is supposed to have written his
tragedies late in life. Jerome records of him, 'picturam exercuit et
fabulas vendidit.' Cicero represents Laelius as speaking of him as a
friend, 'amici et hospitis mei.' A pleasing anecdote is told by Aulus
Gellius[12] of his intercourse with his younger rival, L. Accius.
'When Pacuvius, at a great age, and suffering from disease of long
standing, had retired from Rome to Tarentum, Accius, at that time
a considerably younger man, on his journey to Asia, arrived at that
town, and stayed with Pacuvius. And being kindly entertained, and
constrained to stay for several days, he read to him, at his request,
his tragedy of Atreus. Then, as the story goes, Pacuvius said, that
what he had written appeared to him sonorous and elevated but somewhat
harsh and crude. "It is just as you say," replied Accius; "and in
truth I am not sorry for it, for I hope that I shall write better
in future. For, as they say, the same law holds good in genius as in
fruit. Fruits which are originally harsh and sour afterwards become
mellow and pleasant; but those which have a soft and withered look,
and are very juicy at first, become soon rotten without ever becoming
ripe. It appears, accordingly, that there should be left something
in genius also for the mellowing influence of years and time."' This
anecdote, while giving a pleasing impression of the friendly relation
subsisting between the older and younger poets, seems to add
some corroboration to the opinion that the Romans valued more the
oratorical style than the dramatic art of their tragedies. It affords
support also to the testimony of Horace and Quintilian in regard to
the distinction which the admirers of the old poetry drew between the
excellence of Pacuvius and Accius:--
Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti.
Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to
be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its
modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'--'Epigramma Pacuvii
verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.'
Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat,
Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas,
Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale[13].
With its quiet and modest simplicity of tone this inscription is still
significant of that dignified self-consciousness which characterised
all the early Roman poets, though the feeling may have been displayed
with more prominence by Naevius and Plautus, by Ennius, Accius, and
Lucilius, than by Pacuvius.
Among the testimonies to his literary qualities the best known is that
of Horace, quoted above. Cicero, in speaking of the age of Laelius as
that of the purest Latinity, does not allow this merit to Pacuvius and
to the comic poet Caecilius. He says of them, 'male locutos esse[14].'
Pacuvius seems to have attempted to introduce new forms of words, such
as 'temeritudo,' 'geminitudo,' 'vanitudo,' 'concorditas,' 'unose'; and
also to have carried to a greater length than any of the older
poets the tendency to form such poetical compounds as 'tardigradus,'
'flexanimus,' 'flexidicus,' 'cornifrontis'--a tendency which the Latin
language continued more and more to repudiate in the hands of its most
perfect masters. One line is quoted in which the tendency probably
reached the extremest limits it ever did in any Latin author,--
Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus.
We find also such inflexions as 'tetinerim,' for 'tenuerim,' 'pegi'
for 'pepigi,' 'cluentur' for 'cluent.' These peculiarities are
ridiculed in the fragments of Lucilius, and also in a passage of
Persius. Another author[15] contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with
the _periodi_ of Pacuvius,--a distinction probably connected with the
progress of oratory in the interval between the poets. Persius applies
the term 'verrucosa' (an epithet not inapplicable to his own style) to
the Antiope of Pacuvius, which, on the other hand, was much admired by
Cicero[16]. Lucilius refers to this harshness of style in the line,
Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.
Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies,
founded on Greek subjects; and of one, _Paulus_, founded on Roman
history. Among these, the _Antiope_ was perhaps the most famous and
most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from
Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and
Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute
as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred to
by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius is
described by Cicero[17] as one who made war on all philosophy; and
the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their
controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and
the use of virtue. Two dramas, the _Dulorestes_ and the _Chryses_, the
latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures
of Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder
of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on
the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the
passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as
to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their
subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken
from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent
part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the _Niptra_, was
founded on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles[18]; and the
title seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of
Ulysses by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc.
The subjects of his other dramas may be inferred from their
titles:--_Armorum Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Hermione_, _Ilione_, _Io_,
_Medus_ (son of Medea), _Pentheus_, _Periboea_, _Teucer_.
The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of
these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of
old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the
way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them,
however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode
of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty.
A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of
that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in
the Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful
attraction for many of the Roman poets:--
Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet
Terram
Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret,
Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera:
Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat,
Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater,
Indidemque eadem quae oriuntur, de integro aeque eodem incidunt[19].
The following fragment illustrates the dawning interest in ethical
speculation, which became much more active in the age of Cicero, under
the influence of Greek studies:--
Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi
Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili:
Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta, instabilisque sit:
Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet:
Brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.
Sunt autem alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negant
Esse ullam, sed temeritate res regi omnis autumant.
Id magis veri simile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet:
Velut Orestes modo fuit rex, factu'st mendicus modo[20].
These lines again from the Chryses show that Pacuvius, like Ennius,
exposed and ridiculed the superstition of his time--
Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo,
Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo[21];
and this is to the same effect--
Nam si qui, quae eventura sunt, provideant, aequiparent Jovi.
This tendency to physical and ethical speculation may be the reason
for which Horace applies to Pacuvius the epithet 'doctus.'
The fragments of Pacuvius show not only the cast of understanding, but
also the grave and dignified tone of morality, which was found to be
one of the most Roman characteristics of Ennius. They indicate also a
similar humanity of feeling. The moral nobleness of the situation, in
which Pylades and Orestes contend which should sacrifice himself for
the other, has already been noticed: 'stantes plaudebant in re ficta.'
Again, in the Tusculan Disputations (ii. 21), Cicero commends Pacuvius
for deviating from Sophocles, who had represented Ulysses, in the
Niptra, as utterly overcome by the power of his wound; while,
in Pacuvius, those who are supporting him, 'personae gravitatem
intuentes,' address this reproof to him, 'leviter gementi':--
Tu quoque Ulysses, quanquam graviter
Cernimus ictum, nimis paene animo es
Molli, qui consuetu's in armis
Aevom agere[22]!
The strong tones of Roman fortitude are heard in this grave rebuke;
and the lines in which Ulysses, at the point of death, reproves the
lamentations of those around him, have the unstudied directness
that may be supposed to have characterised the serious speech of the
time:--
Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet:
Id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additus[23].
The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a
Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it
deserving of being written in front of every temple':--
Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia.
There are other fragments the significance of which is political
rather than ethical, as for instance the following:--
Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt
Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere.
A passage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in
order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The
prominent words of the passage were,--
Men' servasse ut essent qui me perderent?[24]
Other passages again appear to be fragments of spirited dialogue,
and well adapted to show the art and the elocution of the actor.
Cicero[25] quotes from the Teucer of Pacuvius the reproach of
Telamon, couched in much the same terms as those which Teucer himself
anticipates in the Ajax of Sophocles:--
Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi,
Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem
Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis
Neque ejus gnati parvi, qui tibi in tutelam est traditus--[26]?
In commenting on these lines, Cicero speaks of the passion displayed
by the actor ('so that even out of his mask the eyes of the actor
appeared to me to burn'), and of the sudden change to pathos in his
voice as he proceeded. He adds the further comment, 'Do we suppose
that Pacuvius, in writing this passage, was in a calm and passionless
mood?'--one of many proofs that the 'gravity' of the old tragedians
was that of strong and ardent, not of phlegmatic natures, and that
their strength was tempered by a pathos and humanity of feeling which
were gradually gaining ascendency over the old Roman austerity. The
language in such passages has not only the straightforward directness
which is the general characteristic of the early literature, but a
force and impetuosity added to its gravity, recalling the style of
some fragments of the older orators[27].
The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of
natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age;
but one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several passages in Ennius,
show the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible
aspects of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the
Greek army after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in
this style:--
Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam
Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occaecat nigror,
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit,
Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit,
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines,
Fervit aestu pelagus[28].
There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines,
exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to
their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'--
Armamentum stridor, flictus navium,
Strepitus fremitus clamor tonitruum et rudentum sibilus[29].
Virgil must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the line--
Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum.
The effect of alliteration and assonance may be illustrated by a
passage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised
Ulysses:--
Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem
Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam,
Lassitudinemque minuam manuum mollitudine[30].
Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the title of which was
'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the principal
character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae,
whom Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words--
Animaeque magnae
Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno,
or his more fortunate son who conquered the Macedonians at Pydna,
yet it would seem much more probable that the poet should celebrate
a great triumph of his own time, achieved by one in whom, from his
connexion with Scipio, the nephew of Ennius would feel a special
interest, than that he should recall a great calamity of a past
generation, neither near enough to excite immediate attention, nor
sufficiently remote to justify an imaginative treatment. The Fabulae
Praetextatae, of which this was one, were, as Niebuhr[31] has pointed
out, historical plays rather than tragedies. Such a drama would not
naturally or necessarily require a tragic catastrophe, but would
represent the traditions of the earlier annals, or the great events of
current history, in accordance with the dictates of national feeling.
No important fragment of this drama has been preserved, but the fact
of its having been written by Pacuvius is interesting, as affording
a parallel to the celebration of the victory of Marcellus in the
Clastidium of Naevius, and of the success of M. Fulvius Nobilior in
the Ambracia of Ennius.
Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce on
a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius
and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius.
His remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general
features of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to
determine from internal evidence alone whether any particular passage
came from the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points
that are known in his life are his provincial origin, and his
relationship to Ennius; the fact of his supporting himself, first by
painting, afterwards by the payment he received from the Aediles for
his plays; his friendship with Laelius, the centre of the literary
circle in Rome during the latter part of the second century B.C.;
his intimacy with his younger rival Accius; the facts also that, like
Sophocles, he preserved his poetical power unabated till a great age,
and that, like Shakspeare, he retired to spend his last years in his
native district. The language of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly
and modest temper, and of the calm and serious spirit of age; while
that of many of his dramatic fragments bears evidence of his moral
strength and worth, and to the manly fervour as well as the gentle
humanity of his temperament.
L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 B.C., of parentage
similar to that of Horace--'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native
of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 B.C.; and an
estate in that district was known in after times by the name 'fundus
Accianus.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the exact
date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born B.C. 106,
speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius
Brutus--Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, B.C. 138, and one of
the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that
age--on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the
poet: 'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus[32].'
The meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is
remarkable, as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which
stand so widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are
respectively characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of
Archias, mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the
poet[33]. The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,'
like that of 'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's
dialogue, to Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets
(men of humble or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and
soldiers, was in that age one of familiar intimacy rather than of
patronage and dependence.
Although Cicero's notice of his own acquaintance with Accius, which is
not likely to have existed before the former assumed the toga virilis,
is a proof of the great age which the poet attained, it is not certain
how long he continued the practice of his art. Seneca, in quoting from
the Atreus of this poet the well-known tyrant's maxim, 'oderint dum
metuant'--a maxim, according to Suetonius, constantly in the mouth of
Caligula,--adds the remark that 'any one could see that it was written
in the days of Sulla.' But Aulus Gellius, on the other hand, states
that the Atreus was the play which had been read by the poet in his
youth to Pacuvius at Tarentum. The termination of the literary career
of Accius must have been soon after the beginning of the first century
B.C., so that nearly half a century elapses between the last of the
works of the older poets and the appearance of the great poem of
Lucretius. The journey of Accius to Asia shows the beginning of
that taste for foreign travel which became prevalent among the most
educated men in a generation later, and grew more and more easy with
the advance of Roman conquest, and more attractive from the increased
cultivation of Greek literature. Accius is the first of the Roman
poets who seems to have possessed a country residence; and some taste
for country life and the beauties of Nature first betrays itself
in one or two of his fragments. He possessed apparently all the
self-esteem and high spirit of the earlier poets. Pliny mentions that
though a very little man, he placed a colossal statue of himself in a
temple of the Muses[34].
Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C.
Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of
the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets'
Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference,
thus asserting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the
unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival.
He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The
titles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50
in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan
cycle of events; and, in his representation of character and action,
to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies of the Romans. Two
of his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian
dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the
second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged
to the class of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of
Ennius in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books.
He was the author also of what seem to have been works on grammar and
literary criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres,
and known by the names Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The
subjects of these last works, as well as those of some of the satires
of Lucilius, and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius
Sedigitus, written in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the
attention which was given about this time by Roman authors to the
principles of composition. The literary and grammatical studies of the
time of Accius must have prepared the way for the rapid development of
style which characterised the first half of the first century B.C.
In some of the fragments of Accius distinctions in the meaning of
words--e.g. of 'pertinacia' and 'pervicacia'--are prominently brought
out. We note also in his remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great
access of formative energy in the language, especially in abstract
words in _-tas_ and _-tudo_, many of which afterwards dropped out of
use. The antagonism manifested by Lucilius to Accius seems in a
great measure to have arisen from his claims to a kind of literary
dictatorship in questions of criticism and style.
The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius,
and attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as
those which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit.
Cicero testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and
to the didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains
illustrate these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense
and vigorous understanding of the older writers, and afford some
traces of a new vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable
in earlier fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that
of 'animosus' to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et
ingeniosus poeta,' and attests the didactic purpose of a particular
passage in the words, 'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with
the view of stimulating, not those princes who no longer existed, but
us and our children to energy and honourable ambition[35].' The style
of a passage from the Atreus is described by the same author in the
dialogue '_De Oratore_,' as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a
certain impassioned gravity of feeling[36].' Oratorical fervour and
dignity seem thus to have been the most distinctive characteristic of
his style. Virgil, whose genius made as free use of the diction and
sentiment of native as of Greek poets, has cast the ruder language of
the old poet into a new mould in some of the greatest speeches of the
Aeneid, and seems to have drawn from the same source something of the
high spirit and lofty pathos with which he has animated the personages
of his story. The famous address, for instance--
Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis,
though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to
Virgil in the line of Accius--
Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.
The address of Latinus to Turnus--
O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci
Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est
Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus,
is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic
poet--
Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo,
Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere.
The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and
something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches
of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most
Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike
the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of
speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather
than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius.
The following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which
may be recognised in many other fragments of Accius:--
Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro
Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo,
Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia
Confingit[37].
He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that
most powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of
compassion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these
fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,--
Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine
Commovit animum excelsa aspecti dignitas[38];
and--
Nam huius demum miseret, cuius nobilitas miserias
Nobilitat[39].
He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human
life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following
may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity,
and direct force of understanding:--
Scin' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem,
Nunquam ulla humilitas ingenium infirmat bonum[40].
Erat istuc virile, ferre advorsam fortunam facul[41].
Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes
Eripere quivit, at virtutem non quit[42].
Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum,
Quod non labascat lingua, mitiscat malo[43].
The following, again, like similar passages already quoted from Ennius
and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superstition
which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:--
Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant
Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos[44].
Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by
the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange
vision--
Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt
Minus mirum est[45].
Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two
passages may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a
poet--force of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is
considerable descriptive power in the following lines, for instance,
in which a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the
first appearance of the Argo--
Tanta moles labitur
Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu:
Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat:
Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat[46].
There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in
this fragment--
Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer
Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives[47].
There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the
Oenomaus--
Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent[48].
This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive
passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from
contemplating the common aspects of Nature. Several other short
fragments betray the existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility,
as, for instance, the following:--
Saxum id facit angustitatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans
Scatebra fluviae radit ripam[49].
The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been
accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining
after effect, as in this fragment:--
Hac ubi curvo litore latratu
Unda sub undis labunda sonit.
The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without
naming the author, are probably from Accius:--
Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
Vites laetificae pampinis pubescere,
Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere,
Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia,
Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.
We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and
asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in
Plautus, as in the following:--
Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser.
Pro se quisque cum corona clarum cohonestat caput.
Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe.
It remains to sum up the most important results as to the early
tragic drama of Rome, which have been obtained from a consideration of
ancient testimony and of the fossil remains of this lost literature,
as we find them collected and arranged from the works of ancient
critics and grammarians. The Roman tragedies seem to have borne much
the same relation to the works of the Attic tragedians as Roman
comedy to the new comedy of Athens. The expression of Quintilian, 'in
comoedia maxime claudicamus[50],' following immediately on the praise
which he bestows on Pacuvius and Accius, implies that in his opinion
the earlier writers had been more successful in tragedy than in
comedy. But a comparison between the fragments of the tragedians and
the extant works of Plautus and Terence, proves that, in style at
least, Roman comedy was much the most successful; and this superiority
is no doubt one main cause of its partial preservation. The style of
Roman tragedy appears to have been direct and vigorous, serious, often
animated with oratorical passion, but singularly devoid of harmony,
subtlety, poetical refinement and inspiration. There is no testimony
in favour of any great dramatic conceptions or impersonations. The
poets appear to have aimed at expressing some particular passion
oratorically, as Virgil has done so powerfully in his representation
of Mezentius and Turnus, but not to have created any of those great
types of human character such as the world owes to Homer, Sophocles,
and Shakspeare. The popularity and the power of Roman tragedy,
during the century preceding the downfall of the Republic, are to be
attributed chiefly to its didactic and oratorical force, to the Roman
bearing of the persons represented, to the ethical and occasionally
the political cast of the sentiments expressed by them, and to the
plain and vigorous style in which they are enunciated. The works of
the tragic poets aided the development of the Roman language. They
communicated new ideas and experience, and fostered among the mass of
the Roman people the only taste for serious literature of which they
were capable. They may have exercised a beneficial influence also on
the thoughts and lives of men. They kept the national ideal of duty,
the 'manners of the olden time,' the 'fas et antiqua castitudo' (to
use an expression of Accius), before the minds of the people:
they inculcated by precept and by representations great lessons of
fortitude and energy: they taught the maxims of common sense, and
touched the minds of their audiences with a humanity of feeling
naturally alien to them. No teaching on the stage could permanently
preserve the old Roman virtue, simplicity, and loyalty to the
Republic, against the corrupting and disorganising effects of constant
wars and conquests, and of the gross forms of luxury, that suited the
temperament of Rome: but, among the various influences acting on the
mind of the people, none probably was of more unmixed good than that
of the tragic drama of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius.
[Footnote 1: E.g. the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius.]
[Footnote 2: De Re Rustica, Lib. ii. Praef. Quoted also by
Columella, Praef. 15.]
[Footnote 3: De Amicitia, 7.]
[Footnote 4: Cic. Pro P. Sestio, 65.]
[Footnote 5: Chap. 57.]
[Footnote 6: Cicero, Brutus, 48, 45; De Orat. iii. 8. 30:
'Quid noster hic Caesar nonne novam quandam rationem attulit
orationis et dicendi genus induxit prope singulare? Quis
unquam res praeter hunc tragicas paene comice, tristes
remisse, severas hilare, forenses scaenica prope venustate
tractavit atque ita, ut neque iocus magnitudine rerum
excluderetur nec gravitas facetiis minueretur.']
[Footnote 7: Cf. Cic. De Orat. iii. 7: 'Atque id primum in
poetis cerni licet quibus est proxima cognatio cum oratoribus
quam sint inter sese Ennius, Pacuvius, Acciusque dissimiles.']
[Footnote 8: 'Sanctitas certe, et, ut sic dicam, virilitas, ab
iis petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi
quoque ratione defluximus.'--Quintil. Inst. Or. i. 8. 9.]
[Footnote 9: Inst. Or. x. i. 97.]
[Footnote 10: Cf. Cic. Opt. Gen. Orat.: 'Itaque licet dicere
et Ennium summum epicum poetam si cui ita videtur, et Pacuvium
tragicum, et Caecilium fortasse comicum.']
[Footnote 11: Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxv. 7.]
[Footnote 12: xiii. 2.]
[Footnote 13: 'Young man, though thou art in haste, this
stone entreats thee to regard it, and then read what is
written:--Here are laid the bones of the poet Marcus Pacuvius.
This I desired to be not unknown to thee. Farewell.']
[Footnote 14: Brutus, 74.]
[Footnote 15: The writer of the treatise on Rhetoric addressed
to C. Herennius.]
[Footnote 16: 'Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est,
qui Ennii Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvii spernat aut rejiciat,
quod se eisdem Euripidis fabulis delectari dicat?'--Cic. De
Fin. i. 2.]
[Footnote 17: De Oratore, ii. 37.]
[Footnote 18: Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 21.]
[Footnote 19: 'Behold this, which around and above
encompasseth the earth, and puts on brightness at the rising
of the sun, becomes dark at his setting; that which our people
call Heaven, and the Greeks Aether. Whatever this is, it is
to all things the source of life, form, nourishment, growth,
existence; it is the grave and receptacle of all things, and
the parent, too, of all things: all things which arise from
it equally lapse into it again.' Compare with this passage
Lucretius, ii. 991--
'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi,' etc.
Both may be traced to a fragment of the Chrysippus of
Euripides, quoted by Ribbeck, Röm. Trag. p. 257; and also by
Munro, Lucret. p. 455, third edition.]
[Footnote 20: 'Philosophers say that Fortune is mad, blind,
and senseless, and represent her as set on a round rolling
stone. They say that she is mad, because she is harsh, fickle,
untrustworthy; blind, for this reason, that she can see
nothing to which to attach herself; senseless, because she
cannot distinguish between the worthy and unworthy. Other
philosophers again deny the existence of Fortune, but hold
that all things are ruled by chance. That this is more
probable, common experience proves, as Orestes was but the
other day a king, and is now a beggar.']
[Footnote 21: 'For those men who understand the language of
birds, and have more wisdom from examining the liver of other
beings than from their own (i.e. understanding), I think
should be heard rather than listened to.']
[Footnote 22: 'Thou, too, Ulysses, although we see thee sore
wounded, art yet almost too much cast down; thou, who hast
been used to pass thy life in arms!']
[Footnote 23: 'To complain of adverse fortune is well, but
not to lament over it. The one is the act of a man; it is a
woman's part to weep.']
[Footnote 24: Sueton. Caes. 84.]
[Footnote 25: De Orat. ii. 46.]
[Footnote 26: 'Didst thou venture to let him part from thee,
or to enter Salamis without him; and didst thou not fear to
see thy father's face, when in his old age, bereft of his
children, thou hast torn him with anguish, robbed, crushed
him; nor didst thou feel for thy brother's death, and his
child, who was trusted to thy protection--?']
[Footnote 27: Compare especially the fragments of the speeches
of C. Gracchus.]
[Footnote 28: 'Glad at their starting, they watch the play
of the fish, and are never weary of watching them. Meanwhile,
nearly at sunset, the sea grows rough, darkness gathers, the
blackness of night and of the storm-clouds hides the world,
the lightning flashes between the clouds, the heaven is shaken
with the thunder, hail mixed with torrents of rain dashes
down in sudden showers; from all quarters all the winds burst
forth, the wild whirlwinds arise, the sea boils with the
surging waters.'--Quoted partly from Cic. De Div. i. 14;
partly from De Orat. iii. 39.]
[Footnote 29: 'The groaning of the ships' tackling, the
dashing together of the ships, the uproar, the crash, the
rattle of the thunder, and the whistling of the ropes.']
[Footnote 30: 'Give me your foot, that with the brown waters
I may wash away the brown dust with those hands with which
I have often rubbed gently the feet of Ulysses, and with my
hands' softness soothe your weariness.']
[Footnote 31: 'It represented the deeds of Roman kings and
generals: hence it is evident that at least it wanted the
unity of time of the Greek tragedy; that it was a history like
Shakspeare's.'--Niebuhr's Roman History, vol. i. note 1150.]
[Footnote 32: Brutus, 28.]
[Footnote 33: 'Decimus quidem Brutus, summus ille vir et
imperator, Accii, amicissimi sui, carminibus templorum ac
monumentorum aditus exornavit suorum.'--Chap. 11.]
[Footnote 34: Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 10: 'Notatum ab auctoribus, et
L. Accium poetam in Camenarum aede maxima forma statuam sibi
posuisse, cum brevis admodum fuisset.']
[Footnote 35: Pro Plancio, 24.]
[Footnote 36: De Orat. iii. 58.]
[Footnote 37: 'Tereus, in his wild mood and savage spirit,
gazed upon her, maddened with burning passion, quite
desperate; in his madness, he resolves a cursed deed.']
[Footnote 38: 'Withdraw him within: for the lofty dignity of
his aspect has moved my mind to compassion.']
[Footnote 39: 'That man indeed we pity whose nobleness gives
distinction to his misery.']
[Footnote 40: 'Dost thou not know, that whatever rank fortune
has assigned to a man, no meanness of station ever weakens a
fine nature?']
[Footnote 41: 'This was the part of a man, to bear adversity
easily.']
[Footnote 42: 'Though fortune could strip me of kingdom and
wealth, it cannot strip me of my virtue.']
[Footnote 43: 'No nature is so strong, no breast so savage,
which is not shaken by words, does not melt at misfortune.']
[Footnote 44: 'I trust not those augurs, who enrich the ears
of others with their words, that they may enrich their own
houses with gold.' There is of course a pun on the _auris_ and
_auro_.]
[Footnote 45: 'O king, what men usually do in life, what they
think about, care about, see,--their pursuits and occupations,
when awake,--if these occur to any one in sleep, it is not
wonderful.']
[Footnote 46: 'So huge a mass is approaching--sounding from
the deep with a mighty rushing noise; it rolls the waves
before it, forces through the eddies, plunges forward, throws
up and dashes back the sea.'--Quoted in Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii.
35.]
[Footnote 47: 'Lying beneath the pole by the seven stars,
whence the blustering roar of the north-wind drives before it
the chill snows.']
[Footnote 48: 'By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning
rays, when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest
into the fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled
soil with the plough, and turn up the clods from the soft
soil.']
[Footnote 49: 'That rock makes the passage narrow, and from
beneath that rock a spring gushing out sweeps past the river's
bank.']
[Footnote 50: Inst. Or. x. i. 99.]
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN COMEDY. PLAUTUS. ABOUT 254 TO 184 B.C.
The era in which Roman epic and tragic poetry arose was also the
flourishing era of Roman comedy. A later generation looked back on
the age of Ennius and Plautus as an age of great poets, who had passed
away:--
Ea tempestate flos poetarum fuit
Qui nunc abierunt hinc in communem locum[1].
And among these poets the writers of comedy were both most numerous
and apparently the most popular in their own time[2]. Besides the
names of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we know the names
of other comic poets of less fame[3], and from allusions in the extant
plays of Plautus[4] and in the prologues of Terence we infer that
there were other competitors for public favour whose names were
unknown to a later generation. In the Ciceronian age the works of
these forgotten playwrights were for the most part attributed to
Plautus, probably with the view of gaining some temporary popularity
for them. In the time of Gellius no fewer than 130 plays passed under
his name; among these, twenty-one were regarded as undoubtedly his,
nineteen more as probably genuine, and the rest as spurious. They were
however all of the class of _palliatae_; and as the _fabulae togatae_
seem, after the time of Terence, to have been composed in much greater
number than those founded on Greek originals, most of them must have
belonged to the first half of the second century B.C. Plays of a later
date would have clearly shown by their diction that they were not the
work of Plautus.
Although this form of literature has little in common with the higher
Roman mood, and exercised comparatively slight influence on the style
and sentiment of later Roman poetry[5], yet no review of the creative
literature of the Republican period would be complete without some
attempt to estimate the value of the comedy of Plautus and Terence.
The difficulty of doing so adequately arises from an opposite cause
to that which makes our judgment on the art and genius of the Roman
tragic poets so incomplete. In the latter case we know what was the
character of their Greek models; but we can only conjecture from a
number of unconnected fragments, how far the copy deviated in tone
and spirit from the original. On the other hand, while we have between
twenty and thirty specimens of Latin comedy, we have no finished work
of Greek art in the same style, with which to compare them. It makes
a great difference in our opinion, not only of the genius of the
Roman poets, but of the productive force of the Roman mind, whether
we regard Plautus and Terence as facile translators, or as writers of
creative originality who filled up the outlines which they took from
the new comedy of Athens with matter drawn from their own observation
and invention. It makes a great difference in the literary interest of
these works, whether we regard them as blurred copies of pictures
from later Greek life, or, like so much else in Roman literature, as
compositions which, while Greek in form, are yet in no slight degree
Roman or Italian in substance, character, life, and sentiment. How far
can we answer these questions, either by general considerations, or
by a special attention to the actual products of Latin comedy which we
possess?
We have seen that there was a certain aptitude in the graver Roman
spirit for tragedy:--
Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet.
The rhetorical character of Roman education and the rhetorical
tendencies of the Roman mind secured favour for this kind of
composition till the age of Quintilian. His dictum 'in comoedia maxime
claudicamus,' on the other hand, implies that the educated taste of
Romans under the Empire did not find much that was congenial in the
works of Plautus, Caecilius, or Terence. The tone of Horace is more
contemptuous towards Plautus than towards Ennius and the tragic poets.
While tragedy continued to be cultivated by eminent writers in the
Augustan age and early Empire, few original comedies seem to have been
written after the beginning of the first century B.C.[6] The higher
efforts of the comic muse were almost, if not entirely, superseded by
the Mimus. These considerations show that comedy was not congenial to
the educated or the uneducated taste of Romans in the last years of
the Republic, and in the early Empire. But, on the other hand, the
popularity enjoyed by the old comedy between the time of Naevius and
of Terence, and even down to the earlier half of the Ciceronian age,
when some of the great parts in Plautus continued to be performed
by the 'accomplished Roscius,' and the admiration expressed for its
authors by grammarians and critics, from Aelius Stilo down to Varro
and Cicero, show its adaptation to an earlier and not less vigorous,
if less refined stage of intellectual development; while the actual
survival of many Roman comedies can only be accounted for by a more
real adaptation to human nature, both in style and substance, than
was attained by Roman tragedy in its straining after a higher ideal of
sentiment and expression.
The task undertaken by Naevius and Plautus was indeed a much easier
one than that accomplished by the early writers of tragedy. They were
not called upon to create a new taste, or to gratify a taste recently
acquired in Sicily and the towns of Magna Graecia. They had only to
give ampler and more defined form, fuller and more coherent substance,
to a kind of entertainment which was indigenous in Italy. The
improvised 'Saturae'--'dramatic medleys or farces with musical
accompaniment'--had been represented on Roman holidays for more than
a century before the first performance of a regular play by Livius
Andronicus. And these 'Saturae' had been themselves developed partly
out of the older Fescennine dialogues--the rustic raillery of the
vintage and the harvest-home,--partly out of mimetic dances imported
from Etruria. Another kind of dramatic entertainment, the 'Oscum
ludicrum,' which was developed into the literary form of the 'fabulae
Atellanae,' with its standing characters of Maccus, Pappus, Bucco,
and Dossennus, had been transferred to the city from the provinces of
southern Italy, and ultimately became so popular as to be performed,
not by professional actors, but by the free-born youth of Rome. The
extant comedies of Plautus show considerable traces of both of these
kinds of entertainment, both in the large place assigned to the
'Cantica,' which were accompanied by music and gesticulation[7], and
in the farcical exaggeration of some of his characters, which provoked
the criticism of Horace,--
Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.
The mass of Roman citizens, both rural and urban, was thus prepared
by their festive traditions and habits to welcome the introduction of
comedy, just as they were prepared by their political traditions and
aptitudes to welcome the appearance of a popular orator.
Naevius and Plautus might thus be poets of the people more truly than
any later Roman poet could be. The career of Naevius, and the public
and personal elements which he introduced into his plays, afford
evidence of his desire to use his position as a popular poet for
political ends. His imprisonment and subsequent banishment equally
attest the determination of the governing class to allow no criticism
on public men or affairs, nor anything derogatory to the majesty of
the State and the dignified forms of Roman life, to be heard on the
stage. Plautus, though prevented either by his own temperament or the
vigilance of state-censorship from directly acting on the political
sympathies of the commons, maintained the thoroughly popular character
of Roman comedy, and poured a strongly national spirit into the forms
which he adopted from Greece. Between the death of Plautus and that of
Terence there was no cessation in the productiveness of Roman comedy;
but the little that is known of Caecilius, and the evidence afforded
by the plays of Terence, show that Roman comedy had now begun to
appeal to a different class of sympathies. The ascendency of Ennius in
Roman literature immensely widened the gulf which always separates an
educated from an uneducated class. One of the great sources of
interest in Plautus is that he flourished before this separation
became marked, while the upper classes were yet comparatively rude and
simple in their requirements, and the mass of the people were yet
hearty and vigorous in their enjoyments. The popularity of his plays
revived again after the death of Terence, and maintained itself till
nearly the end of the Republic, a proof that his genius was not only
in harmony with his own age, but satisfied a permanent vein of
sentiment in his countrymen, so long as they retained anything of
their native vigour and republican spirit. The fact that Roman comedy
was not congenial to the educated taste of the early Empire is no
proof of its want of originality. It was in harmony with an earlier
stage in the development of the Roman people. Had that been all, it
might have been completely lost, or preserved only in fragments like
those of the Satire of Lucilius. But as being the heir of an older
popular kind of composition it enjoyed the advantage, possessed by
none of the more artificial forms of poetry introduced at this period,
of a fresh, copious, popular, and idiomatic diction. The comic poets
of Rome alone inherited, like the epic poets of Greece, a vehicle of
expression formed by the improvised utterance of several generations.
The greater fluency of style and the greater ease of rhythmical
movement, thus enjoyed by the early comedy, is the most obvious
explanation of its permanent hold on the world. But the mere merits of
language would scarcely have secured permanence to these compositions
apart from the cosmopolitan human interest derived from the Greek
originals on which they were founded, and from the strong vitality
which the earlier Roman poet drew from the great time into which he
was born, and the refined art for which the younger poet was partly
indebted to the circle of high-born, aspiring, and accomplished youths
into which he was admitted.
Our chief authorities for the life of Plautus are a short statement
of Jerome, one or two slight notices in Cicero, and a somewhat longer
passage in Aulus Gellius (iii. 3. 14). As he died at an advanced age,
in the year 184 B.C.[8] (during the censorship of Cato), he must have
been born about the middle of the third century B.C. He was thus a
younger contemporary of Naevius, and somewhat older than Ennius. His
birthplace was Sarsina in Umbria. That this district must have been
thoroughly Latinised in the time of Plautus, is attested by the
idiomatic force and purity of his style[9]. He probably came early to
Rome, and was at first engaged 'in operis artificum scenicorum,'--in
some kind of employment connected with the stage. He saved money in
this service, and lost it all in foreign trade,--what he himself calls
'marituma negotia'[10]. Returning to Rome in absolute poverty, he was
reduced to work as a hired servant in a mill; and while thus employed
he first began to write comedies. The names of two of these early
works, _Saturio_ and _Addictus_, have been preserved by Gellius.
From this time till his death he seems to have been a most rapid and
productive writer. We have no means of determining at what date he
began to write. A passage quoted from Cicero has been thought to imply
that he was writing for the stage during the life-time of P. and Cn.
Scipio, i.e. before 212 B.C. But the earliest allusion to contemporary
events that we find in any of his extant plays, is that in the Miles
Gloriosus, to the imprisonment of Naevius, probably in 206-5 B.C.[11]
We have no certainty that any of the extant plays were written before
that date, although the mention of Hiero in the Menaechmi, and the use
of some more than usually archaic inflexions in that play, have been
supposed to indicate an earlier date for it. Of the other plays,
the Cistellaria and Stichus were written within a year or two of the
Second Punic War[12]. The larger number of the extant comedies belong
to the last ten years of the poet's life. His plays do not seem to
have been published as literary works during his life-time, but to
have been left in possession of the acting companies, by whom passages
may have been interpolated and others omitted, before they were
finally reduced into a literary shape. Most of the prologues to his
plays belong to a later time, probably that of the generation after
his death[13]. Of the twenty-one plays which Varro accepted, on the
ground of their intrinsic merits, as certainly genuine, we possess
twenty, and fragments of the remaining one, the _Vidularia_. The names
of some other genuine plays, such as the _Saturio_, _Addictus_, and
_Commorientes_, are also known to us.
How far are we able to fill up this meagre outline by personal
indications of the poet left on his works? In the case of any
dramatist this is always difficult; and Plautus is not in form only,
but in spirit, essentially dramatic. Nothing marks the difference
between the popular and the aristocratic tendencies of Roman thought
and literature more than the entire absence of any didactic tendency
in his plays. He does not think of making his hearers better by his
representations, nor does he believe that it is possible to do so[14].
He identifies himself as heartily for the time being with his rogues
of both sexes as with his rarer specimens of honest men and virtuous
women. He seldom indulges in reflexions on life. When he does so it is
by the mouth of a slave, who winds up the unfamiliar process in some
such way as Pseudolus, 'sed iam satis est philosophatum[15],' or in
the lyrical self-reproaches of some prodigal, whose good resolutions
vanish on the reappearance of his mistress. Among the innumerable
terms of reproach which one slave addresses to another, none is
expressive of more withering contempt than the term 'philosophe[16].'
But even if we could trace any predominant sympathies in Plautus, or
any special vein of reflexion which might seem to throw light on his
own experience, some doubt would always remain as to whether he was
not in these passages reproducing his original. The loss of many
of his prologues deprives us of the kind of knowledge of his
circumstances and position which Terence affords us in his prologues.
Even the 'asides' to the spectators, which often occur in Plautus, may
in many cases be due to the comedians of a later time.
Yet perhaps it is not impossible to enlarge our notion of his personal
circumstances and characteristics by tracing some hints of them in his
extant works.
We find one reference to his birthplace, in the form of a bad pun
altogether devoid of any trace of sentiment or affection[17].
He mentions other districts or towns in Italy in the tone of
half-humorous, half-contemptuous indifference, which a Londoner
of last, or a Parisian of the present century, might adopt to the
provinces[18]. More than one allusion indicates that the citizens of
Praeneste were especially regarded as butts by the wits of Rome[19].
The contempt of the town for the country also appears unmistakeably in
the dialogue between Grumio and Tranio in the 'Mostellaria[20],' and
in the boorish manners of the country lover in the 'Truculentus.' In
the eyes of a town-bred wit the chief use of the country is to supply
elm-rods for the punishment of pert or refractory slaves. A large
number of his illustrations are taken from the handicrafts of
the city, but very few are indicative of familiarity with rustic
occupations. There is no breath of the poetry of rural nature in
Plautus. If he betrays any poetical sensibility to natural influences
at all, it is to be found in passages in which the aspects of the sea,
in calm or storm, are recalled. Mommsen speaks of 'a most remarkable
analogy in many external points between Plautus and Shakespeare[21].
'Yet there is contrast rather than analogy in the impression left upon
their respective works by the associations of their early homes.
On the other hand we find, in many of his plays, traces of intimate
familiarity with the adventures of a mercantile life. It is most
probable that some of the passages in which these appear would have
been found in his originals had they been preserved to us. Yet the
emotions of thankfulness for a safe return to harbour, or of curiosity
and pleasure in landing at a strange town[22], are expressed so
frequently and with such liveliness as to seem like the reminiscence
of personal experience. We get, somehow, the impression of one who had
travelled widely, had 'seen the cities of many men and learned
their minds,' had marked with humorous observation many varieties
of character, had taken note, but without any special aesthetic
sensibility, of the works of art which were scattered throughout the
Hellenic cities, had shared in the pleasures which these cities held
out freely to their visitors, and had encountered the dangers of the
sea not without some sense of their sublimity and picturesqueness[23].
The God most frequently appealed to in prayer or thanksgiving is
Neptune[24]. The colloquial use of Greek phrases in many of his
plays seems to imply a familiar habit of employing them, in active
intercourse with Greeks on his maritime adventures. The day-dream
of Gripus, after finding his treasure, might almost be taken as a
humorous comment on the various motives of curiosity and mercantile
enterprise by which he himself was prompted to become engaged in
maritime speculation:--
Navibus magnis mercaturam faciam: aput reges rex perhibebor.
Post animi causa mihi navem faciam atque imitabor Stratonicum,
Oppida circumvectitabor, ubi nobilitas mea erit clara,
Oppidum magnum conmoenibo: ei ego urbi Gripo indam nomen[25].
He shows much greater familiarity with the life of the lower and
middle classes than with that of those above them in station. He is
not always happy in his embodiment of the character of a gentleman.
Nothing, for instance, can be meaner than the conduct of the second
Menaechmus, who is intended to interest us, in his relations to
Erotion. And this failure is equally conspicuous in another of his
favourite characters, Periplecomenus, the 'lepidus senex' of the
Gloriosus. His indecorous geniality is scarcely compatible with the
respectability, not to say the dignity, of age. We recognise in his
characters and illustrations a vigorous and many-sided contact with
life, but no influence derived from association with members of the
governing class. In this respect he stood in marked contrast to
Ennius and Terence, and probably to Caecilius. The two latter, being
freedmen, were naturally brought into closer association with, and
dependence on, their social superiors. Plautus writes in the spirit
of an 'ingenuus,' in good-humoured sympathy with the mass of the
citizens, and with no feeling of bitterness towards the aristocracy,
or indeed to any human being whatsoever. He is at home with all kinds
of men, except the highest in rank. He takes a good-natured ironical
delight in his slaves, courtesans, parasites, and sycophants. He is
not shocked by anything they can do or say. He feels the enjoyment of
a man of strong animal spirits in laughing at and with them. Even
the 'leno,' the least estimable character in the repertory of ancient
comedy, he treats rather as a butt than as an object of detestation.
He does not by a single phrase show any sign of having been soured or
depressed by the misfortunes and vicissitudes of his life. We feel,
in his dialogues, the presence of irrepressible animal spirits, and a
sense of boundless resource and lively intelligence in his characters,
especially in his slaves. From no scrape does it seem hopeless for
them to find some means of extrication. Like them, he himself has the
buoyancy of one, 'fortunae immersabilis undis.'
From the zest with which he writes of them, we might infer that he had
a keen personal enjoyment in eating and drinking, and in the coarser
forms of conviviality. His favourite dishes,--
Pernam callum glandium sumen, etc.[26]
find no place in the more fastidious gastronomy of our own times,
but they were capable of giving great satisfaction to the larger and
robuster appetites of the ancient Italians,--of a people who had
been, till the sudden influx of luxury in his own time, described as
'barbarous porridge-eaters[27].' Horace has criticised the extravagant
gusto with which he makes his parasites dilate on their peculiar
pleasures[28]; and the important part which the preparation for the
'prandium' or the 'cena' plays in several of his dramas is perhaps
significant of the attention which he himself bestowed on them in
the days of his prosperity. The early revels of Philolaches and
Callidamates in the Mostellaria, the manner in which Pseudolus
celebrates his triumph over Ballio[29], and Sagarinus and Stichus the
return of their masters from abroad[30], the tastes which the poet
attributes to the old women in his pieces, as to Staphyla in the
Aulularia,--show that the Romans had not learned, in his time, the
more cultivated enjoyment of wine, which they brought to perfection
in the days of Horace. The experience to which Plautus bears witness,
like that attributed to his contemporaries in the lines
Ennius ipse pater numquam nisi potus ad arma
Prosiluit dicenda,
and
Narratur et prisci Catonis
Saepe mero caluisse virtus,
is indicative rather of the convivial 'abandon' of men of vigorous
constitutions, than of the more deliberate and fastidious epicureanism
of the poets of a later age.
Another criticism of Horace upon Plautus--
Gestit enim nummum in loculos demittere--
may very probably be true, and is by no means to his discredit. The
same charge has been brought against some of the most facile and
productive creators in modern times, such as Scott, Dickens, and
Balzac, and, to a certain extent, even Shakspeare. To the poets
of Nature, or of the higher thought and emotions of men, the pure
enjoyment of their art may afford sufficient happiness. In so far as
they are true to their higher genius, they are, or ought to be, more
independent than any other class of men of the pleasures which money
can give. But artists whose power consists in vividly realising and
representing the various activities, passions, and enjoyments of life,
may feel, in their own experience, some of the craving and of the
satisfaction which they are called on to describe. Nor is it unnatural
that they should take any legitimate means of securing for themselves
some share in the objects of desire, which are the moving forces of
their imaginary world. In the large place which the details of good
living fill in his plays, Plautus exaggerates a tendency which is
discernible in the more decorous fictions of Scott and Dickens. In the
important part which he assigns to money in many of his dramas, in
his business-like mention of specific sums, in the frequency of
his illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, he shows a
resemblance to Balzac. The experience of his life must have impressed
upon him the value of money. The fact that he saved enough in his
early employment in connexion with the stage to embark on mercantile
speculations is a proof of early thrift and prudence and of a wish to
raise himself in the world. In all this he was merely exhibiting
one of the most common characteristics of the middle class among his
countrymen.
Horace adds the further criticism, that so long as he could make money
he was indifferent to the artistic merits of his pieces,--
Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo;--
and this criticism is to a great extent true. His object was to give
the largest amount of immediate amusement[31]. He was not a careful
artist like Terence, studying either finish of style, perfect
consistency in the development of his characters, or the working
out of his plots to a harmonious conclusion. It was owing to the
irrepressible vitality and strong human nature which he could not help
imparting to his careless execution, that his plays have survived many
more elaborate compositions. Yet he shows a rude kind of consciousness
of his art in such passages as that in which he makes Pseudolus
compare himself to the poet who creates out of nothing--
Set quasi poeta, tabulas quom cepit sibi,
Quaerit quod nusquamst gentium, reperit tamen[32];
and he speaks of the pleasure which he took in his play
'Epidicus[33].' Cicero also testifies to the joy which he derived
from two of the works of his old age, the Pseudolus and the
Truculentus[34]. But his delight was that of a vigorous creator, not
of a painstaking artist.
Many allusions in his plays attest his acquaintance with works of
art, with the stories of Greek mythology or the subjects of Greek
tragedies, and with the names, at least, of Greek philosophers. His
extraordinary productiveness in adapting works from the new comedy
shows that he had a complete command of the Greek language. He not
only uses Greek phrases, but has endeavoured to enrich the native
vocabulary with a considerable number of Greek words in a Latin
form[35]. Yet the knowledge he betrays is that which a man of
versatile intelligence, lively curiosity, and retentive memory, would
pick up in his varied intercourse with his contemporaries, without any
special study of books, except such as were needed for his immediate
purpose. The more recondite learning of Ennius was probably as strange
to him as that of Ben Jonson was to Shakspeare.
The great movement of his age acted on the mind of Plautus in a manner
different from that in which it affected Ennius. To the younger poet
the triumphant close of the Second Punic War brought the sense of a
mighty future awaiting the Roman Republic. He appealed to the higher
national aspirations stirring the hearts of the governing class.
Plautus felt the strong rebound of spirits from a long-continued state
of tension, from a time of anxiety and self-sacrifice, in a less noble
manner. He appealed to the craving which the mass of the citizens felt
for a more unrestrained enjoyment of the pleasures of life. In the
spirit which moved him we seem to recognise the same kind of impulse
which prompted the repeal of the Oppian law, and which led to the
great increase of public amusements of every kind. The newly-acquired
peace and ease awoke in him a sense of the immense capacities of the
individual for enjoyment. In a passage of one of his later plays
he seems to claim this indulgence as the natural concomitant of
victory:--
Postremo in magno populo, in multis hominibus,
Re placida atque otiosa, victis hostibus,
Amare oportet omnes, qui quod dent habent[36].
With this new sense of freedom and of fullness of life, the old
restraints of religion and of the morality bound up with it were
relaxed. The commons began to exercise less and less influence in the
state. Their political indifference finds an echo in the slighting
allusions which Plautus makes to the duties of public life[37]. The
increased contact with the mind and life of the Greeks powerfully
stimulated intellectual curiosity, but at the same time was a great
solvent of faith, manners, and morals. The frequent use of the words
_congraecari_, _pergraecari_, etc., in Plautus, shows that while the
highest Roman minds were learning new lessons of wisdom and humanity
from the great Greek writers of the past, the ordinary Roman was
learning lessons of idleness and dissoluteness from the living Greeks
of the time. The armies which returned from the Macedonian wars, and
still more from that with Antiochus, brought with them new fashions
and new appliances of luxury. Plautus shows a large indulgence, not
unmixed with a vein of saturnine humour, for these new ways on which
both young and old were eagerly entering. We see in him the unchecked
exuberance of animal life, but no sign of the recklessness or the
satiety of exhausted passions. Though there is more decorum, more
refined sentiment, in the life of pleasure as presented by Terence,
there is more often in Plautus an expression of a struggle between the
new temptations and the old Roman ideas of thrift, active duty, and
self-restraint. The conscience, though easily lulled to sleep, is
still capable of feeling the sting of the thought contained in the
Lucretian line--
Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire.
Turning now to the particular plays we find that they all belong to
the class of _palliatae_. They are adaptations or combinations from
the works of Menander, Diphilus, Philemon, and other writers of the
new comedy. The action represented is generally supposed to take place
in Athens, sometimes in other Greek towns, in Epidamnus, Ephesus,
Cyrene, etc. The plays of Plautus, unlike those of Terence and most
of those of Caecilius, have generally Latin titles, but nearly all his
personages have Greek names. One or two of his parasites (Peniculus,
Saturio, Curculio) are exceptions to this rule: but the absence of all
_gentile_ designations among his richer personages would alone prove
that he had no intention of presenting to his audience the outward
conditions of Roman or Italian life. The social circumstances implied
in all his plays are those of well-to-do citizens engaged in foreign
commerce, or retired from business after having made their fortunes.
The only differences in station among his personages are those of
rich and poor, free and slave. There is no recognition of those great
distinctions of birth, privilege, and political status, which were so
pervading a characteristic of Roman life. Old men are indeed spoken
of as 'senati columen'; and it is made a ground of reproach to a young
man that he is not already a candidate for public office, or making
a name for himself by defending cases in the law-courts. But such
passages are probably to be classed among the frequent Roman allusions
to be found in Plautus, which had no equivalent in his original. The
new comedy of Menander was based on the philosophy of Epicurus, which
taught the lesson of abstention from all public duties[38]. The life
of the young men is almost entirely a life of pleasure, varied
perhaps by some participation in their fathers' foreign business, or
occasional service in the army. But the dislike of a military life
among the 'easy livers' of Athens in the beginning of the third
century B.C. is shown as much by the indifference of these young men
to their honour as soldiers[39], as by the ridicule which is heaped
upon the 'Captain Bobadils' who served as mercenaries in the military
monarchies of the successors of Alexander. Even a slave regards
enlisting as a soldier as the last refuge of a ruined man. The other
characters are of Greek origin, though some of them became naturalised
in Rome. The ordinary Roman client on the one hand--such as the
Volteius Mena of Horace,--and the scurra of Roman satire on the other
(Volanerius or Maenius), had a certain likeness to the Greek parasite;
though the position of the first was more respectable[40], and the
last was a more formidable element in society than a Gelasimus or
an Artotrogus. The 'fallax servus' of comedy, though a wonderful
conception of a humorous imagination, is a character hardly compatible
with any social conditions; but it is undoubtedly an exaggeration
of Greek mendacity and intelligence, the very antithesis of Italian
rusticity. The commanding part they play in the affairs of their
masters seems like a grotesque anticipation of the part played under
the empire by Greek freedmen,--
Viscera magnarum domuum dominique futuri.
The 'meretrix blanda' of Menander was probably more refined, but not
essentially different from the 'libertina' of Rome. Among the rare
glimpses into social life which Livy affords behind the stately but
somewhat monotonous pageant of consuls and imperators, armies in the
field, senators in council, and political assemblies of the people,
none is more interesting than that given in the inquiries into the
horrors of the Bacchanalia at Rome[41]. The relations between P.
Aebutius and the freedwoman Hispala Fecenia bring to mind those
existing between the Philematiums, the Phileniums, or Planesiums of
comedy and their lovers. The 'leno insidiosus' and the 'improba lena'
are probably much the same in all times and countries; but there is
a vigorous brutality and inhuman hardness about Ballio and Cleaereta
which seem more true to Roman than to Greek life. The kind of life
which comedy represents must have had great attractions for a race
of vigorous organisation like the Romans, after continued success and
prosperity had broken down the old restraints on conduct and desire,
and the accumulated wealth of the world had become the prize of their
energy. Yet their inherited instincts for industry and frugality must
have made it difficult for them to realise gracefully the hollow life
of light-hearted enjoyment which came easily to a Greek in the third
century B.C. The average Roman learned to exaggerate the profligacy
without acquiring the refinement of his teachers.
It might perhaps have been expected that a writer of such prodigal
invention and so popular and national a fibre as Plautus would
have chosen rather to set before his countrymen a humorous image of
themselves, than to transport them in imagination to Athens and to
exhibit to them those well-used conventional types of Greek life and
manners. But, in the first place, the mere fact that it was more easy
for him to adapt than to create would have been a sufficient motive
to so careless and unconscious an artist. Again, the state-censorship
exercised by the magistrates who exhibited the games would naturally
deter a poet, who did not wish to encounter the fate of Naevius,
from any direct dealing with the delicate subject of Roman social and
family life. The later writers of the _fabulae togatae_ seem for the
most part to have reproduced the life and personages of the provincial
towns in Italy. The position not only of the magistrate but even
of the citizen at Rome was invested with a kind of dignity and even
sanctity, which it would have been dangerous to violate in a public
spectacle. Further, the very novelty and unfamiliarity of the ways of
Greek life would be more stimulating to the rude imagination of that
age than a reproduction of the everyday life of Rome. It requires
a more cultivated fancy to recognise incidents, situations and
characters suited for art in actual experience, than to appreciate the
conventional types of older dramatists. It is a noticeable fact that
Shakspeare places the scene of only one of his comedies in England,
and that he too introduces the English names and characteristics of
Bottom, Snug, Peter Quince, etc., as Plautus does those of Saturio
or Curculio into an imaginary representation of Athenian life. But
whatever were his motives for doing so, Plautus professes to introduce
his hearers to a representation of Greek manners and morals. His
frequent use of the word _barbarus_ in reference to Italian or Roman
ways, his use of Latinised Greek words and actual Greek phrases, the
Greek names of his personages, the dress in which they appeared,
the invariable reference to Greek money, perhaps the actual scene
presented to the eye, the frequent mention of ships unexpectedly
arriving in harbour, the names of the foreign towns visited, etc.,
would all tend to remind the audience that they were listening to an
action and witnessing a spectacle of Greek life.
But while the outward conditions of his dramas are professedly taken
from Greek originals, much of the manner and spirit of his personages
is certainly Roman. The language in which they express themselves in
the first place is thoroughly their own. This is shown by the large
number of his puns and plays on words. These by their spontaneity,
sometimes by their grotesqueness, sometimes by a Latin play on a
Greek word--such as Archidemides[42] or Epidamnus,--show their
native origin. No writer, again, abounds so much in alliterations,
assonances, asyndeta[43], which are characteristic of all early Roman
poetry down even to Lucretius, and which have no parallel in the
more refined and natural diction of the Greek dramatists. Further,
we constantly meet with Roman formulae[44], Roman proverbs[45],
expressions of courtesy[46], and the like. The very fluency,
copiousness, and verve of his language are impossible to a translator,
at least in the early stages of a literature. Nothing can be more
spontaneous and natural than the dialogue in Plautus. There is, on
the other hand, considerable appearance of effort in the reflective
passages of the 'cantica'; and this is exactly what we should expect
in a Roman writer of originality. Reflexion on life was altogether
strange to a Roman in the age of Plautus; to a Greek it was easy and
hackneyed. In the prolixity and slow beating out of the thought in
some of the 'cantica' we note the beginning of a process unfamiliar to
the Roman mind, for which the forms of the Latin language were not
yet adapted. The facility of expressing reflexion appears much more
developed in Terence. If Plautus were reproducing a Greek original in
such passages as Mostell. 85-145, Trinummus 186-273, the thought and
the illustration would have lost much in freshness and _naïveté_ but
they would have been expressed with much more point and conciseness.
But it is not only in his language and manner that Plautus shows his
independence of his originals. The poems taken from Greek life are in
a large measure filled up with matter taken from the life around him.
The Greek personages of his play, without apparently any sense of
artistic incongruity, speak as Romans would do of the places familiar
to Romans--town in Italy[47], streets, markets, gates, in Rome[48]; of
Roman magistrates and other officials, Quaestors, Aediles, Praetors,
Tresviri, Publicani; they allude to the public business of the senate,
comitia, and law-courts,--to colonies[49], praefecturae, and the
provincia of a magistrate,--to public games in honour of the dead,--to
the distinctive dress worn by matrons,--to the forms of bargaining and
purchasing, of summoning an antagonist into court, of pleading a
case at law,--to the times of vacation from business[50],--to
the emancipation of slaves,--peculiar to the Romans. The special
characteristics of Roman religion appear in the number of abstract
deities referred to, such as Salus, Opportunitas, Libentia, etc. A
new divinity is invented in the interests of lovers, under the name of
Suavisuaviatio[51]. Other better-known objects of Roman worship,
such as Jupiter Capitolinus, Laverna, the Lar Familiaris, are
also introduced. We find also references to recent events in Roman
history--such as the subjugation of the Boii[52], the treatment
inflicted on the Campanians after the Second Punic War, the
importation of Syrian slaves after the war with Antiochus[53], the
introduction of foreign luxuries at the same time[54], the extreme
frequency with which triumphs were granted in the first twenty years
of the second century B.C.[55] Allusion is made to particular Roman
laws, such as the lex alearia[56], probably passed about this time
to resist the progress of Greek demoralisation. The state of feeling
aroused, on both sides, by the repeal of the Oppian law, and the
state of society which led to the original enactment of that law, are
reflected in many passages of the plays of Plautus. A remark of one of
the better class of matrons--
Non matronarum officium est, sed meretricium,
Viris alienis, mi vir, subblandirier[57]--
may serve as a comment on the arguments with which Cato opposed
the repeal of the law: 'Qui hic mos est in publicum procurrendi,
et obsidendi vias, et viros alienos appellandi?... An blandiores
in publico quam in privato, et alienis quam vestris estis[58]?' The
imperiousness of a 'dotata uxor,' and the spirit of rebellion thereby
aroused in the mind of her husband, are themes treated with grim
humour in many of the dramas. The stale jokes against the happiness of
married life were as applicable to Greek as to Roman life; and Greek
husbands may have stood in as much dread of their wives' extravagance
in dress, and in as great awe of their surveillance, as were
experienced by the elderly husbands of Latin comedy. But the fact that
similar criticisms appear in the satirical and oratorical fragments
of the second century B.C. indicates that such jokes, whether or
not originally due to the Greek writer, came equally home to a Roman
audience.
Again, the great fertility of Plautus and his many-sided contact
with life are apparent in the number and variety of his metaphors and
illustrations from, and other references to, many varieties of human
occupation. These have, for the most part, both a national and a
popular origin. The number of those taken from military operations,
and from legal and business transactions, is a clear indication that
they were of fresh Roman coinage. There is no character which a slave,
who has to conduct some intrigue to a successful issue, is so fond of
assuming as that of the general of an army. In one passage one of his
confederates addresses him as 'Imperator.' He takes the auspices, he
brings his engines to bear on the citadel of the enemy, he brings
up his supports, he lays his ambush and avoids that laid for him,
he leads his army round by some unknown pass, cuts off the enemy's
communications, keeps open his own, invests and takes the hostile
position, and divides the booty among his allies. The following
passage for instance is freshly coloured with all the recent
experience of the Hannibalian war:--
Viden hostis tibi adesse, tuoque tergo obsidium? Consule,
Arripe opem auxiliumque ad hanc rem, propere hoc non placide decet.
Anteveni aliqua aut aliquo saltu circumduce exercitum,
Coge in obsidium perduellis, nostris praesidium para.
Interclude conmeatum inimicis, tibi moeni viam,
Qua cibatus conmeatusque ad te et legionis tuas
Tuto possit pervenire. Hanc rem age: res subitariast[59].
The illustrations from the practice of keeping accounts, from banking
and business operations, and the references to law forms, such as
the mode of pleading a case by sponsio[60], would come home to the
experience and habits which were fostered more in Rome than in any
other ancient community[61]. Though the Romans never were a mercantile
community, like the Carthaginians or the Greek States in their later
days, yet from the earliest times they understood the uses of the
accumulation and skilful application of capital. Another large class
of metaphors, generally expressive of some form of roguery, and taken
from the trade of various artisans--such as the smith, carpenter,
butcher, weaver, etc.[62]--speaks to the popular as well as the
national characteristics of his dramas. If these metaphorical phrases
had been mere translations, they would, as thus applied, have had no
meaning to a Roman audience. They must have been more or less of slang
phrases, formed by and for the people, and suggested by an intimate
familiarity with many varieties of trickery and swindling on the one
hand, and with the skill and trade of various classes of artisans on
the other.
The exuberant use of terms of endearment and of abuse in Plautus
may be also mentioned as an original and Roman characteristic of his
genius. His lovers' phrases[63], though used by him with a saturnine
humour, remind us of the passionate use of similar phrases in
Catullus. The slave or cook of Greek comedy may probably have indulged
freely in the vituperation of his fellows; but there is an idiomatic
heartiness in the interchange of curses and verbal sword-thrusts among
the slaves, panders, and cooks of Plautus, which seems congenial
to the race who enjoyed the spectacles of the amphitheatre. The
inexhaustible fund of merriment supplied by references to or practical
exemplifications of the various modes of punishing and torturing
slaves, tells of a people not especially cruel, but practically
callous either to the infliction or the suffering of pain. The Greek
nature was, when roused to passion, capable of fiercer and more
cowardly cruelty than the Roman, but was too sensitively organised to
enjoy the spectacle or the imagination of inflictions which form the
subject of the stalest jokes in Plautus. The spirit of the new comedy
as it existed in Greece, was not, on the whole, calculated to elevate,
but it certainly was capable of humanising the Roman character.
We are less able to speak of his originality in the selection of
incidents and dramatic situations, in the general management of his
plots, and his conception of characters. Though more varied than
Terence in the subjects which he chooses for dramatic treatment, yet
there is great sameness, both of incident, development, and character,
in many of them. His favourite subject is a scheme by which a slave,
in the interests of his young master, and his mistress, cheats a
father, a mercenary captain, or a 'leno,' who are treated, though in
different degrees, as enemies of the human race and legitimate
objects of spoliation. Some of the best of his plays--the Pseudolus,
Bacchides, the Mostellaria, and the Miles Gloriosus--turn entirely
upon incidents of this kind--'frustrationes in comoediis' as they are
called. There is nothing on which the chief agent in such plots prides
himself so much as on his success 'in shearing,' 'planing away,'
or 'wiping the nose' of, his antagonist in the game: there is no
indignity about which the sense of honour is so sensitive as that of
having had 'words palmed off upon one,' and having thus been made an
object of ridicule. The invariable enlisting of sympathy in favour
of the cheat and against the dupe is a trait more illustrative of the
countrymen of Ulysses than of Fabricius; but the 'Tusci turba impia
vici' at Rome had, no doubt, their own native aptitude for cheating
and lying.
The 'Pseudolus' is perhaps the best and the most typical specimen of
a play the interest of which turns on this kind of intrigue. In it the
plot is skilfully worked out, the characters are conceived with the
greatest liveliness, and admirably sustained and contrasted, and the
incidents and motives on which the personages act are never strained
beyond the limits of probability. A more fastidious age might
have objected to the celebration by Pseudolus of his triumph, as
a grotesque excrescence: but it serves to bring out the sensual
geniality underlying the audacity and roguery of his character, in
contrast to the sensual brutality underlying the audacity and villainy
of Ballio. When we consider the vigorous life and even the art with
which the whole piece is worked out, we understand why Plautus, with
good reason, took, in his old age, especial pleasure in this play.
There is not much to offend a robust morality in the piece; for though
the result accomplished cannot be called the triumph of virtue
over vice, it is at least the triumph of a more amiable over a more
detestable form of depravity.
In the 'Bacchides' the slave Chrysalus plays a part similar to that of
Pseudolus, with perhaps more subtlety but less vigour and liveliness.
The mode in which both the 'pater attentus' and the 'senex lepidus' of
the piece (Nicobulus and Philoxenus) succumb to the blandishments of
the two sisters, and in the end become the rivals of their sons, is
still less edifying than the winding up of the Pseudolus: but the
_dénouement_ is brought about not unskilfully or extravagantly. It is
difficult to say whether Plautus, like the author of Gil Blas, felt a
moral indifference to the characters he brought on the stage, so long
as he could make them amusing; or whether, like Balzac, but with more
humour and less cynicism, he had a peculiar delight in following human
corruption into its last retreats. The moral with which the piece
winds up--
Hi senes nisi fuissent nihili iam inde ab adulescentia,
Non hodie hoc tantum flagitium facerent canis capitibus,
implies that he recognised the difference between right and wrong, or
at least between good and bad taste in such matters, but that he did
not, perhaps, attach much importance to it. The 'Asinaria,' which also
turns on a scheme by which a slave defrauds his mistress in behalf of
his young master, winds up with a scene in which a father is enjoying
himself as the rival of his complaisant son, till he is summoned
away by the apparition of his wife, and the wrathful and scornful
reiteration of 'Surge, amator, i domum.' The moral expressed there by
the 'Caterva' implies less sympathy with outraged virtue than with the
disappointed delinquent--
Hic senex siquid clam uxorem suo animo fecit volup'
Neque novom neque mirum fecit nec secus quam alii solent.
There are two or three other plays in which a father appears as the
rival of his son. None of the characters in Plautus, not even
Ballio, or Labrax, or Cleaereta,--the worst of his 'lenones' and
'lenae,'--excite more unmitigated disgust than Stalino in the
'Casina.'
The 'Miles Gloriosus' and the 'Mostellaria' are much less
objectionable in point of morality, or at least good taste, than
either the 'Bacchides' or the 'Asinaria.' They are among the most
popular of the plays of Plautus. There is a great variety of humorous
situations in the 'Miles': and, although the principal character
transcends all natural limits in his self-glorification, his stupid
insensibility, and his pusillanimity, the intrigue is carried out with
the greatest vivacity by Palaestrio and his army of accomplices; and
the humour with which the fidelity and veracity of the slave Sceledrus
are played upon almost merges into pathos in the despairing tenacity
with which he cannot bring himself to disbelieve the evidence of his
eyes--
Noli minitari: scio crucem futuram mihi sepulchrum:
Ibi mei sunt maiores siti, pater, avos, proavos, abavos.
Non possunt tuis minaciis hisce oculi mi ecfodiri[63].
Tranio in the 'Mostellaria' is, in readiness of resource and resolute
mendacity, a not unworthy member of the fraternity to which Pseudolus,
Chrysalus, and Palaestrio belong. He is, besides, something of a fop
and a fine gentleman, and all his relations with his young and old
master, with Simo and the Banker, are conducted with perfect urbanity.
Yet the 'Mostellaria' is certainly one of those plays to which the
criticism of Horace--
Securus cadat an recto stet fabula talo,--
is peculiarly applicable. No less suitable 'Deus ex machina' than
the crapulous Callidamates can well be imagined for the purpose of
reconciling a justly incensed father and master of a household to the
profligate extravagance of his son, and the audacious mystification of
his slave.
Several other plays turn upon similar 'frustrationes.' Two of the
best of these are the 'Curculio' and the 'Epidicus.' Though there are
lively and humorous scenes in nearly all his plays, and the language
is generally sparkling and vigorous, yet the sameness of situation
and character, and the unrelieved tone of light-hearted merriment and
mendacity with which this class of play is pervaded soon pall upon the
taste. A few, the 'Cistellaria' and the 'Poenulus,' for instance, turn
upon the incident of a free-born child being stolen in infancy, and
recognised by her parents before she has fatally committed herself
to the occupation for which she has been destined. But these are not
among the best executed of the Plautine plays. In the 'Stichus' we
enjoy the unwonted satisfaction of making acquaintance with two wives
who really care for their husbands: and the parasite Gelasimus in that
play is as amusing as the characters of the same kind in the Captivi,
Curculio, Menaechmi, Persa, etc. But the absence of incident, coherent
plot, and adequate _dénouement_, must prevent this play from being
ranked among the more important compositions of Plautus. A few however
still remain to be noticed as among the most serious or the most
imaginative efforts of his genius. The 'Aulularia,' 'Trinummus,'
'Menaechmi,' 'Rudens,' 'Captivi,' and 'Amphitryo,' are much more
varied in their interest than most of those already mentioned, and
each of them has its own characteristic excellence.
The interest of the 'Aulularia' turns entirely on the character of
Euclio. Whether or not this embodiment of the miser owes much to the
original creation of Plautus, it is certainly realised by him with the
greatest truth and vivacity. The whole conception is thoroughly
human and original; and though nothing can be more complete than
the hypochondriacal possession which his one idea has over his
imagination, the character is not presented in an odious or despicable
light. In this respect it differs from the frequent presentment of
the miserly character in Roman satire, and in most modern works of
fiction. Perhaps, except Silas Marner and Père Goriot, there is no
other case of a miser being conceived with any human-hearted sympathy.
His exaggerated sense of the value of the smallest sum of money is
like a hallucination, arising out of the unexpected discovery of a
great treasure after a life of poverty has made pinching and sparing a
second nature to him. But this hallucination has left him shrewdness,
honesty, pluck, a certain dignity, shown in his relation to Megadorus,
and abundance of a grim humour; and it seems to have cleared away,
in the _dénouement_ of the piece, under the influence of fatherly
affection[65]. There are none of the baser or more brutal characters
of the Plautine comedies introduced into this play. Eunomia is a rare
specimen of a virtuous woman; Megadorus of a worthy and kindly old
man, with a didactic tendency which makes him a little wearisome; the
'young lover' shows an honourable loyalty in the reparation of his
fault. Though none of these subsidiary characters are conceived with
anything like the force and vivacity of Euclio, yet after reading the
humours of ancient life, as exhibited in the 'Asinaria,' 'Casina,' and
'Truculentus,' we feel a sense of relief in finding ourselves in such
respectable company. The genius with which the chief character of the
play is conceived and executed is sufficiently attested by the fact
that it served as a model to the greatest of purely comic dramatists
of modern times.
The 'Trinummus,' if less amusing than most of the other plays of
Plautus, is one of the most unexceptionable in moral tendency; and one
at least of the personages in it, Philto, in his union of shrewd sense
and old-fashioned severity with a sarcastic humour and real humanity
of nature is quite a new type, distinguishable from the hard fathers,
the disreputably genial old men, and the mere worthy citizens, who are
among the stock characters of the Plautine comedy. There is no play
in which the struggle between the stricter morals of an older time
and the new temptations is more clearly exhibited: and though vice is
finally condoned, or at least visited only with the mild penalty of
an unsolicited marriage, the sympathies of the audience are entirely
enlisted on the side of virtue. Lesbonicus is a prodigal of the type
of Charles Surface, whose folly and extravagance are redeemed by good
feeling and a latent sense of honour: and if it is not easy to acquit
Lysiteles of a too conscious virtue, one must remember how difficult
it always is for a comic dramatist to make the character of a
thoroughly respectable young man lively and entertaining. But the
whole piece, from the prologue, which indicates the way which all
prodigals go, to the end,--the good sense, worth of character, and
friendly confidence exhibited in the relations of Megaronides and
Callicles,--the honourable love of Lysiteles for the dowerless sister
of his friend,--the pious humanity and humility of such sentiments as
these in the mouth of Philto--
Di divites sunt, deos decent opulentiae
Et factiones: verum nos homunculi
Scintillula animae, quam quom extemplo emisimus,
Aequo mendicus atque ille opulentissimus
Censetur censu ad Acheruntem mortuos[66],--
the denunciation by Megaronides of the 'School for Scandal,' which
seems to have flourished in Athens as similar institutions do in our
modern cities,--enable us to believe that the citizen life of the
Greek communities, after the loss of their independence, may not have
been so utterly hollow and disreputable as some of the representations
of ancient comedy would lead us to suppose.
There is much greater originality of plot, incident, and character,
though, at the same time, a much less unexceptionable moral tendency
in the 'Menaechmi,' the model after which Shakspeare's 'Comedy of
Errors' was composed. The plot turns upon the likeness of twins, who
have been separated from each other from childhood: and granting this
original supposition,--one perfectly conformable to experience,--the
many lively and humorous situations arising out of their
undistinguishable resemblance to one another, are natural and
lifelike. We feel, in the incidents which Plautus brings before us,
none of that sense of unreality which the complication of the two
Dromios adds to the 'Comedy of Errors.' The play is enlivened also by
the element of personal adventure, arising out of the experiences
of the second Menaechmus in his search for his brother over all the
coasts of the Mediterranean. The two brothers (whether or not this
was intended by the poet) are like in character, as well as in outward
appearance; and they are both, in their hardness and knowledge of the
world, in the unscrupulousness with which they gratify their love
of pleasure, and the superiority which they maintain over their
dependents, entirely distinct from the weak and vacillating 'amantes
ephebi' of most of the other plays. The character of the 'parasite' is
not very different from that in some of the other plays, except that
in his vindictiveness for the loss of his _déjeuner_, and his love of
mischief-making, he comes nearer to the type of the 'scurra' than
of the faithful client of the house, who is best represented by the
Ergasilus of the 'Captivi.' But in the fashionable physician who is
called in by the wife and father-in-law of the first Menaechmus, to
examine into and prescribe for his condition, we are introduced to a
new type of character which certainly seems to be drawn from the life.
After reading the scene in which this personage is introduced, one
might be inclined to fancy that, notwithstanding the advance of
medical science, certain characteristics of manner and procedure had
become long ago stereotyped in the profession.
These three plays show Plautus at his best in regard to the
delineation of character, to moral tendency, to the conduct of a story
by means of humorous incidents and situations. The three which still
remain to be considered assert his claim to some share of poetic
feeling and genius, and to at least some sympathy with the more
elevated motives and sentiments which dignify human life. The 'Rudens'
is inferior to several of the other plays in purely dramatic interest;
but it has all the charm and freshness of a sea-idyll. The outward
picture imprinted on the imagination is that of a bright morning after
a storm, of which the effects are still apparent in the unroofing of
the villa of Daemones, in the wild commotion of the sea[67], in the
desolation of the two shipwrecked women wandering about among the
lonely rocks where they have been cast ashore, in the touching
complaint of the poor fishermen deprived by the storm of their chance
of earning their daily bread. The action, which consists in the rescue
of innocence from villainy, and in the recognition of a lost daughter
by her father, entirely enlists both the moral and the humane
sympathies. There is imaginative as well as humorous originality in
the soliloquies of Gripus, and in his altercation with Trachalio; and
a sense of sardonic satisfaction is experienced in contemplating the
plight of Labrax (a weaker and meaner ruffian than Ballio) and his
confederate chattering with cold and bewailing the loss of their
illgotten gains. But the peculiar charm of the play, as compared with
any of those which have been already noticed, is the sentiment of
natural piety--not unlike that expressed in the 'rustica Phidyle,' of
Horace[68]--by which the drama is pervaded. This key-note is struck in
the prologue uttered by Arcturus, whose function it is to shine in the
sky during the night, and during the day to wander over the earth, and
report to Jove on the good and evil deeds of men:--
Quist imperator divom atque hominum Iuppiter,
Is nos per gentis hic alium alia disparat,
Hominum qui facta, mores, pietatem et fidem
Noscamus, ut quemque adiuvet opulentia[69].
The affinity of piety to mercy is exhibited in the part played by the
priestess of Venus--
Manus mihi date, exurgite a pedibus ambae,
Misericordior nulla mest feminarum[70];
and the natural trust of innocence and good faith in divine protection
is exemplified by the confidence with which the shipwrecked women take
refuge at the altar of Venus:--
Tibi auscultamus et, Venus alma, ambae te opsecramus
Aram amplexantes hanc tuam lacrumantes, genibus nixae,
In custodelam nos tuam ut recipias et tutere, etc.[71]
Even the moral sentiment expressed is of a finer quality than the
maxims of rough good sense and probity which we find, for instance, in
the Trinummus. When Gripus tells his master that he is poor owing to
his scrupulous piety--
Isto tu's pauper, quom nimis sancte piu's--
the answer is in a higher strain than that familiar to ancient
comedy:--
O Gripe Gripe, in aetate hominum plurimae
Fiunt transennae, [illi] ubi decipiuntur dolis.
Atque edepol in eas plerumque esca inponitur,
Quam siquis avidus poscit escam avariter,
Decipitur in transenna avaritia sua.
Ille qui consulte, docte atque astute cavet,
Diutine uti ei bene licet partum bene.
Mi istaec videtur praeda praedatum irier,
Maiore ut cum dote abeat hinc quam advenerit.
Egone ut quod ad me adlatum esse alienum sciam
Celem? minume istuc faciet noster Daemones.
Semper cavere hoc sapientes aequissumum'st,
Ne conscii sint ipsi maleficii suis.
Ego nisi quom lusim nil morer ullum lucrum[72].
The 'Captivi' was pronounced by the greatest critic of last century to
be the best constructed drama in existence. Though probably few will
now be found to assign to it so high a place, yet, if not the best, it
certainly is among the very best plays of Plautus, in respect both
of plot and the dramatic irony of its situations. But it possesses a
still higher claim to our admiration in the presentment of at least
one character of true nobleness. And the originality of the conception
is all the greater from the fact that this heroism is embodied in the
person of one who has been brought up from childhood as a slave. There
are not many of the plays of Plautus calculated to raise our ideas
of human nature; but the loyal affection of Tyndarus for his young
master, his self-sacrifice, the buoyancy, courage, and ready resource
with which he first meets his dangers, and the manly fortitude with
which he accepts his doom--
Dum ne ob malefacta, peream: parvi id aestimo.
Si ego hic peribo, ast ille, ut dixit, non redit,
At erit mi hoc factum mortuo memorabile,
Me meum erum captum ex servitute atque hostibus
Reducem fecisse liberum in patriam ad patrem,
Meumque potius me caput periculo
Hic praeoptavisse quam is periret ponere[73]--
enable us to feel that some of the glory of the older and nobler
Greek tragedy still lingered in the Athens of Menander, and has been
reproduced by Plautus with imaginative sympathy. Yet perhaps even to
this play the criticism of Horace,
Quam non adstricto percurrat pulpita socco,
in part applies. The old slave-tricks of mendacity and unseasonable
joking, which are a legitimate source of amusement in the 'Pseudolus'
and similar plays, jar on our feelings as inconsistent with the simple
dignity of the character of Tyndarus and the heroic part which he has
to play.
There are none of the plays of Plautus which it is so difficult to
criticise from a modern point of view as the 'Amphitruo.' On the
one hand the humour of the scenes between Mercury and Sosia is not
surpassed in any of the other comedies. There is no passage in any
other play in which such power of imagination is exhibited, as that in
which Bromia tells the tale of the birth of Alcmena's twins--
Ita erae meae hodie contigit: nam ubi partuis deos sibi invocat,
Strepitus, crepitus, sonitus, tonitrus: subito ut propere,
ut valide tonuit.
Ubi quisque institerat, concidit crepitu: ibi nescio quis maxuma
Voce exclamat: 'Alcumena, adest auxilium, ne time:
Et tibi et tuis propitius caeli cultor advenit.
Exurgite' inquit 'qui terrore meo occidistis prae metu.'
Ut iacui, exurgo: ardere censui aedis: ita tum confulgebant[74].
Nor is there, perhaps, anywhere in ancient literature a nobler
realisation of the virtue of womanhood than in the indignant
vindication of herself by Alcmena,--
Non ego illam mihi dotem esse duco, quae dos dicitur,
Set pudicitiam et pudorem et sedatum cupidinem,
Deum metum et parentum amorem et cognatum concordiam,
Tibi morigera atque ut munifica sim bonis, prosim probis[75].
On the other hand, it is difficult to understand how the part played
by Jupiter, and the comments of Mercury upon that part, should not
have shocked the religious and moral sense even of the Athenians of
the age of Epicurus and of the Romans in the age when they were first
made familiar with the Sacred Chronicle of Euhemerus. Perhaps the
Romans made a distinction between the Jupiter of Greek mythology and
their own Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and may have thought that what was
derogatory to the first did not apply to the second. Or, perhaps, some
clue to the origin of the Greek play may be found in a phrase of the
Rudens,
Non ventus fuit, verum Alcumena Euripidi[76].
Was the Greek writer partly parodying, in accordance with the
tradition of the old comedy, partly reproducing a tragedy of
Euripides? and was the representation first accepted as a recognised
burlesque of a familiar piece? In any case its production both at
Athens and Rome must be regarded partly as a symptom, partly as a
cause, of the rapid dissolution of religious beliefs among both Greeks
and Romans.
As in the case of other productive writers there is no absolute
agreement as to which are the best of the Plautine plays. Without
assigning precedence to any one over the other, a preference may be
indicated for these five, as combining the most varied elements of
interest with the best execution--_Aulularia_, _Captivi_, _Menaechmi_,
_Pseudolus_, _Rudens_; and for these, as second to the former in
interest owing to some inferiority in comic power, artistic execution,
or natural _vraisemblance_, or owing to some element in them which
offends the taste or moral sentiment--_Trinummus_, _Mostellaria_,
_Miles Gloriosus_, _Bacchides_, _Amphitruo_. These ten plays alone,
without taking the others into account, show both in their incidents,
scenes, and characters, how much wider Plautus' range of observation
was than that of Terence. Even within the narrow limits of the
characters most familiar to ancient comedy--the 'amans ephebus,' the
'meretrix blanda,' the 'fallax servus,' the 'bragging captain,' the
'parasite,' the 'leno,' the 'old men'--good, kindly, severe, genial,
sensual and disreputable,--we find great individual differences. More
than Terence, Plautus maintains a dramatic and ironical superiority
over his characters. This is especially shown in his treatment of his
young lovers and the objects of their despairing affection. The former
exhibit various shades of weakness, from the mere ineffectual struggle
between the grain of conscience left them and the attractions of
pleasure, to the sentimental impulse to end their woes by suicide. The
latter show varying degrees of attraction, from a grace and vivacity
that reminds German critics of the Mariana and the Philina in 'Wilhelm
Meister,' to the hardness and astuteness of the heroines of the
'Truculentus' and the 'Miles Gloriosus.' Plautus cannot be said to
care much about any of them except as objects of amusement and of the
study of human nature. Nor, on the other hand, has he any hatred of
his worst characters. He has the true dramatist's sympathy with the
vigorous conception of Ballio--the same kind of sympathy which made
that part a favourite one of the actor Roscius. His characters are
interesting and amusing in themselves; they are never used as the mere
mouthpieces of the writer's reflexion, wit, or sentiment. It is, of
course, impossible to determine definitely how far he was an original
creator, how far a merely vigorous imitator. But he is so perfectly at
home with his characters, he makes them speak and act so naturally, he
is so careless about those minutiae of artistic treatment of which a
mere translator would be scrupulously regardful, that it seems most
probable that the life with which he animates his conventional type
is derived from his own exuberant vitality and his many-sided contact
with humanity.
In what relation do the plays of Plautus stand to the more serious
interests of life? Is he to be ranked among philosophic humourists
who had felt deeply the speculative perplexities of this world, whose
imagination vividly realised the incongruity between the outward mask
that men wear and the reality behind it, and the wide divergence of
the actual aims of society from the purified ideal towards which
it tends? Is there in him any vein of ironical comment or satirical
rebuke? any latent sympathy with any of the objects which move the
serious passions of moral and social reformers? Or is he merely
a great humourist, revelling in the mirth, the absurdities, the
ridiculous phases of character, which show themselves on the surface
of life? It must be admitted that it is difficult to find in him any
traces of the speculative questioning, of the repressed or baffled
enthusiasm, of the rebellion against the common round of the world
which tempers or inspires some of the greatest humourists of ancient
and modern times. His indifference to the problems of speculative
philosophy is expressed in such phrases as the
Salva res est: philosophatur quoque iam, non mendax modo'st
of Tyndarus in the Captivi[77], and in the
Sed iam satis est philosophatum
of Pseudolus[78]. Yet to Tyndarus he attributes a sense of religious
trust befitting both his character and situation--
Est profecto deus, qui quae nos gerimus auditque et videt, etc.[79],
while Pseudolus easily finds an opposite doctrine to suit his ready,
self-reliant, and unscrupulous nature--
Centum doctum hominum consilia sola haec devincit dea,
Fortuna, etc.[80]
Probably the truth is that living in an age of active enjoyment
and energy, he troubled himself very little about the 'problem of
existence'; but that he had thought enough and doubted enough to
enable him to animate his more elevated characters with sentiments of
natural piety, and to conceive of the ordinary round of pleasure
and intrigue as quite able to dispense with them. There is rather an
indifference to religious influences or beliefs, than such expressions
of scepticism or antagonism to existing superstitions as we find in
the tragic poets. The political indifference of his plays has been
already noticed. Yet the sentiments attributed to some of his
best characters, such as Philto in the Trinummus, Megadorus in the
Aulularia[81], imply that he recognised in the growing ascendency of
wealth an element of estrangement between the different classes of
the community. His frequent reference to the extravagance and
imperiousness of the 'dotatae uxores' seems to imply further his
conviction that the curse of money was a dissolving force, not only of
the social and political but also of the family life of Rome.
The first aspect of many of his plays certainly produces the
impression of their demoralising tendency. But it is perhaps necessary
to be on our guard against judging this tendency too severely from a
merely modern point of view. These plays were addressed to the people
in their holiday mood, and a certain amount of license was claimed
for such a mood (as we may see by the Fescennine songs in marriage
ceremonies and in triumphal processions), which perhaps was not
intended to have more relation to the ordinary life of work and
serious business than the lies and tricks of slaves in comedy to their
ordinary relations with their masters.
Public festivity in ancient times, which was originally an outlet of
religious emotion, became ultimately a rebound from the severer duties
and routine of daily life. There are frequent reminders in Plautus
that this life of pleasure and intrigue was not altogether worthy or
satisfactory. There are no false hues of sentiment thrown around it,
as there are in Terence, and still more in the poets of a later age.
Nor must we expect in an ancient poet any sense of moral degradation
attaching to a life of pleasure. So far as that life is condemned it
is on the ground of sloth, weakness, and incompatibility with more
serious aims. The maxims which Palinurus addresses to Phaedromus in
the Curculio would probably not have shocked an ancient moralist:--
Nemo hinc prohibet nec vetat
Quin quod palamst venale, si argentumst, emas.
Nemo ire quemquam puplica prohibet via,
Dum ne per fundum saeptum faciat semitam:
Dum ted apstineas nupta vidua virgine
Iuventute et pueris liberis, ama quod lubet[82].
Something of the same kind is implied in the warning addressed by his
father to the young Horace. Any breach of the sanctities of family
life is invariably reprobated. On the rare occasions where such
breaches occur,--as in the Aulularia--they are repaired by marriage.
Any one aspiring to play the part of a Lothario--as in the Miles
Gloriosus--is made an object both of punishment and ridicule. In this
respect the comedy of Plautus contrasts favourably with our own comic
drama of the Restoration. There are no scenes in these plays intended
or calculated to stimulate the passions; and although there are coarse
expressions and allusions in almost all of them, yet the coarseness
of Plautus is not to be compared with that of Lucilius, Catullus,
Martial, or Juvenal. It is rather in the absence of any virtuous
ideal, than in positive incitements to vice, that the Plautine comedy
might be called immoral. Although family honour is treated as secure
from violation, there is no pure feeling about family life. Sons
are afraid of their fathers, run into debt without their knowledge,
deceive them in every possible way, occasionally express a wish
that their death might enable them to treat their mistresses more
generously. Husbands fear their wives and speak on all occasions
bitterly against them. Plautus was evidently more familiar with the
ways of the 'libertinae' than of Roman matrons of the better sort; and
thus while we see little of the latter, what we hear of them is not
to their advantage. The only obligation which young men seem to
acknowledge is that of honour and friendly service to one another. So
too slaves, while they hold it as their first duty to lie and swindle
in behalf of their young masters, feel the duty of absolute devotion
and sacrifice of themselves to their interests. Plautus shows scarcely
any of the Roman feeling of dignity or seriousness, or any regard
for patriotism or public duty. There is everywhere abundance of good
humour and good sense, but, except in the Captivi and Rudens, we find
scarcely any pathos or elevated feeling. The ideal of character which
satisfies most of his personages might almost be expressed in the
words of Stalagmus in the Captivi--
Fui ego bellus, lepidus,--bonus vir nunquam neque frugi bonae
Neque ero unquam[83].
But the life of careless freedom and strong animal spirits which
Plautus shaped with prodigal power into humorous scenes and
representations for the holiday amusements of the mass of his
fellow-citizens, does not admit of being tried by any moral or social
standard of usefulness. It would be equally unprofitable to search for
any consistent vein of irony in him, or any deep intuition into the
paradoxes of life. He is to be judged and valued on the grounds put
forward in the epitaph, which was in ancient times attributed to
himself,--
Postquam est mortem aptus Plautus, comoedia luget,
Scaena est deserta, dein risus, ludu' iocusque
Et numeri innumeri simul omnes conlacrumarunt.
And this leads us to the last question concerning him--What is his
value as a poetic artist? The very fact that his imagination plays so
habitually on the surface of life, that he has, as compared with the
greatest humourists of modern times, so little poetry, elevation, or
depth, prevents his being ranked in the very highest class of humorous
creators. In the absence of serious meaning or feeling from his
writings he reminds us of Le Sage or Smollett rather than of Cervantes
or Molière. Nor does he compensate for these defects by careful
artistic treatment. The criticisms of Horace on this subject are
perfectly true. If the line--
Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi
refers to the rapidity with which he hurries on to the _dénouement_
of his plot, it must be admitted that in some cases this quality
degenerates into haste and impatience[84]. But, on the other hand, the
careless ease and prodigal productiveness of his genius entitle him
to take certainly a high rank in the second class of humourists. If
he shows little of the idealising or contemplative faculty of poetic
genius, he has at least the facile power and spontaneous exuberance
which distinguish the great creators of human character.
The power of high and true dramatic invention which he occasionally
puts forth, and the stray gleams of beauty which light up the coarser
and commoner texture of his fancies, suggest the inference that it
was owing more to the demands of his audiences than to the original
limitation of his own powers, that he did not raise both himself
and his countrymen to the enjoyment of nobler productions. A people
accustomed to the buffoonery of the indigenous mimic dances required
strong and broad effects. Their popular poet, in conforming to the
conditions of Greek art, could not altogether forget the Dossennus
native to Italy.
But the largest endowment of Plautus, the truest note of his
creativeness, is his power of expression by means of action, rhythm,
and language. The phrase 'properare' may more probably be explained by
the extreme vivacity and rapidity of gesture, dialogue, declamation,
and recitative, by which his scenes were characterised, than be taken
as an equivalent to 'ad eventum festinare.' Their liveliness and
mobility of temperament made the Italians admirable mimics: and
the favour which the plays of Plautus continued to enjoy with the
companies of players, may be in part accounted for by the scope they
afforded to the talent of the actor. How far he was expected to
bring out the meaning of the poet may be gathered from the lively
description given by Periplecomenus of the outward manifestations
which accompanied the inward machinations of Palaestrio,--
Illuc sis vide
Quem ad modum astitit severo fronte curans, cogitans.
Pectus digitis pultat: cor credo evocaturust foras.
Ecce avortit: nisam laevo in femine habet laevam manum.
Dextera digitis rationem conputat: fervit femur
Dexterum, ita vehementer icit: quod agat, aegre suppetit.
Concrepuit digitis: laborat, crebro conmutat status.
Eccere autem capite nutat; non placet quod repperit.
Quidquid est, incoctum non expromet, bene coctum dabit.
Ecce autem aedificat: columnam mento suffigit suo.
Apage, non placet profecto mihi illaec aedificatio:
Nam os columnatum poetae esse indaudivi barbaro,
Quoi bini custodes semper totis horis occubant.
Euge, euscheme hercle astitit et dulice et comoedice[85].
Many other scenes must have lent themselves to this representation of
feeling by lively gesture, accompanied sometimes by some kind of
mimic dance: of this kind, for instance, is the vigorous recitative
of Ballio on his first appearance on the stage, the scene in which
Ergasilus tells Hegio of the return of his son, the appearance
of Pseudolus when well drunken after celebrating his triumph over
Ballio,--
Quid hoc? sicine hoc fit? pedes, statin an non?
An id voltis ut me hinc jacentem aliqui tollat? etc.[86]
His temptation was to exaggerate in this, as in other elements of
the dramatist's art; and this is what is probably meant by the word
_percurrat_ in the criticism of Horace, which has been already
quoted. But this tendency to exaggerate is merely the defect of his
superabundant share of the vigorous Italian qualities.
It is characteristic of the liveliness of Plautus' temperament,
that the lyrical and recitative parts of his plays occupy a place
altogether out of proportion to that occupied by the unimpassioned
monologue or dialogue expressed in senarian iambics. The 'Cantica,' or
purely lyrical monologues, are much more frequent and much longer in
his comedies than in those of Terence. They were sung to a musical
accompaniment, and were composed chiefly in bacchiac, anapaestic, or
cretic metres, rapidly interchanging with trochaic lines. The bacchiac
metre is employed in passages expressive of some sedate or laboured
thought, as, for instance, the opening part of the 'Canticum' of
Lysiteles in the Trinummus,--
Multas res simitu in meo corde vorso,
Multum in cogitando dolorem indipiscor.
Egomet me coquo et macero et defatigo.
The anapaestic metre was less suited to Latin, and is rarely met with
either in the comic poets, or in the fragments of the tragedians. On
the other hand, cretic and trochaic metres, from their affinity to
the old Saturnian, came most easily to the early dramatists, and are
largely employed by Plautus to express lively emotion. As an instance
of the first we may take the following song of a lover, addressed to
the bolts which barred his mistress's door,--
Pessuli, heus pessuli, vos saluto lubens,
Vos amo vos volo vos peto atque obsecro,
Gerite amanti mihi morem amoenissumi:
Fite caussa mea ludii barbari,
Sussulite, obsecro, et mittite istanc foras,
Quae mihi misero amanti exbibit sanguinem.
Hoc vide ut dormiunt pessuli pessumi
Nec mea gratia conmovent se ocius[87].
These early efforts of the Italian lyrical muse do not approach the
smoothness and ease of the Glyconics and Phalaecians of Catullus, nor
the dignity of the Alcaics and Asclepiadeans of Horace: but they do,
in a rude kind of way, show facility and native power in finding a
rhythmical vehicle for the emotion or sentiment of the moment. In
the longer passages in which they occur, these metres are generally
combined with some form of trochaic verse, which again is often
exchanged for septenarian or octonarian iambics. Of the rapid
transitions with which Plautus passes from one metre to another in the
expression of strong excitement of feeling, we have a striking example
in the long recitative of Ballio[88], in which trochaics, septenarian,
octonarian, and dimeter, are continually varied by the introduction
now of one, now of several, octonarian or septenarian iambics. He thus
claims much greater freedom than Terence in the combination of his
metres. He exercises also greater license, in substituting two short
for one long syllable (in his cretics and trochaics), and in deviating
from the laws of position and hiatus accepted by later poets. It is
impossible for a modern reader to reproduce the rhythmical flow of
passages which must have depended a good deal for their effect on the
musical accompaniment, and on the pronunciation of the actor. Yet even
though it requires some effort to recognise the legitimate beat of the
rhythm 'digito et aure,' it is equally impossible not to recognise the
vigour and vehemence of movement of such passages as these--
Haec, quom ego a foro revortar, facite ut offendam parata,
Vorsa sparsa tersa strata lauta structaque omnia ut sint.
Nam mi hodiest natalis dies: cum decet omnis vos concelebrare.
Magnifice volo me viros summos accipere, ut rem mi esse reantur[89].
Terence has a more artistic mastery than Plautus of the ordinary metre
of comic dialogue: but the latter has the more original poetic gift of
adapting and varying his 'numeri innumeri' to the animated moods and
lively fancies of his characters.
But the gift for which Plautus is pre-eminent above all the earlier,
and in which he is not surpassed by any of the later poets, is the
exuberant vigour and spontaneous flow of his diction. No Roman poet
shows more rapidity of conception, or greater variety of illustration:
and words and phrases are never wanting to body forth and convey with
immediate force and freshness the intuitive discernment of his common
sense, the quick play of his wit, the riotous exaggerations of his
fancy, his vivid observation of facts and of the outward peculiarities
of men, his inexhaustible resources of genial vituperation and
execration, or bantering endearment. The mannerisms of his style,
already mentioned as indicative of the originality with which he
deviates from his Greek models, are not laboured efforts, but the
spontaneous products of a rich and comparatively neglected soil. His
burlesque invention of proper names, even in its wildest exaggeration,
as in the high-sounding title assumed by Sagaristio in the Persa--
Vaniloquidorus, Virginisvendonides,
Nugipalamloquides, Argentumexterebronides,
Tedigniloquides, Nummosexpalponides,
Quodsemelarripides, Nunquampostreddonides--
is a Rabelaisian ebullition, stimulated by the novel contact with
the Greek language, of the formative energy which he displays more
legitimately in the creation of new Latin words and phrases. In the
freedom with which he uses, without vulgarising, popular modes of
speech, in the idiomatic verve of his Latin, employed in an age when
inflexions still retained their original virtue, and had not been
limited by the labours of grammarians to a fixed standard, he has
no equal among Latin writers. It is one of the great charms of the
Letters to Atticus, and of the shorter poems of Catullus, that they
give us back the flavour of this homely native idiom. Where there
is difficulty in interpreting Plautus, this arises either from the
uncertainty of the reading, or from the wealth of his vocabulary. He
saw clearly and realised strongly what he meant to say, and his words
and phrases appeared in rapid, close, and orderly movement to his
summons. He describes his personages,--Pseudolus for instance,
Rufus quidam, ventriosus, crassis suris, subniger,
Magno capite, acutis oculis, ore rubicundo, admodum
Magnis pedibus[90];
Ballio,
Cum hirquina barba;
Plesidippus, in the Rudens,
Adulescentem strenua facie, rubicundum, fortem;
Harpax, in the same play,
Recalvom ac silonem senem, statutum, ventriosum
Tortis superciliis, contracta fronte, etc.--
in such a way as to show how real they were to his imagination in
their outward semblance as well as in the inward springs of their
actions. Or he brings before us some peculiarity in the dress or
manner of his personages by some graphic touch, as that of the
disguised sycophant of the Trinummus,--
Pol hic quidem fungino generest: capite se totum tegit.
Illurica facies videtur hominis: eo ornatu advenit;
and later--
Mira sunt
Ni illic homost aut dormitator aut sector zonarius.
Loca contemplat, circumspectat sese, atque aedis noscitat[91].
He tells an imaginary story or adventure, such as that which Chrysalus
invents of the pursuit of his vessel by a piratical craft--
Ubi portu eximus, homines remigio sequi,
Neque aves neque venti citius, etc.[92],
or the account which Curculio gives of his encounter with the
soldier[93], tersely, rapidly, and vividly, as if he were recalling
some scene within his own recent experience. He imitates the style
of tragedy--as in the imaginary speech of the Ghost in the
Mostellaria--in such a manner as to show that he might have rivalled
Ennius in the art of tragic rhythm and expression, if his genius had
allowed him to pass beyond the province which was peculiarly his
own. His plays abound in pithy sayings which have anticipated popular
proverbs, or the happy hits of popular poets in modern times, such
as the 'nudo detrahere vestimenta,' in the Asinaria, and the
'virtute formae id evenit te ut deceat quidquid habeas[94],' in the
Mostellaria. He writes letters with the forms of courtesy, and with
the ease and simplicity characteristic of the best epistles of a later
age. His resources of language are never wanting for any call which he
may make upon them. In a few descriptive passages he shows a command
of the language of forcible poetic imagination. But he does not often
betray a sense of beauty in action, character, or Nature: and thus
if his style altogether wants the peculiar charm of the later Latin
poets, and the tenderness and urbanity of Terence, the explanation of
this defect is perhaps to be sought rather in the limited play which
he allowed to his finer sensibilities, than in any inability to avail
himself of the full capabilities of his native language.
Whether the deficiency in the sense of beauty should deny to him the
name of a great poet, is to be answered only when agreement has been
attained as to the definition of a poet. He was certainly a true and
prodigally creative genius. He is also thoroughly representative of
his race--not of the gravity and dignity superinduced on the natural
Italian temperament by the strict discipline of Roman life, and by
the sense of superiority which arises among the governing men of an
imperial state--but of the strong and healthy vitality which enabled
the Italian to play his part in history, and of the quick observation
and ready resource, the lively emotional and social temperament, the
keen enjoyment of life, which are the accompaniment of that original
endowment.
[Footnote 1: Prologue to Casina, 18, 19.]
[Footnote 2: Prologue to Amphitryo, 52.]
[Footnote 3: Licinius and Atilius are placed before Terence in
the Canon of Volcatius Sedigitus.]
[Footnote 4: E.g. Pseudolus, 1081:--
'Nugas theatri: verba quae in comoediis
Solent lenoni dici, quae pueri sciunt.'
Cf. also Captivi, 778.]
[Footnote 5: The influence of Plautus may be traced in the
style of Catullus, and perhaps in the sentiment of the passage
in Lucretius, iv. 1121, etc.; and that of Terence also in
Catullus, and in the Satires, Epistles, and some of the Odes
of Horace.]
[Footnote 6: Fundanius, the friend of Horace, appears to have
made an attempt to produce an artistic revival of the old
comedy in the Augustan age, as Pollio, Varius, Ovid and others
did of the old tragic drama, but with no permanent success.]
[Footnote 7: E.g. the dance of Pseudolus. Pseud. 1246, etc.]
[Footnote 8: Cic. Brut. 15. 60; De Senec. 14. 50.]
[Footnote 9: Cf. Cicero's testimony to the purity of the style
of Naevius and Plautus with his criticism on the style of
Caecilius and Pacuvius. Terence was the only foreigner who
attained perfect idiomatic purity of speech, but he must have
been brought to Rome when quite a child.]
[Footnote 10: 'Puplicisne adfinis fuit an maritumis
negotiis?'--Trinum. 331.]
[Footnote 11: See the paper by Professor H. F. West, reprinted
from the American Journal of Philology, referred to supra page
54.]
[Footnote 12: Cf. the line at the end of the Prologue to the
Cistellaria (Act. i. Sc. 3)--
'Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.'
The 'Didascalia' to the Stichus is one of the few preserved.
From it we learn that the play was acted P. Sulpicio, C.
Aurelio, Cos., i.e. 200 B.C.]
[Footnote 13: This is shown in some cases by reference to
seats in the theatre, which were not introduced till 155 B.C.
In the Prologue to the Casina it is said that only the older
men present could remember the first production of that play
in the life-time of the poet. The Prologues to the Aulularia,
Trinummus, and Rudens, are probably genuine, and also the
speech of _Auxilium_ in the Cistellaria.]
[Footnote 14: Cf. Rudens, 1249:--
Spectavi ego pridem comicos ad istum modum
Sapienter dicta dicere atque is plaudier,
Quom illos sapientis mores monstrabant poplo.
Set quom inde suam quisque ibant divorsi domum
Nullus erat illo pacto ut illi iusserant.]
[Footnote 15: Pseud. 687.]
[Footnote 16: E.g. Rudens, 986.]
[Footnote 17: Quid? Sarsinatis ecquast, si Umbram non
habes.--Mostel. 757.]
[Footnote 18: Post Ephesi sum natus, noenum in Apulis, noenum
Aminulae.--Mil. Glor. 653.
Quid tu per barbaricas urbes iuras? _Erg._ Quia enim item
asperae Sunt ut tuum victum autumabas esse.--Captiv. 884-5.]
[Footnote 19: Capt. 879; Trinum. 609; Truc. iii. 2. 23; Bacch.
24.]
[Footnote 20:
Quid tibi, malum, hic ante aedis clamitatiost?
An ruri censes te esse? apscede ab aedibus.--Most. 6. 7.]
[Footnote 21: Vol. ii, p. 440; Eng. Trans.]
[Footnote 22: Cf. Trinum. 820, etc.; Menaechmi, 228, etc.;
Stichus, 402, etc.]
[Footnote 23:
Ita iam quasi canes, haud secus circumstabant navem turbine venti,
Imbres, fluctus, atque procellae infensae (fremere) frangere malum,
Ruere antennas, scindere vela, ni pax propitia foret praesto.--
Trinum. 835-7.]
[Footnote 24: E.g. Rudens, 906; Trinum. 820.]
[Footnote 25: 'I shall trade in big ships: at the courts
of princes I shall be styled a prince. Afterwards for my
amusement I shall build a ship and imitate Stratonicus; I
shall visit towns in my voyages: when I shall have become
famous, I'll build a big town, and call it Gripus.'--Rudens,
931-5.]
[Footnote 26: Pseud. 166.]
[Footnote 27:
Non enim haec pultifagus opufex opera fecit barbarus.--
Mostel. 815.]
[Footnote 28:
Quantus sit Dossennus edacibus in parasitis.]
[Footnote 29: Pseud. 1229, etc.]
[Footnote 30: Stichus, 682, etc.]
[Footnote 31: Cf. Pseud. 720:--
Horum causa haec agitur spectatorum fabula,
Hi sciunt qui hic adfuerunt; vobis post narravero.]
[Footnote 32: Pseud. 401-2.]
[Footnote 33: Bacchid. 214.]
[Footnote 34: De Senec. 14.]
[Footnote 35: E.g. graphicus, doulice, euscheme, morus, logos,
techinae, prothyme, basilicus, etc., etc.]
[Footnote 36: Truculentus, 55-57. Weise condemns the passage
as spurious. But whether written by Plautus or not it is
in the spirit of the Plautine comedy. In a passage of the
Poenulus (Act iii. 1. 21) another reference is made to the
sense of security enjoyed since their victory:--
Praesertim in re populi placida, atque interfectis hostibus,
Non decet tumultuari.]
[Footnote 37: Cp. the remark of the parasite in the Persa, 75,
76:--
Set sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam,
Ubi sint magistratus, quos curare oporteat?
and that of the parasite in the Captivi, 'that only those
who were unable to procure invitations to luncheon should be
expected to attend public meetings and elections'; and such
jokes as 'Plebiscitum non est scitius.']
[Footnote 38: The Comedy of Terence, which represents that of
Menander, is completely non-political.]
[Footnote 39: Cf. Epidicus, 30, etc., and Captivi, 262.]
[Footnote 40: The advocati in the Poenulus, who are evidently
clients, show a certain spirit of independence. Cf. Act iii.
6. 13:--
Et tu vale.
Iniuriam illic insignite postulat:
Nostro sibi servire nos censet cibo.
Verum ita sunt omnes isti nostri divites:
Si quid bene facias, levior pluma est gratia;
Si quid peccatum est, plumbeas iras gerunt.]
[Footnote 41: Livy, xxxix. 9, etc.]
[Footnote 42:
Quom mi ipsum nomen eius Archidemides
Clamaret dempturum esse si quid crederem.--Bacchid. 285.
Propterea huic urbi nomen Epidamno inditumst
Quia nemo ferme sine damno huc devortitur.--Menaech. 264.
Cf. also the play on Chrysalus and Crucisalus; and the
following may serve as a specimen of his perpetual puns:--
Non enim es in senticeto, eo non sentis.--Captivi, 857.]
[Footnote 43: Alliterations and assonances:--Vi veneris
vinctus. Cottabi crebri crepent. Laetus, lubens, laudes ago.
Collus collari caret.
Atque mores hominum moros et morosos efficit, etc., etc.
Asyndeta:--
Laudem, lucrum, ludum, iocum, festivitatem, ferias.
Vorsa, sparsa, tersa, strata, lauta, structaque omnia ut sint,
etc., etc.
These are not occasional, but constantly recurring
characteristics of his style. The thought and matter
they express must, in a great measure, be due to his own
invention.]
[Footnote 44: Roman formulae:--Quae res bene vortat. Conceptis
verbis. Quod bonum, felix, faustum, fortunatumque sit. Ut
gesserit rempublicam ductu, imperio, auspicio suo, etc., etc.]
[Footnote 45: Proverbs:--Sarta tecta. Sine sacris haereditas.
Inter saxum et sacra. Vae victis. Ad incitas redactust, etc.,
etc.]
[Footnote 46: Expressions of courtesy:--Tam gratiast. Benigne.
Num quid vis? etc.]
[Footnote 47: E.g. Pistoria, Placentia, Praeneste, Sutrium,
Sarsina, etc.]
[Footnote 48: E.g. Vicus Tuscus, Velabrum, Macellum, Porta
Trigemina, Porta Metia; and compare the long passage in the
Curculio (462), which directly refers to Rome.]
[Footnote 49:
Quid ego cesso Pseudolum
Facere ut det nomen ad Molas coloniam.--Pseud. 1082.]
[Footnote 50: Mancupio dare, stipulatio, antestatio, sponsio,
ubi res prolatae sunt.]
[Footnote 51: Bacchid. 120.]
[Footnote 52: Captivi, 888.]
[Footnote 53: Trinummus, 545-6.]
[Footnote 54: Non omnes possunt olere unguenta
exotica.--Mostell. 42.]
[Footnote 55: Cf. Bacch. 1072;--
Set, spectatores, vos nunc ne miremini
Quod non triumpho: pervolgatumst, nil moror.
Verum tamen accipientur mulso milites.]
[Footnote 56: Mil. Glor. 164, 6. Cf. Hor. Od. iii. 24. 58: Seu
malis vetita legibus alea.]
[Footnote 57: Casina, iii. 3. 22.]
[Footnote 58: Livy, xxiv. 2.]
[Footnote 59: 'Do you see that the enemy is close upon you,
and that your back will soon be invested? Quick! seize some
help and succour: it must be done speedily, not quietly. Get
before them somehow; lead round your forces by some pass or
other. Invest the enemy; bring relief to our own troops; cut
off the enemy's supplies; make a road for yourself, by which
provisions or supplies may reach yourself or your legions
safely: give your whole heart to the business--it is a sudden
emergency.'--Mil. Glor. 219-225.
This is the 'patriotic passage' which Mr. West discusses in
the paper previously referred to. He holds that 'The passage,
keeping steadily within the limits so rigidly imposed by Roman
Stage-censorship, is written from the stand-point of sympathy
with the _plebs_ in favour of Scipio's assuming command
against Hannibal, and reflects very brightly and completely
those features of the Second Punic War which were prominent
and recent in 205 B.C.'
The end of many of the prologues also shows that they were
addressed to a people constantly engaged in war.]
[Footnote 60: Menaech. 590.]
[Footnote 61: Cf. such expressions and lines as:--Salva sumes
indidem (Mil. Glor. 234); locare argentum; fenerato.
Mihi quod credideris, sumes ubi posiueris.--Trinum. 145.
Nequaquam argenti ratio comparet tamen.--Ib. 418.
Bene igitur ratio accepti atque expensi inter nos
convenit.--Mostel. 292.]
[Footnote 62: For a list of these cp. the edition of the
Mostellaria by the late Professor Ramsay.]
[Footnote 63: E.g. Mellitus, ocelle, mea anima, medullitus
amare.]
[Footnote 64: 'Don't threaten me; I know that the cross will
be my tomb: there lie my ancestors, father, grandfather,
great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather: but your threats
can't dig these eyes out of my head.'--Mil. Glor. 372-5.]
[Footnote 65: The conclusion of the Aulularia is lost, but
the play seems to have ended with the old man's consigning his
treasure into the hands of his son-in-law and daughter.]
[Footnote 66: 'The Gods only are rich: great wealth and high
connexions are for the Gods; but we, poor creatures, are but
a tiny spark of life, and so soon as that is gone, the beggar
and the richest man, when dead, are rated alike by the shores
of Acheron.'--Trin. 490-4.]
[Footnote 67:
Non vidisse undas me maiores censeo.--Rudens, 167.
Atque ut nunc valide fluctuat mare, nulla nobis spes est.
--Ib. 303.]
[Footnote 68: Cf.
Atque hoc scelesti [illi] in animum inducunt suum
Iovem se placare posse donis, hostiis:
Et operam et sumptum perdunt; id eo fit quia
Nihil ei accemptumst a periuris supplici, etc.--22-5.]
[Footnote 69: 9-12.]
[Footnote 70: 280, 1.]
[Footnote 71: 694, etc.]
[Footnote 72: 'O Gripus, Gripus! in the life of man are laid
many snares, by which they are trapped; and for the most part
a bait is laid on them, and whoso in his greed greedily craves
for it, by reason of his greed he is caught in the trap. But
whoso warily, wisely, craftily takes heed, to him it is given
long to enjoy what has been well earned. That prize of yours,
I fancy, will be so made prize of, as to bring a larger dower
in going from us than when it came to us. To fancy that I
should be capable of keeping secret possession of what I know
to be another's property! Far will that be from our friend
Daemones. It is the absolute duty of a wise man to be on his
guard against ever being privy to any wrong done by his own
people. I never would care for any gain, except when I am in
the game.'--Rudens, 1235-48.]
[Footnote 73: 'Provided it be not for wrong done, let me
perish, I care not. If I shall perish here, while he returns
not, as he promised, yet even after death this will be a
memorable act, that I restored my master from captivity and
his enemies to his father and his home, and chose rather
to emperil my own life here than that he should
perish.'--Captivi, 682-8.]
[Footnote 74: 'So it befell my mistress this day: for when
she calls the powers of travail to her aid, lo! there ensues
a rumbling, rattling noise, loud uproar and a peal of
thunder--all of a sudden how fast, how mightily it thundered!
At the crash each one fell on the spot where he stood. Then
some one, I know not who, exclaims in a loud voice, "Alcmena,
be not afraid; help is at hand: the dweller in the skies
draweth nigh with kindly intent to thee and thine. Arise ye
who from the dread inspired by me have fallen down in alarm."
As I lay, I rose up: methought the house was all on fire, so
brightly did it shine.'--Amphitruo, 1060-67.]
[Footnote 75: 'I call not that which is named my dower, my
true dower, but chastity and modesty, and passion subdued,
fear of the Gods, affection to my parents, amity with my
kinsmen, a will to yield to thee, to be bountiful to the good,
of service to the worthy.'--Amphitruo, 839-42.]
[Footnote 76: 86.]
[Footnote 77: Captivi, 280.]
[Footnote 78: Pseud. 666.]
[Footnote 79: Captivi, 310.]
[Footnote 80: Pseud. 677.]
[Footnote 81: Cf. Aul. iii. 5. 4-8:--
Nam, meo quidem animo, si idem faciant ceteri,
Opulentiores pauperiorum filias
Ut indotatas ducant uxores domum,
Et multo fiat civitas concordior,
Et invidia nos minore utamur, quam utimur.]
[Footnote 82: Curculio, 33-8.]
[Footnote 83: 'I was a fine gentleman, a nice fellow--a good
or respectable man I never was nor will be.'--Capt. 956-7.]
[Footnote 84: Cp. the winding up of the Mostellaria, Casina,
Cistellaria.]
[Footnote 85: 'Look there, if you please, how he has taken up
his post, with serious brow pondering, meditating; now he taps
his breast with his fingers. I fancy he is going to summon
his heart outside: look, he turns away; now his left hand is
leaning on his left thigh; with his right hand he is making
a calculation on his fingers; his right thigh burns, such a
violent blow he has struck it; his scheme does not come easily
to him:--he cracks his fingers: he is at a loss; he often
changes his position: look, there he nods his head: he does
not like this new idea. Whatever it is, he will not bring it
out till it is ready: he'll serve it up well done. Look again,
he is busy building: he props up his chin with a pillar. Away
with it! I don't like that kind of building: for I have heard
that a foreign poet has his face thus pillared, beside whom
two sentinels are every hour on watch. Bravo! by Hercules,
now he is in a fine attitude, like a slave, or a man in a
play.--Mil. Glor. 201-14.]
[Footnote 86: Pseud. 1246.]
[Footnote 87: 'Hear me, ye bolts, ye bolts, gladly I greet
you, I love you, I am fond of you; I beg you, I beseech you,
most amiably now comply with the desire of me a lover. For my
sake become like foreign dancers; spring up, I beseech you,
and send her forth, who now is drinking up the life-blood of
me her lover. Mark how these vilest bolts are still asleep,
and do not stir one whit on my account.'--Curculio, 147-154.]
[Footnote 88: Pseud. 132-238.]
[Footnote 89: 'See that when I return from the Forum, I find
everything ready, the floor swept, sprinkled, polished, the
couches covered; the plate all clean and arranged: for this
is my birthday: this you must all join in keeping: I want to
entertain some great people sumptuously, that they may think I
am well to do.'--Pseud. 159-62.]
[Footnote 90: 'A red-haired fellow, pot-bellied, with thick
legs, darkish, with a big head, keen eyes, a red face, and
enormous feet.']
[Footnote 91: 'By Pollux he is of the mushroom sort: he hides
himself with his head: he looks like an Illyrian: he is got up
like one;'--
'I should be surprised if he be not either some dreaming
fellow (?al. house-breaker) or a cutpurse: he takes a good
look of the ground, gazes about him, takes note of the
house.'--Trinum. 850-862.]
[Footnote 92: Bacchid. 289.]
[Footnote 93: Curculio, 337, etc.]
[Footnote 94: Cp. the proverbial 'taking the breeches off a
Highlander,' and the lines in one of Burns' earliest songs--
'And then there's something in her gait
Gars ony dress look weel.']
CHAPTER VII.
TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO PLAUTUS.
The names of five or six comic dramatists are known, who fill
the space of eighteen years between the death of Plautus and the
representation of the earliest play of Terence, the 'Andria.' From
one of these, Aquilius, some verses are quoted, which Varro did not
hesitate to attribute to Plautus, and which Gellius characterises as
'Plautinissimi.' They are the words of a parasite, complaining of the
invention of sun-dials as inconveniently retarding the dinner
hour. Among these writers the most famous was Caecilius Statius, an
Insubrian Gaul, first a slave, and afterwards a freedman of a member
of the Caecilian house. He is said to have lived on terms of great
intimacy with Ennius. His poetic career very nearly coincides with
that of the epic and tragic poet, and he only survived him by one
year. Some Roman critics ranked him above even Plautus as a comic
poet. The line of Horace--
Vincere Caecilius gravitate, Terentius arte--
probably indicates the ground of their preference. He is said also
to have been careful in the construction of his plots[1]. Cicero, who
often quotes from him, speaks of him as having written a bad style[2].
He is also mentioned among those poets who 'powerfully moved the
feelings.'
He composed about forty plays. Most of them had Greek titles, and a
considerable number of these are identical with the titles of comedies
by Menander. Two of the longest of his fragments express with more
bitterness and less humour the feelings which husbands in Plautus
entertain towards their wives. In one of these passages he has adapted
his Greek original to the coarser Roman taste with even less
fastidiousness than Plautus generally shows[3]. Another passage, from
the Synephebi, is more in the spirit of Terence than of Plautus. It is
one in which a young lover complains that the 'good nature' (commoditas) of
his father made it impossible to cheat him with an easy conscience.
Occasionally we find specimens of those short maxims which probably
led the Augustan critics to attribute to him the character of
_gravitas_, such as the
Serit arbores quae alteri saeclo prosint,
quoted by Cicero in the Tusculan Questions, and this line--
Saepe est etiam sub palliolo sordido sapientia.
He seems to have had nothing of the creative originality of Plautus,
nor ever to have enjoyed the same general popularity. He prepared the
way for Terence by a more careful conformity to his Greek models than
his predecessor had shown, and, apparently, by introducing a more
serious and sentimental vein into his representations of life.
With Terence Roman literature enters on a new stage of its
development. When he appeared, a younger generation had grown up, who
not only inherited the enthusiasm for Greek art and letters of the
older generation,--of men of the stamp of the elder Scipio, Aemilius
Paulus, T. Quintius Flamininus,--but who had been carefully
educated from their boyhood in Greek accomplishments. The leading
representative of this younger generation, Scipio Aemilianus, was
about the same age as Terence, and admitted him to his intimacy; thus
showing in his early youth the same enlightened and tolerant spirit
and the same cultivated aspiration which made him choose Panaetius and
Polybius as the associates of his manhood, and induced him to live in
relations of frank unreserve with Lucilius during the latter years
of his life. Among the members of the Scipionic circle, Laelius and
Furius Philo were also closely associated with Terence; and he is said
to have enjoyed the favour of older men of distinction and culture,
Sulpicius Gallus, Q. Fabius Labeo, and M. Popillius, men of consular
rank and of literary and poetic accomplishment[4]. In the interval
between Plautus and Terence, the great gap which was never again to be
bridged over had been made between the mass of the people and a small
educated class. While the former became less capable of intellectual
pleasure, and were beginning to prefer the exhibitions of boxers,
rope-dancers, and gladiators[5], to the comedies which had delighted
their fathers, the latter became more exacting than the men of a
former generation, in their demands for correctness and elegance. They
had acquired through education the fastidiousness of men of culture,
a quality not easily gained and retained without some sacrifice
of native force and popular sympathies. Recognising the immense
superiority of the Greek originals in literature to the rude Roman
copies, they believed that the best way to create a national Latin
literature was to deviate as little as possible, in spirit, form, and
substance, from the works of Greek genius. But though cosmopolitan,
or rather purely Greek, in their literary tastes, they were thoroughly
patriotic in devotion to their country's interests. They cherished
their native language as the great instrument of social and political
life; and they recognised the influence which a cultivated literature
might have in rendering that instrument finer and more flexible than
natural use had made it. By concentrating attention on form and style,
without aiming at originality of invention, Latin literature might
become a truer medium of Greek culture, and might, at the same time,
impart a finer edge and temper to the rude ore of Latin speech.
The task which awaited Terence was the complete Hellenising of Roman
comedy, and the creation of a style which might combine something of
Attic flexibility and delicacy with the idiomatic purity of the
Latin spoken in the best Roman houses. By birth a Phoenician, by
intellectual education a Greek, by the associations of his daily
life a foreigner living in Rome, he was more in sympathy with the
cosmopolitan mode of thought and feeling which Greek culture was
diffusing over the civilised world, than with the traditions of Roman
austerity or the homely humours of Italian life. As a dependent and
associate of men belonging to the most select society of Rome, he had
neither that contact with the many sides of life, nor that familiarity
with the animated modes of popular speech, which helped to fashion
the style of Plautus: but by assimilating the literary grace of the
Athenian comedy and the familiar manner of a high-bred, friendly,
and intelligent society, he gave to Latin, what the Greek language in
ancient and the French in modern times have had pre-eminently, a style
which gives dignity and urbanity to conversation, and freedom and
simplicity to literary expression. If the oratorical tastes and
training of the Romans make the absence of these last qualities
perceptible in much both of their prose and verse, we feel the charm
of their presence in the Letters of Cicero, the lighter poems of
Catullus, the Epistles of Horace, the Epigrams of Martial: and it was
owing to the social and intellectual position of Terence that this
secret of combining consummate literary grace with conversational ease
and spontaneity was discovered.
Our knowledge of the life of Terence is derived chiefly from a
fragment of the lost work of Suetonius, _De viris illustribus_,
preserved in the commentary of Donatus. Confirmation of some of the
statements contained in the life is obtained from later writers and
speakers, and also from the prologues to the different plays, which
throw light on the literary and personal relations of the poet. These
prologues were among the original sources of Suetonius: but he
quotes or refers to the works of various grammarians and
antiquarians--Porcius Licinus, Volcatius Sedigitus, Santra, Nepos,
Fenestella, Q. Cosconius--as his authorities. The first two lived
within a generation or two after the death of Terence, and the first
of them shows a distinct animus against him and his patrons. But
notwithstanding the abundance of authorities, there is uncertainty as
to both the date of his birth and the place and manner of his death.
The doubt as to the former arises from the discrepancy of the MSS. His
last play, the Adelphoe, was exhibited in 160 B.C. Shortly after its
production he went to Greece, being then, according to the best MSS.,
in his twenty-fifth ('nondum quintum atque vicesimum egressus[6]
annum'), according to inferior MSS., in his thirty-fifth year. This
uncertainty is increased by a discrepancy between the authorities
quoted by Suetonius. Cornelius Nepos is quoted for the statement that
he was about the same age as Scipio (born 185 B.C.) and Laelius, while
Fenestella, an antiquarian of the later Augustan period, represented
him as older. As the authority of the MSS. coincides with that of the
older record, the year 185 B.C. may be taken as the most probable date
of his birth. In the case of an author drawing originally from life,
it might seem improbable that he should have written six comedies, so
true in their apprehension and delineation of various phases of human
nature, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five. But the case of
an imitative artist reproducing impressions derived from literature
is different; and the circumstances of Terence's Phoenician origin and
early life may well have developed in him a precocity of talent. His
acknowledged intimacy with Scipio and Laelius, and the general belief
that they assisted him in the composition of his plays, agree better
with the statement that he was about their own age than that he was
ten years older. The lines at the end of the prologue to the Heauton
Timorumenos--
Exemplum statuite in me ut _adulescentuli_
Vobis placere studeant potius quam sibi,
indicate that he was a very young man when they were written. Thus
Terence may, more even than Catullus or Lucan, be ranked among 'the
inheritors of unfulfilled renown.'
He is said to have been born at Carthage, brought to Rome as a slave,
and carefully educated in the house of M. Terentius Lucanus, by whom
he was soon emancipated. A difficulty was felt in ancient times as to
how he originally became a slave, as there was no war between Rome and
Carthage between the Second and Third Punic Wars, and no commercial
relations with Rome and Italy till after the destruction of Carthage.
But there was no doubt as to his Phoenician origin. It has been
suggested that his Carthaginian origin perhaps explains the interest
which the family of the Scipios first took in him. He was of slender
figure and dark complexion. He is said to have owed the favour of
his great friends as much to his personal gifts and graces as to his
literary distinction. In one of his prologues he declares it to be his
ambition, while not offending the many, to please the 'boni.'
His earliest play was the 'Andria,' exhibited in 166 B.C., when he
could only have been about the age of nineteen. A pretty, but probably
apocryphal, story is told of his having read the play, before its
exhibition, to Caecilius--who however is said to have died in
168 B.C., the year after the death of Ennius--and of the generous
admiration manifested by Caecilius. The story probably owes its origin
to the same impulse which gave birth to that of the visit of Accius on
his journey to Asia to the veteran Pacuvius. The next play exhibited
by Terence was the 'Hecyra,' first produced in 165, but withdrawn in
consequence of the bad reception which it met with, and afterwards
reproduced in 160. The 'Heauton Timorumenos' appeared in 163, the
'Eunuchus' and 'Phormio' in 161, and the 'Adelphoe' in 160, at the
funeral games of L. Aemilius Paulus.
After bringing out these plays Terence sailed for Greece, whether, as
it is said, to escape from the suspicion of publishing the works of
others as his own, or, as is more probable, from the desire to obtain
a more intimate knowledge of that Greek life which had hitherto been
known to him only in literature, and which it was his professed aim
to reproduce in his comedies. From the voyage to Greece Terence never
returned. According to one account he was lost at sea, according to
another he died at Stymphalus in Arcadia, and according to a third
at Leucadia, from grief at the loss by shipwreck of his baggage,
containing a number of new plays which he had translated from
Menander. The old grammarian quoted by Suetonius states that he was
ruined in fortune through his intimacy with his noble friends. Another
account spoke of him as having left behind him property consisting of
gardens, to the extent of twenty acres, close to the Appian Way. It
is further stated that his daughter was so well provided for that she
married a Roman knight.
As his art is purely dramatic and also imitative, for any further
knowledge of his character and circumstances we have to rely on
his prologues in which he speaks in his own person. They give the
impression of a man of frank and ingenuous nature, with a high idea
of his art, very sensitive to criticism, and proud, though not
ostentatiously so, of the favour he enjoyed with the best men of his
time. The tone of all his prologues is apologetic. In this respect, as
well as in his relation to his patrons, he reminds us of the tone of
some of the Satires of Horace. But there is a robuster force both of
defence and of offence in the son of the Venusian freedman than in
the young Phoenician freedman. In nearly all his prologues he defends
himself against the malevolence and detraction of an old poet,
'malevolus vetus poeta,' whose name is said to have been Luscius
Lavinius, or Lanuvinus. The chief charge which his detractor brings
against him is that of _contaminatio_, the combining in one play of
scenes out of different Greek plays. Terence justifies his practice
by that of the older poets, Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, whose careless
freedom he follows in preference to the dull pedantry of his
detractor[7]. He recriminates on his adversary as one who, by his
literal adherence to his original, had turned good Greek plays into
bad Latin ones. He justifies himself from the charge of plagiarising
from Plautus and Naevius[8]. In another passage he contrasts his own
quiet treatment of his subjects with the sensational extravagance of
other play-wrights[9]. He meets the charge of receiving assistance
in the composition of his plays by claiming, as a great honour, the
favour which he enjoyed with those who deservedly were the favourites
of the Roman people[10].
He was not a popular poet, in the sense in which Plautus was popular;
he made no claim to original invention, or even original treatment
of his materials: he was however not a mere translator but rather
an adapter from the Greek; and his aim was to give a true picture of
Greek life and manners in the purest Latin style. He stands in much
the same relation to Menander and other writers of the new comedy[11],
as that in which a fine engraver stands to a great painter. He speaks
with the enthusiasm not of a creative genius, but of an imitative
artist, inspired by a strong admiration of his models. And this view
of his aim is confirmed by the result which he attained. He has
none of the purely Roman characteristics of Plautus, in sentiment,
allusion, or style[12]; none of his extravagance, and none of his
creative exuberance of fancy. The law which Terence always imposes
on himself is the 'ne quid nimis.' He aims at correctness and
consistency, and rejects nearly every expression or allusion which
might remind his hearers that they were in Rome and not in Athens.
His plots are tamer and less varied in their interest than those of
Plautus, but they are worked out much more carefully and artistically.
He takes great pains in the opening scenes to make the situation in
which the play begins clear, and he allows the action to proceed to
the _dénouement_ through the medium of the natural play of character
and motive. As a painter of life it is not by striking effects, but
by his truth in detail, and his power of delineating the finer
distinctions in varying specimens of the same type, that he gains
the admiration of the reader. There are no strongly-drawn or vividly
conceived personages in his plays, but they all act and speak in the
most natural manner. Though he has left no trace in any of his plays
of one drawing directly from the life, there is no more truthful,
natural, and delicate delineator of human nature, in its ordinary
and more level moods, within the whole range of classical literature.
Characters, circumstances, motives, etc., are all in keeping with a
cosmopolitan type of citizen or family life, courteous and humane,
taking the world easily, and outwardly decorous in its pleasures, but
without serious interests, or high aspirations.
Terence is, accordingly, in substance and form, a 'dimidiatus
Menander,'--a Roman only in his language. The aim of his art was to be
as purely Athenian as it was possible for one writing in Latin to
be. While his great gift to Roman literature is that he first made
it artistic, that he imparted to rude Latium the sense of elegance,
consistency, and moderation, his gift to the world is that, through
him, it possesses a living image of Greek society in the third century
B.C. presented in the purest Latin idiom. The life of Athens after
the loss of her religious belief, her great political activity, and
speculative and artistic energy,--or, rather, one of the phases
of that life, as it was shaped by Menander for dramatic
purposes--supplies the material of all his plays. It is the embodiment
of the lighter side of the philosophy of Epicurus, without the
elevation of the speculative and scientific curiosity which gave
serious interest even to that form of the philosophic life. There is
a charm of friendliness, urbanity, social enjoyment, superficial
kindness of heart, in the picture presented: and it was a necessary
stage in the culture of the best Romans that they should learn
to appreciate this charm, and assimilate its influence in their
intercourse with one another. The Greek comedy of Menander was a
lesson to the Romans in manners, in tolerance, in kindly indulgence
to equals and inferiors, and in the cultivation of pleasant relations
with one another. The often quoted line,--
Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,
might be taken as its motto. The idea of 'human nature,' in its
weakness and in its sympathy with weakness, may be said to be the
new element introduced into Roman life by the comedy of Terence. The
qualities of 'humanitas, clementia, facilitas,'--general amiability
and good nature,--are the virtues which it exemplifies. The indulgence
of the old to the follies or pleasures of the young is often
contrasted with the stricter view of the obligations of life,
entertained by an earlier generation, and always in favour of the
former. The plea of the passionate modern poet--
'To step aside is human.'--
is often urged, but without any feeling that this divergence needs
an apology. The hollowness of the social conditions on which this
superficial agreeability and humanity rested is revealed by passages
in these plays which prove that the habitual comfort of a moderately
wealthy class was maintained by the practice of infanticide: and a
virtuous wife is represented as begging the forgiveness of her husband
for having given her child away instead of ordering it to be put to
death[13]. In its outward amenity, as well as its inward hollowness,
the social and family life depicted in the comedies of Terence was the
very antithesis of the old Roman austere and formal discipline. How
far this new view of life contributed to the subsequent deterioration
of Roman character, it is difficult to say. The writings of Cicero and
Horace show that the receptive Italian intellect was able to extract
the elements of courtesy, tolerance, and social amiability out of such
a delineation without any loss of native manliness and strength of
affection. And thus perhaps, apart from their literary charm, the
permanent gain to the world from the comedies of Terence and the
philosophy which they embody, has been greater than the immediate loss
to the weaker members of the Roman youth who may have been misled by
the view of life presented in them.
Love, generally in the form of pathetic sentiment rather than of
irregular passion, is the motive of all the pieces. There is generally
a double love-story; one, an attachment, which, if not virtuous in the
beginning, has become so afterwards, and which ends in marriage and
the discovery that the lady is the daughter of a citizen, who has
been exposed or carried away in her infancy; the other, an ordinary
intrigue, like those which form the subject of most of the comedies
of Plautus. In his treatment of love, Terence may be said to be the
precursor of Catullus, Propertius, and Tibullus. He has the serious
sense of its pains and pleasures which they display, though he wants
the passionate intensity of the two first of these. The greatest
attraction of his love passages arises from his tenderness of feeling.
In this he is like Tibullus. Although the origin of the sentiment, in
most of his plays, is nothing deeper than desire, inspired by outward
charms and enhanced by compassion, yet we recognise in him, or in the
model which he followed, much more than in Plautus, a belief in
and appreciation of constancy and fidelity. In his treatment of his
'amantes ephebi' he shows sympathy with, rather than the humorous
superiority to, their weaknesses which we find in Plautus. But though
there is more grossness in the older poet, yet there is occasionally
more real indelicacy in Terence; as in the subject of the 'Eunuchus'
and in the acceptance by Phaedria, at the end of that play, of
the suggestion of Gnatho, which, in its union of mercenary with
sentimental motives, is almost more repugnant to natural feeling than
the conclusion of the 'Asinaria' and 'Bacchides.'
The characters in Terence, although more consistent and more true to
ordinary life, are more faintly drawn than those of Plautus. None of
them stand out in our memory with the distinctness and individuality
of Euclio, Pseudolus, Ballio, or Tyndarus. The want of definite
personality which they had to the poet himself is implied in the
frequent recurrence of the same names in his different pieces. They
are products of analysis and reflexion, not of bold invention and
creative sympathy. They are embodiments of the good sense which keeps
a conventional society together, or of the tamer impulses by which the
surface of that society is temporarily ruffled. The predominant tone
in their intercourse with one another is one of urbanity. We find none
of the rollicking vituperation and execration in which Plautus revels.
Delicate irony and pointed epigram take the place of broad humour.
The encounter of wits between slaves and fathers is conducted with
the weapons of polished repartee and mutual deference to one another.
Davus, Parmeno, Syrus, Geta, speak in the terse and epigrammatic
language of gentlemen and men of the world.
While the 'Andria' has more pathetic situations, and the 'Adelphoe'
is on the whole more true to human nature, the 'Eunuchus' presents the
greatest number of interesting personages. The Thais of that play is
the most favourable delineation of the Athenian 'Hetaera' in ancient
literature. She has grace and dignity, a consciousness of her charms
combined with a proud humility, and not only kindliness of nature, but
real goodness of heart. The natural dignity of her nature, tempered by
the sense of her position, appears in her rebuke to Chaerea,--
Non te dignum, Chaerea,
Fecisti: nam si ego digna hac contumelia
Sum maxume, at tu indignus qui faceres tamen[14];
and her kindness is equally manifest in her ready admission of his
excuse,
Non adeo inhumano ingenio sum, Chaerea,
Neque ita imperita, ut quid amor valeat, nesciam[15].
Gnatho is a new and more subtly conceived type of the parasite, and
in Thraso the 'Miles Gloriosus' does not transcend the limits of
credibility. Parmeno and Phaedria are natural embodiments of the
confidential slave and the weak lover. Their relations to one another
are brought out with more delicate irony and finer psychological
analysis, though with less vigour than those of Pseudolus and
Calidorus, or of Ludus and Pistoclerus in the Pseudolus and Bacchides
of Plautus. The Davus, Geta, and Syrus of the other plays are tamer
and less humorous than the slaves of Plautus; but they play their part
with wit and liveliness, and the _rôle_ which they have to perform
is not felt to be incompatible with the ordinary conditions of life.
Aeschinus, in the Adelphoe, shows a higher spirit and more energy of
character than most of the other lovers in Plautus or Terence. The
contrast between the genial, indulgent, selfish man of the world,
and the harder type of character produced by exclusive devotion to
business, is well brought out in the Micio and Demea of the Adelphoe,
and in the Chremes and Menedemus of the Heauton Timorumenos. The
two brothers in the 'Phormio,' Demipho and Chremes, are also happily
characterised and distinguished from one another; and Phormio is
himself a type of the parasite, as distinct from Gnatho, as he is
from the Gelasimus or Curculio of Plautus. The character-painting
in Terence is altogether free from the tendency to exaggeration
and caricature which is the besetting fault of some of the greatest
humourists. Yet with all his truth of detail, his careful avoidance of
the extreme forms of villainy, roguery, and inhuman hardness, it may
be doubted whether the life represented by Terence is not on the
whole more purely conventional than that represented by Plautus. His
personages seem to move about in a kind of 'Fools' paradise' without
the knowledge of good or evil. All the sentimental virtues seem to
flourish spontaneously, even in the hearts of his courtesans: and
though he holds up a true ideal of fidelity in love and loyalty in
friendship, yet the chief practical lesson that seems to be suggested
is the necessity of overcoming the restraints imposed by prudence and
conscience on the indulgence of natural inclination.
If we consider the form, substance, and spirit of these six plays, we
find that their merit consists in the art with which the situation is
unfolded and the plot developed, the consistency and moderation with
which a conventional view of life and various types of character are
set before us, and in the large part played in them by the tender and
sympathetic emotions. But their great attraction, both to ancient and
modern readers, has been their charm of style. The diction of Terence,
while it wants the creativeness and exuberance of Plautus, is free
from the mannerisms which accompanied these large endowments of the
older poet. The superiority of his style over that of Lucilius, who
wrote a generation after him, is almost immeasurable. The fine Attic
flavour is more perceptible in his Latin, than in the Greek of his
contemporaries. He does not attempt to emulate the 'numeri innumeri'
of Plautus, but limits himself almost entirely to those metres which
suit the natural flow of placid or more animated conversation, viz.
the iambic (senarian or septenarian) and the trochaic septenarian.
The effect of his metre is to introduce measure, propriety, grace,
and point into ordinary speech without impairing its ease and
spontaneousness. The natural vivacity and urbanity of his style is
equally apparent in dialogue, or in rapid and picturesque narrative
of incidents and pathetic situations[16]. He is full of happy
often-quoted sayings, such as
Hinc illae lacrimae. Amantium irae amoris integratiost.
Quot homines, tot sententiae.
Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.
Tacent: satis laudant.
Nosse omnia haec salus est adulescentulis.
Cantilenam eandem canis--laterem lavem,--etc. etc.
Many of these--such as 'ne quid nimis,' 'ad restim res redit mihi,'
'auribus teneo lupum,' etc.--are obviously translations from Greek
proverbial sayings; and in all his use of language we may trace the
influence of a close observation and sympathetic enjoyment of Greek
subtlety, reserve, delicate allusiveness, curious felicity in union
with direct simplicity. These qualities of style, reproduced in the
purest Latin idiom, had a great influence on the familiar style of
Horace. Expressions in his Satires and Epistles, and even in his Odes,
show how closely he studied the language of Terence[17]. It is from
a scene in Terence that Horace takes his example of the weakness of
passion[18]; and the mode in which he tells how his father trained
him to correct his own faults by observing other men must have
been suggested by the conversation between Demea and Syrus in the
Adelphoe[19]:--
_De._ Denique
Inspicere tamquam in speculum in vitas omnium
Iubeo atque ex aliis sumere exemplum sibi.
'Hoc facito.' _Sy._ Recte sane. _De._ 'Hoc fugito.' _Sy._ Callide.
_De._ 'Hoc laudist.' _Sy._ 'Istaec res est.' _De._ 'Hoc vitio
datur.'[20]
Again, the remonstrance of Micio to Demea,
Si esses homo,
Sineres nunc facere, dum per aetatem licet,
expresses the philosophy of many of his love poems and his drinking
songs. The Epicurean sentiment and reflexion borrowed from Menander
were congenial to one side of Horace's nature, as the manly
independence and serious spirit of Lucilius were to another: and in
his own style he has incorporated the conversational urbanity of the
one writer no less than the intellectual vigour of the other. But
Horace was much richer and more varied in the subjects of his art, as
he was larger and more penetrating in his knowledge of the world, and
more manly and serious in his view of life, than the comic poet who
died so early in his career.
But not Horace only, but some of the best judges and greatest masters
of style both in ancient and modern times have been among his chief
admirers. Cicero frequently reproduces his expressions, applies
passages in his plays to his own circumstances, and refers to his
personages as typical representatives of character[21]. Julius Caesar
characterises him as 'puri sermonis amator.' Quintilian applies to his
writing the epithet 'elegantissimus,' and in that connexion refers to
the belief that his plays were the work of Scipio Africanus. Cicero,
on the other hand, speaks of the belief that they were the work of
Laelius, 'cuius fabellae propter elegantiam sermonis putabantur a C.
Laelio scribi[22].' The imputation in the poet's own time, which he
does not altogether disclaim, appears to have been that both friends
assisted him in his task.
His works were studied and learned by heart by the great Latin writers
of the Renaissance, such as Erasmus and Melanchthon: and Casaubon, in
his anxiety that his son should write a pure style, inculcates on him
the constant study of Terence. Montaigne applies to him the phrase of
Horace,--
Liquidus puroque simillimus amni.
He speaks of 'his fine expression, elegancy, and quaintness,' and
adds, 'he does so possess the soul with his graces that we forget
those of his fable[23].' It is among the French, the great masters
of the prose of refined conversation, that his merits have been most
appreciated in modern times. Sainte-Beuve, in his 'Nouveaux Lundis,'
devotes to him two papers of delicate and admiring criticism. He
quotes Fénelon and Addison, 'deux esprits polis et doux, de la
même famille littéraire,' as expressing their admiration for the
illimitable beauty and naturalness of one of his scenes. Fénelon is
said to have preferred him even to Molière. Sainte-Beuve calls Terence
the bond of union between Roman urbanity and the Atticism of the
Greeks, and adds that it was in the seventeenth century, when French
literature was most truly Attic, that he was most appreciated. M.
Joubert is quoted[24] as applying to him the words 'Le miel Attique
est sur ses lèvres; on croirait aisément qu'il naquit sur le mont
Hymette.'
After the death of Terence the only writer of _palliatae_ of any name
was Sextus Turpilius, who died about the end of the second century
B.C. No new element seems to have been contributed by him to the
Roman Stage. After the decline of the Comoedia palliata, the Comoedia
togata, which professed to represent the Roman and Italian life of the
middle classes, first obtained popular favour. The principal writers
of this branch of comedy were T. Quintius Atta and L. Afranius. The
latter was regarded as the Roman Menander:--
Dicitur Afrani toga convenisse Menandro.
The admiration which he expressed for Terence, whom he regarded as
the foremost of all the Roman comic poets, is in keeping with this
criticism. From the testimony of Quintilian[25] we may infer that the
change of scene from Athens to Rome and the provincial towns of Italy
did not improve the morality of the Roman stage. A further decline
both in intellectual interest and in moral tendency appeared in the
resuscitation in a literary form of the Fabulae Atellanae, the
chief writers of which were L. Pomponius and Novius. A still further
degradation was witnessed in the later days of the Republic and under
the Empire in the rise of the 'Mimus,' as a recognised branch of
dramatic literature. If the influence of the comic stage, when its
chief representatives were Plautus and Terence, is to be regarded as
only of a mixed character, it is difficult to associate any idea
of intellectual pleasure with the gross buffooneries of the Atellan
farce, when it had passed from the spontaneous hilarity of primitive
times into the conditions of an artistic performance, and still
less with the 'mimi,' which were intended to gratify the lowest
propensities of the spectators. The rapid degeneracy of the mass of
the people from the characteristic virtues of the older Republic
is testified as much by the popularity of such spectacles as by the
passionate delight excited by the gladiatorial combats.
[Footnote 1: 'In argumento Caecilius poscit palmam,' quoted
from Varro.]
[Footnote 2: Ep. ad Attic. vii. 3; Brutus, 74.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Mommsen, vol. ii. p. 435, English Translation.]
[Footnote 4: 'Consulari utroque ac poeta.' Life of Terence, by
Suetonius.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. Prologue to the Hecyra.]
[Footnote 6: Ritschl reads 'ingressus,' which would make him a
year younger.]
[Footnote 7: Prol. Andria, l. 20.]
[Footnote 8: Eunuchus, Prologue, l. 22, etc.]
[Footnote 9: Prol. to Phormio, l. 5, etc.]
[Footnote 10: Prol. Adelph. 15-21.]
[Footnote 11: The Phormio is taken from Apollodorus.]
[Footnote 12: We have one or two Latin puns. Such as the play
of words in _amentium_ and _amantium_, _verba_ and _verbera_;
one or two cases of alliteration and asyndeton, e.g.--
Hic est victus, vetus, veternosus senex,--
and
Profundat, perdat, pereat, etc.;
but such mannerisms, which abound in Plautus, are extremely
rare in the younger poet.]
[Footnote 13: In the Heauton Timorumenos.]
[Footnote 14: 'This act was not worthy of you, Chaerea: for
even if it is quite fitting that I should receive such an
insult, all the same it was not fitting that it should come
from you.']
[Footnote 15: 'I am not so wanting in natural feeling or so
unschooled in its ways as not to know what love is capable
of.']
[Footnote 16: E.g. Andria, 115-136; 282-298; Heauton
Timorumenos, 273-301.]
[Footnote 17: The original of such expressions as--Appone
lucro; Dulce est desipere in loco; Rimosa quae deponuntur
in aure; Qua parte debacchentur ignes; Cena dubia; Paucorum
hominum et mentis bene sanae; Quam sapere et ringi; Quid non
ebrietas designat?--and others, are to be found in Terence.]
[Footnote 18: Eunuch. A. i. 1; cf. Hor. Sat. ii. 3, 260,
etc.]
[Footnote 19: 414, etc.]
[Footnote 20: 'Then I bid him look into the lives of men
as into a mirror, and to form for himself an example from
others.' 'Do this.' _Sy._ 'Quite right.' _De._ 'Avoid this.'
_Sy._ 'Cleverly said.' _De._ 'This is honourable.' _Sy._ 'That
is it.' _De._ 'This is discreditable.']
[Footnote 21: Cf. Ep. ad Fam. i. 9. 19; Phil. ii. 15.]
[Footnote 22: Ep. ad Att. vii. 3. 10.]
[Footnote 23: Essays of Montaigne, Cotton's Translation, ch.
lxvii.]
[Footnote 24: By E. Negrette, in his Histoire de la
Littérature Latine.]
[Footnote 25: Quint. x. 1, 100.]
CHAPTER VIII.
EARLY ROMAN SATIRE--C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.
Poetical satire, as a branch of cultivated literature, arose out of
the social and political circumstances, and the moral and literary
conditions of Roman life in the last half of the second century B.C.
The tone by which that form of poetry has been characterised, in
ancient and modern times, is derived from the genius and temper of a
remarkable man, belonging to that era, and from the spirit in which he
regarded the world. C. Lucilius invented satire, by first imparting
a definite purpose to an inartistic kind of metrical composition, in
which miscellaneous topics had been treated in accordance with the
occasional mood or interests of the writer. Although the satire of
Lucilius was rude and unfinished, and evidently retained much of the
vague general character belonging to the satura of Ennius, yet he was
undoubtedly the first Roman writer who used his materials with the aim
and in the manner which poetical satire has permanently assumed.
The indigenous satura existing at Rome before the rise of regular
literature had been merged partly in the Latin comedy of Naevius,
Plautus, Caecilius, etc., partly in the metrical miscellanies of
Ennius and Pacuvius, which, though not written for the stage, retained
the name of the old scenic medley. The new satire differed from Latin
comedy in form and style, and in the personal and national aims which
it set before itself. The satire of Lucilius, and even that of Horace,
retained many features in common with the desultory medley which
Ennius had formed out of the older satura. But the latter was the
parent of no permanent form of literary art. The miscellanies of
Varro, the most famous work produced on this model, were composed
partly in prose and partly in verse, and were never ranked by the
Romans among their poetical works. The former, on the other hand, was
the parent of the satire of Horace, of Persius, and of Juvenal, and,
through that, of the poetical satire of modern times. The spirit
of censorious criticism, in which Lucilius treated the politics and
morals, the social manners and the literary taste of his age, has
become the essential characteristic of that form of literature which
derived its name from the old Italian satura.
Of all the forms of Roman poetry, satire was least indebted to
the works of the Greeks. Quintilian claims it altogether for his
countrymen--'satira tota nostra est.' Horace characterises it as
'Graecis intacti carminis.' While the names by which they are known
at once betray the Greek invention of the other great forms of poetic
art, the name of satire alone indicates a Roman origin. It is true
that Lucilius, like every educated man of his time, was acquainted
with the Greek language and literature. It is true also that the
critical spirit in Greece had found vent for itself in the works
of the early iambic writers, Archilochus, Simonides of Amorgos, and
Hipponax, of the great authors of the old political comedy of Athens,
and apparently in later writings such as the satiric discourses of
Bion of Borysthenes, mentioned in Horace's line--
Ille Bioneis sermonibus et sale nigro.
But Roman satire sprang up and flourished independently of any of
those kinds of composition. In national spirit and moral purpose
it was unlike the personal lampoons of the Greek satirists. It was
perhaps not less personal, but was more ethical; it professed at least
to be animated not by private enmity but by public spirit. It embraced
also a much greater variety of topics. Horace finds a closer parallel
to the satire of Lucilius in the old Athenian comedy. These two kinds
of literature have this in common, that they are the expression of
public, not of personal feeling. But though Lucilius probably, like
Horace after him, studied the old comic poets 'Eupolis, Cratinus and
Aristophanes,' to catch something of their spirit and manner in his
satire, Roman satire was not an imitation of Greek comedy. Where Roman
literature professes to be an imitation of Greek, it is the form and
the metre much more than the spirit and matter that are reproduced.
Greek comedy and Roman satire were the independent results of freedom
of speech and criticism in different ages and countries. Their
difference in form arose out of fundamental differences in the
character as well as in the genius of the two nations. Although Roman
speakers and writers exercised a license of speech and of personal
criticism equal to that which prevailed in the Athenian democracy, and
beyond what the spirit of personal honour tolerates in modern times,
yet the exposure of public men to ridicule on the stage was utterly
repugnant to the instincts of an aristocratic republic in which one
of the great bonds of union was respect for outward authority[1]. The
tendency of the Roman mind to reduce all things to rule and to express
itself in abstract comments on life, rather than to represent human
nature in living forms, also favoured the assumption by Lucilius of a
mode of literature addressing itself to the understanding of readers,
and not to the curiosity of spectators.
The spirit by which satire is animated was native to Italy. The germ
out of which it was developed was the _Fescennina licentia_, or, as
it is called by Dionysius, the [Greek: kertomos kai satyrikê paidia],
peculiar to the Italian people. But in assuming a regular literary
form, this native raillery was tempered by the serious spirit and
vigorous understanding of Rome, and liberalised by the tastes
and ideas derived from a Greek education. The age in which satire
arose,--the age of the Gracchi,--was one of social discontent, of
political excitement, of intellectual activity, of moral and religious
unsettlement: and all these conditions exercised a powerful influence
on its character. As addressed not to the imagination but to the
practical understanding, it was in a peculiar manner the literary
product of a people 'rebus natus agendis.' It combined the practical
philosophy of the 'abnormis sapiens,' expressing itself in proverbial
sayings, anecdotes, and homely illustrations; the keen perceptions,
the criticism, and vivacity of a circle, educated, well-bred, and
versed in affairs; the serious purpose of a moral censor; and the
knowledge of life, which results from the mixed study of men and
books. Their circumstances, temper, and pursuits, united these various
elements, in different proportions, first in Lucilius, and after him
in Horace. By writing what interested themselves, in accordance with
their own natural bent, they satisfied the practical and social tastes
of their countrymen. While the higher poetical imagination was a rare
and exceptional gift among Roman authors, and was appreciated only by
a limited class of readers, there was in Roman satire a true popular
ring and a close adaptation to the national character, understanding,
and circumstances. Martial writes in his day--
Nescis heu, nescis dominae fastidia Romae:
Crede mihi nimium Martia turba sapit:
Maiores nusquam rhonchi; iuvenesque senesque
Et pueri nasum rhinocerotis habent[2].--i. 4. 2-6.
As the most genuine product of actual Roman life, satire was, if not
so luxuriant, a more vigorous plant than any other species of Roman
poetry. It is seen growing up in hardy vigour under the free air
of the Republic, attaining to mature perfection amid the rich
intellectual life of the Augustan age, and still fresh and vital in
the general intellectual languor and corruption of the Empire.
The Roman character of satire is attested also by the fact that other
Roman poets and authors, besides those who professed to follow in the
footsteps of Lucilius, have exhibited the satiric spirit. The caustic
sense of Ennius, the generous scorn of Lucretius, the license of
Catullus, attest their affinity, in some elements of character, to the
Roman satirists. There may be remarked also in the best modern works
of poetical satire,--such as the Absalom and Achitophel, the Prologue
to Pope's Satires, the Vanity of Human Wishes,--a conscious or
unconscious echo of that vigorous sense and nervous speech, which
accompanied the great practical energy of the Romans.
Satire was not only national in its intellectual and moral
characteristics, but it played a part in public life at Rome. Even
under the Empire, when free speech and comment on the government were
no longer possible, the Roman satirists claimed to perform an office
similar in spirit to that which the Republic in its best days had
devolved on its most honourable magistracy. But the satire of the
Republic, besides performing this magisterial office, played an active
part in the politics of the day. It combined the freedom of a tribune
with the severity of a censor. It held up to public criticism the
delinquencies of leading politicians, and of the mass of the people in
their elective divisions,--
Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim.
Nor was it confined to aggressive criticism: it was used also as an
instrument of political partisanship, to paint the virtues of Scipio
as well as the vices of his antagonists. It thus performed something
of the same kind of public office as the political pamphlet of an
earlier time, and the newspaper of the present day.
It endeavoured also, by acting on individual character, to effect
objects which the Roman State strove to accomplish by direct
legislation. The various sumptuary laws of that age, and the
enactments made to repress the study of Greek rhetoric and philosophy,
emanated from the same spirit which led Lucilius to denounce the
increase of luxury and the affectation of Greek manners among his
contemporaries. The strong Roman appetites and the novelty of new
studies prevailed alike over the artificial restraints of legislative
enactments, and over the contemptuous and the earnest teaching of
satire. But the influence of satire could reach further than that of
censors or sumptuary laws. While it could brand notorious offenders it
was able also to unmask hypocritical pretences--
Detrahere et pellem, nitidus qua quisque per ora
Cederet, introrsum turpis.
It could stimulate to virtue as well as denounce flagrant offences.
It wielded something of the power of the preacher to produce an
inward change in the characters of men. By its close contact with real
experience and its close adherence to the national standard of virtue,
it might educate men for the duties of citizens more effectually than
the teaching of Greek rhetoric or philosophy.
But while satire in its earlier manifestation, from one side, is to be
regarded as the directest expression of Roman public life, it was,
at the same time, the truest exponent of the character, pursuits,
and interests of the individual writer. The old definition of it by
a Latin grammarian, 'Carmen maledicum et ad carpenda hominum vitia
compositum,' is quite inapplicable to those familiar writings of
Horace, in which he gives a pleasant account of his habits and mode of
life in town and country, or that in which he humorously narrates
his various adventures on his journey to Brundisium. The writings of
Horace and Lucilius bore a more varied and miscellaneous character
than that of the satire of the Empire or of modern times. Horace
expresses his opinions and feelings in the form sometimes of a
dialogue, sometimes of a familiar epistle, sometimes of a discourse
put into the mouth of another, sometimes of a moral disquisition. He
makes abundant use of fables, anecdotes, personal portraiture, real
and imaginary, autobiography, and self-analysis. The fragments of
Lucilius, and the notices about him in ancient authors, prove that in
these respects Horace followed in his footsteps. The testimony of the
lines--
Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim, etc.,
implies that Lucilius used his satire as a natural vehicle for
expressing everything that interested him, in his own life and in the
circumstances of his time. In regard to the miscellaneous nature
of the topics treated by him, and the frankness of his personal
revelations, his truest modern parallel is Montaigne,--the father of
the prose essay, which has performed the function of the older Roman
satire more completely than even the poetical satire of modern times.
Among the poets of the Republic, whose works have reached us only
in fragments, Lucilius is only second in importance to Ennius. Roman
Satire owes as much in form, substance, and spirit to him as the Roman
epic does to the older poet. While Ennius represents the highest
mood of Rome, and first gave expression to that imperial idea which
ultimately realised itself in history, Lucilius is the exponent of her
ordinary moods, manifested in the streets and the forum, and of those
internal dissensions and destructive forces by which her political
life was agitated and ultimately overthrown. His personal
characteristics and literary position can be inferred with nearly
as much certainty as those of Ennius. The most important external
evidence from which we form our idea of him is that of Horace and
Cicero. But the numerous fragments of his writings bear a strong
impress of his personality. From the confirmation which they give to
other testimonies, we may endeavour to recover some of the lines and
colours of that 'votiva tabula' which the contemporaries of Horace
found in his books, and to realise the nature of the work performed by
him and of the influence which he exercised over his countrymen.
The time at which he appeared was one of the most critical epochs
in Roman history, the end of one great era,--that of the undisputed
ascendency of the Senate,--the beginning of the century of revolution
which ended with the Battle of Actium. The mind of the nation began
then to turn from the monotonous spectacle of military conquest and
to busy itself with the conditions of internal well-being. A spirit
of discontent with these, similar to that which called forth the
legislation of the Gracchi, opened up a new path for Latin literature.
It began then to concern itself, not with the national idea of
conquest and empire, but with the actual condition of men. It sought
for its material, not in the representation which had been fashioned
by Greek dramatic art out of the heroic legends of early Greece or the
citizen life of her later days, but out of the every day life of
the Roman streets, law-courts, public assemblies, dinner-tables, and
literary coteries, and out of the baser details of actual experience
by which the magnificent ideal of Roman greatness was largely
qualified. Though there is considerable difficulty in accepting the
dates usually assigned for the birth and death of Lucilius, there is
no reason to doubt that his active literary career began about the
time of the tribunates of Tib. Gracchus, and continued till nearly
the end of the first century B.C. This period is so important and
interesting that such glimpses of light as are afforded by the
fragments of the contemporary satirist are highly to be prized.
The dates of his birth and death, according to Jerome, were 148 B.C.
and 102 B.C. We are told, on the same authority, that he died
at Naples and received the honour of a public funeral. The chief
difficulty in accepting these dates arises from the statement of
Velleius that Lucilius served as an 'eques' under Scipio in the
Numantine War[3], and from the fact, attested by Horace and other
authorities, of his great intimacy with both Scipio and Laelius[4].
Horace also mentions that he celebrated in his writings the justice
and valour of Scipio,--
Attamen et iustum poteras et scribere fortem
Scipiadem ut sapiens Lucilius--;
and the parallel there suggested between the relation of Lucilius to
the great soldier and statesman of his age, and of Horace to Augustus,
would be inappropriate unless the praises there spoken of had been
bestowed on Scipio in his lifetime. Fragments from one book of
the Satires appear to be parts of a letter written by Lucilius to
congratulate his friend on the capture of Numantia[5]. One line of
Book xxvi,--
Percrepa pugnam Popilli, facta Corneli cane,
contrasts the defeat of M. Popillius Laenas in 138 B.C. with the
subsequent successes of Scipio. In another fragment Lucilius charges
Scipio with affectation for pronouncing the word 'pertaesum' as if
it were 'pertisum[6].' He is also mentioned as one of those whose
criticism Lucilius dreaded[7]. These and other passages must have been
written in the lifetime of Scipio--i.e. before 129 B.C. Thus, if
the date assigned for the birth of Lucilius is correct, he must have
served in the Numantine War at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he
must have been admitted into the most intimate familiarity with the
greatest man of the age, and must have composed some books of his
Satires, and thus introduced a new form of literature, before the age
of nineteen. L. Müller in his edition of the Fragments adduces other
considerations for rejecting the dates given by Jerome, such as the
allusions to the career of Lupus (whom he supposes to be the same as
the Censor of 147 B.C.) and to the war with Viriathus. He holds also
that the words of Horace--
Quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita _senis_--
lose their point, unless _senis_ is to be understood in its usual
sense. He supposes that the mistake of Jerome arose from a similarity
in the names of the Consuls of 148 B.C. and 180 B.C., and would
therefore throw the date of the poet's birth more than thirty years
further back than that commonly received.
Whatever strength there may be in the other objections urged against
accepting the date 148 B.C. as that of the birth of Lucilius, it
is difficult to believe that Lucilius should have taken part in the
Numantine War, and been admitted to apparently equal intimacy with
Scipio before he had attained the age of fifteen. It is still more
difficult to suppose that the earliest book or books of his Satires,
composed before the death of Scipio, should be the work of a boy under
nineteen years of age. But with these admissions it is not necessary
to throw back the date of the poet's birth so far as is done by
Müller. A more probable explanation of the error in the date was
suggested by Mr. Munro in the Journal of Philology. He supposes that
Jerome in copying the words of Suetonius referring to the death and
funeral of Lucilius substituted the 'anno aetatis xlvi. for lxiv. or
lxvi., and then adapted the year of birth to the annus Abrahae which
would correspond to this false reading.' Mr. Munro adds, 'Everything
would now run smooth. Lucilius when he went with Scipio to Spain would
be in the prime of manhood, thirty-two or thirty-four years of age.
Soon after that time he would be writing and publishing his earliest
Books, xxvi.-xxix., and then xxx. Some of these at all events would
be published before the death of Scipio, when the poet would
be thirty-seven or thirty-nine[8].' It may be added against the
supposition that Lucilius was born in the year 180 B.C., that, in that
case, we should have expected to have found in his numerous fragments
allusions to events even earlier than the Censorship of P. Cornelius
Lupus or the wars with Viriathus. Moreover the notices of his relation
to Scipio and Laelius, as in the 'discincti ludere' of Horace, and in
the story told by the Scholiast on that passage, of Laelius coming on
them, when the poet was chasing Scipio round the table with a napkin,
seem to indicate the familiar footing of a much younger to older men.
His birth-place was Suessa Aurunca in Campania. Juvenal calls him
'Auruncae magnus alumnus.' He belonged to the equestrian order, a fact
indicated in the passage in which Horace speaks of himself as 'infra
Lucili censum.' The Scholiast on that passage mentions that he was on
the mother's side grand-uncle to Pompey--a relationship confirmed by a
passage in Velleius, who mentions that the mother of Pompey was named
Lucilia.
His satires were written in thirty Books. The remaining fragments
amount to about 1100 lines. Most of these are single lines, preserved
by grammarians as illustrative of the use of words. The amount and
variety of these, if they had no other value, would at least be
suggestive of the industry with which grammatical and philological
research into their own language was carried on by Roman writers.
Some fragments are found in ancient commentaries on the Satires and
Epistles of Horace. The longer passages are quoted by Cicero, Gellius,
Lactantius, and others. The Books from i. to xx. were written in
hexameters; Book xxii., apparently, in elegiacs, a metre which had
hitherto been employed only in short epigrams. Of the intervening
Books between xxii. and xxvi. there remains only one line[9].
Books xxvi. and xxix., from which a large number of lines have been
preserved, were written in trochaics and iambics. The last Book (xxx.)
was written in hexameters. From the fact that the trochaic and iambic
metres had been chiefly employed by the older writers of saturae, it
seems probable that Lucilius made his first attempts in these metres,
that he afterwards adopted the hexameter, and that in one or two of
his latest books he attempted to write continuously in elegiacs. The
allusions in Book xxvi. to the Spanish wars and to the 'exploits of
Cornelius,' and the statement of his reasons for coming forward as an
author, render it not improbable that this Book was the earliest
in order of composition. It was in this Book that he appeared most
conspicuously as the censor and critic of the older writers, a
position not unlikely to have been assumed, at the very outset of his
career, by one who claimed to initiate a change in Roman literature.
The first impression produced by reading these fragments, as they have
been arranged by Müller or Lachmann, is one of extreme desultoriness
and discursiveness of treatment. The words applied by Horace to
Lucilius,--
Garrulus atque piger scribendi ferre laborem,
characterise not his style only but his whole mode of composition.
Subjects most widely removed from one another seem to have been
introduced into the same book. We have no means of determining whether
the separate books consisted of one or several miscellaneous pieces.
He seems to start off on some new chase on the slightest suggestion,
verbal or otherwise, as in the opening of Book v.--
Quo me habeam pacto, tametsi non quaeri', docebo,
Quando in eo numero mansti, quo in maxima nunc est
Pars hominum,
Ut periise velis quem visere nolueris, cum
Debueris. Hoc nolueris et debueris te
Si minu' delectat, quod [Greek: technion] Isocratium est,
[Greek: Lêrôdes]que simul totum ac [Greek: symmeirakiôdes],
Non operam perdo[10].
We cannot accordingly expect to trace in them anything of the unity of
purpose, the formal discourse and illustration of a set topic, which
characterise the Satires of Persius and Juvenal, nor yet, of the
apparently artless, but carefully meditated ease with which Horace,
in his Satires, reproduces the manner of cultivated conversation.
Lucilius adopts many modes of bringing himself into relations with
his reader. Sometimes he speaks of himself by name, and appears to be
communing with himself on his own fortunes or feelings. Sometimes he
carries on a controversy in the form of dialogue; at other times he
addresses the reader directly; or again, he puts a discourse in the
mouth of another, as that on the luxury of the table in the mouth of
Laelius. He makes frequent use of the epistolary form--a form which
in prose and verse became one of the happiest products of Roman
literature. He employs fables, quotations, and parodies, to illustrate
his subject. He gives a narrative of his travels, and describes scenes
and incidents at which he was present, such as a fight between two
gladiators, a rustic feast, and a storm which he encountered in his
voyage to Sicily. In other places he plays the part of a moralist,
and discourses to a friend on the nature of virtue. More frequently he
takes on himself the special office of a censor, and assails the vices
of the day by direct denunciation and living examples. In other places
he appears as a literary critic and a dictator on questions of grammar
and orthography.
In Book i., dedicated to Aelius Stilo the grammarian, a council of
the gods was introduced, debating how the Roman State was still to be
preserved; and some of the most notorious men of the time were exposed
by name to public reprobation. Book iii. contained an account of
the author's journey from Rome to the Sicilian Strait, and has been
imitated by Horace in his journey to Brundisium. From the line--
Mantica cantheri costas gravitate premebat[11]--
it appears that some part of the journey was made on horseback, but
other lines[12] show that the latter part was made by water, and that
a severe storm was encountered on the voyage. In Book iv., imitated by
Horace (Sat. ii. 2), and by Persius in his third satire, was included
the discourse of Laelius against gluttony. In this book mention was
made of the sturgeon which gained notoriety for Gallonius[13]. Book v.
contained a letter to a friend of the poet, who had neglected to visit
him when ill. Book ix. was composed of a dissertation on questions of
grammar, orthography, and criticism. Book xi. treated of the wars in
Spain and Transalpine Gaul, and contained criticisms and anecdotes of
various public men. Book xvi. was named 'Collyra,' in honour of the
poet's mistress. In other books the castigation of particular vices
formed a prominent topic, and some of the latest (probably the
earliest in the order of composition), were largely filled with
personal explanations and with criticisms of the older poets. But the
desultory, discursive, self-communing character seems to have been
common to all of them; and it would be contrary to our evidence
to speak of any single book as composed on a definite plan, or as
treating of a special topic.
The fragments however, when read collectively, bring out the main
sources of interest which the Romans found in the writings of
Lucilius; first, the interest of a self-portraiture and close personal
relation established with the reader[14]: second, the interest of a
censorious criticism on politics, morals, and literature[15].
Among the personal indications of the author we note the great freedom
and independence of his life and character. In his mode of expressing
this freedom and independence he reminds us of Horace, who seems to
have imitated him in his view of life as well as in his writings.
Thus, Lucilius declares his indifference to public employment, and
his unwillingness to change his own position for the business of the
Publicani of Asia, just as Horace declares that he would not exchange
his leisure for all the wealth of Arabia[16]. Like Horace, he speaks
of the joy of escaping from the storms of life into a quiet haven
of repose[17], or inculcates contentment with one's own lot[18]
and immunity from envy[19], and the superiority of plain living to
luxury[20]. Like Horace, while holding to his independence of life, he
put a high value on friendship, and strove to fulfil its duties[21].
Like him, while condemning excess and weakness, he did not conform
to any austerer standard of morals than that of the world around him.
Like Horace, too, in his later years, he seems to have been
something of a valetudinarian[22], and to have had much of the
self-consciousness which accompanies that condition. On the whole
the impression we get of him is that of an independent, self-reliant
character,--of a man living in strong contact with reality, taking all
the rubs of life cheerfully[23],--enjoying society, travelling[24],
the exercise of his art[25],--a warm friend and partisan, and a bold
and uncompromising enemy,--not professing any austerity of life,
but knowing and following the course which gave his own nature most
satisfaction[26], while, at the same time, upholding a high standard
of public duty and personal honour[27].
This establishment of a personal relation with his readers was one of
the most original elements in the Lucilian satire. He was the first
of Roman, and one of the first among all, writers, who took the public
into his confidence, and gained their ear, without exposing himself to
contempt, by making a frank and unreserved display of his inmost and
most personal thoughts and feelings. Had his works reached us entire,
we should probably have found the same kind of attraction in them,
from the sense of familiar intimacy with a man of interesting
character and intelligence, which we find in the Epistles of Cicero
and the Satires and Epistles of Horace.
His independent social position, and the character of the times in
which he lived, enabled him to perform the office of a political
satirist with more freedom than any other Roman writer. He belonged to
the middle party between the extreme partisans of the aristocracy and
of the democracy, the party of Scipio and Laelius, and that to which
Cicero, in a later age, naturally inclined. He directed his satire
against the corruption, incapacity, and arrogance[28] of the nobles by
whom the wars abroad and affairs at home were mismanaged. His service
under Scipio, and his admiration of his generalship, made him keenly
sensitive to the disgrace incurred by the Roman arms under 'the
limping Hostilius and Manius[29],' and in the war against Viriathus.
Among those assailed by him on political grounds, L. Hostilius
Tubulus, notorious for openly receiving bribes while presiding at a
trial for murder, and C. Papirius Carbo, the friend of Tib. Gracchus
and the suspected murderer of Scipio, were conspicuous. The more
reputable names of Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus and Mucius
Scaevola are also mentioned among the objects of his satire[30].
Personal motives--and especially his devotion to Scipio[31]--may
have stimulated these animosities; but there were instances enough of
incapacity in war, profligacy and extortion in the government of
the provinces, corruption and favouritism in the administration of
justice, of venality and ignorance in the electoral bodies, to justify
the bold exposure by Lucilius of 'the leading men of the State and
of the mass of the people in their tribes.' The personality of his
attacks probably made him many enemies; and thus we hear that he was
assailed by name on the stage, and was unable to obtain redress, while
a writer who had taken a similar liberty with the tragic poet Accius
was condemned. But the honour of a public funeral awarded to him at
his death would indicate that the final verdict of his contemporaries
was that in assuming the censorial function of attaching marks of
infamy against the names of eminent men he was actuated, in the main,
by worthy motives, and had done good service to the State.
The chief social vices which Lucilius attacks are those which reappear
in the pages of the later satirists. They are the two extremes to
which the Roman temperament was most prone, rapacity and meanness
in gaining money, vulgar ostentation and coarse sensuality in using
it[32]. These were opposite results of a sudden influx of wealth among
a people trained through many generations to habits of thrift
and self-restraint, and, through this accumulated vital force,
unaccompanied, as it was, with much capacity for refined enjoyment,
animated by a strong craving for the coarser enjoyments of life. The
intensity and concentrativeness of the Roman temperament also tended
to produce those one-sided types of character, which are the favourite
objects of satiric portraiture. The parasites and spendthrifts, the
misers and money-makers of Horace's Satires and Epistles, Maenius
and Avidienus for instance, are among the most strongly marked of his
personal sketches. Lucilius witnessed the same tendencies in his time
and exposed them with greater freedom. The names which are typical of
certain characters in Horace, such as Nomentanus, Pantolabus (probably
a nickname) Maenius and Gallonius, had first been taken by Lucilius
from the streets and dinner-tables of Rome. This indifference to the
claims of personal feeling, in which Lucilius emulates the license of
the old Greek comedy, although sanctioned by the approval of Horace
in a poet of an earlier age, would probably have been forbidden by the
greater urbanity and decorum of the Augustan age.
The excesses of his contemporaries in the way of good living, against
which numerous sumptuary laws (the Lex Fannia and Lex Licinia for
instance), enacted in that age, vainly contended, were largely
satirised by Lucilius. Such passages as these--
O Publi, O gurges Galloni, es homo miser, inquit,
Cenasti in vita numquam bene, quom omnia in ista
Consumis squilla atque acipensere quum decumano.
Hoc fit item in cena, dabis ostrea millibu' nummum
Empta.
Occidunt, Lupe, saperdae te et iura siluri.
Vivite lurcones, comedones, vivite ventres.
Illum sumina ducebant atque altilium lanx
Hunc pontes Tiberinu' duo inter captu' catillo.
Purpureo tersit tunc latas gausape mensas, etc.[33]
show the proportions already assumed by a form of sensuality the
beginnings of which may be traced in Plautus and in the publication of
the Hedyphagetica of Ennius, but of which the final culmination is to
be sought in the ideal of life realised under the Empire, by Apicius,
Vitellius, Elagabalus, and many men of less note.
The other extreme of unceasing activity in getting, and sordid
meanness in hoarding money, and the discontent produced among all
classes by the restless passion to grow rich, which fills so large a
place in the Satires and Epistles of Horace, appears also frequently
in the fragments of Lucilius; as, for instance, in the following:--
Milia dum centum frumenti tolli medimnum,
Vini mille cadum.--
Denique uti stulto nihil est satis, omnia cum sint.--
Rugosi passique senes eadem omnia quaerunt.--
Mordicus petere aurum e flamma expediat, e caeno cibum.--
Aquam te in animo habere intercutem[34].
The following description of a miser seems to have suggested the
beginning of one of Catullus' lampoons[35]:--
Cui neque iumentumst nec servos nec comes ullus,
Bulgam et quidquid habet nummum secum habet ipse,
Cum bulga cenat, dormit, lavit; omnis in unast
Spes homini bulga. Bulga haec devincta lacertost[36].
In other passages he inculcates the lessons of good sense and
moderation in the use of money, or urges, in the person of an
objector, that a man is regarded in proportion to the estimate of his
means. In his enumeration of the various constituents of virtue, one
on which he dwells with emphasis, is the right estimation of the value
of money. In all his thoughts and expressions on this subject it is
easy to see how closely Horace follows on his traces.
The extravagance, airs, and vices of women, are another theme of
his satire. But he deals with these topics rather in the spirit of
raillery adopted by Plautus, than in that of Juvenal. In one fragment
he compares, in terms neither delicate nor complimentary, the
pretensions to beauty of the Roman ladies of his time with those of
the Homeric heroines. In another he contrasts the care which they take
in adorning themselves when expecting the visits of strangers with
their indifference as to their appearance when alone with their
husbands,--
Cum tecum'st, quidvis satis est: visuri alieni
Sint homines, spiras, pallam, redimicula promit[37].
Another fragment--
Homines ipsi hanc sibi molestiam ultro atque aerumnam offerunt,
Ducunt uxores, producunt quibus haec faciant liberos,--
indicates the same repugnance to marriage, which is expressed in a
fragment of contemporary oratory, quoted by A. Gellius: 'If, Quirites,
we could get on at all without wives, we should all keep clear of
that nuisance; but since, in the way of nature, life cannot go on
comfortably with them, nor at all without them, we ought rather
to provide for the continued well-being of the world than for our
temporary comfort.' The dislike to incur the responsibilities of
family life, which appears so conspicuously among the cultivated
classes in the later times of the Republic, was probably, if we are to
judge from the testimony and examples of Lucilius and Horace, as much
the result of the license allowed to men, as of the extravagant habits
or jealous imperiousness of women.
The intellectual, as well as the moral and social peculiarities of
the age were noted by Lucilius. One fragment is directed against the
terrors of superstition, and shows that Lucilius, like all the older
poets, was endowed with that strong secular sense which enabled the
educated Romans, notwithstanding the forms and ceremonies of religion
encompassing every private and public act, to escape, in all their
ordinary relations, from supernatural influences. This passage affords
a fair specimen of the continuous style of the author:--
Terriculas Lamias, Fauni quas Pompiliique
Instituere Numae, tremit has, hic omnia ponit;
Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere, et esse homines; et sic isti omnia ficta
Vera putant, credunt signis cor inesse in ahenis;
Pergula pictorum, veri nihil, omnia ficta[38].
His attitude to philosophy, like his attitude to superstitious
terrors, was not unlike that of Horace. We find mention in his
fragments of the 'Socratici charti,' of the 'eidola atque atomus
Epicuri' of the four [Greek: stoicheia] of Empedocles, of the 'mutatus
Polemon,' spoken of in Horace (Sat. ii. 3, 253), of Aristippus, and
of Carneades; but his own wisdom was that of the world and not of the
schools. In these lines,--
Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre,
Utilior mihi, quam sapiens;
and--
Nondum etiam, qui haec omnia habebit,
Formosus, dives, liber, rex solu' feretur,
we find an anticipation of the tones in which Horace satirised the
professors of Stoicism in his own time. The affectation of Greek
manners and tastes is ridiculed in the person of Titus Albutius, in a
passage which Cicero describes as written 'with much grace and pungent
wit'[39]:--
Graecum te, Albuci, quam Romanum atque Sabinum,
Municipem Ponti, Tritanni, Centurionum,
Praeclarorum hominum ac primorum signiferumque,
Maluisti dici. Graece ergo praetor Athenis,
Id quod maluisti, te, cum ad me accedi', saluto:
Chaere, inquam, Tite. Lictores turma omni' cohorsque
Chaere, Tite. Hinc hostis mi, Albucius, hinc inimicus[40].
We learn from Cicero's account of the orators antecedent to, and
contemporary with himself, that this denationalising fastidiousness
was a not uncommon result of the new studies. The practice of Lucilius
of mixing Greek words and phrases with his Latin style might, at first
sight, expose him to a similar criticism. But this mannerism of style,
which is condemned by the good sense of Horace, is merely superficial,
and does not impair the vigorous nationality of the sentiment
expressed by the Roman satirist. Like the similar practice in the
Letters of Cicero, it was probably in accordance with the familiar
conversational style of men powerfully attracted by the interest and
novelty of the new learning, but yet strong enough in their national
self-esteem to adhere to Roman standards in all the greater matters
of action and sentiment. Lucilius seems however to recognise a
deeper mischief than that of mere literary affectation in the general
insincerity of character produced by the rhetorical and sophistical
arts fostered by the new studies, and finding their sphere of action
in the Roman law-courts.
The satire of Lucilius, besides its political, moral, and social
function, assumed the part of a literary critic and censor. The
testimony of Horace on this point,--
Nil comis tragici mutat Lucilius Acci?
Non ridet versus Enni gravitate minores,
Cum de se loquitur non ut maiore reprensis?
confirmed by that of Gellius[41], is amply borne out by extant
fragments. These criticisms formed a large part of the twenty-sixth
book, which Müller supposes to have been the earliest of the
compositions of Lucilius. Several lines preserved from that book are
either quotations or parodies from the old tragedies[42]. We observe
in these and other quotations the peculiarities of style, noticed in
the two tragic poets, such as their tendencies to alliteration and
the use of asyndeta, the strained word-formations of Pacuvius, and the
occasional inflation of Accius[43]. We trace the influence of these
criticisms in the sneer of Persius,--
Est nunc Briseis quem venosus liber Acci,
Sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, aerummis cor luctificabile fulta.
The antagonism displayed by Lucilius to the more ambitious style
of the tragic and epic poets was perhaps as much due to his
own deficiency in poetical imagination, as to his keen critical
discernment, the 'stili nasus' or 'emunctae nares' attributed to him
by Pliny and Horace.
The criticism of Lucilius was not only aggressive, but also directly
didactic. In the ninth book he discussed, at considerable length,
disputed questions of orthography; and a passage is quoted from the
same book, in which a distinction is drawn out between 'poëma' and
'poësis.' Under the first he ranks--
Epigrammation, vel
Distichum, epistula item quaevis non magna;
under the second, whole poems, such as the Iliad, or the Annals of
Ennius. The only interest attaching to these fragments is that, like
the didactic works of Accius, they testify to the crude critical
effort that accompanied the creative activity of the earlier Roman
poets.
As specimens of his continuous style the two following passages may
be given. The first exemplifies the serious moral spirit with which
ancient satire was animated; the second vividly represents and rebukes
one of the most prevalent pursuits of the age--
Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum,
Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu', potesse:
Virtus est hominis, 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 rei finem scire modumque:
Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse:
Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori:
Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
Hos magnifacere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
Commoda praeterea patriae sibi prima putare,
Deinde parentum, tertia jam postremaque nostra[44].
If there is no great originality of thought nor rhetorical grace
of expression in this passage, it proves that Lucilius judged of
questions of right and wrong from his own point of view. To him, as
to Ennius, common sense and a just estimate of life were large
ingredients in virtue. To be a good hater as well as a staunch friend,
and to choose one's friends and enemies according to their characters,
is another quality of his virtuous man. With him, as with the best
Romans of every age, love of country, family, and friends, were the
primary motives to right action. The next passage, written in language
equally plain and forcible, gives a graphic picture of the growing
taste for forensic oratory--
Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto,
Toto itidem pariterque die, populusque patresque
Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam,
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti,
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se
Insidias facere, ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes[45].
These passages are probably not unfavourable specimens of the author's
continuous style. At its best that style appears to be sincere,
serious, rapid, and full of vital force, but careless, redundant,
and devoid of all rhetorical point and subtle suggestiveness. Even to
these passages the censure of Horace applies,--
At dixi fluere hunc lutulentum.
If we regard these passages as on the ordinary level of his style we
cannot hesitate to recognise his immense inferiority to Terence
in elegance and finish[46], and to Plautus in rich and humorous
exuberance of expression. There is scarcely a trace of imaginative
power, or of susceptibility to the grandeur and pathos of human life,
or to the beauty and sublimity of Nature in the thousand lines of his
remains. We find a few vivid touches, as in this half-line--
Terra abit in nimbos imbresque,
but we fail to recognise not only the 'disjecti membra poetae,' but
even the elements of the rhetorician, or of the ironical humourist--
Parcentis viribus atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
Thus it is difficult to understand what Cicero means when he speaks
of the 'Romani veteres atque urbani sales' as being 'salsiores' than
those of the true masters of Attic wit, such as were Aristophanes,
Plato, and Menander.
But these passages are simple, direct, and clear, compared with many
of the single lines or longer passages, already quoted in illustration
of the substance of his satire. These leave an impression not only of
a total want of the 'limae labor,' but of an abnormal harshness and
difficulty, beyond what we find in the fragments of Pacuvius, Accius,
or Ennius. The fragments of his trochaics and iambics are much
simpler, 'much less depart from the natural order of the words,' than
those of his hexameters: a fact which reminds us of the great
advance made by Horace in adapting the heroic measure to the familiar
experience of life. Lucilius is moreover a great offender against not
only the graces but the decencies of language. Lines are found in his
fragments as coarse as the coarsest in Catullus or Juvenal: nor could
he urge the extenuating plea of having forgotten the respect due to
his readers from the necessity of relieving his wounded feelings or of
vindicating morality.
Yet it is undoubted that, notwithstanding the most glaring faults and
defects in form and style, he was one of the most popular among the
Roman poets. The testimony of Cicero, Persius, Juvenal, Quintilian,
Tacitus, and Gellius, confirms on this point the more ample testimony
of Horace. If, as Mr. Munro thinks, Horace may have expressed, in
deference to the prevailing taste of his time, a less qualified
admiration for him than he really felt, this only shows how strong a
hold his writings had over the reading public in the Augustan age. But
Horace shows by no means the same deference to the admirers of Plautus
and Ennius. To Lucilius he pays also the sincerer tribute of
frequent imitation. He made him his model, in regard both to form
and substance, in his satires; and even in his epistles he still
acknowledges the guidance of his earliest master. In reading both the
Satires and Epistles we are continually coming upon the vestiges of
Lucilius, in some turn of expression, some personal or illustrative
allusion. Similar vestiges are found, imbedded in the harsh and jagged
diction of Persius, and though not to the same extent, in the polished
rhetoric of Juvenal. Nor was his literary influence confined to Roman
satirists. Lucretius, Catullus, and even Virgil, have not disdained to
adopt his thoughts or imitate his manner[47].
But if we cannot altogether account for, we may yet partially
understand the admiration which his countrymen felt for Lucilius. In
every great literature, while there are some works which appeal to
the imagination of the whole world, there are others which seem to hit
some particular mood of the nation to which their author belongs,
and are all the more valued from the prominence they give to this
idiosyncracy. Every nation which has had a literature seems to have
valued itself on some peculiar humour or vein of observation and
feeling, which it regards as specially allotted to itself, over and
above its common inheritance of the sense of the ludicrous, which it
shares with other races. Those writers who have this last in unusual
measure become the favourite humourists of the world. But their own
countrymen often prefer those endowed with the narrower domestic type;
and of this type Lucilius seems to have been a true representative.
The 'antiqua et vernacula festivitas,' attributed to him, seems to
have been more combative and aggressive than genial and sympathetic.
The 'Italum acetum' was employed by the Romans as a weapon of
controversy with the view of damaging an adversary and making
either himself or the cause he represented appear ridiculous and
contemptible. The dictum of a modern humourist, that to laugh at a
man properly you must first love him, would have seemed to an ancient
Roman a contradiction in terms. When Horace writes--
Ridiculum acri
Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res,
he means that men are more likely to be made better by the fear of
contempt than of moral reprobation.
But Lucilius had much more than this power of personal raillery,
exercised with the force supplied and under the restraints imposed by
an energetic social and political life. He is spoken of not only
as 'comis et urbanus,' but also as 'doctus' and 'sapiens.' Even his
fragments indicate that he was a man of large knowledge of 'books and
men.' Horace testifies to the use which he made of the old comic poets
of Athens:--
Hinc omnis pendet Lucilius, hosce secutus.
His fragments show familiarity with Homer, with the works of the
Greek physical and ethical philosophers, with the systems of the
rhetoricians, and some acquaintance with the writings of Plato,
Archilochus, Euripides, and Aesop. His habit of building up his Latin
lines with the help of Greek phrases illustrates the first powerful
influence of the new learning before the Roman mind was able
thoroughly to assimilate it, but when it was in the highest degree
stimulated and fascinated by it. The mind of Lucilius was susceptible
to the novelty of the new thoughts and new impressions, but like that
of his contemporaries was insensible to the grace and symmetry of
Greek art. Terence is the only writer in the ante-Ciceronian period
who had the sense of artistic form. But all this foreign learning was,
in the mind of Lucilius, subsidiary to the freshest observation and
most discerning criticism of his own age. He was a spectator of life
more than an actor in it, but he yet had been present at one of the
most important military events of the time, and he had lived in the
closest intimacy with the greatest soldier and most prudent statesman
of his age. His satire had thus none of the limitation and unreality
which attaches to the work of a student and recluse, such as Persius
was. To the writings of Lucilius more perhaps than to those of any
other Roman would the words of Martial apply--
Hominem pagina nostra sapit.
It is his strong realistic tendency both in expression and thought
that seems to explain his antagonism to the older poets who treated
of Greek heroes and heroines in language widely removed from that
employed either in the forum or in the social meetings of educated
men. The popularity of Lucilius among the Romans may thus be explained
on much the same grounds as that of Archilochus among the Greeks. He
first introduced the literature of the understanding as distinct from
that either of the graver emotions or of humorous and sentimental
representation. And, while writing with the breadth of view and wealth
of illustration derived from learning, he did not, like the poets of
later times, write for an exclusive circle of critical readers,
but rather, as he himself said, 'for Tarentines, Consentini, and
Sicilians[48].' There was nothing about him of the fastidiousness and
shyness of a too refined culture. Every line almost of his fragments
attests his possession of that quality which, more than any other,
secures a wide, if not always a lasting, popularity, great vitality
and its natural accompaniment, boldness and confidence of spirit.
While he saw clearly, felt keenly, and judged wisely the political
and social action of his time, he reproduced it vividly in his pages.
Whatever other quality his style may want, it is always alive. And
the life with which it is animated is thoroughly healthy. There is a
singular sincerity in the ring of his words, the earnest of a mind,
absolutely free from cant and pretence, not lashing itself into fierce
indignation as a stimulant to rhetorical effect, nor forcing itself to
conform to any impracticable scheme of life, but glowing with a hearty
scorn for baseness, and never shrinking from its exposure in whatever
rank and under whatever disguise he detected it[49], and ever
courageously 'upholding the cause of virtue and of those who were on
the side of virtue'--
Scilicet uni aequus virtuti atque eius amicis.
It was by the rectitude and manliness of his character, as much as by
his learning, his quick and true discernment, his keen raillery
and vivid portraiture, that he became the favourite of his time and
country, and, alone among Roman writers, succeeded in introducing a
new form of literature into the world.
[Footnote 1: Bernhardy quotes the following words from Cicero,
de Rep. iv. ap. Augustin. C. D. ii. 9:--
Etsi eiusmodi cives (scil. Cleonem, Cleophontem, Hyperbolum)
a censore melius est, quam a poeta notari ... iudiciis enim
magistratuum, disceptationibus legitimis propositam vitam, non
poetarum ingeniis habere debemus; nec probrum audire nisi ea
lege ut respondere liceat et iudicio defendere.]
[Footnote 2: 'You know not, ah you know not the airs of
Imperial Rome: believe me the people of Mars is too critical:
nowhere are there greater sneers; young men and old and even
boys have the nose of a rhinoceros.']
[Footnote 3: Vell. Paterc. ii. 9. The service of Lucilius in
Spain seems to be confirmed by a line in one of his Satires:--
Publiu' Pavu' mihi [ ] quaestor Hibera
In terra fuit, lucifugus, nebulo, id genu' sane.]
[Footnote 4: Hor. Sat. ii. I. 71-5.]
[Footnote 5: Cf. L. Müller's edition of the Fragments.]
[Footnote 6:
Quo facetior videare et scire plus quam caeteri
Pertisum hominem, non pertaesum dices.
The comment of Festus shows that these words were addressed by
Lucilius to Scipio.]
[Footnote 7: Cic. de Fin. i. 3.]
[Footnote 8: Journal of Philology, vol. viii. 16.]
[Footnote 9:
Iucundasque puer qui lamberat ore placentas.
One of many lines imitated and almost reproduced by Horace.]
[Footnote 10: 'I will tell you how I am, though you don't ask
me, since you are of the fashion of most men now, and would
rather that the man whom you did not choose to visit, when
you ought, had died. If you don't like this "nolueris"
and "debueris," because it is the trick of Isocrates, and
altogether nonsensical and puerile, I don't waste my time on
the matter.' This passage illustrates two characteristics of
Lucilius--his habit of mixing Greek with Latin words, and the
attention he bestowed on technical rules of style.]
[Footnote 11: Imitated by Horace in the lines:--
Nunc mihi curto
Ire licet mulo, vel, si libet, usque Tarentum,
Mantica cui lumbos onere ulceret, atque eques armos.]
[Footnote 12:
Promontorium remis superamu' Minervae.--
Hinc media remis Palinurum pervenio nox.--
Tertius hic mali superat decumanis fluctibus--carchesia summa.]
[Footnote 13: Hor. Sat. ii. 2. 46:--
Haud ita pridem
Galloni praeconis erat acipensere mensa
Infamis.]
[Footnote 14:
Quo fit ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis.]
[Footnote 15:
Secuit Lucilius urbem--
Primores populi arripuit populumque tributim--
Non ridet versus Enni gravitate minores--?]
[Footnote 16:
Mihi quidem non persuadetur publiceis mutem meos.
Publicanu' vero ut Asiae fiam scriptuarius
Pro Lucilio, id ego nolo, et uno hoc non muto omnia.
Cf. Hor. Ep. i. 7. 36:--
Nec
Otia divitiis Arabum liberrima muto.]
[Footnote 17:
Quodque te in tranquillum ex saevis transfers tempestatibus.]
[Footnote 18:
Nam si quod satis est homini, id satis esse potisset,
Hoc sat erat; nam cum hoc non est, qui credimu' porro
Divitias ullas animum mi explere potisse.]
[Footnote 19:
Nulli me invidere: non strabonem fieri saepius
Deliciis me istorum.]
[Footnote 20:
O lapathe, ut iactare nec es sati cognitu' qui sis--
Quod sumptum atque epulas victu praeponis honesto.]
[Footnote 21:
Munifici comesque amicis nostris videamur viri--
Sic amici quaerunt animum, rem parasiti ac ditias.
Among the friends of Lucilius, besides Scipio and Laelius,
were Aelius Stilo, Albinus, and Granius, whom Cicero quotes
for his wit.]
[Footnote 22:
Querquera consequitur capitisque dolores
Infesti mihi.--
Si tam corpu' loco validum ac regione maneret.
Scriptoris quam vera manet sententia cordi.]
[Footnote 23:
Verum haec ludus ibi susque omnia deque fuerunt,
Susque et deque fuere, inquam, omnia ludu' iocusque.]
[Footnote 24:
Et saepe quod ante
Optasti, freta Messanae, Regina videbis
Moenia.]
[Footnote 25:
Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit.]
[Footnote 26:
Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum
Iam qua tempestate vivo chresin ad me recipio.
Cf. Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu.]
[Footnote 27: Cf. Virtus, Albine, etc. Infra, p. 240.]
[Footnote 28:
Peccare impune rati sunt
Posse et nobilitate procul propellere iniquos.]
[Footnote 29:
Hostiliu' contra
Pestem permitiemque catax quam et Maniu' nobis.]
[Footnote 30: Cf. Cic. De Or. 1. 16: Sed ut solebat C.
Lucilius saepe dicere, homo tibi (i.e. Scaevolae) subiratus,
mihi propter eam causam minus quam volebat familiaris, sed
tamen et doctus et perurbanus.
Hor. Sat. ii. 1. 67:--
Aut laeso doluere Metello
Famosisque Lupo cooperto versibus?
Pers. i. 115:--
Secuit Lucilius urbem,
Te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis.]
[Footnote 31: Fuit autem inter P. Africanum et Q. Metellum
sine acerbitate dissensio.]
[Footnote 32: Cf. Diversisque duobus vitiis, avaritia et
luxuria civitatem laborare.--Livy, xxxiv. 4.]
[Footnote 33: 'O Publius Gallonius, thou whirlpool of excess;
thou art a miserable man, says he; never in thy life hast thou
supped well, since thou spendest all thy substance in that
lobster of thine and that monstrous sturgeon.'
'This too is the case at dinner, you will give oysters, bought
at a thousand sesterces.'
'Sardines and fish-sauce are your death, O Lupus.'
'Long live, ye gluttons, gourmands, belly-gods.'
'One was attracted by sow-teats and a dish of fatted fowls;
another by a gourmandising pike caught between the two
bridges.'
'Then he wiped the ample table with a purple cloth.'
The two last passages are reproduced by Horace in the lines:--
Unde datum sentis, lupus hic Tiberinus, an alto
Captus hiet, pontesne inter iactatus, an amnis
Ostia sub Tusci?--Sat. ii. 2. 31.
And
Gausape purpureo mensam pertersit.--Ib. ii. 8. 11.]
[Footnote 34: Cf.
Crescit indulgens sibi dirus hydrops, etc.]
[Footnote 35:
Furei cui neque servus est neque arca, etc.]
[Footnote 36: 'Who has neither beast, nor slave, nor
attendant; he carries about him his purse and all his money;
with his purse he sleeps, dines, bathes--his whole hopes
centre in his purse; this purse is fastened to his arm.']
[Footnote 37: Cp. the speech of Cato (Livy, xxxiv. 4) in
support of the Oppian law: 'An blandiores in publico quam in
privato, et alienis quam vestris estis?']
[Footnote 38: 'These bugbears and goblins from the days of
the Fauni and Numa Pompilius fill him with terror; he believes
anything of them. As children suppose that statues of brass
are real and living men, so they fancy all these delusions to
be real: they believe that there is understanding in brazen
images: mere painter's blocks, no reality, all a delusion.'
Cf. Horace, Ep. ii. 2. 208:--
Somnia, terrores magicos, miracula, sagas,
Nocturnos lemures portentaque Thessala rides?]
[Footnote 39: De Fin. i. 3.]
[Footnote 40: 'You preferred, Albucius, to be called a Greek,
rather than a Roman or Sabine, a fellow-countryman of the
Centurions, Pontius, Tritannius, excellent, first-rate men,
and our standard-bearers. Accordingly, I, as praetor of
Athens, when you approach me, greet you, as you wished to be
greeted. "Chaere," I say, Titus; my lictors, escort, staff,
address you with "Chaere." Hence you are to me a public and
private enemy.']
[Footnote 41: Et Pacuvius, et Pacuvio iam sene Accius,
clariorque tunc in poematis corum obtrectandis Lucilius fuit.]
[Footnote 42: E.g.
Ego enim contemnificus fieri et fastidire Agamemnona.--
Di monerint meliora, amentiam averruncassint tuam.--
Hic cruciatur fame,
Frigore, inluvie, inperfundie, inbalnite, incuria.--
Nunc ignobilitas his mirum, taetrum, ac monstrificabile--
Dividant, differant, dissipent, distrahant.]
[Footnote 43: In the same spirit is the following line:--
Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.
And this from another book of Satires:--
Ransuro tragicus qui carmina perdit Oreste.
Among the phrases of Ennius at which Lucilius carped was one
which Virgil did not disdain to adopt. The passage of the old
poet,--
Hastis longis campus splendet et horret,--
parodied by the Satirist in the form 'horret et alget,' was
justified by being reproduced in the Virgilian phrase,
Tum late ferreus hastis
Horret ager.]
[Footnote 44: 'Virtue, Albinus, consists in being able to give
their true worth to the things on which we are engaged, among
which we live. The virtue of a man is to understand the real
meaning of each thing: to understand what is right, useful,
honourable for him; what things are good, what bad, what is
unprofitable, base, dishonourable; to know the due limit and
measure in making money; to give its proper worth to wealth;
to assign what is really due to office; to be a foe and enemy
of bad men and bad principles; to stand by good men and good
principles; to extol the good, to wish them well, to be their
friend through life. Lastly, it is true worth to look on our
country's weal as the chief good; next to that, the weal of
our parents; third and last, our own weal.']
[Footnote 45: 'But now from morning till night, on holiday and
work-day, the whole day alike, common people and senators
are bustling about within the Forum, never quitting it--all
devoting themselves to the same practice and trick of wary
word-fencing, fighting craftily, vying with each other in
politeness, assuming airs of virtue, plotting against each
other as if all were enemies.']
[Footnote 46: Cp. Mr. Monro's criticism in the Journal of
Philology.]
[Footnote 47: Passages of Lucilius apparently imitated by
Lucretius:--
(1) Quantum haurire animus Musarum ec fontibu' gestit.
(2) Cum sciam nil esse in vita proprium mortali datum
Iam qua tempestate vivo, chresin ad me recipio.
(3) Ut pueri infantes credunt signa omnia ahena
Vivere et esse homines, sic istic omnia ficta
Vera putant.
Virgil's 'rex ipse Phanaeus' is said by Servius to be imitated
from the [Greek: Chios te dynastês] of Lucilius. Other
imitations are pointed out in Macrobius and in Servius. An
apparent imitation by Catullus has been already noticed.]
[Footnote 48: Cic. De Fin. i. 3.]
[Footnote 49:
Detrahere et pellem nitidus qua quisque per ora
cederet, introrsum turpis.]
CHAPTER IX.
REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.
The poetic literature reviewed in the last five chapters is the
product of the second century B.C. The latest writers of any
importance belonging to the earlier period of the poetry of the
Republic were Lucilius and Afranius. Half a century from the death of
Lucilius elapsed before the appearance of the poems of Lucretius and
Catullus, which come next to be considered. But before passing on to
this more familiar ground, a few pages may be devoted to a retrospect
of some general characteristics marking the earlier period, and to a
consideration of the social and intellectual conditions under which
literature first established itself at Rome.
With striking individual varieties of character, the poets whose works
have been considered present something of a common aspect, distinct
from that of the literary men of later times. They were placed in
different circumstances, and lived in a different manner from either
the poets who adorned the last days of the Republic or those who
flourished in the Augustan age. The spirit animating their works was
the result of the forces acting on the national life, and the form
and style in which they were composed were determined by the stage of
culture which the national mind had reached, and the stage of growth
through which the Latin language was passing under the stimulus of
that culture.
Like nearly all the literary men of later times, these poets were
of provincial or foreign birth and origin. They were thus born under
circumstances more favourable to, or at least less likely to repress,
the expansion of individual genius, than the public life and private
discipline of Rome. Their minds were thus more open to the reception
of new influences; and their position as aliens, by cutting them
off from an active public career, served to turn their energies
to literature. Their provincial birth and Greek education did not,
however, check their Roman sympathies, or prevent them from stamping
on their writings the impress of a Roman character.
While, like many of the later poets, they came originally as strangers
to Rome, unlike them, they seem to have in later years resided
habitually within the city. The taste for country life prevailing in
the days of Cicero and of Horace was not developed to any great extent
in the times of Ennius or Lucilius. The great Scipio, indeed, retired
to spend the last years of his life at Liternum; and Cicero mentions
the boyish delight of Laelius and the younger Africanus in escaping
from the public business and the crowded streets of Rome to the
pleasant sea-shore of Caieta[1]. Accius seems to have possessed
a country farm, and Lucilius showed something of a wandering
disposition, and possessed the means to gratify it. But most of
these writers were men of moderate means; nor had it then become
the practice of the patrons of literature to bestow farms or
country-houses on their friends. By their circumstances, as well
as the general taste of their time, they were thus brought almost
exclusively into contact with the life and business of the city; and
their works were consequently more distinguished by their strong
sense and understanding than by the passionate or contemplative
susceptibility which characterises the great eras of Latin literature.
It is remarkable that nearly all the early poets lived to a great
age, and maintained their intellectual vigour unabated to their latest
years; while of their successors none reached the natural term of
human life, and some among them, like many great modern poets, were
cut off prematurely before their promise was fulfilled. The finer
sensibility and more passionate agitation of the poetic temperament
appear, in some cases, to exhaust prematurely the springs of life;
while, in natures more happily balanced, or formed by more favourable
circumstances, the gifts of genius are accompanied by stronger powers
of life, and thus maintain the freshness of youth unimpaired till
the last. The length of time during which Naevius, Plautus, Ennius,
Pacuvius, Accius, and probably Lucilius, exercised their art suggests
the inference, either that they were men of firmer fibre than their
successors, or that they were braced to a more enduring strength by
the action of their age. As the work of men writing in the fulness
of their years, the serious poetry of the time appealed to the mature
sympathies of manhood; and even the comic poetry of Plautus deals with
the follies of youth in a genial spirit of indulgence, tempered by the
sense of their absurdity, such as might naturally be entertained by
one who had outlived them.
But perhaps the most important condition determining the original
scope of Roman poetry was the predominance in that era of public over
personal interests. Like Virgil and Horace, most of the early poets
were men born in comparatively a humble station; yet by their force
of intellect and character they became the familiar friends of the
foremost men in the State. But while the poets of the Augustan age
owed the charm of their existence to the patronage of the great, the
earlier poets depended for their success mainly on popular favour. The
intimacy subsisting between the leaders of action and of literature
during the second century B.C. arose from the mutual attraction of
greatness in different spheres. The chief men in the Republic obtained
their position by their services to the State, and thus the personal
attachment subsisting between them and men of letters was a bond
connecting the latter with the public interest. The early poetry of
the Republic is not the expression of an educated minority keeping
aloof from public life. If it is animated by a strong aristocratic
spirit, the reason is that the aristocratic spirit was predominant in
the public life of Rome during that century.
In this era, more than in any later age, the poetry of Rome, like
that of Greece in its greatest eras, addressed itself to popular and
national, not to individual tastes. The crowds that witnessed and
applauded the representations of tragedy as well as comedy, afford
a sufficient proof that the reproduction of Greek subjects and
personages could be appreciated without the accomplishment of a Greek
education. The popularity of the poem of Ennius is attested by his own
language, as well as by the evidence of later writers. The honour of
a public funeral awarded to Lucilius, implies the general appreciation
with which his contemporaries enjoyed the verve, sense, and moral
strength which secured for his satire the favour of a more refined and
critical age.
This general popularity is an argument in favour of the original
spirit animating this early literature. It implies the power of
embodying some sentiment or idea of national or public interest. Thus
Roman tragedy appears to have been received with favour, chiefly
in consequence of the grave Roman tone of its maxims, and the Roman
bearing of its personages. The epic poetry of the age did not, like
the Odyssey, relate a story of personal adventure, but unfolded the
annals of the State in continuous order, and appealed to the pride
which men felt, as Romans, in their history and destiny. The satire of
Lucilius was not intended merely to afford amusement by ridiculing
the follies of social life, but played a part in public affairs by
political partisanship and antagonism, and maintained the traditional
standard of manners and opinions against the inroads of foreign
influences. Latin comedy, indeed, was a more purely cosmopolitan
product. The plays of Terence especially would affect those who
listened to them simply as men and not as Roman citizens. But the
comedy of Plautus abounded in the humour congenial to the Italian
race, and owed much of its popularity to the strong Roman colouring
spread over the Greek outlines of his representations.
The national character of this poetry is attested also by the spirit
and character which pervades it. Among all the authors who have been
reviewed, Ennius alone possessed in a large measure that peculiar vein
of imaginative feeling which is the most impressive element in the
great poets of a later age. The susceptibility of his mind to the
sentiment that moulded the institutions and inspired the policy of the
Imperial Republic, entitles him to rank as the truest representative
of the genius of his country, notwithstanding his apparent inferiority
to Plautus in creative originality. The glow of moral passion, which
is another great characteristic of Latin literature, as it was of the
best types of the Latin race, reveals itself in the remains of all
the serious writers of the age. The struggle between the old Roman
self-respect and the new modes of temptation, is exemplified in the
antagonistic influence exercised by the tragic, epic, and satiric
poetry on the one hand, and the comedy of Plautus and Terence on the
other. The more general popularity of comedy was a symptom of the
facility with which the severer standard of life yielded to the new
attractions. The graver writers, equally with the writers of comedy,
shared in the sceptical spirit, or the religious indifference, which
was one of the dissolving forces of social and political life during
this age. The strong common sense which characterised all the writers
of the time, could not fail to bring them into collision with the
irrational formalism of the national religion; while the distaste for
speculative philosophy which Ennius and Plautus equally express, and
the strong hold which they all have on the immediate interests
of life, explain the absence of any, except the most superficial,
reflections on the more mysterious influences which in the belief of
the great Greek poets moulded human destiny.
The political condition of Rome in the second century B.C. is
reflected in the changes through which her literature passed. For
nearly two-thirds of that century, Roman history seems to go through a
stage of political quiescence, as compared at least with the vigorous
life and stormy passions of its earlier and later phases. But under
the surface a great change was taking place, both in the government
and the social condition of the people, the effects of which made
themselves sufficiently manifest during the last century of the
existence of the Republic. The outbreak of the long gathering forces
of discontent and disorder is as distinctly marked in Roman history,
as the outbreak of the revolutionary forces in modern Europe. The year
133 B.C., the date of the first tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, has
the same kind of significance as the year 1789 A.D. Nor is it a mere
coincidence that about the same time a great change takes place in the
spirit of Roman literature. The comedies of Plautus, written in
the first years of the century, while they reflect the political
indifference of the mass of the people, are yet indicative of their
general spirit of contentment, and their hearty enjoyment of life.
The epic of Ennius, written a little later, proclaims the undisputed
ascendency of an aristocracy, still moulded by its best traditions,
and claiming to lead a united people. The remains of Roman tragedy
breathe the high spirit of the governing class, and attest the severer
virtue still animating its best representatives. The comedies of
Terence seem addressed to the taste of a younger generation of greater
refinement, but of a laxer moral fibre than their fathers, and of a
class becoming separated by more elaborate culture from ordinary Roman
citizens. Expressions in his prologues[2], however, show that
there was as yet no division between classes arising from political
discontent. But in the satire of Lucilius we read the protest of the
better Roman spirit against the lawless arrogance of the nobles, their
incapacity in war, their corrupt administration of justice, their
iniquitous government of the provinces; against the ostentatious
luxury of the rich; the avarice of the middle classes; the venality
of the mob, and the profligacy of their leaders; and against the
insincerity and animosities fostered among the educated classes by the
contests of the forum and the law-courts.
In passing from the substance and spirit of this early literature to
its form and style, we can see by the rudeness of the more original
ventures which the Roman spirit made, how slowly it was educated by
imitative effort to high literary accomplishment. The only writer who
aimed at perfection of form was Terence, and his success was due to
his close adherence to his originals. But as some compensation for
their artistic defects, these early writers display much greater
productiveness than their literary successors. They were like
the settlers in a new country, who are spared the pains of exact
cultivation owing to the absence of previous occupation of the soil,
and the large extent of ground thus open to their industry. The
contrast between the standard aimed at, and the results attained
by the sincerest literary force in two different eras of Roman
literature, is brought home to the mind by contrasting the rude
fragments of the lost works of Ennius, embodying the results of a
long, hearty, active, and useful life, with the small volume which
still preserves the flower of a few passionate years, as fresh as when
the young poet sent it forth:--
Arido modo pumice expolitum.
The style of the early poets was marked by haste, harshness, and
redundance, occasionally by verbal conceits and similar errors of
taste. That of the writers of comedy, on the other hand, is easy,
natural, and elegant. The Latin language seems thus to have adapted
itself to the needs of ordinary social life more readily than to the
expression of elevated feeling. Though many phrases in the fragments
which have been reviewed are boldly and vigorously conceived, few
passages are written with continuous ease and smoothness, and the
language constantly halts, as if inadequate to the meaning which
labours under it. The style has, in general, the merits of directness
and sincerity, often of freshness and vigour, but wants altogether
the depth and richness of colour, as well as the finish and moderation
which we expect in the literature of a people to whom poetry and art
are naturally congenial, and associated with many old memories and
feelings. Their merits of style, such as the simple force with which
they go directly to the heart of a matter, and the grave earnestness
of their tone, are qualities characteristic rather of oratory than of
poetry. But this colouring of their style is very different from the
artificial rhetoric of the literature of the Empire. The oratorical
style of the early poets was the natural result of a sympathy with the
most practical intellectual instrument of their age. The rhetoric
of the Empire was the expression of an artificial life, in which
literature was cultivated to beguile the tedium of compulsory
inaction, and the highest form of public speaking had sunk from its
proud office as the organ of political freedom into a mere exercise of
pedants and schoolboys[3].
The same impulse in this age which gave birth to the forms of serious
poetry, stimulated also the growth of oratory and history. While these
different modes of mental accomplishment all acted and reacted on one
another, oratory appears to have exercised the most influence on the
others. Roman literature is altogether more pervaded by oratorical
feeling than that of any other nation, ancient or modern. From
the natural deficiency of the Romans in the higher dramatic and
speculative genius, the rhetorical element entered largely into
their poetry, their history, and their ethical discussions. Cicero
identifies the faculties of the orator with those of the historian and
the philosopher. His treatise _De Claris Oratoribus_ bears witness to
the energy with which this art was cultivated for more than a century
before his own time; and the remains of Ennius and Lucilius confirm
this testimony. It was from the impassioned and dignified speech of
the forum and senate-house that the Roman language first acquired its
capacity of expressing great emotions. All the serious poetry of the
age bears traces of this influence. Roman tragedy shows its affinity
to oratory in its grave and didactic tone. This affinity is further
implied in the political meaning which the audience attached to the
sentiments expressed, and which the actor enforced by his voice and
manner. It is also attested by the fact that in the time of Cicero,
famous actors were employed in teaching the external graces of public
speaking. The theatre was a school of elocution as much as a place of
dramatic entertainment. Cicero specifies among the qualifications of
a speaker, 'Vox tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum actorum.' Although
the epic poetry of the time mainly appealed to a different class of
sympathies, yet the fragments of speeches in Ennius indicate that
kind of rhetorical power which moves an audience by the weight and
authority of the speaker. Roman satire could wield other weapons
of oratory, such as the fierce invective, the lashing ridicule,
the vehement indignation which have often proved the most powerful
instruments of debate in modern as well as ancient times.
Historical composition also took its rise at Rome at this period.
Although the earliest Roman annalists composed their works in the
Greek language, it was not from the desire of imitating the historic
art of Greece that this art was first cultivated at Rome. The origin
of Roman history may be referred rather to the same impulse which gave
birth to the epic poems of Naevius and Ennius. The early annalists
were men of action and eminent station, who desired to record the
important events in which they themselves had taken part, and to fix
them for ever in the annals of their country. History originated at
Rome in the impulse to keep alive the record of national life, not,
as among the Greeks, in the spell which human story and the wonder of
distant lands exercised over the imagination. Its office was not to
teach lessons of political wisdom, but to commemorate the services of
great men, and to satisfy a Roman's pride in the past, and his trust
in the future of his country. The word _annales_ suggests a different
idea of history from that entertained and exemplified by Herodotus and
Thucydides. The purpose of building up the record of unbroken national
life was present to, though probably not realised by, the earliest
annalists who preserved the line of magistrates, and kept account of
the religious observances in the State: in the time of the expansion
of Roman power, this purpose directed the attention of men of action
to the composition of prose annals, and stimulated the productive
genius of Naevius and Ennius: and when, in the Augustan age, the
national destiny seemed to be fulfilled, the same purpose inspired the
great epic of Virgil, and the 'colossal masterwork of Livy.'
Another form of literature, in which Rome became pre-eminent, first
began in this era,--the writing of familiar letters. It was natural
that a correspondence should be maintained among intimate friends
and members of an active social circle, separated for years from one
another by military service, or employment in the provinces; and the
new taste for literature would induce the writers to give form and
finish to these compositions, so that they might be interesting not
only to the persons addressed, but to all the members of the same
circle. The earliest compositions of this kind of which we read,
are the familiar letters in verse ('Epistolas versiculis facetis ad
familiares missas' Cicero calls them) written to his friends by the
brother of Mummius, during the siege of Corinth[4]. That these had
some literary value may be inferred from the fact that they survived
down to the age of Cicero, and are spoken of in the letters to
Atticus, as having often been quoted to him by a member of the family
of Mummii. One of the earliest satires of Lucilius appears to have
been a letter written to Scipio after the capture of Numantia; and
several of his other satires were written in an epistolary form. How
happily the later Romans employed this form in prose and verse is
sufficiently proved by the letters of Cicero and Pliny, and the
metrical Epistles of Horace.
This era also saw the beginning of the critical and grammatical
studies which flourished through every period of Roman literature, and
continued long after the cessation of all productive originality. This
critical effort was a necessary condition of the cultivation of art by
the Romans. The perfection of form attained by the great Roman poets
of a later time was no exercise of a natural gift, but the result
of many previous efforts and failures, and of much reflection on the
conditions which had been, with no apparent effort, fulfilled by
their Greek masters. Neither did their language acquire the symmetry,
precision, and harmony, which make it so effective a vehicle in prose
and verse, except as the result of assiduous labour. The natural
tendency of the spoken language was to rapid decomposition. This was
first arrested by Ennius, who cast the literary language of Rome
into forms which became permanent after his time. Among his poetic
successors in this era Accius and Lucilius made critical and
grammatical studies the subjects of some of their works. Lucilius was
a contemporary and friend of the most famous of the early grammarians,
Aelius Stilo, the critic to whom is attributed the saying that 'if
the muses were to speak in Latin, they would speak in the language
of Plautus.' Critical works in trochaic verse were written by Porcius
Licinus, and Volcatius Sedigitus, who appear to have been the chief
authorities from whom later writers derived their information as to
the lives of the early poets. It is characteristic of the want of
spontaneousness in Latin literature, as compared with the fresh and
varied impulses which the Greek genius obeyed in every stage of
its literary development, that reflection on the principles of
composition, efforts to form the language into a more certain and
uniform vehicle, and comment on living writers, were carried on
concurrently with the creative efforts of the more original minds.
The existing works of the two great writers of Roman comedy have an
acknowledged value of their own, but even the fragments of this early
literature, originally scattered through the works of many later
authors, and collected together and arranged by the industry of modern
scholars, are found to possess a peculiar interest. They recall
the features of the remarkable men by whom the foundations of Roman
literature were laid, and the Latin language was first shaped into
a powerful and symmetric organ. They present the Roman mind in its
earliest contact with the genius of Greece; and they are almost the
sole contemporary witnesses of national character and public feeling
in the most vigorous and interesting age of the Republic. They throw
also much light on the national sources of inspiration in the later
Roman literature. The early poets are seen to be men living the life
of citizens in a Republic, appealing rather to popular taste than to
the sympathies of a refined and limited society; men of mature years
and understanding, animated by a serious purpose and with a strong
interest in the affairs of their time; rude and negligent but direct
and vigorous in speech,--more remarkable for energy, industry, and
common sense, than for the finer gifts and susceptibility of genius.
Their poetry springing from their sympathy with national and political
life, and from the impulses of the will and the manlier energies,
was less rich, varied, and refined than that which flows out of the
religious spirit of man, out of his passions and affections, or of
his imaginative sense of the life and grandeur of Nature. But in these
respects the early poetry was essentially Roman in spirit, in harmony
with the strength and sagacity, the sobriety and grave dignity of
Rome.
The accomplished art of the last age of the Republic and of the
Augustan age owed much of its national and moral flourishment to the
vigorous life of this early literature. The earnest enthusiasm of
Ennius was inherited by Lucretius,--his patriotic tones were repeated
by Virgil. The lofty oratory of the Aeneid sometimes sounds like an
echo of the grave and ardent style of early tragedy. The strong sense
and knowledge of the world, the frank communicativeness and lively
portraiture of Lucilius reappeared in the familiar writings of Horace,
while his fierce vehemence and bold invective were reproduced by the
vigorous satirist of the Empire.
[Footnote 1: De Orat. ii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Adelphi, 18-21:--
Quom illis placet,
Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent,
Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio
Suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Juv. x. 167:--
Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.]
[Footnote 4: Referred to by Mommsen.]
SECOND PERIOD.
THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.
* * * * *
LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.
CHAPTER X.
TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.
An interval of nearly half a century elapsed between the death of
Lucilius and the appearance of the poem of Lucretius. During this
period no poetical works of any value were produced at Rome. The only
successors of the older tragedians, C. Julius Caesar (Consul B.C. 88)
and C. Titius, never obtained a success on the stage approaching to
that still accorded to the older dramas. No rival appeared to dispute
the popularity enjoyed by Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, as authors
of the Comoedia Palliata; but the literary activity of Afranius and
of T. Quintius Atta, the most eminent among the authors of the Fabulae
togatae, extended into the early years of the first century B.C. It
was during this period also that the Fabula Atellana was raised by L.
Pomponius of Bononia and Novius into the rank of regular literature.
The tendency to depart more and more from the Greek type of comedy,
and to revert to the scenic entertainment native to Italy, is seen in
the attempt of Laberius, in the last years of the Republic, to raise
the Mimus into the sphere of recognised literary art. The Annalistic
epic of Hostius on the Istrian war, and the Annales of Furius, of
Antium, a friend of the elder Catulus, perpetuated the traditional
influence of Ennius, during the interval between Lucilius and
Lucretius. The first attempts to introduce the erotic poetry of
Alexandria, in the form of epigrams and short lyrical poems,
also belong to this period. The writers of this new kind of
poetry,--Valerius Aedituus, Q. Lutatius Catulus (the Colleague of
Marius in his consulship of the year 102 B.C.), and Laevius, the
author of Erotopaegnia, have significance only as indicating the
direction which Roman poetry followed in the succeeding generation.
Cicero in his youth cultivated verse-making, both as a translator
of the poem of Aratus, and as the author of an original poem on
his townsman Marius. His hexameters show considerable advance in
rhythmical smoothness and exactness beyond the previous condition of
that metre, as exemplified in the fragments of Ennius and Lucilius:
and his translation of Aratus marks a stage in the history of Latin
poetry as affording a native model, which Lucretius did not altogether
disregard in the structure of his verse and diction[1]. But Cicero
is not to be ranked among the poets of Rome. He merely practised
verse-making as part of his general literary training. He retained
the accomplishment till his latest years, and shows his facility by
translating passages from the Greek tragedians in his philosophical
works. That he had no true poetical faculty is shown by the apparent
indifference with which he regarded the works of the two great poets
of his time. This indifference is the more marked from his generous
recognition of the oratorical promise and accomplishment of the men
of a younger generation. The tragedies of Q. Cicero were mere literary
exercises and made no impression on his generation. Though several of
the multifarious works of Varro were written in verse, yet the whole
cast of his mind was thoroughly prosaic. His tastes and abilities were
those of an antiquarian scholar, not of a man of poetic genius and
accomplishment.
The period of nearly half a century, from 102 till about 60 B.C.,
must thus be regarded as altogether barren in genuine poetical result.
During this long interval there appeared no successor to carry on the
work of developing the poetical side of a national literature, begun
by Plautus, Ennius, and Lucilius. The only metrical compositions
of this time were either inferior reproductions of the old forms or
immature anticipations of the products of a later age. The political
disturbance of the times between the tribunate of Tib. Gracchus and
the first consulship of Crassus and Pompey (B.C. 70) was unfavourable
to the cultivation of that poetry which is expressive of national
feeling: and the Roman genius for art was as yet too immature to
produce the poetry of individual reflection or personal passion. The
state of feeling throughout Italy, before and immediately subsequent
to the Social War, alienated from Rome the sympathetic genius of the
kindred races from whom her most illustrious authors were drawn in
later times. It was in the years of comparative peace, between the
horrors of the first civil war and the alarm preceding the outbreak of
the second, that a new poet grew apparently unnoticed to maturity, and
the silence was at last broken after the long repression of Italian
genius by a voice at once stronger in native vitality and richer in
acquired culture than any which had preceded it.
But there is one thing significant in the literary character of this
period, otherwise so barren in works of taste and imagination. Those
by whom the art of verse was practised are no longer 'Semi-Graeci' or
humble provincials, but Romans of political or social distinction.
The chief authors in the interval between the first and second era
of Roman poetry are either members of the aristocracy or men of old
family belonging to the equestrian order. And this connexion between
literature and social rank continues till the close of the Republic.
The poets of the Ciceronian age,--Hortensius, Memmius, Lucretius,
Catullus, Calvus, Cinna, &c.--either themselves belonged to the
governing class, or were men of leisure and independent means, living
as equals with the members of that class. This circumstance explains
much of the difference in tone between the literature of that age and
both the earlier and later literature. The separation in taste and
sympathy between the higher classes and the mass of the people which
had begun in the days of Terence, grew wider and wider with the
growth of culture and with the increasing bitterness of political
dissensions. It was only among the rich and educated that poetry
could now expect to find an audience; and the poetry written for them
appealed, for the most part, to the convictions, tastes, pleasures,
and animosities which they shared as members of a class, not, like the
best Augustan poetry, to the higher sympathies which they might share
as the depositaries of great national traditions. But if this poetry
was too exclusively addressed to a class--a class too, though refined
by culture, yet living for the most part the life of fashion and
pleasure--it had the merit of being the sincere expression of men
writing to please themselves and their equals. It was not called upon
to make any sacrifice of individual conviction or public sentiment to
satisfy popular taste or the requirements of an Imperial master.
But though barren in poetry this interval was far from being barren
in other intellectual results. This was the era of the great Roman
orators, the successors of Laelius, Carbo, the Gracchi, etc., and the
immediate predecessors and contemporaries of Cicero. It was through
the care with which public speaking was cultivated that Latin
prose was formed into that clear, exact, dignified, and commanding
instrument, which served through so many centuries as the universal
organ of history, law, philosophy, learning, and religion,--of public
discussion and private correspondence. While Latin poetry is, both in
spirit and manner, quite as much Italian as Roman, Latin prose bears
the stamp of the political genius of Rome. It was the deliberate
expression of the mind of men practised in affairs, exercised in the
deliberations of the Senate, the harangues of the public assemblies,
the pleadings of the courts,--of men accustomed to determine and
explain questions of law and to draw up edicts binding on all subjects
of the State,--trained, moreover, to a sense of literary form by the
study of Greek rhetoric, and naturally guided to clearness and
dignity of expression by the orderly understanding, the strong hold on
reality, and the authoritative bearing which were their birthright as
Romans. The effort which obtained its crowning success in the prose
style of Cicero left its mark on other forms of literature. History
continued to be written by members of the great governing families to
serve both as a record of events and a weapon of party warfare.
The large and varied correspondence of Cicero shows how general the
accomplishment of style had become among educated men. And if this
result was, in the main, due to the fervour of mind and temper
elicited by the contests of public life, the systematic teaching of
grammarians and rhetoricians acted as a corrective of the natural
exuberance or carelessness of the rhetorical faculty.
Perfection of style attained in one of the two great branches of a
national literature cannot fail to react on the other. It was
the peculiarity of Latin literature that this perfection or high
accomplishment was reached in prose sooner than in poetry. The
contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar, whose genius impelled them to
awaken into new life the long silent Muses of Italy, were conscious
that the great effort demanded of them was to raise Latin verse to a
similar perfection of form, diction, and musical cadence. What Cicero
did for Latin prose, in revealing the fertility of its resources,
in giving to it more ample volume, and eliciting its capabilities of
sonorous rhythmical movement, Lucretius aspires to do for Latin verse.
Although Catullus in forming his more elaborate style worked carefully
after the manner of his Greek models, yet we may attribute something
of the terseness, the idiomatic verve, the studied simplicity of
expression in his lighter pieces to the literary taste which he shared
with the younger race of orators, who claimed to have substituted
Attic elegance for Asiatic exuberance of ornament.
During all this interval, in which native poetry was neglected, the
art and thought of Greece were penetrating more deeply into Italy.
Cicero, in his defence of Archias, attests the eagerness with which
Greek studies were cultivated during the early years of the century;
'Erat Italia tunc plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum, studiaque
haec et in Latio vehementius tum colebantur quam nunc iisdem in
oppidis, et hic Romae propter tranquillitatem reipublicae non
neglegebantur.' With the reviving tranquillity of the Republic these
studies also revived. Learned Greeks continued to flock to Rome and
to attach themselves to members of the great houses,--the Luculli,
the Metelli, Pompey, etc.; and it became more and more the custom for
young men of birth and wealth to travel or spend some years of study
among the famous cities of Greece and Asia. This new and closer
contact of the Greek with the Roman mind came about, not as the
earlier one through dramatic representations, but, in a great measure,
through the medium of books, which began now to be accumulated at Rome
both in public and private libraries. Probably no other cause produces
so great a change in national character and intellect as the awakening
of the taste and the creating of facilities for reading. By the
diffusion of books, as well as by the instruction of living teachers,
the Romans of this generation came under the influence of a new class
of writers, whose spirit was more in harmony with the modern world
than the old epic and dramatic poets, viz. the exponents of the
different philosophic systems and the learned poets of Alexandria.
These new influences helped to denationalise Roman thought and
literature, to make the individual more conscious of himself, and
to stimulate the passions and pleasures of private life. While the
endeavour to regulate life in accordance with a system of philosophy
tended to isolate men from their fellows, the study of the Alexandrine
poets, the cultivation of art for its own sake, the exclusive
admiration of a particular manner of writing fostered the spirit
of literary coteries as distinct from the spirit of a national
literature. But making allowance for all these drawbacks, it is to the
Alexandrine culture that the education of the Roman sense of literary
beauty is primarily due. Along with this culture, indeed, the taste
for other forms of art, which was rapidly developed and largely fed
in the last age of the Republic, powerfully cooperated. Lucretius
specifies among the 'deliciae vitae'
Carmina, picturas, et daedala signa[2];
and, in more than one place, he writes, with sympathetic admiration,
of the charm of instrumental music,
Musaea mele per chordas organici quae
Mobilibus digitis expergefacta figurant[3].
The delicate appreciation of the paintings, statues, gems, vases,
etc., either brought to Rome as the spoils of conquest, or seen in
their original home by educated Romans, travelling for pleasure or
employed in the public service, was not without effect in
calling forth the ideal of literary form, realised in some of the
master-pieces of Catullus. We may suppose too that the cultivation of
music had some share in eliciting the lyrical movement in Latin verse
from the fact mentioned by Horace, that the songs of Catullus and
Calvus were ever in the mouths of the fashionable professors of that
art in a later age. If the life of the generation which witnessed
the overthrow of the Republic was one of alarm and vicissitude, of
political unsettlement and moral unrestraint, it was, at the same
time, very rich in its capabilities of sensuous and intellectual
enjoyment. The appetite for pleasure was still too fresh to produce
that deadening of energy and of feeling, which is most fatal to
literary creativeness. The passionate life led by Catullus and his
friends may have shortened the days of some of them, and tended to
limit the range and to lower the aims of their genius, but it did not
dull their vivid sense of beauty, chill their enjoyment of their
art, or impair the mastery over its technical details, for which they
strove.
As the bent given to philosophical and literary studies developed
the inner life and personal tastes of the individual, the political
disorganisation of the age tended to stimulate new modes of thought
and life, which had not, in any former generation, been congenial
to the Roman mind. While the work of political destruction was being
carried on along with the most strenuous gratification of their
passions by one set among the leading men at Rome--such as Catiline
and his associates, and, somewhat later, Clodius, Curio, Caelius,
Antony, etc.--among men of more sensitive and refined natures
the pleasures of the contemplative life began to exercise a novel
fascination. The comparative seclusion in which men like Lucullus and
Hortensius lived in their later years may, perhaps, be accounted for
by other reasons than the mere love of ease and pleasure. It was a
symptom of that despair of the Republic which is so often expressed
in Cicero's letters, and of the consequent diversion of thought from
practical affairs to the questions and interests which concern the
individual. In the same way the unsettlement and afterwards the loss
of political life at Athens gave a great impulse both to the various
philosophical sects on the one hand, and to the literature of the new
comedy, which deals exclusively with private life, on the other. In
Rome this alienation from politics naturally allied itself, among
members of the aristocracy, with the acceptance of the Epicurean
philosophy. The slow dissolution of religious belief which had been
going on since the first contact of the Roman mind with that of
Greece, awoke in Rome, as it had done in Greece, a deeper interest in
the ultimate questions of the existence and nature of the gods and of
the origin and destiny of the human soul. We see how the contemplation
of these questions consoled Cicero when no longer able to exercise
his energy and vivid intelligence on public affairs. He discusses them
with candour and seriousness of spirit and with a strong leaning to
the more hopeful side of the controversy, but scarcely from the point
of view which regards their settlement as of supreme importance to
human well-being. But they are raised from much greater depths of
feeling and inward experience by Lucretius, to whom the life of
political warfare and personal ambition was utterly repugnant, and who
had dedicated himself, with all the intensity of his passionate and
poetical temperament, to the discovery and the teaching of the true
meaning of life. The happiest results of his recluse and contemplative
life were the revelation of a new delight open to the human spirit
through sympathy with the spirit of Nature, and the deepening
beyond anything which had yet found expression in literature of
the fellow-feeling which unites man not only to humanity but to
all sentient existence. The taste, so congenial to the Italian,
for country life found in him its first and most powerful poetical
interpreter: while the humanity of sentiment, first instilled through
the teaching of comedy, and fostered by later literary and ethical
study, was enforced with a greatness of heart and imagination which
has seldom been equalled in ancient or modern times.
The dissolution of traditional beliefs and of the old loyalty to
the State produced very different results on the art and life of the
younger poets of that generation. The pursuit of pleasure, and the
cultivation, purely for its own sake, of art which drew its chief
materials from the life of pleasure, became the chief end and aim
of their existence. In so far as they turned their thoughts from
the passionate pleasures of their own lives and the contemplation of
passionate incidents and situations in art, it was to give expression
to the personal animosities which they entertained to the leaders of
the revolutionary movement. Nor did this animosity spring so much
from public spirit as from a repugnance of taste towards the coarser
partisans of the popular cause, and from the instinctive sense that
the privileges enjoyed by their own caste were not likely to survive
any great convulsion of the State. The intensity of their personal
feelings of love and hatred, and the limitation of their range of
view to the things which gave the most vivid and immediate pleasure
to themselves and to others like them, were the sources of both their
strength and weakness.
Of the poetry which arose out of these conditions of life and culture,
two representatives only are known to us in their works, Lucretius and
Catullus. From the testimony of their contemporaries we know them
to have been recognised as the greatest of the poets of that age.
Lucretius in his own province held an unquestioned pre-eminence. Yet
that other minds were occupied with the topics which he alone treated
with a masterly hand is proved by the existence of a work, of a
somewhat earlier date, by one Egnatius, bearing the title 'De Rerum
Natura,' and also by Cicero's notice, in connexion with his mention of
Lucretius, of the 'Empedoclea' of Sallustius. Varro also is mentioned
by ancient writers, in connexion with Empedocles and Lucretius, as
the author of a metrical work 'De Rerum Natura[4].' More satisfactory
evidence is afforded by the discussions in the 'De Natura Deorum,' the
'Tusculan Questions,' and the 'De Finibus,' of the interest taken by
educated men in the class of questions which Lucretius professed to
answer. Yet neither the antecedent nor the later attention devoted
to these subjects explains the powerful attraction which they had for
Lucretius. In him, more than in any other Roman, we recognise a fresh
and deep source of poetic thought and feeling appearing in the world.
The culture of his age may have suggested or rendered possible the
channel which his genius followed, but cannot account for the power
and intensity with which it poured itself into that channel. He
cannot be said either to sum up the art and thought contemporary with
himself, or, like Virgil, to complete that of preceding times. The
work done by him, and the influence exercised by him on the poetry of
Rome and on the world, are to be explained only by his original and
individual force.
Catullus, on the other hand, was the most successful among a band
of rival poets with most of whom he lived in intimacy. Among the men
older than himself, Hortensius, the orator, and Memmius were known as
writers of amatory poetry. His name as a lyric poet is most usually
coupled with that of his friend Calvus; and a well-known passage of
Tacitus[5] brings together his lampoons and those of Bibaculus as
being 'referta contumeliis Caesarum.' Among others to whom he was
bound by the ties of friendship and common tastes were C. Helvius
Cinna, author of an Alexandrine epic, called Zmyrna, and Caecilius,
author of a poem on Cybele. Ticidas and Anser, mentioned by Ovid among
his own precursors in amatory poetry, also belong to this generation.
Among the swarms of poetasters--
Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae,--
a countryman of his own, Volusius[6], the author of a long Annalistic
epic, is held up by Catullus to especial obloquy.
While so much of the literature of that age has perished, we are
fortunate in possessing the works of the greatest authors in prose and
verse. The poems of Lucretius and Catullus enable us, better perhaps
than any other extant Latin works, to appreciate the most opposite
capacities and tendencies of the Roman genius. In their force and
individuality, they are alike valuable as the last poetic voices of
the Republic, and as, perhaps, the most free and sincere voices of
Rome. The first is one of the truest representatives of the national
strength, majesty, seriousness of spirit, massive constructive energy;
the second is the most typical example of the strong vitality
and passionate ardour of the Italian temperament and of its vivid
susceptibility to the varied beauties of Greek art.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Munro, in his Introduction to Part II of his
Commentary on Lucretius, illustrates this relation of the work
of the poet to this youthful production of Cicero.]
[Footnote 2: v. 1451.]
[Footnote 3: ii. 412; cf. also ii. 505-6:--
Et cycnea mele Phoebeaque daedala chordis
Carmina consimili ratione oppressa silerent.
These lines point to the union of music and lyrical poetry.]
[Footnote 4: Cp. the passages quoted from Quintilian,
Lactantius, etc. by W.S. Teuffel, Wagner's Translation, p.
239.]
[Footnote 5: Annals, iv. 34.]
[Footnote 6: Tanusius Geminus, who has generally been identified
with Volusius from the passage in Seneca, Ep. 93. 11,
'Annales Tanusii scis quam ponderosi sint et quid vocentur,'
is supposed, on the evidence of Suetonius, to have been the author
of a prose history, which he, Plutarch, and Strabo used as an
authority for the times. Seneca certainly must have identified them.
He may have written both in prose and verse, or perhaps the Annals
in verse may have been the historical authority appealed to.
There is, however, this further difficulty in identifying them,
that there is no apparent reason why Catullus should in his case
have deviated from his invariable practice of speaking of the
objects of his satire by their own names. Cf. Schmidt, Catullus,
Prolegomena, p. xlvi.]
CHAPTER XI.
LUCRETIUS.--PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
It is in keeping with the isolated and independent position which
Lucretius occupies in literature, that so little is known of his life.
The two kinds of information available for literary biography,--that
afforded by the author himself, and that derived from contemporaries,
or from later writers who had access to contemporary testimony,--almost
entirely fail us in his case. The form of poetry adopted by him
prevented his speaking of himself and telling his own history, as
Catullus, Horace, Ovid, etc., have done in their lyrical, elegiac, and
familiar writings. His work appears to have been first published after
his death: nor is there any reason to believe that he attracted the
attention of the world in his lifetime. To judge from the silence of
his contemporaries, and from the attitude of mind indicated in his
poem, the words 'moriens natusque fefellit' might almost be written as
his epitaph. Had he been prominent in the social or literary circles
of Rome during the years in which he was engaged on the composition of
his poem, some traces of him must have been found in the correspondence
of Cicero or in the poems of Catullus, which bring the personal life
of those years so close to modern readers. It is thus impossible to
ascertain on what original authority the sole traditional account of
him preserved in the Chronicle of Jerome was based. That account, like
similar notices of other Roman writers, came to Jerome in all
probability from the lost work of Suetonius, 'de viris illustribus.'
But as to the channels through which it passed to Suetonius, we have
no information.
The well-known statement of Jerome is to this effect,--'The poet
Lucretius was born in the year 94 B.C. He became mad from the
administration of a love-philtre, and after composing, in his lucid
intervals, several books which were afterwards corrected by Cicero, he
died by his own hand in his forty-fourth year.' The date of his death
would thus be 50 B.C. But this date is contradicted by the statement
of Donatus in his life of Virgil, that Lucretius died (he says nothing
of his supposed suicide) on the day on which Virgil assumed the 'toga
virilis,' viz. October 15, 55 B.C. And this date derives confirmation
from the fact that the first notice of the poem appears in a letter
of Cicero to his brother, written in the beginning of 54 B.C. As the
condition in which the poem has reached us confirms the statement that
it was left by the author in an unfinished state, it must have been
given to the world by some other hand after the poet's death; and, as
Mr. Munro observes, we should expect to find that it first attracted
notice some three or four months after that event. We must accordingly
conclude that here, as in many other cases, Jerome has been careless
in his dates, and that Lucretius was either born some years before 94
B.C., or that he died before his forty-fourth year. His most recent
Editors, accordingly, assign his birth to the end of the year 99 B.C.
or the beginning of 98 B.C. He would thus be some seven or eight
years younger than Cicero, three or four years younger than Julius
Caesar[1], about the same age as Memmius to whom the poem is
dedicated, and from about twelve to fifteen years older than Catullus
and the younger poets of that generation[2].
But is this story of the poet's liability to fits of derangement, of
the cause assigned for these, of his suicide, and of the correction of
his poem by Cicero, to be accepted as a meagre and, perhaps, distorted
account of certain facts in his history transmitted through some
trustworthy channels, or is it to be rejected as an idle fiction which
may have assumed shape before the time of Suetonius, and been accepted
by him on no other evidence than that of a vague tradition? Though no
certain answer can be given to this question, yet some reasons may be
assigned for according a hesitating acceptance to the main outlines of
the story, or at least for not rejecting it as a transparent fiction.
It may indeed be urged that if this strange and tragical history had
been known to the Augustan poets, who, in greater or less degree,
acknowledge the spell exercised upon them by the genius of Lucretius,
some sympathetic allusion to it would probably have been found in
their writings, such as that in Ovid to the early death of Catullus
and Calvus. It would seem remarkable that in the only personal
reference which Virgil, who had studied his poem profoundly, seems to
make to his predecessor, he characterises him merely as 'fortunate in
his triumph over supernatural terrors.' But, not to press an argument
based on the silence of those who lived near the poet's time, and who,
from their recognition of his genius might have been expected to
be interested in his fate, the sensational character of the story
justifies some suspicion of its authenticity. The mysterious efficacy
attributed to a love-philtre is more in accordance with vulgar
credulity than with experience. The supposition that the poem, or
any considerable portion of it, was written in the lucid intervals of
derangement seems hardly consistent with the evidence of the supreme
control of reason through all its processes of thought. The impression
both of impiety and melancholy which the poem was likely to produce
on ordinary minds, especially after the religious reaction of the
Augustan age, might easily have suggested this tale of madness and
suicide as a natural consequence of, or fitting retribution for, such
absolute separation from the common hopes and fears of mankind[3].
Yet indications in the poem itself have been pointed out which might
incline us to accept the story rather as a meagre tradition of some
tragic circumstances in the poet's history, than as the idle invention
of an uncritical age. The unrelieved intensity of thought and
feeling, by which more almost than any other work of literature it is
characterised, seems indicative of an overstrain of power, which
may well have caused the loss or eclipse of what to the poet was the
sustaining light and joy of his life[4]. Under such a calamity
it would have been quite in accordance with the principles of his
philosophy to seek refuge in self-destruction, and to imitate an
example which he notes in the case of another speculative thinker, on
becoming conscious of failing intellectual power[5]. But this general
sense of overstrained tension of thought and feeling is, as was first
pointed out by his English Editor, much intensified by references in
the poem (as at i. 32; iv. 33, etc.), to the horror produced on
the mind by apparitions seen in dreams and waking visions[6]. 'The
emphatic repetition,' says Mr. Munro, 'of these horrid visions seen
in sickness might seem to confirm what is related of the poet being
subject to fits of delirium or disordering sickness of some sort.' He
further shows by quotation from Suetonius' 'Life of Caligula,' that
such mental conditions were attributed to the administration of
a love-philtre. The coincidence in these recorded cases may imply
nothing more than the credulity of Suetonius, or of the authorities
whom he followed: but it is conceivable that Lucretius may have
himself attributed what was either a disorder of his own constitution,
or the result of a prolonged overstrain of mind, to the effects of
some powerful drug taken by him in ignorance[7].
Thus, while the statement of Jerome admits neither of verification nor
refutation, it may be admitted that there are indications in the poem
of a great tension of mind, of an extreme vividness of sensibility, of
an indifference to life, and, in the later books, of some failure
in the power of organising his materials, which incline us rather to
accept the story as a meagre and distorted record of tragical events
in the poet's life, than as a literary myth which took shape out of
the feelings excited by the poem in a later age. Yet this qualified
acquiescence in the tradition does not involve the belief that
any considerable portion of the poem was written 'per intervalla
insaniae,' or that the disorder from which the poet suffered was
actually the effect of a love-philtre.
The statement involved in the words 'quos Cicero emendavit,' has also
been the subject of much criticism. No one can read the poem without
recognising the truth of the conclusion established by Lachmann, and
accepted by the most competent Editors of the poem since his time,
that the work must have been left by the author in an unfinished state
and given to the world by some friend or some person to whom the task
of editing it had been entrusted. But there is some difficulty in
accepting the statement that this editor was Cicero. His silence on
the subject of his editorial labours, when contrasted with the frank
communicativeness of his Epistles in regard to anything which for the
time interested him, and the slight esteem with which he regarded the
philosophy which is embodied in the poem, justify some hesitation in
accepting the authority of Jerome on this point also. He only once
mentions the poem in a letter to his brother Quintus[8], and in
passages of his philosophical works in which he seems to allude to it
he expresses himself slightingly and somewhat contemptuously[9]. In
the disparaging references to the Latin writers on Greek philosophy
before the appearance of his own Tusculan Questions and Academics, he
makes no exception in favour of Lucretius. The words in his letter
to his brother Quintus are these, 'Lucretii poemata, ut scribis, ita
sunt, multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis: sed cum veneris,
virum te putabo, si Sallustii Empedoclea legeris, hominem non putabo.'
Professor Tyrrell in his 'Correspondence of Cicero,' remarks on this
passage (vol. II. page 106): 'The criticism of Quintus, with which
Cicero expresses his accord, was that Lucretius had not only much of
the _genius_ of Ennius and Attius, but also much of the _art_ of the
poets of the new school, among them even Catullus, who are fashioning
themselves on the model of the Alexandrine poets, especially
Callimachus and Euphorion of Chalcis. This new school Cicero refers
to as the [Greek: neôteroi] (Att. VII. 2. 1) and as _hi cantores
Euphorionis_ (Tusc. III. 45). Their _ars_ seemed to Cicero almost
incompatible with the _ingenium_ of the old school. This criticism on
Lucretius is not only quite just from Cicero's point of view, but it
is most pointed. Yet the editors from Victorius to Klotz will not let
Cicero say what he thought. They insert a _non_ either before _multis_
or before _multae_, and thus deny him either _ingenium_ or _ars_. The
point of the judgment is that Lucretius shows the genius of the old
school and (what might seem to be incompatible with it) the art of
the new[10].' Thus if his notice of the poem is slight, it is not
deficient in appreciation. Mr. Munro succeeds in explaining Cicero's
silence on the subject in his other correspondence. It is in his
Letters to his oldest and most intimate correspondent, the Epicurean
Atticus, that we should expect to find notices of his editorial
labours. It was a task on which Atticus might have given most valuable
help from his large employment of educated slaves in the copying of
manuscripts. Cicero's silence on the subject in the Letters to Atticus
is fully explained by the fact that they were both in Rome during
the greater part of the time between the death of Lucretius and the
publication of his poem. Again, Cicero's strong opposition to the
Epicurean doctrines was not incompatible with the closest
friendship with many who professed them; and this opposition was not
conspicuously declared till some years after this time. Lucretius
would have sympathised with Cicero's political attitude, as he appears
to commend Memmius for adopting a similar attitude in his Praetorship,
and he must have known that Cicero was the man of widest literary
culture then living. There is thus no great difficulty in supposing
that the work of even so uncompromising a partisan as Lucretius should
have been placed, either by his own request or by the wish of his
friends, in the hands of one who was not attracted to it either by
strong poetical or philosophical sympathy. The energetic kindliness
of Cicero's nature, and his active interest in literature, would have
prompted him not to decline the service if he were asked to render it.
Thus, although on this point too our judgment may well be suspended,
we may think with pleasure of the good-will and kindly offices of the
most humane and energetic among Roman writers, as exercised in behalf
of Lucretius after his untimely death.
This is all the direct external evidence available for the personal
history of Lucretius. It is remarkable, when compared with the
information given in his other notices, that the record of Jerome does
not even mention the poet's birth-place. This may be explained on the
supposition either that the authorities followed by Jerome knew very
little about him, or that, if he were born at Rome, there would not be
the same motive for giving prominence to the place of his birth, as
in the case of poets and men of letters who brought honour to the less
famous districts of Italy. While Lucretius applies the word _patria_
to the Roman State ('patriai tempore iniquo'), and the adjective
_patrius_ to the Latin language, these words are used by other Roman
poets,--Ennius and Virgil for instance,--in reference to their own
provincial homes. The Gentile name Lucretius was one eminently Roman,
nor is there ground for believing that, like the equally ancient and
noble name borne by the other great poet of the age, it had become
common in other parts of Italy. The name suggests the inference that
Lucretius was descended from one of the most ancient patrician houses
of Rome, but one, as is pointed out by Mr. Munro, more famous in the
legendary than in the later annals of the Republic. Some members
of the same house are mentioned in the letters of Cicero among the
partisans of Pompey: and possibly the Lucretius Ofella, who was one of
the victims of Sulla's tyranny, may have been connected with the poet.
As the position indicated by the whole tone of the poem is that of a
man living in easy circumstances, and of one, who, though repelled
by it, was yet familiar with the life of pleasure and luxury, he must
have belonged either to a senatorian family, or to one of the richer
equestrian families, the members of which, if not engaged in financial
and commercial affairs, often lived the life of country gentlemen
on their estates and employed their leisure in the cultivation of
literature. The tone of the dedication to Memmius, a member of a noble
plebeian house, and of the occasional addresses to him in the body of
the poem, is not that of a client to a patron, but of an equal to an
equal:--
Sed tua me virtus tamen et sperata voluptas
Suavis amicitiae--.
While Lucretius pays the tribute of admiration to the literary
accomplishment of his friend, and to the active part which he played
in politics, he yet addresses him with the authority of a master. In
a society constituted as that of Rome was in the last age of the
Republic this tone could only be assumed to a member of the
governing class by a social equal. Memmius combined the pursuits of
a politician, a man of letters, and a man of pleasure; and in none of
these capacities does he seem to have been worthy of the affection and
admiration of Lucretius. But as he filled the office of Praetor in the
year 58 B.C.[11] it may be inferred that he and the poet were about
the same age, and thus the original bond between them may probably
have been that of early education and literary sympathies. That
Memmius retained a taste for poetry amid the pursuits and pleasures of
his profligate career is shown by the fact that he was the author of a
volume of amatory poems, and also by his taking with him, in the
year 57 B.C., the poets Helvius Cinna and Catullus, on his staff
to Bithynia. The keen discernment of the younger poet, sharpened by
personal animosity, formed a truer estimate of his chief, than that
expressed by the philosophic enthusiast. But at the time in which the
words--
Nec Memmi clara propago
Talibus in rebus communi deesse saluti--
were written, even Cicero regarded him as one of the bulwarks of the
senatorian cause against Clodius and his influential supporters. And
neither the scandal of his private nor of his public life prevented
his being in later years among the orator's correspondents.
This relation to Memmius is the only additional fact which an
examination of the poem brings into light. Nothing is learned from
it of the poet's parentage, his education, his favourite places of
residence, of his career, of his good or evil fortune. There were
eminent Epicurean teachers at Athens and Rome (Patro, Phaedrus,
Philodemus, etc.) during his youth and manhood, but it is useless to
ask what influence of teachers or personal experience induced him
to become so passionate a devotee of the doctrines of Epicurus.
Yet though no direct reference to his circumstances is found in his
writings, we may yet mark indirect traces of the impression produced
upon him by the age in which his youth and manhood were passed; we
seem to catch some glimpses of his habitual pursuits and tastes, to
gain some real insight into his being, to apprehend the attitude in
which he stood to the great teachers of the past, and to know the
man by knowing the objects in life which most deeply interested him.
Nothing, we may well believe, was further from his wish or intention
than to leave behind him any record of himself. No Roman poet has
so entirely sunk himself and the remembrance of his own fortunes
in absorption in his subject. But his strong personal force and
individuality have penetrated deeply into all his representation, his
reasoning, and his exhortation. From the beginning to the end of the
poem we feel that we are listening to a living voice speaking to us
with the direct impressiveness of personal experience and conviction.
No writer ever used words more clearly or more sincerely: no one shows
a greater scorn for the rhetorical artifices which disguise the lack
of meaning or insinuate a false conclusion by fine-sounding phrases:--
Quae belle tangere possunt
Auris et lepido quae sunt fucata sonore[12].
The union of an original and independent personality with the utmost
sincerity of thought and speech is a characteristic in which Lucretius
resembles Thucydides. It is this which gives to the works of both,
notwithstanding their studied self-suppression, the vivid interest of
a direct personal revelation.
The tone of many passages in the poem clearly indicates that
Lucretius, though taking no personal part in the active politics of
his age, was profoundly moved by the effects which they produced on
human happiness and character. Thus the lines at iii. 70-74--
Sanguine civili rem conflant, etc.--
recall the thought and spectacle of crime and bloodshed vividly
presented to him in the impressible years of his youth[12]. Other
passages are an immediate reflexion of the disturbance and alarm of
the times in which the poem was written. Thus the opening lines of
the second book, which contrast the security of the contemplative
life with the strife of political and military ambition, seem to
be suggested by the action of what is sometimes called the first
triumvirate. The lines--
Si non forte tuas legiones per loca campi, etc.--
have been noted[14] as a probable allusion to the position actually
taken up by Julius Caesar outside of Rome in the opening months of the
year 58 B.C. Some earlier lines of the same passage--
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri,--
have a resemblance to words directly applied by Cicero to Caesar[15],
and are certainly more applicable to him than to any other of the
poet's contemporaries. The political reflexions in the poem, as for
instance that at v. 1123, seem, in almost all cases, to be forced from
him by the memory of the first civil war, or the vague dread of that
which was impending. It is not from any effeminate recoil from danger,
but rather from horror of the turbulence, disorder, and crimes against
the sanctities of human life, involved in the strife of ambition, that
Lucretius preaches the lessons of political quietism. And while his
humanity of feeling makes him shrink from the prospect of evil days,
like those which he well remembered, again awaiting his country, his
capacity for pure and simple pleasures makes him equally shrink from
the spectacle of prodigal luxury which Rome then presented in a degree
never before witnessed in the world.
Thus the first general impression of Lucretius which we form from his
poem is that of one who, from a strong distaste to the life of
action and social pleasure, deliberately chose the life of
contemplation,--the 'fallentis semita vitae.' Some illustrations of
his argument--as, for instance, a description of the state of mental
tension produced by witnessing public games and spectacles for many
days in succession[16], of the reflexion of the colours cast on the
stage by the awnings of the theatre[17], of the works of art adorning
the houses of the great[18], etc.--imply that he had not always been
a stranger to the enjoyments of city life, and that they attracted
him by a certain fascination of pomp and novelty. His pictures of
the follies of the 'jeunesse dorée' (at iv. 1121, etc.), and of sated
luxury (at iii. 1060, etc.), show that he had been a witness of the
conditions of life out of which they were engendered. At iv. 784,
in speaking of the power of the mind to call up images, he specifies
'conventus hominum, pompam, convivia, pugnas.' But such illustrations
are rare when compared with those which speak of a life passed in the
open air, and of intimate familiarity with many aspects of Nature. The
vivid minuteness with which outward things are described, as well as
the occasional use of such words as _vidi_[19], show that though a few
of the sights observed by him may have been drawn from the physics
of Epicurus[20], the great mass of them had either been originally
observed by himself or at least had been verified in his own
experience. He was endowed not only with the poet's susceptibility
to the beauty and movement of the outward world, but also with the
observing faculty and curiosity of a naturalist: and by both impulses
he was more attracted to the solitudes of Nature than to the haunts of
men. Many bright illustrations of his argument tell of hours spent by
the sea shore. Thus he notes minutely the effect of the exhalations
from the salt water in wearing away rocks and walls (i. 336; iv. 220),
of the invisible influence of the sea-air in producing moisture in
clothes (i. 305; vi. 472), or a salt taste in the mouth (iv. 222), of
the varied forms of shells paving the shore (ii. 374), of the sudden
change of colour when the winds raise the white crest of the waves
(ii. 765), of the appearance of sky and water produced by a black
storm-cloud passing over the sea (vi. 256). Other passages show his
familiarity with inland scenes,--with the violent rush of rivers in
flood (i. 280, etc.), or their stately flow through fresh meadows (ii.
362), or their ceaseless unperceived action in eating away their banks
(v. 256);--or again, with all the processes of husbandry, the growth
of plants and trees, the ways of flocks and herds in their pastures,
and the sounds and sights of the pathless woods. While he anticipates
Virgil in his Italian love of peaceful landscape, he shows some
foretaste of the modern passion for the mountains,--as (at ii. 331)
where he speaks of 'some spot among the lofty hills,' commanding a
distant view of a wide expanse of plain, and (at iv. 575) where he
recalls the memory of wanderings among mountain solitudes--
Palantis comites cum montis inter opacos
Quaerimus et magna dispersos voce ciemus,--
and (at vi. 469) where he notices the more powerful action of the wind
on the movements of the clouds at high altitudes--
Nam loca declarat sursum ventosa patere
Res ipsa et sensus, montis cum ascendimus altos.
Even some of the metaphorical phrases in which he figures forth the
pursuit of truth seem to be taken from mountain adventure[21]. The
mention of companionship in some of these wanderings, and in other
scenes in which the charm of Nature is represented as enhancing the
enjoyment of a simple meal--
Propter aquae rivum sub ramis arboris altae,--
enables us to think of him as, although isolated in his thoughts from
other men, yet not separated from them in the daily intercourse of
life by any unsocial austerity. Such separation would have been quite
opposed both to the teaching and the example of his master. Some
remembrance of active adventure is suggested by illustrations of his
philosophy drawn from the experience of a sea-voyage (iv. 387, etc.,
432), of riding through a rapid stream (iv. 420), of watching the
action of dogs tracking their game through woods and over mountains
(i. 404), or renewing the memories of the chase in their dreams (v.
991, etc.). The lines (at ii. 40, etc., and 323, etc.) show that his
imagination had been moved by witnessing the evolutions of armies,
not indeed in actual warfare, but in the pomp and pageantry of martial
spectacles,--'belli simulacra cientes.' These and many other indirect
indications afford some glimpses of his habitual manner of life and of
the pursuits that gave him most lively pleasure: but they do not give
us any special knowledge of the particular districts of Italy in which
he lived, or of the scenes in foreign lands which he may have visited.
The poem tells us nothing immediately of the trials or passions of his
life, though of both he seems to bear the scars. But as passages in
which he reveals the deep secrets of human passion and suffering prove
him to have been a man of strong, ardent, and vividly susceptible
temperament, so the numerous illustrations drawn from the repertory of
his personal observation tell of an eye trained to take delight in the
outward face of Nature as well as of a mind unwearied in its search
into her hidden laws. One great charm of his work is that it breathes
of the open air more than of the library. If, in dealing with the
problems of human life, his strain--
'Is fraught too deep with pain,'
yet to him too might be applied the lines written of one who, though
not comparable to him in intellectual and imaginative power, yet, in
his spiritual isolation from the world, seems almost like his modern
counterpart--
'And thou hast pleasures too to share
With those who come to thee,
Balms floating on thy mountain air
And healing sights to see[22].'
But we may trust with even more confidence to the indications of his
inner than of his outward life. The spirit and purpose which impelled
Lucretius to expound his philosophy can be understood without any
collateral knowledge of his history. The dominant impulse of his
being is the ardent desire to emancipate human life from the fears and
passions by which it is marred and degraded. He has more of the zeal
of a religious reformer than any other ancient thinker, except one who
in all his ways of life was most unlike him, the Athenian Socrates.
The speculative enthusiasm which bears him along through his argument
is altogether subsidiary to the furtherance of his practical purpose.
Even the poetical power to which the work owes its immortality was
valued chiefly as a pleasing means of instilling the unpalatable
medicine of his philosophy[23] into the minds and hearts of unwilling
hearers. It is the constant presence of this practical purpose, and
the profound sense which he has of the actual misery and degradation
of human life, and of the peace and dignity which are attainable
by man, that impart to his words the peculiar tone of impassioned
earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient literature.
Among his personal characteristics none is more prominent than his
consciousness both of the greatness of the work on which he was
engaged, and of his own power to cope with it. The passage in which
his high self-confidence is most powerfully proclaimed (i. 920, etc.)
has been imitated both by Virgil and Milton. The sense of novelty,
adventure, and high aspiration expressed in the lines--
Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
Trita solo--
moved Virgil less powerfully in speaking of his humbler theme--
Sed me Parnassi deserta per ardua dulcis
Raptat amor;
and inspired the English poet in his great invocation:--
'I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
The sense of difficulty and the joy of overcoming it meet us with
a keen bracing effect in many passages of the poem. He speaks
disdainfully of those enquirers who fall into error by shrinking from
the more adventurous paths that lead to truth--
Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai.
Without disowning the passion for fame,--'laudis spes magna,' so
powerful an incentive to the Roman temperament,--he is more inspired
and supported in his arduous task by 'the sweet love of the Muses.'
The delight in the exercise of his art and the joyful energy sustained
through the long processes of gathering and arranging his materials
appear in such passages as iii. 419-20:--
Conquisita diu dulcique reperta labore
Digna tua pergam disponere carmina cura:
and again at ii. 730--
Nunc age dicta meo dulci quaesita labore
Percipe.
The thoroughness and devotion of a student tell their own tale in such
expressions as the 'studio disposta fideli,' and the 'noctes vigilare
serenas' in the dedication to Memmius, and in the more enthusiastic
acknowledgment of the source from which he drew his philosophy at iii.
29, etc.--
Tuisque ex, inclute, chartis,
Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia libant,
Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta.
The absorbing interest with which he carried on the work of enquiry
and of composition appears in illustrations of his argument drawn from
his own pursuits; as where (ii. 979) in arguing that, if the atoms
have the properties of sense, those of which man is compounded must
have the intellectual attributes of man, he says,--
Multaque de rerum mixtura dicere callent
Et sibi proporro quae sint primordia quaerunt[24];
and, again (at iv. 969), in explaining how men in their dreams seem to
carry on the pursuits to which they are most devoted, how lawyers seem
to plead their causes, generals to fight their battles over again,
sailors to contend with the elements, he adds these lines:--
Nos agere hoc autem et naturam quaerere rerum
Semper et inventam patriis exponere chartis[25].
His frequent use of the sacrificial phrase 'Hoc age,' affords evidence
of the religious earnestness with which he had devoted himself to his
task.
The feeling animating him through all his great adventure,--through
the wastest flats as well as the most commanding heights over which it
leads him,--is something different from the delight of a poet in his
art, of a scholar in his books, of a philosopher in his thought, of
a naturalist in his observation. All of these modes of feeling are
combined with the passion of his whole moral and intellectual being,
aroused by the contemplation of the greatest of all themes--'maiestas
cognita rerum'--and concentrated on the greatest of practical
ends, the emancipation and elevation of human life. The life of
contemplation which he alone among the Romans deliberately chose and
realised he carried out with Roman energy and fortitude. It was with
him no life of indolent musing, but one of thought and study, varied
and braced by original observation. It was a life, also, of strenuous
literary effort employed in giving clearness to obscure materials,
and in eliciting poetical charm from a language to which the musical
cadences of verse had been hitherto almost unknown. Above all, it was
the life of one who, while feeling the spell of Nature more profoundly
than any poet who had gone before him, did not in that new rapture
forget
'The human heart by which we live.'
His high intellectual confidence, based on his firm trust in his
master, shows itself in a spirit of intolerance towards the school
which was the chief antagonist of Epicureanism at Rome. His argument
is a vigorous protest against philosophical error and scepticism,
as well as against popular ignorance and superstition. His polemical
attitude is seen in the frequent use of such expressions as 'vinco,'
'dede manus,' etc., addressed to an imaginary opponent. Discussion of
topics, not apparently necessary to his main argument, is raised with
the object of carrying the war into the enemy's camp. Such frequently
recurring expressions as 'ut quidam fingunt,' 'perdelirum esse
videtur,' etc., are invariably aimed at the Stoics[26]. Of other early
philosophers, even when dissenting from their opinions, he speaks
in terms of admiration and reverence: but Heraclitus, whose physical
explanation of the universe was adopted by the Stoics, is described in
terms of disparagement, levelled as much against his later followers
as against himself, as--
Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter inanis
Quamde gravis inter Graios qui vera requirunt.
The traditional opposition between Democritus and Heraclitus lived
after them. Adherence to the doctrine of 'atoms and the void,' and
to that of 'the pure fiery element,' became the symbol of a radical
divergence in the whole view of human life.
While there is frequent allusion to the Stoics in the poem, there is
no direct mention either of them or of their chief teachers, Zeno,
Chrysippus, or Cleanthes. Neither do the greater names of Socrates,
Plato, or Aristotle appear in it, though one or two passages clearly
imply some familiarity with the writings of Plato[27]. But among the
moral teachers of antiquity he acknowledges Epicurus only. The whole
enthusiasm of his temperament breaks out in admiration of him. He
alone is the true interpreter of Nature and conqueror of superstition
(i. 75); the reformer 'who has made pure the human heart' (vi. 24);
the 'guide out of the storms and darkness of life into calm and light'
(iii. 1; v. 11, 12); the 'sun who at his rising extinguished all the
lesser stars' (iii. 1044). He is to be ranked even as a God on account
of his great services to man, in teaching him the mastery over his
fears and passions:--
Deus ille fuit, deus, inclute Memmi[28].
He speaks of his master throughout not only with the affection of
a disciple, but with an emotion akin to religious ecstasy[29]. His
admiration for him springs from a deeper source of spiritual sentiment
than that of Ennius for Scipio, or of Virgil for Augustus. Though
Epicurus inspired much affection in his lifetime, and though
other great writers after Lucretius,--such as Seneca, Juvenal, and
Lucian,--vindicate his name from the dishonour which the perversion of
his doctrines brought upon it, yet even the most favourable criticism
of his life and teaching must find it difficult to sympathise with
the idolatry of Lucretius. Yet his error, if it be one, springs from a
generous source. He attributes his own imaginative interest in Nature
to a philosopher who examined the phenomena of the outward world
merely to find a basis for the destruction of all religious belief.
He saturates with his own deep human feeling a moral system which
professes to secure human happiness by emptying life of its most
sacred associations, most passionate longings, and profoundest
affections.
There was a truer affinity of nature between Lucretius and another
philosopher whom he names with the warmest feelings of love and
veneration--Empedocles of Agrigentum--the most famous of the early
physiological poets of Greece. He flourished during the fifth century
B.C., and was the author of a didactic poem on Nature, of which some
fragments still remain, sufficient to indicate the nature of the work
and the character of the man. These fragments prove that Lucretius had
carefully studied the older poem, and adopted it as his model in using
a poetical form and diction to expound his philosophical system. He
declares, indeed, his opposition to the doctrine of Empedocles, which
traced the origin of all things to four original elements; but he
adopted into his own system many both of his expressions and of his
philosophical ideas. The line in which the Roman poet enunciates his
first principle,--
Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,
was obviously taken from the lines of the old poem [Greek: peri
physeôs]--
[Greek:
ek tou gar mê eontos amêchanon esti genesthai
to t' eon exollysthai anênyston kai aprêkton.]
Speaking of Sicily as a rich and wonderful land, Lucretius pays his
tribute of love and admiration to his illustrious predecessor in these
lines,--
Nil tamen hoc habuisse viro praeclarius in se
Nec sanctum magis et mirum carumque videtur.
Carmina quin etiam divini pectoris eius
Vociferantur et exponunt praeclara reperta,
Ut vix humana videatur stirpe creatus[30].
There is a close agreement between the two poetical philosophers in
their imaginative mode of conceiving Nature. They both represented the
principle of beauty and life in the universe under the symbol of the
Goddess of Love--'[Greek: Kypri basileia]'; 'alma Venus, genetrix.'
They both explain the unceasing process of decay and renovation in the
world by an image drawn from the most impressive spectacle of human
life--a mighty battle, waged through all time between opposing forces.
The burden and the mystery of life seem to weigh heavily on both, and
to mould their very language to a deep, monotonous solemnity of tone.
But along with this affinity of temperament there is also a marked
difference in their modes of thought and feeling. The view of Nature
in the philosophy of Empedocles appears to be just emerging out of the
anthropomorphic fancies of an earlier time: the first rays of knowledge
are seen trying to pierce through the clouds of the dawn of enquiry:
the dreams and sorrows of religious mysticism accompany the awakened
energies of the reason. His mournful tone is the voice of the
intellectual spirit lamenting its former home, and baffled in its eager
desire to comprehend 'the whole.' Lucretius, on the other hand, saw the
outward world as it looks in the light of day, neither glorified by the
mystic colours of religion, nor concealed by the shadows of mythology.
He was moved neither by the passionate longing of the soul, nor by the
'divine despair' of the intellect: but he felt profoundly the sorrows
of the heart, and was weighed down by the ever-present consciousness
of the misery and wretchedness in the world. The complaint of the first
is one which has been uttered from time to time by some solitary
thinker in modern as in ancient days:--
[Greek:
pauron de zôês abiou meros athrêsantes
hôkymoroi, kapnoio dikên arthentes apeptan,
auto monon peisthentes, hotô prosekursen hekastos,
pantos' elaunomenoi; to d' oulon epeuchetai heurein
autôs. out' epiderkta tad' andrasin out' epakousta
oute noô perilêpta[31].]
The other gives a real and expressive utterance to that 'thought of
inexhaustible melancholy,' which has weighed on every human heart:--
Miscetur funere vagor
Quem pueri tollunt visentis luminis oras:
Nec nox ulla diem neque noctem aurora secutast
Quae non audierit mixtos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[32].
Besides Epicurus and Empedocles Lucretius mentions Democritus and
Anaxagoras, and speaks even of those whom he confutes as 'making
many happy discoveries by divine inspiration,' and as 'uttering their
responses from the shrine of their own hearts with more holiness
and truth than the Pythia from the tripod and laurel of Apollo.'
The reverence which other men felt in presence of the ceremonies of
religion he feels in presence of the majesty of Nature; and to the
interpreters of her meaning he ascribes the holiness claimed by the
ministers of religion. Thus, to a doctrine of Democritus he applies
the words 'sancta viri sententia.' The divinest faculty in man is
that by which truth is discovered. The highest office of poetry is
to clothe the discoveries of thought with the charm of graceful
expression and musical verse[33].
Of other Greek authors, Homer and Euripides are those of whom we find
most traces in the poem. To the first he awards a high pre-eminence
above all other poets,--
Adde repertores doctrinarum atque leporum,
Adde Heliconiadum comites; quorum unus Homerus
Sceptra potitus eadem aliis sopitu' quietest[34].
The passages in which Lucretius imitates him show how clearly
he recognised his exact vision of outward things, and his true
appreciation of the moral strength and dignity of man. The frequent
imitations of Euripides[35] show that while he felt the spell of
his pathos, he was also attracted by the poetic mould into which the
tragic poet has cast the physical speculations of Anaxagoras. Allusion
is made in tones of indifference or disparagement to other poets of
Greece, as having, in common with the painters of former times, given
shape and substance to the superstitious fancies of mankind. It is
characteristic of his powerful and independent genius, that, unlike
the younger poets of his generation, he adheres to the older
writers of the great days of Greece, and acknowledges no debt to
the Alexandrine School. Although amply furnished with the knowledge
necessary for the performance of his task, he is a poet of original
genius much more than of learning and culture: and he is thus more
drawn to those who acted on him by a kindred power, than to those
who might have served him as models of poetic form or repertories of
poetic illustration. The strength of his understanding attracted him
to some of the great prose-writers of Greece, by whom that quality
is most conspicuously displayed; notably to Thucydides, whom he has
closely followed in his account of the 'Plague at Athens,' and, as has
been shown by Mr. Munro, to Hippocrates. The kind of attraction which
the last of these has for him confirms the criticism of Goethe, that
Lucretius shows the observing faculty of a physician, as well as of a
poet.
The diction and rhythm of the poem, as well as the more direct tribute
of personal acknowledgment[36], prove that he was an admiring student
of his own countryman Ennius, to whom in some qualities of his
temperament and genius he bore a certain resemblance. Many lines,
phrases, and archaic words in Lucretius, such as--
Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret,--
Lumina sis oculis etiam bonus Ancu' reliquit,--
inde super terras fluit agmine dulci,--
multa munita virum vi; caerula caeli Templa; Acherusia templa; luminis
oras; famul infimus; induperator; Graius homo, etc.--
have a clear ring of the old poet. The few allusions to Roman history
in the poem, as, for instance, the line--
Scipiadas, belli fulmen, Carthaginis horror,--
the specification at iii. 833 of the second Punic War as a momentous
crisis in human affairs,--the description at v. 1226 of a great naval
disaster, such as happened in the first Punic War--the introduction
there of elephants into the picture of the pomp and circumstance of
war,--suggest the inference that, just as events and personages of the
earlier history of England live in the imaginations of many English
readers from their representation in the historical plays of
Shakspeare, so the past history of his country lived for Lucretius in
the representation of Ennius. But of the national pride by which
the older poet was animated, the work of Lucretius bears only scanty
traces. The feeling which moved him to identify the puissant energy
pervading the universe with 'the mother of the Aeneadae,' and the
motive of his prayer for peace addressed to that Power,--
Nam neque nos agere hoc patriai tempore iniquo,--
seem indeed to spring from sources of patriotic affection, perhaps all
the deeper because not too loudly proclaimed. But in the body of the
poem his illustrations are taken as frequently from Greek as from
Roman story, from the strangeness of foreign lands as from the beauty
of Italian scenes. The Georgics of Virgil, in the whole conception of
Nature as a living power, and in many special features, owe much to
the imaginative thought of Lucretius; but nothing can be more unlike
the spirit of the older poet than the episodes in which Virgil pours
forth all his Roman feeling and his love of Italy. The height from
which Lucretius contemplates all human history, as 'a procession of
the nations handing on the torch of life from one to another,' is wide
apart from that from which Virgil beholds all the nations of the world
doing homage to the majesty of Rome. The poem of Lucretius breathes
the spirit of a man, apparently indifferent to the ordinary sources of
pleasure and of pride among his countrymen. Living in an era, the most
momentous in its action on the future history of the world, he was
only repelled by its turbulent activity. The contemplation of the
infinite and eternal mass and order of Nature made the issues of
that age and the imperial greatness of his country appear to him as
transient as the events of the old Trojan and Theban wars. To him, as
to the modern poet, whose imagination most nearly resembles his, the
thought of more enduring things had
'Power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.'
But while by his silence on the subject of national glory and his
ardent speculative enthusiasm Lucretius seems to be more of a Greek
than of a Roman, yet no Roman writer possessed in larger measure the
moral temper of the great Republic. He is a truer type of the strong
character and commanding genius of his country than Virgil or Horace.
He has the Roman conquering energy, the Roman reverence for the
majesty of law, the Roman gift for introducing order into a confused
world, the Roman power of impressing his authority on the minds
of men. In his fortitude, his superiority to human weakness, his
seriousness of spirit, his dignity of bearing, he seems to embody the
great Roman qualities 'constantia' and 'gravitas.' If in the force and
sincerity of his own nature he reminds us of the earliest Roman writer
of genius, in these last qualities, the acquired and inherited virtues
of his race, he reminds us of the last representative writer, whose
tone is worthy of the 'Senatus populusque Romanus.' But Lucretius is
much more than a type of the strong Roman qualities. He combines a
poetic freshness of feeling, a love of simple living, an independence
of the world, with a tenderness and breadth of sympathy, and a power
of sounding into the depths of human sorrow, such as only a very few
among the ancients--Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,--and not many among the
poets or thinkers of the modern world have displayed. In no quality
does he rise further above the standard of his age than in his
absolute sincerity and his unswerving devotion to truth[37]. He
combines in himself some of the rarest elements in the Greek and the
Roman temperament,--the Greek ardour of speculation, the Roman's firm
hold on reality. A poet of the age of Julius Caesar, he is animated
by the spirit of an early Greek enquirer. He unites the speculative
passion of the dawn of ancient science with the minute observation of
its meridian; and he applies the imaginative conceptions formed in the
first application of abstract thought to the universe to interpret the
living beauty of the world.
[Footnote 1: According to Mommsen's opinion that Julius Caesar
was born in 102 B.C.]
[Footnote 2: Woltier in Phil. Jahrb. cxxix, referred to in
Schmidt's Catullus, attempts to show by an examination of the
dates assigned for the birth of Lucretius, that he was born in
97 B.C. and died in 53 B.C. But the most definite statement
we have is that he died on the day in which Virgil assumed
the _toga virilis_, and that was in the second consulship of
Pompey and Crassus, i.e. 55 B.C. Besides both tradition and
internal evidence lead to the conclusion that his poem was not
given to the world till after his death, and it certainly had
been read by both the Ciceros early in 54 B.C. F. Marx in the
Rheinisches Museum, 'de aetate Lucretii,' holds that he was
born in 97 B.C., and died in his 42nd year, B.C. 55. He makes
a more important contribution to the controversy in the remark
'acceptissima vero Enniana Lucretii poesis fuisse putanda est
Ciceroni.' Whether Lucretius died in his 44th or 42nd year
cannot be of much consequence to anybody; and, in the
general uncertainty of Jerome's dates, it seems impossible to
determine it one way or other.]
[Footnote 3: Professor Wallace in his interesting account
of 'Epicureanism' writes, in reference to the way in which
Epicurus himself was regarded in a later age, 'And the
maladies of Epicurus are treated as an anticipatory judgment
of Heaven upon him for his alleged impieties.'--Epicureanism,
p. 46.]
[Footnote 4: This consideration is urged by De Quincey in one
of his essays.]
[Footnote 5: iii. 1039, etc.]
[Footnote 6: iv. 33-38:--
Atque eadem nobis vigilantibus obvia mentes
Terrificant atque in somnis, cum saepe figuras
Contuimur miras simulacraque luce carentum,
Quae nos horrifice languentis saepe sopore
Excierunt, ne forte animas Acherunte reamur
Effugere aut umbras inter vivos volitare.]
[Footnote 7: An article in the Fortnightly Review of
September, 1878, on 'Hallucination of the Senses,' suggests
a possible explanation of the mental condition of Lucretius,
during the composition of some part of his work. The writer
speaks of the power of calling these hallucinations up as
being quite consistent with perfect sanity of mind, but as
sometimes inducing madness. He goes on, 'Or, if the person
does not go out of his mind, he may be so distressed by the
persistence of the apparition which he has created, as to fall
into melancholy and despair, and even to commit suicide.']
[Footnote 8: The theory of Lachmann and others that Q. Cicero
was the editor may possibly be true. He dabbled in poetry
himself, and he was more nearly of the same age as Lucretius,
and thus perhaps more likely to have been a friend of his.
The fact that Cicero's remark is in answer to one of his might
suggest the opinion that the poem had been read by him before
it became known to the older brother, and perhaps been sent
by him to Cicero. But if Q. Cicero was the editor, Jerome must
here also have copied his authorities carelessly. In the
time of Jerome the familiar name of Cicero must have been
understood as applying to the great orator and philosophic
writer, not to his comparatively obscure brother. The only
certain inference which can be drawn from this mention of the
poem is that it had been read, shortly after its appearance,
in the beginning of the year 54 B.C., by both brothers. Yet
the consideration of the whole case does not lead to the
rejection of the statement that M. Cicero was the editor as
incredible, or even as highly improbable. If it was he, he
must have performed his task very perfunctorily. Possibly, as
Mr. Munro suggests, all that he may have been asked to do was
to introduce the work to the public by the use of his name.
The actual revision and arrangement of the poem may have been
made by one of the 'librarii' of Atticus.]
[Footnote 9: E.g. Tusc. Disp. i. 21, especially the
sentence--'Quae quidem cogitans soleo saepe admirari non
nullorum insolentiam philosophorum qui naturae cognitionem
admirantur, eiusque inventori et principi gratias exultantes
agunt eumque venerantur ut deum.']
[Footnote 10: The use of _tamen_ in the sense of 'all the
same' is not uncommon in the colloquial language of Terence,
which the language of Cicero's familiar letters closely
resembles.]
[Footnote 11: At that time he would be about forty-one years
of age--the same age as Lucretius, if, as is most probable, he
was born in 99 B.C.]
[Footnote 12: i. 643-4; cf. [Greek: oute hôs logographoi
xunethesan epi to prosagôgoteron tê akroasei ê
alêthesteron].--Thuc. i. 21.]
[Footnote 13: The lines (v. 999)--
At non multa virum sub signis milia ducta
Una dies dabat exitio, etc.--
might well be a reminiscence of the great massacre at the
Colline gate.]
[Footnote 14: Cp. Munro, Note II, p. 413. Third Edition.]
[Footnote 15: 'Si jam violentior aliqua in re C. Caesar
fuisset, si eum magnitudo contentionis, studium gloriae,
praestans animus, excellens nobilitas aliquo impulisset.'--In
Vatinium 6.]
[Footnote 16: iv. 973, etc.]
[Footnote 17: iv. 75, etc.]
[Footnote 18: ii. 24, etc.]
[Footnote 19: In places where he is not drawing from his own
observation, he uses such expressions as _memorant_;
e.g. iii. 642.]
[Footnote 20: E.g. iv. 353, etc.]
[Footnote 21: E.g.
Ardua dum metuunt amittunt vera viai,
and
Avia Pieridum peragro loca.]
[Footnote 22: Obermann, by M. Arnold.]
[Footnote 23: i. 935-50.]
[Footnote 24: 'And can discourse much on the combination
of things, and enquire moreover, what are their own first
elements.']
[Footnote 25: 'While I seem ever to be plying this task
earnestly, to be enquiring into Nature, and explaining my
discoveries in writings in my native tongue.' This is one of
those passages which seem to indicate an unhealthy overstrain
which may have been the precursor of the final disturbance of
'his power to shape.']
[Footnote 26: Cp. Munro's notes on the passages where these
expressions occur.]
[Footnote 27: E.g. ii. 77, etc. Augescunt aliae gentes, etc.,
suggested by a passage in the Laws:--[Greek: gennôntas te kai
ektrephontas paidas, kathaper lampada ton bion paradidontas
allois ex allôn]--and the lines which recur several times,
etc. 'Nam veluti pueri trepidant,' which Mr. Munro aptly
compares with the words in the Phaedo (77), [Greek: isôs eni
tis kai en hêmin pais, hostis ta toiauta phobeitai.]]
[Footnote 28: v. 8.]
[Footnote 29: Cf.
His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit adque horror.]
[Footnote 30: 'But nought greater than this man does it seem
to have possessed, nor aught more holy, more wonderful, or
more beloved. Yea, too, strains of divine genius proclaim
aloud and make known his great discoveries, so that he seems
scarcely to be of mortal race.'--i. 729-33.]
[Footnote 31: 'When they have gazed for a few years of a life
that is indeed no life, speedily fulfilling their doom, they
vanish away like a smoke, convinced of that only which each
hath met in his own experience, as they were buffeted about to
and fro. Vainly doth each boast to have discovered the whole.
The eye cannot behold it, nor the ear hear it, nor the mind of
man comprehend it.']
[Footnote 32: 'With death there is ever blending the wail
of infants newly born into the light. And no night hath ever
followed day, no morning dawned on night, but hath heard the
mingled sounds of feeble infant wailings and of lamentations
that follow the dead and black funeral train.'--ii. 576-80.]
[Footnote 33: i. 943-50.]
[Footnote 34: iii. 1036-38.]
[Footnote 35: Cf. notes ii. of Mr. Munro's edition.]
[Footnote 36: i. 117, etc.]
[Footnote 37: Mr. Froude, in his 'Julius Caesar,' says, 'The
age was saturated with cant.' Perhaps, to that condition of
the age we, in part, owe one of the sincerest protests
against cant, and unreality of every kind, ever written.
Both speculatively and practically Cicero appears at a great
disadvantage when compared with Lucretius in these respects.]
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.
The peculiarity of the poem of Lucretius, that which makes it unique
in literature, is the fact that it is a long sustained argument
in verse. The prosaic title of the poem, 'De rerum natura,'--a
translation of the Greek [Greek: peri physeôs],--indicates that the
method of exposition was adopted, not primarily with the view of
affecting the imagination, but with that of communicating truth in
a reasoned system. In the lines, in which the poet most confidently
asserts his genius, he professes to fulfil the three distinct offices
of a philosophical teacher, a moral reformer, and a poet,--
Primum quod magnis doceo de rebus et artis
Religionum animum nodis exsolvere pergo,
Deinde quod obscura de re tam lucida pango
Carmina, musaeo contingens cuncta lepore[1].
We have, accordingly, to examine the poem in three different
aspects:--
I. as the exposition of a system of speculative philosophy.
II. as an attempt to emancipate and reform human life.
III. as a work of poetical art and genius.
But these three aspects, though they may be considered separately, are
not really independent of one another. The speculative ideas on which
the system of philosophy is ultimately based impart confidence and
elevation to the moral teaching, and new meaning and imaginative
grandeur to the interpretation of Nature and of human life, on
which the permanent value of the poem depends. Thus, although the
philosophical argument, which forms as it were the skeleton of the
work, is in many places barren and uninteresting, yet it is necessary
to master it before we can form a true estimate of the personality
of the poet, of the main passion and labour of his life, of the full
meaning of his thought, and the full compass of his poetic genius.
Moreover, the study of the argument is interesting on its own account.
In no other work are the strength and the weakness of ancient physical
philosophy so apparent. If the poem of Lucretius adds nothing to the
knowledge of scientific facts, it throws a powerful light on one phase
of the ancient mind. It is a witness of the eager imagination and of
the searching thought of that early time, which endeavoured, by the
force of individual thinkers and the intuitions of genius, to solve a
problem which is perhaps beyond the reach of the human faculties,
and to explain, at a single glance, secrets of Nature which have
only slowly been revealed to the patient labours and combined
investigations of many generations of enquirers.
I.--EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENT.
I. The philosophical system expounded in the poem is the atomic theory
of Democritus[2], in the form in which it was accepted by Epicurus,
and made the basis of his moral and religious doctrines. Lucretius
lays no claim to original discovery as a philosopher: he professes
only to explain, in his native language, 'Graiorum obscura reperta.'
His originality consists, not in any expansion or modification of the
Epicurean doctrine, but in the new life which he has imparted to its
exposition, and in the poetical power with which he has applied it to
reveal the secret of the life of Nature and of man's true position
in the world. After enunciating the first principles of the atomic
philosophy, he discusses in the last four books of the poem some
special applications of that doctrine, which formed part of the
physical system of Epicurus. But the extent to which he carries these
discussions is limited by the practical purpose which he has in view.
The impelling motive of all his labour is the impulse to purify
human life, and, especially, to emancipate it from the terrors of
superstition. The source of these terrors is traced to the general
ignorance of certain facts in Nature,--ignorance, namely, of the
constitution and condition of our souls and bodies, of the means
by which the world came into existence and is still maintained, and
lastly, of the causes of many natural phenomena, which are attributed
to the direct agency of the gods. With the view of establishing
knowledge in the room of ignorance on these questions, it is
necessary, in the first place, to give a full account of the original
principles of being: and to this enquiry the two first books of the
poem are devoted. Had his purpose been merely speculative, the subject
of the fifth book,--viz. the origin of the world, of life, and of
human society,--would naturally have been treated immediately after
the exposition of these first principles. But the order of treatment
is determined by the immediate object of attacking the chief
stronghold of superstition: and, accordingly, the third and fourth
books contain an examination of the nature of the soul, a proof of
its non-existence after death, and an explanation of the origin of the
belief in a future state. In the fifth and sixth books an attempt
is made to show that the creation and preservation of the world, the
origin and progress of human society, and the phenomena of thunder,
tempests, volcanoes, and the like, are the results of natural laws,
without Divine intervention. Although he sometimes carries his
argument into greater detail than is necessary for his purpose, and
addresses himself to the reform of other evils to which the human
heart is liable, yet his whole treatment of his subject is determined
by the thought of the irreconcilable opposition between the truths of
Nature and the falsehood of the ancient religions. The key-note to the
argument is contained in the lines, which recur as a kind of prelude
to the successive stages on which it enters, in the first, second,
third, and sixth books:--
Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necessest
Non radii solis neque lucida tela diei
Discutiant, sed naturae species ratioque[3].
The action of the poem might be described as the gradual defeat of the
ancient dominion of superstition by the new knowledge of Nature. This
meaning seems to be symbolised in its magnificent introduction, where
the genial, all-pervading Power--the source of order, beauty, and
delight in the world and in the heart of man,--and the grim phantom of
superstition--
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,--
the cause of ignorance, degradation, and misery,--are vividly
personified and presented in close contrast with one another. The
thought, thus symbolised, pervades the poem. The processes of Nature
are explained not chiefly for the purpose of satisfying the love of
knowledge (although this end is incidentally attained), but as the
means of establishing light in the room of darkness, peace in the room
of terror, faith in the laws and the facts of the universe in the room
of a base dependence on capricious and tyrannical Powers.
What then was this philosophy which supplied to Lucretius an answer
to the perplexities of existence? The object contemplated by all the
early systems of ontology was the discovery of the original substance
or substances out of which all existing things were created, and which
alone remained permanent amid the changing aspects of the visible
world. Various systems, of a semi-physical, semi-metaphysical
character, were founded on the answers given by the earliest enquirers
to this question. In the first book of the poem several of these
theories are discussed. Lucretius, following Epicurus, adopts the
answer given by Democritus to this question, that the original
substances were the 'atoms and the void'--[Greek: atoma kai
kenon]. After the invocation and the address to Memmius, and the
representation of the universal tyranny exercised by superstition
until its power was overcome by Epicurus, and after a summary of the
various topics to be treated in order to banish this influence from
the world, he lays down this principle as the starting-point of his
argument,--that no existing thing is formed out of nothing by divine
agency--
Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam.
The apprehension of this principle--a principle common to all the
ontological systems of antiquity--is the first step in the enquiry,
as to what are the original substances out of which all creation
comes into being and is maintained. The proof of this principle is
the manifest order and causation recognisable in the world. If things
could arise out of nothing, all existence would be confused and
capricious. The regularity of Nature subsists--
Materies quia rebus reddita certast
Gignundis e qua constat quid possit oriri.
The complement of this first principle is the proposition that nothing
is annihilated, but all existences are resolved into their ultimate
elements. As the first is a necessary inference from the existence of
universal order, the second is proved by the perpetuity of creation
and the observed transformation of things into one another.
The original substances out of which all things are produced, and into
which they are ultimately resolved, are found to be certain
primordial particles of matter or atoms, which are called by various
names--'materies,' 'genitalia corpora,' 'semina rerum,' 'corpora
prima.' Some of these names, it may be observed, are expressive not
only of their primordial character, but also of a germinative or
productive power. The objection that these atoms are invisible to our
senses is met by showing that there are many invisible forces acting
in Nature, the effects of which prove that they must be bodies,--
Corporibus caecis igitur natura gerit res.
In addition to bodily substance there must also be vacuum or space;
otherwise there could be no motion in the universe, and without motion
nothing could come into being. The existence of matter is proved by
our senses, of vacuum by the necessity of there being space for matter
to move in, and also by the varying density of bodies. But besides
body and vacuum there is no other absolute substance--
Ergo praeter inane et corpora tertia per se
Nulla potest rerum in numero natura relinqui[4].
All material bodies are either elemental substances or compounded
out of a union of these substances. The elemental substances are
indestructible and indivisible. This is proved by the necessities of
thought (i. 498, etc.) and of Nature. If there were no ultimate limit
to the divisibility of these substances, if there were not something
immutable underlying all phenomena, there could be no law or order
in the world. The existence and ultimate constitution of the atoms is
thus enunciated--
Sunt igitur solida primordia simplicitate
Quae minimis stipata cohaerent partibus arte,
Non ex illarum conventu conciliata,
Sed magis aeterna pollentia simplicitate,
Unde neque avelli quicquam neque deminui iam
Concedit natura reservans semina rebus[5].
At this stage in the argument, from line 635 to 920 of Book I, the
first principles of other philosophies, and particularly of the
systems of Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras, are discussed at
considerable length, and shown to be inconsistent with the actual
appearance of things and with the principles already established.
The argument starts anew at line 920, and it is shown that the
atoms must be infinite in number, and space infinite in extent;--the
contrary supposition being both inconceivable and incompatible with
the origin, preservation, and renewal of all existing things. It is
shown also that the existing order of things has not come into being
through design, but by infinite experiments through infinite time.
The doctrine that all things tend to a centre is denied, and the book
concludes with the imaginative presentation of the thought that, if
matter were not infinite, the whole visible fabric of the world would
perish in a moment, 'and leave not a rack behind.'
The second book opens with an impressive passage, in which the
security and charm of the contemplative life is contrasted with the
restless anxieties and alarms of the life of worldly ambition. The
argument then proceeds to explain the process by which these atoms,
primordial, indestructible, and infinite in number, combine together
in infinite space, so as to carry on the birth, growth, and decay of
all things. While the sum of things always remains the same, there
is constant change in all phenomena. This is explicable only on the
supposition of the original elements being in eternal motion. The
atoms are borne through space, either by their own weight, or by
contact with one another, with a rapidity of motion far beyond that
of any visible bodies. All motion is naturally in a downward direction
and in parallel lines, but to account for the contact of the atoms
with one another it must be supposed that in their movements they make
a slight declension from the straight line at uncertain intervals.
This liability to declension is the sole thing to break the chain of
necessity--'quod fati foedera rumpat.' It is through this liability in
the primal elements that volition in living beings becomes possible.
As the sum of matter in the universe is constant, so the motions of
the atoms always have been and always will be the same[6]. All things
are in ceaseless motion, although they may present to our senses the
appearance of perfect rest.
It is necessary further to assume the existence of other properties
in the atoms, in order to account for the variety in Nature, and the
individuality of existing things. They have original differences in
form; some are smooth, others round, others rough, others hooked, &c.
These varieties in form are not infinite, but limited in number.
As the diversity in the world depends on the diversity of these forms,
the order and regularity of Nature imply that there is a limit to
these varieties. But while they are limited, the individuals of each
kind are infinite, otherwise the primordial atoms would be finite in
number, and there could be no cohesion among atoms of the same kind,
in the vast and chaotic sea of matter--
Unde ubi qua vi et quo pacto congressa coibunt
Materiae tanto in pelago turbaque aliena[7]?
The motions which tend to the support and the destruction of created
things are balanced by one another: there must be an equilibrium in
these opposing forces--
Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum
Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum[8].
Death and birth succeed one another, as now the vitalising, now the
destructive forces gain the upper hand.
Further, the great diversity in Nature is to be accounted for by
diversity, not only in the original forms of matter, but also in their
modes of combination. No existing thing is composed solely of one kind
of atoms. The greater the variety of forces and powers which anything
displays, the greater is the variety of the elements out of which it
was originally composed. Of all visible objects the earth contains the
greatest number of elements; therefore it has justly obtained the
name of the universal mother. There is however a limit to the modes
in which atoms can combine with one another: each nature appropriates
elements suitable to its being and rejects those unsuitable. All
existing things differ from one another in consequence of the
difference in their elements and in their modes of combination. The
different modes of combination give rise to many of the secondary
properties of matter, which are not in the original elements. Colour,
for instance, is not one of the original properties of atoms: for
all colour is changeable, and all change implies the death of what
previously existed. Moreover, colour depends on light, and the atoms
never come forth into the light. The atoms are also devoid of heat and
cold, of sound, taste, and smell. All these properties must be kept
distinct from the original elements--
Immortalia si volumus subiungere rebus
Fundamenta quibus nitatur summa salutis;
Ne tibi res redeant ad nilum funditus omnes[9].
Further, although they are the origin of all living and sentient
things, the atoms themselves are devoid of sense and life, otherwise
they would be liable to death. All living things are merely results
of the constant changes in the primordial elements contained in the
heavens and the earth. Hence the heaven is addressed as the father,
the earth as the mother, of all things that have life.
Finally, from the infinity of space and matter, it may be inferred
that there are infinite other worlds and systems beside our own. Many
elements were added from the infinite universe to our system before it
reached maturity: and many indications prove that the period of growth
is now past, and that we are living in the old age of the world.
The sum of the first two books, in which the principles of the atomic
philosophy are methodically unfolded and illustrated, is, accordingly,
to this effect:--that all things have their origin in, and are
sustained by, the various combinations and motions of solid elemental
atoms, infinite in number, various in form, but not infinite in the
variety of their forms,--not perceptible to our senses, and themselves
devoid of sense, of colour, and of all the secondary properties of
matter. These atoms, by virtue of their ultimate conditions,
are capable only of certain combinations with one another. These
combinations have been brought about by perpetual motion, through
infinite space and through all eternity. As the order of things now
existing has come into being, so it must one day perish. Only the
atoms will permanently remain, moving unceasingly through space, and
forming new combinations with one another.
These first principles being established, the way is made clear for
the true explanation, according to natural laws, of those phenomena
which give rise to and maintain the terrors of superstition.
The third book treats of the nature of the mind, and of the vital
principle. As it is by the fear of death, and of eternal torment after
death, that human life is most disturbed, it is necessary to explain
the nature of the soul, and to show that it perishes in death along
with the body.
The mind and the vital principle are parts of the man as much as
the hands, feet, or any other members. The mind is the directing
principle, seated in the centre of the breast. The vital principle is
diffused over the whole body, obedient to and in close sympathy with
the mind. The power which the mind has in moving the body proves its
own corporeal nature, as motion cannot take place without touch, nor
touch without the presence of a bodily substance.
The soul (including both the mind and vital principle) is, therefore,
material, formed of the finest or minutest atoms, as is proved by
the extreme rapidity of its movement, and by the fact that there is
nothing lost in appearance or weight immediately after death:--
Quod simul atque hominem leti secura quies est
Indepta atque animi natura animaeque recessit,
Nil ibi libatum de toto corpore cernas
Ad speciem, nil ad pondus: mors omnia praestat
Vitalem praeter sensum calidumque vaporem[10].
Four distinct elements enter into the composition of the soul--heat,
wind, calm air, and a finer essence 'quasi anima animai.' The variety
of disposition in men and animals depends on the proportion in which
these elements are mixed.
The soul is the guardian of the body, inseparably united with it, as
the odour is with frankincense; nor can the soul be disconnected from
the body without its own destruction. This intimate union of soul and
body is proved by many facts. They are born, they grow, and they decay
together. The mind is liable to disease, like the body. Its affections
are often dependent on bodily conditions. The difficulties of
imagining the state of the soul as existing independently of the
body are next urged; and the book concludes with a long passage of
sustained elevation of feeling, in which the folly and the weakness of
fearing death are passionately insisted upon.
The fourth book, which treats of the images which all objects cast off
from themselves, and, in connexion with that subject, of the senses
generally, and of the passion of love, is intimately connected with
the preceding book. If there is no life after death, what is the
origin of the universal belief in the existence of the souls of
the departed? Images cast off from the surface of bodies, and borne
incessantly through space without force or feeling, appearing to
the living sometimes in sleep and sometimes in waking visions, have
suggested the belief in the ghosts of the dead, and in many of the
portents of ancient mythology. The rapid formation and motion of these
images and their great number are explained by various analogies. Some
apparent deceptions of the senses are next mentioned and explained.
These deceptions are shown to be not in the senses, but in our minds
not rightly interpreting their intimations. There is no error in the
action of the senses. They are our 'prima fides'--the foundation of
all knowledge and of all conduct--
Non modo enim ratio ruat omnis, vita quoque ipsa
Concidat extemplo, nisi credere sensibus ausis[11].
Images that are too fine to act on the senses sometimes directly
affect the soul itself. Discordant images unite together in the air,
and present the appearance of Centaurs, Scyllas, and the like. In
sleep, images of the dead--
Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa[12],--
appear, and give rise to the belief in the existence of ghosts.
The mind sees in dreams the objects in which it is most interested,
because, although all kinds of images are present, it can discern only
those of which it is expectant.
Several other questions are discussed in connexion with the doctrine
of the 'simulacra.' The final cause of the senses and the appetites is
denied, and, by implication, the argument from design founded on the
belief in final causes. The use of everything is discovered through
experience. We do not receive the sense of sight in order that we may
see, but having got the sense of sight, we use it--
Nil ideo quoniam natumst in corpore ut uti
Possemus, sed quod natumst id procreat usum[13].
There follows an account of sleep, and of the condition of the mind
during that state; and the book concludes with a physical account of
the passion of love, which is dependent on the action of the simulacra
on the mind. Love is shown also to arise from natural causes, and
not to be engendered by divine influence. The fatal consequences
of yielding to the passion are then enforced with much poetical and
satiric power.
The object of the fifth book is to explain the formation of our
system--of earth, sea, sky, sun, and moon,--the origin of life upon
the earth, and the advance of human nature from a savage state to the
arts and usages of civilisation. The purpose of these discussions is
to show that all our system was produced and is maintained by natural
agency, that it is neither itself divine nor created by divine power,
and that, as it has come into existence, so it must one day perish.
As the parts of our system,--earth, water, air, and heat,--are
perishable, and constantly passing through processes of decay and
renovation, the system must have had a beginning, and will have
an end. There must at last be an end of the long war between the
contending elements.
The world came into existence as the result not of design, but
of every variety of combination in the elemental atoms throughout
infinite time. Originally all were confused together. Gradually those
that had mutual affinities combined and separated themselves from the
rest. The earthy particles sank to the centre. The elemental particles
of the empyrean (aether ignifer) formed the 'moenia mundi.' The sun
and moon were formed out of the particles that were neither heavy
enough to combine with the earth, nor light enough to ascend to the
highest heaven. Finally, the liquid particles separated from the
earth and formed the sea. Highest above all is the empyrean, entirely
separated from the storms of the lower air, and moving round with its
stars by its own impetus. The earth is at rest in the centre of our
system, supported by the air, as our body is by the vital principle.
The movements of the stars and of the sun and moon through the heavens
are next explained; then the origin of vegetable and animal life on
the earth, and the beginning and progress of human society.
First plants and trees, afterwards men and animals, were produced from
the earth in the early and vigorous prime of the world. Many of the
animals originally produced afterwards became extinct. Those only
were capable of continuation which had either some faculty of
self-preservation against others, or were useful to man, and so
shared his protection. The existence of monsters such as Scylla, the
Centaurs, the Chimaera, is shown to be impossible according to the
natural laws of production.
The earliest condition of man was one of savage vigour and power of
endurance, but liable to danger and destruction from many causes.
The first humanising influence is traced to domestic union and the
affection inspired by children--
Et Venus inminuit viris puerique parentum
Blanditiis facile ingenium fregere superbum[14].
The origin of language is next explained, then that of civil society,
of religion, and of the arts,--the general conclusion being that all
progress is the result of natural experience, not of divine guidance.
The last source of superstition is our ignorance of the causes of
natural phenomena--
Praesertim rebus in illis
Quae supera caput aetheriis cernuntur in oris[15].
Hence the sixth book is devoted to the explanation of thunderstorms,
tempests, volcanoes, earthquakes, and the like,--phenomena which are
generally attributed to the direct agency of the gods. The whole work
terminates with an account of the Plague at Athens, closely following
that given by Thucydides.
The first question which arises after a review of the whole argument
is that suggested by the statement of Jerome, and brought into
prominence since the publication of Lachmann's edition of Lucretius,
viz. whether there is good reason for believing that the poem was left
by the author in an unfinished state. In answering this question, it
is to be observed, on the one hand, that there is no incompleteness
in the fulfilment of the original plan of the work, unless from one
or two hints[16] we conclude that the poet intended giving a fuller
account of the blessed state of the Gods than that given at iii.
17-24. He announces at i. 54, etc., and again at i. 127, etc., the
design of the poem as embracing the first principles of natural
philosophy, and the application of these principles to certain special
subjects, viz. the nature of soul and body, the origin of the belief
in ghosts, the natural causes of creation, and the meaning of certain
celestial phenomena.
The practical purpose of the poem--the overthrow of
superstition--limits the argument to these subjects of discussion.
They are severally mentioned where the argument is resumed in Books
iii, iv, v, and vi, as those matters which require a clear explanation
from the poet. All the topics enunciated in the opening statement
are discussed with the utmost fulness. The great strongholds of
superstition are attacked and overthrown in regular succession. In the
introduction to the sixth book, the lines (91-95)
Tu mihi supremae praescribta ad candida calcis, etc.
clearly show that the poet considered himself approaching the end of
his task.
But, on the other hand, an examination of the poem in detail leads to
the conclusion that it did not receive its author's final touch. The
continuity of the argument is occasionally broken in all the books
except the first. In the fourth, fifth, and sixth, especially, these
breaks are very frequent, and there are more frequent instances in
them of repetition and careless workmanship. They extend also to a
greater length than the earlier books, which would naturally be the
case if they had not received the author's final revision. The poem
throughout gives the impression of great fulness of matter--
Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis
Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet;--
and in the composition of these later books, new suggestions seem to
have been constantly occurring to the poet as new materials were added
to his stores of knowledge: and the first draft of his argument has
not been recast so as to incorporate and harmonise them with it. The
passages containing these new materials appear to have been fitted
into the place which they now occupy in the work, not always very
judiciously, either by Cicero or some other editor.
It was also part of the author's design to enunciate his deepest
thoughts on the Gods, on Nature, and on human life in more highly
finished digressions from the main argument. Such passages are, in
general, introduced at the beginning and the end of the different
books. They seem to bring out the more catholic interest which
underlies the special subject of the poem. Some of these passages are
highly finished, and were evidently fixed by the poet in the
places which he designed them to occupy. Such are, especially,
the introductions to the first, second, and third books, and the
concluding passages of the second and third. But the repetition of a
passage of the first book as the introduction to the fourth, the
long break in the continuity of the introduction to the fifth, the
unfinished style of that to the sixth, and the abrupt and episodical
conclusion to the whole poem (when contrasted with its elaborately
artistic introduction), show that the same cause which marred the
symmetry of his argument deprived it of the finished execution of a
work of art. Yet these books--especially the fifth--are as rich in
poetical feeling and substance as the earlier ones. The eye and hand
of the master are as powerful as in the first enthusiasm with which
he dedicated himself to his task, but they are less certain in their
action. Whether his powers became intermittent owing to the attacks
of illness, or whether his habit was to work roughly in the first
instance and to perfect his work by subsequent revision, which in
the case of his latest labours was prevented by death, must remain
uncertain. It is a noticeable result of the vastness of the tasks
which Roman genius set before itself, that two such works as the
didactic poem of Lucretius and the Aeneid of Virgil were left
unfinished by their authors, and given to the world in a more or less
imperfect condition by other hands.
The poem, though incomplete in regard to the arrangement of its
materials and artistic finish, presents a full and clear view of the
philosophy accepted and expounded by Lucretius. What, then, is the
intellectual interest and value of the work, considered as a great
argument, in which the plan of Nature is explained, and the position
of man in relation to that plan is determined? Is it true, as an
illustrious modern critic[17] has said, that 'the greatest didactic
poem in any language was written in defence of the silliest and
meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy'? Is this work
a mere maze of ingeniously woven error, enriched with a few brilliant
colours which have not yet faded with the lapse of time? or is it a
great monument of the ancient mind, marking indeed its limitations,
but at the same time perpetuating the memory of its native strength
and energy? Has all the meaning of this controversy between science in
its infancy and the pagan mythology in its decrepitude passed away,
as from the vantage-ground of nineteen centuries the blindness and
the ignorance of both combatants are apparent? Or, may we not rather
discern that amid all the confusion of this dim [Greek: nyktomachia]
a great cause was at issue; that truths the most vital to human
wellbeing were involved on both sides; and that some positions were
then gained which are not now abandoned?
In estimating the strength and the weakness of the system expounded
by Lucretius, it is necessary to distinguish between the exposition
of the principles of the atomic philosophy, contained in the first
two books, and the explanation of natural phenomena contained in
the remaining books. The first, notwithstanding some arbitrary and
unverifiable assumptions, represents a real and important stage in
the progress of enquiry; the second, although containing many striking
observations and immediate inferences from the facts and processes of
Nature, is, from the point of view of modern science, to be regarded
mainly, as a curious page in the records of human error. Whatever
may be said of the Epicurean additions to the system, it seems to
be admitted that the original hypothesis of Democritus has been more
pregnant in results, and has more affinity with the most advanced
physical speculations of modern times, than the doctrines of all the
other philosophers of antiquity. But even amid the mass of unwarranted
assumptions and erroneous explanations contained in the later books,
the topics discussed--such as the relation of the mind to the body,
the mode by which sensible impressions are conveyed to the mind, the
processes by which our globe assumed its present form, the origin of
life, the evolution of humanity from its lowest to its higher stages
of development, the origin of spiritual beliefs, of the humaner
sentiments, of language, etc.--possess the interest of being kindred
to those on which speculative activity is most employed in the present
day. If the study of Lucretius forces upon our minds the arbitrary
assumptions, the inadequate method, and the false conclusions of
ancient science, it enables us to appreciate the disinterested
greatness of its aims, and the enlightened curiosity which sought to
solve the vastest problems.
It might be said, generally, that the argument of Lucretius was an
attempt to give a philosophical description of Nature before the
advent of physical science. But, as a means of throwing light on the
inadequacy of such speculations, it may be well to consider in detail
some of those points where the argument most obviously fails in
premises, method, and results.
The ancient as well as the modern enquirer into the truth of things
was confronted with the question of the origin of all our knowledge.
Is knowledge obtained originally through the exercise of the reason or
the senses, or through their combined and inseparable action? To
this question Lucretius distinctly answers, that the senses are the
foundation of all our knowledge.[18] They are our 'prima fides': the
basis not only of all sound inference, but of all human conduct. The
very conception of the meaning of true and false is derived from the
senses:--
Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam
Notitiam veri neque sensus posse refelli[19].
But besides the direct action of outward things on the senses, he
admits the power of certain images to make themselves immediately
present to the mind (iv. 722-822), and also a certain immediate
apprehension or intuition of the mind (iniectus animi) into
things beyond the cognisance of sense[20]. Thus there is no
actual inconsistency with his principles in claiming the power of
understanding the properties and configuration of the atoms, which are
represented as lying below the reach of our senses--
Omnis enim longe nostris ab sensibus infra
Primorum natura iacet.
But of the mode of operation of this 'intuition of the mind' there is
no criterion. The doctrine of the properties, shapes, motions, etc.
of the atoms is a creation of the imagination, suggested by certain
analogies from sensible things, but incapable of being verified by the
senses, which he regards as the only sure foundations of knowledge.
But even on the supposition that the existence and properties of the
atoms had been satisfactorily established, no adequate explanation
is offered of their relation to the facts of existence. The same
difficulty is encountered at the outset of this as of all other
ancient systems of ontology, viz. how to pass from the eternal and
immutable forms of the atoms to the variety and transitory nature of
sensible objects. This is the very difficulty which Lucretius himself
urges against the system of Heraclitus,--
Nam cur tam variae res possint esse requiro,
Ex uno si sunt igni puroque creatae.
The order of Nature now subsisting is declared to be the result of the
manifold combination of the atoms through infinite time and space, but
the intermediate stages by which this process was effected are assumed
rather than investigated. We seem to pass 'per saltum' from the chaos
of lifeless elements to the perfect order and manifold life of our
system. This wide chasm seems as little capable of being bridged
by the help of the atoms of Democritus, as by the watery element
of Thales or the fiery element of Heraclitus. But in Lucretius this
difficulty is partially concealed, by a poetical element in his
conception, really inconsistent with the mechanical materialism on
which his philosophy professes to be based.--It is to be observed
that while the Greek word [Greek: atoma] implies merely the notion
of individual existences, the words used by Lucretius, 'semina,'
'genitalia corpora,' really indicate a creative capacity in these
existences. In conceiving their power of carrying on and sustaining
the order of Nature, his imagination is thus aided by the analogy of
the growth of plants and living beings. A secret faculty in the atoms,
distinct from their other properties, is assumed. Thus he says--
At primordia gignundis in rebus oportet
Naturam clandestinam caecamque adhibere[21].
In his statement of the doctrine of the _Clinamen_, or slight
declension in the motion of the atoms, so as 'to break the chain of
fate,' he attributes to them a power analogous to volition in living
beings. This doctrine is suggested by the necessity of explaining
contingency in Nature and freedom in the movements of sentient beings.
We are, as in all attempts to account for creation, forced back on
the thought of an ultimate unexplained power in virtue of which things
have been created and are maintained in being.
The Lucretian hypothesis of the atoms, even if it were accepted as the
most reasonable explanation of the original constitution of matter,
is, by itself, altogether inadequate as a key to the secret of Nature.
It cannot be shown either how these atoms succeeded in arranging
themselves in order, or how from their negative properties all
positive life has been produced. The explanation of physical phenomena
given in the four last books, as to the nature of our bodies and
souls,--as to the action of outward things on the senses,--the origin
and existence of the sun and moon, the earth and the living beings
upon it, etc., although professedly deduced from the principles
established in the first two books, are really reached independently.
They are either immediate inferences from the obvious intimations of
sense, or they are the suggestions of analogy.
The weakness as well as the strength of ancient science lay in its
perception of analogies. The mind of Lucretius was both under the
influence of earlier analogical conceptions, and also shows great
boldness and originality in the logical and poetical apprehension
of 'those same footsteps of Nature, treading on diverse subjects or
matters.' But, in common with the earlier enquirers of Greece,
he trusts too implicitly to their guidance through all his daring
adventure. He seems to believe that the hidden properties of things
are as open to discovery through this 'lux sublustris' of the
imagination, as through the 'lucida tela' of the reason.
To take one prominent instance of this influence, it is remarkable
how, in his explanation of our mundane system, he is both consciously
and unconsciously guided by the analogy of the human body. Even
Lucretius, living in the very meridian of ancient science, cannot in
imagination absolutely emancipate himself from the associations of
mythology. He is indeed conscious of the inconsistency of attributing
life and sense to the earth: yet not only does he speak poetically of
Earth being the creative mother, Aether the fructifying father of
all things, but his whole conception of the creation of the world
is derived from a supposed likeness between the properties of our
terrestrial and celestial systems, and those of living beings. Thus we
read--
Undique quandoquidem per caulas aetheris omnis
Et quasi per magni circum spiracula mundi
Exitus introitusque elementis redditus extat[22].
Of the growth of plants and herbage it is said--
Ut pluma atque pili primum saetaeque creantur
Quadripedum membris et corpore pennipotentum,
Sic nova tum tellus herbas virgultaque primum
Sustulit, inde loci mortalia saecla creavit[23].
From v. 535 to 563 the power of the air in supporting the earth 'in
media mundi regione' is compared with the power which the delicate
vital principle has in supporting the human body. Again, the gathering
together of the waters of the sea is thus represented--
Tam magis expressus salsus de corpore sudor
Augebat mare manando camposque natantis[24].
And finally, though it would be easy to multiply such quotations, the
striking account, at the end of the second book, of the growth and the
decay of our world is drawn directly from the obvious appearances of
the growth and decay of the human body; e.g.--
Quoniam nec venae perpetiuntur
Quod satis est neque quantum opus est natura ministrat[25].
As a necessary result of a system of natural philosophy based on
assumptions, largely illustrated indeed, but not corroborated by
the observation of phenomena, with no verification of experiment or
ascertainment of special laws, there is throughout the poem the utmost
hardihood of assertion and inference on many points, on which modern
science clearly proves this system to have been as much in error as
it was possible to be. It is strange to note how inadequate an idea
Lucretius had of the vastness and complexity of the problem which
he professed to solve. He has no real conception of the progressive
advance of knowledge, and of the necessity of patiently building on
humble foundations. The striking lines--
Namque alid ex alio clarescet nec tibi caeca
Nox iter eripiet quin ultima naturai
Pervideas: ita res accendent lumina rebus[26],
look rather like an unconscious prophecy of the future progress of
science than an account of the process of enquiry exhibited in the
book.
A few out of many erroneous assertions about physical facts, in regard
to some of which the opinions of Lucretius are behind the science even
of his own time, may be noticed. Thus, at i. 1025, the existence of
the Antipodes is denied. Again, in Book iii. the mind is stated to be
a material substance, seated in the centre of the breast, composed of
very minute particles, the relative proportions of which determine the
characters both of men and animals. Lucretius shows a close and subtle
observation of facts that establish the interdependence of mind and
body, but no suspicion of that interdependence being connected with
the functions of the brain and nervous system. His whole account of
the _mundus_, of the earth at rest in the centre, and of the rolling
vault of heaven, with its sun and moon and stars--'trembling fires
in the vault'--all no larger than they appear to our eyes, is given
without any notion of the inadequacy of his data to bear out his
conclusions. The science which satisfied Epicurus was on
astronomical and meteorological questions behind that attained by
the mathematicians of Alexandria: and thus some of the conclusions
enunciated by Virgil in the Georgics are nearer the truth than those
accepted by Lucretius. While enlarging on the variety and subtlety in
the combinations of his imaginary atoms, he has no adequate idea of
the variety and subtlety in the real forces of Nature. His observation
of the outward and visible appearances of things is accurate and
vivid: there is often great ingenuity as well as a true apprehension
of logical conditions in his processes of reasoning both from ideas
and from phenomena: yet most of his conclusions as to the facts of
Nature, which are not immediately perceptible to the senses, are mere
fanciful explanations, indicating, indeed, a lively curiosity, but no
real understanding of the true conditions of the enquiry. The root
of his error lies in his not feeling how little can be known of the
processes and facts of Nature by ordinary observation, without
the resources of experiment and of scientific method built upon
experiment.
The weak points of this philosophy, the mistaken aim and incomplete
method of enquiry, the real ignorance of facts disguised under an
appearance of systematic treatment, the unproductiveness of the
results for any practical accession to man's power over Nature, are
quite obvious to any modern reader, who, without any special study of
physical science, cannot help being familiar with information which is
now universally diffused, but which was beyond the reach of the most
ardent enquirers and original thinkers of antiquity. But the amount
of information possessed by different ages, or by different men, is no
criterion of their relative intellectual power. The mental force of
a strong and adventurous thinker may be recognised struggling even
through these mists of error. The weakness of the system, interpreted
by Lucretius, is the necessary weakness of the childhood of knowledge.
But along with the weakness and the ignorance there are also the keen
feeling, the clear eye, and the buoyant fancies of early years,--the
germs and the promise of a strong maturity.
The full light in which ancient poetry, history, and mental philosophy
can still be read, makes us apt to forget that a great part even of
the intellectual life of antiquity has left scarcely any record of
itself. Of one aspect of this intellectual life Lucretius is the
most complete exponent. The genius of Plato and Aristotle has been
estimated, perhaps, as justly in modern as in ancient times. But the
great intellectual life of such men as Democritus, Empedocles,
or Anaxagoras, escapes our notice in the more familiar studies
of classical literature. The work of Lucretius reminds us of the
intensity of thought and feeling, the clearness and minuteness of
observation, with which the earliest enquiries into Nature were
carried on. In some respects the general ignorance of the times
enhances our sense of the greatness of individual philosophers. Each
new attempt to understand the world was an original act of creative
power. The intellectual strength and enthusiasm displayed by the
poet himself may be regarded as some measure of the strength of the
masters, who filled his mind with affection and astonishment.
The history of the physical science of the ancients cannot, indeed, be
regarded as so interesting or important as that of their metaphysical
philosophy. And this is so, not only on account of the comparative
scantiness of their real acquisitions in the one as compared with the
ideas and method which they have contributed to the other, and with
the masterpieces which they have added to its literature; but still
more on this account, that in physical knowledge new discovery
supplants the place of previous error or ignorance, and can be
understood without reference to what has been supplanted; whereas the
power and meaning of philosophical ideas is unintelligible, apart from
the knowledge of their origin and development. The history of physical
science in ancient times affords satisfaction to a natural curiosity,
but is not an indispensable branch of scientific study. The history of
ancient mental philosophy, on the other hand,--the source not only
of most of our metaphysical ideas and terms, but of many of the
most familiar thoughts and words in daily use,--is the basis of all
speculative study. Yet among the various kinds of interest which this
poem has for different classes of modern readers this is not to be
forgotten, that it enables a student of science to estimate the
actual discoveries, and, still more, the prognostications of discovery
attained by the irregular methods of early enquiry. The school of
philosophy to which Lucretius belonged was distinguished above other
schools for the attention which it gave to the facts of Nature.
Though he himself makes no claim to original discovery, he yet shows
a philosophical grasp of the whole system which he adopted, and
a rigorous study of its details. He does not, like Virgil, merely
reproduce some general results of ancient physics, to enhance the
poetical conception of Nature: as he is not satisfied with those
general results about human life and the origin of man, which amused
a meditative poet and practical epicurean like Horace. He was a real
student both of the plan of Nature and of man's relation to it. Out
of the stores of his abundant information the modern reader may best
learn not only the errors but also the happy guesses and pregnant
suggestions of ancient science.
To the general reader there is another aspect, in which it is
interesting to compare these germs of physical knowledge with some
tendencies of scientific enquiry in modern times. The questions,
vitally affecting the position of man in the world, which are
discussed or raised by Lucretius in the course of his argument, are
parallel to certain questions which have risen into prominence in
connexion with the increasing study of Nature. Most conspicuous
among these is the relation of physical enquiry to religious belief.
Expressions such as this,
Impia te rationis inire elementa viamque
Indugredi sceleris,
show that scientific enquiry had to encounter the same prejudice in
ancient as in modern times. The insufficiency and audacity of human
reason were reprobated by the antagonists of Lucretius as they
often are in the present day. Ancient religion denounced those who
investigated the origin of sun, earth, and sky, as
Immortalia mortali sermone notantes[27].
The views of Lucretius as to the natural origin of life, and the
progressive advance of man from the rudest condition by the exercise
of his senses and accumulated experience,--his denial of final causes
universally, and specially in the human faculties,--his resolution
of our knowledge into the intimations of sense,--his materialism
and consequent denial of immortality,--and his utilitarianism in
morals,--all present striking parallels to the opinions of one of
the great schools of modern thought. At v. 875 there is a passage
concerning the preservation and destruction of species, originally
suggested by Empedocles,--which shows that the idea of the struggle
for existence and of the survival of those species best fitted for the
conditions of that struggle was familiar to ancient thinkers. It is
there observed that those species alone have escaped destruction which
possess some natural weapon of defence, or which are useful to man.
Of others that could neither live by themselves nor were maintained by
human protection, it is said--
Scilicet haec aliis praedae lucroque iacebant
Indupedita suis fatalibus omnia vinclis,
Donec ad interitum genus id natura redegit[28].
The attempt to trace the origin of all supernatural belief to the
impressions made by dreams, the explanation given of the first
manifestation of the humaner sentiments, of the beginning of language,
and of the whole condition of 'primitive man,' are in conformity with
the teaching of the most popular exponent of the doctrine of evolution
in the present day.
But altogether apart from the truth and falsehood, the right and
wrong tendencies of his system of philosophy, our feeling of personal
interest in the poet is strengthened by noting the power of reasoning,
observation, and expression put forth by him through the whole course
of his argument. The pervading characteristic of Lucretius is
the 'vivida vis animi.' The freshness of feeling and vividness of
apprehension denoted by the words,
Mente vigenti
Avia Pieridum peragro loca,
are as remarkable in the processes of his intellect as of his
imagination.
The passionate intensity of his nature has left its impress on the
enunciation of his physical as well as of his moral doctrines. He has
a thoroughly logical grasp of his subject as a whole. He shows
the capacity of unfolding it and marshalling all his arguments in
symmetrical order, and of arranging in due subordination vast
masses of details. Vigour in acquiring and tenacity in retaining the
knowledge of facts are combined with a high organising faculty. He
has also, beyond any other Roman writer, a power of analysing and
comprehending abstract ideas, such as that of the infinite, of space
and time, of causation and the like, and of keeping the consequences
involved in these ideas present to his mind through long-sustained
processes of reasoning. He alone among his countrymen possessed,
if not the faculty of original speculation, the genuine philosophic
impulse, and the powers of mind demanded for abstruse and systematic
thinking.
This vigour of understanding is displayed in many processes of
deductive reasoning, in the power of seizing some general principle
underlying diverse phenomena, in the use of analogies by which he
illustrates the argument and advances from known to unknown causes and
from things within the cognisance of our senses to those beyond their
range, and in the clearness and variety of his observation.
His system cannot be called either purely inductive or purely
deductive, though it is more of the former than of the latter. He
argues with great force both from a large and varied mass of facts to
general laws and from general principles to facts involved in them.
The best examples of his power of following abstract ideas into their
consequences may be found in the first two books, where he establishes
the existence of vacuum, the infinity of space and of the atoms, the
limitations of the form of the atoms and the like. The reasoning at i.
298-328 where the existence of invisible bodies is established
affords a good instance of his power of recognising a common principle
involved in a great number and variety of phenomena.
The vigour with which he reasons from known to unknown facts and
causes may be judged most fairly by his arguments on the progress of
society, where he is more on an equality with modern speculation. He
discards, altogether, as might be expected, the fancies concerning
a heroic or a golden age, and assumes as his data the facts of human
nature as observed in his own day. The grounds from which he starts,
his method of reasoning, and the nature of his conclusions remind a
reader of the positive tendencies of Thucydides, as they are displayed
in the introduction to his history. The importance of personal
qualities, such as beauty, strength, and power of mind, in the
earliest stage of civil society, the influence of accumulated wealth
at a later period, the causes of the establishment and overthrow of
tyrannies and of the rise of commonwealths in their room, are all set
forth with a degree of strong sense and historical sagacity, such
as no other Roman writer has shown in similar investigations. The
inferiority even of Tacitus in his occasional digressions into the
philosophy of history is very marked. On such topics, where the data
were accessible to the natural faculties of observation and inference,
and where conclusions were sought which, without aiming at definite
certainty, should yet be true in the main, the reader of Lucretius has
no sense of that wasted ingenuity which he often feels in following
the investigations into some of the primary conditions of the atoms,
the component elements of the soul, the process by which the world was
formed, or the causes of electric or volcanic phenomena.
Lucretius makes a copious, and often a very happy use, of analogies,
both in the illustration of his philosophy, and in passages of the
highest poetical power. Some of the most striking of the former
kind have already been noticed as sources of error, or at least of
disguising ignorance, in his reasoning, viz. those founded on the
supposed parallel between the world and the human body; others again
are employed with force and ingenuity in support of various positions
in his argument. Among these may be mentioned his comparison of
the effect of various combinations of the same letters in forming
different words, with that of the various combinations of similar
atoms in forming different objects in nature. So too the ceaseless
motion of the atoms is brought visibly before the imagination by
the analogy of the motes dancing in the sunbeam. There is something
striking in the comparison of the human body immediately after death
to wine 'cum Bacchi flos evanuit,' and again, in that of the relation
of body and soul to the relation of frankincense and its odour--
E thuris glaebis evellere odorem
Haud facile est quin intereat natura quoque eius[29].
But this faculty of his understanding is in general so united with the
imaginative feeling through which he discerns the vital identity of
the most diverse manifestations of some common principle, that it can
best be illustrated in connexion with the poetical, as distinct from
the logical, merits of the work.
So also it is difficult to separate his faculty of clear, exact, and
vivid observation from his poetical perception of the life and beauty
of Nature. His powers of observation were, however, stimulated and
directed by scientific as well as poetic interest in phenomena. From
the wide scope of his philosophy he was led to examine the greatest
variety of facts, physical as well as moral. His sense of the
immensity of the universe led him to contemplate the largest and
widest operations of Nature,--such as the movements of the heavenly
bodies, the recurrence of the seasons, the forces of great storms,
volcanoes, etc.; while, again, the theory of the invisible atoms drew
his attention to the minutest processes of Nature, in so far as they
can be perceived or inferred without the appliances of modern science.
Thus, for instance, in a long passage beginning--
Denique fluctifrago suspensae in litore vestes[30]
he shows by an accumulation of instances that there are many invisible
bodies, the existence of which is inferred from visible effects. In
other places he draws attention to the class of facts which have
been the basis of the modern science of geology,--such as the mark
of rivers slowly wearing away their banks,--of walls on the sea-shore
mouldering from the long-continued effects of the exhalations from the
sea,--of the fall of great rocks from the mountains under the wear and
tear of ages.
Again, the argument is frequently illustrated by observation of the
habits of various animals. In these passages Lucretius shows the
curiosity of a naturalist, as well as the sympathetic feeling and
insight of a poet. How graphic, for instance, is his description of
dogs following up the scent of their game--
Errant saepe canes itaque et vestigia quaerunt[31].
How happily their characteristics are struck off in the line--
At levisomna canum fido cum pectore corda[32].
The various cries and habits of birds are often observed and
described, as--
Et validis cycni torrentibus ex Heliconis
Cum liquidam tollunt lugubri voce querellam[33];
and again--
Parvus ut est cycni melior canor ille gruum quam
Clamor in aetheriis dispersus nubibus austri[34].
The description of sea-birds,
Mergique marinis
Fluctibus in salso victum vitamque petentes[35],
recalls the vivid and natural life of those that haunted the isle of
Calypso--
[Greek:
tanyglôssoi te korônai
einaliai têsin te thalassia erga memêlen[36].]
His lively personal observation and active interest in the casual
objects presented to his eyes in the course of his walks are seen in
such passages as--
Cum lubrica serpens
Exuit in spinis vestem; nam saepe videmus
Illorum spoliis vepres volitantibus auctas[37].
There is also much truth and liveliness of observation in his notices
of psychological and physiological facts; as in those passages where
he establishes the connexion between mind and body, and in his account
of the senses. With what a graphic touch does he paint the outward
effects of death[38], the decay of the faculties with age, and the
madness that overtakes the mind--
Adde furorem animi proprium atque oblivia rerum,
Adde quod in nigras lethargi mergitur undas[39];
the bodily waste, produced by long-continuous speaking--
Perpetuus sermo nigrai noctis ad umbram
Aurorae perductus ab exoriente nitore[40];
the reflex action of the senses, produced by the nervous strain of
witnessing games and spectacles for many days in succession; the
insensibility to the pain of the severest wounds in the excitement
of battle! In his account of the plague of Athens, in which he enters
into much greater detail than Thucydides, he displays the minute
observation of a physician, as well as the profound thought of a
moralist.
The 'vivida vis' of his understanding is apparent also in the
clearness and consecutiveness of his philosophical style. His
complaint of 'the poverty of his native tongue' is directed against
the capacities of the Latin language for scientific, not for poetical
expression--
Nunc et Anaxagorae scrutemur Homoeomerian
Quam Grai memorant nec nostra dicere lingua
Concedit nobis patrii sermonis egestas[41].
That language, which gives admirable expression to the dictates of
common sense and to the dignified emotions which inspire the conduct
of great affairs, is ill adapted both for the expression of abstract
ideas and for maintaining a long process of connected argument.
Lucretius has occasionally to meet the first difficulty by the
adoption of Graecisms, and the second by some sacrifice of artistic
elegance. Thus he uses _omne_ for [Greek: to pan] (II. 1108), _esse_,
again, for [Greek: to einai], and the like. Something of a formal and
technical character appears in the links by which his argument is kept
together, as in the constantly recurring use of certain connecting
particles, such as the 'etenim,' 'quippe ubi,' 'quod genus,' 'amplius
hoc,' 'huc accedit,' and the like. Virgil has retained some of the
most striking of these connecting formulae, such as 'contemplator
item,' 'nonne vides,' etc.; but, as was natural in a poem setting
forth precepts and not proofs, he uses them much more sparingly and
with more careful selection. As used by Lucretius, they add to our
sense of the vividness of the book, of the constant personal address
of the author, and of his ardent polemical tone. They also keep the
framework of the argument more compact and distinct: but they bring
into greater prominence the artistic mistake of conducting an abstract
discussion in verse. The very merits of the work considered as an
argument,--its clearness, fullness, and consecutiveness,--detract from
the pleasure which a work of art naturally produces. But the style
cannot be too highly praised for its logical coherence and lucid
illustration. The meaning of Lucretius can never be mistaken from any
ambiguity in his language. There are difficulties arising from the
uncertainty of the text, difficulties also from our unfamiliarity with
his method and principles, or with the objects he describes, but
none from confusion in his ideas or his reasoning, or from a vague or
unreal use of words.
II.--THE SPECULATIVE IDEAS IN LUCRETIUS.
But it is in his grasp of speculative ideas, and in his application of
them to interpret the living world, that the greatness of Lucretius as
an imaginative thinker is most apparent. The substantial truth of
all the ancient philosophies lay in the ideas which they attempted
to express and embody, not in the symbols by which these ideas
were successively represented. Lucretius has a place among the few
adventurous thinkers of antiquity who attained to high eminences
of contemplation, which were hidden from the mass of their
contemporaries, and which, in the breadth of view afforded by them,
are not far below the higher levels of our modern conceptions of
Nature and human life. And there came to him, as to the earlier race
of thinkers, that which comes so rarely to modern enquiry, the fresh
and poetical sense of surprise and keen curiosity, as at the first
discovery of a new country, or the first unfolding of some illimitable
prospect.
(1) In the philosophy of Lucretius the world is conceived as
absolutely under the government of law. The starting-point of his
system--
Nullam rem e nilo gigni divinitus unquam,
is an inference from the recognition of this condition. There is no
need to prove its truth: it is openly revealed in all the processes of
Nature. This fact of universal order is indeed supposed to result
from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms and from the
original limitation in their varieties: but the idea of law is prior
to, and the condition of, all the principles enunciated in the first
two books, in regard to the nature and properties of matter. In no
ancient writer do we find the certainty and universality of law more
emphatically and unmistakably expressed than in Lucretius. This is
the final appeal in all controversy. The superiority of Epicurus
is proclaimed on the ground of his having discovered the fixed and
certain limitations of all existence--
Unde refert nobis victor quid possit oriri,
Quid nequeat, finita potestas denique cuique
Quanam sit ratione atque alte terminus haerens[42].
Following on his steps the poet himself professes to teach--
Quo quaeque creata
Foedere sint, in eo quam sit durare necessum,
Nec validas valeant aevi rescindere leges[43].
In another place he says--
Et quid quaeque queant per foedera naturai
Quid porro nequeant, sancitum quandoquidem extat[44].
All knowledge and speculative confidence are declared to rest on this
truth--
Certum ac dispositumst ubi quicquit crescat et insit[45].
Superstition, the great enemy of truth, is said to be the result of
ignorance of 'what may be and what may not be.' This is the thought
which underlies and gives cogency to the whole argument. The subject
of the poem is 'maiestas cognita rerum,'--the revelation of the
majesty and order of the universe. The doctrine proclaimed by
Lucretius was, that creation was no result of a capricious or
benevolent exercise of power, but of certain processes extending
through infinite time, by means of which the atoms have at length been
able to combine and work together in accordance with their ultimate
conditions. The conception of these ultimate conditions and of their
relations to one another involves some more vital agency than that
of blind chance or an iron fatalism[46]. The 'foedera naturai'
are opposed to the 'foedera fati.' The idea of law in Nature, as
understood by Lucretius, is not, necessarily, inconsistent with
that of a creative will determining the original conditions of the
elemental substances. Though the ultimate principles of Lucretius are
incompatible with a belief in the popular religions of antiquity,
his mode of conceiving the operation of law in the universe is not
irreconcileable with the conceptions of modern Theism.
The idea of law not only supports the whole fabric of his physical
philosophy, but moulds his convictions on human life and imparts to
his poetry that contemplative elevation by which it is pervaded. It
is from this ground that he makes his most powerful assault on the
strongholds of superstition. Nature is thus declared to be free from
the arbitrary and capricious agency of the gods:--
Libera continuo dominis privata superbis[47].
Man also is under the same law, and is made free by his knowledge and
acceptance of this condition. A sense of security is thus gained for
human life; a sense of elevation above its weakness and passions, and
the courage to bear its inevitable evils[48]. This absolute reliance
on law does not act upon his mind with the depressing influence of
fatalism. Although the fortunes of life and the phases of individual
character are said to be the results of the infinite combinations
of blind atoms, yet man is made free by knowledge and the use of
his reason. Notwithstanding the original constitution of his nature,
arising out of influences over which there is no control, he still has
it in his power to live a life worthy of the gods:--
Illud in his rebus videor firmare potesse,
Usque adeo naturarum vestigia linqui
Parvola, quae nequeat ratio depellere nobis
Ut nil inpediat dignam dis degere vitam[49].
From these high places of his philosophy,--'the "templa serena"
well-bulwarked by the learning of the wise'[50] he derives not only a
sense of certainty in thought and security in life, but also his wide
contemplative view, and his profound feeling of the majesty of the
universe. The idea of universal law enables him to apprehend in
all the processes of Nature a presence which awakens reverence and
enforces obedience. This idea imparts unity of tone to the whole poem,
informs its language, and seems to mould the very rhythm of its verse.
(2) But a closer view brings another aspect of the world into light;
viz. the interdependence of all things on one another. There is not
only fixed order, but there is also infinite mobility in Nature. The
sum of all things remains unchanged, though all individual existences
decay and perish. So too the sum of force remains the same[51]. There
is no rest anywhere; all things are continually changing and passing
into one another; decay and renovation form the very life and being
of all things. Nothing is ever lost. 'Nature repairs one thing from
another, and allows of no birth except through the death of something
else':--
Haud igitur penitus pereunt quaecumque videntur,
Quando alid ex alio reficit natura nec ullam
Rem gigni patitur nisi morte adiuta aliena[52]?
As the 'ever-during peace' at the heart of all things is supposed to
result from the eternal and immutable properties of the atoms, this
'endless agitation' arises out of their unceasing motion through
infinite space. There are two kinds of motion,--the one tending to the
renewal,--the other, to the destruction of things as they now exist.
The maintenance of our whole system depends on the equilibrium of
these opposing forces--
Sic aequo geritur certamine principiorum
Ex infinito contractum tempore bellum[53].
There is thus seen to be not only absolute order, but also infinite
change in the processes of Nature. Decay and renovation, death
and life, support the existing creation in unceasing harmony. The
imagination represents this process under the impressive symbol of
an endless battle, in which now one side now the other gains some
position, but neither, as yet, can become master of the field--
Nunc hinc nunc illic superant vitalia rerum,
Et superantur item[54].
This symbol is the poetical form of the old philosophical distinction
of [Greek: auxêsis] and [Greek: phthora]. It is another form of
the [Greek: eris] and [Greek: philia] which to the imagination of
Empedocles appeared to pervade the universe. The idea of a constant
battle imparts to the infinite and all-pervading movement of Nature
the interest and the life of human passion on the grandest and widest
sphere of action. The greatness of the thought makes each particular
object in Nature pregnant with a deeper meaning, associates trivial
and ordinary phenomena with a sense of imaginative wonder, and throws
an august solemnity around the familiar aspects of human life. The
passage in which this principle is most powerfully announced at ii.
575, etc., swells into deeper and grander tones, as the real human
pathos involved in this strife of elements is made manifest. This
struggle of life and decay is no mere war of abstractions: it is
the daily and hourly process of existence. Birth and death are the
fulfilment of this law. 'The old order changeth, yielding place to
new'--
Cedit enim rerum novitate extrusa vetustas[55].
'New nations wax strong, while the old are waning away; the
generations of living things are changed within a brief space, and,
like the runners in a race, pass on the torch of life'--
Augescunt aliae gentes, aliae minuuntur,
Inque brevi spatio mutantur saecla animantum
Et quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt[56].
Man also must resign himself to the universal law, and accept his life
not as a thing to be possessed for ever, but only to be used for a
time--
Sic alid ex alio numquam desistet oriri
Vitaque mancipio nulli datur, omnibus usu[57].
Under this law of universal decay and restoration, we see the rains of
heaven lost in the earth, but passing into new life in the fruits from
which all living things are supported--
Hinc alitur porro nostrum genus atque ferarum,
Hinc laetas urbes pueris florere videmus,
Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas[58].
Or we see the waters of a river lost in the sea and returning through
the earth to their original source, and again flowing in a fresh
stream along the channel first formed for them--
Inde super terras fluit agmine dulci
Qua via secta semel liquido pede detulit undas[59].
Under the same law the earth is seen to be the parent of all things
and their tomb (v. 259); the sea, which loses its substance through
evaporation and the subsidence of its waters, is found to be ever
renewed by its native sources and the abundant tribute of rivers (v.
267; i. 231; vi. 608); the air is ever giving away and receiving back
its substance; the sun ('liquidi fons luminis'), moon, and stars,
are ever losing and ever renewing their light. The day on which the
'long-sustained mass and fabric of the world' will pass away, leaving
only void space and the viewless atoms, is destined to come suddenly
through the termination of this long balanced warfare:--
Denique tantopere inter se cum maxima mundi
Pugnent membra, pio nequaquam concita bello,
Nonne vides aliquam longi certaminis ollis
Posse dari finem? vel cum sol et vapor omnis
Omnibus epotis umoribus exsuperarint;
Quod facere intendunt, neque adhuc conata patrantur[60].
(3) It is to be observed, also, how vividly Lucretius realises and
how steadfastly he keeps before his mind the ideas of the eternity
and infinity of the primordial atoms and of space. These conceptions
support him in his antagonism to the popular religion, and deepen the
feeling with which he contemplates human life and Nature. Our world
of earth, sea, and sky is only one among infinite other systems. It
stands to the universe in much the same proportion as any single man
to the whole earth--
Et videas caelum summai totius unum
Quam sit parvula pars et quam multesima constet
Nec tota pars, homo terrai quota totius unus[61].
It was the glory of Epicurus that he first passed beyond the empyrean
that bounds our world--
Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque[62].
The immensity of the universe is incompatible with the constant agency
and interference of the gods,--
Quis regere immensi summam, quis habere profundi
Indu manu validas potis est moderanter habenas[63].
This negative idea is, at least, a step in advance towards a higher
conception of the attributes of Deity. The infinity and complexity of
the universe protest against the limited and divided powers, as the
natural feelings of human nature protest against the moral qualities
attributed to the gods of the Pagan mythology.
The power of these conceptions is also seen in the poet's deep sense
of the littleness of human life. Such pathetic expressions of the
shortness and triviality of each man's mortal span, as that,--
Degitur hoc aevi quodcumquest[64],
are called forth by the ever-present thought of the Infinite and the
Eternal. But this thought, if associated with a feeling of the pathos
of human life does not lead Lucretius into cynicism or despair.
It rather elevates him and fortifies him to suppress all personal
complaint in the presence of ideas so stupendous. His imagination
expands in contemplating the objects either of thought or of sight,
which produce the impression of immensity,--such as the vast expanse
of earth, sea and sky,--or of great duration,--such as the 'aeterni
sidera mundi' or the 'validas aevi vires.' Thus, as much of the
majesty of his poetry may be connected with his contemplative sense
of law, much of its pervading life with his sense of the mobility of
Nature, so the sublimity of many passages may be resolved into the
influence of the ideas of immensity, both of time and space, on his
imagination.
(4) Another aspect of things vividly realised by Lucretius is that of
their individuality. It was in the atomic philosophy, that the thought
of 'the individual' first rose into prominence. The meaning of
the word 'atom' is simply 'individual.' The sense of each separate
existence is not merged in the conception of law, of change, or of the
immensity of the universe. The atoms are not only infinite in
number, they are also varied in kind and powerful in solid
singleness,--'solida pollentia simplicitate.' From their variety and
individuality the variety and individuality in Nature emerge. No two
classes and no two single objects are exactly alike. Between any
two of the birds that gladden the sea-shore, the river banks, or the
woods, there is some difference in outward appearance--
Invenies tamen inter se differre figuris[65].
Each individual of a flock is different from every other, and by this
difference only can the mother recognise her offspring. This sense of
individuality intensifies the pathos of many passages in the poem.
By regarding each being as having an existence of its own, the poet
enters with sympathy into the feelings of all sentient existence,--of
dumb animals as well as of human creatures. The freshness and
distinctness of all his pictures from Nature are the result of an eye
trained by his philosophy to see each thing not only as part of the
universal life, but as existing in and for itself.
(5) The thought, also, of the infinite subtlety of combination in the
elements and forces of the world acts powerfully on his imagination.
The individuality of things depends on the fact that no two are
composed of exactly the same elements, combined in the same way. The
infinity of the elements, the immensity of the spaces in which they
meet, and the infinite possibilities in their modes of combination
result in the endless variety of beauty and wonder which the world
presents to the eye. The epithet 'daedala,' by which this subtlety
is expressed is applied not only to Nature, but to the earth as the
sphere in which the elements are most largely mixed, and the
creative forces most powerfully active. The varied loveliness of
the world,--the 'varii lepores,' by which the eye is gratified and
relieved,--are the result of the variety in the elements and the
infinite subtlety in their modes of combination. Their invisibility
and inscrutable action enhance the imaginative sense of the power and
beauty resulting from these causes.
(6) The abstract properties of the atoms, discussed in the first two
books, so far from being arbitrary assumptions, without any relation
to actual existence, are thus found to be the conditions which explain
the order, life, immensity, individuality, and subtlety manifested in
the universe. These conceptions, which bridge the chasm between the
particles of lifeless matter and the living world, unite in the
more general conception of Nature. What then is involved in this
conception--the dominant conception of the poem in its philosophical
as well as its imaginative aspects? Something more than the subsidiary
conceptions mentioned above. There is, in the first place, all that
is involved in the unity of an organic whole. But to this whole the
imagination of the poet seems, in some passages, to attach attributes
scarcely reconcileable with the mechanical principles of his
philosophy. In emancipating himself from the religious traditions of
antiquity, Lucretius did not altogether escape from the power of an
idea, so deeply rooted in the thought of past ages, as to seem to
be an integral element of human consciousness. It is against the
limitations which the ancient mythology imposed on the idea of Divine
agency, rather than against the idea itself, as it is understood in
modern times, that his philosophy protests. To Nature his imagination
attributes not only life, but creative and regulative power. There
would be more truth in calling this conception pantheistic than
atheistic. But the sense of will, freedom, individual life, is so
strong in Lucretius, that we think of the 'natura daedala rerum'
rather as a personal power, with attributes in some respects analogous
to those of man, than as a being in whose existence all other life is
merged. Though this figurative attribution of personal qualities to
great natural forces cannot be pressed as evidence of philosophical
belief, yet as it shows, on the one hand, an unconscious survival of
the state of mind which gave birth to mythology, so it seems to be
the unconscious awakening of a spiritual conception of a creative and
sustaining power in the universe.
This new and more vital conception which supersedes the old
mythological modes of thought is not altogether independent of them.
Lucretius still interprets the world by analogies and illustrations
which attach personal attributes to different phases and forces of
Nature. Thus he speaks of Aether as the fructifying father, of Earth
as the great mother of all living things. But the survival of the
mythological conception of the universe, blended indeed with other
modes of imaginative thought, appears most conspicuously in the famous
invocation to the poem,--
Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas,
Alma Venus.
The mysterious power there addressed is identified with the Alma
Venus of Italian worship,--the abstract conception of the life-giving
impulse, the operations of which are most visible in the new birth
of the early spring,--and with the Aphrodite of Greek art and
poetry,--the concrete and passionate conception of the beauty and
charm which most fascinate the senses. But if nothing more was meant
in the opening lines of the poem than a fanciful appeal to one of the
Deities of the popular belief, it might with justice be said that some
of the finest poetry in Lucretius directly contradicted his sincerest
convictions. But the language in which she is addressed clearly
proves that the 'Alma Venus' of the invocation is not an independent
capricious power, separate from the orderly action of Nature. She is
emphatically addressed as a Power, present through all the world,--
Caeli subter labentia signa
Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis
Concelebras.
She is not only omnipresent, but all-creative,--
Per te quoniam genus omne animantum
Concipitur,--
and all-regulative--
Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas, etc.
Thus under the name, and with some of the attributes of the Goddess of
Mythology, the genial force of Nature,--'Natura Naturans' as distinct
from the 'rerum summa,' or 'Natura Naturata,'--is apprehended as a
living, all-pervading energy, the cause of all life, joy, beauty, and
order in the world, the cause too of all grace and accomplishment in
man. To this mysterious Power, from which all joy and loveliness are
silently emanating, the poet, (remembering at the same time that the
friend to whom he dedicates his poem claims especially to be under
the protection of that Goddess with whom she is identified), prays for
inspiration,--
Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem[66].
Here, as in earlier invocations of the Muse, there is a recognition
of the truth that the feeling, the imagery, and the words of the poet
come to him in a way which he does not understand,--
[Greek: hêmeis de kleos oion akouomen, oude ti idmen,]--
and by the gift of a Power which he cannot command. Like Goethe,
Lucretius seems to feel that his thoughts and feelings pass into form
and musical expression under the influence of the same vital movement
which in early spring fills the world with new life and beauty.
But still true to his philosophy, and remembering the Empedoclean
thought[67], which recurs with impressive solemnity in his argument,
that this life-giving energy is inseparably united with a destructive
energy, and seeing at the same time before his imagination the figures
and colouring of some great masterpiece of Greek art, he embodies his
conception in a passionately wrought picture of the loves of Aphrodite
and Ares, and concludes with a prayer that the gracious Power whom
he invokes would prevail on the fierce God of War to grant a time of
peace to his country.
If to regard this passage as merely an artistic ornament of the poem
would be unjust to the sincerity of Lucretius as a thinker, to regard
it merely as a piece of elaborate symbolism would be still more
unjust to his genius as a poet. It is a truth both of thought and of
imaginative feeling that there is a pervading and puissant energy in
the world, manifesting itself most powerfully in animate and inanimate
creation, when the deadness of winter gives place to the genial warmth
of spring,--
Tibi rident aequora ponti
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum;--
manifesting itself also in the human spirit in the form of genius,
calling into life new feelings and fancies of the poet, and shaping
them into forms of imperishable beauty. Whether consistently or
inconsistently with the ultimate tenets of his philosophy, the poet,
in this invocation, seems to recognise, behind these manifestations of
unconscious energy, the presence of a conscious Being with which his
own spirit can hold communion, and from which it draws inspiration.
With similar inconsistency or consistency a modern physicist speaks
of 'the impression of joy given in the unfolding of leaf and the
spreading of plant as irresistibly suggesting the thought of a great
Being conscious of this joy.'
But this puissant and joy-giving energy, personified in the 'Alma
Venus genetrix,' is only one of the aspects which the 'Natura daedala
rerum' of Lucretius presents to man. She seems to stand to him
rather in the position of a task-mistress than of a beneficent
Being, ministering to his wants. The Gods receive all things from her
bounty,--
Omnia suppeditat porro Natura,[68]--
and the lower animals who 'wage no foolish strife with her' have their
wants also abundantly satisfied:--
Quando omnibus omnia large
Tellus ipsa parit Naturaque daedala rerum[69].
But to man she is the cause of evil as well as of good; of shipwrecks,
earthquakes, pestilence, and untimely death, as well as of all beauty
and delight. Sometimes he seems to hear her speaking to him in the
tones of stern reproof,--
Denique si vocem rerum Natura repente, etc.[70]
Again he sees her rising up before him like the old Nemesis of Greek
religion, and trampling with secret irony on the pride and pomp of
human affairs,--
Usque adeo res humanas vis abdita quaedam
Opterit et pulchros fascis saevasque secures
Proculcare ac ludibrio sibi habere videtur[71].
It is this large conception of Nature which seems to bring the
abstract doctrines of Lucretius into harmony with his poetical
feelings and his human sensibilities. The poetry of the living
world is thus breathed into the dry bones of the Atomic system of
Democritus. The unity which the mind strains to grasp in contemplating
the universe is thus made compatible with the perception of individual
life in everything. The pathos and dignity of human life are enhanced
by the recognition of our dependence on this great Power above and
around us. The contemplation of this Power affects the imagination
with a sense of awe, wonder, and majesty. But with this contemplative
emotion a still deeper feeling seems to mingle. Throughout the poem
there is heard a deep undertone of solemnity as from one awakening
to the apprehension of a great invisible Power,--'a concealed
omnipotence,'--in the world. As the imagination of Lucretius is
immeasurably more poetical, so is his spirit immeasurably more
reverential than that of Epicurus. If by the analysis of his
understanding he seems to take all mystery and sanctity out of the
universe, he restores them again by the synthesis of his imagination.
If his work seems in some places to 'teach a truth he could not
learn,' this is to be explained partly by the fact that he sometimes
leaves the beaten road of Epicureanism for the higher and less defined
tracts,--'avia loca,'--along which the mystic enthusiasm of Empedocles
had borne him. But partly it may be explained by the fact that the
poetic imagination, which was in him the predominant faculty, asserts
its right to be heard after the logical understanding has said its
last word. The imagination which recognises infinite life and order
in the world unconsciously assumes the existence of a creative and
governing Power, behind the visible framework of things. Even the germ
of such a thought was more elevating than the popular idolatry
and superstition. The recognition of the majesty of Nature enables
Lucretius to contemplate life with a sense both of solemnity and
security, while it imparts a more elevated feeling to his enjoyment
of the beauty of the world. The belief which he taught and by which he
lived is neither atheistic nor pantheistic; it is not definite enough
to be theistic. It was like the twilight between the beliefs that were
passing away, and that which rose on the world after his time,--
[Greek: êmos d' out' ar pô êôs, eti d' amphilykê nyx].
[Footnote 1: 'First, by reason of the greatness of my
argument, and because I set the mind free from the close-drawn
bonds of superstition; and next because, on so dark a theme, I
compose such lucid verse, touching every point with the grace
of poesy.'--i. 931-34.]
[Footnote 2: Of Leucippus, with whose name the theory is also
associated, very little is known.]
[Footnote 3: 'This terror of the soul, therefore, and this
darkness must be dispelled, not by the rays of the sun or the
bright shafts of day, but by the outward aspect and harmonious
plan of nature.'--i. 146-48.]
[Footnote 4: i. 445-56.]
[Footnote 5: 'The original atoms are, therefore, of solid
singleness, composed of the smallest particles in close and
compact union, not kept together by any meeting of these
particles, but rather powerful by their eternal singleness,
from which nature allows no loss by violence or decay, storing
them as the seeds of all things.'--i. 609-14.]
[Footnote 6: ii. 297-302.]
[Footnote 7: ii. 549.]
[Footnote 8: ii. 575-76.]
[Footnote 9: 'If we are to suppose the existence of an eternal
substance, at the basis of all things, on which the safety of
the whole universe rests, lest you find creation resolved into
nonentity.'--ii. 862-64.]
[Footnote 10: 'So soon as the deep rest of death hath fallen
upon a man, and the mind and the life have departed from him,
there is no loss in his whole frame to be perceived, either in
appearance or in weight. Death still presents everything that
was before, except the vital sense and the warm heat.'--iii.
211-15.]
[Footnote 11: 'For, not only would all reason come to nought,
even life itself would immediately be overthrown, unless you
dare to trust the senses.'--iv. 507-8.]
[Footnote 12: i. 135.]
[Footnote 13: 'Since nothing in our body has been produced
in order that we might be able to put it to use, but what has
been produced creates its own use.'--iv. 834-35.]
[Footnote 14: 'And love impaired their strength, and children,
by their coaxing ways, easily broke down the proud temper of
their fathers.'--v. 1017-18.]
[Footnote 15: vi. 60-1.]
[Footnote 16: E.g. i. 54; v. 154.]
[Footnote 17: Macaulay.]
[Footnote 18: E.g. i. 694.]
[Footnote 19: iv. 478-79.]
[Footnote 20:
In quae corpora si nullus tibi forte videtur
Posse animi iniectus fieri, procul avius erras.--ii. 739-40.]
[Footnote 21: 'But it is necessary that the atoms, in the
act of creation, should exercise some secret, invisible
faculty.'--i. 778-79.]
[Footnote 22: 'Since on all sides, through all the pores
of aether, and, as it were, all round through the
breathing-places of the mighty world, a free exit and entrance
is given to the atoms.'--vi. 492-94.]
[Footnote 23: 'As feathers, and hair, and bristles are first
formed on the limbs of beasts and the bodies of birds, so the
young earth then first bore herbs and plants, afterwards gave
birth to the generations of living things.'--v. 788-91.]
[Footnote 24: 'So more and more, the sweat oozing from the
salt body, increased the sea and the moving watery plains by
its flow.'--v. 487-88.]
[Footnote 25: 'Since neither its veins can support adequate
nourishment, nor does Nature supply what is needful.'--ii.
1141-42.]
[Footnote 26: 'For one thing will grow clear after another:
nor shall the darkness of night make thee lose thy way, before
thou seest, to the full, the furthest secrets of Nature: so
shall all things throw light one on the other.'--i. 1115-17.]
[Footnote 27: 'Dishonouring immortal things by mortal
words.'--v. 121.]
[Footnote 28: 'They, doubtless, became the prey and the gain
of others, unable to break through the bonds of fate by
which they were confined, until Nature caused that species to
disappear.'--v. 875-77.
Professor Wallace (Epicureanism, p. 114) in commenting on this
passage adds, 'Of course in this there is no implication of
the peculiarly Darwinian doctrine of descent, or development
of kind from kind, with structure modified and complicated to
meet changing circumstances.']
[Footnote 29: iii. 327-28.]
[Footnote 30: i. 305.]
[Footnote 31: iv. 705.]
[Footnote 32: 'Dogs, lightly sleeping, with faithful
heart.'--v. 864.]
[Footnote 33: 'When from the strong torrents of Helicon the
swans raise their liquid wailing with doleful voice.'--iv.
547-48.]
[Footnote 34: 'As the low note of the swan is sweeter than the
cry of the cranes, far-scattered among the south-wind's skiey
clouds.'--iv. 181-82.]
[Footnote 35: 'And gulls among the sea-waves, seeking their
food and pastime in the brine.'--v. 1079-80.]
[Footnote 36: Od. v. 66.]
[Footnote 37: 'And likewise, when the lithe serpent casts its
skin among the thorns; for often we notice the briers, with
their light airy spoils hanging to them.'--iv. 60-2.]
[Footnote 38: iii. 213-15.]
[Footnote 39: 'Consider, too, the special madness of the mind,
and forgetfulness of things; consider its sinking into the
black waves of lethargy.'--iii. 828-29.]
[Footnote 40: 'Unbroken speech prolonged from the first light
of dawn till the shadows of the dark night.'--iv. 537-38.]
[Footnote 41: 'Now, too, let us examine the "Homoeomeria" of
Anaxagoras, as the Greeks call it, though the poverty of
our native speech does not admit of its being named in our
language.'--i. 830-33.]
[Footnote 42: 'Whence returning victorious he brings back to
us tidings of what may and what may not come into existence:
on what principle, in fine, the power of each thing is
determined and the deeply-fixed limit of its being.'--i.
75-77.]
[Footnote 43: 'According to what condition all things have
been created, what necessity there is that they abide by it,
and how they may not annul the mighty laws of the ages.'--v.
56-58.]
[Footnote 44: 'Since it is absolutely decreed, what each thing
can and what it cannot do by the conditions of nature.'--i.
586.]
[Footnote 45: 'It is fixed and ordered where each thing may
grow and exist.'--iii. 787.]
[Footnote 46: ii. 254.]
[Footnote 47: ii. 1091.]
[Footnote 48: vi. 32.]
[Footnote 49: 'This, in these circumstances, I think I can
establish, that such faint traces of our native elements are
left beyond the powers of our reason to dispel, that nothing
prevents us from leading a life worthy of the gods.'--iii.
319-22.]
[Footnote 50: ii. 8.]
[Footnote 51: ii. 297-99.]
[Footnote 52: i. 262-64.]
[Footnote 53: ii. 573-74.]
[Footnote 54: ii. 575-76.]
[Footnote 55: iii. 964.]
[Footnote 56: ii. 77-79.]
[Footnote 57: 'So one thing shall never cease being born from
another, and life is given to no man as a possession, to all
for use.'--iii. 970-71.]
[Footnote 58: 'Hence, moreover, the race of man and the beasts
of the forest are fed; hence we see cities glad with the
flower of their children, and the leafy woods on all sides
loud with the song of young birds.'--i. 254-56.]
[Footnote 59: v. 271-72.]
[Footnote 60: 'Finally, since the vast members of the world,
engaged in no holy warfare, so mightily contend with one
another, see'st thou not that some end may be assigned to
their long conflict, either when the sun and every mode of
heat, having drunk up all the moisture, shall have gained
the day, which they are ever tending to do but do not yet
accomplish?' etc.--v. 380-85.]
[Footnote 61: 'And that you may see how very small a part one
firmament is of the whole sum of things, how small a fraction
it is, not even so much in proportion as a single man is to
the whole earth.'--vi. 650-52.]
[Footnote 62: 'And traversed the whole boundless region of
space, in mind and spirit.'--i. 74.]
[Footnote 63: 'Who can order the infinite mass? who can hold
with a guiding hand the mighty reins of immensity?'--ii.
1095-96.]
[Footnote 64: ii. 16.]
[Footnote 65: ii. 348.]
[Footnote 66: i. 28.]
[Footnote 67: Lucretius, in other places where he introduces
pictures or stories from the ancient mythology, as at ii.
600, etc., iii. 978, etc., iv. 584, etc., treats them as
symbolising some facts of Nature or human life. Occasionally,
as at v. 14, etc., he deals with them in the spirit of
Euhemerism. He never uses them, as Virgil, Horace, and Ovid
do, merely as materials for artistic representation.]
[Footnote 68: iii. 23.]
[Footnote 69: v. 233-4.]
[Footnote 70: ii. 931, etc.]
[Footnote 71: v. 1233-5.]
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS.
Lucretius does not enforce his moral teaching on the systematic plan
on which his physical philosophy is discussed. His view of human
life is sometimes presented as it arises in the regular course of the
argument, at other times in highly finished digressions, interspersed
throughout the work with the view apparently of breaking its severe
monotony. These passages might be compared to the lyrical odes in a
Greek drama. They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest
the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently
special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between
the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects
of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral
attitude of Epicurus was, in some respects, anticipated by Democritus,
Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz. from the
later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the
personal circumstances and disposition of Epicurus. By the ordinary
Epicurean his philosophy was valued chiefly as affording a basis
for the denial of the doctrines of Divine Providence and of the
immortality of the soul. But there is a wide difference between
ordinary Epicureanism and that solemn view of human life which was
revealed to the world in the poem of Lucretius. The power which his
speculative philosophy exercised over his mind was one cause of this
difference. Although there is no necessary connexion between his
philosophical convictions and his ethical doctrines, yet the elevation
of feeling which he has imparted to the least elevated of all the
moral systems of antiquity may be in part accounted for by the
influence of ideas derived from the philosophy of Democritus.
Epicureanism, in its original form, was the expression of a character
as unlike as possible to that of Lucretius. It arose in a state of
society and under circumstances widely different from the social and
political condition of the last phase of the Roman Republic. It was a
doctrine suited to the easy social life which succeeded to the great
political career, the energetic ambition, and the creative genius
which ennobled the great age of Athenian liberty. It was essentially
the philosophy of the [Greek: rheia zôontes], who found in refined and
regulated pleasure, in friendliness and sociability, a compensation
for the loss of political existence, and of the sacred associations
and ideal glories of their ancestral religion. Human life, stripped
of its solemn meaning and high practical interest, was supposed to
be understood and realised, and brought under the control of a
comfortable and intelligible philosophy. Pleasure was the obvious
end of existence; the highest aim of knowledge was to ascertain the
conditions under which most enjoyment could be secured; the triumph of
the will was to conform to these conditions. All violent emotion,
all care and anxiety, whatever impaired the capacity of enjoyment
or fostered artificial desire, was to be controlled or resisted, as
inimical to the tranquillity of the soul. The philosophers of the
garden taught and acted on the practical truth, that pleasure depended
on the mind more than on external things; that a simple life tended
more to happiness than luxury[1]; that excess of every kind was
followed by reaction. They inculcated political quiescence as well as
the abnegation of personal ambition. As death was 'the end of all,'
life was to be temperately enjoyed while it lasted, and resigned when
necessary, with cheerful composure.
Such a philosophy would scarcely be thought capable of having given
birth to any form of serious and elevated poetry. Its natural fruit
was the refined, cheerful, and witty new comedy of Athens. Yet the
genius of Lucretius and of Horace expressed these doctrines in tones
of dignity and beauty, which have been denied to more ennobling
truths. The philosophy of pleasure thus makes its appeal to the
poetical susceptibility, as well as to the ordinary temperament of
men. It might have been thought also that no philosophy would have
been less attractive to the dignity of the nobler type, or to the
coarser texture of the common type of Roman character. Yet among the
Romans of the last age of the Republic, Epicureanism was a formidable
rival to the more congenial system of Stoicism, and was professed by
men of pure character and intellectual tastes as well as by men like
the Piso Caesoninus, of whom both Cicero and Catullus have left so
unflattering a portrait. These two systems, although antagonistic
in their view and aim, yet had this common adaptation to the Roman
character, that they held out a definite plan of life, and laid down
precepts by which that life might be attained. The strength of will
and singleness of aim, characteristic of the Romans, their love of
rule and impatience of speculative suspense, inclined and enabled
them to embrace the teaching of those schools whose tenets were most
definite and most readily applicable to human conduct. To a Greek
philosopher the interest of conforming his life to any system arose in
a great measure from the freedom and exercise thereby afforded to
his intellect. Thus Epicurus, in denying the power of luxury to give
happiness, says,--'These are not the things which form the life of
pleasure,'--'[Greek: alla nêphôn logismos kai tas aitias exereunôn
pasês haireseôs kai phygês, kai tas doxas exelaunôn, aph' hôn pleistos
tas psychas katalambanei thorybos][2].' To a Roman, on the other hand,
such a scheme of life was recommended by the new power which was thus
imparted to the will. Greek philosophy has sometimes been reproached
as the cause of the corruption of Roman character and the decay of
Roman religion. But it would be more true to say that, to the higher
natures at least, philosophy supplied the place of the ancient
principles of duty, which had long since decayed with the decay of
patriotism and religion. The idea of regulating life by an ideal
standard afforded a broader aim and a more humane and liberal sphere
of action to that self-control and constancy of will, out of which,
in combination with absolute devotion to the State, the ancient Roman
virtue had been formed. But still it is true that the principles of
Epicureanism were difficult to reconcile with some of the conditions,
both good and bad, of Roman character. While fostering the humaner
feelings and more social tastes, and so softening the primitive
rudeness and austerity, these doctrines tended to discourage national
and political spirit, by withdrawing the energies of the will from
outward activity to the regulation of the inner life. The attitude
both of Stoicism and Epicureanism was one of resistance on the part
of the will to outward influences;--the one system striving to attain
entire independence of circumstances, the other to regulate life in
accordance with them, so as to secure the utmost positive enjoyment,
and the utmost exemption from pain. The political passions of the
last age of the Republic inclined men of thought and leisure to that
philosophy which seemed best fitted to meet and satisfy--
'The longing for confirmed tranquillity
Inward and outward.'
But while Epicureanism was a natural refuge from the passions of a
revolutionary era, Stoicism was a fortress of inward strength to the
few who, at the fall of the Republic, resisted the manifest tendency
of things, and, in a later age, to those who strove to maintain the
dignity of Roman citizens under the degradation of the early Empire.
But the profession of Epicureanism, in the last age of the Republic,
was not confined to men like Atticus and Lucretius who stood aloof
from public life. The existence of Cassius, who acted and suffered
for the same cause as the Stoic Cato, shows that political apathy,
although theoretically required by this philosophy, was not essential
to a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius, though animated by an ardent spirit
of proselytism, does not desire that Memmius should forget his duties
as a citizen and statesman. The denial of the Divine interference in
human affairs and of the doctrine of a future state was the essential
bond of agreement among the adherents of Epicureanism. The religious
unsettlement of the age assumed in them a positive form. They were the
Sadducees of Rome, who escaped from the perplexity as well as from
the most elevating influences of life, by moulding their feelings
and conduct on the firm conviction, that while man was master of his
happiness in this world, he had nothing either to hope or fear after
death.
It seems a strange result of the moral confusion of that time to find
the enthusiasm of Lucretius springing from this denial of what from
the days of Plato have been regarded as the highest hopes of mankind.
No writer of antiquity was more profoundly impressed by the serious
import and mystery of life. Yet he appears as the unhesitating
advocate of all the tenets of this philosophy, and denies the
foundations of religious belief with a zeal more like religious
earnestness than the spirit of any other writer of antiquity. Without
conscious deviation from the teaching of his master, he reproduces
the calm unimpassioned doctrines of Epicurus, in a new type,--earnest,
austere, and ennobled; enforcing them not for the sake of ease or for
the love of pleasure, but in the cause of truth and human dignity.
Pleasure is indeed recognised by him as the universal law or condition
of existence--'dux vitae dia voluptas,'--the great instrument of
Nature through which all life is created and maintained. But the real
object of his teaching is to obtain not active pleasure, but peace and
a 'pure heart.' 'For life,' he says, 'may go on without corn or wine,
but not without a pure heart--
At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi.
All that Nature craves is that the body should be free from actual
pain, and that the mind, undisturbed by fear and anxiety, should be
open to the influence of natural enjoyment--'
Nonne videre
Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, cui
Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur
Iucundo sensu cura semotu' metuque[3]?
Although in different places he indicates a genuine appreciation of
the charms of art,--in the form of music, paintings, statues,
etc.,--yet he expresses or implies an independence of all the
adventitious stimulants to enjoyment. The only needful pleasure is
that which Nature herself bestows on a mind free from care, passion,
violent emotion, restless discontent, and slothful apathy.
Although no new principle or maxim of conduct appears in his teaching,
the view of human life presented by Lucretius was really something new
in the world. A strong and deep flood of serious thought and
feeling was for the first time poured into the shallow channel of
Epicureanism. The spirit in which Lucretius contemplated the world
was different from that of any other man of antiquity; especially
different from that of his master in philosophy. To the one human
life was a pleasant sojourn, which should be temperately enjoyed and
gracefully terminated at the appointed time: to the other it was the
more sombre and tragic side of the august spectacle which all Nature
presents to the contemplative mind. Moderation in enjoyment was the
practical lesson of the one: fortitude and renunciation were the
demands which the other made of all who would live worthily.
This difference in the spirit, rather than the letter, of their
philosophy is to be attributed in some degree to this, that Lucretius
was a Roman of the antique type of Ennius, born with the passionate
heart of a poet, and inheriting the resolute endurance of the great
patrician families. Partly too, as was said before, the effect of the
speculative philosophy which he embraced was to deepen and strengthen
that mood of imaginative contemplation, which he shares, not with any
of his countrymen, but with a few great thinkers of the world. It
is his philosophical enthusiasm which distinguishes the teaching of
Lucretius from the meditative and practical wisdom which has made
Horace the favourite Epicurean teacher and companion of modern times.
Partly too, as was said in a former chapter, this new aspect of
Epicureanism in Lucretius may be attributed to the reaction of his
nature from the confusion of the times in which he lived.
It is not indeed possible to learn whether the passions of his age
first drove him to Epicureanism, or whether the doctrines of that
philosophy, adopted on speculative grounds, may not rather have led
him to regard his age in the spirit of contemplative isolation, which
he has described in the well-known passage--
Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, etc.
His philosophy may have been forced on him by personal experience, or
the intimations of experience may have assumed their form and colour
from the nature of his philosophy. But the memories of his youth and
the experience of things witnessed in his manhood did undoubtedly
colour all his thoughts and feelings on human life. Some of the
forms of evil against which he contends had never been so prominently
displayed before. Yet all these considerations afford only a partial
explanation of the character of his practical philosophy. There were
other Roman Epicureans, contemporary with him and later, and none are
known to have been in any way like him. Although his nature was made
of the strong Roman fibre; although his mind had been deeply imbued
with the spirit of Greek philosophy; although his view of life
was necessarily coloured by the action of his times; yet all these
considerations go but a little way to explain his attitude of mind
and the work which he accomplished in the world. Over all these
considerations this predominates, that he was a man of great original
and individual force, and one who in power and sincerity of thought
and feeling rose higher than any other above the level of his age and
country.
The moral teaching of the poem was rather an active protest against
various forms of evil than the proclamation of a positive good. The
happiness which the philosophic life promised is described in vague
outline, like the delineation given of the calm and passionless
existence of the Gods. Epicureanism appears here in antagonism to
the prejudice and ignorance, the weakness and the passions of human
nature, rather than in its hold of any positive good. Hence it is that
the tones of Lucretius might in many places be mistaken for those of
a Stoic rather than an Epicurean. In their resistance to the common
forms of evil these systems were at one. Perhaps, too, in the positive
good at which he aimed, the spirit of Lucretius was more that of
a Stoic than he imagined. His sense of human dignity was much more
powerful than his regard for human enjoyment. Yet his philosophy
enabled him, along with the strength of Stoicism, to cherish humaner
sympathies. While his earnest temper, his scorn of weakness, his
superiority to pleasure were in harmony with the militant rather than
the quiescent attitude of each of these philosophies, his humanity and
tenderness of feeling and the enjoyment which he derived from Nature
and art were more in harmony with the better side of Epicureanism than
with the formal teaching of the Porch.
The evils of life, for the cure of which Lucretius considers his
philosophy available, appeared to him to spring not out of man's
relation to Nature, but out of the weakness of his reason and the
corruption of his heart. The great service of Epicurus consisted not
only in revealing the laws of Nature, but in laying his finger on the
secret cause of man's unhappiness. Observing the insufficiency of all
external goods to bestow peace and contentment, he saw that the evil
lay in the vessel into which these blessings were poured:--
Intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum
Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus,
Quae conlata foris et commoda cumque venirent;
Partim quod fluxum pertusumque esse videbat,
Ut nulla posset ratione explerier umquam;
Partim quod taetro quasi conspurcare sapore
Omnia cernebat, quaecumque receperat, intus[4].
The evils which vitiate our happiness are the cowardice which dares
not accept the blessings of life, the weakness which repines at what
is inevitable, the restless desires which cannot enjoy the present and
crave for what is beyond their reach, the apathy and insensibility to
natural enjoyment, which are the necessary consequence of luxurious
indulgence. Thus the aim of his moral teaching was to purify the
heart from superstition, from the fear of death, from the passions of
ambition and of love, from all artificial pleasures and desires.
The greatest of these evils and the mainspring of all human misery
is superstition. It is this which surrounds life with the gloom of
death--
Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore[5].
Against the arbitrary and cruel power, supposed to be exercised by the
Gods, Lucretius proclaimed internecine war. The fear of this power is
denounced, not as a restraint on natural inclination, but as a base
and intolerable burden, degrading life, confounding all genuine
feeling, corrupting our ideas of what is holiest and most divine. The
pathetic story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told to enforce the
antagonism between the exactions of religious belief and the most
sacred human affections. Every line of the poem is indirectly a
protest against the religious errors of antiquity. At occasional
intervals this protest is directly uttered, sometimes with indignant
irony, at other times with the profoundest pathos. The first feeling
breaks forth in the passage at vi. 380, etc., where he argues against
the fancies which attribute thunder to the capricious anger of the
Gods. 'Why is it,' he asks, 'that the bolts pass over the guilty and
often strike the innocent? Why are they idly spent on desert places?
Is this done by the Gods merely in the way of practice and exercise
for their arms? Why is it that Jupiter never hurls his bolts in a
clear sky? Does he descend into the clouds in order that his aim may
be surer? Why does he cast his bolts into the sea? What charge has he
against the waves and the waste of waters?
Quid undas
Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantis[6]?
Why is it that he often destroys and disfigures his own temples and
images?'
Elsewhere, however, he is moved by a feeling deeper than scorn,--a
feeling of true reverence, springing from a high ideal of the attitude
which it became man to maintain in presence of a superior nature.
There is no passage in the poem in which he speaks more from the
depths of his heart than in the lines--
O genus infelix humanum, talia divis
Cum tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!
Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque nobis
Volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!
Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri
Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras
Nec procumbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas
Ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo
Spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota,
Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri[7].
The terrors of the popular mythology are denounced as a violation
of the majesty of the Gods, as well as the cause of infinite evil
to ourselves,--not indeed because any thought or act of ours has
the power to rouse the Divine anger, but from the effect that these
feelings have on our own minds. 'No longer can we approach the
temples of the Gods with a quiet heart, nor receive into our minds the
intimations of the Divine nature in peace'--
Nec delubra deum placido cum pectore adibis,
Nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur
In mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae
Suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace valebis[8].
This passage and others in the poem imply that Lucretius both
believed in the existence of Gods, and conceived of them as revealing
themselves through direct impressions to the mind of man, and filling
it with solemn awe and peace. But the account which he gives of their
eternal existence is vague and poetical, and might almost be regarded
as a symbolical expression of what seemed to him most holy and divine
in man. The highest aim of man is to 'lead a life worthy of the Gods':
the essential attribute of the divine life is 'peace.' The Gods are
said to consist of the finest and purest essence, to be exempt from
death, decay, and wasting passions, to be supplied with all things
by the liberal bounty of Nature, and to dwell for ever in untroubled
serenity above the darkness and the storms of our world. Their abode
in the spaces betwixt different worlds--(the 'intermundia' as they are
called by Cicero),--is described in words almost literally translated
from the description of the Heaven of the Odyssey--
Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae
Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis
Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether
Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident[9].
They reveal themselves to man in dreams and waking visions by
images of ampler size and more august aspect than that of our mortal
condition. Fear and ignorance have assigned to these unchanging forms
the functions of creating and governing the world, and out of this
fear have arisen all over the earth temples and altars, along with
the festivals and the solemn rites of superstition. But the Gods are
neither the arbitrary tyrants nor the beneficent guardians of the
world. Why should they have done anything for the benefit of man?
How can he add to or detract from their eternal happiness? Shall
we suppose them weary of their existence, and infected with a human
passion for change?--
At, credo, in tenebris vita ac maerore iacebat,
Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo.
Whence could they have obtained the idea of creation, whence gathered
the secret powers of matter--
Si non ipsa dedit specimen natura creandi?
Against the old argument from final causes he opposes that drawn
from the imperfections of the world, such as the waste of Nature's
resources on vast tracts of mountain and forest, on desolate marshes,
rocks, and seas,--the enmity to man of other occupants of the
earth,--the malign influences of climate and the seasons,--the
feebleness of infancy,--the devastations of disease,--the untimeliness
of early death[10].
While his belief in the Gods is thus expressed in vague outline and
poetical symbolism, yet it is clear that as he recognised a secret,
orderly, and omnipotent power in Nature, so also he recognised the
ideal of a purer and serener life than that of earthly existence.
These two elements in all true religion, a reverential acknowledgment
of a universal power and order, and a sense of a diviner life with
which man may have communion, were part of the being of Lucretius. His
denial of supernatural beliefs extended not only to all the fables
and false conceptions of ancient mythology, but to the doctrine of a
Divine Providence recompensing men, here or hereafter, according to
their actions. The intensity of his nature led him to identify all
religion with the cruel or childish fables of the popular faith. The
certainty with which he grasped the truth of the laws and order of
Nature was incompatible with the only conception he could form of a
Divine action on the world. His deep sense of human rights and deep
sympathy with human feeling rebelled against a belief in Powers
exercising a capricious tyranny over the world, and exacting human
sacrifice as a propitiation of their offended majesty. His reverence
for truth and his sense of the power and mystery of Nature led him to
scorn the virtue attributed to an idolatrous and formal worship. This
attitude of religious isolation, not more from his own time than from
the subsequent course of thought, in a man of unusual sincerity
and earnestness of feeling, is certainly among the most impressive
phenomena of ancient literature. The spirit in which he denies the
beliefs of the world is far from resembling the triumph of a cold
philosophy over the religious associations of mankind. He is moved
even to a kind of poetical sympathy with some of the ceremonies
and symbols of Paganism. A sense of religious awe,--a sympathetic
recognition of the power of religious emotion over the hearts of
men,--is expressed, for instance, in the lines which describe the
procession of Cybele through the great cities and nations of the
world. While guarding himself against the pollution of a base
idolatry, he yet acknowledges not only the power of religious
associations to entwine themselves with human affections, but the
intrinsic power of the truths symbolised in that worship; viz. the
truth of the majesty of Nature, and of the duties arising from the
elemental affections to parents and country. In regard to all his
religious impressions his intensity of feeling and imagination seems
to place him on a solitary height, nearly as far apart from the
followers of his own school as from their adversaries[11].
The same strength of heart and mind characterises that passage of
sustained and impassioned feeling, in which Lucretius encounters the
thought of eternal death. The vast spiritual difference between the
Roman poet and the Greek philosopher is apparent when we contrast the
cold, unsympathetic language of the epistle to Menoeceus with the
fervent and profoundly human tones of the third book of the poem of
Lucretius. Epicurus escapes from the fear of death through a placid
indifference of feeling, an easy contentment with the comforts of
this life, a sense of relief in getting rid of 'the longing for
immortality' ([Greek: ton tês athanasias pothon]). Lucretius, while
realising the full pathos and solemnity of the thought of death,
preaches submission to the inexorable decree of Nature with a stern
consistency and a proud fortitude combating the suggestions of human
weakness.
The whole of the third book is devoted to this part of his subject,
and the argument of the fourth is to a great extent supplementary
to that of the third book. The physical doctrine enunciated and
illustrated in the first half of the third book is the materiality of
the soul and its indissoluble connexion with the body. The practical
consequence of this doctrine, viz. that death is nothing to us, is
there enforced in a long passage[12] of sustained power and solemnity
of feeling. First, we are made to realise the entire unconsciousness
in death throughout all eternity. 'As it was before we were born, so
shall it be hereafter. As we felt no trouble in the past at the clash
of conflict between Roman and Carthaginian, when all the world shook
with alarm, so nothing can touch us or move us then--
Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo[13].
It is but the trick of our fancy which suggests the thought of any
kind of suffering after all consciousness has ceased--
Nec radicitus e vita se tollit et eicit
Sed facit esse sui quiddam super inscius ipse[14].
Men feel that the sadness of death lies in the separation from wife,
and children, and home; in the extinction which a single day has
brought to all the blessings and the gains of a lifetime. But they
forget that along with these blessings is extinguished all desire and
longing for them. So, too, men "spice their fair banquets with the
dust of death." They say, "our joy is but for a season; it will soon
be past, nor ever again be recalled,"--as if forsooth any want or any
desire can haunt that sleep from which there is no awaking--
Nec quisquam expergitus exstat,
Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[15].
Nature herself might utter this reproof to all weak complaining: "Thou
fool, if thy life hath given thee joy, and all its blessings have not
been poured into a leaky vessel, why dost thou not leave the feast
like a satisfied guest, and take thy rest contentedly? But if all has
hitherto been to thee vanity and vexation of spirit, why seek to add
to thy trouble? I can devise or frame no new pleasure for thee. "There
is no new thing under the sun"--"eadem sunt omnia semper."' To the
weak complaint of age, Nature would speak with sterner voice: 'Away
hence with thy tears and thy complainings. It is because, unable to
enjoy the present, thou art ever weakly longing for what is absent,
that death has come on thee unsatisfied.' 'This would be, indeed, a
just charge and reproof. For the old order is ever yielding place to
new; and life is given to no man in possession, to all men for use.
The time before we were born is a mirror to us of what the future
shall be. Is there any gloom or horror there? Is there not a deeper
rest than any sleep?'
'The terrors of the unseen world are but the hell which fools make
for themselves out of their passions[16]. The torments of Tantalus,
of Tityus, of Sisyphus, and the Danaides, are but symbols of the
blind cowardice and superstition, of the craving passions, of the
ever-foiled and ever-renewed ambition, of the thankless discontent
with the natural joy and beauty of the world, which curse and degrade
our mortal existence. The stories of Cerberus and the Furies, and of
the tortures of the damned are creations of a guilty conscience,
or the projections into futurity of the experiences of earthly
punishment.'
Other consolations are suggested by the thoughts of those who have
gone before us. Echoing the stern irony of Achilles--
[Greek:
alla, philos, thane kai su; tiê olophyreai houtôs?
katthane kai Patroklos, hoper seo pollon ameinôn][17]--
he reminds us that better and greater men than we have died,--kings
and soldiers, poets and philosophers, the mightiest equally with the
humblest. In the spirit, and partly too in the words of Ennius, he
enforces the thought that 'Scipio, the thunderbolt of war, the terror
of Carthage, gave his bones to the earth as if he were the meanest
slave.' 'Why, then, should one whose life is half a sleep, who is the
prey of weak fears and restless discontent, complain that he too is
subject to the common law? What is this wretched love of life, which
makes us tremble at every danger? Death cannot be avoided; no new
pleasure can be forged out by longer living. This evil of our lot is
not inflicted by Nature, but by our own craving hearts, which cannot
enjoy, and are yet ever thirsting for longer life[18].'
The power of the whole of this passage depends partly on the vividness
of feeling and conception with which the thought is realised, partly
on the august and solemn associations with which it is surrounded.
Such graphic touches as these--
Frigida quem semel est vitai pausa secuta[19];--
Cum summo gelidi cubat aequore saxi[20];--
Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae[21],--
and again, the life, truth, and tenderness of the picture presented in
the lines--
Iam iam non domus accipiet te laeta, neque uxor
Optima nec dulces occurrent oscula nati
Praeripere et tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[22],
bring home to the mind, in startling distinctness, the old familiar
contrast between the 'cold obstruction' of the grave and 'the warm
precincts of the cheerful day.' But the horror and pain of the thought
of death are lost in a feeling of august resignation to the universal
law. Though the fact is made present to our minds in its sternest
reality, yet it is encompassed with the pomp and majesty of great
associations. It suggests the thought of the most momentous crisis in
history--
Ad confligendum venientibus undique Poenis[23],
of the regal state of kings and mighty potentates--
Inde alii multi reges rerumque potentes
Occiderunt, magnis qui gentibus imperitarunt[24],
of the simpler and more impressive grandeur of the great men of old,
such as the 'good Ancus,' the mighty Scipio, Homer, 'peerless among
poets,' the sage Democritus, Epicurus, 'the sun among all the lesser
luminaries.' Lastly, we are reminded of the universal law of Nature,
that the death of the old is the condition of the life of the new--
Sic alid ex alio nunquam desistet oriri[25].
Even if the spirit of the poet cannot be said to rise buoyantly above
the depressing and paralysing influence of this conviction, yet he
draws a higher lesson from it than the maxim of 'Eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die.' He understands the epicurean precept of 'carpe
diem' in a sense more befitting to human dignity. The lesson which
he teaches is the need of conquering all weakness, sloth, and
irresolution in life. This life is all that we have through eternity;
let it not be wasted in unsatisfied desires, insensibility to present
and regrets for absent good, or restless disquiet for the future; let
us understand ourselves and our position here, bear and enjoy whatever
is allotted to us during our few years of existence. We are masters
of ourselves and of our fortunes, so far at least as to rise clearly
above the degradation of ignorance and misery.
The practical use of the study of Nature, according to Lucretius,
is, first, to inspire confidence in the room of an ignorant and
superstitious fear of supernatural power; and, secondly, to show
what man really needs, and so to clear the heart from all artificial
desires and passions. All that is wanted for happiness in this world
is a mind free from error, and a heart neither incapable of natural
enjoyment (fluxum pertusumque) nor vitiated by false appetite[26]. Of
the errors to which man is liable superstition and the fear of death
are the most deeply seated. Of the artificial desires and passions,
on the other hand, the most destructive are the love of power and of
riches, and the sensual appetite for pleasure. In the opening lines
of the second book the strife of ambition, the rivalries of rank and
intellect in the warfare of politics are contrasted with the serene
life of philosophy, as darkness, error, and danger with light,
certainty, and peace--
Sed nil dulcius est, bene quam munita tenere
Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,
Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae,
Certare ingenio, contendere nobilitate,
Noctes atque dies niti praestante labore
Ad summas emergere opes rerumque potiri[27].
Yet to be the master of armies and of navies, or to be clothed in
gold and purple, gives not that exemption from the real terrors and
anxieties of life which the power of reason only can bestow--
Quod si ridicula haec ludibriaque esse videmus,
Re veraque metus hominum curaeque sequaces
Nec metuunt sonitus armorum nec fera tela,
Audacterque inter reges rerumque potentis
Versantur neque fulgorem reverentur ab auro
Nec clarum vestis splendorem purpureai,
Quid dubitas quin omni' sit haec rationi' potestas?
Omnis cum in tenebris praesertim vita laboret[28].
The desire of power and station leads to the shame and misery of
baffled hopes, of which the toil of Sisyphus is the type, and also
to the guilt which deluges the world in blood, and violates the
most sacred ties of Nature[29]. While failure in the struggle is
degradation, success is often only the prelude to the most sudden
downfall. Weary with bloodshed, and with forcing their way up the
hostile and narrow road of ambition[30], men reach the summit of their
hopes only to be hurled down by envy as by a thunderbolt[31]. They are
slaves to ambition, merely because they cannot distinguish the true
from the false, because they cannot judge of things as they really
are, apart from the estimate which the world puts upon them--
Quandoquidem sapiunt alieno ex ore petuntque
Res ex auditis potius quam sensibus ipsis.[32]
The love of riches and of luxurious living, which had begun to corrupt
the Roman character in the age of Lucilius, had increased to gigantic
dimensions in the last age of the Republic. By no aspect of his age
was Lucretius more repelled than by this. No doctrine is enforced in
the poem with more sincerity of conviction than that of the happiness
and dignity of plain and natural living, the vanity of all the
appliances of wealth, and their inability to give real enjoyment
either to body or mind. In a well-known passage at the beginning of
the second book he adapts an ideal description from Homer's account
of the palace of Alcinous to the costly magnificence and splendour
of Roman banquets, with which he contrasts the pleasure of gratifying
simple tastes, in fine weather, among the beauties of Nature--
Praesertim cum tempestas adridet et anni
Tempora conspergunt viridantis floribus herbas[33].
With fervid sincerity he announces the truth that 'to the man who
would govern his life by reason plain living and a contented spirit
are great riches'--
Quod siquis vera vitam ratione gubernet,
Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce
Aequo animo[34].
Moderation, independence, and self-control are the virtues which
Horace derives from his philosophy. He knew how to enjoy both the
luxury of the city and the simple fare of the country. Lucretius is
more alive to the dangers of pampering the body and enervating the
mind. He is more active in his resistance to the common forms of
indulgence: he shows more truly simple tastes, stronger capacity of
natural enjoyment. He is vividly sensible of the apathy and _ennui_
produced by the luxury and inaction of his age. Others among the Roman
poets, with more or less sincerity and consistency, appear to long for
a return to more natural ways, and paint their ideals of the purity
and simplicity of country life. But no writer of antiquity is less
of an idealist than Lucretius: there is no writer, ancient or modern,
whose words are more truthful and unvarnished. There is no romance or
self-deception in what he longs for. There may be some anticipation of
the spirit of Rousseau in Virgil, and still more in Tibullus, but none
whatever in Lucretius. The privations and rude misery of savage life
are painted in as sombre colours as the satiety and discontent of his
own age. It would be difficult to name any writer, ancient or modern,
by whom the lesson of 'plain living and high thinking' was more
worthily inculcated.
The passion of love, which, in its more violent phases, was seen to
be a prominent motive in the comedy of Plautus, became a very powerful
influence in actual life during the last years of the Republic and the
early years of the Empire. Extreme license in the pursuit of pleasure
was common among men and women of the highest rank: but, over and
above this, the poetry of Catullus and of the elegiac poets of the
Augustan age shows that in the case of young men of fashion and
literary accomplishment (and these were often combined) intrigue and
temporary _liaisons_ had become the absorbing interest and occupation
of life. With these claims of passion and sentiment, apparently so
alien to the ancient strength and dignity of the Roman character,
Lucretius felt no sympathy. No writer has shown a profounder reverence
for human affection. In his eyes the crowning guilt of superstition
is the cruel violation of natural ties exacted by it: the chief
bitterness of death is the thought of eternal separation from wife and
children: the first civilising influence acting on the world is traced
to the power of the blandishments of children over the savage pride of
strength. The pathos of the famous passage, at Book ii. 350, attests
his sympathy with the sorrow caused by the disruption of natural ties,
even in the lower animals. Other casual expressions, as in that line
of profound feeling--
Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[35];--
or such pictures, as that at iii. 469, of friends and relatives
surrounding the bed of one who has sunk into a deep lethargy--
Ad vitam qui revocantes
Circumstant lacrimis rorantes ora genasque[36],--
show how strong and real was his regard for the great elemental
affections of human nature. But, on the other hand, he is austerely
indifferent to the follies and the idealising fancies of lovers. With
satirical and not fastidious realism he strips passion of all
romance, and exhibits it as a bondage fatal alike to character and
independence, to peace of mind and to self-respect. But it is the
weakness, not the immorality of licentious passion which he condemns.
And it would be altogether an anachronism to attribute to a writer of
that age sentiments on this subject in harmony either with the austere
virtue of the primitive Romans, or with the moral standard of modern
times. It is not the indulgence of inclination, but its excess and
perversion, by which the happiness and dignity of life are placed in
another's power, which he condemns.
In order to perceive the limitation of the view of the evils of human
life and of their remedy presented by Lucretius, it is not necessary
to contrast it with the higher aspects of moral and religious thought
in modern times. It is clear that owing to some idiosyncrasy, the
result perhaps of some accident of his early years, and fostered by
seclusion in later years from the common ways of life, he greatly
exaggerates the influence of the terrors of the ancient religion over
the world. There is little trace, either in the literature[37] or in
the sepulchral inscriptions of the Romans, of that 'fear of Acheron'--
Funditus humanam qui vitam turbat ab imo
Omnia suffendens mortis nigrore neque ullam
Esse voluptatem liquidam puramque reliquit.
The answer of Cicero to the exaggerated pretensions of Epicureanism
seems to express the common sense of his age, 'Where can you find
an old woman fatuous enough to believe what you forsooth would have
believed, if you had not studied physical science[38]?' The passionate
protest of Lucretius seems more applicable to times of religious
persecution, and to extreme forms of fanaticism in modern times, than
to the tolerant spirit and the not unkindly superstition of the Greek
and Roman world, as they are known in its literature. But if
the experience of the modern world gives a still more startling
significance to the words--
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum,--
that experience also enables us better to understand the blindness
of Lucretius to the purifying and consoling power which even ancient
religion was capable of exercising. Though not insensible to the
poetical charm of some of the old mythological fancies, and to the
solemnising effect of impressive ceremonials, he can see only the
baser influences of fear in man's whole attitude to a supernatural
Power. His ordinary acuteness of mind seems to desert him in that
passage[39] where he resolves the passions of ambition and avarice
into the fear of death, and that again into the dread of eternal
punishment.
The limitation of his philosophy is also apparent in his want of
sympathy with the active duties and pursuits of life. He can see
only different modes of evil in the busy interests of the world.
War, politics, commerce, appeared to him a mere struggle of personal
passion with a view to personal aggrandisement. A life of peace, not
of energetic action, was his ideal. In eternal peace he placed the
supreme happiness of the Gods: a state of peaceful contemplation--
Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri--
he regards as the only true religion for man: the 'mute and
uncomplaining' peace of the grave reconciles him to the thought of
everlasting death. The inadequacy of his philosophy may thus be traced
partly to his vivid impressibility of imagination, which made him
too exclusively sensible of the awe produced on man's spirit by the
mystery of the universe, partly to his defective sympathy with the
active interests and duties of life. Partly, too, the bent of his mind
towards material observation and enquiry had some share in determining
his convictions. In dwelling on the outward appearances of decay and
death, he seems to have shut his eyes to those inward conditions
of the human spirit which to Plato, Cicero, and Virgil appeared
the witnesses of immortality. The inability to form the definite
conception of a God without human limitations, as well as his strong
sense of the imperfection of the world, forced upon him the absolute
denial of any Divine providence over human affairs.
Yet a modern reader, without accepting the conclusions of his
philosophy, may sympathise with much of his spirit. In his firm faith
in the laws which govern the universe, he will recognise a great
position established, as essential to the progress of religious as
of scientific thought. He will see, in the earnest intensity of his
feeling and the sincerity of his expression, a spirit akin to the
purer kinds of religious fervour in modern times. In no other writer,
ancient or modern, will he find a profounder sense of human dignity,
of the supreme claims of affection, of the superiority of a natural
to a conventional life. From the direct exhortation and the indirect
teaching of Lucretius, he may learn such lessons as these,--that it is
man's first business to know and obey the laws of his being,--that the
sphere of his happiest activity is to be found in contemplation rather
than in action,--that his well-being consists in valuing rightly the
real blessings of life rather than in following the illusions of fancy
or of custom,--in reverencing the sanctity of family life,--and in
cherishing a kindly sympathy with all living things. If there was
nothing especially new in the views which he enunciated, the power
of realising the common conditions of life, the passionate effort not
only to rise himself above human weakness, but to redeem the whole
race of man from the curse of ignorance, and the force of imaginative
sympathy with which he executed this part of his task were, perhaps,
something altogether new in the world.
The same 'vivida vis' with which he observes natural phenomena
characterises his insight into human character and passion. He
penetrates below the surface of life with the searching insight of a
great satirist, and sees more clearly into the hearts of men, and has
a more subtle perception of the secret springs of their unhappiness,
than any of his countrymen. The aim of his satire is not to make men
seem objects of ridicule or scorn, but to restore them to the
dignity which they had forfeited through weakness and ignorance. The
observation of Horace is wider and more varied, but it ranges much
more over the surface of life. He has neither the same sense of the
mystery of our being, nor the same sympathy with the common conditions
of mankind.
The power of truthful moral painting which Lucretius exercises is seen
in that passage in which he reveals the secret of the 'amari aliquit,'
'amid the very flowers of love,'--
Aut cum conscius ipse animus se forte remordet
Desidiose agere aetatem lustrisque perire,
Aut quod in ambiguo verbum iaculata reliquit
Quod cupido adfixum cordi vivescit ut ignis,
Aut nimium iactare oculos aliumve tueri
Quod putat in voltuque videt vestigia risus[40]:
and in that in which he describes the satiety and restlessness which
is the avenging nemesis of an opulent and luxurious society,--
Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
Esse domi quem pertaesumst, subitoque revertit,
Quippe foris nilo melius qui sentiat esse.
Currit agens mannos ad villam praecipitanter,
Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans;
Oscitat extemplo, tetigit cum limina villae,
Aut abit in somnum gravis atque oblivia quaerit,
Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit[41].
There is always poetry and pathos in the satire of Lucretius. There
is no trace in him of the malice or the love of detraction which
is seldom wholly absent from satiric writing. The futility of human
effort is the burden of his complaint[42]: and this (as has been
pointed out by M. Martha) is the explanation of the pathetic
recurrence of the word 'nequicquam' in so many passages of his poem.
His scorn and indignation are shown only in exposing the impostures
which men mistake for truths. There is thus infinite compassion for
the common lot of man blended with the irony of the passage in which
he represents the aged husbandman complaining of the general decay
of piety as the cause of the failure of the earth to respond to his
labours. His direct and realistic power of expression enhances his
power as a moral painter and teacher. Though the writings of Horace
supply many more quotations applicable to various situations in life,
and expressed in equally apposite language, yet such lines as these
in the older poet seem to come from the heart of one ever 'sounding a
deeper and more perilous way' over the sea of human life, than suited
the more worldly wisdom of Horace,--
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum[43].--
Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis[44]?--
Vitaque mancipio nulli datur omnibus usu[45].--
Surgit amari aliquit quod in ipsis floribus augat[46].--
Nam verae voces tum demum pectore ab imo
Eiciuntur et eripitur persona, manet res[47].--
Divitiae grandes homini sunt vivere parce
Aequo animo[48].
Many other lines and expressions of similar force will occur to every
reader familiar with Lucretius. As his ordinary style brings the
outward aspects of the world vividly before the mind, so the language
in which his moral teaching is enforced, or the result of his moral
observation is expressed, stamps powerfully on the mind important and
permanent truths of human nature. His thoughts are uttered sometimes
with the impressive dignity of Roman oratory, sometimes with the
nervous energy, not without flashes of the vigorous wit, of Roman
satire. There are occasionally to be heard also higher and deeper
tones than those familiar to classical poetry. His burning zeal and
indignation against idolatry, and the scorn with which he exposes the
impotence of false gods--
Cur etiam loca sola petunt frustraque laborant?
An tum bracchia consuescunt firmantque lacertos[49]?--
show some affinity of spirit to the prophets of another race and an
earlier time. The 'grandeur of desolation' uttered in the reproof of
Nature,--
Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner inveniamque,
Quod placeat, nil est: eadem sunt omnia semper[50],--
recalls the old words of the Preacher--'The thing that hath been, it
is that which shall be; and that which is done, is that which shall be
done: and there is no new thing under the sun.'
[Footnote 1: Cf. Juv. xiv. 319:--
Quantum Epicure tibi parvis suffecit in hortis.]
[Footnote 2: 'But the sober exercise of reason, investigating
the causes why we choose or avoid anything, and banishing
those opinions which cause the greatest trouble in the soul.']
[Footnote 3: ii. 16-19.]
[Footnote 4: 'Thereupon he perceived that the vessel itself
caused the evil, and that all external gains and blessings
whatsoever were vitiated within through its fault, partly
because he saw that it was so unsound and leaky that it could
never be filled in any way, partly because he discerned that
it tainted inwardly everything which it had received as it
were with a nauseous flavour.'--vi. 17-23.]
[Footnote 5: iii. 39.]
[Footnote 6: vi. 404-5.]
[Footnote 7: 'O miserable race of man when they imputed to
the Gods such acts as these, and ascribed to them also angry
passions. What sorrow did they then prepare for themselves,
what deep wounds for us, what tears for our descendants. For
there is no holiness in being often seen, turning round with
head veiled, in presence of a stone, and in drawing nigh to
every altar; nor in lying prostrate in the dust, and uplifting
the hands before the temples of the Gods; nor in sprinkling
altars with the blood of beasts, and in ever fastening up
new votive offerings, but rather in being able to look at all
things with a mind at peace.'--v. 1194-1203.]
[Footnote 8: vi. 75-78.]
[Footnote 9: 'The holy presence of the Gods is revealed, and
their peaceful dwelling-places, which neither the winds beat
upon, nor the clouds bedew with rain; nor does snow, gathered
in flakes by keen frost, and falling white, invade them; ever
the cloudless ether enfolds them, and they are radiant with
far-spread light.'--iii. 18-22.]
[Footnote 10: v. 145-225.]
[Footnote 11: The feelings with which Lucretius contemplates
the solemn procession of Cybele may be illustrated by the
following passage, quoted by Mr. Morley in his Life of
Diderot, vol. ii. p. 65: 'Absurd rigorists do not know the
effect of external ceremonies on the people: they can never
have seen the enthusiasm of the multitude at the procession of
the Fête Dieu, an enthusiasm that sometimes even gains me. I
have never seen that long file of priests in their vestments,
those young acolytes clad in their white robes, with broad
blue sashes engirdling their waists, and casting flowers on
the ground before the Holy Sacrament, the crowd, as it goes
before and follows after them, hushed in religious silence,
and so many with their faces bent reverently to the ground: I
have never heard the grave and pathetic chant, as it is led
by the priests and fervently responded to by an infinity of
voices of men, of women, of girls, of little children, without
my inmost heart being stirred, and tears coming into my eyes.
There is in it something, I know not what, that is grand,
solemn, sombre, and mournful.']
[Footnote 12: From 830 till the end.]
[Footnote 13: iii. 842.]
[Footnote 14: iii. 877-8.]
[Footnote 15: iii. 929-30.]
[Footnote 16: Hic Acherusia fit stultorum denique vita.]
[Footnote 17: Iliad xxi. 106-7.]
[Footnote 18: iii. 830-1094.]
[Footnote 19: iii. 930.]
[Footnote 20: iii. 892.]
[Footnote 21: iii. 893.]
[Footnote 22: 'Soon shall thy home receive thee no more with
glad welcome, nor thy true wife, nor thy dear children run
to snatch the first kiss, touching thy heart with silent
gladness.'--iii. 894-96.]
[Footnote 23: iii. 833.]
[Footnote 24: iii. 1027-8.]
[Footnote 25: iii. 970.]
[Footnote 26: Compare the metaphorical expressions at vi.
20-4.]
[Footnote 27: 'But there is no greater joy than to hold high
aloft the tranquil abodes, well bulwarked by the learning of
the wise, whence thou mayest look down on other men, and see
them wandering every way, and lost in error, seeking the road
of life; mayest mark the strife of genius, the rivalries of
rank, the struggle night and day with surpassing effort to
reach the highest place, and be master of the State.'--ii.
48-54.]
[Footnote 28: 'But if we see that all this is but folly and
a mockery, and, in real truth, the fears of men and their
dogging cares dread not the clash of arms nor the fierce
weapons of warfare, and boldly mix with kings and potentates,
nor fear the splendour of gold or the bright glare of purple
robes, canst thou doubt that it is the force of reason on
which all this depends, especially since all our life is in
darkness and tribulation?'--ii. 48-55.]
[Footnote 29: iii. 70.]
[Footnote 30: v. 1131.]
[Footnote 31: v. 1125.]
[Footnote 32: 'Since they take their wisdom from the lips of
others, and pursue their object in accordance rather with what
they hear than with what they really feel.'--v. 1133-4.]
[Footnote 33: ii. 33.]
[Footnote 34: v. 1117-19.]
[Footnote 35: ii. 638.]
[Footnote 36: iii. 468-9.]
[Footnote 37: A passage in the Captivi of Plautus (995-7),
shows that these terrors did appeal to the imagination in
ancient times, and thus might powerfully affect the happiness
of persons of specially impressible natures, although they do
not seem to have often interfered with the actual enjoyment of
life,--
Vidi ego multa saepe picta quae Acherunti fierent
Cruciamenta: verum enimvero nulla adaequest Acheruns
Atque ubi ego fui in lapicidinis.
Professor Wallace in his 'Epicureanism' (p. 109) writes,
'Whatever may have been the case in earlier ages of Greece,
there is no doubt that in the age of Epicurus, the doctrine of
a judgment to come, and of a hell where sinners were punished
for their crimes, made a large part of the vulgar creed....
Orphic and other religious sects had enhanced the terrors of
the world below,' etc. Cicero, however, is a better witness
than Lucretius of the actual state of opinion among his
educated contemporaries. The exaggerated sense entertained by
Lucretius of the influence of such terrors among the class
for whom his poem was written is a confirmation of his having
acted on the maxim [Greek: lathe biôsas].']
[Footnote 38: Tusc. Disp. i. 21.]
[Footnote 39: iii. 59, etc.]
[Footnote 40: 'Either when his mind is stung with the
consciousness that he is wasting his life in sloth, and
ruining himself in wantonness; or because from the shafts of
her wit she has left in him some word of double meaning, which
seizes on his passionate heart and burns there like a fire; or
because he fancies that she casts about her eyes too much
or gazes at another, and marks the traces of a smile on her
countenance.'--iv. 1135-40.]
[Footnote 41: 'Oft-times, weary of home, the lord of some
spacious mansion issues forth abroad, and suddenly returns,
feeling that it is no better with him abroad. Driving his
horses, he speeds in hot haste to his country house, as if his
house were on fire and he was hurrying to bring assistance.
Straightway he begins to yawn, so soon as he has reached
his threshold, or sinks heavily into sleep and seeks
forgetfulness, or even with all haste returns to the
city.'--iii. 1060-67.]
[Footnote 42: E.g. v. 1430-34:--
Ergo hominum genus incassum frustraque laborat
Semper et in curis consumit inanibus aevom,
Nimirum quia non cognovit quae sit habendi
Finis et omnino quoad crescat vera voluptas.]
[Footnote 43: i. 101.]
[Footnote 44: iii. 938.]
[Footnote 45: iii. 971.]
[Footnote 46: iv. 1134.]
[Footnote 47: iii. 57-8.]
[Footnote 48: v. 1116.]
[Footnote 49: vi. 396-7.]
[Footnote 50: iii. 944-5.]
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.
It remains to consider the poem of Lucretius as a work of literary
art and genius. Much indeed of what may be said on the subject of his
genius has necessarily been anticipated in the chapters devoted to
the consideration of his personal characteristics, his speculative
philosophy, and his moral teaching. The 'multa lumina ingenii' are
most conspicuous in those passages of his poem which best illustrate
the range and distinctness of his observation, the grandeur and truth
of his philosophical conceptions, the passionate sympathy with which
he strove to elevate and purify human life. But, at the same time, the
most manifest defects of the poem, considered as a work of art, spring
from the same source as its greatness considered as a work of genius,
viz. the diversity and conflicting aims of the faculties employed on
its production. Although, perhaps, from a Roman point of view, the
practical purpose which reduces the mass of miscellaneous details to
unity, and the success with which he encounters the difficulties both
of matter and language, might entitle the poem to be regarded as a
work 'multae artis,' yet, when tested by the canons either of Greek
or of modern taste, it fails in the most essential conditions of
art,--the choice of subject and the form of construction. The title of
the poem is indeed taken from a Greek model, the poem of Empedocles,
'[Greek: peri physeôs]': and the form of a personal address to
Memmius, in which Lucretius has embodied his teaching, was suggested
by the personal address of the older poet to the 'son of Anchytus.'
But although Aristotle acknowledges the poetical genius of Empedocles
by applying to him the epithet [Greek: Homêrikos], he denies to
his composition the title of a poem. The work of Empedocles and the
kindred works of Xenophanes and Parmenides are inspired not by the
passion of art but by the enthusiasm of discovery. They are to be
regarded rather as philosophical rhapsodies than as purely didactic
poems, like either the 'Works and Days' of Hesiod or the writings of
the Alexandrine School. They were written in hexameter verse partly
because that was the most familiar vehicle of expression in the first
half of the fifth century B.C., and partly because it was the vehicle
most suited to the imaginative conceptions of Nature which arose out
of the old mythologies. But in the time of Lucretius a prose vehicle
was more suited than any form of verse for the communication of
knowledge in a systematic form. The conception of Nature was no
longer mystical or purely imaginative as it had been in the age of
Empedocles. Thus the task which Lucretius had to perform was both
vaster and more complex than that of the early [Greek: physiologoi].
He had to combine in one whole the prosaic results of later scientific
observation and analysis with the imaginative fancies of the dawn of
ancient enquiry. He professes to make both conducive to the practical
purpose of emancipating and elevating human life; but a great part of
his argument is as remote from all human interest as it is from the
ascertained truths of science.
All life and Nature were to his spirit full of imaginative wonder,
but they were believed also to be susceptible of a rationalistic
explanation. And the greater part of the work is devoted to give this
explanation. This large infusion of a prosaic content necessarily
detracts from the artistic excellence and the sustained interest of
the poem. Lucretius speaks of the difficulty which he had to encounter
in gaining the ear of his countrymen, in the lines,--
Quoniam haec ratio plerumque videtur
Tristior esse quibus non est tractata, retroque
Volgus abhorret ab hac[1].
And the unattractiveness of much of his theme is not diminished
when the real discoveries of science have shown how illusory are his
processes of investigation, and how false are many of his conclusions.
He has made his poetry ancillary to his science, instead of
compelling, as Virgil, Dante, and Milton have done, a subject,
susceptible of purely artistic treatment, to assimilate the stores of
his knowledge. His theme--'maiestas cognita rerum,'--is too vast and
complex to be brought within the compass and proportions of a single
work of art. The processes of minute observation and reasoning
employed in establishing his conclusions are alien from the movement
of the imagination. The connecting links of the argument are
suggestive of the labour of the workman, not of the finished
perfection of the work. And while some of the ideas of science may be
so applied to the interpretation of the outward world, as to act on
the imaginative emotions with greater power than any mere description
of the forms and colours of external things, yet the pleasure with
which processes of investigation are pursued is quite distinct from
the pleasure derived from poetic intuition into the secret life of
Nature and man. If it be the condition of a great poem to produce the
purest and noblest pleasure by its whole conception and execution, the
poem of Lucretius fails to satisfy this condition. It is in spite of
its design and proportions,--in spite of the fact that long parts of
the work neither interest the feelings nor satisfy the reason, that
the poem still speaks with impressive power to the modern world.
And while the whole conception of the work, as regards both matter
and method of treatment, necessarily involves a large interfusion of
prosaic materials with the finer product of his genius, it must be
added that there is considerable inequality of execution even in its
more inspired passages. A few consecutive passages show indeed the
finest sense of harmony, and are finished in a style not much inferior
to that of Virgil. Such, for instance, are the opening lines:--
Aeneadum genetrix, hominum divomque voluptas, etc.;--
and again the lines in the introduction to Book iii.:--
Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae, etc.
But long passages seem rather to revert to the roughness of Ennius
than to approach the smooth and varied cadences of Virgil. Though the
imaginative effect of single expressions is generally more forcible
than in any Latin poet, yet the composition of long paragraphs is
apt to overflow into prosaic detail, or to display the qualities of
logical consecutiveness or close adherence to fact rather than those
of skilled accomplishment and conformity with the principles of
beauty. In common with the older race of Roman poets he exhibits that
straining after verbal effects by means of alliteration, assonances,
asyndeta, etc., which marks the ruder stages of literary development.
The Latin language, although beginning to feel the quickening of a new
life, had not yet been formed into its more exquisite modulations, nor
learned the power of suggesting delicate shades of meaning and the new
strength derivable from the reserved use of its resources. All these
causes,--the vast and miscellaneous range, and the abstruse character
of his subject, the dryness and futility of much of the argument, the
frequent subordination of poetry to science, the inadequacy of the
Latin language as a vehicle of thought and its imperfect development
as an organ of poetry,--prevented the poem from ever obtaining great
popularity in ancient times, and have denied to it in modern times
anything like the large influence which has been enjoyed in different
ages and countries by Virgil, Horace, and Ovid. Even the more ardent
admirers of the poem are tempted to pass from one to another of the
higher ranges and more commanding summits, which swell gradually
or rise abruptly out of the general level over which he leads them,
rather than to follow him through all the windings of his argument.
Yet it is only after the poem has been mastered in its details that
we realise its full effect on the imagination. It is only then that we
understand the complete greatness of the man, as a thinker, a teacher,
and a poet. The most familiar beauties reveal a deeper meaning when
they are seen to be not mere resting places in the toilsome march of
his argument, but rather commanding positions, successively reached,
from which the widest contemplative views of the realms of Nature and
human life are laid open to us. As we follow closely in his footsteps,
through all his processes of observation, analysis, and reasoning, we
feel, that he too, like the older Greeks, is borne along by a strong
enthusiasm,--the philosophical [Greek: erôs] of Plato,--different
from, but akin to, the impulses of poetry. That marvellous intensity
of feeling in conjunction with the operations of the intellect,
which the Greeks regarded as a kind of divine possession, and which
Lucretius, by the use of such phrases as 'divinitus invenientes',
ascribes to the earliest enquirers, animates all his interpretation of
the facts and laws of Nature. The speculative passion imparts life to
the argumentative processes which are addressed to the understanding,
while it adds a fresher glory or more impressive solemnity to those
aspects of the subject by which the imagination is most powerfully
moved.
Again, although his rhythm, even at its best, falls far short of
the intricate harmony and variety of Virgil, and, in its more level
passages, scarcely aims at pleasing the ear at all, yet there is a
kind of grandeur and dignity even in its monotony, varied, as that is,
by deeper and more majestic tones whenever his spirit is stirred by
impulses of awe, wonder, and delight. There is always a sense of life
and onward movement in the flow of his verse. Often there is a kind
of cumulative force revealing a more powerful emotion of heart and
imagination as his thoughts and images press on one another in close
and ordered sequence. Thus, for instance, the effect of the lines
describing the religious impressions produced on the early inhabitants
of the world by the grand and awful aspects of Nature, depends, not
on any harmonious variation of sounds, but on the swelling and
culminating power with which the whole passage breaks on the ear,--
In caeloque deum sedes et templa locarunt,
Per caelum volvi quia nox et luna videtur,
Luna dies et nox et noctis signa severa
Noctivagaeque faces caeli flammaeque volantes,
Nubila sol imbres nix venti fulmina grando
Et rapidi fremitus et murmura magna minarum[2].
In many passages it may be noticed how much is added to the rhythmical
effect by the force or weight of the concluding line, as at iii.
870-893, by the rugged grandeur of the line,--
Urgerive superne obtritum pondere terrae,--
at ii. 569-580, by the sad and solemn movement of the close,
Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri,--
and at i. 101, by the line of cardinal significance, which ends a
passage of most finished power and beauty,--
Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum.
The music of Lucretius is altogether his own. As he was the first
among his countrymen who contemplated in a reverential spirit the
majesty of Nature and the more solemn meaning of life, so he was the
first to call out the full rhythmical majesty and deep organ-tones of
the Latin language, to embody in sound the spiritual emotions stirred
by that contemplation.
The poetical style of Lucretius is, like his rhythm, a true and
powerful symbol of his genius. Though his diction is much less studied
than that of Virgil, yet his large use of alliterations, assonances,
asyndeta[3], etc., shows that he consciously aimed at producing
certain effects by recognised rhetorical means. The attraction which
the artifices of rhetoric had for his mind is as noticeable in his
style as a similar attraction is in the speeches of Thucydides. But
neither Lucretius nor Thucydides can be called the slave of rhetorical
forms. In both writers recourse is had to them for the legitimate
purpose of emphasising thought, not for that of disguising its
insufficiency. The use of such phrases, for instance, as 'sed casta
inceste,' 'immortalia mortali sermone notantes,' 'mors immortalis,'
etc., is no mere play of words, but rather the tersest phrase in which
an impressive antithesis of thought can be presented. The mannerisms
of his style, if they show that he was not altogether emancipated from
archaic rudeness, afford evidence also of the prolific fertility of
his genius. The amplitude and unchecked volume of his diction flow out
of the mental conditions, described in the lines,--
Usque adeo largos haustus e fontibu' magnis
Lingua meo suavis diti de pectore fundet.
And he had not only the 'suavis lingua diti de pectore'; he had also
the 'daedala lingua,'--the formative energy which shapes words into
new forms and combinations. The frequent [Greek: hapax legomena]
in his poem and his abundant use of compound words, such as
_fluctifragus_, _montivagus_, _altitonans_, etc., most of which fell
into disuse in the Augustan age, were products of the same creative
force which enabled Plautus and Ennius to add largely to the resources
of the Latin tongue. In him, more than in any Latin poet before or
after him, we meet with phrases too full of imaginative life to be
in perfect keeping with the more sober tones and tamer spirit of
the national literature. Thus his language never became trite and
hackneyed, and, as we read him, no medium of after-associations is
interposed between his mind and our own.
But it is not in individual phrases, however fresh and powerful, but
in continuous passages, that the power of his style is best seen. The
processes of his mind are characterised by continuity, consistency,
and a kind of gathering intensity of movement. The periods of Virgil
delight us by their intricate harmony; those of Lucretius impress us
by their continuous and hurrying impetus. The long drawn out charm
of the one is indicative of the deep love which induced him to linger
over every detail of his subject: the force and grandeur of the other
are the outward signs of the inward wonder and enthusiasm by which his
spirit was borne rapidly along. Virgil's movement displays the majesty
of grace and serenity; that of Lucretius the majesty of power, and
largeness of mind.
Thus although the poetical style of Lucretius shows the traces of
labour and premeditation, and of occasional imitation both of foreign
and native models, it is more than that of any other Latin poet, the
immediate creation of his own genius. The 'ingenuei fontis,' by which
his imagination was so abundantly fed, found many spontaneous outlets,
and were not checked in their speed or stained in their purity by the
artificial channels in which he sometimes forced them to flow. If the
loving labour, so prodigally bestowed upon the task of finding words
and rhythm[4] adequate to his great theme, explains some peculiarities
of his diction, the qualities which have made the work immortal are
due to his noble singleness of heart and sincerity of nature, and
to the openness and sensibility with which his imagination received
impressions, the penetrative force with which it saw into the heart of
things, and the creative energy with which it shaped what it received
and discerned into vivid pictures and symbols.
He has, in the first place, the freshness of feeling, the living sense
of the wonder of the world, which is a great charm in the older poets
of all great literatures,--in Homer, Dante, Chaucer;--and this sense
he communicates by words used in their simplest and directest meaning.
The life which animates and gladdens the familiar face of earth,
sea, and sky,--of river, wood, field, and hill-side,--is vividly and
immediately reproduced in such lines as these:--
Caeli subter labentia signa
Quae mare navigerum quae terras frugiferentis
Concelebras[5].
Denique per maria ac montis fluviosque rapacis
Frondiferasque domos avium camposque virentis[6].
Frondiferasque novis avibus canere undique silvas[7].
Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta
Lanigerae reptant pecudes quo quamque vocantes
Invitant herbae gemmantes rore recenti[8].
Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentis
Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis[9].
So, too, he makes us realise, with a quickening and expanding emotion,
which seems to bring us nearer to the core of Nature, the majesty of
the sea breaking on a great expanse of shore,--the solemn stillness of
midnight,--the invisible agency by which the clouds form the pageantry
of the sky,--the active noiseless energy by which rivers wear away
their banks,--by the use of words that seem exactly equivalent to the
thing which they describe,--
Quam fluitans circum magnis anfractibus aequor
Ionium glaucis aspargit virus ab undis[10].
Severa silentia noctis
Undique cum constent[11].
Ut nubes facile interdum concrescere in alto
Cernimus et mundi speciem violare serenam
Aera mulcentes motu[12].
Pars etiam glebarum ad diluviem revocatur
Imbribus et ripas radentia flumina rodunt[13].
The changing face of Nature is to his spirit so full of power and
wonder, that it needs no poetical adornment, but is left to tell
its own tale in the plainest language. If words are a true index of
feeling, it would be difficult to name any poet by whom the living
presence and full being of Nature were more immediately apprehended,
nor has any one caught with more fidelity the intimations of her
hidden life, as they betray themselves in her outward features and
motions.
With similar fidelity and directness of language he communicates to
his reader the spell of awe and wonder by which his own spirit is
possessed in presence of the impressive facts of human life. No
subtlety of reflexion nor grandeur of illustrative imagery could
enhance the effect of the thought of the dead produced by the austere
plainness of the words,--
Morte obita quorum tellus amplectitur ossa,
and,
Ossa dedit terrae proinde ac famul infimus esset.
By no pomp of description could a deeper sense of religious solemnity
be created than by the lines describing the silent influence of the
procession of Cybele on the minds of her devotees,--
Ergo cum primum magnas invecta per urbis
Munificat tacita mortalis muta salute[14].
The undying pain of a great sorrow,--the paralysis of all human effort
in the face of new and terrible agencies of death,--the blessedness
and pathos of the purest human affections,--the ecstatic delight
derived from the revelation of great truths--imprint themselves
permanently on the imagination through the august simplicity of the
phrases,
Aeternumque daret matri sub pectore volnus[15],--
tacito mussabat medicina timore[16],--
tacita pectus dulcedine tangent[17]--
His ibi me rebus quaedam divina voluptas
Percipit adque horror[18].--
His language has the further power of producing a vague sense of
sublimity, where the cause of the feeling is too vast or undefined
to be distinctly conceived or visibly presented to the mind. The very
sound of his words seems sometimes to be a kind of echo of the voices
by which Nature produces a strange awe upon the imagination. Such, for
instance, are these lines and phrases--
Altitonans Volturnus et auster fulmine pollens[19].
Nec fulmina nec minitanti
Murmure compressit caelum[20].
Murmura magna minarum[21], etc.
The sublimity of vagueness and vastness is present in the language of
these lines--
Impendent atrae formidinis ora superne[22].
Sustentata ruet moles et machina mundi[23].
Aut cecidisse urbis magno vexamine mundi[24].
Non si terra mari miscebitur et mare caelo[25].
While no other ancient poet brings before the mind more forcibly and
immediately the living presence of the outward world and the solemn
meaning of familiar things, there is none whose language seems to
respond so sensitively to the vague suggestions of an invisible and
awful Power omnipresent in the universe.
The creative power of imagination which gives new life to words and
thoughts is also present in many vivid and picturesque expressions,
either scattered through the main argument, or shining in brilliant
combinations in the more elaborate parts of the work. By this more
imaginative use of language, the poet can illustrate his ideas by
subtle analogies, or embody them in visible symbols, or endow the
objects he describes with the personal attributes of will and energy.
Thus, for instance, the penetrating subtlety of the mind in exploring
the secrets of Nature becomes a visible force in the curious felicity
of the expression (i. 408), 'caecasque latebras insinuare omnis.'
The freedom and boundless range of the imagination is suggested with
picturesque effect in the familiar expression--
Avia Pieridum peragro loca nullius ante
Trita solo[26];
while the calm serenity of the contemplative mind is symbolised in
such figurative expressions as 'sapientum templa serena'; 'humanum in
pectus templaque mentis'; and the stormy tumult of the passions and
the perilous errors of life become vividly present to the imagination
by means of the analogies pictured in the lines--
Volvere curarum tristis in pectore fluctus[27],
and
Errare atque viam palantis quaerere vitae[28].
What life and energy again are imparted to external things and
abstract conceptions by such expressions as these:--'flammai flore
coorto'; 'avido complexu quem tenet aether'; 'caeli tegit impetus
ingens'; 'circum tremere aethera signis'; 'semina quae magnum
iaculando contulit omne'; 'vagos imbris tempestatesque volantes';
'concussaeque cadunt urbes dubiaeque minantur'; 'simulacraque fessa
fatisci'; 'sol lumine conserit arva'; 'lucida tela diei'; 'placidi
pellacia ponti'; 'vivant labentes aetheris ignes'; 'leti sub dentibus
ipsis'; 'leti praeclusa est ianua caelo,' etc.
A similar power of imagination is shown in his more elaborate use of
analogies, in his symbolical representation of ideas, and in his power
of painting scenes from Nature and from human life. Few great poets
have been more sparing in the use of mere poetical ornament. The
grandest imagery which he strikes out, and the finest pictures which
he paints are immediately suggested by his subject. The earnestness
of his speculative and practical purpose restrains all exuberance of
fancy. Thus his imaginative analogies are more often latent in
single expressions than drawn out at length. But the few which he has
elaborated, 'stand out with the solidity of the finest sculpture[29],'
to embody some deep or powerful thought for all time. They are
suggested not by outward resemblance, but by an identity which the
imagination discerns in the innermost meaning of the objects compared
with one another. The strong emotion attending on the presence of some
great thought calls up before the inward eye some scene or action,
which, if actually witnessed, would produce a similar effect upon the
mind. Thus the thought of the chaotic confusion which the universe
would present, on the supposition that the original atoms were
limited in number, calls up the image of the most impressive and awful
devastation, wrought by Nature upon the works of man.
Sed quasi naufragiis magnis multisque coortis
Disiectare solet magnum mare transtra guberna
Antemnas proram malos tonsasque natantis,
Per terrarum omnis oras fluitantia aplustra
Ut videantur et indicium mortalibus edant,
Infidi maris insidias virisque dolumque
Ut vitare velint, neve ullo tempore credant,
Subdola cum ridet placidi pellacia ponti,
Sic tibi si finita semel primordia quaedam
Constitues, aevom debebunt sparsa per omnem
Disiectare aestus diversi materiari,
Numquam in concilium ut possint compulsa coire
Nec remorari in concilio nec crescere adaucta[30].
It is through the penetrating intuition of his imagination into the
deepest meaning of the two phenomena, and his sensibility to the
pathos and the strangeness involved in each of them, that he sees the
birth of every child into the world under the well-known image of
the shipwrecked sailor--'saevis proiectus ab undis.' Other analogies,
suggested rather than elaborately drawn out, express an inward or
spiritual, not an outward or bodily resemblance. Or rather the thing
illustrated is a thought or a mental act, the illustration a scene or
action, visible to the eye, suggestive of the same power in Nature,
and calculated to rouse the same emotions in the mind. Thus he
compares the life transmitted in succession through the nations of the
world to the torch passed on by the runners in the torch-race; or he
illustrates his calm contemplation of the struggles of life from the
heights of his Epicurean philosophy, by the vision of the dangers of
the sea, as seen from some commanding position on the land.
Although few of his descriptions from Nature are capable of being
transferred to canvas, yet he shows in his treatment of mythological
subjects, and in his personification of great natural phenomena, that
purely pictorial faculty, in virtue of which Catullus and Ovid have
inspired the imagination and directed the hand of some of the great
painters of modern times. Such, for instance, is the representation of
the sacrifice of Iphigenia, suggested indeed, in some of its features,
by an earlier poet, but executed with original power. Such too are the
pictures of Venus and Mars in the invocation to the poem, and that of
Pan--
Pinea semiferi capitis velamina quassans[31].
By this power of vision he presents that superstition against which
all the weight of his argument is directed, not as an abstraction, but
as a real palpably existing Power of evil--
Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat
Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans[32].
So, too, in his vivid account of the orderly procession of the
seasons, he invests the freshness and the beauty of spring with the
charm of personal and human attributes in the lines--
It ver et Venus, et veris praenuntius ante
Pennatus graditur zephyrus, vestigia propter
Flora quibus mater praespargens ante viai
Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet[33].
But it is in describing actual scenes and actual aspects of human life
that Lucretius chiefly employs his power of poetical conception and
expression. He looks upon the world with an eye which discerns beneath
the outward appearances of things the presence of Nature in her
attributes both of majesty and of genial all-penetrating life,--as at
once the 'Magna mater' and the 'alma mater' of all living things[34].
She appears to his imagination not as an abstraction, or a vast
aggregate of forces and laws, but as a living Power, whose processes
are on an infinitely grander scale, but are yet analogous to the
active and moral energies of man. He shows the same sympathy with
this life of Nature, the same vivid sense of wonder and delight in
her familiar aspects, the same imaginative perception of her secret
agency, which led the early Greek mind to people the world with the
living forms of the old mythology, and which have been felt anew
by the great poets of the present century. All natural life is thus
endowed with a poetical interest, as being a new manifestation of the
creative energy, which is the fountain of all beauty and delight in
the world.
The minutest phenomena and the most gigantic forces, the changes of
decay and renovation in all outward things, the growth of plants
and trees, the habits of beasts rioting in a wild liberty over the
mountains,--
Quod in magnis bacchatur montibu' passim[35],--
or tended by the care and ministering to the wants of man; the life
and enjoyment of the birds that gladden the early morning with their
song by woods and river-banks, or that seek their food and pastime
among the sea-waves;--these, and numberless other phenomena, are all
contemplated and described by an eye quickened by the poetical sense
of manifold and inexhaustible energy in the world.
It is not so much the beauty of form and colour, as the appearance
of force and life which he reproduces. He has not, like Catullus,
the pure delight of an artist in painting outward scenes. He does
not express, like Virgil, the charm of old associations attaching
to famous places. It is the association of great laws, not of great
memories, which moves him in contemplating the outward world. Neither
has he invested any particular place with the attraction which Horace
has given to his Sabine home, and Catullus to Sirmio. But no ancient
or modern poet has expressed more happily the natural enjoyment of
beholding the changing life and familiar face of the world. No other
writer makes us feel with more reality the quickening of the spirit,
produced by the sunrise or the advent of spring, by living in fine
weather or looking on fair and peaceful landscapes. The freshness of
the feeling with which outward scenes inspire him is one of the great
charms of the poem, especially as a relief to the pervading gravity of
his thought. More than any poet, except Wordsworth, he seems to derive
a pure and healthy joy from the common sights and sounds of animate
and inanimate Nature. No distempered fancies or regrets, no vague
longings for some unattainable rapture, coloured the natural aspect
which the world presented to his eyes and mind.
In the descriptions of Lucretius, as in those of Homer, there is
always some active movement and change represented as passing before
the eye. What power and energy there are, for instance, in that of a
river-flood,--(like one of equal force and truth in Burns's 'Brigs of
Ayr,')--
Nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai
Vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri
Molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis[36].
How naturally is the pure and sparkling life of brooks and springs
brought before the mind in the passage at v. 269[37], already
quoted,--and again, in these lines--
Denique nota vagi silvestria templa tenebant
Nympharum, quibus e scibant umori' fluenta
Lubrica proluvie larga lavere umida saxa,
Umida saxa, super viridi stillantia musco,
Et partim plano scatere atque erumpere campo[38].
In this representation of the sea-shore--
Concharumque genus parili ratione videmus
Pingere telluris gremium, qua mollibus undis
Litoris incurvi bibulam pavit aequor harenam[39],--
there is the same suggestion of quiet ceaseless movement, as in a line
of the Odyssey representing the same phase of Nature--
[Greek: laïngas poti cherson apoplynespe thalassa.]
There is the same sense of active life in all his pictures of the
early morning; as, for instance,--
Primum aurora novo cum spargit lumine terras
Et variae volucres nemora avia pervolitantes
Aera per tenerum liquidis loca vocibus opplent,
Quam subito soleat sol ortus tempore tali
Convestire sua perfundens omnia luce,
Omnibus in promptu manifestumque esse videmus[40].
And again,--
Aurea cum primum gemmantis rore per herbas
Matutina rubent radiati lumina solis
Exhalantque lacus nebulam fluviique perennes,
Ipsaque ut interdum tellus fumare videtur;
Omnia quae sursum cum conciliantur, in alto
Corpore concreto subtexunt nubila caelum[41].
Two other passages (at iv. 136 and vi. 190), in which the movements
and shifting pageantry of the clouds are described, may be compared
with a more elaborate passage in the Excursion, in which Wordsworth
has represented a similar spectacle[42] wrought by 'earthly Nature,'--
'Upon the dark materials of the storm.'
Nowhere does he present pictures of pure repose. The philosophical
idea of ceaseless motion and change animates to his eye every aspect
of the world. Every separate description in the poem possesses the
charm of freshness and faithfulness, and of relevance to the great
ideas of his philosophy. His living enjoyment in the outward world,
and his sympathy with all existence, both fed and were fed by his
trust in speculative ideas. The poetical descriptions which adorn
and illustrate his argument are like the sublime and beautiful scenes
which refresh and reward the adventurous discoverer of distant lands.
Some passages, illustrative of philosophical principles, blend the
movements of animal and human life with descriptions of natural
scenery. The lines at ii. 352-366, describing the cow searching
for her calf, which has been sacrificed at the altar, combine many
characteristics of the poetical style of Lucretius. There is the
literal--almost too minute faithfulness of reproduction--as in the
line--
Noscit humi pedibus vestigia pressa bisulcis[43];--
the active life of the whole representation, too full of movement for
a picture, yet flashing the objects on the inward eye with graphic
pictorial power; the ever fresh charm of some familiar scene, called
up by the lines already referred to,--
Nec tenerae salices atque herbae rore vigentes
Fluminaque illa queunt summis labentia ripis;
the pathos and respect for every mode of natural feeling denoted in
such expressions as 'desiderio perfixa iuvenci'; and, lastly, the
power of investing the most common things with the majesty of the laws
which they express and illustrate. This passage is adduced as a proof
and illustration of the varieties in form of the primordial atoms. In
a passage, immediately preceding, the perpetual motion of the atoms,
going on beneath an appearance of absolute rest, is illustrated by two
pictures, one taken from the jubilant life of the animal creation--
Nam saepe in colli tondentes pabula laeta[44], etc.;
the other taken from the pomp of human affairs, and the gay pageantry
of armies--
Praeterea magnae legiones cum loca cursu
Camporum complent belli simulacra cientes,
Fulgor ibi ad caelum se tollit totaque circum
Aere renidescit tellus supterque virum vi
Excitur pedibus sonitus clamoreque montes
Icti reiectant voces ad sidera mundi
Et circumvolitant equites mediosque repente
Tramittunt valido quatientes impete campos[45].
The truth and fulness of life in this passage are immediately
perceived, but the element of sublimity is added by the thought in the
two lines with which the passage concludes, which reduces the whole of
this moving and sounding pageant to stillness and silence--
Et tamen est quidam locus altis montibus unde
Stare videntur et in campis consistere fulgor[46].
As Lucretius was the first poet who revealed the majesty and wonder of
the Natural world, so he restored the sense of awe and mystery, felt
by the earlier Greek poets, to the contemplation of human life. In
dealing with the problem of human destiny, he has sounded deeper than
any of the other ancient poets of Italy: but others have sympathised
with a greater variety of the moods of life, and have allowed its
lights and shadows to play more easily over their poetry. The thought
both of the dignity and the littleness of our mortal state is ever
present to the mind of Lucretius. His imagination is involuntarily
moved by the pomp and grandeur of affairs, while his strong sense of
reality keeps ever before him the conviction of the vanity of
outward state, the weariness of luxurious living, and the miseries
of ambition. Thus his imaginative recognition of the pomp and
circumstance of war brings out by the force of contrast his deeper
conviction of the littleness and impotence of man in the presence of
the great forces of Nature--
Summa etiam cum vis violenti per mare venti
Induperatorem classis super aequora verrit
Cum validis pariter legionibus atque elephantis,
Non divom pacem votis adit ac prece quaesit
Ventorum pavidus paces animasque secundas, etc.[47]
If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of
human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed
the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through
great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.
But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative
emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of
human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more
truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and
sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing
the birth of every infant into the world--
Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum[48].
With what truth and _naiveté_ is the complaint of the husbandman over
his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!--
Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator
Crebrius incassum manuum cecidisse labores,
Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert
Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis
Et crepat, anticum genus ut pietate repletum
Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom,
Cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim[49].
His feeling is profoundly solemn, as well as infinitely tender. Above
all the tumult of life, he hears incessantly the funeral dirge over
some one departed, and the infant wail of a newcomer into the troubles
of the world,
mixtos vagitibus aegris
Ploratus mortis comites et funeris atri[50].
His tone can, indeed, be stern and indignant, as well as tender and
melancholy: it is never morbid or effeminate. His tenderness is that
of a thoroughly masculine nature. Some signs of the same mood may be
discovered in the fragments of Ennius; but the feeling of Lucretius
springs from a more sympathetic heart and a more contemplative
imagination.
His imagination, which depicts so forcibly the intimations of
experience, is able to hear him beyond the known and familiar regions
of life. As it enables him to pass--
extra flammantia moenia mundi--
and to behold the dawn of creation, and even the blank desolation
which will follow on the overthrow of our system, so it has enabled
him to realise with vivid feeling the primeval condition of man
upon the world. Yet even in these daring enterprises of his fancy he
adheres strictly to the conclusions of his philosophical system, and
shows that sincerity and truthful adherence to fact are as inseparable
from the operations of his creative faculty as of his understanding
and moral nature.
His excellences are so different from those of Virgil that the
question need not be entertained, whether the rank of the greatest of
Roman poets is or is not to be awarded to him. If each nation must be
considered the best judge of its own poets, it will be admitted that
Lucretius would have found few Roman voices to support his claim to
the first or even the second place. The strongest support which he
could have received would have been Virgil's willing acknowledgment of
the powerful spell which the genius of his predecessor had exercised
over him. Both the artistic defects and the profound feeling and
imaginative originality of his work were calculated to alienate both
popular favour and critical opinion in the Rome of the Empire. The
poem has a much deeper significance for modern than it had for ancient
times. Lucretius stands alone as the great contemplative poet of
antiquity. He has proclaimed with more power than any other the
majesty of Nature's laws, and has interpreted with a truer and deeper
insight the meaning of her manifold life. Few, if any among his
countrymen, felt so strongly the mystery of man's being, or have
indicated so passionate a sympathy with the real sorrows of life, and
so ardent a desire to raise man to his proper dignity, and to support
him in bearing his inevitable burden. If he has, in large measure,
the antique simplicity and grandeur of character, he has much also
in common with the spirit and genius of modern times. He contemplates
human life with a profound feeling, like that of Pascal, and with a
speculative elevation like that of Spinoza. The loftier tones of his
poetry and the sustained effort of mind which bears him through his
long argument remind us of Milton. His sympathy with Nature, at once
fresh and large, is more in harmony with the feeling of the great
poets of the present century than with the general sentiment of
ancient poetry. In the union of poetical feeling with scientific
passion he has anticipated the most elevated mode of the study of
Nature, of which the world has as yet seen only a few great examples.
His powers of observation, thought, feeling, and imagination, are
characterised by a remarkable vitality and sincerity. His strong
intellectual and poetical faculty is united with some of the rarest
moral qualities,--fortitude, seriousness of spirit, love of truth,
manly tenderness of heart. And if it seems that his great powers of
heart, understanding, and genius led him to accept and to teach a
philosophy, paralysing to the highest human hope and energy, it is to
be remembered that he lived at a time when the truest minds may well
have despaired of the Divine government of the world, and must have
honestly felt that it was well to be rid, at any cost, of the burden
of Pagan superstition.
[Footnote 1: i. 943-45.]
[Footnote 2: 'And they placed the dwelling-places and mansions
of the gods in the heavens, because it is through the heavens
that the night and the moon are seen to sweep--the moon, the
day, and night, and the stern constellations of night, the
torches of heaven wandering through the night, and flying
meteors, the clouds, the sun, the rains, the snow, the winds,
lightning, hail, the rapid rattle, the threatening peals and
murmurs of the thunder.'--v. 1188-93.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Munro, Introduction, ii. pp. 311, etc.]
[Footnote 4: Cf.
Quaerentem dictis quibus et quo carmine demum
Clara tuae possim praepandere lumina menti
Res quibus occultas penitus convisere possis.
i. 143-5.]
[Footnote 5: i. 2-4.]
[Footnote 6: i. 17-18.]
[Footnote 7: i. 256.]
[Footnote 8: ii. 317-19.]
[Footnote 9: ii. 362-63.]
[Footnote 10: i. 718-19.]
[Footnote 11: iv. 460-61.]
[Footnote 12: iv. 136-38.]
[Footnote 13: v. 255-56.]
[Footnote 14: ii. 624-25.]
[Footnote 15: ii. 639.]
[Footnote 16: vi. 1179.]
[Footnote 17: iii. 896.]
[Footnote 18: iii. 28-30.]
[Footnote 19: v. 745.]
[Footnote 20: i. 68-9.]
[Footnote 21: v. 1193.]
[Footnote 22: vi. 254.]
[Footnote 23: v. 96.]
[Footnote 24: v. 340.]
[Footnote 25: iii. 842.]
[Footnote 26: i. 926-27.]
[Footnote 27: vi. 34.]
[Footnote 28: ii. 10.]
[Footnote 29: Prévost Paradol, _Nouveaux Essais de Politique
et de Littérature_.]
[Footnote 30: 'But as when there have been at the same time
many and mighty shipwrecks, the mighty sea is wont to drive in
all directions the rowers' benches, rudders, sailyards, prows,
masts, and floating oars, so that along all the coasts of land
there may be seen the tossing flag-posts of ships, to warn
mortals that they shun the wiles, and force, and craft of the
faithless sea, nor ever trust the treacherous alluring smile
of the calm ocean; so if once you will suppose any finite
number of elements, you will find that the many surging forces
of matter must disperse and drive them apart through all time,
so that they never can meet and gather into union, nor stay in
union and wax in increase.'--ii. 552-64.]
[Footnote 31: iv. 587.]
[Footnote 32: i. 64-5.]
[Footnote 33: 'Then comes forth the Spring and Venus, and the
harbinger of Spring steps on before them, the winged Zephyr;
and near their footsteps, Mother Flora, scattering her
treasures before her, fills all the way with glorious colours
and fragrance.'--v. 737-40.]
[Footnote 34: Cp. 'Keats has, above all, a sense of what is
pleasurable and open in the life of Nature; for him she is
the _Alma Parens_: his expression has, therefore, more than
Guérin's, something genial, outward, and sensuous. Guérin has
above all a sense of what there is adorable and secret in
the life of Nature; for him she is the _Magna Parens_; his
expression has, therefore, more than Keats', something mystic,
inward, and profound.' _Essays in Criticism_, by M. Arnold, p.
130. _Third Edition._]
[Footnote 35: v. 842.]
[Footnote 36: 'Nor can the strong bridges endure the sudden
force of the rushing water: in such wise, swollen by heavy
rain, the stream with mighty force dashes upon the piers.'--i.
285-87.]
[Footnote 37: 'Percolatur enim virus,' etc.]
[Footnote 38: 'Finally, in their wandering they made their
dwelling in the familiar woodland grottoes of the nymphs,
from which they marked the rills of water laving the dripping
rocks, made slippery with their abundant flow,--dripping
rocks, with drops oozing out above the green moss,--and
gushing forth and forcing their way over the level plain.'--v.
944-52.]
[Footnote 39: 'And in like manner we see shells paint the lap
of the earth, where with its soft waves the sea beats on the
porous sand of the winding shore.'--ii. 374-76.]
[Footnote 40: 'When the dawn first sheds its new light over
the earth, and birds of every kind, flying over the pathless
woods through the delicate air, fill all the land with their
clear notes, the suddenness with which the risen sun then
clothes and steeps the world in his light, is clear and
evident to all men.'--ii. 144-49.]
[Footnote 41: 'Just as when first the morning beams of the
bright sun glow all golden through the grass gemmed with dew,
and a mist arises from meres and flowing streams; and as even
the earth itself is sometimes seen to steam; then all these
vapours gather together above, and taking shape, as clouds on
high, weave a canopy beneath the sky.'--v. 460-66.]
[Footnote 42: Excursion, Book ii:--
'The appearance, instantaneously disclosed,' etc.]
[Footnote 43: ii. 356.]
[Footnote 44: ii. 317.]
[Footnote 45: 'Besides when mighty legions fill the plains
with their rapid movement, raising the pageantry of warfare,
the splendour rises up to heaven, and all the land around is
bright with the glitter of brass, and beneath from the
mighty host of men the sound of their tramp arises, and the
mountains, struck by their shouting, re-echo their voices
to the stars of heaven, and the horsemen hurry to and fro on
either flank, and suddenly charge across the plains, shaking
them with their impetuous onset.'--ii. 323-30.]
[Footnote 46: 'And yet there is some place in the lofty
mountains whence they appear to be all still, and to rest as a
bright gleam upon the plains.'--ii. 331-32.]
[Footnote 47: 'When, too, the utmost force of a violent gale
is sweeping the admiral of some fleet over the seas, along
with his mighty legions and elephants, does he not court the
protection of the Gods with vows, and in his terror pray for a
calm to the storm, and for favouring gales?'--v. 1226-30.]
[Footnote 48: 'Moreover, the babe, like a sailor cast ashore
by the cruel waves, lies naked on the ground, speechless,
in need of every aid to life, when first nature has cast him
forth by great throes from his mother's womb; and he fills the
air with his piteous wail, as befits one whose doom it is to
pass through so much misery in life.'--v. 222-27.]
[Footnote 49: 'And now, shaking his head, the aged peasant
laments, with a sigh, that the toil of his hands has often
come to naught; and, as he compares the present with the past
time, he extols the fortune of his father, and harps on this
theme, how the good old race, full of piety, bore the burden
of their life very easily within narrow bounds, when the
portion of land for each man was far less than now.'--ii.
1164-70.]
[Footnote 50: ii. 569-70.]
CHAPTER XV.
CATULLUS.
Lucretius and Catullus were regarded by their contemporaries as
the greatest poets of the last age of the Republic[1]. They alone
represent the poetry of that time to the modern world. Although
born into the same social rank, and acted upon by the dissolving
influences, the intellectual stimulus, and the political agitation
of the same time, no poets could be named of a more distinct type of
genius and character. The first has left behind him only the record
of his impersonal contemplation. His life was passed more in communion
with Nature than in contact with the world: his experiences of
happiness or sorrow entered into his art solely as affording materials
for his abstract thought. The second has stamped upon his pages the
lasting impression of the deepest joy and pain of his life, as well
as of the lightest cares and fancies that occupied the passing hour.
Intensely social in his temper and tastes, he lived habitually the
life of the great city and the provincial town, observing and sharing
in all their pleasures, distractions, and animosities, and only
escaping, from time to time, for a brief interval to his country
houses on the Lago di Garda and in the neighbourhood of Tivoli. He
seems to have had no other aim in life than that of passionately
enjoying his youth in the pleasures of love, in friendly intercourse
with men of his own rank and age, in the practice of his art, and
the study of the older poets, by whom that art was nourished. All his
poems, with the exception of three or four works of creative fancy
and one or two translations, have for their subject some personal
incident, feeling, or character. Nearly all have some immediate
relation to himself, and give expression to his love or hatred, his
admiration or scorn, his happiness or misery. There is nearly as
little in them of reflexion on human life as of meditative communion
with Nature; but, as individual men and women excited in him intense
affection or passion, so certain beautiful places and beautiful
objects in Nature charmed his fancy and sank into his heart. He shows
himself, spiritually and intellectually, the child of his age in
his ardent vitality, in the license of his life and satire, in the
fierceness of his antipathies; and also in his eager reception of the
spirit of Greek art, his delight in the poets of Greece and the
tales of the Greek mythology, in his striving after form and grace in
composition, and in the enthusiasm with which he anticipates the joy
of travelling among 'the famous cities of Asia.' In all our thoughts
of him he is present to our imagination as the 'young Catullus'--
hedera iuvenalia vinctus
Tempora.
More than any great ancient, and than any great modern poet, with the
exception, perhaps, of Keats, he affords the measure of what youth
can do, and what it fails to do, in poetry. Although the exact age at
which he died is disputed, yet the evidence of his poems shows that
he did not outlive the boyish heart. In character he was even younger
than in actual age. Nearly all his work was done between the years 61
and 54 B.C.; and most of it, apparently, with little effort. Born with
the keenest capacities of pleasure and of pain, he never learned to
regulate them: nor were they, seemingly, united with such enduring
vital power as to carry him past the perilous stage of his career, so
as to enable him with maturer power and more concentrated industry to
employ his genius and accomplishment on works of larger scope, more
capable of withstanding the shocks and chances of time, than the small
volume which, by a fortunate accident, has preserved the flower and
bloom of his life, and the record of all the 'sweet and bitter' which
he experienced at the hands of that Power--
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem.
The ultimate preservation of his poems depended on a single copy,
which, after being lost to the world for four centuries, was
re-discovered in Verona, the poet's birthplace, during the fourteenth
century. As that copy was again lost, the text has to be determined
from the conflicting testimony of later copies, only two of which are
considered by the latest critics to be of independent value. There is
thus much more uncertainty, and much greater latitude for conjecture,
as to the actual words of Catullus, than in the case of almost any
other Roman poet. As lines not found in this volume are attributed to
him by ancient authors, and as he appears to allude to the composition
of love poems in his first youth[2] which must have been written
before the earliest of the Lesbia-poems, it may be inferred that we do
not possess all that he wrote. It has been generally assumed that the
dedicatory lines to Cornelius Nepos, with which the volume opens, were
prefixed by the poet to the collected edition of his poems which we
now possess; but Mr. Ellis, following Bruner, has shown that that
poem may more probably have been prefixed to a smaller and earlier
collection. The lines--
Namque tu solebas
Meas esse aliquid putare nugas, etc.--
imply that earlier poems of Catullus were well known for some time
before the writing of this dedication; and allusions in more than one
of the poems[3] prove that the poems of an earlier date must have
been in circulation before those in which these allusions occur were
written. In the time of Martial, a small volume, probably chiefly
consisting of the Lesbia-poems, was known as the 'Passer Catulli[4].'
It may be inferred that, as he wrote his poems from his earliest youth
till his death, he gave them to the world at various stages of his
career. He may have combined in these libelli some of the elegiac
epigrams with his iambics and phalaecians, just as Martial, who
regarded him as his master, did afterwards. Even some of the longer
poems, such as the Janua or the Epithalamia, may have formed part of
these collections. The attention which he attracted from men eminent
in social rank and literature,--such as Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Memmius, etc.,--shows that his genius was soon recognised: and his
eager craving for sympathy and appreciation would naturally prompt
him to bring his various writings immediately before the eyes of his
contemporaries. It seems likely, therefore, that this final collection
from several shorter collections already in circulation was made some
time after the poet's death[5]; that some poems were omitted which
were not thought worthy of preservation, and, possibly, that some may
have then been added which had not previously been given to the world.
It would be difficult to believe that poems expressive of the most
passionate love and the bitterest scorn of the same person could have
appeared for the first time in the same collection.
This collection consists of about 116 poems[6], written in various
metres, and varying in length from epigrams of only two lines to an
'epyllion' which extends to 408 lines. The poems numbered from i to
lx, are short lyrical or satiric pieces, written in the phalaecian,
glyconic, or iambic metres, and devoted almost entirely to subjects of
personal interest. The middle of the volume is occupied by the longer
poems--numbered lxi to lxviii^b--of a more purely artistic and
mostly an impersonal character, written in the glyconic, galliambic,
hexameter, and elegiac metres. The latter part of the volume is
entirely occupied by epigrammatic or other short pieces in elegiac
metre, varying in length from two to twenty-six lines. Many of the
epigrams refer to the persons who are the subject of the short
lyric and iambic pieces. There is no attempt to arrange the poems in
anything like chronological order. Thus, among the first twelve poems,
ii, iii, v, vii, ix, xii, are probably to be assigned to the years 61
and 60 B.C., while iv, x, xi, certainly belong to the last three years
of the poet's life. It is difficult to imagine on what principle
the juxtaposition of certain poems was determined. Probably, in some
cases, it may have been on the mere mechanical one of filling up the
pages symmetrically by poems of suitable length. Sometimes we find
poems of the same character, or referring to the same person, grouped
together, and yet varied by the insertion of one or two pieces related
to the larger group by contrast rather than similarity of tone.
Thus the passionate exaltation of the earlier Lesbia-poems is first
relieved by a poem (iv) written in another metre, and appealing to a
much calmer class of feelings, and next varied by one (vi) written
in the same metre, and suggested by a friend's amour, which in its
meanness and obscurity serves as a foil to the glory and brightness of
the good fortune enjoyed by the poet. Yet this clue does not carry us
far in determining the principle, if indeed there was any principle,
on which either the short lyrical poems or the elegiac epigrams were
arranged. These various poems were written under the influence of
every mood to which he was liable; and, like other passionate lyrical
poets, he was susceptible of the most opposite moods. The most trivial
incident might give rise to them equally with the greatest joy or the
greatest sorrow of his life. As he felt a strong need to express, and
had a happy facility in expressing his purest and brightest feelings,
so he felt no shame in indulging, and knew no restraint in expressing,
his coarsest propensities and bitterest resentments: and he evidently
regarded his worst moods no less than his best as legitimate
material for his art. Thus pieces more coarse than almost anything in
literature are interspersed among others of the sunniest brightness
and purity. The feelings with which we linger over the exquisite
beauty of the 'Sirmio,' and are stirred by the noble inspiration of
the 'Hymn to Diana,' receive a rude shock from the two intervening
poems, characterised by a want of reticence and reserve not often
paralleled in the literature or the speech of civilised nations. In
a poet of modern times a similar collocation might be supposed
indicative of a cynical bitterness of spirit--of a mind mocking its
own purest impulses. But Catullus is too genuine and sincere a man,
too natural in his enjoyments, and too healthy in all his moods, to be
taken as an example of this distempered type of genius. It seems more
likely, as is conjectured by recent commentators[7], that the present
collection was made (perhaps at Verona) in a comparatively late
age, when the knowledge of the circumstances of Catullus and the
intelligent appreciation of his poems was lost.
These poems, whether good or bad, serious or trivial, are all written
with such transparent sincerity that they bring the poet before us
almost as if he were our contemporary. They make him known to us
in many different moods,--in joy and grief, in the ecstasy and
the despair of love, in the frank outpouring of affection and the
enjoyment of social intercourse, in the bitterness of his scorn and
animosity, in the license of his coarser indulgences. They enable us
to start with him on his travels; to enjoy with him the beauty of his
home on the Italian lakes; to pass with him from the life of letters
and idle pleasure and the brilliant intellectual society of Rome to
the more homely but not more virtuous ways and the more commonplace
people of his native province; to join with him in ridiculing some
affectation of an acquaintance, or to feel the contagion of his
admiration for genius or wit in man, grace in woman, or beauty in
Nature. In the glimpses of him which we get in the familiar round of
his daily life, we seem to catch the very turn of his conversation[8],
to hear his laugh at some absurd incident[9], to see his face brighten
as he welcomes a friend from a distant land[10], to mark the quick
ebullition of anger at some slight or rudeness[11], or to be witnesses
of his passionate tears as something recalls to him the memory of
his lost happiness, or makes him feel his present desolation[12]. His
impressible nature realises with extraordinary vividness of pleasure
and pain experiences which by most people are scarcely noticed. To be
rightly appreciated, his poems must be read with immediate reference
to the circumstances and situations which gave rise to them. We must
take them up with our feelings attuned to the mood in which they were
written. Hence, before attempting to criticise them, we must try, by
the help of internal and any available external evidence, to determine
the successive stages of his personal and literary career, and so
to get some idea of the social relations and the state of feeling of
which they were the expression.
There is some uncertainty as to the exact date of his birth and death.
The statement of Jerome is that he was born at Verona in the year 87
B.C., and that he died at Rome, at the age of thirty, in the year 57
B.C. But this last date is contradicted by allusions in the poems to
events and circumstances, such as the expeditions of Caesar across
the Rhine and into Britain, the second Consulship of Pompey, the
preparations for the Eastern expedition of Crassus, which belong to a
later date. The latest incident which Catullus mentions is the
speech of his friend Calvus, delivered in August 54 B.C. against
Vatinius[13]. A line in the poem, immediately preceding that
containing the allusion to the speech of Calvus,--
Per consulatum perierat Vatinius,--
was, till the appearance of Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,'
accepted as a proof that Catullus had actually witnessed the
Consulship of Vatinius in 47 B.C. But it has been satisfactorily shown
that that line refers to the boasts in which Vatinius used to indulge
after the conference at Luca, or after his own election to the
Praetorship, and not to their actual fulfilment at a later time. There
is thus no evidence that Catullus survived the year 54 B.C.; and some
expressions in some of his later poems, as, for instance,--
Malest Cornifici tuo Catullo,--
and--
Quid est Catulle? quid moraris emori?
are thought to indicate the anticipation of approaching death. But if
54 B.C. is to be accepted as the year of his death, one of Jerome's
two other statements, viz. that he was born in the year 87 B.C. and
that he died at the age of thirty, must be wrong. Most critics and
commentators hold that the first date is right, and that the
mistake lies in the words 'xxx. aetatis anno.' Mr. Munro, with more
probability, believes the error to lie in the 87 B.C., and that
Jerome, 'as so often happens with him, has blundered somewhat in
transferring to his complicated era the Consulships by which Suetonius
would have dated.' He argues further, that the phrase 'iuvenalia
tempora,' in the passage quoted above from Ovid and written by him at
the age of twenty-five, is more applicable to one who died at the age
of thirty than of thirty-three. A further argument for believing that
the 'xxx. aetatis anno' is right, and the date 87 B.C. consequently
wrong, is that the age at which a person died was more easily
ascertained than the date at which he was born, owing to the common
practice of recording the former in sepulchral inscriptions. It is
easy to see how a mistake might have occurred in substituting the
first of the four successive Consulships of Cinna (87 B.C.) for the
last in 84 B.C.; but it is not so obvious how the substitution of xxx.
for xxxiii. could have taken place. The only ground for assuming that
the date of 87 B.C. is more likely to be right, is that thereby the
disparity of age between Catullus and his mistress Clodia, who must
have been born in 95 or 94 B.C., is somewhat lessened. But when we
remember that she was actually twelve years older than M. Caelius
Rufus, who succeeded Catullus as her lover, and that Cicero in his
defence of Caelius speaks of her as supporting from her own means the
extravagance of her youthful ('adulescentis') lovers[14], there is no
more difficulty in supposing that she was ten than that she was seven
years older than Catullus. Moreover, the brotherly friendship in which
Catullus lived with Calvus, and his earlier intimate relations with
Caelius and Gellius, who were all born in or about the year 82 B.C.,
seem to indicate that he was nearer to them in age than he would
have been if born in 87 B.C. Between the age of twenty and thirty
a difference of five years is not frequent among very intimate
associates, who live together on a footing of perfect freedom. Again,
the expression of the feelings both of love and friendship in the
earlier poems of Catullus--written about the year 61 or 60 B.C.--seems
more like that of a youth of twenty-three or four, than of twenty-six
or seven, especially when we remember that, by his own confession, he
had entered at a precociously early age on his career both of pleasure
and of poetry. The date 84 B.C. accordingly seems to fit the recorded
facts of his life and the peculiar character of his poetry better than
that of 87 B.C.; and there seems to be more opening for a mistake in
assigning the particular date of the poet's birth and death, than in
recording the number of years which he lived[15].
It seems, therefore, most probable that he was born in the year 84
B.C., and that he died at the age of thirty, either late in 54 B.C.
or early in 53 B.C. The much less important, but still more disputed
question as to his 'praenomen,' appears now to be conclusively
settled, in accordance with the evidence of Jerome and Apuleius, in
favour of Gaius, and against Quintus. In the large number of places
in which he speaks of himself, he invariably calls himself 'Catullus';
and in the best MSS. his book is called 'Catulli Veronensis liber.'
His Gentile name Valerius is confirmed by Suetonius in his life of
Julius Caesar; and the evidence of inscriptions shows that that name
was not uncommon in the district near Verona. How it happened that
this Roman patrician name had spread into Cisalpine Gaul we do not
know; but that the family of Catullus was one of high consideration in
his native district, and maintained relations with the great families
of Rome, is indicated by the intimate footing on which Julius Caesar
lived with his father, and also by the fact that the poet was received
as a friend into the best houses of Rome,--such as that of Hortensius,
Manlius Torquatus, Metellus Celer,--shortly after his arrival there.
It is quite possible that the last of these, who was Proconsul in
Cisalpine Gaul in 62 B.C., and to whom Cicero writes when governor of
that province, may have lived on the same footing as Julius Caesar
did with Catullus' father at Verona, and that, in that way, Catullus
obtained his first introduction to his wife Clodia, the Lesbia of the
poems. Although some humorous complaints of money difficulties--the
natural consequences of his fashionable pleasures--occur in his
poems[16], yet from the fact of his possessing, in his father's
lifetime, a country house on lake Benacus and a farm on the borders of
the Sabine and the Tiburtine territories, and of his having bought and
manned a yacht in which he made the voyage from Bithynia to the mouth
of the Po, it may be inferred that he belonged to a wealthy senatorian
or equestrian family. One or two expressions, such as 'se atque suos
omnes,' and again, 'te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua[17],' seem to
speak of a large connexion of kinsmen: but we only know of one other
member of his own family, his brother, whose early death in the Troad
is mentioned with very genuine feeling in several of his poems. The
statement of Jerome that he was born at Verona is confirmed by Ovid
and Martial, and by the poet himself. He speaks of the 'Transpadani'
as his own people ('ut meos quoque attingam'); he addresses Brixia
(the modern Brescia), as--
Veronae mater amata meae;
he speaks of one of his fellow-townsmen, as--
Quendam municipem meum.
Besides spending his early youth there, we find him, on three
different occasions, retiring thither from Rome, and making a
considerable stay there; first, at the time of his brother's death,
apparently at the very height of his _liaison_ with Clodia; next,
immediately after his return from Bithynia; and again in the winter of
55-54 B.C., when it is probable that his interview and reconciliation
with Julius Caesar took place. We find him inviting his friend, the
poet Caecilius, to come and visit him from the newly established
colony of Como. He had his friends and confidants among the youth of
Verona, and he records his intrigues both with the married women and
courtesans of the place[18]. He took a lively interest in the humorous
scandals of the Province, and he has made them the subjects of several
of his poems,--e.g. xvii and lxvii. Although his life was too full
of social excitement and human interests to make him dwell much on
natural beauty, yet the pure feeling expressed in the Sirmio--
Salve, o venusta Sirmio, atque ero gaude;
Gaudete vosque o vividae[19] lacus undae--
shows that he derived keen enjoyment from the familiar loveliness
of that 'ocellus' of 'all isles and capes': and in the illustrative
imagery of his more artistic poems we seem to find traces of the
impression made unconsciously on his imagination by the mountain
scenery of Northern Italy[20].
His native district afforded scope for the culture, which was the
serious charm of his life, as well as for the pleasures which formed
a large part of it. It was in the youth of Catullus that the power of
Greek studies was first felt by the impressionable race, half-Italian,
half-Celtic, of Cisalpine Gaul, which still remained outside of Italy,
and is called by him 'Provincia.' Among the men of letters belonging
to the last age of the Republic,--Cato, the grammarian and poet, the
great teacher of the poets of the new generation[21], described in
lines quoted by Suetonius as
Latina Siren
Qui solus legit ac facit poetas,--
Cornelius Nepos, the friend who early recognised the genius of
Catullus and to whom one of his 'libelli' was dedicated in the lines
now prefixed to the collection,--Quintilius Varus, probably the Varus
of poems x and xxii, and the friend whose death Horace laments in an
Ode to Virgil, and whose candour as a critic he commends in the Ars
Poetica,--Furius Bibaculus, Cornificius, and Caecilius, most of whom
were among the intimate friends of Catullus, came from, or resided in,
the North of Italy[22]. In the poem already mentioned he speaks of the
mistress of Caecilius as being--
Sapphica puella
Musa doctior,--
an indication that, not only in Rome but even in the northern
province, the finest literary taste and culture was shared by
women. Catullus shows in the earlier stage of his poetic career his
familiarity both with the 'Muse of Sappho,' and with the more laboured
art of Callimachus. His special literary butt, 'Volusius,' whose
poems are ridiculed under the title of 'Annales Volusi,' was also his
'Conterraneus,' being a native of the ancient 'Padua,' a town at
the mouth of the Po[23]. The strength of the impulse first given to
literary study in this age is marked also by the eminent names from
the North of Italy, which belong to the next generation, those of
Virgil, Cornelius Gallus, Aemilius Macer, Livy, etc. There is no
proof that Catullus left his native district in order to complete his
education, though it is not improbable that he may have done so and
come under the instruction of the 'Latina Siren,' with whom he was
later on terms of familiar intimacy (lvi); nor have we any sure sign
of his presence at Rome before the year 61 B.C.[24] He tells us that
he began his career both as an amatory poet and as a man of pleasure
in his earliest youth,--
Tempore quo primum vestis mihi tradita pura'st,
Iucundum cum aetas florida ver ageret,
Multa satis lusi: non est dea nescia nostri,
Quae dulcem curis miscet amaritiem[25].
One or two of the poems which we still possess may have been written
before Catullus settled in Rome, and before his genius was fully
awakened by his passion for Lesbia: but the great majority belong to a
later date; and if he did write many love poems before leaving Verona,
'in the pleasant spring-time of his life,' nearly all, if not all,
of them were omitted from the final collection. Even the 'Aufilena
poems,' which are based on an intrigue carried on at Verona, are
shown, by the lines in c:--
Cui faveam potius? Caeli, tibi, nam tua nobis
Per facta exhibita'st unica amicitia,
Cum vesana meas torreret flamma medullas,
to be subsequent to the _liaison_ with Clodia. This last line can only
refer to the one all-absorbing passion of the poet's life. His own
relations to Aufilena, in whose affections he seems to have tried to
supplant his friend Quintius, were subsequent to the composition of
that poem. It is possible, as Westphal suggests, that the Veronese
bride, 'viridissimo nupta flore puella' of the 17th poem, in whom
Catullus evidently took a lively interest, may have been this
Aufilena, at an earlier stage of her career.
The event which first revealed the full power of his genius, and which
brought the greatest happiness and the greatest misery into his life,
was his passion for 'Lesbia.' After the elaborate discussions of the
question by Schwabe, Munro, Ellis and others, it can no longer be
doubted that the lady addressed under that name was the notorious
Clodia; the [Greek: boôpis] who appears so prominently in the second
book of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, and the 'Medea Palatina' whose
crimes, fascination, and profligacy stand out so distinctly in the
defence of Caelius. We learn first from Ovid that 'Lesbia' was a
feigned name; and the application of that name is easily intelligible
from the admiration which Catullus felt, and which his mistress
probably shared, for the 'Lesbian poetess,' whose passionate words he
addressed to his mistress when he was first dazzled by her exceeding
charm and beauty. Apuleius tells us further that the real name of
'Lesbia' was Clodia; and the truth of his statement is confirmed
by his mention in the same place of other Roman ladies, who
were celebrated by their poet-lovers,--Ticidas, Tibullus, and
Propertius,--under disguised names. The statement made there that the
real name of the Cynthia of Propertius was Hostia, is confirmed by the
line in one of his elegies,
Splendidaque a docto fama refulget avo[26].
The fact that this Clodia was the sister of P. Clodius Pulcher is also
indicated in the 79th poem of Catullus,
Lesbius est pulcher: quidni? quem Lesbia malit
Quam te cum tota gente, Catulle, tua.
The play on the word _pulcher_ might be illustrated by many parallel
allusions in Cicero's Letters to Atticus. The gratitude expressed by
Catullus to Allius[27], a man of rank and position, for having made
arrangements to enable him to meet his mistress in secret, clearly
shows that she could not have belonged to the class of _libertinae_,
in whose case no such precautions could have been necessary: and the
language of Catullus in the first period of his _liaison_--
Ille mi par esse deo videtur;
and again,
Quo mea se molli candida diva pedem
Intulit,
is like the rapture of a lover acknowledging the gracious
condescension of a superior, as well as the delight of passion
returned. Of the two kinds of lovers, those who 'allow themselves to
be loved' and are flattered by this tribute to their superiority, and
those who are carried out of themselves by their idealising admiration
of the object of their love, Catullus, in his earlier and happier
time, unquestionably belonged to the latter. Such a feeling, on the
part of a young provincial poet, although primarily inspired by charms
of person and manner, would naturally be enhanced by the thought
that the lady whom he loved belonged to one of the oldest and highest
patrician houses, and was the wife of one of the greatest nobles of
Rome, who was either actual Consul, or Consul designate, at the time
when she first returned the poet's passion. The subsequent course of
their _liaison_ affords further corroboration of her identity with the
famous Clodia. The rival against whom the poet's anger is most fierce
and bitter, is addressed by him as Rufus[28],--the cognomen of M.
Caelius, who became the lover of Clodia in the latter part of the year
59, and was defended by Cicero in a prosecution instigated by her
in the early part of 56 B.C. The speech of Cicero amply confirms the
charges of Catullus as to the multiplicity of her later lovers. As,
therefore, there seems no reason to doubt, and the strongest reason
to accept the statement of Apuleius that the real name of Lesbia was
Clodia; as the Lesbia of Catullus was, like her, evidently a lady of
rank and of great accomplishment[29]; as there was no other Clodia
of the family of Clodius Pulcher at Rome, except the wife of Metellus
Celer, to whom the statements made in the poems of Catullus could
apply; and as these statements closely agree with all that Cicero says
of her,--there is no reasonable ground for doubting their identity. If
it is urged, on the other side, that a lady of the rank and station of
Clodia cannot have sunk so low, as some of the later poems of Catullus
imply, it may be said that all that Catullus in his jealous wrath
imputed to her need not have been true, and also that other Roman
ladies of as high rank and position, both in the last age of the
Republic and in the early Empire, did sink as low[30].
That the intrigue was carried on and had even reached its second
stage--that of the 'amantium irae'--in the life-time of Metellus,
appears from the 83rd poem,
Lesbia mi praesente viro mala plurima dicit, etc.
Metellus was governor of the Province of Gallia Cisalpina in 62
B.C., and he must have returned to Rome early in 61 to stand for the
Consulship. Catullus may have become known to Clodia in his absence,
and the earliest poem addressed to her, the translation from Sappho,
which is expressive of passionate and even distant admiration rather
than of secure possession, may belong to the time of her husband's
absence. But in the 68th poem, which recalls most vividly the early
days of their love, when they met in secret at the house provided
by Allius, the lines, in which the poet excuses her faithlessness to
himself--
Sed furtiva dedit mira munuscula nocte,
Ipsius ex ipso dempta viri gremio[31]--
clearly imply that these meetings occurred after the return of
Metellus to Rome. The earlier love poems to Lesbia--those on her pet
sparrow, the 'Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,' and the 'Quaeris
quot mihi basiationes,'--in all of which the feeling expressed is
one at once of passionate admiration and of perfect security,--belong
probably to the year 60, or to the latter part of the year 61 B.C. To
this period may, in all probability, be assigned some of the poet's
brightest and happiest efforts,--the Epithalamium in honour of the
marriage of Manlius and Vinia Aurunculeia[32], and the poems ix, xii,
xiii, commemorative of his friendship with Veranius and Fabullus. The
words in the last of these--
Nam unguentum dabo, quod meae puellae
Donarunt Veneres Cupidinesque--
seem to admit of no other explanation than that they were written
in the heyday of his passion. The lines in the poem, welcoming
Veranius,--
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
Narrantem loca, facta, nationes--
seem to speak of some adventures encountered in Spain: and from the
fact that three years later the two friends, who are always coupled
together as inseparable by Catullus, went together on the staff of
Calpurnius Piso, the father-in-law of Caesar, to his Province of
Macedonia, it seems a not unwarranted conjecture[33] that they were
similarly engaged at this earlier time, and had gone to Spain in
the train of Julius Caesar, and had returned with him to Rome in the
middle of the year 60 B.C.[34] The twelfth poem, which is interesting
as a testimony to the honour and good taste of Asinius Pollio, then
a boy of sixteen, was written somewhat earlier, while Veranius and
Fabullus were still in Spain.
The first hint of any rift in the loves of Catullus and Clodia
is contained in the 68th poem, written in the form of a letter to
Manlius[35]--
Quare, quod scribis Veronae turpe Catullo, etc.
Catullus had retired to Verona on hearing of the death of his
brother, and he was for a time so overwhelmed with grief as to become
indifferent both to poetry and love. He is as sincere and unreserved
in the expression of his grief as of his former happiness, and as
completely absorbed by it. He writes to Hortensius, enclosing, in
fulfilment of an old promise, a translation of the 'Coma Berenices' of
Callimachus, but at the same time expressing his loss of all interest
in poetry owing to his recent affliction,--
Etsi me adsiduo confectum cura dolore
Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus, etc.
In his letter to Manlius, in which he excuses himself on the same
ground for not sending any poetry of his own, and for not complying
with his request to send him some volumes of Greek poetry, on the
ground that his collection of books was at Rome, he notices, with a
feeling almost of hopeless indifference, a hint conveyed to him by
Manlius, of his mistress' faithlessness[36]. In the poem written
somewhat later to Allius,--
Non possum reticere deae qua me Allius in re, etc.--
in which his grief is still fresh but more subdued, and in which the
full tide of his old passion, as well as his old delight in his art,
returns to him, he speaks lightly of her occasional infidelities,--
Quae tamen etsi uno non est contenta Catullo
Rara verecundae furta feremus erae.
If he can no longer be her only lover, he still hopes to be the most
favoured. But he soon finds even this privilege denied to him. His
love-poetry henceforth assumes a different sound. For a time, indeed,
his reproaches are uttered in a tone of sadness not unmixed with
tenderness. Afterwards, even though his passion from time to time
revives with its old vehemence, and he again becomes the slave of
Lesbia's caprice, his tone becomes angry, hard, and scornful. Finally,
the evidence of her shameless life and innumerable infidelities with
Caelius, Gellius, Egnatius, and 'three hundred others,' enables him
utterly to renounce her. The earlier of the poems, both of anger and
reconciliation, may probably have been written in the life-time of
Metellus, i.e. in 60 or in the beginning of 59 B.C. But later in that
year Metellus died, suspected of being poisoned by his wife, who, on
the ground of that suspicion, was named by Caelius Rufus, after his
passion had merged in a hatred equal to that of Catullus, by the
terrible _oxymoron_ of 'Clytemnestra quadrantaria.' Her widowhood
gained for her absolute license in the indulgence of her propensities,
and the first use she made of her liberty was to receive Caelius Rufus
into her house on the Palatine. What her ultimate fate was we do not
know, but the language of Cicero, Caelius, and Catullus show that she
could inspire as deadly hatred as passionate admiration, and that
the 'Juno-like' charm of her beauty, the grace and fascination of her
presence, the intellectual accomplishment which made poets and orators
for a time her slaves, did not save her from sinking into the lowest
degradation.
The poems representing the second and third stage--that in which
passion and scorn strive with one another--of the relations to
'Lesbia,' and containing the savage attacks on his rivals, belong to
the years 59 and 58 B.C.: nor do there appear to be any other poems of
importance referable to this latter date. One or two poems, in which
his final renunciation is made with much scornful emphasis, belong to
a later date after his return from Bithynia. He went there early in
the year 57 B.C., on the staff of the Propraetor Memmius, and remained
till the spring of the following year. The immediate motive for this
step may have been his wish to escape from his fatal entanglement, but
the chances of bettering his fortunes, the congenial society of his
friend the poet Helvius Cinna and other members of the staff, and the
attraction of visiting the famous seats of the old Greek civilization,
were also powerful inducements to a man who combined a strong social
and pleasure-loving nature with the enthusiasm of a poet and a
scholar. His severance from his recent associations and from the
animosities they engendered was favourable to his happiness and his
poetry. He did not indeed improve his fortunes, owing, as he says, to
the poverty of the province and the meanness of his chief. He detested
Memmius, and has recorded his detestation in the hearty terms of abuse
of which he was a master; and he expresses his joy in quitting, in the
following spring, the dull monotony of the Phrygian plains and the hot
climate of Nicaea. But he had great enjoyment in his association with
his comrades on the Praetor's staff--
O dulces comitum valete coetus.--
He was attracted to one of them, Helvius Cinna, by warm admiration for
his poetic accomplishment, as well as by friendship[37]; and the time
spent by them together was probably lightened by the practice of their
art, and the study of the Alexandrine poets. Although the fame of
Cinna did not become so great as that of Catullus or Calvus, he seems
to have been regarded by the poets of that school in the light of a
master[38]; and it is probably owing to the example of his Zmyrna, so
highly lauded in the 95th poem of Catullus, that Catullus composed
his Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, Calvus composed his Io, and
Cornificius his Glaucus. A still more remarkable poem of Catullus, the
Attis, the subject of which, so remote not only from Roman but even
Greek life, is identified with the Phrygian highlands and the seats
of the worship of Cybele, probably owes its inspiration as well as
its local colouring to the poet's sojourn in this district. It is not
unlikely that it was during the leisure of the time spent in Bithynia
that these poems were commenced, as it was during his retirement to
Verona after his brother's death that his longer Elegiac poems were
written. The mention of the 'Catagraphi Thyni' in a later poem is
suggestive of the interest which he took in the novel aspects of
Eastern life opened up to him in the province. But it is in the poems
which are written in the year 56 B.C., that we chiefly note the happy
effect of the poet's absence from Rome, and of his emancipation from
his passion. Some of these poems,--more especially xlvi, ci, xxxi, and
iv,--are among the happiest and purest products of his genius. They
bring him before us eagerly preparing to start on his journey 'among
the famous cities of Asia,'--making his pious pilgrimage to his
brother's tomb in the Troad,--greeting his beloved Sirmio and the
bright waters of the Lago di Garda on his first return home, and
recalling sometime later to his guests by the shores of the lake the
memories of the places visited, and of the gallant bearing of his
pinnace, 'through so many wild seas,' on his homeward voyage. Some
of the poems written from Verona--those referring to his intrigue
or perhaps his disappointment with Aufilena, and the invitation to
Caecilius (xxxv), were probably composed about this time, before his
return to Rome. The 'Aufilena' poems belong certainly to a time
later than his passion for Lesbia; and during a still later visit to
Verona--probably that during which he met and was reconciled to Julius
Caesar--Catullus is found engaged in love-affairs in which Mamurra
was his rival. As the invitation to Caecilius was written after the
foundation of Como (B.C. 59), it could not have been sent by Catullus
during his earlier sojourns at Verona: and 'the ideas' which he wished
to interchange with the poet who was then engaged in writing a poem
on Cybele--'Dindymi domina,'--to which Catullus pointedly refers, may
well have been those suggested by his Eastern sojourn, and embodied
in the Attis. But soon afterwards we find him back in Rome, and the
lively and most natural comedy, dramatically put before us in x--
Varus me meus ad suos amores
Visum duxerat e foro otiosum--
bears the freshest impress of his recent Bithynian experiences. Poems
xxviii and xlviii, inspired by his hatred of Memmius and his sympathy
with the treatment, like to that which he had himself experienced,
which his friends Veranius and Fabullus had met with at the hands of
their chief Piso, probably belong to a later time, after the return of
Piso from his province in 55 B.C. Some critics have found the motive
of the famous lines addressed to Cicero--
Disertissime Romuli nepotum
Quot sunt quotque fuere, Marce Tulli--
in the speech delivered in the early part of 56 B.C., in defence of
Caelius, of which, from the prominence given in it to the vices of
Clodia, Catullus must have heard soon after his return to Rome. But
the words of the poem hardly justify this inference. Catullus was not
interested in the vindication of Caelius, who had proved false to
him as a friend, and supplanted him as a rival. And he was himself so
perfect a master of vituperation that he did not need to thank Cicero
for his having done that office for him in regard to Clodia. Yet
the reference to Cicero's eloquence, and to his supremacy in the law
courts--,
Tanto pessimus omnium poeta
Quanta tu optimus omnium patronus--
seems to point to some exercise of Cicero's special talent as an
advocate, for which Catullus was grateful. The great orator and the
great poet, who speaks so modestly of himself in the contrast he draws
between them, may have been brought together in many ways. They had
common friends and acquaintances--Hortensius, Manlius Torquatus,
Sestius, Licinius Calvus, Memmius, etc.; and they heartily hated
the same persons, Clodia, Vatinius, Piso, and others. The intimate
associates of Catullus shared the political views and sympathies which
the orator had professed at least up to the year 55 B.C. Cicero, too,
was naturally attracted to young men of promise and genius,--if they
did not belong too prominently to the 'grex Catilinae';--and, like Dr.
Johnson in his relations to Beauclerk and Boswell, he may have valued
their society more for their intellectual vivacity than their moral
virtues[39].
The poems written in the last two years of the poet's life do not
indicate any emancipation from the coarser passions and the fierce
animosities of the period immediately preceding the Bithynian journey.
To this later time may be assigned the famous lampoons on Julius
Caesar and Mamurra, the poems referring to some of his Veronese
amours, those addressed to Juventius, and the reckless,
half-bantering, half-savage assaults on 'Furius and Aurelius,' who
were both the butts of his wit and the sharers of his least reputable
pleasures. They seem to have been needy men, though of some social
standing[40], probably of the class of 'Scurrae,' who preyed on his
purse and made loud professions of devotion to him, while they abused
his confidence and his character behind his back. Some of the poems of
his last years, however, are indicative of a more genial frame of mind
and of happier relations with the world. It was at this time that he
enjoyed the intimate friendship of Licinius Calvus[41], to whom he was
united by similarity of taste and of genius, as well as by sympathy in
their personal and political dislikes. Four poems--one certainly among
the very last written by Catullus--are inspired by this friendship,
and all clearly prove that at least this source of happiness was
unalloyed by any taint of bitterness. Two other poems, the final
repudiation of Lesbia, and the bright picture of the loves of Acme and
Septimius, which, by their allusions to the invasion of Britain and
to the excitement preceding the Parthian expedition of Crassus and the
Egyptian expedition of Gabinius, show unmistakeably that they belong
to the last year of his life, afford conclusive evidence that neither
the exhausting passions, the rancorous feuds, nor the deeper sorrows
of his life had in any way impaired the vigour of his imagination or
his sense of beauty. Perhaps the latest verses addressed by Catullus
to any of his friends are those lines of tender complaint to
Cornificius, in which he begs of him some little word of consolation--
Maestius lacrimis Simonideis.
The lines--
Malest, me hercule, et est laboriose,
Et magis magis in dies et horas--
might well have been drawn from him by the rapid advance of his fatal
illness, and the phrase 'lacrimis Simonideis' is suggestive of
the anticipation of death rather than of the misery of unfortunate
love[42].
The length as well as the diction, rhythm, and structure of the 64th
poem--
Peliaco quondam prognatae, etc.--
shows that it was a work of much greater labour and thought than any
of those which sprang spontaneously out of the passion or sentiment
of the moment. Probably in the composition of this, which he must
have regarded as the most serious and ambitious effort of his Muse,
Catullus may have acted on the principle which he commends so warmly
in his lines on the Zmyrna of Cinna--
Zmyrna mei Cinnae nonam post denique messem
Quam coepta'st nonamque edita post hiemem,--
and have kept it by him for years, elaborating the unfamiliar poetic
diction in which it is expressed, and enlarging its original plan
by the insertion of the long Ariadne episode. It is the only poem
of Catullus which produces the impression of the slow and reflective
processes of art as distinct from the rapidly shaping power of
immediate inspiration. From this circumstance alone we should regard
it as a work on which his maturest faculty was employed. But it has
been shown[43] that throughout the poem, and more especially in the
episode of Ariadne, there are clear indications that Catullus had read
and imitated the poem of Lucretius, which appeared about the end of 55
or the beginning of 54 B.C. We may therefore conclude that in the year
54 B.C.--the last of his life--Catullus was still engaged either in
the original composition of his longest poem, or in giving to it the
finishing touches. The concluding lines of the poem--
Sed postquam tellus scelere est imbuta nefando, etc.--
which are written in a more serious spirit, and with a graver judgment
on human life than anything else he has left, perhaps indicate the
path which his maturer genius might have struck out for itself, if
he had ever risen from the careless freedom of early youth to the
reflective habits and steady labour of riper years.
But although longer life might have brought to Catullus a still
higher rank among the poets of the world, the chief charm of the poems
actually written by him arises from the strength and depth of his
personal feelings, and the force, freshness, and grace with which
he has expressed them. Other Roman poets have produced works of more
elaborate composition, and have shown themselves greater interpreters
of Nature and of human life: none have expressed so directly and
truthfully the great elemental affections, or have uttered with such
vital sincerity the happiness or the pain of the passing hour.
He presents his own simple experience and emotions, uncoloured by
idealising fancy or reflexion, and the world accepts this as among
the truest of all records of human feeling. The 'spirat adhuc amor' is
especially true of all the poems inspired by his love for Lesbia. It
is by the union of the utmost fire of passion with a heart capable of
the utmost constancy of feeling that he transcends all other poets of
love. We pass with him through every stage of his passion, from the
first rapture of admiration and the first happiness of possession to
the biting words or scorn in which he announces to Lesbia his final
renunciation of her. We witness the whole 'pageant of his bleeding
heart,' from the fresh pain of the wound on first fully realising
her unworthiness, through the various stages of superficial
reconcilement,--the 'amoris integratio' following on the 'amantium
irae[44],'--on to the state of torture described by him in the words
'Odi et amo[45],' till at last he obtains his emancipation by the
growth of a savage rancour and loathing in the place of the passionate
love which had tried so long to sustain itself 'like a wild flower
at the edge of the meadow[46].' Among the many poems, written through
nearly the whole of his poetical career, and called forth by this, the
most vital experience of his life, those of most charm and power are
the two on the 'Sparrow of Lesbia' (ii and iii) written in tones of
playful tenderness, not without some touch of the luxury of melancholy
which accompanies and enhances passion;--the two, v and vii,
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
and
Quaeris, quot mihi basiationes, etc.,--
written in the very height of his short-lived happiness, in the
wildest tumult and most reckless abandonment of passion, when the
immediate joy is felt as the only thing of any moment in life; the 8th
poem--
Miser, Catulle, desinas ineptire--
in which he recalls the bright days of the past--
Fulsere quondam candidi tibi soles,--
and steels his heart against useless regret:--and another poem written
in a different metre, in the same mood, and apparently after the
wounds, which had been partially healed, had broken out afresh,--
Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas, etc.[47];
in which he prays for a deliverance from his passion as from a foul
disease, or a kind of madness;--and lastly, the final renunciation
(xi),--
Furi et Aureli comites Catullo,--
in which scornful irony is combined with an imaginative power and
creative force of expression which he has only equalled or surpassed
in one or two other of his greatest works,--such as the 'Attis' and
the Epithalamium of Manlius. Other tales of love told by poets have
been more beautiful in their course, or more pathetic in their issue;
none have been told with more truthful realism, or more desperate
intensity of feeling.
The fame of Catullus, as alone among ancient poets of love rivalling
the traditional glory of Sappho, does not rest only on those poems
which record the varying vicissitudes of his own experience. His
longer and more artistic poems are all concerned with some phase of
this passion, either in its more beautiful and pathetic aspects, or
in its perversion and corruption. Thus he not only selects from Greek
legends the story of the desertion of Ariadne, of the brief union of
Protesilaus and Laodamia, of the glory and blessedness of Peleus
and Thetis, but he makes the tragic deed of Attis, instigated by the
fanatical hatred of love,--'Veneris nimio odio,'--the subject of his
art. Others of his poems are inspired by sympathy with the happiness
of his friends in the enjoyment of their love, and with their sorrow
when that love is interrupted by death. The most charming of all his
longer poems is the Epithalamium which celebrates the union of Manlius
with his bride. No truer picture of the passionate devotion of lovers
has ever been painted than that presented in the few playful and
tender but burning lines of the 'Acme and Septimius.' His own
experience did not teach him the lessons of cynicism. At the close as
at the beginning of his career, he finds in the union of passion with
truth and constancy the most real source of happiness. The elegiac
lines in which he comforts his friend Calvus for the loss of Quintilia
bear witness to the strength and delicacy of his friendship, and,
along with others of his poems, make us feel that the life of pleasure
in that age was not only brightened by genius and culture, but also
elevated by pure affection and sympathy,--
Si quicquam mutis gratum acceptumque sepulchris
Accidere a nostro Calve dolore potest,
Quo desiderio veteres renovamus amores
Atque olim missas flemus amicitias
Certe non tanto mors immatura dolori est
Quintiliae, quantum gaudet amore tuo[48].
The most attractive feature in the character of Catullus is the warmth
of his affection. No ancient poet has left so pleasant a record of
the genial intercourse of friends, or has given such proof of his own
dependence on human attachment and of his readiness to meet all the
claims which others have on such attachment. In his gayest hours and
his greatest sorrow, amid his pleasures and his studies, he shows his
thoughtful consideration for others, his grateful recollection of past
kindness, and his own extreme need of sympathy. Perhaps he expects too
much from friendship, and, in addressing his comrades, is too ready
to assume that whatever gives momentary pleasure or pain to 'their own
Catullus' must be of equal importance to them. No poet makes such use
of terms of endearment and affectionate diminutives in writing both to
and of his friends, and of himself in his relation to them. But if he
expected much from the sympathy of his associates, he possessed in no
ordinary measure the capacity of feeling with and of heartily loving
and admiring them. He often expresses honest and delicate appreciation
of the works, or of the wit, taste, and genius of his friends. The
dedication of his volume to Cornelius Nepos, the lines addressed to
Cicero, the invitation to Caecilius--
Poetae tenero, meo sodali
Velim Caecilio papyre dicas,--
the poem in which he recalls to Licinius Calvus a day passed together
in witty talk and the interchange of verses over their wine, the
contrast which he draws between the doom of speedy oblivion which he
pronounces on the 'Annals of Volusius,' and the immortality which he
confidently anticipates for the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna,--all show that,
though fastidious in his judgments, he was without a single touch of
literary jealousy, and that he felt a generous pride in the fame and
accomplishments of men of established reputation as well as of his own
younger compeers. Nor was his affection limited by literary sympathy.
Of none of his associates does he write more heartily than of Veranius
and Fabullus, young men, apparently enjoying their youth, and trying
to better their fortunes by serving on the staff of some Praetor or
Proconsul in his province. The language of affection could not be
uttered with more cordiality, simplicity, and grace than in the poem
of ten or eleven lines welcoming Veranius on his return from Spain,--
Venistine domum ad tuos Penates
Fratresque unanimos anumque matrem?
Venisti. O mihi nuntii beati.
There is not a word in the poem wasted; not one that does not come
straight and strong from the heart. The 'Invitation to Fabullus' is in
a lighter strain, and is written with the freedom and humour which he
could use to add a charm to his friendly intercourse[49], and a sting
to his less congenial relations. Yet through the playful banter of
this poem his delicate and kindly nature betrays itself in the words
'venuste noster,' and in those lines of true feeling,--
Sed contra accipies meros amores
Seu quid suavius elegantiusve.
His affection for both comes out incidentally in his remonstrance with
Marrucinus Asinius[50] for having filched after dinner, 'in ioco atque
vino,' one of his napkins, which he valued as memorials of the friends
who had sent them to him, and which he endows with some share of the
love he felt for them,--
Haec amem necessest
Ut Veraniolum meum et Fabullum.
The lampoons on Piso and his favourites, Porcius and Socration, show
that those who wronged his friends could rouse in him as generous
indignation as those who wronged himself.
Other poems express the pain and disappointment of a very sensitive
nature, which expects more active and disinterested sympathy from
others than ordinary men care either to give or to receive. Of this
sort are his complaint to Cornificius[51],--
Malest, Cornifici, tuo Catullo--
and the affectionate reproach which he addresses to Alphenus (xxx):--
Certe tute iubebas animam tradere, inique, me
Inducens in amorem, quasi tuta omnia mi forent.
Inde nunc retrahis te ac tua dicta omnia factaque
Ventos irrita ferre ac nebulas aerias sinis.
These, and other poems, show that Catullus was quick to feel any
coldness or neglect on the part of his friends, and exceedingly
dependent for his happiness on their sympathy. But the tone of these
poems is quite different from the resentment which he feels and
expresses against those from whom he had experienced malice or
treachery. It does great injustice to his noblest qualities, to think
of him as one who wantonly attacked or lightly turned against his
friends. No instance of such levity of feeling can be adduced from his
writings. It has been conclusively shown[52] that in the third line of
the 95th poem there can be no reference to Hortensius, who, under
the name of Hortalus, is addressed by Catullus in his 65th poem
with courteous consideration: and if 'Furius and Aurelius' are to be
regarded, on the strength of the opening lines of the 11th poem, as
having ever ranked among his devoted friends, then the poem, instead
of being a magnificent outburst of scornful irony, becomes a mere
specimen of bathos. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more in keeping
with the feeling of contemptuous tolerance which Catullus expresses
in his other poems relating to them, than the pointed contrast between
their hollow professions of enthusiasm and the degrading office which
he assigns to them,--
Pauca nuntiate meae puellae
Non bona dicta.
Catullus could pass from friendship or love to a state of permanent
enmity and hatred, when he believed that those in whom he had trusted
had acted falsely and heartlessly towards him: and then he did not
spare them. But the duties of loyal friendship and affection are to
him a kind of religion. Perfidy and falsehood are regarded by him not
only as the worst offences against honour in man, but as sins against
the Gods. He lays claim to a good conscience and to the character of
piety, on the ground that he had neither failed in acts of kindness
nor violated his word or his oath in any of his human dealings:--
Si qua recordanti benefacta priora voluptas
Est homini, cum se cogitat esse pium,
Nec sanctam violasse fidem, nec foedere in ullo
Divum ad fallendos numine abusum homines, etc.[53]
That he possessed no ordinary share of 'piety,' in the Roman sense
of the word, appears from the poems which express his grief for his
brother's death. He died in the Troad; and we have seen how, some
years after the event, Catullus turned aside from his pleasant voyage
among the Isles of Greece and coasts of Asia, to visit his tomb and to
offer upon it the customary funeral gifts. His words in reference to
this great sorrow, in all the poems in which he speaks of it, are
full of deep and simple human feeling. He does not venture to comfort
himself with the hope which he suggests to Calvus, in the lines on
the death of Quintilia, of a conscious existence after death; but
he resolves that his love shall still endure even after the eternal
separation from its object. Yet while yielding to the first shock
of this affliction, so as to become for the time indifferent to the
passion which had swayed his life, and to the delight which he had
taken in the works of ancient poets and the exercise of his art, he
does not allow himself to forget what was due to living friends. It is
characteristic of his frank affectionate nature, that, while dead to
his old interests in life and literature, he finds his chief comfort
in unburthening his heart to his friends and in writing to them words
of delicate consideration. He cannot bear that, even in a trifling
matter, Hortalus should find him forgetful of a promise: and he longs
to lighten the sorrow of his friend Manlius, who had written to him
in some sudden affliction,--probably the loss of the bride in whose
honour Catullus had, a short time previously, composed his great
Nuptial Ode. Though all other feelings were dead, and neither love
could distract nor poetry heal his grief, his heart was alive to the
memory of former kindness[54], to the natural craving for sympathy,
and to the duty of thinking of others.
Another, and less admirable, side of the nature of Catullus is
reflected in his short satirical poems. These have nothing in common
with the ethical and reflective satire of Lucilius and Horace: and
although the objects of some of them are the most prominent personages
in the State, yet their motive cannot, in any case, be called purely
political. They are like the lampoons of Archilochus and the early
Greek Iambic writers, purely personal in their object. They are either
the virulent expression of his antipathies, jealousies, and rancours,
or they are inspired by his lively sense of the ridiculous and by his
extreme fastidiousness of taste. The most famous, most incisive, and
least justifiable of these lampoons are the attacks on Julius Caesar,
especially that contained in the 29th poem,--
Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati,
Nisi impudicus et vorax et alco, etc.--
and in the less vigorous but much more offensive 57th poem.
Catullus in these poems expresses the animosity which the 'boni'
generally entertained towards the chiefs of the popular party: and his
intimacy at this time with Calvus, who was a member of the Senatorian
party, and who lampooned Caesar and Pompey in the same spirit, may
have given some political edge to his Satire. He was moved also by a
feeling of disgust towards the habits and manners of some of Caesar's
instruments and creatures,--such as Vatinius, Libo, Mamurra, etc. But
the chief motive both of the 29th and the 57th,--the two poems which
Suetonius regarded as attaching an 'everlasting stigma' to the name of
Caesar--is the jealousy of Mamurra,--the object also of many separate
satires,--who, through the favour of the Proconsul and the fortune
which he thereby acquired, was a successful rival of Catullus in his
provincial love affairs. The indignation of Cicero was roused against
the riches of Mamurra on political grounds[55]: that of Catullus on
the ground that they gave their possessor an unfair advantage in the
race of pleasure:--
Et ille nunc superbus et superfluens
Perambulabit omnium cubilia, etc.
Suetonius tells the story, confirmed by the lines in a later poem of
Catullus--
Irascere iterum meis iambis
Inmerentibus, unice imperator,--
that Caesar, while staying at his father's house at Verona, accepted
the poet's apology for his libellous verses, and admitted him the
same day to his dinner-table. Had he attached the meaning to the
imputations contained in them, which Suetonius did two hundred
years afterwards, even his magnanimous clemency could not well have
tolerated them. But, as Cicero tells us in his defence of Caelius,
such charges were in those days regarded as a mere 'façon de parler,'
which if made coarsely were regarded as 'rudeness' ('petulantia'),
if done wittily, as 'polite banter' ('urbanitas'). Caesar must
have looked upon the imputations of the 57th poem as a mere angry
ebullition of boyish petulance: and he showed the same disregard for
imputations made by Calvus, which, though as unfounded, were not so
absolutely incredible and unmeaning. His clemency to Catullus met with
a return similar to that which it met with at a later time from other
recipients of his generosity. Catullus, though the 'truest friend,'
was certainly not the 'noblest foe.' The coarseness of his attack may
be partly palliated by the manners of the age: but the spirit in which
he returns to the attack in the 54th poem leaves a more serious
stain on his character. He was too completely in the wrong to be able
frankly to forgive Caesar for his gracious and magnanimous treatment.
Many of his personal satires are directed against the licentiousness
of the men and women with whom he quarrelled. Notwithstanding the
evidence of his own frequent confessions, he lays a claim to purity
of life in the phrase, 'si vitam puriter egi[56],' and in his strange
apology for the freedom of his verses,--
Nam castum esse decet pium poetam
Ipsum, versiculos nihil necesse est[57].
He is absolutely unrestrained both in regard to the imputations which
he makes, and to the choice of the language in which he conveys them;
and in these imputations he spares neither rank nor sex. It is one of
the strangest paradoxes to find a poet like Catullus, endowed with the
purest sense of beauty, and yet capable of turning all his vigorous
force of expression to the vilest uses. He is coarser in his language
than any of the older poets, and than any of those of the Augustan
age. In the time of the former the traditional severity of the old
Roman life,--'tetrica ac tristis disciplina Sabinorum,'--had not
altogether lost its influence. In the Augustan age, if there was as
much immorality as in the age preceding it, there was more outward
decorum. The licentiousness of that age expresses itself in tones of
refinement; it associates itself with sentimentalism in literature; it
was reduced to system and carried out as the serious business of life.
The coarseness of Catullus is symptomatic rather of more recklessness
than of greater corruption in society. Impurity is less destructive to
human nature when it vents itself in bantering or virulent abuse, than
when it clings to the imagination, associates itself with the sense
of beauty, and expresses itself in the language of passion. Though, in
his nobler poetry, Catullus is ardent and impassioned, he is much more
free from this taint than Ovid or Propertius. The errors of his life
did not deaden his sensibility, harden his heart, or corrupt his
imagination. It is only in his careless moods, when he looks on
life in the spirit of a humorist, or in moods of bitterness when his
antipathies are roused, or in fits of savage indignation against some
violation of natural feeling or some prosperous villainy, that he
disregards the restraints imposed by the better instincts of men on
the use of language.
Many of his Satires, however, are written in a more genial vein, and
are not much disfigured by coarseness or indelicacy of expression. As
he especially valued good taste and courtesy, wit, and liveliness of
mind in his associates, so he is intolerant of all mean and sordid
ways of living, of all stupidity, affectation, and pedantry. The
pieces in which these characteristics are exposed are marked by
keen observation, a lively sense of absurdity, and sometimes by
a boisterous spirit of fun. They are expressed with vigour and
directness; but they want the subtle irony which pervades the Satires,
Epistles, and Odes of Horace. Among the best of his lighter satires is
the poem numbered xvii:--
O Colonia, quae cupis ponte ludere magno,--
which has some touches of graceful poetry as well as of humorous
extravagance. It is directed against the dulness and stolid
indifference of one of his fellow-townsmen, who, being married to a
young and beautiful girl,--
Quoi cum sit viridissimo nupta flore puella
(Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
Asservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis),--
was utterly careless of her, and insensible to the perils to which she
was exposed. To rouse him from his sloth and stupor, Catullus asks to
have him thrown head over heels--
Munus hoc mihi maximi da, Colonia, risus--
from a rickety old bridge into the deepest and dirtiest part of the
quagmire over which it was built. In another piece Catullus laughs at
the affectation of one of his rivals, Egnatius,--a black-bearded fop
from the Celtiberian wilds,--who had a trick of perpetually smiling
in order to show the whiteness of his teeth;--a trick which did not
desert him at a criminal trial, during the most pathetic part of the
speech for the defence, or when he stood beside a weeping mother at
the funeral pyre of her only son. In another of his elegiac pieces he
gives expression to the relief felt on the departure for the East of
a bore who afflicted the ears of the polite world by a superfluous use
of his aspirates--
Chommoda dicebat, si quando commoda vellet
Dicere, et insidias Arrius hinsidias, etc.[58]
Just as the ears of men had recovered from this infliction--
Subito affertur nuntius horribilis,
Ionios fluctus, postquam illuc Arrius isset,
Iam non Ionios esse, sed Hionios.
Like fastidious and irritable poets of other times (Horace, Pope,
Byron, etc.), Catullus waged internecine war against pedants, literary
pretenders, and poetasters. He remonstrates in a vein of humorous
exaggeration with his friend Licinius Calvus, for palming off on him
as a gift on the Saturnalia (corresponding to our Christmas presents)
a collection of the works of these 'miscreants' ('impiorum'),
originally sent to him by some pedantic grammarian, in acknowledgment
of his services as an advocate--
Dii magni, horribilem ac sacrum libellum.
In the 36th poem he represents Lesbia as offering a holocaust to Venus
of the work of 'the worst of all poets,' 'The Annals of Volusius,'
in quittance of a vow on her reconcilement with Catullus. In another
(xxii), addressed to Varus, probably the fastidious critic whom Horace
quotes in the 'Ars Poetica[59],' he exposes the absurdity of one of
their friends, who, though in other respects a man of sense, wit, and
agreeable manners, entertained the delusion that he was a poet, and
was never so happy as when he had surrounded himself with the
newest and finest literary materials, and was plying his uncongenial
occupation. In another he records the nemesis, in the form of a severe
cough, which overtook him for allowing himself to be seduced by the
hopes of a good dinner to read (or perhaps listen to the reading of) a
speech of Cicero's friend and client Sestius,--
Plenam veneni et pestilentiae.
About one half of the shorter poems, and more than half of the
epigrams, are to be classed among his personal lampoons or light
satiric pieces. Many of these show Catullus to us on that side of his
character, which it is least pleasant or profitable to dwell on. He
could not indeed write anything which did not bear the stamp of
the vital force and sincerity of his nature: but even his vigour of
expression does not compensate for the survival in literature of the
feelings and relations which are most ignoble in actual life. Yet some
of these satiric pieces have an interest which amply justifies their
preservation. The greatest of all his lampoons, the 29th, has an
historical as well as a literary value. Tacitus, as well as Suetonius,
refers to it. It is not only a masterpiece of terse invective, but,
like the 11th, it is a powerful specimen of imaginative irony. The
momentous events of a most momentous era--the Eastern conquests of
Pompey, the first Spanish campaign of Caesar, the subjugation of Gaul,
the invasion of Britain, the revolutionary measures of 'father-in-law
and son-in-law,'--are all made to look as if they had had no other
object or result than that of pampering the appetites of a worthless
favourite. Other lampoons, such as those against Memmius and Piso,
have also an historical interest. They testify to the republican
freedom of speech, the open expression of which was soon to be
silenced for ever. They enable us to understand how strong a social
and political weapon the power of epigram was in ancient Rome,--a
power which continued to be exercised, though no longer with
republican freedom, under the Empire. The pen of the poet was employed
in the warfare of parties as fiercely as the tongue of the orator;
and although Catullus did not spare partisans of the Senate, such
as Memmius, yet all his associations and tastes combined to turn his
hostility chiefly against the popular leaders and their tools. The
more genial satiric pieces, again, are chiefly interesting as throwing
light on the social and literary life of Rome and the provincial towns
of Italy. They give us an idea of the lighter talk, the criticism,
and merriment of the younger men in the world of letters and fashion
during the last age of the Republic. If they are not master-pieces of
humour, they are full of gaiety, animal spirits, shrewd observation,
and not very unkindly comment on men and manners.
Besides the poems which show Catullus in various relations of love,
affection, animosity, and humorous criticism, there are still a few of
the shorter pieces which have a personal interest. He had the purest
capacity of enjoying simple pleasures; and some of his most delightful
poems are vivid records of happy experiences procured to him by
this youthful freshness of feeling. Three of these are especially
beautiful,--the dedication of his yacht to Castor and Pollux,--the
lines written immediately before quitting Bithynia,--
Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--
and the famous lines on Sirmio. They all belong to the same period of
his life, and all show how happy and serene his spirit became, when it
was untroubled by the passions and rancours of city life. The lines on
his yacht--
Phaselus ille quem videtis, hospites,--
express with much vivacity the feelings of affectionate pride which a
strong and kindly nature lavishes not only on living friends, but on
inanimate objects, associated with the memory of past happiness and
adventure. His fancy endows it with a kind of life from the earliest
time when, under the form of a clump of trees, it 'rustled its leaves'
on Cytorus, till it obtained its rest in a peaceful age on the fair
waters of Benacus. The 46th poem is inspired by the new sense of life
which comes to early youth with the first approach of spring, and by
the eager flutter of anticipation--
Iam mens praetrepidans avet vagari,
Iam laeti studio pedes vigescunt--
with which a cultivated mind forecasts the pleasure of travelling
among famous and beautiful scenes. But perhaps the most perfect of his
smaller pieces is that in which the love of home and of Nature, the
sense of rest and security after toil and danger, the glee of a boy
and the strong happiness of a man unite to form the charm of the lines
on Sirmio, of which it is as impossible to analyse the secret as it is
to reproduce in another tongue the language in which it is expressed.
Catullus is one of the great poets of the world, not so much through
gifts of imagination--though with these he was well endowed--as
through his singleness of nature, his vivid impressibility, and his
keen perception. He received the gifts of the passing hour so happily,
that, to produce pure and lasting poetry, it was enough for him to
utter in natural words something of the fulness of his heart. His
interests, though limited in range, were all genuine and human. His
poems inspired by personal feeling seem to come from him without any
effort. He says, on every occasion, exactly what he wanted to say,
in clear, forcible, direct language. There are, indeed, even in his
simplest poems, a few strokes of imaginative expression, as, for
instance,--
Aut quam sidera multa, cum tacet nox,
Furtivos hominum vident amores[60],--
and this, written with the feeling and with the application which
Burns makes of the same image,--
Velut prati
Ultimi flos, praetereunte postquam
Tactus aratro est[61];--
and these two touches of tenderness and beauty, which appear in a poem
otherwise characterised by a tone of careless drollery,--
Nec sapit pueri instar
Bimuli, tremula patris dormientis in ulna,--
and--
Et puella tenellulo delicatior haedo,
Adservanda nigerrimis diligentius uvis[62].
But the great charm of the style in these shorter poems is its simple
directness, and its popular idiomatic ring. It largely employs,
especially in the poems which express his coarser feelings, common,
often archaic and provincial words, forms, and idioms. There is
nothing, apparently, studied about it, no ornament or involution, no
otiose epithets, no subtle allusiveness. Yet in the poems expressive
of his finer feelings it shows the happiest selection, not only of
the most appropriate, but of the most exquisite words. To no style, in
prose or verse, in any language, could the words 'simplex munditiis'
be with more propriety applied. It has all the ease of refined and
vigorous conversation, combined with the grace of consummate art.
Though this perfection of expression could not have been attained
without study and labour, yet it bears no trace of them.
In these smaller poems he shows himself as great a master of metre as
of language. The more sustained power which he has over the flow
of his verse, is best exemplified by the skylark ring of his great
Nuptial Ode, by the hurrying agitation of the Attis, and the stately
calm of the Peleus and Thetis, giving place to a more impassioned
movement in the 'Ariadne' episode. But in his shorter poems, also, he
shows the true gift of the [Greek: aoidos]--the power of using musical
language as a symbol of the changing impulses of feeling. Thus the
delicate playfulness and tenderness of his phalaecians,--the lingering
long-drawn-out sweetness, and the calm subdued sadness of the scazon,
as exemplified in the 'Sirmio,' and the
Miser Catulle desinas ineptire,--
the 'bright speed' of the pure iambic, so happily answering to the
subject of the 'phaselus,' and its bold impetus as it is employed in
the attack on Julius Caesar--the irregular but sonorous grandeur of
his Sapphic[63],--the majesty which in the Hymn to Diana blends with
the buoyant movement of the glyconic,--all attest that the words and
melody of the poems were born together with the feeling and meaning
animating them. Although his elegiac poems are not written with the
smoothness and fluency which was attained by the Augustan poets,
yet those among them which record his graver and sadder moods have
a plaintive force and natural pathos, which their roughness seems to
enhance. If his epigrammatic pieces, written in that metre, want the
polish and point to which his brilliant disciple attained under the
Empire, we may believe that Catullus experienced the difficulty which
Lucilius found, and which Horace at last successfully overcame, of
adapting a metre originally framed for the expression of serious
feeling to the commoner interests and experiences of life.
The language of Catullus in these shorter poems is his own, or, where
not his own, is drawn from such wells of Latin undefiled as Plautus
and Terence. His metres are happy applications of those invented or
largely used by the earlier lyric poets of Greece,--Sappho, Anacreon,
Archilochus,--and the later Phalaecus. For the form of some of his
longer poems he has taken, and not with the happiest result, the
Alexandrine poets for his models. But in these shorter poems, so
far as he has had any models, he has tried to emulate the perfection
attained in the older and purer era of Greek inspiration. But it is
not through imitation that he has attained a perfection of form like
to theirs. It is owing to the singleness and strength of his feeling
and impression, that these poems are so exquisite in their unity
and simplicity. Catullus does not care to present the gem of his own
thought in an alien setting, as Horace, in his earlier Odes at least,
has often done. It is one of the surest notes of his lyrical genius
that, while more modest in his general self-estimate than any of the
great Roman poets, he trusts more implicitly than any of them to his
own judgment and inspiration to find the most fitting and telling
medium for the communication of his thought. Thus he presents only
what is essential, unencumbered with any associations from older
poetry. The form is indeed so perfect that we scarcely think of it. We
feel only that nothing mars or interrupts the revelation of the poet's
heart and soul. We apprehend, as perhaps we never apprehended before,
some one single feeling of great potency and great human influence in
a poem of some ten or twenty lines, every word of which adds something
to the whole impression. Thus for instance, in the poems--
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,--
Acmen Septimius suos amores,--
Verani, omnibus e meis amicis,--
Iam ver egelidos refert tepores,--
Paene insularum Sirmio insularumque,--
Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire,--
we apprehend through a perfectly pure medium, and by a single
intuition, the highest pitch of the passionate love of man and woman,
the perfect beauty and joy of self-forgetful friendship, the eager
enthusiasm for travel and adventure, the deep delight of returning to
a beautiful and well-loved home, the 'sorrow's crown of sorrows' in
'remembering happier things.' We may see, too, in a totally different
sphere of experience, how Catullus instinctively seizes the moment
of supreme intensity of emotion, and utters what is vitally
characteristic of it. He is not, in any sense, one of the Anacreontic
singers of the pleasures of wine, of whom Horace is the typical
example in ancient times. Neither was he one, who, like Burns,
habitually forgot, in the excitement of good fellowship, the perils
of Bacchanalian merriment. Yet even the drinking songs of the Scottish
poet scarcely realise with more vivacity the moment of mad elevation
when a revel is at its height, than Catullus has done in the song of
seven short lines--
Minister vetuli puer Falerni
Inger mi calices amariores, etc.
The 'Hymn to Diana' occupies an intermediate place between the poems
founded on personal feelings and the longer and more purely artistic
pieces. Like the first it seems unconsciously, or at least without
leaving any trace of conscious purpose, to have conformed to the
conditions of the purest art. It is, like them, a perfect whole, one
of those, to quote Mr. Munro, '"cunningest patterns" of excellence,
such as Latium never saw before or after, Alcaeus, Sappho, and the
rest then and only then having met their match[64]'. It resembles some
of the longer poems in being a creation of sympathetic imagination,
not an immediate expression of personal feeling. It must have been
written for some public occasion; and the selection of Catullus to
compose it would imply that he was recognised as the greatest lyrical
poet in his lifetime, and that it was written after his reputation was
established. It is a poem not only of pure artistic excellence, but of
imaginative conception, like that exemplified in the 'Attis' and the
'Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis.' The 'Diana' of Catullus is not a
vague abstraction or conventional figure, as the Gods and Goddesses in
the Odes of Horace are apt to be. The mythology of Greece received
a new life from his imagination. In this poem he shows too, what he
hardly indicates elsewhere[65], that he could identify himself in
sympathy with the national feeling and religion of Rome. The Goddess
addressed is a living Power, blending in her countenance the human and
picturesque aspects of the Greek Artemis with the more spiritual
and beneficent attributes of the Roman Diana. Yet no confusion or
incongruity arises from the union into one concrete representation of
these originally diverse elements. She lives to the imagination as a
Power who, in the fresh morning of the world, had roamed in freedom
over the mountains, the woods, the secret dells, and the river-banks
of earth[66],--and now from a far away sphere watched over women in
travail, increased the store of the husbandman, and was the especial
guardian of the descendants of Romulus.
This poem affords a natural transition to the longer and more purely
artistic pieces in the centre of the volume. Yet with some even of
these a personal element is interfused. The hymn in honour of the
nuptials of Manlius, is, like the short poem on the loves of Acme and
Septimius, inspired by the poet's sympathy with the happiness of a
friend. The 68th poem attempts to weave into one texture his own love
of Lesbia, and the romance of Laodamia and Protesilaus. But in general
these poems bring before us a new side of the art of Catullus. In
one way indeed they add to our knowledge of his personal tastes. The
larger place given in them to ornament and illustration lets us know
what objects in Nature afforded him most delight. His life was
too full of human interest to allow him to devote his art to the
celebration of Nature: yet he could not have been the poet he was if
he had not been susceptible to her influence. And this susceptibility,
indicated in occasional touches in the shorter poems, finds greater
scope in the poems of impersonal art which still remain to be
considered.
Among the more purely artistic pieces none is more beautiful than the
Nuptial Ode in celebration of the marriage of his friend Manlius,
a member of the great house of the Torquati, and one of the most
accomplished men of his time, with Vinia Aurunculeia. In this poem
Catullus pours forth the fulness of his heart
'In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.'
It is marked by the excellence of his shorter pieces and by poetical
beauty of another order. Resembling his shorter poems in being called
forth by an event within his own experience, it breathes the same
spirit of affection and of sympathy with beauty and passion. It is
written with the same gaiety of heart, blending indeed with a graver
sense of happiness. The feeling of the hour does not merely
express itself in graceful language: it awakens the active power of
imagination, clothes itself in radiant imagery, and rises into the
completeness and sustained melody of the highest lyrical art. The
tone of the whole poem is one of joy, changing from the rapture of
expectation in the opening lines to the more tranquil happiness of the
close. The passion is ardent, but, on the whole, free from grossness
or effeminate sentiment. Even where, in accordance with the Roman
marriage customs, he abandons himself for a few stanzas to the spirit
of raillery and banter--
Ne diu taceat procax
Fescennina locutio[67]--
he remembers the respect due to the innocence of the bride. Thoughts
of her are associated with the purest objects in Nature,--with ivy
clinging round a tree, or branches of myrtle,--
Quos Hamadryades deae
Ludicrum sibi roscido
Nutriunt humore,--
or with a hyacinth growing in some rich man's garden. Like the eager
lover of beauty among our own poets, he sees in other flowers--
Alba parthenice velut
Luteumve papaver--
the symbol of maidens--
'Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale.'
The grace of trees and the bloom of flowers were prized by him among
the fairest things in Nature. The charm in woman which most moves
his imagination is virgin innocence unfolding into love, or passion
ennobled by truth and constancy of affection. So too, in the
Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, he compares Ariadne in her
maidenhood to the myrtle trees growing on the banks of Eurotas, and to
the bloom of vernal flowers:--
Quales Eurotae progignunt flumina myrtos
Aurave distinctos educit verna colores[68].
In this Ode he expresses not merely, as in the Acme and Septimius, his
sympathy with the joy of the hour. He recognises in marriage a greater
good than in the love for a mistress. He associates it with thoughts
of the power and security of the household, of the pure happiness of
parental love, of the continuance of a time-honoured name, and of the
birth of new defenders of the State.
The charm of the poem does not arise from its tone of feeling and its
clear ringing melody alone. The bright spirit of the day awakens the
inward eye which creates pictures and images of beauty in harmony
with itself. The poet sees Hymenaeus coming from the distant rocks
of Helicon, robed in saffron, and wreathed with fragrant amaracus,
in radiant power and glory, chanting the song with his ringing voice,
beating the ground with his foot, shaking the pine-torch in his hand.
As the doors of the house are opened, and the bride is expected by
the singers outside, by one vivid flash of imagination he reveals all
their eager excitement--
Viden ut faces
Splendidas quatiunt comas?
The two pictures, further on in the poem, of a peaceful old age
prolonged to the utmost limit of human life--
Usque dum tremulum movens
Cana tempus anilitas
Omnia omnibus annuit,--
and of infancy, awakening into consciousness and affection,--
Torquatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus,
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semihiante labello;
Sit suo similis patri
Manlio et facile insciis
Noscitetur ab omnibus,
Et pudicitiam suae
Matris indicet ore[69];
are drawn with the truest and most delicate hand.
The whole conception and execution of this poem, as also of the Attis
and of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, leave no doubt that
Catullus was richly endowed with the vision and the faculty of
genius, as well as with impassioned feeling and the gift of musical
expression.
The poem which immediately follows is also an Epithalamium, intended
to be sung by young men and maidens, in alternate parts. It is written
in hexameter verse, and in rhythm, thought, and feeling resembles some
of the golden fragments from the Epithalamia of Sappho. The whole poem
sounds like a song in a rich idyll. Its charm consists in its calm
and mellow tone, in the dramatic truth with which the feelings
and thoughts natural to the young men and maidens are alternately
expressed, and especially in the beauty of its two famous similes.
In the first of these a flower is again the symbol of the bloom and
innocence of maidenhood, growing up apart and safe from all rude
contact. The idea in the concluding lines of the simile--
Idem cum tenui carptus defloruit ungui,
Nulli illum pueri, nullae optavere puellae,--
may probably have been suggested by a passage in Sappho, of which
these two lines remain,
[Greek:
hoian tan hyakinthon en ôresi poimenes andres
possi katasteiboisi, chamai de te porphyron anthos.]
In the second simile, which is supposed to be spoken by the young men,
the vine growing upon a bare field, scarcely rising above the ground,
unheeded and untended, is compared to the maid who
'Grows, lives, and dies in single blessedness;'
while the same vine, when wedded to the elm, is regarded as the symbol
of the usefulness, dignity, and happiness which await the bride.
The absence of all personal allusion in this poem, and its resemblance
in tone and rhythm to some fragments of the Lesbian poetess, might
suggest the idea that it was translated, or at least imitated, from
the Greek. But, on the other hand, from its harmony with the kind
of subject and imagery in which Catullus most delights, and from the
close observation of Italian Nature, shown in such lines as this--
Iam iam contingit summum radice flagellum,--
it seems more probable that it was an adaptation of the style of his
great model to some occasion within his own experience, than that it
was a mere exercise in translation, like his 'Coma Berenices.'
The 'Attis' is the most original of all his poems. As a work of pure
imagination, it is the most remarkable poetical creation in the Latin
language. In this poem Catullus throws himself, with marvellous power,
into a character and situation utterly alien to common experience, and
pours an intense flood of human feeling and passion into a legend of
strange Oriental fanaticism. The effect of the piece is, in a great
measure, produced by the startling vividness of its language and
imagery, and by the impetuous rush of its metre. Though the poem may
have been partly founded on Greek materials, yet Catullus has treated
the subject in a thoroughly original manner. It is difficult to
believe that any translation could produce that impression of genuine
creative power, which is forced upon every reader of the Attis.
There is nothing at all like the spirit of this poem in extant Greek
literature. No other writer has presented so life-like an image of the
frantic exultation and fierce self-sacrificing spirit of an inhuman
fanaticism; and of the horror and sense of desolation which the
natural man, more especially a Greek or Roman, would feel in the
midst of the wild and strange scenes described in the poem, when first
awaking to the consciousness of his voluntary bondage, and of the
forfeiture of his country and parents, and the free social life
of former days. A few touches in the poem--as, for instance, the
expressions, 'niveis manibus,' 'roseis labellis,' and 'Ego gymnasii
fui flos,'--all introduced incidentally,--force upon the mind the
contrast between the tender youth and beauty of Attis and the fierce
power of the passion that possesses him. The false excitement and
noisy tumult of the evening deepen the sense of the terrible reality
and blank despair of the morning.
The effect of the whole drama of human passion and agony is
intensified by the vividness of all its pictorial environment;--by the
vision of the wild surging seas, through which the swift ship and its
mad crew were borne, and of the gloom and horror of the woods that hid
the sounding rites of the goddess, and the tall columns of her temple.
With what a powerful and rapid touch he paints the aspect of sky,
earth, and sea in the early morning--
Sed ubi oris aurei Sol radiantibus oculis
Lustravit aethera album, sola dura, mare ferum,
Pepulitque noctis umbras vegetis sonipedibus.
Everything is seen in those sharply-defined forms, which imprint
themselves on the brain in moments of intense excitement or agony.
These three poems are composed with the unity and simplicity of the
purest art. Like the shorter poems they have taken shape under the
influence of one powerful motive; and the feeling with which they were
conceived is sustained at its height through the whole composition. It
is more difficult to find any single motive which combines into unity
the original nucleus of the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis with
the long episode of the desertion of Ariadne, which interrupts the
continuity of the 64th poem. The form of art to which it belongs is
the 'Epyllion' or heroic idyll, of which several specimens are found
among the poems of Theocritus. This form was due to the invention of
the Alexandrians; and Catullus in the selection of his subject and in
his manner of treating it takes up the position of an imitator. But
there is no reason to suppose that he is reproducing, still less
translating, any particular work of these poets, or that his
contemporaries--Cinna, Calvus, and Cornificius,--merely reproduced
some Alexandrine original in their Zmyrna, Io, and Glaucus. A
comparison of the imagery of this poem with that of the earlier
Epithalamia, and a consideration of the passionate beauty with which
the subject of love and marriage is treated, favour the conclusion
that the style and substance of the poem are the workmanship of
Catullus. It may be doubted whether any Alexandrine poet, except
perhaps Apollonius, whom Catullus in this poem[70] often imitates, but
does not translate, had sufficient imagination to produce the original
which Catullus is supposed to have copied. But the plan of the
poem may have been suggested by some Alexandrine model. The more
complicated structure of the 68th poem is fashioned after a particular
style of Greek art: and on entering upon a new and larger adventure,
Catullus may have trusted to the guidance of those whom he regarded
as his masters. The Alexandrians studied pictorial representation of
outward scenes and of passionate situations, and works of tapestry
on which such representations were wrought were common among their
'deliciae vitae[71].' Thus, the mode in which the story of Ariadne is
told is one likely to have occurred to an Alexandrine poet. It would
be also in keeping with the over-subtlety of a class of poets who
owed more to learning than to inspiration, to combine apparently
incongruous parts into one whole by some obscure link of connexion.
Thus Catullus may have intended, in imitation of Callimachus or some
other Alexandrian, to paint two pictures of the love of an immortal
for a mortal,--the love of Thetis for Peleus, and of Bacchus for
Ariadne,--and to heighten the effect of each by the contrast presented
in the pendent picture. The original good fortune and the unbroken
happiness of Peleus are more vividly realised by the contrast
presented to the imagination in the betrayal and passionate agitation
of Ariadne. The thought of the crowds of mortals and immortals who
come together to celebrate the marriage of the Thessalian prince
brings into greater relief the utter loneliness of Ariadne, when first
discovered by 'Bacchus and his crew.' Or the original unifying motive
of both pictures might be sought in the concluding lines, written in
a graver tone than anything else in Catullus; and it might be supposed
that he intended by the two pictures of divine favour granted to
mortals (in one of which retribution is exacted for what he regards as
the greatest sin in actual life--a violation of good faith) to enforce
the lesson that it is owing to the sins of the latter time that
the Gods have withdrawn their gracious presence from the earth. The
thought contained in the lines
Sed postquam tellus scelerest imbuta nefando, etc.,
is pure and noble, and purely and nobly expressed. These lines reveal
a genuine and unexpected vein of reverence in the nature of Catullus.
The sins which he specifies as alienating the Gods from men are those
most rife in his own time, with which he has dealt in a more realistic
fashion in his satiric epigrams. All this may, perhaps, be said. But
on the other hand, Catullus is the least didactic of poets. He is also
the least abstract and reflective. We cannot suppose (in the case of
such a writer) all the concrete passionate life of the poem taking
shape in his imagination in order to embody any idea however noble.
The idea was the afterthought, not the creative germ. Nor can we think
that the conception of the whole poem existed in his mind before,
or independently of, the separate conception of its parts. He was
attracted to both subjects by the charm which the Greek mythology and
the bright spectacle of the heroic age had for his imagination, by
their harmony with the feelings and passions with which he had most
sympathy in real life, and by the scope which they afforded to his
peculiar power as a pictorial artist. The device of the tapestry, by
which the tale of Ariadne is told, was especially favourable to the
exercise of this gift. He looked back upon an ideal vision of the
golden morning of the world, when men were so stately and noble,
and women so fair and true, that even the blessed Gods and Goddesses
deigned to visit them, and to unite with them in marriage. The
original motive of the two poems appears to be purely imaginative.
If there was any intention to give artificial unity to the poem,
by pointing the contrast between a love calm and happy from the
beginning, and one at first passionate and afterwards betrayed, or
between the holiness and nobleness of an ideal past, and the sin
and baseness of the actual present, that intention was probably
not present to the mind of the poet when he first contemplated his
subject, but came to him in the course of its development.
It may be said, therefore, that if any principle of unity is aimed
at in the poem, it is one so artificial as rather to detract from the
artistic merit of the composition. There is a similar want of unity
in the 'Pastor Aristaeus' of Virgil, which was also composed in the
manner of the Alexandrine Epyllion. The Alexandrians seem to have
aimed rather at a combination of diverse effects than at a composition
'simplex et unum.' They cared much for the elaboration of details,
little for the consistency of the whole. And the same tendency appears
in their imitators. Neither can the poem be called a successful
specimen of narrative. There is scarcely any story to tell in
connexion with the marriage of Peleus. It is a succession of pictures,
not a tale of passion or adventure. The romance of Theseus and Ariadne
is told much less distinctly and simply than the myth of Orpheus
and Eurydice in Virgil. There is dramatic power in the soliloquy of
Ariadne, as in that of Attis, but the dramatic faculty in Catullus
is rather a phase of his special lyrical gift, which enables him to
identify himself with some single passionate situation, than the
power of giving life to various types of character. The imaginative
excellence of the poem is idyllic rather than epic or dramatic. There
is a wonderful harmony of tone in his whole conception of the heroic
age. He does not attempt to reproduce the picturesque life represented
by Homer, nor the majestic passions imagined by the Attic tragedians,
but he has his own vision of the stately and beautiful figures
belonging to an ideal foretime,--
O nimis optato saeclorum tempore nati
Heroes, saluete, deum genus.
There is a sense of the freshness and brightness of the early morning
in his conception of the time when the first ship, manned by the
flower of Greek warriors, 'broke the silence of the seas'
(Illa rudem cursu prima imbuit Amphitriten),
and when the Gods and Goddesses of Olympus, the mysterious Powers
over-ruling mortal destiny, and the other beings, half-human,
half-divine, whom Greek imagination so lavishly created, appeared in
their bodily presence to do honour to the union of a mortal with an
immortal. The poem abounds in pictures, or suggestions of pictures,
taken from the world of divine and human life, and of outward Nature.
Such are those of the Nereids gazing on the Argo--
Emersere feri candenti e gurgite vultus
Aequoreae monstrum Nereides admirantes,--
of Ariadne watching with pale and anxious face the perilous encounter
of Theseus with the Minotaur--
Quam tum saepe magis fulgore expalluit auri,--
and again, looking on the distant fleet--
Saxea ut effigies bacchantis,--
of the advent of Bacchus--
Cum thiaso Satyrorum et Nysigenis Silenis,--
a passage which has inspired one of the masterpieces of modern
art,--of Prometheus--
Extenuata gerens veteris vestigia poenae--
of the aged Parcae--
infirmo quatientes corpora motu--
spinning the thread of human destiny, as with clear-ringing voice they
poured forth their truthful prophecy. So too the eye of an artist
is shown in the description of the scenes in which the action takes
place, and in the illustrative imagery with which the subject is
adorned,--as in the pictures from mountain and sea scenery at lines
240 and 269; and in that image of a waste expanse of sea called up in
the lines--
Idomeneosne petam montes? a gurgite lato
Discernens ponti truculentum ubi dividit aequor?
A genuine love of Nature, which his more personal poems only faintly
suggest, appears in the lines describing the gifts which Chiron
brought with him from the plains and vast mountain chains and
river-banks of Thessaly--
Nam quoscumque ferunt campi, quos Thessala magnis
Montibus ora creat, quos propter fluminis undas
Aura parit flores tepidi fecunda Favoni,
Hos indistinctis plexos tulit ipse corollis,
Quo permulsa domus iucundo risit odore[72];
and in the enumeration of the various trees which Peneus, quitting
Tempe,--
Tempe quae silvae cingunt super inpendentes,--
planted before the vestibule of the palace.
The diction and rhythm of the poem are characterised by excellences
of a quite different sort from those of his other pieces. Both produce
the impression of very careful study and labour. In no previous
work of Latin genius was so much use made of an artificial poetical
diction. Though this diction has not the _naïveté_ or charm of his
simpler pieces, yet it is very effective in its own way. It reveals
new and unsuspected wealth in the ore of the Latin language. The old
rhetorical artifices of alliteration, assonance, etc. are used more
sparingly than in Lucretius, yet they do appear, as in the lines--
Peliaco quondam prognatae vertice pinus,--
Aut tereti tenues tinnitus aere ciebant,--
Putridaque infirmis variabant pectora palmis.--etc., etc.
As in the Attis we find such word-formations as _sonipedibus_,
_silvicultrix_, _nemorivagus_, so in this poem we have _fluentisono_,
_raucisonos_, _clarisona_, _flexamino_, etc. We recognise his old
partiality for diminutives, as in the
Frigidulos udo singultus ore cientem,
and
Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos.
But there are many peculiarities of style which are scarcely, if
at all, observable in his other poems. New artifices, such as those
familiar to the Greek idyll, of the recurring chime of the same or
similar words, are frequent, as in the lines--
Vos ego saepe meo vos carmine compellabo;--
Cui Iupiter ipse
Ipse suos divom genitor concessit amores;--
Sicine me patriis avectam, perfide, ab oris,
Perfide, deserto liquisti in litore Theseu?
Sicine discedens neglecto numine divom;--
Nulla fugae ratio, nulla spes; omnia muta
Omnia sunt deserta, ostentant omnia mortem, etc.
The phrases are to a much greater extent cast in a Greek mould[73].
The words follow one another in a less natural order. Ornamental
epithets, metaphorical phrases, and the substitution of abstract for
concrete words, occur much more frequently. Latin poetry creates for
itself an artificial diction by assimilating, to a much greater extent
than in any earlier work of genius, the long-accumulated wealth of
Greek poetry. This was a gain to its resources, opening up and giving
expression to a new range of emotions, but a gain against which must
be set off a considerable loss of freshness and _naïveté_.
The rhythm also is elaborately constructed after a Greek model,--the
model, not of Homer, but of the later poets who wrote in his metre.
It is much more carefully and correctly finished than the rhythm
of Lucretius. Each separate line has a smoother cadence. The whole
movement is more regular, more calm, and more stately. But with all
the occasional roughness of Lucretius there is much more life and
force in his general movement. It is much more capable of presenting
a continuous thought or action to the mind. The lines of Catullus seem
intended to be dwelt on separately, and each to bring out some point
of detail. There is generally a pause in the sense at the end of
each line, and thus the lines, when read continuously, produce an
impression of monotony[74], which is increased by the frequent use
of spondaic lines. The uniformity of his pauses, and the sameness of
structure in a large number of his hexameters, enable us to appreciate
the great improvement in rhythmical art which appeared some ten years
later in the Bucolics of Virgil. Yet if Catullus does not, in this his
most elaborate work, equal the natural force of language and rhythm
displayed in his simpler pieces, the poem, as a whole, has a noble and
stately movement, in unison with the noble and stately pictures of an
ideal fore-time which it brings before the imagination.
The four longer elegiac pieces which follow add little to
our impression of the art of Catullus. In the 'Epistle to
Manlius'--perhaps owing to the trouble by which his mind was darkened
at the time of its composition--he does not use the elegiac metre,
as a vehicle of his personal feelings, with much force or clearness.
There is much more than in his phalaecians and iambics the appearance
of effort, and there is much greater uncertainty as to his meaning.
The 67th poem keeps alive with some vivacity a scandalous story of
his native province which might well have been allowed to sink into
oblivion. In the 'Coma Berenices,' and the poem addressed to Allius,
he again writes under the influence of his Alexandrian masters. He
seems to have regarded the 'Carmina Battiadae' with the admiration
which youthful genius, not yet sure of its own powers, entertains for
culture and established reputation,--the kind of admiration which led
Burns to imagine that his own early inspiration might be of less value
to the world than 'Shenstone's art.' Like Burns, too, Catullus is
least happy when he gives up his own language, which he wields easily
and powerfully, and the forms of art which came naturally to him, in
deference to the standard of poetic taste recognised in his day.
His selection of the 'Coma Berenices' as a task in translation,
illustrates the attraction which the union of beauty and passion with
truth and constancy of affection had for his imagination. The poem
to Allius is the most artificially constructed of all his pieces. He
endeavours to unite in it three distinct threads of interest,--that
of his passion for Lesbia, that of the romance of Laodamia and
Protesilaus, and that of his brother's death in the Troad. Although
this triple combination is accomplished with much mechanical
ingenuity[75], yet the effect of the poem as a whole is disappointing,
and its motive,--gratitude for a service which no honourable man,
according to our modern ideas of honour, would have rendered,--does
not make amends for the want of simplicity in its structure. Yet as
written in the heyday of his passion for Lesbia, and largely inspired
by that passion, it has, along with an Alexandrian superfluity of
ornament and illustration, many beauties of expression and feeling.
The passionate devotion of Laodamia for Protesilaus is conceived with
sympathetic power,--
Quo tibi tum casu pulcherrima Laudamia,
Ereptum est vita dulcius atque anima
Coniugium[76].
There is an exquisite picture of his own stolen meetings with his
'candida diva'; and depth and sincerity of affection are purely and
simply expressed in the last two lines--
Et longe ante omnes mihi quae me carior ipse'st,
Lux mea qua viva vivere dulce mihi'st.
In this poem too, although the application of the image is an
incongruous adaptation of an old Homeric simile, we meet with a
descriptive passage which, more perhaps than any other in his poems,
shows that Catullus was a true lover and close observer of Nature,--
Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide
Qui cum de prona praeceps est valle volutus
Per medium sensim transit iter populi,
Dulce viatori lasso in sudore levamen,
Cum gravis exustos aestus hiulcat agros[77].
The perfection attained by Catullus in his best lyrical poetry, and
the power displayed in his longer pieces, are so high and genuine that
we are hardly surprised at the enthusiasm of those who have ranked
him, in respect both of art and genius, foremost among Roman poets. If
the pure essence of poetry could be separated from the whole spiritual
and intellectual being of the poet, much might be said in favour
of that estimate. Others, who think that the work accomplished by
Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace is, both in quantity and quality, of
more lasting value to the world, cannot forget that had they died at
the same early age as Catullus, their names would have been unknown,
or perhaps remembered as those of Cinna and Cornificius are now. From
the exquisite skill with which Catullus has treated light and playful
themes, he has been sometimes compared to modern poets who have no
other claim to recognition than a similar facility. But if he is to be
compared with any, it is not with the minor poets, ancient or modern,
but with the greater, that he is to be ranked. The two eminent English
scholars who have made a special study of this poet, and have done
more than almost any others in recent times to elucidate his meaning
and gain for him his just recognition, look upon him as the equal of
Sappho and Alcaeus. Among modern poets he has been compared to one,
most unlike him in all the outward conditions of his life, and in
many of the conditions of his art,--the poet Burns[78]. In general
intellectual power, in the breadth of his human sympathies, the modern
poet is much the greater. He is, in all ways, the larger man. But in
some endowments of heart and genius the ancient poet is far from being
the inferior. He was more fortunate in his nearness to the greatest
source of poetic culture, and in the use of a medium of expression,
not of a local and limited influence, but one which brings him into
immediate relation with educated men of all ages and countries. But
in the passionate ardour of their temperament, and the robustness,
too closely allied with coarseness, of their fibre; in their
susceptibility to beautiful and tender emotions, and the mobility of
nature with which they yielded to impulses the most opposite to these;
in their large capacity of love and scorn, of pleasure and pain; in
their genuine sincerity and firm hold on real life; in the keenness
of their satire, and their shrewd observation of the world around
them;--in their simple and direct force of feeling and expression;
in the freshness of their love for the fairer objects in Nature
with which they were most familiar,--they have much in common. The
resemblance of the concluding lines of the 'Final renunciation of
Lesbia' to the sentiment of the 'Daisy' has been already noticed. The
scornful advice, conveyed in the words 'pete nobiles amicos,' finds
many an echo in the tones of the modern poet. The art of both is so
inseparably associated with their lives, that our admiration of it can
hardly help being enhanced or qualified by personal sympathy with,
or dislike of their characters. In the case of Catullus it must be
allowed that if a careless pursuit of pleasure, an apparent absence
of all high aims in life, the too frequent indulgence in the coarsest
language and the vilest imputations, could alienate our affections
from a great poet, his art would be judged at a disadvantage. But his
own frank revelations, from which we learn his faults, must equally
be taken as the unintended evidence of his nobler and more generous
nature. If his passions led him too far astray, he himself, so far as
now appears, alone suffered from them. There is no trace in him of the
selfish calculation, or the baser falsehood, which renders 'the life
of pleasure,' as led by many men, detestable. There was in his case no
'hardening of all within' as its effect. The small volume bequeathed
by him to the world is in itself a sufficient result of his few years.
If he is in a great degree unreflective, if he does not consciously
realise what are the ends of life, yet he does not look on life in a
spirit of cynicism or frivolity. Whatever vein of reflection appears
in him is not devoid of reverence and seriousness. His too frequent
coarseness is to be explained by the manners of his age and race;
and the imputations which he makes on his enemies were, in all
probability, never meant to be taken seriously. Although unfortunate
in his love, he has shown a capacity of ardent, self-forgetful, and
constant devotion, that deserved a better object. He could care for
another more than for his own life and happiness. And he had, in a
degree rarely equalled, a virtue which devoted lovers often want, the
truest, kindliest, most considerate and appreciative affection for
many friends. His very dependence on their sympathy in all his joy
and sorrow is a claim on the sympathy of the world. If to love warmly,
constantly, and unselfishly be the best title to the love of others,
few poets, in any age or country, deserve a kindlier place in the
hearts of men than 'the young Catullus.'
[Footnote 1: Cf. 'L. Iulium Calidum, quem post Lucretii
Catullique mortem multo elegantissimum poetam nostram tulisse
aetatem vere videor posse contendere.'--Corn. Nep. Vit. Att.
12.]
[Footnote 2: 'Multa satis lusi.'--lxviii^a. 17. The
context shows that the 'lusi,'--like Horace's 'lusit
Anacreon,'--refers to the composition of amatory poetry
founded on his own experience. It was for this kind of poetry
that Manlius had applied to him, and he pleads his grief as an
excuse for his inability to write any at that time, although
he had written much in his earliest youth.]
[Footnote 3: E.g. xvi. 12; liv. 6.]
[Footnote 4: Martial iv. 14,--
Sic forsan tener ausus est Catullus
Magno mittere passerem Maroni.
Ibid. xi. 6. 16,--
Donabo tibi passerem Catulli.]
[Footnote 5: B. Schmidt conjectures that the collection as
we now have it was made after books were generally written in
parchment. His whole collected poems would thus be more easily
enclosed in a single volume, than when written on the old
papyrus rolls.]
[Footnote 6: Three poems formerly attributed to
Catullus,--those between xvii and xxi,--are now omitted from
all editions. On the other hand, one poem, lxviii, must, in
all probability, be divided into two, and possibly some lines
now attached to others are parts of separate poems.]
[Footnote 7: Cf. B. Schmidt, quoting Bruner, Prolegomena, p.
xcviii.]
[Footnote 8: x. 6.]
[Footnote 9: xvii. 7; liii. 1; lvi. 1.]
[Footnote 10: ix.]
[Footnote 11: xxv, xl, xlii, etc.]
[Footnote 12: Cf. viii, xxxviii, lxv, etc.]
[Footnote 13: liii.]
[Footnote 14: Cf. 'quae etiam aleret adulescentis et
parsimoniam patrum suis sumptibus sustentaret.' Cic. Pro M.
Caelio, 16, 38. Gellius, another of her lovers, was probably
about the same age, or a year or two younger than Caelius. Cf.
Schwabe, p. 112, etc.]
[Footnote 15: B. Schmidt supposes that he did not die till 52
B.C., and that he must have been born in 82 B.C. The reasons
he assigns for this belief are not convincing. He thinks that
it was unlikely that Catullus should have been reconciled to
Julius Caesar in the winter of 55-54 B.C., so soon after the
offence was committed, which must have been after the first
invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in the summer and autumn
of 55. He shows that the reconciliation could not have
taken place in the winter of 54-3, as Caesar was absent in
Transalpine Gaul. He supposes therefore that it must have
taken place in the winter of 53-2. He thinks it probable that
Catullus' reconciliation must have taken place about the same
time or subsequently to that of Calvus, who was likely to have
influenced Catullus' political action, and that Calvus could
not have desired to be reconciled till after the autumn of
54, when he prosecuted Vatinius. It seems quite arbitrary to
suppose that a considerable time must have elapsed between the
offence and the apology of Catullus. If Catullus was in Verona
in the winter of 55-4, and in his father's house, and Julius
Caesar was then, as was his habit, living on intimate terms
with and enjoying the hospitality of the father of Catullus,
that of itself affords an explanation of their meeting and
reconciliation. If Catullus required to be induced by any
one to make an apology, it is more likely that his father's
influence moved him to do so than the example and influence of
Calvus.]
[Footnote 16: Cf. x, xiii, xxvi, xli, ciii.]
[Footnote 17: lviii. 3; lxxix. 2.]
[Footnote 18: Cf. cx, xli.]
[Footnote 19: Reading suggested by Munro.]
[Footnote 20: E.g. lxiv. 240-41:--
Ceu pulsae ventorum flamine nubes,
Aerium nivei montis liquere cacumen.
And this most characteristic feature of Alpine
scenery,--lxviii^b. 17, etc.:--
Qualis in aerii perlucens vertice montis
Rivos muscoso prosilit e lapide, etc.]
[Footnote 21: For his influence on the art of the [Greek:
neôteroi] cf. Schmidt, Prolegomena, p. lxii.]
[Footnote 22: Schmidt believes that Cinna was a native of
Brescia; Prol. lxiii; but he does not there give his reason
for his belief.]
[Footnote 23: Cf. xcv. 7:
At Volusi Annales Paduam morientur ad ipsam.]
[Footnote 24: The epigram on Cominius (cviii) was probably
written at Rome, as he was not of sufficient importance
to have made an impression on the people of Verona. The
accusation of C. Cornelius, which excited odium against him,
was made in 65 B.C. But it does not follow that the poem
was written by Catullus at that time. He may have become
acquainted with him later, and avenged some private pique by
reference to the unpopularity formerly excited by him. There
is no direct reference to the trial of Cornelius in the poem,
which appears among others referring to a much later date.]
[Footnote 25: lxviii. 15-18.]
[Footnote 26: In the 'docto avo' we have an allusion to the
author of the 'Istrian War.']
[Footnote 27: lxviii^b.]
[Footnote 28: The _Caelius_ addressed in some of the poems is
not M. Caelius Rufus, but a Veronese friend and confidant of
Catullus--
'Flos Veronensum ... iuvenum.'
Caesar, Bell. Civ. i. 2, mentions M. Caelius Rufus simply as
M. Rufus, Cicero in his epistles addresses him as 'mi Rufe.']
[Footnote 29: Among other indications the vow of
Lesbia (xxxvi) throws light on her literary taste and
accomplishment.]
[Footnote 30: On the whole question compare Mr. Munro's
Criticisms and Elucidations, etc., pp. 194-202.
It has been argued on the other side that public opinion
would not have tolerated the publicity given to an adulterous
intrigue, especially one with a Roman matron so high in rank
as the wife of Metellus Celer. But the state of public opinion
in the last years of the Republic is not to be gauged either
by that of an earlier time, or by that existing during the
stricter censorship of the Augustan _régime_. Catullus himself
(cxiii) testifies to what is known from other sources, the
extreme laxity with which the marriage tie was regarded in the
interval between 'the first and second consulships of Pompey.'
Perhaps, however, if Metellus Celer had survived Catullus,
the Lesbia-poems might never have been publicly given to the
world. After his death Clodia by her manner of life forfeited
all claim to the immunities of a Roman matron.]
[Footnote 31: lxviii^b. 105-6.]
[Footnote 32: The poem lxviii--
Quod mihi fortuna casuque oppressus acerbo--
was addressed to Manlius just after Catullus had heard of his
brother's death, i.e. probably late in the year 60, or early
in the year 59 B.C. Manlius was himself suffering then from
a great and sudden sorrow. The expressions in lines 1, 5, 6,
'casu acerbo,' 'sancta Venus,' 'desertum in lecto caelibe,'
make it at least highly probable that this sorrow was the
premature death of his young bride. If this generally accepted
opinion is true, the Epithalamium must have been written some
time before 59 B.C.]
[Footnote 33: That of Westphal.]
[Footnote 34: Schmidt supposes that poems ix, xii, xiii belong
to a later date, 56 B.C., when he thinks that Veranius and
Fabullus were with some otherwise unknown Piso in the Province
of Hispania Citerior, and that the poems xxviii,
Pisonis comites, cohors inanis,
and xlvii,
Porci et Socration, duae sinistrae
Pisones, etc.,
belong to the same period.
But not to speak of the fact that the character imputed
to Piso, in the phrase 'duae sinistrae,' and in the words
'vappa,' 'verpa,' 'verpus,' applied to him, are in exact
accordance with that ascribed to him in the virulent invective
of Cicero (In L. Calpurnium Pisonem Oratio), it is difficult
to see how the words in xxviii,
Satisne cum isto
Vappa frigoraque et famem tulistis?
could apply to either the climate or the condition of Hispania
Citerior at that time. But they closely coincide with the
words of Cicero applied to the government by Piso of his
province of Macedonia (17-40), 'An exercitus nostri interitus
ferro, _fame_, _frigore_, pestilentia?' On the other hand, the
words in ix,
Visam te incolumem audiamque Hiberum
Narrantem loca, facta, nationes,
would be applicable to the adventures and dangers of Julius
Caesar in further Spain in 61 B.C. There is no difficulty
in supposing that the two young friends went together on two
different occasions on the staff of two different provincial
governors. The tone of the two different sets of poems is
so different, the one set so bright and happy, the other so
savage and bitter, that it is almost inconceivable that they
belong to the same time and the same circumstances.]
[Footnote 35: Schmidt supposes that the person to whom this
letter is written is the same as the Allius of lxviii^b; that
the lines beginning
Non possum reticere
are a continuation of what used to be thought a separate poem,
Quod mihi fortuna, etc.,
that Manlius was the praenomen of Allius, and that he is
addressed in the first part of the poem by the praenomen,
in the latter by the gentile name. But the letter to Manlius
clearly indicates the recent loss of his bride, or some
distress connected with his marriage (lines 1, 5, 6), whereas
at the end of the letter to Allius he says, 'Sitis felices et
tu simul et tua vita;' lxviii. 155.]
[Footnote 36: There is some uncertainty both as to the reading
and interpretation of the lines (lxviii. 15-19). The most
generally accepted view is that Manlius had written to let
Catullus know that several fashionable rivals were supplanting
him in his absence. Mr. Munro supposes that the letter was
written from Baiae, and that the _hic_ is so to be explained.
Another view of the passage is that Manlius had, without any
reference to Clodia, merely rallied Catullus on leading a dull
and lonely life at Verona, a place quite unsuitable for the
pleasures of a man of fashion.]
[Footnote 37: Cf. poems x. 30, etc., and xcv.]
[Footnote 38: Cf. Munro's Criticisms and Elucidations of
Catullus, p. 214.]
[Footnote 39: An entirely different interpretation has
recently been given to this poem (Schmidt, Prolegomena, xxxix,
etc.). It is supposed not to be complimentary, but bitterly
sarcastic. It is said that Catullus could not, except in
irony, have described himself as
'pessimus omnium poeta;'
and if those words applied to himself as a poet are irony,
so must the words applied in strong contrast to Cicero as an
advocate (tanto--quanto) be equally ironical. In that case the
_omnium_ in the last line must not be taken in connexion with
optimus, but with patronus. Cicero's readiness to be 'omnium
patronus' is sarcastically commented on with immediate
reference to his defence of Vatinius, which startled some of
his best friends among the constitutional party. The formal
address 'Marce Tulli' is also ironical. (If that is so,
probably also the 'Romuli nepotum' is used in mock heroic
irony, like the 'Remi nepotum' in lviii.) What then is
the favour for which Catullus writes these ironically
complimentary thanks? Schmidt supposes that Cicero had
expressed either publicly or privately a very poor opinion
of Catullus' poems, and that Catullus revenges himself by
professing to agree with him, to be most grateful for the
criticism (gratias tibi maximas Catullus agit), and to repay
it by heaping ironical coals on his head.
It is just possible that the poem might have been so
understood in the set to which Catullus belonged, if we were
certain that it was written at the time when Cicero defended
Vatinius. But the general public could hardly have understood
it so, and it is not surprising that it never occurred to any
one to understand it in that sense till within the last year
or two. It is not in keeping with Catullus' straightforward,
outspoken vituperation, nor with the manners of the time (as
shown in Cicero's speeches), to write an epigram which would
leave the object of it in doubt whether it was written in
earnest or derision. No doubt Catullus did not seriously think
himself 'the worst of living poets,' worse for instance than
Volusius. But there is an irony of modest self-depreciation,
as that of Virgil when he applies to himself the words
'argutos inter strepere anser olores,' as well as of insulting
banter. The change in the construction of the 'omnium' in
the two consecutive lines would be at least startling. That
Catullus, a young man, not intimate with Cicero, should
address him as Marce Tulli is not perhaps more remarkable than
that a young poet of the present day should in writing to a
man of great eminence, twenty years his senior, address him as
Mr. ----. Cicero writes banteringly and good-naturedly to one
of his correspondents, Volumnius, probably a much younger
man (Fam. vii. 32): 'Quod sine praenomine familiariter, ut
debebas, ad me epistolam misisti, primum addubitavi, num a
Volumnio senatore esset, quorum mihi est magnus usus.'
There is no reason for supposing that Cicero ever passed any
criticism favourable or unfavourable on Catullus, though in
his letters he twice uses his phrases; and if he did, it was
not in Catullus' way to retaliate without making it perfectly
clear what he was retaliating for. Cicero was constantly in
the way of doing kindnesses to all sorts of people, in the
law-courts or by recommending them to some of his influential
friends. He especially says that he had always done what he
could to foster the genius of poets. He was attracted to young
men like Catullus (he was not of the 'grex Catilinae'); and of
his friend Calvus he writes with genuine appreciation. It is
more natural as well as more pleasant to think of these two
men of genius, in so far as they came in contact, having
agreeable relations with one another, than to believe that
the poet wrote these apparently straightforward, kindly
appreciative lines in revenge for some real or fancied
disparagement of his verses.]
[Footnote 40: Cf. xxiv. 7:--
Qui? non est homo bellus? inquies. Est.]
[Footnote 41: Two of the four poems connected with Calvus
allude to his antagonism to Vatinius, which went on actively
between the years 56 and 54 B.C. In none of them is there any
allusion to Lesbia, who was never out of Catullus, thoughts or
his verse till after his Bithynian journey.]
[Footnote 42: Horace contrasts the 'dirge of Simonides'
('Ceae retractes munera neniae') with the lighter poetry
of love.]
[Footnote 43: Cf. Munro's Lucretius, p. 468, third edition.]
[Footnote 44: lxxii. 5-8:--
Nunc te cognovi: quare etsi impensius uror,
Multo mi tamen es vilior et levior.
Qui potis est? inquis. Quia amantem iniuria talis
Cogit amare magis, set bene velle minus.]
[Footnote 45: lxxxv. 1.]
[Footnote 46: xi. 23.]
[Footnote 47: lxxvi.]
[Footnote 48:
'Calvus, if those now silent in the tomb
Can feel the touch of pleasure in our tears
For those we loved, who perished in their bloom,
And the departed friends of former years:
Oh then, full surely thy Quintilia's woe,
For the untimely fate that bade ye part,
Will fade before the bliss she feels to know
How very dear she is unto thy heart.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 49: Compare also his humorous notice of the
compliment which he heard in the crowd paid to the speech of
Calvus against Vatinius--
Dii magni, salaputium disertum.]
[Footnote 50: xii.]
[Footnote 51: xxxviii.]
[Footnote 52: Mr. Munro, in his Elucidations (pp. 209,
etc.), shows that the whole point of the poem consists in the
contrast drawn between the 'Zmyrna' of Cinna and the 'Annals
of Volusius.' Baehrens admits the reading 'Hortensius' into
the text, but adds in a note on the word, _vox corrupta est_.]
[Footnote 53: lxxvi. 1-4.]
[Footnote 54: Cf. lxiii. 12:--
Neu me odisse putes hospitis officium.]
[Footnote 55: Att. vii. 7. 6: 'Placet igitur etiam me expulsum
et agrum Campanum perisse et adoptatum patricium a plebeio,
Gaditanum a Mytilenaeo, et Labieni divitiae et Mamurrae
placent et Balbi horti et Tusculanum.']
[Footnote 56: lxxvi. 19.]
[Footnote 57: xvi. 5-6.]
[Footnote 58: lxxxiv. Cicero also was afflicted by a bore of
the same name, who stayed away from Rome in order 'that he
might pass whole days discussing philosophy with Cicero at
Formiae.' The Arrius of this poem is supposed to be Q. Arrius,
Praetor in 73 B.C., whom Cicero speaks of as having been in
the habit of acting as a kind of Junior Counsel along with
Crassus ('qui fuit M. Crassi quasi secundarum'), and having,
though a man of the lowest origin and without either culture
or natural ability, got into a considerable practice. The
words 'Hoc misso in Syriam' are supposed to imply that he was
sent as a legatus to join Crassus in his Syrian province. The
poem would thus be written about the end of 55 B.C. Schmidt.]
[Footnote 59: Hor. A. P. 437-38:--
Quintilio si quid recitares, Corrige, sodes,
Hoc aiebat et hoc.
Schmidt supposes him to be the Alphenus Varus, the Jurist, to
whom the 30th poem, written in a tone of tender reproach, is
addressed. Catullus does not seem to address the same person
by different names, unless Manius and Allius are the same.
Thus M. Caelius Rufus is addressed as Rufus, the Caelius
addressed in other poems being a native of Verona. As both
Alphenus Varus and Quintilius Varus were natives of Cremona,
Catullus was likely to have known both.]
[Footnote 60: vii. 7-8.]
[Footnote 61: xi. 22-24.]
[Footnote 62: xvii. 12-15 and 15-16.]
[Footnote 63: E.g.
Litus ut longe resonante Eoa
Tunditur unda.]
[Footnote 64: 'Criticisms and Elucidations,' etc. p. 73.]
[Footnote 65: The pride of Roman nationality is, perhaps,
unconsciously betrayed in such phrases as 'Romuli nepotum,' in
the lines addressed to Cicero.]
[Footnote 66: xxxiv. 7-12:--
Quam mater prope Deliam
Deposivit olivam,
Montium domina ut fores
Silvarumque virentium
Saltuumque reconditorum
Amniumque sonantum.]
[Footnote 67: lxi. 122-46.]
[Footnote 68: lxiv. 89-90.]
[Footnote 69:
'Soon my eyes shall see, mayhap,
Young Torquatus on the lap
Of his mother, as he stands
Stretching out his tiny hands,
And his little lips the while
Half open on his father's smile.
'And oh! may he in all be like
Manlius his sire, and strike
Strangers when the boy they meet
As his father's counterfeit,
And his face the index be
Of his mother's chastity.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 70: Cf. Mr. Ellis's notes on the poem.]
[Footnote 71: Cf. Plaut. Pseud. 147:--
Neque Alexandrina beluata conchyliata tapetia.
Mr. Ellis, in his Commentary on Catullus, p. 226, mentions
that both the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, and the legend
of Ariadne, were common subjects of ancient art. He points out
also that the idea of the quilt on which the Ariadne story was
represented was borrowed from Apollonius, i. 730-66.]
[Footnote 72:
'Whate'er of loveliest decks the plain, whate'er
The giant mountains of Thessalia bear,
Whate'er beneath the west's warm breezes blow,
Where crystal streams by flowery margents flow,
These in festoons or coronals inwrought
Of undistinguishable blooms he brought,
Whose blending odours crept from room to room,
Till all the house was gladdened with perfume.'--Martin.]
[Footnote 73: E.g. 'Argivae robora pubis'--'decus
innuptarum'--'funera nec funera,' etc., etc. Mr. Ellis's
commentary largely illustrates the influence exercised by the
phraseology of the Greek poets,--especially Homer, Euripides,
Apollonius--on the poetical diction of Catullus in this poem.]
[Footnote 74: This monotony, as is pointed out by Mr. Ellis,
is, in a great degree, the result of the coincidence of the
accent and rhythmical ictus in the last three feet of the
line.]
[Footnote 75: Westphal, pp. 73-83, has given an elaborate
explanation of the principle on which the various parts of the
poem are arranged and connected with one another.]
[Footnote 76: The lines immediately following these are in the
worst style of learned Alexandrinism.]
[Footnote 77:
'As some clear stream, from mossy stone that leaps,
Far up among the hills, and, wimpling down
By wood and vale, its onward current keeps
To lonely hamlet and to stirring town,
Cheering the wayworn traveller as it flows
When all the fields with drought are parched and bare.'
--Martin.]
[Footnote 78: This parallel was first pointed out by the writer of
an excellent article on Catullus in the North British Review,
referred to by Mr. Munro in his 'Criticisms and Elucidations,'
p. 234.]
THE END.
Transcriber's Note:
Sundry damaged or missing punctuation has been repaired.
Page 28: 'Neibuhr' corrected to 'Niebuhr' (2nd entry)
"Niebuhr went so far as to assert that the Romans ..."
Page 53: Æneas and Aeneas both occurred on this page. Both spellings
are correct, but as there is only the single instance of Æneas, with
the æ ligature, and around 30 instances of Aeneas, wihout the ligature,
Æneas has been amended to Aeneas. The Æ/æ ligature has not otherwise
been used in this book.
page 148: 'advorsam' is correct; alternative spelling for 'adversam'.
page 157: 'adoped' corrected to 'adopted'
"... into the forms which he adopted from Greece."
page 447: 'dulness' is correct; Oxford Dictionary gives it as an
alternative spelling.
page 468: 'Luaguidnlosque' corrrected to 'Languidulosque'
"Languidulosque paret tecum coniungere somnos."
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