So the poem begins. The poet laments his enforced delay at Corcyra, where he is detained by illness. There follows a list of the bad omens that warned Tibullus not to set out from Rome, then a prayer to Isis for aid. A brief description of the Golden Age is introduced, and the poet prays that Jove may grant him life:
The remainder of the poem consists of a description of the lower world and an appeal to Delia. No translation can render exactly the qualities of expression which make Tibullus one of the greatest among the lesser Roman poets. It is only after repeated reading of his poems that one learns to appreciate the lightness of touch and the technical perfection of this sweet singer of soft themes.
Sextus Propertius was born in Umbria, probably at Asisium (Assisi), about 50 B. C., for he was younger than Tibullus and older than Ovid, whose birth was in 43 B. C. Propertius. His family was of some importance and must have been wealthy, for although Propertius, whose father was already dead, lost part of his property in the confiscations of 41 B. C., enough remained to support him and give him a good education. His mother took him to Rome, where he studied law for a short time, but abandoned it for the pursuit of poetry. After the publication of the first book of his elegies, Propertius was introduced to Mæcenas, to whom he afterward addressed two poems (II, i; and III, ix). He appears, however, to have been less intimate with him than were Horace and Virgil. Propertius nowhere mentions Horace, and if Horace refers to him at all it is without mentioning his name. He was a warm admirer of Virgil and a friend of Ovid. Little is known of his life, and it is only because his poems contain no allusions to events later than 16 B. C. that his death is supposed to have taken place about 15 B. C. From two passages in the letters of the younger Pliny, in which a certain Passenus Paullus is said to be descended from Propertius, it appears that the poet married and left at least one child.
Propertius is a poet of love, who expresses as few poets have done the tender emotions of the heart. The poems of Propertius. His poems are passionate and sensual, without the pensive melancholy of Tibullus or the frivolity of Ovid. The object of his love is Cynthia, whose real name was Hostia. She was a courtesan, but educated and refined in taste, beautiful and attractive. She it was who inspired his first poems, and only in the last book does she cease to be the chief theme of his verses. The poems are handed down to us in four books, the second of which is, however, made up of two incomplete books. The appearance of the first book made Propertius famous and introduced him to the circle of Mæcenas. Naturally Mæcenas wished him to sing the praises of Augustus and the Roman Empire, and from this time Cynthia is no longer the exclusive subject of his poems. In the fourth book (the fifth in many editions) there are four poems on Roman antiquities, in imitation of the Αἴτια (Causes) of Callimachus. Love is, however, throughout the subject to which Propertius naturally turns. His poems are full of learned mythological allusions, and the situations described or depicted are doubtless for the most part imaginary, yet the passionate nature of the poet’s love is manifest through all his learning and his invention. Even though he did not pass through all the hopes and fears, the changes of love and hate, the joy and sorrow, the jealousy and the reconciliations which the poems depict with such wealth of illustration and such beauty of language, he knew as few have known them the varying passions of the lover’s heart. For the modern reader his passion is too sensuous and his erudition too obtrusive; but the genuine feeling expressed makes his poems beautiful in spite of occasional coarseness and constant display of mythological learning. Propertius is remarkable for the sonorous richness of his lines, and in the technical execution of his verse he is careful and accurate. His earlier poems admit words of three and four syllables at the end of the pentameter without scruple, but in the later poems the pentameter usually ends with a word of two syllables, showing that Propertius was disposed to follow Ovid’s rule in this particular. Like other Roman poets, Propertius is professedly an imitator of the Greeks. Those whom he claims to imitate especially are Callimachus and Philetas, both poets of the Alexandrian period.
One of the shortest of his poems, free alike from coarseness and display of learning, is the following, on Cynthia’s absence:
In an age of great poets many lesser poets are sure to be found. Ovid, in one of his letters,75 mentions twenty-three poets of the Augustan age, and his list is not exhaustive. Lesser Augustan poets. Little is known of these lesser writers, and few of their works are preserved, even in fragments. Domitius Marsus, who lived from about 54 to about 4 B. C., and belonged to the circle of Mæcenas, wrote a series of epigrams, entitled Cicuta (poisonous hemlock), which enjoyed considerable reputation, some elegies on Melænis, an epic poem on the Amazons, and a treatise De Urbanitate (on refinement of expression). Albinovanus Pedo was also an author of epigrams and an epic poet. One of his epics, the Theseis, narrated the deeds of Theseus, another gave an account of a voyage to the ocean, probably the voyage of Germanicus, in 16 B. C. A fragment of twenty-three lines contains a vivid description of the stranding of some vessels in the night, which shows that the author was a poet of some ability. Of a poem on hunting (Cynegetica) by Grattius, five hundred and forty-one hexameters are preserved, which show little poetic merit. Only a few brief fragments remain of a poem on the Egyptian war of
Augustus, by Rabirius. Cornelius Severus wrote a poem on Roman history (Res Romanæ), and perhaps other epics. The longest extant fragment consists of twenty-five lines on the death of Cicero, and shows rhetorical rather than poetic ability. Ovid’s friends, Ponticus and Macer, and several others, wrote mythological epics. Iambic verses were composed by Bassus, and other poets gained more or less reputation for various kinds of poetry.
Gaius Melissus, a freedman of Augustus, from Spoletum, was by profession a librarian. The Fabula Trabeata. He was the originator of the fabula trabeata, named from the trabea, the distinctive costume of the equestrian rank. This was a national comedy, differing from the fabula togata of Titinius and Atta (see page 29) in the rank of the persons represented, for the fabula togata had chosen its characters from the lower classes, while the fabula trabeata was a comedy of high life. Its popularity was brief, and it disappeared, leaving hardly a trace of its existence. Melissus also made a collection of humorous tales (Ineptiæ) in one hundred and fifty books, and appears to have been the author of some learned treatises.
A poem on astronomy and astrology (Astronomica), ascribed in some of the manuscripts to an otherwise unknown Marcus or Gaius Manilius, is a didactic poem of unusual merit. Manilius. As preserved it consists of five books, the last of which is incomplete. If, as is probable, a sixth book once existed, the whole work contained about five thousand lines. Even in its present condition it is the longest didactic Latin poem except the De Rerum Natura of Lucretius. The poem is, as a whole, rather uninteresting, but contains passages of great vigor, showing independence of thought and remarkable power of expression. The author has an easy mastery of hexameter verse, in which he is superior to Lucretius; but with all his skill in versification, his earnestness, his learning, and his originality, he can not entirely overcome the prosaic nature of his subject. The poem is uneven, at times prosaic, sometimes rhetorical, not often, if ever, rising to lofty heights of poetic fancy, but serious and thoughtful. A large part of it is occupied with astrology, and other portions describe the heavenly bodies. In the introductions to the several books, and in digressions, theories concerning the origin of the world, the nature of man, and the power of fate are introduced, showing that the author accepts in the main the Stoic doctrines as opposed to the Epicurean teachings of Lucretius. So he maintains that the world is not the product of blind forces but of a divine will:
Various mythological tales are inserted with a view to enlivening the poem, but the author lacks narrative skill. The most elaborate of these episodes, in which the story of Perseus and Andromeda is told,77 shows, however, good descriptive ability and lively rhetoric. Manilius is not a great poet, but he treats, not without success, a subject new to Roman poetry, and shows himself to be a man of original power of mind and of serious purpose. With all its defects, the Astronomica has also great merits.
Many Augustan poets are known by name whose works have perished. On the other hand, some poems by unknown authors are preserved. Priapea. A curious collection of eighty short poems in elegiac and lyric metres, all addressed to the god Priapus, or at least written with reference to him, belongs for the most part to this period. Statues of Priapus, the god of gardens and of fruitfulness of all sorts, were set up in public parks, in orchards, and other places, and most of the Priapea, as these short poems are called, are supposed to have been inscribed upon or affixed to such statues. Many of the poems are extremely indecent, but many are well written and witty.
Far more interesting than the Priapea are the poems falsely ascribed to Virgil, and contained in manuscripts of his works. Culex. Three of these are “epyllia,” or short epics, composed, like Virgil’s genuine works, in hexameter verse. The first, entitled Culex, “The Gnat,” tells in four hundred and fourteen lines how a herdsman, lying asleep in the noonday heat, was on the point of being killed by a poisonous serpent, when a gnat stung him, and, by arousing him to his danger, saved his life. As he awoke, the herdsman killed the gnat, whose soul afterward appears to him in a dream and reproaches him. Finally the herdsman erects a funeral mound in honor of the gnat. The poem is a mock epic, intended to be humorous, but is not very successful. In versification it shows great similarity to the genuine works of Virgil, but also in some respects to those of Ovid. A poem entitled Culex is ascribed to Virgil’s youthful days by Martial and Statius, but the metrical qualities of the existing poem show that it can not have been written until a later date. Either, therefore, Martial and Statius were mistaken, or this is not the poem to which they refer.
The second piece, entitled Ciris, is a little longer than the Culex. Ciris. This poem, evidently written by some member of the circle of Messalla, tells the story of Scylla, who caused the death of her father, Nisus, and betrayed her native town, on account of her love for Minos, the leader of an invading army. She was dragged through the water at the stern of a vessel, but the gods pitied her and changed her into a seabird called ciris. Her father was restored to life and made a sea eagle. Moretum. The third poem, the Moretum (the word denotes a sort of salad eaten by the peasants), contains only one hundred and twenty-four lines. It is a slight poem, idyllic in character, and admirably written. It describes how a poor peasant and his slave, a negress, make the moretum in the early morning. This poem is said to be an imitation of a Greek original by Parthenius. It is possible, though not probable, that it is by Virgil. Copa. The fourth poem is the Copa (barmaid), consisting of only thirty-eight lines of elegiac verse. It has to do with the barmaid of a wayside tavern, and is clever and interesting, but has none of the qualities of Virgil’s poems. It belongs, however, without doubt, to the Augustan period. The Diræ, which is also included in the manuscripts of Virgil, belongs, as has been said (page 63), to an earlier time, and the Ætna belongs to the subsequent period. Ætna. This consists of six hundred and forty-six hexameters, describing volcanic eruptions, and attempting to account for them. It has little poetic merit, but shows that even an indifferent poet could write good hexameters. The remaining short poems ascribed to Virgil are of little interest or importance, though one of them—a comic ode in honor of an old muleteer—is an excellent parody of the poem of Catullus addressed to his old yacht.
Nux. Consolatio ad Liviam.The elegy entitled Nux (nut tree), and the Consolatio ad Liviam (Consolation to Livia), both ascribed to Ovid, are imitations by writers of a slightly later time, and have little merit. The Nux is the complaint of a tree on account of the bad treatment it receives from passers-by. The Consolatio ad Liviam purports to be addressed to Livia, wife of Augustus, on the death of her son Drusus, in 9 B. C.
OVID
Ovid, 43 B. C.-18 A. D.—His life—Poems of love—Fasti—Metamorphoses—Poems written after his banishment—His qualities and influence.
Publius Ovidius Naso was born at Sulmo, in the country of the Pæligni, in 43 B. C., on the 20th of March. Life of Ovid. He belonged to a wealthy equestrian family and received, along with his elder brother, a good education at Rome, practising rhetoric under Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro. He also studied at Athens, and at some time traveled with the poet Macer in Asia and Sicily. After assuming the toga virilis he held two of the minor offices incidental to the beginning of the senatorial career, and was employed as arbitrator in private cases. But in spite of his father’s remonstrances, he withdrew from public life and devoted himself to poetry. This decision was, according to his own statement, due in part to his delicate physique, but the chief reason was probably his love of poetry and pleasure, and his aversion to serious affairs. His social position was excellent. He was intimate with Messalla and his circle, and had many friends among the literary men of the capital. Virgil, he says, he only saw, but he was intimate with Tibullus, Propertius, Ponticus, and Bassus. He was married three times. His first wife, whom he married in his early youth, was “neither worthy nor useful,”78 and he was soon separated from the second also, though he charges her with no fault. His third wife, of the Fabian family, remained faithful to him, and he to her. He had one daughter, who in turn had two children. His life of ease and social pleasure at Rome was brought to a sudden close in 8 A. D. by an imperial edict banishing him to Tomi, on the shore of the Pontus (Black Sea). “Two charges,” he writes, “wrought my ruin, a poem and an error, but I must be silent about the fault of one of these acts. I am not important enough to renew thy wounds, Cæsar, since it is more than enough that thou hast suffered once. The other part remains, in which, as author of a vile poem, I am charged with being a teacher of obscene adultery.”79 The poem referred to can be no other than the Ars Amatoria; but this was published ten years before the poet’s banishment. The real cause of his sentence must be sought in the charge about which he keeps silence through fear of wounding Augustus. Perhaps he was privy to an intrigue between Julia, the granddaughter of Augustus, and Decimus Silanus. Ovid remained in banishment at Tomi until his death in 18 A. D.
Ovid’s poems fall into three divisions: poems of love, in elegiac metre, the works of his earlier years; antiquarian and mythological poems (the Fasti, in elegiacs, and the Metamorphoses, in hexameters), written before his banishment; and the poems written, in elegiac verse, at Tomi. Ovid’s Poems. The exact chronological order of the love poems is hard to fix, as the first series of elegies, the Amores, appeared in two editions, at first in five books, later in three. The later edition is preserved. Most of these elegies were probably written between 22 and 15 B. C. The Heroides, letters from mythical heroines to their absent husbands or lovers, were written soon after the Amores, then followed the poem On the Care of the Face (De Medicamine Faciei), then the Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) and the Remedia Amoris (Cures for Love). The last two seem to have been published between the beginning of 1 B. C. and the end of 1 A. D., but need not have been entirely written in the space of those two years.
The three books of the Amores contain forty-nine elegies, nearly all of which are love poems. The Amores. Among the comparatively small number on other subjects the best known and most interesting are the elegy on the death of Tibullus (III, ix) and the description of a festival of Juno (III, xiii). The love poems are in great part addressed to Corinna, who seems to be a mere figment of the poet’s imagination, not, like the Lesbia of Catullus, the Delia of Tibullus, and the Cynthia of Propertius, a real person under a fictitious name. Ovid’s love poems are not expressions of his own feelings for any individual, but the means by which he exhibits his astonishing facility in versification and his lively imagination. From beginning to end the poems show an utter lack of serious purpose. All the vicissitudes of a long love affair are treated with equal lightness and grace. Corinna is ill, she goes away, she receives a letter, to which she replies unfavorably, her parrot dies, and her lover laments it in an elegy; but nowhere does any real feeling make itself manifest. The poet seems to wish to give a complete series of pictures of the feelings and conduct of a lover under all possible circumstances, and his lively imagination plays lightly with all the varying phases of passion, but it is all play. Some of the poems are based upon Greek originals, many contain mythological allusions, a few are heavy with Alexandrian learning, some are harmlessly sportive, others extremely indecent, but all alike are masterly in technical execution, and empty of real sentiment. In these, his earliest poems, Ovid is already the most brilliant of Roman elegists. The easy flow of his verse is admirable. The rules that each distich must form a complete sentence, or at least express an independent thought, and that each pentameter must end with a word of two syllables, give great uniformity to the cadence of the verses, but in spite of this the variety of expression and the clever rhetoric employed preserve the poems from monotony. Only the sameness of subject and the lack of real feeling make the Amores tedious to the modern reader.
The subject of the Amores is continued in the Heroides, but in a different form. The Heroides. Here the elegies are supposed to be letters from fifteen famous women of antiquity—Penelope, Briseïs, Phædra, and others—to their absent lovers or husbands. The form of poetic love-letter was known to the Alexandrians and had been employed once (IV, iii) by Propertius, but was first made popular at Rome by Ovid, who was also, apparently, the first to write in the character of mythological persons. Soon after the publication of Ovid’s letters from heroines, replies to some, at least, were written by Sabinus.80 These replies are lost, but at the end of the Heroides we now have three pairs of letters. Paris, Leander, and Acontius write respectively to Helen, Hero, and Cydippe, and each woman writes a reply. These six letters are so nearly in the style of Ovid that only careful study has led the best critics to the opinion that they are not his work, but clever imitations by some unknown contemporary. In the Heroides, as in the six letters just mentioned, the fact that the writers are well-known mythological persons lends an interest and a dramatic quality to the poems, which is wanting in the Amores, but the general character of the work remains the same.
The book On the Care of the Face is imperfectly preserved, for it breaks off after one hundred lines. The introduction compares the highly developed culture of the Augustan period with the rough simplicity of earlier times. On the Care of the Face. The maids and matrons of old may not have bestowed any care upon their personal beauty, but the Roman girls of the present must act differently, since even the men are no longer careless of their persons. To be sure, the character is more important than personal beauty, for character remains while beauty is fleeting. Up to this point the poem is attractive, but the remainder, consisting of recipes for cosmetics, with accurate directions concerning weights and measures of the various ingredients, is so uninteresting that the loss of the latter part of the poem is hardly to be regretted.
The Art of Love is one of the most immoral poems in existence. The Art of Love. The first book gives instruction to young men to aid them in finding and seducing desirable mistresses, the second tells them how to keep the girls’ affection, and the third instructs girls in the art of gaining lovers. The love of which Ovid writes is mere sensual passion, not the union of souls, and his three books of systematic instruction in the arts of seduction would be utterly tedious were they not enlivened by some striking descriptive passages and myths, as well as by sententious lines of worldly wisdom. A remarkable passage in the first book81 celebrates the praise of Roman greatness and of Augustus, in order to lead up to the mention of a triumphal procession; and this is mentioned, because in the crowd of spectators the young man may scrape acquaintance with a girl. Of the Roman women at the theatre, Ovid says:
and many other lines show keen observation, knowledge of humanity, and no little humor; but, in spite of these beauties of detail, the poem is, as a whole, so uninteresting that its immorality has probably done little harm.
The Cure of Love offers various means for freeing oneself from the bonds of passion. The Cure of Love. Activity and travel are recommended; the lover who longs for freedom is advised to consider the faults of his mistress, and the expense she causes him; he is told to make her show her faults; is urged to fall in love with another, to avoid reminders of the beloved when she is absent, and to shun poetry, music, and the dance. All this is uninteresting enough; but this poem, like the Ars Amatoria, contains many fine details. The Remedia Amoris is the last of Ovid’s poems on the subject of love. From beginning to end his love poems show the greatest ease and fluency of expression, superb mastery of technique, much imagination, wit, and humor, but an almost absolute lack of real feeling and serious purpose.
With the Fasti, or calendar of Roman festivals, Ovid’s poetry becomes more serious. The Fasti. When this work was begun can not be determined, but it probably occupied part of the poet’s time for several years. The description of the festival of Juno in the Amores (III, xiii) shows an interest in religious ritual, and it may be that Ovid conceived the idea of writing the Fasti even before the Ars Amatoria was published. However that may be, the Fasti never reached completion. The poem as planned was to consist of twelve books, one for each month of the year, and was dedicated to Augustus; but, when six books had been written, the work was interrupted by Ovid’s banishment. After the death of Augustus, Ovid began a revision of the poem, and prefixed to it a dedication to Germanicus; but the revision progressed no further than the first book. As this book contains references to events as late as 17 A. D., the entire work as we possess it must have been published after Ovid’s death.
Poetic descriptions of festivals, with accounts of their origin, had been written by the Alexandrians, notably by Callimachus, and four elegies of Propertius (see p. 135) had introduced such subjects into Roman poetry. Ovid undertook to treat systematically all the Roman festivals, arranging them according to the days on which they occurred. This arrangement often causes related myths to be widely separated, and the same myth to be treated in several places, thus destroying the poetic unity of the work. The poet is also obliged by his subject to regard the astronomical as well as the antiquarian aspects of the calendar, and this double interest destroys the harmony of the poem. Ovid was not a careful student of astronomy, and the astronomical parts of his work contain some serious mistakes; but they are interesting on account of their clear descriptions, their variety of expression, and the myths connected with the stars which are introduced. The days that mark important events in Roman history are treated with especial fulness, and the poet takes every opportunity for the expression of patriotic sentiments, and for the praise of Augustus and the Julian family. The descriptions of festivals are lively and beautiful pictures of Roman life. Events of the poet’s own times, or of the early, mythical period, are described with great variety, sometimes in elaborate detail, sometimes more briefly, but always with easy and attractive grace. The causes or origins of festivals and customs are introduced in various ways; sometimes a god appears and reveals them, sometimes they are narrated by a friend or contemporary of the poet, or again the poet tells them without adducing any authority. The Greek myths narrated are derived from some of the many collections of such material familiar to the Romans of Ovid’s day; and even in the matter of Roman legends Ovid probably made no original researches. The grammarian Verrius Flaccus had compiled a prose calendar, with explanations of the established customs pertaining to each day, and it is probably from this that Ovid derived much of his antiquarian lore. The books from which Ovid derived his information are lost, and his work is now one of the chief sources from which we can gain knowledge of Roman ritual, belief, religious antiquities, and even topography, for Ovid frequently mentions the relative positions of temples and other buildings. To the student of Roman life the six books of the Fasti are therefore of great importance. And their importance is not less to the student of Roman poetry, for they teem with beautiful and lively descriptions and interesting stories, and the patriotic sentiments eloquently expressed in several passages show that Ovid was something more than the careless, frivolous writer of corrupt love poems. In beauty of workmanship, vividness of description, and fluent grace of narrative, many portions of the Fasti are equal to any works of Roman literature, not even excepting the Metamorphoses of Ovid himself.
The Metamorphoses.The fifteen books of the Metamorphoses are Ovid’s greatest achievement. When he began the work we do not know, but, according to his own statement,82 he had finished it at the time of his banishment, though he had not revised and perfected it to his own satisfaction. In his grief he put the manuscript in the fire and burned it, but several copies must have been made, so the work survived. The opening lines of the poem explain its purpose:
This great collection of myths became almost immediately, and has remained ever since, the chief source of popular knowledge of mythology. Poets and artists alike have drawn their conceptions of the ancient gods and heroes from Ovid even more than from Homer. The myths selected are those in which a metamorphosis, or change of form, takes place. Collections of the same sort had been made by several Alexandrian writers; but Ovid was apparently the first to arrange these stories in continuous order from the beginning of the world to his own time. The astonishing skill with which the transition from one tale to the next is accomplished, the rapidity and fluency of the narrative, the abundance of charming descriptive passages, and the never-failing variety of expression, make this one of the most remarkable of poems. The number of stories told is so great that a list of them would be tedious, but a brief mention and characterization of some of the more important among them will serve to show the scope and variety of the work.
After describing the creation, Ovid gives an account of the four ages (of gold, silver, bronze, and iron) of mankind’s deterioration and of the flood, from which only Deucalion and Pyrrha survived. Contents of the Metamorphoses. The story of Phaëthon’s attempt to drive the chariot of the Sun is told with great animation, though the poet’s display of geographical knowledge is somewhat out of place. The tale of the founding of Thebes by Cadmus is a striking example of narrative skill. More tragical in subject, and more dramatic in composition, are the stories of Pentheus, torn in pieces by the maddened worshipers of Bacchus, led by his own mother and sisters, and of Athamas, who is driven mad by Juno and kills his eldest son, while his wife Ino casts herself, with her son Melicerta, into the sea. Between these two stories are several less dramatic tales, among them the sentimental idyll of Pyramus and Thisbe, which is burlesqued in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The deeds of Perseus, his rescue of Andromeda from the sea-monster, their wedding, with the quarrel that arose, and the turning into stone of Perseus’s enemies by means of the terrible Gorgon’s head, are narrated with vivid detail. The story of Proserpine, carried off by Pluto and sought all over the world by her mother Ceres, is enriched and retarded by the insertion of all manner of geographical, antiquarian, and mythological details. The tale of the pride and grief of Niobe is told with tragic pathos. In telling of Medea’s love for Jason, Ovid imitates to some extent the portrayal of her mental torments given by Apollonius of Rhodes,83 and at the same time displays his own liking for rhetorical argument. The adventures of Cephalus and Procris, Nisus and Scylla, Dædalus and Icarus, and others, are more simply told. The story of the Calydonian boar-hunt and the death of Meleager, enables Ovid to show his ability in description, narrative, and psychological analysis. The charming idyll of the pious and hospitable rustics, Philemon and Baucis, rests the mind of the reader after the preceding tales of violence. The deeds of Hercules follow, then the story of Orpheus, in which are inserted numerous tales, as if told by Orpheus himself. The account of the terrible death of Orpheus is followed by the story of Midas, who turned all things to gold by his touch, and whose ears were changed into those of an ass because he declared Pan to be a better musician than Apollo. The transformation of Ceyx and Alcyone into sea-gulls gives the poet an opportunity to tell of and praise conjugal fidelity. The combat of the centaurs and Lapithæ is told at some length, with too many names and too little unity. Many tales are told in connection with the Trojan war. Among these, the strife of Ajax and Ulysses for the armor of
Achilles occupies a prominent position, and Ovid shows his rhetorical tendency by introducing set speeches by the two rivals in support of their claims. With the fall of Troy and the escape of Æneas, the poem begins to deal with Roman rather than Greek subjects. The earlier adventures of Æneas and others after the fall of Troy are, to be sure, still derived from Greek sources, but the stories of the combats in Italy and of the founding of Rome are no longer Greek. Near the end of the poem the Pythagorean doctrine of the transmigration of souls is set forth in considerable detail. Several Roman stories follow, and at last comes the account of Julius Cæsar’s ascent to the gods, and a prophecy of a similar fortune for Augustus. Then the poem ends with the lines:
Certainly Ovid had written a most remarkable poem. At times the lack of earnestness so noticeable in his earlier works appears also in the Metamorphoses, but frequently he is carried along by his subject to utterances of real power and pathos. His hexameters have not the swelling grandeur of Virgil’s, but they have a fluent rapidity and easy grace that no other Latin writer ever attained. Nor does any other Roman poet equal Ovid in the art of telling a story. He is a master of direct, simple narrative and of clear, vivid description, and he excels also in dramatic presentation and in the analysis of human thoughts and feelings.
In the Metamorphoses Ovid’s power is at its height. His later poems, written after his banishment, show a constant deterioration in every respect, even in technique. The long series of laments over his exile is tedious and wearisome. The five books entitled Tristia consist of elegies addressed for the most part to no one person, while the four books of Letters from the Pontus (Ex Ponto) have the form of real letters to the poet’s friends. The second book of the Tristia is one long letter of appeal to Augustus. The short poem entitled Ibis is an elaborate heaping up of curses and maledictions against an enemy to whom the fictitious name of Ibis is given, and the Halieutica is a fragment (134 lines) of a poem on fishes. Among all these poems those in which Ovid refers to his own circumstances are the most interesting. It is from these84 that most of our information about his life is derived. In some of these elegies the tone of genuine feeling, which is wanting in the earlier poems, is evident:
So Ovid sings of his departure from Rome. His letters to his wife86 and the letter to his daughter Perilla87 are among the most attractive of these poems of bitter exile and grief. But even upon these the bitterness of the exile’s lot casts its shadow. A greater poet, or a poet of greater character, might have soared above his grief and disappointment; but Ovid wearies us with his continued complaints.
Several works by Ovid have been lost. The most important was probably his tragedy Medea, which was regarded as one of the greatest of Roman tragedies. Only two fragments of this play remain, from one of which we learn that Ovid represented Medea in a state of excitement bordering upon madness. Of a work in hexameters on the constellations, entitled Phœnomena, and a series of epigrams, a few brief fragments remain. Not even fragments are preserved of a bridal song (Epithalamium) for Fabius Maximus, an elegy on the death of Messalla, a poem on the triumph of Tiberius (January 16, 13 A. D.), a poem on the death of Augustus, a medley on bad poets, made up of lines from Macer’s Tetrasticha, and a poem in the Getic language in honor of the imperial family.
Ovid’s one defect as a poet is his lack of character. No other Roman wrote more polished verse, no other employed the Latin language more effectively for his purposes; but the want of moral earnestness and power makes Ovid, with all his genius, the least among the great Roman poets. His weakness is most noticeable in his earlier and later works, and the Metamorphoses and the Fasti are therefore the most admirable of his poems. Ovid was read throughout the Middle Ages, and the mythological allusions in writings of the Renaissance period and modern times are, for the most part, traceable to him. He was one of Milton’s favorite authors, and several passages in Paradise Lost show his influence. Shakespeare, too, was acquainted, directly or indirectly, with the Metamorphoses, and numerous echoes of Ovid’s poems are heard in the strains of other English poets.
LIVY—OTHER AUGUSTAN PROSE WRITERS
Livy, 59 B. C.-17 A. D.—His qualities as historian and writer—Pompeius Trogus, about 20 B. C.—Justin, second or third century after Christ—Fenestella, 52 B. C.-19 A. D.—Oratory—Seneca the elder, about 55 B. C. to about 40 A. D.—Verrius Flaccus, about 1 A. D.—Festus, third or fourth century after Christ—Hyginus, about 64 B. C. to about 17 A. D.—Extant works under the name of Hyginus—Labeo and Capito—Vitruvius, about 70 B. C. to after 16 B. C.
The Augustan period is the golden age of Latin poetry. Prose reached its greatest height in the age of Cicero and began to deteriorate soon after his death. Prose inferior to poetry of this period. One reason for this is the great development of poetry, which led to the introduction of poetic words and phrases into prose; another is the fashionable rhetoric of the day, which aimed not at simplicity and clearness, nor dignity and grandeur, but at novel or striking expressions, artificial arrangement, and subtlety of thought. The influence of the rhetorical schools is seen in some of the poetry of Ovid and Manilius, but is much more evident in the prose of this period and the succeeding times.
The only great prose writer of the Augustan period is Livy. Livy. Titus Livius was born at Patavium (Padua) in 59 B. C., and died in his native place in 17 A. D. Little is known of his life, but the tone of his writing indicates that he was not poor and belonged to a family of some position. He is said to have written philosophical works, probably popular treatises in the form of dialogues, and a treatise on rhetoric in the form of a letter to his son. These works are lost, and can never have possessed much importance in comparison with the great history to which Livy devoted more than forty years of his life. About 30 B. C. Livy moved to Rome, where he lived the greater part of the time until his death. Probably he visited his native Padua more than once, and he travelled also to other places in Italy. He was a republican in principle, but accepted the rule of Augustus without reserve. In fact, he was a personal friend of Augustus, who called him in jest a Pompeian, on account of his criticisms of Julius Cæsar and his admiration for the old republic. Livy appears in his work as a man of conservative tendencies, content to live under whatever government happened to exist, provided it was not too oppressive, willing to accept the state religion, with all its beliefs in signs and omens, while recognizing that some, at least, of the omens reported were inventions. His one great enthusiasm was for the greatness of Rome. This sentiment it was which led him to devote his life to the composition of a great history of Rome from the earliest times to his own day.
The title of Livy’s history was Libri ab Urbe Condita (Books from the Foundation of the City). Livy’s History. It consisted of 142 books, the first of which was written between 29 and 25 B. C., while the last twenty-two were published after the death of Augustus. The last book ended with the death of Drusus, in 9 A. D. Whether Livy intended to carry his work still further is unknown. The division into books is Livy’s own, but the division into decades, or groups of ten books, was made later, though it may perhaps have been suggested by the original publication of some of the books in groups. For the earlier parts of the work comparatively little material was available; consequently the history of the early years of Rome is less detailed than that of later periods. Fifteen books carry the narrative from the foundation of the city to the beginning of the Punic wars, a period of nearly five hundred years, while the war with Hannibal occupies ten books, and ten books are devoted to the eight years from the death of Marius to the death of Sulla (86-78 B. C.).
Of this immense work only thirty-five books are extant: Books I-X, from the beginning into the third Samnite War (753-293 B. C.), and XXI-XLV, from the second Punic War to the Macedonian triumph of Lucius Æmilius Paulus (218-167 B. C.). In Books XXI-XLV numerous gaps occur. The contents of the remaining books are known to us through a series of abstracts made not directly from Livy, but from an epitome. Such an epitome existed as early as the time of Martial, not many years after Livy’s death.
Livy derived his material from earlier historians, such as Fabius Pictor, Valerius Antias, Licinius Macer, Claudius Quadrigarius, and Polybius, following sometimes one and sometimes another, but seldom trying to reconcile conflicting statements of his authorities. Qualities of Livy’s History. When they did not agree, he usually accepted the statement that seemed to him most probable. He did not try to discover new truths by the study of original sources, such as inscriptions and other monuments, nor did he make careful studies of battlefields, routes of march, or the like. He did not, as most modern historians do, try to establish facts by independent research, but he worked over the accounts of his predecessors with the intention of presenting the whole of Roman history in an attractive literary form. In this he was so successful that his history soon became the one source from which all subsequent writers drew their information. His lack of military knowledge makes his description of battles and other military matters somewhat untrustworthy, and the early part of his work suffers from his inability to understand the gradual growth of Roman civilization, but such defects are more than compensated for by the admirable literary qualities of his history. He is, moreover, truthful, so far as he knows the truth, and any incorrect statements are due rather to insufficient knowledge than to any desire to conceal or pervert the truth. In his accounts of the dealings of the Romans with other peoples he is partial to the Romans, but that is because his sincere admiration for the Roman greatness leads him to believe that the Romans were in the right and acted rightly, and his partiality to the Scipios is to be accounted for in a similar way.
It is evident from what has been said above that Livy is far from being a perfect historian; yet his history is true in the main, and is based upon broad knowledge and insight into the underlying principles of human character and human actions. He is less interested in accuracy of detail than in broader and more general truth and dramatic presentation. Livy’s speeches. So in the speeches with which he enlivens his work, he does not pretend to repeat what the speakers actually said, nor even in every instance to put in their mouths words that express their individual characters, but rather to say in good rhetorical form what the circumstances seem to him to demand. In this he follows Thucydides, and his speeches, like those of Thucydides, serve not merely to give variety to the narrative, but also to bring vividly before us and to explain the circumstances and motives that led up to the actions narrated. These speeches are the most brilliant parts of his work. In them he shows the fruit of his training in the rhetorical schools and of careful study of Demosthenes and Cicero; but his rhetoric does not end in mere declamation. The speeches are not written merely to exhibit his rhetorical training, but to explain and enlighten.
Throughout his work Livy appears as the enemy of extremes. His admiration for Pompey does not lead him to become hostile to the ruling family; he is opposed alike to royalty and to unbridled democracy. At the same time he treats his subject with sympathy and warmth of feeling, and makes the ethical side of history prominent, seeking to present in a strong light such actions as may serve as models for conduct, not merely to give a record of events.
Livy is unrivalled as a narrator and a painter in words. His style is clear and straightforward, although his periods are often long and sometimes made complicated by the insertion in the sentence of numerous subordinate ideas, often expressed in the form of participles. Livy’s style. As is natural for one who wrote when Roman poetry was at its height, he introduces poetical words which are foreign to the prose of Cicero and Cæsar, and some of his phrases show poetic coloring. But his Latin is pure, and it is difficult to see what Asinius Pollio meant by accusing him of “Patavinitas” or Paduanism. In later prose writers the striving for poetic effect becomes a disagreeable mannerism, but such traces of poetry as are found in Livy are not the result of conscious effort, but of the literary atmosphere of the time. His style is not everywhere of uniform excellence; for it is inevitable that in such a long historical work the different qualities of the subject and the advancing age of the writer affect the mode of presentation, but there is no part of the work in which the style is dull or without charm. It is perhaps at its best in the books dealing with the Punic wars.
Livy’s work was even in his lifetime regarded as the most perfect example of historical writing. The younger Pliny tells us that a citizen of Cadiz travelled all the way to Rome merely to see Livy, and when he had seen him returned at once to Cadiz, feeling that the other sights of Rome were of no further interest. Livy’s influence upon later Roman writers was of the utmost importance, and his work has served as a model for more than one historian in more recent times. His enthusiasm for what is good and noble, his admiration for the great men of Rome, and his worship of Rome itself, give to his work something of the exalted character that belongs to a hymn of praise or a panegyric. His great history served, like Virgil’s Æneid, to give permanent literary expression to the greatness of the past days of the Roman commonwealth.
It would occupy too much space to try to give specimens of all the varieties of Livy’s style and composition. His descriptions of battles, among which that of the defeat of Antiochus at Magnesia88 deserves special mention, are masterpieces of painting in words, even when they betray his lack of military knowledge, and his summaries of the characters of important persons are admirable. The introduction to the history of the war with Hannibal, with the description of the siege of Saguntum, the hesitation at Rome, and the scene in the Carthaginian senate, is unsurpassed. Speech of Hanno. The speech of Hanno, who alone among the Carthaginian senators wished to preserve peace by relinquishing Saguntum and delivering Hannibal into the hands of the Romans, is one of the most remarkable of the many striking passages in this wonderful history:89
You have sent to the army, adding, as it were, fuel to the fire, a youth who burns with the desire of ruling, and who sees only one way to his end, if he lives girt with arms and legions, sowing from wars the seed of wars. You have therefore nourished this fire with which you are now burning. Your armies are now surrounding Saguntum, which the treaty forbids them to approach; presently the Roman legions will surround Carthage under the leadership of those same gods by whom in the last war the broken treaties were avenged. Do you not know the enemy, or yourselves, or the fortune of the two peoples? Your good general refused to admit to his camp envoys who came from allies in behalf of allies; they, nevertheless, though refused admittance where even the envoys of enemies are not forbidden to enter, have come to us; they demand restitution in accordance with the treaty; that there may be no deceit on the part of the state, they ask that the author of the wrong and the accused person be delivered up. The more gently they act, the more slowly they begin, the more persistently, I fear, they will rage when once they have begun. Place before your eyes the Ægates islands and Eryx and what you suffered by land and sea for twenty-four years. And that leader was no boy, but his father Hamilcar himself, a second Mars, as his partisans will have it. But we had not kept our hands off from Tarentum, that is from Italy, in obedience to the treaty, as now we are not keeping them off from Saguntum. Therefore the gods overcame men, and in the question at issue, which people had broken the treaty, the event of war, like a just judge, gave the victory to that side on which right stood. It is against Carthage that Hannibal is now moving up his screens and towers; he is shaking the walls of Carthage with his battering-ram. The ruins of Saguntum (may I prove a false prophet!) will fall upon our heads, and the war begun against the Saguntines must be carried on against the Romans. “Shall we then give up Hannibal?” some one will say. I know that in his case my influence has little weight on account of my enmity to his father; but I have been glad that Hamilcar is dead, because if he were living we should already be at war with the Romans, and I hate and detest this youth as the fury and fire-brand of this war, as one who ought not only to be given up as an expiation for the broken treaty, but if no one demanded him, should be carried away to the uttermost shores of sea and land, removed to such a distance that his name and fame could not reach to us nor he disturb the condition of our quiet state. I make this motion: That ambassadors be sent at once to Rome, to give satisfaction to the senate; other envoys to announce to Hannibal that he withdraw his army from Saguntum, and to hand Hannibal himself over to the Romans in pursuance of the treaty; I move a third embassy to restore their property to the Saguntines.
This speech, composed with powerful rhetoric and placed in a dramatic setting, serves not only to bring before our eyes the fruitless errand of the Roman envoys at Carthage, but to emphasize the justice of the Roman cause and to predict the ultimate success of the Romans, on whose side the gods that watch over treaties were enlisted. It is an example of Livy’s oratorical composition, of his dramatic power, of his desire to show that historical events are the result of moral causes, and of his conviction that the Roman power was founded upon right and justice.
Livy’s great work was the first complete history of Rome composed in fine literary form. The time was ripe for such a work. The Roman people had spread its power over the whole civilized world, and the peace and order established by Augustus made it natural that men should wish to read the history of the long struggles of the republic that led up to the present peace of the empire. Livy’s history, therefore, appealed directly to a large circle of readers. But in extending its power over the world, the Roman people had come in contact with various nations, and it was natural that the history of those nations should be of interest to the Romans. The task of writing this history was undertaken by Pompeius Trogus. By descent he was a Vocontian, of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, but his grandfather had received the Roman citizenship from Pompey, and his father had served under Cæsar in Gaul. Pompeius Trogus. Pompeius Trogus himself is mentioned as a writer on zoology, but his most important work was his universal history entitled Historiæ Philippicæ, in forty-four books. Trogus began with the history of the Oriental empires, Assyria, Media, and Persia, passing from the Persians to the Scythians and the Greeks. The greater part of his work was taken up with the account of the Macedonian Empire founded by Philip, and of the kingdoms that arose from it after the death of Alexander the Great. The history of each of these kingdoms is continued to its absorption in the Roman Empire. It is from this part of the work (Books VII-XL) that the whole received its title. The forty-first and forty-second books contained the history of the Parthians, the forty-third told of the beginnings of Rome and treated of affairs in Gaul, and the forty-fourth book contained the history of Spain, ending with the victory of Augustus over the Spaniards.
The history of Trogus is not preserved in its original form, but only in a brief summary made in the second or third century after Christ by an otherwise unknown Marcus Junianus Justinus. Justin’s summary. It is evident that Trogus was not an original investigator, and his work was probably little more than a translation of a Greek original, perhaps by Timagenes of Alexandria, who came to Rome in the time of the civil wars. Nevertheless, the work was important, as it was based on good authorities. It never became so popular as Livy’s history, but it was evidently much used by later writers, and Justin’s summary was much read in the Middle Ages. Of the style of Trogus it is difficult to judge, but so far as it can be appreciated in Justin’s abridgment, it was clear and lively, with a good deal of rhetorical adornment. Even the abridgment is a valuable work on account of the importance of its contents.
Several other historians of the Augustan period are known by name, but their works are lost and have left few traces. Fenestella. The most important of these writers was probably Fenestella, who lived from 52 B. C. to 19 A. D. He wrote Annals in at least twenty-two books, and probably also a variety of works on antiquarian subjects.
The oratory of this period was far inferior to that of the age of Cicero. Oratory. It was for the most part without serious purpose, and the productions of the orators were little more than school exercises to show their skill and serve as models for their pupils. Messalla, Pollio, and some others continued the earlier style of oratory in the Augustan age, but they found few imitators or successors. Among other early Augustan orators was Titus Labienus, who wrote a history as well as speeches. He was so bitterly opposed to the rule of Augustus that his works were burned by decree of the senate. Cassius Severus made in his speeches and writings such violent attacks upon the aristocracy that he was banished by Augustus, and his property was confiscated under Tiberius. He died in great poverty at Seriphus in 32 A. D. Other orators, whose speeches were almost exclusively school exercises, were Marcus Porcius Latro, Gaius Albucius Silus, Quintus Haterius, Lucius Junius Gallio, and the two Asiatic Greeks, Arellius Fuscus and Lucius Cestius Pius. Seneca the elder. Little or nothing is known about any of these men except what is derived from the works of Annæus Seneca, the father of the philosopher Lucius Annæus Seneca and grandfather of the epic poet Lucan. Of the life of the elder Seneca little is known. He was born at Corduba, in Spain, probably as early as 55 B. C., and spent part of his life in Rome. He lived to a great age, for his only extant work was written as late as 37 A. D. This is a series of recollections of famous orators and rhetoricians, written at the request of the author’s sons, Novatus, Seneca, and Mela. It originally contained ten books of Controversiæ or arguments, and one book of Suasoriæ or speeches advising some particular course of conduct. The most important parts of the work are the introductions, which contain much information on the history of oratory. The ten books of Controversiæ treated of seventy-four subjects, the book of Suasoriæ of seven. The beginning of the Suasoriæ is now lost, and of the Controversiæ only thirty-five are preserved. The subject-matter is throughout insipid and dull. Such things are discussed as this: “A man and his wife swore that if anything happened to one of them the other would die. The man went on a journey and sent a message to his wife that he was dead. The wife threw herself down from a high place. She was brought to herself again, and her father ordered her to leave her husband. She refused.” The utterances of the masters of rhetoric on such matters as this are given by Seneca, whose prodigious memory made him able to repeat them almost, if not quite, in the original words. The most interesting single theme is the sixth Suasoria, in which the question is answered whether Cicero should beg Antony to spare his life. The answers given contain several judgments on Cicero, among them those of Asinius Pollio and Livy. But the folly and emptiness of the sort of oratorical study with which Seneca makes us acquainted can not fail to impress every reader. Seneca himself expresses his disgust. His remarkable memory enabled him to hand down to later ages specimens of the oratorical teaching which, even in the Augustan age, began to corrupt Latin style. Seneca’s own style is not far removed from that of Cicero’s time, and Seneca, though he wrote under Caligula, probably acquired his style in the early part of the Augustan period. The specimens he has preserved show, however, that the influential teachers of his early days had far less taste than he.
Among the learned writers on special subjects one of the most important was Verrius Flaccus, of whose life little is known, except that he was chosen by Augustus to educate his grandsons Gaius and Lucius, and that he died in old age during the reign of Tiberius. Verrius Flaccus. Of his numerous works on grammatical and antiquarian subjects one only, On the Meaning of Words (De Verborum Significatu), is partially preserved in an abridgment by Pompeius Festus, who seems to have lived in the third or fourth century after Christ. Only part of this abridgment remains, but this is important for the information it contains concerning Roman antiquities and early Latin words. A further abridgment of Festus was made in the eighth century by Paulus, and even this is of value, though it is a mere skeleton of the original work of Verrius Flaccus. Another scholar was Gaius Julius Hyginus, a freedman of Augustus and librarian of the Palatine library. Hyginus. His life extended from about 64 B. C. to about 17 A. D. He composed works on agriculture, history, geography, and antiquities, besides commentaries on Virgil and on Cinna’s poem to Asinius Pollio. Of all these works nothing remains; but two works under the name of Hyginus are extant. One of these is a treatise on astronomy, including myths relating to the stars, the other a mythological handbook entitled Fabulæ, to which a series of genealogies is appended. The handbook is valuable chiefly because the myths told in it are taken from Greek tragedies for the most part, and through them we learn the plots of many lost works of Greek authors. These extant works are, however, not by the librarian Hyginus, but by a later writer, who lived probably in the second century after Christ. Labeo and Capito. Of the legal writings of Marcus Antistius Labeo and Gaius Ateius Capito nothing remains. Each was the head of a school of writers and teachers on legal subjects. Labeo tried to explain changes and growth in legal matters, as well as in grammar, by the principle of analogy or likeness, while Capito regarded anomaly or difference as more important.
A work of no literary excellence, but of great value on account of the information it contains, is the treatise On Architecture (De Architectura), in ten books, by Vitruvius Pollio. Vitruvius. Vitruvius was a practical architect, who built a basilica at Colonia Fanestris and had charge of the construction of machines of war under Augustus.90 His books appear to have been written between 16 and 13 B. C., and dedicated to Augustus. They form the only systematic treatise on architecture preserved to us from antiquity, and are for that reason of the greatest importance to architects and archæologists. The style is, however, inelegant and obscure, though its obscurity is due in part to the necessary employment of technical expressions. Vitruvius was evidently a man of no great literary education or ability, however able he may have been as an architect.
The age of Augustus is marked by the highest development of Roman poetry. Virgil, Horace, Tibullus, Propertius and Ovid are, each in his own way, the greatest of the Roman poets. Only Catullus and Lucretius can be compared with any one of them. The only great prose writer of the period is Livy. His style is still pure, and is certainly very charming; but even Livy departs somewhat from the dignity and beauty of the sermo urbanus, the Latin of Cicero and Cæsar. The extracts preserved by Seneca show that the rhetorical teaching of the time was artificial and tasteless, and was leading the way to decline, to the so-called silver Latin of the imperial epoch.