The poet’s real patrons had been educated on Greek principles; and hence Greek taste was completely triumphant over national legend, and the heroes of Roman tragedy were those who were celebrated in Hellenic story. The Roman historical plays, (prætextatæ,) which approached most nearly towards realizing the idea of a national tragedy, were graceful compliments to distinguished individuals. They were usually performed at public funerals; and as, in the procession, masks representing the features of the deceased were borne by persons of similar stature, so incidents in his life formed the subject of the drama which was exhibited on the occasion.
The list of Fabulæ Prætextatæ, even if it were perfect, would occupy but narrow limits; nor had they sufficient merits to stand the test of time. They survive but in name, and the titles extant are but nine in number:——
The Paulus of Pacuvius, which represented an incident in the life of L. Æmilius Paulus.[240]
The Brutus, Æneadæ, and Marcellus of Attius.[241]
Iter ad Lentulum, a passage in the life of Balbus.[242]
Cato.
Domitius Nero, by Maternus, in the time of Vespasian.
Vescio, by the Satirist (?) Persius.
Octavian, by Seneca, in the reign of Trajan.
Nor must it be forgotten, in comparing the influence which tragedy exercised upon the people of Athens and Rome, that with the former it was a part and parcel of the national religion. By it not only were the people taught to sympathize with their heroic ancestors, but their sympathies were hallowed. In Greece, the poet was held to be inspired—poetry was the voice of deified nature—the tongue in which the natural held communion with the supernatural, the visible with the invisible. With the Romans, poetry was nothing more than an amusement of the fancy; with the Greeks, it was a divinely originating emotion of the soul.
Hence, in Athens, the drama was, as it were, an act of worship,—it formed an integral part of a joyous, yet serious, religious festival. The theatre was a temple; the altar of a deity was its central point; and a band of choristers moved in solemn march and song in honour of the god, and, in the didactic spirit which sanctified their office, taught men lessons of virtue. Not that the audience entered the precincts with their hearts imbued with holy feelings, or with the thoughts of worshippers; but this is always the case when religious ceremonials become sensuous. The real object of the worship is by the majority forgotten. But still the Greeks were habituated unconsciously to be affected by the drama, as by a development of religious sentiments. With the Romans, the theatre was merely a place of secular amusement. The thymele existed no longer as a memorial of the sacrifice to the god. The orchestra, formerly consecrated to the chorus, was to them nothing more than stalls occupied by the dignitaries of the state. Dramas were certainly exhibited at the great Megalensian games, but they were only accessories to the religious character of the festival. A holy season implies rest and relaxation—a holiday in the popular sense of the word—and theatrical representations were considered a fit and proper species of pastime; but as religion itself did not exercise the same influence over the popular mind of the Romans which it did over that of the Greeks, so neither with the Romans did the drama stand in the place of the handmaid of religion.
Again, their religion, though purer and chaster, was not ideal like that of the Greeks. Its freedom from human passions removed it out of the sphere of poetry, and, therefore, it was neither calculated to move terror nor pity. The moral attributes of the Deity were displayed in stern severity; but neither the belief nor the ceremonial sought to inflame the heart of the worshipper with enthusiasm. Rome had no priestly caste uniting in one and the same person the character of the bard and of the minister of religion. In after ages, she learned from the Greeks to call the poet sacred, but the holiness which she attributed to his character was not the earnest belief of the heart. The Roman priests were civil magistrates; religion, therefore, became a part of the civil administration, and a political engine. It mattered little what was believed as true. The old national faith of Italy, not being firmly rooted in the heart, soon became obsolete: it readily admitted the engrafting of foreign superstitions. The old deities assumed the names of the Greek mythology: they exchanged their attributes and histories for those of Greek legend, and a host of strange gods filled their Pantheon. They had, however, no hold either on the belief or the love of the people: they were mythological and unreal characters, fit only to furnish subjects and embellishments for poetry.
Nor was the genius of the Roman people such as to sympathize with the legends of the past. The Romans lived in the present and the future, rather than in the past. The poet might call the age in which he lived degenerate, and look forward with mournful anticipations to a still lower degradation, whilst he looked back admiringly to bygone times. Through the vista of past years, Roman virtue and greatness seemed to his imagination magnified: he could lament, as Horace did, a gradual decay, which had not as yet reached its worst point:——
But the people did not sympathize with these feelings: they delighted in action, not in contemplation and reflection. They did not look back upon their national heroes as demigods, or dream over their glories: they were pressing forward and extending the frontiers of their empire, bringing under their yoke tribes and nations which their forefathers had not known. If they regarded their ancestors at all, it was not in the light of men of heroic stature, as compared with themselves, but as those whom they could equal or even surpass: they lived in hope and not in memory.
These are not the elements of character which would lead a people to realize to themselves the ideal of tragedy. The tragic poet at Athens would have been sure that the same subject which inspired him would also interest his audience—that if his genius rose to the height which their critical taste demanded, he could reckon up the sympathy of a theatre crowded with ten thousand of his countrymen. A Roman tragic poet would have been deserted for any spectacle of a more stirring nature—his most affecting scenes and noble sentiments, for scenes of real action and real life. The bloody combats of the gladiators, the miserable captives and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating agonies, or mangled by wild beasts, were real tragedies—the sham fights and Naumachiæ, though only imitations, were real dramas, in which those pursuits which most deeply interested the spectators, which constituted their chief duties and highest glories, were visibly represented. Even gorgeous spectacles fed their personal vanity and pride in their national greatness. The spoil of conquered nations, borne in procession across the stage, reminded them of their triumphs and their victories; and the magnificent dress of the actors—the model of the captured city, preceded and followed by its sculptures in marble and ivory—represented in mimic grandeur the ovation or the triumph of some successful general, whose return from a distant expedition, laden with wealth, realized the rumours which had already arrived at the gates of Rome; whilst the scene, glittering with glass, and gold, and silver, and adorned with variegated pillars of foreign marble, told ostentatiously of their wealth and splendour.[243]
Again, the Romans were a rough, turbulent people, full of physical rather than intellectual energy, loving antagonism, courting peril, setting no value on human life or suffering. Their very virtues were stern and severe. The unrelenting justice of a Brutus, representing as it did the victory of principle over feeling, was to them the height of virtue. They were ready to undergo the extreme of physical torture with Regulus, and to devote themselves to death, like Curtius and the Decii. Hard and pitiless to themselves, they were, as might be expected, the same towards others. They were, in fact, strangers to both the passions, which it was the object of tragedy to excite and to purify, Pity and Terror.[244] They were too stern to pity, too unimaginative to be moved by the tales of wonder and deeds of horror which affected the tender and marvel-loving imagination of the Greeks. Being an active, and not a sentimental people, they did not appreciate moral suffering and the struggles of a sensitive spirit. They were moved only by scenes of physical suffering and agony.
The public games of Greece at Olympia, or the Isthmus, were bloodless and peaceful, and the refinements of poetry mingled with those which were calculated to invigorate the physical powers and develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were exhibitions, not of moral, but of physical courage and endurance: they were sanguinary and brutalizing,—the amusements of a nation to whom war was not a necessary evil or a struggle for national existence, for hearths and altars, but a pleasure and a pastime—the means of gratifying an aggressive ambition. The tragic feeling of Greece is represented by the sculptured grief of Niobe, that of Rome by the death-struggles which distort the features and muscles of the Laocoon. It was, if the expression is allowable, amphitheatrical, not theatrical.
To such a people the moral woes of tragedy were powerless; and yet it is to the people that the drama, if it is to flourish, must look for patronage. A refined and educated society, such as always existed at Rome during its literary period, might applaud a happy adaptation from the Greek tragedians, and encourage a poet in his task—for it is only an educated and refined taste which can appreciate such talent as skilful imitation displays; but a tragic drama under such circumstances could hardly hope to be national. Nor must it be forgotten, with reference to their taste for spectacle, that the artistic accessories of the drama would have a better chance of success with a people like the Romans than literary merit, because the pleasures of art are of a lower and more sensuous kind. Hence, in the popular eye, the decoration of the theatre and the costume of the performers naturally became the principal requisites, whilst the poet’s office was considered subordinate to the manner in which the play was put upon the stage; and thus the degenerate theatrical taste which prevailed in the days of Horace called forth the poet’s well-known and well-deserved criticism.[245]
It cannot, indeed, be asserted that tragedy was never, to a certain extent, an acceptable entertainment at Rome, but only that it never flourished at Rome as it did at Athens—that no Roman tragedies can, notwithstanding all that has been said in their praise and their defence, be compared with those of Greece, and that the tragic drama never maintained such a hold on the popular mind as not to be liable to be displaced by amusements of a more material and less intellectual kind. It was imitative and destitute of originality. It was introduced from without as one portion of the new literature; it did not grow spontaneously by a process of natural development out of preceding eras of epic and lyric poetry, and start into being, as it did at Athens, at the very moment when the public mind and taste was ready to receive and appreciate it.
Three eras, separated from one another by chasms, the second wider than the first, produced tragic poets. In the first of these flourished Livius Andronicus, Nævius, and Ennius; in the second Pacuvius and Attius; in the third Asinius Pollio[246] wrote tragedies, the plots of which, as the words of Virgil seem to imply, were taken from Roman history.[247] Varius either wrote, or, as some of the Scholiasts assert, stole, the “Thyestes” from Cassius or Virgil. Ovid attempted a “Medea,” of which Quintilian speaks, as being, to say the least, a promising performance; and even the Emperor Augustus himself, together with other men of genius, tried their hands, though unsuccessfully, at tragedy. The epistle of Horace to the Pisos shows at once the prevalence of this taste, and that general ignorance of the rules and principles of art required instruction. Ten rhetorical dramas, attributed with good reason to the philosopher Seneca, complete the catalogue of tragedies belonging to this era, but with the exception of these, no specimens remain; most probably they did not merit preservation. The tragedies of the older school were of a higher stamp, and they kept their place in the public estimation long enough to give birth to the newer and inferior school. Passages from the old Latin tragedies quoted by Cicero well deserve the admiration with which he regarded them; and a fragment of the “Prometheus” of Attius is marked by a grandeur and sublimity which makes us regret the almost total loss of this branch of Roman literature.
The era at which Roman tragedy reached its highest degree of perfection was the second of those mentioned, and was simultaneous with that of comedy. Both nourished together; for, whilst Terence was so successfully reproducing the wit and manners of the new Attic comedy, M. Pacuvius was enriching the Roman drama with free imitations of the Greek tragedians. He was a native of Brundisium, and nephew,[248] or, according to St. Jerome, grandson of the poet Ennius. Although born as early as B. C. 220, he does not appear to have attained the height of his popularity until B. C.[249] During his residence at Rome, where he remained until after his 80th year,[250] he distinguished himself as a painter as well as a dramatic poet; and one of his pictures in the temple of Hercules was thought only to be surpassed by the work of Fabius Pictor.[251] He formed one of that literary circle of which Lælius was so great an ornament. The close of his long life was passed in the retirement of Tarentum, where he died in the ninetieth year of his age. A simple and unpretending epigram is preserved by Aulus Gellius,[252] which may probably have been written by himself:——
Pacuvius was a great favourite with those who could make allowances for the faults, and appreciate the merits, of the great writers of antiquity, and his verses were popular in the time of J. Cæsar;[253] and that lover of the old Roman literature, Cicero, though not blind to his faults, is warm in his commendations. He was not without admirers in the Augustan age, and even his defects had zealous defenders in the time of Persius amongst those who could scarcely discover a fault in any work which savoured of antiquity.[254] The archaic ruggedness of his language, his uncouth forms, such as axim, tetinerim, egregiissimus, and his unauthorized constructions, like mihi piget, were due to the unsettled state of the Latin language in his days. His strange combinations, such as repandirostrum and incurvicervicum, may possibly have been suggested by the study of Greek, and by his overweening admiration for its facility of composition. But his polish, pathos, and learning,[255] the harmony of his periods,[256] his eloquence,[257] his fluency, his word-painting,[258] are peculiarly his own.
The tragedies of Pacuvius were not mere translations, but adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are extant are full of new and original thoughts. His plots were borrowed from the Greek, but the plan and treatment were his own. The lyric portion appears to have occupied an important place in his tragedies, and displays considerable imaginative power. It is evident that his mind only required suggestions, and was sufficiently original, to form new combinations. The titles of thirteen of his tragedies are preserved,[259] of which the most celebrated were the “Antiopa” and “Dulorestes” (Orestes in Slavery.) Of the former, the only fragment extant is one severely criticised by Persius. The latter was principally founded on the “Iphigenia in Tauris” of Euripides,[260] although the author was evidently inspired with the poetical conceptions of Æschylus. In fact, Pacuvius is less Euripidean than the other Roman tragic poets. The very roughness of his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of Attic tragedy.
The subject of the “Dulorestes” was the adventures of the son of Agamemnon. When driven from the palace of his ancestors, he was in exile and in slavery.[261] On the first representation of this play, the generous friendship of Orestes and Pylades called forth the most enthusiastic applause from the audience, who then probably heard the legend for the first time. “What acclamations,” says Lælius,[262] “resounded through the theatre at the representation of the new play of my guest and friend, M. Pacuvius, when the king, being ignorant which of the two was Orestes, Pylades affirmed that he was Orestes, that he might be put to death in his place, whilst Orestes persevered in asserting that he was the man!”
One of his plays, “Paulus,” was a fabula prætextata: its subject was taken entirely from Roman history, the hero being L. Æm. Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus. Besides tragedies, the grammarians have attributed to him one satura.[263] He is said also to have written comedies; but there is no evidence in favour of any, with the exception of one, entitled “Mercator.”
Although born about fifty years later than Pacuvius,[264] Attius was almost his contemporary, and a competitor for popular applause. The amiable old poet lived on the most friendly terms with his young rival; and A. Gellius tells us that after he withdrew from the literary society of Rome to retirement at Tarentum, he on one occasion invited the rising poet to be his guest for some days, and made him read his tragedy of “Atreus.” Pacuvius criticised it kindly, fairly praised the grandeur of the poetry, but said that it was somewhat harsh and hard. “You are right,” replied Attius, “but I hope to improve. Fruits which are at first hard and sour, become soft and mellow, but those which begin by being soft, end in being rotten.” Valerius Maximus[265] relates that in the assemblies of the poets he refused to rise at the entrance of J. Cæsar, because he felt that in the republic of letters he was the superior. If this anecdote is genuine, it does not prove that the aged poet was guilty of unwarrantable self-esteem, for Cæsar must then have been quite a youth, and if he had any claim to reputation as a poet, he was, at any rate, not yet distinguished as a warrior or a statesman. Amongst the great men whose friendship the poet enjoyed was Dec. Brutus, who was consul A. U. C. 616.[266] Nothing more is known respecting his private history, except that his parents were freedmen, and that he was one of the colonists settled at Pisaurum, where, in after times, a farm or estate (fundus Attianus) continued to bear his name. His tragedies were very numerous. He is said to have written more than fifty. Three at least were prætextatæ, their titles being “Brutus,” “The Æneadæ,” or “Decius,”[267] and “Marcellus.” His “Trachiniæ” and “Phœnissæ” were almost translations, the one from Sophocles, the other from Euripides; the rest were free imitations of Greek tragedies. They were distinguished both for sublimity and pathos; and although he was warmed by the fiery spirit and tragic grandeur of Æschylus, he evidently evinced a predilection for Sophocles.[268] His taste is chastened, his sentiments noble, his versification elegant. His language is almost classical, and was deservedly admired by the ancients for its polish as well as its vigour. The “Brutus” was written at the suggestion of his friend Decimus. The plot was the expulsion of the Tarquins, the hero Brutus, the heroine Lucretia. He had chosen one of the noblest romances in Roman history. Two passages,[269] quoted by Cicero, are all that remain of this national tragedy. In them the tyrant relates to the augurs a dream which had haunted him, and they, at his request, give their interpretation of it. Varro has also preserved the soliloquy of Hercules in the agonies of death, from the Trachiniæ,[270] a noble paraphrase of Sophocles. This fine specimen of his genius extends to the length of forty-five lines. In another passage, Philoctetes pours forth his sufferings in language as touching as the original Greek; and in a third, Prometheus, now delivered from the tyranny of Jupiter, addresses to his assembled Titans a strain of indignant eloquence not unworthy of Æschylus.[271] The following lines from the “Phœnissæ” and the “Complaint of Philoctetes,” are, though brief, fair examples of his language and versification:——
These are the most important of the numerous fragments which are extant of the various tragedies of the lofty Attius.[274] He has been considered by some as the founder of the Tragœdia Prætextatæ. This, however, is not true, for there is no doubt that such dramas were written by his predecessors. Nevertheless, he brought the natural tragedy to its highest state of perfection.
The time was now evidently approaching when the Romans were beginning to show, that although they did not possess the inventive genius of the Greeks, they were capable of stripping their native language of its rudeness, and of transferring into it the beauties of Greek thought; that they were no longer mere servile copyists, but could use Greek poetry as furnishing suggestions for original efforts. They could not quarry for themselves, but they could now build up Greek materials into a glowing and polished edifice, of which the details were new and the effect original.
The metres which Attius used were chiefly the iambic trimeter and the anapæstic dimeter, but his prætextatæ were written in trochaic and iambic tetrameters, the rhythm of which proves that his ear was more refined than that of his predecessors.[275]
It is not known whether he was the author of any comedies, but he was a historian, an antiquarian, and a critic, as well as a poet. He left behind him a review of dramatic poetry, entitled “Libri Didascalion,” “Roman Annals,” in verse, and two other works—“Libri Pragmaticon,” and “Parerga.” The former of these is quoted by Nonius, and A. Gellius. He died at an advanced age, probably about A. U. C. 670, and is thus a link, as it were, which connects the first literary period with the age of Cicero; for the great orator was personally acquainted with him, and at his death must have been about twenty-two years of age.
With Attius Latin tragedy disappeared. The tragedies of the third period were written expressly for reading and recitation, and not for the stage. They may have deserved the commendations which they obtained, but the merit and talent which they displayed were simply rhetorical, and not dramatic; they were dramatic poems, not dramas.
The state of political affairs, which synchronized with the death of Attius, was less congenial than ever to the tragic muse. Real and bloody tragedies were being enacted, and there was no room in the heart of the Roman people for fictitious woes. If it was improbable that a people who delighted in the sanguinary scenes of the amphitheatre should sympathize with the sorrows of a hero in tragedy, it was almost impossible that tragedy should flourish when Rome itself was a theatre in which scenes of horror were daily enacted.
Either then, or not long before, the terrible domination of Cinna and Marius had begun. Massacre and violence raged through the streets of Rome. The best and noblest fell victims to the raging thirst for blood. The aged Marius, distracted by unscrupulous ambition and savage passions, died amidst the delirious ravings of remorse, and thus made way for the tyranny of his perjured accomplice Cinna. Still there was no respite or interruption. The cruel Sulla sent his orders from Antemnæ to slaughter 8,000 prisoners in cold blood. The massacre had hardly begun when he himself arrived, had taken his place in the Senate; and the shrieks of his murdered victims were audible in the house whilst he was coolly speaking. This was the beginning of horrors: the notorious proscription followed. Besides other victims, 5,600 Roman knights perished.
Amidst such scenes as these, the voice of the tragic muse was hushed. Depending for her very existence on the breath of popular favour, she necessarily could not find supporters, and so languished and was silenced. It might appear surprising that literature of any kind should have lived through such times of savage barbarism. But other literature is not dependent upon public patronage: it finds a refuge beneath the shelter of the private dwelling. The literary man finds friends and patrons amongst those who, devoted to the humanities of intellectual pursuits, shuns the scenes of revolutionary strife and the struggles of selfish ambition. Even Sulla himself had a polished and refined taste; and, when he resigned the Dictatorship, passed those hours of retirement in literary studies which were not devoted to depravity and licentiousness.
The style in which the Roman theatres were built, indicate that whatever taste for tragedy the Roman people possessed had now decayed. The huge edifice erected by Pompey was too vast for the exhibition of tragedy. The forty thousand spectators which it contained could scarcely hear the actor, still less could they see the expression of human passions and emotions. The two theatres, placed on pivots, back to back, so that they could be wheeled round and form one vast amphitheatre, show how an interest in the drama was shared with the passion for spectacle; and provision was thus publicly made for gratifying that corrupt taste which had arrived at its zenith in the time of Horace, and, as we have seen, interrupted even comedy so early as the times of Terence.
The invention of satire is universally attributed to the Romans, and this assertion is true as far as the external form is concerned; but the spirit of satire is found in many parts of the literature of Greece. It animated the Homeric Margites, the poem on woman by Simonides, the bitter lyrical iambics of Archilochus, Stesichorus’ attack on Helen, and especially, as Horace says, the old comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes. Some resemblance may also be discerned between Roman satire and the Greek Silli, poems belonging to the declining period of Greek literature,[276] the design of which was to attack vice and folly with severe ridicule.[277]
Satire is, in fact, if Horace may be believed, the form which comedy took amongst the people with whom the drama did not flourish. Ennius was the inventor of the name, but Lucilius[278] was the father of satire, in the proper sense, and was at Rome what the writers of the old comedy were at Athens. It subsequently occupied a wider field: Persius and Juvenal confined themselves to its didactic purpose, but Horace made it a vehicle for the narration of amusing adventure, and picturesque descriptions of human life.
The Satires of Lucilius mark an era in Roman literature, and prove that a love for this species of poetry had already made great progress. Hitherto, science, literature, and art, had been considered the province of slaves and freedmen. The stern old Roman virtue despised such sedentary and inactive employment as intellectual cultivation, and thought it unworthy of the warrior and statesman. Some of the higher classes loved literature and patronised it, but did not make it their pursuit. Cato blamed M. Fulvius Nobilior for being accompanied by poets when he proceeded to his provincial government,[279] and did not until advanced in years undertake to study Greek.[280] C. Lucilius was by birth of equestrian rank, the first Roman knight who was himself a poet.[281] He was born at Suessa Aurunca, B. C. 148,[282] and lived to the age of forty-six years.[283] At fourteen, he served under Scipio at the siege of Numantia.[284] He was the maternal great-uncle of Pompey, and numbered amongst his friends and patrons, Africanus and Lælius. His Satires were comprised in thirty books, of which the first twenty and the thirtieth were written in hexameters, the rest in iambics or trochaics. Numerous fragments are still extant, some of considerable length. The Satires were probably arranged according to their subject-matter; for those in the first book are on topics connected with religion, whilst those in the ninth treat of literary and grammatical criticism. His versification is careless and unrefined; very inferior in this respect to that of his predecessors. He sets at defiance the laws of prosody, and almost returns to the usage of that period in which the ear was the only judge.
The prejudices of Horace[285] against the ancient Roman literature render him an unsafe guide in criticism. Even in his own time his attacks were considered by some indefensible; but his strictures on the style of Lucilius are not undeserved; it was unmusical, affected, and incorrect. His sentences are frequently ill-arranged, and therefore deficient in perspicuity. His mixture of Greek and Latin expressions, without that skill and art with which Horace considered it allowable to enrich the vernacular language, is itself offensive to good taste, and is rendered still more disagreeable by unnecessary diminutives and forced alliteration. On these grounds, and on these alone, he merits the contemptuous criticism of Horace.
His real defect was want of facility; and it is not improbable that, if prose had been considered a legitimate vehicle, he would have preferred pouring forth in that unrestricted form his indignant eloquence, rather than that, as Horace says, every verse should have cost him many scratchings of the head, and biting his nails to the quick. Whilst the criticism of Horace errs on the side of severity, that of Cicero[286] is somewhat too partial: firstly, because he himself was deficient in poetical facility; secondly, because in his time there were no models of perfection wherewith to compare the works of Lucilius. The judgment of Quintilian[287] is moderate; and although the taste for poetry was then corrupted by a love of quietness and rhetorical affectation, the praise is well merited which he bestows on the frank honesty and biting wit of the Satires of Lucilius. As he took the writers of old Attic comedy for his models, it cannot be a matter of surprise that he occasionally added force to his attacks on vice by coarseness and personality. Like them, if Lucilius found any one who deserved rebuke for his crimes, he did not trouble himself to make general remarks, and to attack vice in the abstract, but to illustrate his principles by living examples.
The education of Lucilius had probably been desultory, and his course of study not sufficiently strict to give the rich young Roman knight the accurate training, the critical knowledge, necessary to make him a poet as well as a satirist. It had given him learning and erudition—it had furnished him with the wealth of two languages, both of which he used whenever he thought they supplied him with a two-edged weapon—but it had not sufficiently cultivated his ear and refined his taste. On the other hand, his Satires must have possessed nobler qualities than those of style. He was evidently a man of high moral principle, though stern and stoical, devotedly attached to the cause of virtue, a relentless enemy of vice and profligacy, a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty. He must have felt with Juvenal, “difficile est satiram non scribere.” He was under an obligation which he could not avoid. What cared he for correct tetrameters, or heroics, or senarii, so that he could crush effeminacy, and gluttony, and self-indulgence, and restore the standard of ancient morals, to which he looked back with admiration?
This chivalrous devotion inspired him with eloquence, and gave a dignity to his rude verses, although it did not invest them with the graces and charms of poetry. Nor is it only when he declares open war against corruption that he must have made his adversaries tremble, or his victims, conscience-stricken, writhe beneath his knife. His encomiums upon virtue form as striking pictures; but in both it is the masterly outline of the drawing which amazes and instructs, not the mere accessory of the colouring. See, for example, the following noble passage, with its unselfish conclusion, preserved by Lactantius:[288]—
Had they been extant, we should have found useful information and instruction in his faithful pictures of Roman life and manners in their state of moral transition—amusement in such pieces as his journal of a progress from Rome to Capua, from which Horace borrowed the idea of his journey to Brundisium, whilst in his love poems, addressed to his mistress, Collyra, we should have traced the tender sympathies of human nature, which the sternness of stoicism was unable to overcome.
Besides satire, Lucilius is said to have attempted lyric poetry: if this be the case, it is by no means surprising that no specimens have stood the test of time, for he possessed none of the qualifications of a lyric poet.
After the death of Lucilius, satire languished. Varro Atacinus attempted it and failed.[289] Half a century subsequently it assumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put forth its original vigour in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.
This literary period was entirely destitute of lyric poetry, unless Niebuhr is correct in supposing that Lævius flourished contemporaneously with Lucilius.[290] Nothing is known of his history; and such uncertainty prevails respecting him that his name is constantly confounded with those of Livius and Nævius. It is not improbable, that some passages attributed to them, which appear to belong to a later literary age, are, in reality, the work of Lævius—for example, the hexameters which are found in the Latin Odyssey of Livius. He translated the Cyprian poems, and wrote some fugitive amatory pieces entitled Erotopægnia. They seem to have possessed neither the graceful simplicity nor the tender warmth which are essential to lyric poetry, although they perhaps attained as great elegance of expression as the state of the language then admitted. Short fragments are preserved by Apuleius and in the Noctes Atticæ of A. Gellius.[291]
Prose was far more in accordance with the genius of the Romans than poetry. As a nation they had little or no ideality or imaginative power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, no acute perception of the sympathy and relation existing between man and the external world. In the Greek mind a love of country and a love of nature held a divided empire—they were poets as well as patriots. Roman patriotism had indeed its dark side—an unbounded lust of dominion, an unscrupulous ambition to extend the power and glory of the republic; but, nevertheless, it prompted a zealous devotion to whatever would promote national independence and social advancement. Statesmanship, therefore, and the subjects akin to it, constituted the favourite civil pursuit of an enlightened Roman, who sought a distinguished career of public usefulness; and, therefore, that literature which tended to advance the science of social life had a charm for him which no other literature possessed.
The branches of knowledge which would engage his attention were History, Jurisprudence, and Oratory. They would be studied with a view to utility, and in a practical spirit they would require a scientific and not an artistic treatment; and, therefore, their natural language would be prose and not poetry. As matter was more valued than manner by this utilitarian people, it was long before it was thought necessary to embellish prose literature with the graces of composition. The earliest orators spoke with a rude and vigorous eloquence which is always captivating: they wrote but little; their style was stiff and dry, and very inferior to their speaking. Cato’s prose was less rugged than that of his contemporaries or even his immediate successors. Sisenna was the first historian to whom gracefulness and polish have been attributed; and C. Gracchus is spoken of as a single exception to the orators of his age, on account of the rhythmical modulation of his prose sentences—a quality which he probably owed not more to a delicate ear than to the softening influence of a mother’s education. Even the prose of that celebrated model of refinement and good taste, C. Lælius, was harsh and unmusical.[292]
Besides the influence which the practical character of the Roman mind exercised upon prose writing, it must not be forgotten that Roman literature was imitative: its end and object, therefore, were not invention, but erudition; it depended for its existence on learning, and was almost synonymous with it. This principle gave a decidedly historical bias to the Roman intellect: an historical taste pervades a great portion of the national literature. There is a manifest tendency to study subjects in an historical point of view. It will be seen hereafter that it is not like the Greek, original and inventive, but erudite and eclectic. The historic principle is the great characteristic feature of the Roman mind; consequently, in this branch of literature, the Romans attained the highest reputation, and may fairly stand forth as competitors with their Greek instructors. Not that they ever entirely equalled them; for though they were practical, vigorous, and just thinkers, they never attained that comprehensive and philosophical spirit which distinguished the Greek historians.
The work of an historian was, in the earliest times, recognised as not unworthy of a Roman. It was not like the other branches of literature, in which the example was first set by slaves and freedmen. Those who first devoted themselves to the pursuit were also eminent in the public service of their country. Fabius Pictor was of an illustrious patrician family. Cincius Alimentus, Fulvius Nobilior, and others, were of free and honourable birth. Such were Roman historians until the time of Sulla; for L. Otacilius Pilitus, who flourished at that period, was the first freedman who began to write history.[293][294]
Again, the science of jurisprudence formed an indispensable part of statesmanship. It was a study which recommended itself by its practical nature: it could not be stigmatized even by the busiest as an idle and frivolous pursuit, whilst the constitutional relation which subsisted between patron and client, rendered the knowledge of its principles, to a certain extent, absolutely necessary. Protection from wrong was the greatest boon which the strong could confer upon the weak, the learned on the unlearned. It was, therefore, the most efficacious method of gaining grateful and attached friends; and by their support, the direct path was opened to the highest political positions. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that, even when elegant literature was in its infancy, so many names are found of men illustrious as jurists and lawyers.
Practical statesmanship, in like manner, gave an early encouragement to oratory. It is peculiarly the literature of active life. The possession of eloquence rendered a man more efficient as a soldier and as a citizen. Great as is the force of native, unadorned eloquence, vigorous common sense, honest truthfulness, and indignant passion, nature would give way to art as taste became more cultivated. Nor could the Romans long have the finished models of Greek eloquence before their eyes, without transferring to the forum or the senate-house somewhat of their simple grandeur and majestic beauty.
The first efforts of the Roman historians were devoted to the transfer of the records of poetry into prose, as their more appropriate and popular vehicle. The national lays which tradition had handed down were the storehouses which they ransacked to furnish a supply of materials. As far as the records of authentic history are concerned, they performed the functions of simple annalists: they related events almost in the style of public monuments, without any attempt at ornament, without picturesque detail or political reflection. When Cicero compares the style of Fabius Pictor, Cato, and Piso, to that of the old Greek logographers,[295] Pherecydes, Hellanicus, and Acusilaus, the points of resemblance which he instances are, that both neglected ornament, were careful only that their statements should be intelligible, and thought the chief excellence of a writer was brevity. Probably the subject-matter of the Roman annalists was the more valuable, whilst the Greeks had the advantage in liveliness and skill. Some of the earliest historians wrote in Greek instead of Latin. Even, in later times, such men as Sulla and Lucullus, and also Cn. Aufidius, who flourished during the boyhood of Cicero, wrote their memoirs in a foreign tongue. There was some reason for this. The language in which the higher classes received their education was Greek—the tutors, even the nurses, were Greek, as well as the librarians, secretaries, and confidential servants in most distinguished families. Such was the humanizing spirit of literature that these distinguished foreigners found an asylum in the households of noble Romans, notwithstanding the severity with which the law treated prisoners of war. Fashionable conversation, moreover, was interlarded with Greek phrases, and, in some houses, Greek was habitually spoken. Even so late as the times of Cicero,[296] Greek literature was read and studied in almost every part of the civilized world, while the works of Latin writers were only known within the circumscribed limits of Italy.
The most ancient prose writer of Roman history was Q. Fabius Pictor, the contemporary of Nævius. He belonged to that branch of the noble house of the Fabii, which derived its distinguishing appellation from the eminence of its founder as a painter. The temple of Salus, which he painted, was dedicated B. C. 302, by the dictator, C. Junius Bubulcus; and this oldest known specimen of Roman fine art remained until the conflagration of the temple in the reign of Claudius. It must, therefore, have been subjected to the criticisms of an age capable of forming a correct judgment respecting its merits; and it appears from the testimony of antiquity to have possessed the two essentials of accurate drawing and truthful colouring, and to have been free from the fault of conventional treatment.[297]
The Fabii were an intellectual family as well as a distinguished one: perhaps the numerous records of their exploits which exist were, in some degree, owing to their learning. The grandson of the eminent artist was Fabius Pictor the historian. Livy[298] continually refers to him, and throughout his narrative of the Hannibalian war, he professes implicit confidence in him on the grounds of his being a contemporary historian,[299] (æqualem temporibus hujusce belli;) he is likewise the authority on whom the greatest reliance was placed by Dion Cassius and Appian. Nor did the accurate and faithful Polybius consider him otherwise than trustworthy upon the whole, although he accuses him of partiality towards his countrymen.[300] Niebuhr[301] attributes to Fabius Pictor the accurate knowledge of constitutional history displayed by Dion Cassius, and acknowledges how deeply we are indebted to him for the information which we possess concerning the changes which took place in the Roman constitution. It is to his care that we owe the faithfulness of Dion, whilst Dionysius and Livy too often lead us astray. It constitutes some justification of his partiality as an historian, that Philinus of Agrigentum had also written a history of the first Punic war in a spirit hostile to Rome, and that this provoked Pictor to a defence of his country’s honour. His work was written in Greek, and its principal subject was a history of the first and second Punic wars, especially that against Hannibal. It has been held by some, on the authority of a passage in the “De Oratore” of Cicero,[302] that he wrote in Latin as well as in Greek; but Niebuhr believes that Cicero is in error, and has confused him with a Latin annalist, named F. Max. Servilianus. The period to which his work extended is uncertain; but the last event alluded to by Livy, on his authority, is the battle of Trasymenus,[303] and the last occasion on which he mentions his name is when he records his return from an embassy to Delphi in the following year.[304] The earlier history of Rome was prefixed by way of introduction; for his object was not merely to assist in constructing the rising edifice of Roman literature, but to spread the glory of his country throughout that other great nation of antiquity, which now, for the first time, came in contact with a worthy rival. The pontifical annals, the national ballads, the annals of his own house, so rich in legendary tales of heroism, furnished him with ample materials; but he is also said to have drawn largely on the stores of a Greek author, named Diocles, a native of Peparethus, who had preceded him in the work of research and accumulation.
Contemporary with Fabius was the other annalist of the second Punic war, L. Cincius Alimentus. He was prætor in Sicily[305] in the ninth year of the war, and took a prominent part in it.[306] The soldiers who fought at Cannæ[307] were placed at his disposal, his period of command was prolonged, and after his return home he was sent as legatus to the consul Crispinus, on the occasion of the melancholy death of his colleague, Marcellus.[308] Some time after this, he was taken prisoner by Hannibal.[309] Like Fabius, he wrote his work in Greek, and prefixed to it a brief abstract of early Roman history.[310] Livy speaks of him as a diligent antiquarian, and appeals to his authority to establish the Etruscan origin of the custom of the dictator driving a nail into the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.[311] As his accurate investigation of original monuments gives a credibility to his early history, so his being personally engaged in the war in a high position, renders him trustworthy in the later periods. It is also said that, when he was a prisoner of war, Hannibal, who delighted in the society of literary men, treated him with great kindness and consideration, and himself communicated to him the details of his passage across the Alps into Italy.
To him, therefore, and to the opportunities which he enjoyed of gaining information, we owe the credibility of this portion of Livy’s history[312] on a point on which authors were at variance, namely, the number of Hannibal’s forces at this time. Livy appeals to the statement of Cincius as settling the question, and says, Hannibal himself informed Cincius how many troops he had lost between the passage of the Rhone and his descent into Italy.
His accurate habit of mind must have made his annals a most
valuable work; and, therefore, it was most important that the
variation of his early chronology from that which is commonly
received should be explained and reconciled. This task Niebuhr
has satisfactorily accomplished. He supposes that Cincius took
cyclical years of ten months, which were used previous to the
reign of Tarquinius Priscus, in the place of common years of
twelve months. The time which had elapsed between the
building of Rome and this epoch was, according to the pontifical
annals, 132 years. The error, therefore, due to this miscalculation
would be 132 - 132 + 10
12 = 22 years. If this be added to the
common date of the building of Rome, B. C. 753 = Ol. vii. 2, the
result is the date given by Cincius, namely Ol. vii. 4.[313]
A few words may be devoted to C. Acilius Glabrio, the third representative of the Græco-Roman historic literature. Very little is known respecting him. He was quæstor A. U. C. 551, tribune A. U. C. 557, and subsequently attained senatorial rank; for Gellius[314] relates that, when the three Athenian philosophers visited Rome as ambassadors, Acilius introduced them to the senate and acted as interpreter. His story was considered worthy of translation by an author named Claudius, and to this translation reference is twice made by Livy.[315]
Valuable though the works of these annalists must have been as historical records, and as furnishing materials for more thoughtful and philosophical minds, they are only such as could have existed in the infancy of a national literature. They were a bare compilation of facts, the mere scaffolding and framework of history; they were diversified by no critical remarks or political reflections. The authors made no use of their facts, either to deduce or to illustrate principles. With respect to style, they were meager, insipid, and jejune.
The versatility and variety of talent displayed by Cato claim for him a place amongst orators, jurists, economists, and historians. It is, however, amongst the latter, as representatives of the highest branch of prose literature, that we must speak of the author of the “Origines.” His life extends over a wide and important period of literary history: everything was in a state of change—morals, social habits, literary taste. Not only the influence of Greek literature, but also that of the moral and metaphysical creed of Greek philosophy, was beginning to be felt when Cato’s manly and powerful intellect was flourishing. When he filled the second public office to which the Roman citizen aspired, Nævius was still living. He was censor when Plautus died; and, before his own life ended, the comedies of Terence had been exhibited on the Roman stage.
Three political events took place during his lifetime, which must have exercised an important influence on the mental condition of the Roman people. When Macedonia, at the defeat of Perseus,[316] was reduced to the condition of a Roman province, nearly a thousand Achæans, amongst whom was the historian Polybius, were sent to Rome, and detained in Italy as hostages during nearly seventeen years. The thirteenth year from that event witnessed the dawn of philosophy at Rome, for previously to this epoch, the philosophical schools of Magna Græcia appear to have been unnoticed and disregarded. But now[317] Carneades the academic, Critolaus the peripatetic, and Diogenes the stoic,[318] came to Rome as ambassadors from Athens, and delivered philosophical lectures, which attracted the attention of the leading statesmen, whilst the doctrines which they taught excited universal alarm. The following year Crates arrived as ambassador from Attalus, king of Pergamus, and during his stay delighted the literary society of the capital with commentaries on the Greek poets.[319] It is not surprising that one who lived through a period during which Greek literature had such favourable opportunities of being propagated by some of its most distinguished professors, sufficiently overcame his prejudices as to learn in his old age the language of a people whom he both hated and despised.
M. Porcius Cato Censorius was born at Tusculum, B. C. 234.[320] His family was of great antiquity, and numbered amongst its members many who were distinguished for their courage in war and their integrity in peace. His boyhood was passed in the healthy pursuits of rural life, at a small Sabine farm belonging to his father; and his mind, invigorated by stern and hardy training, was early directed to the study as well as the practice of agriculture. To this rugged yet honest discipline may be traced the features of his character as displayed in after life, his prejudices as well as his virtues.
He became a soldier at a very early age, B. C. 217, served in the Hannibalian war, was under the command of Fabius Maximus both in Campania and Tarentum, and did good service at the decisive battle of the Metaurus. Between his campaigns he did not seek to exhibit his laurels in the society of the capital, but, like Curius Dentatus and Quintius Cincinnatus, employed himself in the rural labours of his Sabine retirement.
His shrewd remarks and easy conversation, as well as the skill with which he pleaded the causes of his clients before the rural magistracy, soon made his abilities known, and his reputation attracted the notice of one of his country neighbours, L. Valerius Flaccus, who invited him to his town-house at Rome. Owing to the patronage of his noble friend, and his own merits, his rise to eminence as a pleader was rapid. He was a quæstor in B. C. 206, ædile in B. C. 199, prætor the following year, and in B. C. 195 he obtained the consulship, his patron Flaccus being now his colleague. His province was Spain;[321] and, whilst stern and pitiless towards his foes, he exhibited a noble example of self-denying endurance in order to minister to the welfare of his army. At the conclusion of his consulship, he served as legatus in Thrace and Greece; and in B. C. 189 was sent on a civil mission to Fulvius Nobilior in Ætolia.
After experiencing one failure, he was elected censor in B. C. 184; and he had now an opportunity of making a return for the obligations which his earliest patron had conferred upon him; for, by his influence, Flaccus was appointed his colleague. This office was, above all others, suited to his talents; and to his remarkable activity in the discharge of his duties, he owes his fame and his surname.
He had now full scope for displaying his habits of business, his talents for administration, his uncompromising resistance to all luxury and extravagance, his fearlessness in the reformation of abuses: and though he was severe, public opinion bore testimony to his integrity, for he was rewarded with a statue and an inscription. He had now served his country in every capacity, but still he gave himself no rest; advancing age did not weaken his energies; he was always ready as the champion of the oppressed, the advocate of virtue, the punisher of vice. He prosecuted the extortionate governors of his old province, Spain.[322] He pleaded before the senate the cause of the loyal Rhodians.
He caused the courteous dismissal of the three Greek philosophers, because the arguments of Carneades made it difficult to discern what was truth.[323] Although his prejudice against Greeks prevented him sympathizing with the sorrows of the Achæan exiles, he supported the vote for their restoration to their native land. Neither his enemies nor his country would allow him rest. In his eighty-sixth year, he had to defend himself against a capital charge. In his eighty-ninth, he was sent to Africa as one of the arbitrators between the Carthaginians and Massinissa,[324] and in his ninetieth, the year in which he died,[325] his last public act was the prosecution of Galba for his perfidious treatment of the conquered Lusitanians.[326]
Cato loved strife, and his long life was one continued combat. He never found a task too difficult, because difficulty called forth all his energies, and his strong will and invincible perseverance insured success. His inherent love of truth made him hate anything conventional. As a politician, he considered rank valueless, except it depended upon personal merit; and therefore he was an unrelenting enemy of the aristocracy. As a moralist, he indignantly rejected that false gloss of modern fashion which was superseding the old plainness, and which was, in his opinion, the foundation of his country’s glory. In literature, he distrusted and condemned every thing Greek, because he confounded the sentiments of its noblest periods as a nation with those of the degenerate Greeks with whom he came in contact. But, at length, his candid and truthful disposition discovered and confessed his error on this point, and his prejudices gave way before conviction.
Cato, with all his virtues, was a hard-hearted man.[327] He had no amiability, no love, no affection; he did not love right, for he loved nothing; but he had a burning indignation against wrong. This was the mainspring of his conduct. He did not feel for the oppressed, but he declared war against the oppressor. He never could sympathize with living men. In his youth, all his admiration was for the past generation. In his old age, his feeling was that his life had been spent with the past, and he had nothing in common with the present.
As is usually the case with those who live during a period of transition, his feelings were so interested in that past by which his character was formed, that he was incapable of discerning any good whatever in change and progress. For this reason he dreaded the invasion of refinement and civilization. Accustomed to connect virtue and purity with the absence of temptations, he was prepared to take an exaggerated view of the relation between polish and effeminacy, between a taste for the beautiful and luxury.