II. VIRGIL (70-19 B.C.)
PUBLIUS VIRGILIUS, or more correctly, VERGILIUS [1] MARO, was born in the village or district [2] of Andes, near Mantua, sixteen years after the birth of Catullus, of whom he was a compatriot as well as an admirer. [3] As the citizenship was not conferred on Gallia Transpadana, of which Mantua was a chief town, until 49 B.C., when Virgil was nearly twenty-one years old, he had no claim by birth to the name of Roman. And yet so intense is the patriotism which animates his poems, that no other Roman writer, patrician or plebeian, surpasses or even equals it in depth of feeling. It is one proof out of many how completely the power of Rome satisfied the desire of the Italians for a great common head whom they might reverence as the heaven-appointed representative of their race. And it leads us to reflect on the narrow pride of the great city in not earlier extending her full franchise to all those gallant tribes who fought so well for her, and who at last extorted their demand with grievous loss to themselves as to her, by the harsh argument of the sword. To return to Virgil. We learn nothing from his own works as to his early life and parentage. Our chief authority is Donatus. His father, Maro, was in humble circumstances; according to some he followed the trade of a potter. But as he farmed his own little estate, he must have been far removed from indigence, and we know that he was able to give his illustrious son the best education the time afforded. Trained in the simple virtues of the country, Virgil, like Horace, never lost his admiration for the stern and almost Spartan ideal of life which he had there witnessed, and which the levity of the capital only placed in stronger relief. After attending school for some years at Cremona, he assumed at sixteen the manly gown, on the very day to which tradition assigns the death of the poet Lucretius. Some time later (53 B.C.), we find him at Rome studying rhetoric under Epidius, and soon afterwards philosophy under Siro the Epicurean. The recent publication of Lucretius's poem must have invested Siro's teaching with new attractiveness in the eyes of a young author, conscious of genius, but as yet self-distrustful, and willing to humble his mind before the "temple of speculative truth," The short piece, written at this date, and showing his state of feeling, deserves to be quoted:--
"Ite hinc inanes ite rhetorum ampullae... Scholasticorum natio madens pingui:... Tuque o mearum cura, Sexte, curarum Vale Sabine: iam valete formosi. Nos ad beatos vela mittimus portus Magni patentes docta dicta Sironis, Vitamque ab omni vindicabimus cura. Ite hinc Camenae... Dulces Camenae, nam (fatebimur verum) Dulces fuistis: et tamen meas chartas Revisitote, sed pudenter et varo."
These few lines are very interesting, first, as enabling us to trace the poetic influence of Catullus, whose style they greatly resemble, though their moral tone is far more serious; secondly, as showing us that Virgil was in aristocratic company, the names mentioned, and the epithet formosi, by which the young nobles designated themselves, after the Greek kaloi, kalokagathoi, indicating as much; and thirdly, as evincing a serious desire to embrace philosophy for his guide in life, after a conflict with himself as to whether he should give up writing poetry, and a final resolution to indulge his natural taste "seldom and without licentiousness." We can hardly err in tracing this awakened earnestness and its direction upon the Epicurean system to his first acquaintance with the poem of Lucretius. The enthusiasm for philosophy expressed in these lines remained with Virgil all his life. Poet as he was, he would at once be drawn to the theory of the universe so eloquently propounded by a brother-poet. And in all his works a deep study of Lucretius is evidenced not only by imitations of his language, but by frequent adoption of his views and a recognition of his position as the loftiest attainable by man. [4] The young Romans at this time took an eager interest in the problems which philosophy presents, and most literary men began their career as disciples of the Lucretian theory. [5] Experience of life, however, generally drew them away from it. Horace professed to have been converted by a thunder-clap in a clear sky; this was no doubt irony, but it is clear that in his epistles he has ceased to be an Epicurean. Virgil, who in the Eclogues and Georgics seems to sigh with regret after the doctrines he fears to accept, comes forward in the Aeneid as the staunch adherent of the national creed, and where he acts the philosopher at all, assumes the garb of a Stoic, not an Epicurean. But he still desired to spend his later days in the pursuit of truth; it seemed as if he accepted almost with resignation the labours of a poet, and looked forward to philosophy as his recompense and the goal of his constant desire. [6] We can thus trace a continuity of interest in the deepest problems, lasting throughout his life, and, by the sacrifice of one side of his affections, tinging his mind with that subtle melancholy so difficult to analyse, but so irresistible in its charm. The craving to rest the mind upon a solid ground of truth, which was kept in abeyance under the Republic by the incessant calls of active life, now asserted itself in all earnest characters, and would not be content without satisfaction. Virgil was cut off before his philosophical development was completed, and therefore it is useless to speculate what views he would have finally espoused. But it is clear that his tone of mind was in reality artistic and not philosophical. Systems of thought could never have had real power over him except in so far as they modified his conceptions of ideal beauty: he possessed neither the grasp nor the boldness requisite for speculative thought; all ideas as they were presented to his mind were unconsciously transfused into materials for effects of art. And the little poem which has led to these remarks seems to enshrine in the outpourings of an early enthusiasm the secret of that divided allegiance between his real and his fancied aptitudes, which impels the poet's spirit, while it hears the discord, to win its way into the inner and more perfect harmony.
After the battle of Philippi (42 B.C.) he appears settled in his native district cultivating pastoral poetry, but threatened with ejection by the agrarian assignations of the Triumvirs. Pollio, who was then Prefect of Gallia Transpadana, interceded with Octavian, and Virgil was allowed to retain his property. But on a second division among the veterans, Varus having now succeeded to Pollio, he was not so fortunate, but with his father was obliged to fly for his life, an event which he has alluded to in the first and ninth Eclogues. The fugitives took refuge in a villa that had belonged to Siro, [7] and from this retreat, by the advice of his friend Cornelius Gallus, he removed to Rome, where, 37 B.C., he published his Eclogues. These at once raised him to eminence as the equal of Varius, though in a different department; but even before their publication he had established himself as an honoured member of Maecenas's circle. [8] The liberality of Augustus and his own thrift enabled him to live in opulence, and leave at his death a very considerable fortune. Among other estates he possessed one in Campania, at or near Naples, which from its healthfulness and beauty continued till his death to be his favourite dwelling-place. It was there that he wrote the Georgics, and there that his bones were laid, and his tomb made the object of affectionate and even religious veneration. He is not known to have undertaken more than one voyage out of Italy; but that contemplated in the third Ode of Horace may have been carried out, as Prof. Sellar suggests, for the sake of informing himself by personal observation about the localities of the Aeneid; for it seems unlikely that the accurate descriptions of Book III. could have been written without some such direct knowledge. The rest of his life presents no event worthy of record. It was given wholly to the cultivation of his art, except in so far as he was taken up with scientific and antiquarian studies, which he felt to be effectual in elevating his thought and deepening his grasp of a great subject. [9] The Georgics were composed at the instance of Maecenas during the seven years 37-30 B.C., and read before Augustus the following year. The Aeneid was written during the remaining years of his life, but was left unfinished, the poet having designed to give three more years to its elaboration. As is well known, it was saved from destruction and given to the world by the emperor's command, contrary to the poet's dying wish and the express injunctions of his will. He died at Brundisium (19 B.C.) at the comparatively early age of 51, of an illness contracted at Megara, and aggravated by a too hurried return. The tour on which he had started was undertaken from a desire to see for himself the coasts of Asia Minor which he had made Aeneas visit. Such was the life and such the premature death of the greatest of Roman bards.
Even those who have judged the poems of Virgil most unfavourably speak of his character in terms of warmest praise. He was gentle, innocent, modest, and of a singular sweetness of disposition, which inspired affection even where it was not returned, and in men who rarely showed it. [10] At the same time he is described as silent and even awkward in society, a trait which Dante may have remembered when himself taunted with the same deficiency. His nature was pre-eminently a religious one. Dissatisfied with his own excellence, filled with a deep sense of the unapproachable ideal, he reverenced the ancient faith and the opinions of those who had expounded it. This habit of mind led him to underrate his own poetical genius and to attach too great weight to the precedents and judgment of others. He seems to have thought no writer so common-place as not to yield some thought that he might make his own; and, like Milton, he loves to pay the tribute of a passing allusion to some brother poet, whose character he valued, or whose talent his ready sympathy understood. In an age when licentious writing, at least in youth, was the rule and required no apology, Virgil's early poems are conspicuous by its almost total absence; while the Georgics and Aeneid maintain a standard of lofty purity to which nothing in Latin, and few works in any literature, approach. His flattery of Augustus has been censured as a fault; but up to a certain point it was probably quite sincere. His early intimacy with Varius, the Caesarian poet, and possibly the general feeling among his fellow provincials, may have attracted him from the first to Caesar's name; his disposition, deeply affected by power or greatness, naturally inclined him to show loyalty to a person; and the spell of success when won on such a scale as that of Augustus doubtless wrought upon his poetical genius. Still, no considerations can make us justify the terms of divine homage which he applies in all his poems, and with every variety of ornament, to the emperor. Indeed, it would be inconceivable, were it not certain, that the truest representative of his generation could, with the approbation of all the world, use language which, but a single generation before, would have called forth nothing but scorn.
Virgil was tall, dark, and interesting-looking, rather than handsome; his health was delicate, and besides a weak digestion, [11] he suffered like other students from headache. His industry must, in spite of this, have been extraordinary; for he shows an intimate acquaintance not only with all that is eminent in Greek and Latin literature, but with many recondite departments of ritual, antiquities, and philosophy, [12] besides being a true interpreter of nature, an excellence that does not come without the habit as well as the love of converse with her. Of his personal feelings we know but little, for he never shows that unreserve which characterises so many of the Roman writers; but he entertained a strong and lasting friendship for Gallus, [13] and the force and truth of his delineations of the passion of love seem to point to personal experience. Like Horace, he never married, and his last days are said to have been clouded with regret for the unfinished condition of his great work.
The early efforts of Virgil were chiefly lyric and elegiac pieces after the manner of Catullus, whom he studied with the greatest care, and two short poems in hexameters, both taken from the Alexandrines, called Culex and Moretum, of which the latter alone is certainly, the formerly possibly, genuine. [14] Among the short pieces called Catalecta we have some of exquisite beauty, as the dedicatory prayer to Venus and the address to Siro's villa; [15] others show a vein of invective which we find it hard to associate with the gentle poet; [16] others, again, are parodies or close imitations of Catullus; [17] while one or two [18] are proved by internal evidence to be by another hand than Virgil's. The Copa, "Mine Hostess," which closes the series, reminds us of Virgil in its expression, rhythm, and purity of style, but is far more lively than anything we possess of his. It is an invitation to a rustic friend to put up his beast and spend the hot hours in a leafy arbour where wine, fruits, and goodly company wait for him. We could wish the first four lines away, and then the poem would be a perfect gem. Its clear joyous ring marks the gay time of youth; its varied music sounds the prelude to the metrical triumphs that were to come, and if it is not Virgil's, we have lost in its author a genre poet of the rarest power.
The Moretum is a pleasing idyll, describing the daily life of the peasant Simplus, translated probably from the Greek of Parthenius. On it Teuffel says, "Suevius had written a Moretum, and it is not improbable that the desire to surpass Suevius influenced Virgil in attempting the same task again." [19] Trifling as this circumstance is, nothing that throws any light on the growth of Virgil's muse can be wanting in interest. Virgil was not one of those who startle the world by their youthful genius. His soul was indeed a poet's from the first, but the rich perfection of his verse was not developed until after years of severe labour, self-correction, and even failure. He began by essaying various styles; he gradually confined himself to one; and in that one he wrought unceasingly, always bringing method to aid talent, until, through various grades of immaturity, he passed to a perfection peculiarly his own, in which thought and expression are fused with such exceeding art as to elude all attempts to disengage them. If we can accept the Culex in its present form as genuine, the development of Virgil's genius is shown to us in a still earlier stage. Whether he wrote it at sixteen or twenty-six (and to us the latter age seems infinitely the more probable), it bears the strongest impress of immaturity. It is true the critics torment us by their doubts. Some insist that it cannot be by Virgil. Their chief arguments are derived from the close resemblances (which they regard as imitations) to many passages in the Aeneid; but of these another, and perhaps a more plausible, explanation may be given. The hardest argument to meet is that drawn from the extraordinary imperfection of the plot, which mars the whole consistency of the poem; [20] but even this is not incompatible with Virgil's authorship. For all ancient testimony agrees in regarding the Culex of Virgil as a poem of little merit. [21] Amid the uncertainty which surrounds the subject, it seems best not to disturb the verdict of antiquity, until better grounds are discovered for assigning our present poem to a later hand. To us the evidence seems to point to the Virgilian authorship. The defect in the plot marks a fault to which Virgil certainly was prone, and which he never quite cast off. [22] The correspondences with the mythology, language, and rhythm of Virgil are just such as might be explained by supposing them to be his first opening conceptions on these points, which assumed afterwards a more developed form. [23] And this is the more probable because Virgil's mind created with labour, and cast and re-cast in the crucible of reflection ideas of which the first expression suggested itself in early life. Thus we find in the Aeneid similes which had occurred in a less finished form in the Georgics; in both Georgics and Aeneid phrases or cadences which seem to brood over and strive to reproduce half-forgotten originals wrought out long before. Nothing is more interesting in tracing Virgil's genius, than to note how each fullest development of his talent subsumes and embraces those that had gone before it; how his mind energises in a continuous mould, and seems to harp with almost jealous constancy on strings it has once touched. The deeper we study him, the more clearly is this feature seen. Unlike other poets who throw off their stanzas and rise as if freed from a load, Virgil seems to carry the accumulated burden of his creations about with him. He imitates himself with the same elaborate assimilation by which he digests and reproduces the thoughts of others.
It is probable that Virgil suppressed all his youthful poetry, and intended the Eclogues to be regarded as the first-fruits of his genius. [24] The pastoral had never yet been cultivated at Rome. Of all the products of later Greece none could vie with it in truth to nature. Its Sicilian origin bespoke a fresh inspiration, for it arose in a land where the muse of Hellas still lingered. Theocritus's vivid delineation of country scenes must have been full of charm to the Romans, and Virgil did well to try to naturalise it. Not even his matchless grace, however, could atone for the want of reality that pervades an imported type of art. Sicilian shepherds, Roman literati, sometimes under a rustic disguise, sometimes in their own person; a landscape drawn, now from the vales round Syracuse, now from the poet's own district round Mantua; playful contests between rural bards interspersed with panegyrics on Julius Caesar and the patrons or benefactors of the poet; a continual mingling of allegory with fiction, of genuine rusticity with assumed courtliness; such are the incongruities which lie on the very surface of the Eclogues. Add to these the continual imitations, sometimes sinning against the rules of scholarship, [25] which make them, with all their beauties, by far the least original of Virgil's works, the artificial character of the whole composition; and the absence of that lofty self-consciousness on the poet's part [26] which lends so much fire to his after works: and it may seem surprising that the Eclogues have been so much admired. But the fact is, their irresistible charm outweighs all the exceptions of criticism. While we read we become like Virgil's own shepherd; we cannot choose but surrender ourselves to the magic influence:
"Tale tuum carmen nobis, divine poeta, Quale sopor fessis in gramine, quale per herbam Dulcis aquae saliente sitim restinguere rivo." [27]
This charm is due partly to the skill with which the poet has blended reality with allegory, fancy with feeling, partly to the exquisite language to which their music is attuned. The Latin language had now reached its critical period of growth, its splendid but transitory epoch of ripe perfection. Literature had arrived at that second stage of which Conington speaks, [28] when thought finds language no longer as before intractable and inadequate, but able to keep pace with and even assist her movements. Trains of reflection are easily awakened; a diction matured by reason and experience rivals the flexibility or sustains the weight of consecutive thought. It is now that an author's mind exhibits itself in its most concrete form, and that the power of style is first fully felt. But language still occupies its proper place as a means and not an end; the artist does not pay it homage for its own sake; this is reserved for the next period when the meridian is already past.
It has already been said that the Georgics were undertaken at the request of Maecenas. [29] From more than one passage in the Eclogues we should infer that Virgil was not altogether content with the light themes he was pursuing; that he had before his mind's eye dim visions of a great work which should give full scope to the powers he felt within him. But Virgil was deficient in self-reliance. He might have continued to trifle with bucolic poetry, had not Maecenas enlisted his muse in a practical object worthy of its greatness. This was the endeavour to rekindle the old love of husbandry which had been the nurse of Rome's virtue, and which was gradually dying out. To this object Virgil lent himself with enthusiasm. To feel that his art might be turned to some real good, that it might advance the welfare of the state, this idea acted on him like an inspiration. He was by early training well versed in the details of country life. And he determined that nothing which ardour or study could effect should be wanting to make his knowledge at once thorough and attractive. For seven years he wrought into their present artistic perfection the technical details of husbandry; a labour of love wrought out of study and experience, and directed, as Merivale well says, to the glorification of labour itself as the true end of man.
Virgil's treatment is partially adapted from the Alexandrines; but, as he himself says, his real model is Hesiod. [30] The combination of quaint sententiousness with deep enthusiasm, which he found in the old poet, met his conception of what a practical poem should be. And so, although the desultory maxims of the Works and Days give but a faint image of the comprehensive width and studied discursiveness of the Georgics, yet they present a much more real parallel to it than the learned trifling of Aratus or Nicander. For Virgil, like Lucretius, is no trifler: he uses verse as a serious vehicle for impressing his conviction; he acknowledges, so to say, the responsibility of his calling, [31] and writes in poetry because poetry is the clothing of his mind. Hence the Georgics must be ranked as a link in the chain of serious treatises on agriculture, of which Cato's is the first and Varro's the second, designed to win the nation back to the study and discipline of its youth. And that Columella so understood it is clear both from his defending his opinions by frequent quotation from it as a standard authority, and from his writing one book of his voluminous manual in verses imitated from Virgil. The almost religious fervour with which Virgil threw himself into the task of arresting the decay of Italian life, which is the dominant motive of the Aeneid, is present also in the Georgics. The pithy condensation of useful experience characteristic of Cato,
"Utiliumque sagax rerum et divina futuri Sortilegis non discrepuit sententia Delphis," [32]
the fond antiquarianism of Varro, "laudator temporis acti," unite, with the newly-kindled hope of future glories to be achieved under Caesar's rule, to make the Georgics the most complete embodiment of Roman industrial views, as the Aeneid is of Roman theology and religion. [33] Virgil aims at combining the stream of poetical talent, which had come mostly from outside, [34] with the succession of prose compositions on practical subjects which had proceeded from the burgesses themselves. Cato and Varro are as continually before his mind as Ennius, Catullus, and Lucretius. A new era had arrived: the systematising of the results of the past he felt was committed to him. Of Virgil's works the Georgics is unquestionably the most artistic. Grasp of the subject, clearness of arrangement, evenness of style, are all at their highest excellence; the incongruities that criticism detects in the Eclogues, and the unrealities that often mar the Aeneid, are almost wholly absent. There is, however, one great artistic blemish, for which the poet's courage, not his taste, is to blame. We have already spoken of his affection for Gallus, celebrated in the most extravagant but yet the most ethereally beautiful of the Eclogues; [35] and this affection, unbroken by the disgrace and exile of its object, had received a yet more splendid tribute in the episode which closed the Georgics. Unhappily, the beauties of this episode, so honourable to the poet's constancy, are to us a theme for conjecture only; the narrow jealousy of Augustus would not suffer any honourable mention of one who had fallen under his displeasure; and, to his lasting disgrace, he ordered Virgil to erase his work. The poet weakly consented, and filled up the gap by the story, beautiful, it is true, but singularly inappropriate, of Aristacus and Orpheus and Eurydice. This epic sketch, Alexandrine in form but abounding in touches of the richest native genius, [36] must have revealed to Rome something of the loftiness of which Virgil's muse was capable. With a felicity and exuberance scarcely inferior to Ovid, it united a power of awakening feeling, a dreamy pathos and a sustained eloquence, which marked its author as the heir of Homer's lyre, "magnae spes altera Romae." [37]
In a work like this it would be obviously out of place to offer any minute criticism either upon the beauties or the difficulties of the Georgics. We shall conclude this short notice with one or two remarks on that love of nature in Latin poetry of which the Georgics are the most renowned example. Dunlop has called Virgil a landscape painter. [38] In so far as this implies a faithful and picturesque delineation of natural scenes, whether of movement or repose, [39] the criticism is a happy one: Virgil lingers over these with more affection than any previous writer. The absence of a strong feeling for the peaceful or the grand in nature has often been remarked as a shortcoming of the Greek mind, and it does not seem to have been innate even in the Italian. Alpine scenery suggested no associations but those of horror and desolation. Even the more attractive beauties of woods, rills, and flowers, were hailed rather as a grateful exchange from the turmoil of the city than from a sense of their intrinsic loveliness; it is the repose, the comfort, ease, in a word the body, not the spirit of nature that the Roman poets celebrate. [40] As a rule their own retirement was not spent amid really rustic scenes. The villas of the great were furnished with every means of making study or contemplation attractive. Rich gardens, cool porticoes, and the shade of planted trees were more to the poet's taste than the rugged stile or the village green. Their aspirations after rural simplicity spring from the weariness of city unrealities rather than from the necessity of being alone with nature. As a fact the poems of Virgil were not composed in a secluded country retreat, but in the splendid and fashionable vicinity of Naples. [41] The Lake of Avernus, the Sibyl's cave, and the other scenes so beautifully painted in the Aeneid are all near the spot. From his luxurious villa the poet could indulge his reverie on the simple rusticity of his ancestors or the landscapes famous in the scenery of Greek song. At such times his mind called up images of Greek legend that blended with his delineations of Italian peasant life: [42]
"O ubi campi Spercheiosque, et virginibus bacchata Lacaenis Taygeta; o qui me gelidis in vallibus Haemi Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!"
The very name Tempe, given so often to shady vales, shows the mingled literary and aesthetic associations that entered into the love of rural ease and quiet. The deeper emotion peculiar to modern times, which struggles to find expression in the verse of Shelley or Wordsworth, in the canvass of Turner, in the life of restless travel, often a riddle so perplexing to those who cannot understand its source; the mysterious questionings which ask of nature not only what she says to us, but what she utters to herself; why it is that if she be our mother, she veils her face from her children, and will not use a language they can understand--
"Cur natum crudelis tu quoque falsis Ludis imaginibus? Cur dextrae iungere dextram Non datur, et veras audire et reddere voces?"
feelings like these which--though often but obscurely present, it would indeed be a superficial glance that did not read in much of modern thought, however unsatisfactory, in much of modern art, however imperfect --we can hardly trace, or, if at all, only as lightest ripples on the surface, scarcely ruffling the serene melancholy, deep indeed, but self- contained because unconscious of its depth, in which Virgil's poetry flows.
At what time of his life Virgil turned his thoughts to epic poetry is not known. Probably like most gifted poets he felt from his earliest years the ambition to write a heroic poem. He expresses this feeling in the Eclogues [43] more than once; Pollio's exploits seemed to him worthy of such a celebration. [44] In the Georgics he declares that he will wed Caesar's glories to an epic strain, [45] but though the emperor urged him to undertake the subject, which was besides in strict accordance with epic precedent, his mature judgment led him to reject it. [46] Like Milton, he seems to have revolved for many years the different themes that came to him, and, like him, to have at last chosen one which by mounting back into the distant past enabled him to indulge historical retrospect, and gather into one focus the entire subsequent development. As to his aptitude for epic poetry opinions differ. Niebuhr expresses the view of many great critics when he says, "Virgil is a remarkable instance of a man mistaking his vocation; his real calling was lyric poetry; his small lyric poems show that he would have been a poet like Catullus if he had not been led away by his desire to write a great Graeco-Latin poem." And Mommsen, by speaking of "successes like that of the Aeneid" evidently inclines towards the same view. It must be conceded that Virgil's genius lacked heroic fibre, invention, dramatic power. He had not an idea of "that stern joy that warriors feel," so necessary to one who would raise a martial strain. The passages we remember best are the very ones that are least heroic. The funeral games in honour of Anchises, the forlorn queen, the death of Nisus and Euryalus, owe all their charm to the sacrifice of the heroic to the sentimental. Had Virgil been able to keep rigidly to the lofty purpose with which he entered on his work, we should perhaps have lost the episodes which bring out his purest inspiration. So far as his original endowments went, his mind certainly was not cast in a heroic mould. But the counter-balancing qualifications must not be forgotten. He had an inextinguishable enthusiasm for his art, a heart
"Smit with the love of ancient song,"
a susceptibility to literary excellence never equalled, [47] and a spirit responsive to the faintest echo of the music of the ages. [48] The very faculties that bar his entrance into the circle of creative minds enable him to stand first among those epic poets who own a literary rather than an original inspiration. For in truth epic poetry is a name for two widely different classes of composition. The first comprehends those early legends and ballads which arise in a nation's vigorous youth, and embody the most cherished traditions of its gods and heroes and the long series of their wars and loves. Strictly native in its origin, such poetry is the spontaneous expression of a people's political and religious life. It may exist in scattered fragments bound together only by unity of sentiment and poetic inspiration: or it may be welded into a whole by the genius of some heroic bard. But it can only arise in that early period of a nation's history when political combination is as yet imperfect, and scientific knowledge has not begun to mark off the domain of historic fact from the cloudland of fancy and legend. Of this class are the Homeric poems, the Nibelungen Lied, the Norse ballads, the Edda, the Kalewâla, the legends of Arthur, and the poem of the Cid: all these, whatever their differences, have this in common, that they sprang at a remote period out of the earliest traditions of the several peoples, and neither did nor could have originated in a state of advanced civilization. It is far otherwise with the other sort of epics. These are composed amid the complex influences of a highly developed political life. They are the fruit of conscious thought reflecting on the story before it and seeking to unfold its results according to the systematic rules of art. The stage has been reached which discerns fact from fable; the myths which to an earlier age seemed the highest embodiment of truth, are now mere graceful ornaments, or at most faint images of hidden realities. The state has asserted its dominion over man's activity; science, sacred and profane, has given its stores to enrich his mind; philosophy has led him to meditate on his place in the system of things. To write an enduring epic a poet must not merely recount heroic deeds, but must weave into the recital all the tangled threads which bind together the grave and varied interests of civilized man.
It is the glory of Virgil that alone with Dante and Milton he has achieved this; that he stands forth as the expression of an epoch, of a nation. That obedience to sovereign law, [49] which is the chief burden of the Aeneid, stands out among the diverse elements of Roman life as specially prominent, just as faith in the Church's doctrine is the burden of Mediaevalism as expressed in Dante, and as justification of God's dealings, as given in Scripture, forms the lesson of Paradise Lost, making it the best poetical representative of Protestant thought. None of Virgil's predecessors understood the conditions under which epic greatness was possible. His successors, in spite of his example, understood them still less. It has been said that no events are of themselves unsuited for epic treatment, simply because they are modern or historical. [50] This may be true; and yet, where is the poet that has succeeded in them? The early Roman poets were patriotic men; they chose for subjects the annals of Rome, which they celebrated in noble though unskilled verse. Naevius. Ennius, Accius, Hostius, Bibaculus, and Varius before Virgil, Lucan and Silius after him, treated national subjects, some of great antiquity, some almost contemporaneous. But they failed, as Voltaire failed, because historical events are not by themselves the natural subjects of heroic verse. Tasso chose a theme where history and romance were so blended as to admit of successful epic treatment; but such conditions are rare. Few would hesitate to prefer the histories of Herodotus and Livy to any poetical account whatever of the Persian and Punic wars; and in such preference they would be guided by a true principle, for the domain of history borders on and overlaps, but does not coincide with, that of poetry.
The perception of this truth has led many, epic poets to err in the opposite extreme. They have left the region of truth altogether, and confined themselves to pure fancy or legend. This error is less serious than the first; for not only are legendary subjects well adapted for epic treatment, but they may be made the natural vehicle of deep or noble thought. The Orlando Furioso and the Faery Queen are examples of this. But more often the poet either uses his subject as a means for exhibiting his learning or style, as Statius, Cinna, and the Alexandrines; or loses sight of the deeper meaning altogether, and merely reproduces the beauty of the ancient myths without reference to their ideal truth, as was done by Ovid, and recently by Mr. Morris, with brilliant success, in his Earthly Paradise. This poem, like the Metamorphoses, does not claim to be a national epic, but both, by their vivid realization of a mythology which can never lose its charm, hold a legitimate place among the offshoots of epic song.
Virgil has overcome the difficulties and joined the best results of both these imperfect forms. By adopting the legend of Aeneas, which, since the Punic wars, had established itself as one of the firmest national beliefs, [51] he was enabled without sacrificing reality to employ the resources of Homeric art; by tracing directly to that legend the glorious development of Roman life and Roman dominion, he has become the poet of his nation's history, and through it, of the whole ancient world.
The elements which enter into the plan of the Aeneid are so numerous as to have caused very different conceptions of its scope and meaning. Some have regarded it as the sequel and counterpart of the Iliad, in which Troy triumphs over her ancient foe, and Greece acknowledges the divine Nemesis. That this conception was present to the poet is clear from many passages in which he reminds Greece that she is under Rome's dominion, and contrasts the heroes or achievements of the two nations. [52] But it is by no means sufficient to explain the whole poem, and indeed is in contradiction to its inner spirit. For in the eleventh Aeneid [53] Diomed declares that after Troy was taken he desires to have no more war with the Trojan race; and in harmony with this thought Virgil conceives of the two nations under Rome's supremacy as working together by law, art, and science, to advance the human race. [54] Roman talent has made her own all that Greek genius created, and fate has willed that neither race should be complete without the other. The germs of this fine thought are found in the historian Polybius, who dwelt on the grandeur of such a joint influence, and perhaps through his intercourse with the Scipionic circle, gave the idea currency. It is therefore rather the final reconciliation than the continued antagonism that the Aeneid celebrates, though of course national pride dwells on the striking change of relations that time had brought.
Another view of the Aeneid makes it centre in Augustus. Aeneas then becomes a type of the emperor, whose calm calculating courage was equalled by his piety to the gods, and care for public morals. Turnus represents Antony, whose turbulent vehemence (violentia) [55] mixed with generosity and real valour, makes us lament, while we accept his fate. Dido is the Egyptian queen whose arts fell harmless on Augustus's cold reserve, and whose resolve to die eluded his vigilance. Drances, [56] the brilliant orator whose hand was slow to wield the sword, is a study from Cicero; and so the other less important characters have historical prototypes. But there is even less to be said for this view than for the other. It is altogether too narrow, and cannot be made to correspond with, the facts of history, nor do the characters on a close inspection resemble their supposed originals. [57] Beyond doubt the stirring scenes Virgil had as a young man witnessed, suggested points which he has embodied in the story, but the Greek maxim that "poetry deals with universal truth," [58] must have been rightly understood by him to exclude all such dressing-up of historical facts.
There remains the view to which many critics have lent their support, that the Aeneid celebrates the triumph of law and civilization over the savage instincts of man; and that because Rome had proved the most complete civilizing power, therefore it is to her greatness that everything in the poem conspires. This view has the merit of being in every way worthy of Virgil. No loftier conception could guide his verse through the long labyrinth of legend, history, religious and antiquarian lore, in which for ten years of patient study his muse sought inspiration. Still it seems somewhat too philosophical to have been by itself his animating principle. It is true, patriotism had enlarged its basis; the city of Rome was already the world, [59] and the growth of Rome was the growth of human progress. Hence the muse, while celebrating the imperial state, transcends in thought the limits of space and time, and swells, as it were, the great hymn of humanity. But this represents rather the utmost reach of the poet's flight after he has thrown himself into the empyrean than the original definitely conceived goal on which he fixed his mind. We should supplement this view by another held by Macrobius and many Latin critics, and of which Mr. Nettleship, in a recent admirable pamphlet [60] recognises the justice, viz. that the Aeneid was written with a religious object, and must be regarded mainly as a religious poem. Its burning patriotism glows with a religious light. Its hero is "religious" (pius), not "beautiful" or "brave." [61] At the sacrifice even of poetical effect his religious dependence on the gods is brought into prominence. The action of the whole poem hinges on the Divine will, which, is not as in Homer, a mere counterpart of the human, far less is represented as in conflict with resistless destiny, but, cognizant of fate and in perfect union with it, as overruling all lower impulses, divine or human, towards the realization of the appointed end. This Divine Power is Jupiter, whom in the Aeneid he calls by this name as a concession to conventional beliefs, but in the Georgics prefers to leave nameless, symbolised under the title Father. [62] Jupiter is not the Author, but he is the Interpreter and Champion of Destiny (Fata), which lies buried in the realm of the unknown, except so far as the father of the gods pleases to reveal it. [63] Deities of sufficient power or resource may defer but cannot prevent its accomplishment. Juno is represented doing this--the idea is of course from Homer. But Jupiter does not desire to change destiny, even if he could, though he feels compassion at its decrees (e.g. at the death of Turnus). The power of the Divine fiat to overrule human equity is shown by the death of Turnus who has right, and of Dido who has the lesser wrong, on her side. Thus punishment is severed from desert, and loses its higher meaning; the instinct of justice is lost in the assertion of divine power; and while in details the religion of the Aeneid is often pure and noble, its ultimate conceptions of the relation of the human and divine are certainly no advance on those of Homer. The verdict of one who reads the poem from this point of view will surely be that of Sellar, who denies that it enlightens the human conscience. Every form of the doctrine that might is right, however skilfully veiled, as it is in the Aeneid by a thousand beautiful intermediaries, must be classed among the crude and uncreative theories which mark an only half-reflecting people. But when we pass from the philosophy of religion to the particular manifestation of it as a national worship, we find Virgil at his greatest, and worthy to hold the position he held with later ages as the most authoritative expounder of the Roman ritual and creed. [64] He shared the palm of learning with Varro, and sympathy inclined towards the poet rather than the antiquarian. The Aeneid is literally filled with memorials of the old religion. The glory of Aeneas is to have brought with him the Trojan gods, and through perils of every kind to have guarded his faith in them, and scrupulously preserved their worship. It is not the Trojan race as such that the Romans could look back to with pride as ancestors; they are the bis capti Phryges, who are but heaven-sent instruments for consecrating the Latin race to the mission for which it is prepared. "Occidit" says Juno, "occideritque sinas cum nomine Troja:" [65] and Aeneas states the object of his proposal in these words--
"Sacra deosque dabo; socer arma Latinas habeto." [66]
This then being the lofty origin, the immemorial antiquity of the national faith, the moral is easily drawn, that Rome must never cease to observe it. The rites to import which into the favoured land cost heaven itself so fierce a struggle, which have raised that land to be the head of all the earth, must not be neglected now that their promise has been fulfilled. Each ceremony embodies some glorious reminiscence; each minute technicality enshrines some special national blessing.
Here, as in the Georgics, Cato and Varro live in Virgil, but with far less of narrow literalness, with far more of rich enthusiasm. We can well believe that the Aeneid was a poem after Augustus's heart, that he welcomed with pride as well as gladness the instalments which, before its publication, he was permitted to see, [67] and encouraged by unreserved approbation so thorough an exponent of his cherished views. To him the Aeneid breathed the spirit of the old cult. Its very style, like that of Milton from the Bible, was borrowed in countless instances from the Sacred Manuals. When Aeneas offers to the gods four prime oxen (eximios tauros) the pious Roman recognised the words of the ritual. [68] When the nymph Cymodoce rouses Aeneas to be on his guard against danger with the words "Vigilas ne deum gens? Aenea, vigila!" [69] she recalls the imposing ceremony by which, immediately before a war was begun, the general struck with his lance the sacred shields, calling on the god "Mars, vigila!" These and a thousand other allusions caused many of the later commentators to regard Aeneas as an impersonation of the pontificate. This is an error analogous to, but worse than, that which makes him represent Augustus; he is a poetical creation, imperfect no doubt, but still not to be tied to any single definition.
Passing from the religious to the moral aspect of the Aeneid, we find a gentleness beaming through it, strangely contradicted by some of the bloody episodes, which out of deference to Homeric precedent Virgil interweaves. Such are the human sacrifices, the ferocious taunts at fallen enemies, and other instances of boasting or cruelty which will occur to every reader, greatly marring the artistic as well as the moral effect of the hero. Tame as he generally is, a resigned instrument in the divine hands, there are moments when Aeneas is truly attractive. As Conington says, his kindly interest in the young shown in Book V. is a beautiful trait that is all Virgil's own. His happy interview with Evander, where, throwing off the monarch, he chats like a Roman burgess in his country house; his pity for young Lausus whom he slays, and the mournful tribute of affection he pays to Pallas, are touching scenes, which without presenting Aeneas as a hero (which he never is), harmonise far better with the ideal Virgil meant to leave us. But after all said, that ideal is a poor one for purposes of poetry. Aeneas is uninteresting, and this is the great fault of the poem. Turnus enlists our sympathy far more, he is chivalrous and valiant; the wrong he suffers does not harden him, but he lacks strength of character. The only personage who is "proudly conceived" [70] is Mezentius, the despiser of the gods. The absence of restraint seems to have given the poet a more masculine touch; the address of the old king to his horse, his only friend, is full of pathos. Among female characters Camilla is perhaps original; she is graceful without being pleasing. Amata and Juturna belong to the class virago, a term applied to the latter by Virgil himself. [71] Lavinia is the modest maiden, a sketch, not a portrait. Dido is a character for all time, the chef d'oeuvre of the Aeneid. Among the stately ladies of the imperial house --a Livia, a Scribonia, an Octavia, perhaps a Julia--Virgil must have found the elements which he has fused with such mighty power, [72] the rich beauty, the fierce passion, the fixed resolve. Dido is his greatest effort: and yet she is not an individual living woman like Helen or Ophelia. Like Racine, Virgil has developed passions, not created persons. The divine gift of tender, almost Christian, feeling that is his, cannot see into those depths where the inner personality lies hidden. Among the traditional characters few call for remark. The gods maintain on the whole their Homeric attributes, only hardened by time and by a Roman moulding. Venus is, however, touched with magic skill; it may be questioned whether words ever carried such suggestions of surpassing beauty as those in which, twice in the poem, her mystic form [73] is veiled rather than pourtrayed. The characters of Ulysses and Helen bear the debased, unheroic stamp of the later Greek drama; the last spark of goodness has left them, and even his careful study of Homer, seems to have had no effect in opening the poet's eyes to the gross falsification. Where Virgil did not feel obliged to create, he was to the last degree conventional.
A most interesting feature in the Aeneid--and with it we conclude our sketch--is its incorporation of all that was best in preceding poetry. All Roman poets had imitated, but Virgil carried imitation to an extent hitherto unknown. Not only Greek but Latin writers are laid under contribution in every page. Some idea of his indebtedness to Homer may be formed from Conington's commentary. Sophocles and the other tragedians, Apollonius Rhodius and the Alexandrines are continually imitated, and almost always improved upon. And still more is this the case with his adaptations from Naevius, Ennius, Lucretius, Hostius, Furius, &c. whose works he had thoroughly mastered, and stored in his memory their most striking rhythms or expressions. [74] Massive lines from Ennius, which as a rule he has spared to touch, leaving them in all their rugged grandeur planted in the garden of his verse, to point back like giant trees to the time when that garden was a forest, bear witness at once to his reverence for the old bard and to his own wondrous art. It is not merely for literary effect that the old poets are transferred into his pages. A nobler motive swayed him. The Aeneid was meant to be, above all things, a National Poem, carrying on the lines of thought, the style of speech, which National Progress had chosen; it was not meant to eclipse so much us to do honour to the early literature. Thus those bards who like Naevius and Ennius had done good service to Rome by singing, however rudely, her history, find their Imagines ranged in the gallery of the Aeneid. There they meet with the flamens and pontiffs unknown and unnamed, who drew up the ritual formularies, with the antiquarians and pious scholars who had sought to find a meaning in the immemorial names, [75] whether of places or customs or persons; with the magistrates, moralists, and philosophers, who had striven to ennoble or enlighten Roman virtue; with the Greek singers and sages, for they too had helped to rear the towering fabric of Roman greatness. All these meet together in the Aeneid as if in solemn conclave, to review their joint work, to acknowledge its final completion, and predict its impending fall. This is beyond question the explanation of the wholesale appropriation of others' thought and language, which otherwise would be sheer plagiarism. With that tenacious sense of national continuity which had given the senate a policy for centuries, Virgil regards Roman literature as a gradually expanded whole; coming at the close of its first epoch, he sums up its results and enters into its labours. So far from hesitating whether to imitate, he rather hesitated whom not to include, if only by a single reference, in his mosaic of all that had entered into the history of Rome. His archaism is but another side of the same thing. Whether it takes the form of archaeological discussion, [76] of antiquarian allusion, [77] of a mode of narration which recalls the ancient source, [78] or of obsolete expressions, forms of inflection, or poetical ornament, [79] we feel that it is a sign of the poet's reverence for what was at once national and old. The structure of his verse, while full of music, often reminds us of the earlier writers. It certainly has more affinity with that of Lucretius than with that of Lucan. A learned Roman reading the Aeneid would feel his mind stirred by a thousand patriotic associations. The quaint old laws, the maxims and religious formulae he had learnt in childhood would mingle with the richest poetry of Greece and Rome in a stream flowing evenly, and as it would seem, from a single spring; and he who by his art had effected this wondrous union would seem to him the prophet as well as the poet of the era. That art, in spite of its occasional lapses, for we must not forget the work was unfinished, is the most perfect the world has yet seen. The poet's exquisite sense of beauty, the sonorous language he wielded, the noble rivalry of kindred spirits great enough to stimulate but not to daunt him, and the consciousness of living in a new time big with triumphs, as he fondly hoped, for the useful and the good, all united to make Virgil not only the fairest flower of Roman literature, but as the master of Dante, the beloved of all gentle hearts, and the most widely- read poet of any age, to render him an influential contributor to some of the deepest convictions of the modern world.
Appendix
Note I.--Imitations of Virgil in Propertius, Ovid, and Manilius.
The prestige of Virgil made him a subject for imitation even during his lifetime. Just as Carlyle, Tennyson, and other vigorous writers soon create a school, so Virgil stamped the poetical dialect for centuries. But he offered two elements for imitation, the declamatory or rhetorical, which is most prominent in his speeches, and in the second and sixth books; and detached passages showing descriptive imagery, touches of pathos, similes, &c. These last might he imitated without at all unduly influencing the individuality of the imitator's style. In this way Ovid is a great imitator of Virgil; so to a less extent are Propertius, Manilius, and Lucan. Statius and Silius base their whole poetical art on him, and therefore particular instances of imitation throw no additional light on their style. We shall here notice a few of the points in which the Augustan poets copied him:--
(1) In Facts.--Beside the great number of early historical points on which he was followed implicitly, we find even his errors imitated, e.g. the confusion which perhaps in Virgil is only apparent between Pharsalia and Philippi, has, as Merivale remarks, been adopted by Propertius (iv. 10,40), Ovid (M. xv, 824), Manilius (i. 906), Lucan (vii. 854), and Juvenal (viii. 242); not so much from ignorance of the locality as out of deference to Virgilian precedent. The lines may be quoted--Virgil (G. i. 489), Ergo inter se paribus concurrere telis Romanas acies iterum videre Philippi; Propertius, Una Philippeo sanguine inusta nota; Ovid, Emathiaque iterum madefient caede Philippi; Manilius, Arma Philippeos implerunt sanguine campos. Vixque etiam sicca miles Romanus arena Ossa virum lacerosque prius superastitit artus; Lucan, Scelerique secundo Praestatis nondum siccos hoc sanguine campos; Juvenal, Thessaliae campis Octavius abstulit ... famam.... This is analogous to the way in which the satirists use the names consecrated by Lucilius or Horace as types of a vice, and repeat the same symptoms ad nauseam, e.g. the miser who anoints his body with train oil, who locks up his leavings, who picks up a farthing from the road, &c. The veiled allusion to the poet Anser (Ecl. ix. 36) is perhaps recalled by Prop. iii. 32, 83, sqq. So the portents described by Virgil as following on the death of Caesar are told again by Manilius at the end of Bk. I. and referred to by Lucan (Phars. i.) and Ovid. Again, the confusion between Inarime and ein Arimois, into which Virgil falls, is borrowed by Lucan (Phars. v. 101).
(2) In Metre.--As regards metre, Ovid in the Metamorphoses is nearest to him, but differs in several points, He imitates him--(a) in not admitting words of four or more syllables, except very rarely, at the end of the line; (b) in rhythms like vulnificus sus (viii. 358), and the not unfrequent spondetazontes; (c) in keeping to the two caesuras as finally established by him, and avoiding beginnings like scilicet omnibus | est, &c. In all these points Manilius is a little less strict than Ovid, e.g. (i. 35) et veneranda, (iii. 130) sic breviantur, (ii. 716) altribuuntur. He also follows Virgil in alliteration, which Ovid does not. They differ from Virgil in--(a) a much more sparing employment of elision. The reason of this is that elision marks the period of living growth; as soon as the language had become crystallised, each letter had its fixed force, the caprices of common pronunciation no longer influencing it; and although no correct writer places the unelided m before a vowel, yet the great rarity of elision not only of m but of long and even short vowels (except que) shows that the main object was to avoid it, if possible. The great frequency of elision in Virgil must be regarded as an archaism. (b) In a much lesser variety of rhythm. This is, perhaps, rather an artistic defect, but it is designed. Manilius, however, has verses which Virgil avoids, e.g. Delcetique sacerdotes (i. 47), probably as a reminiscence of Lucretius.
Imitations in language are very frequent. Propertius gives ah pereat! qui (i. 17, 13), from the Copa. Again, Sit licet et saxo patientior illa Sicano (i. 16, 29), from the Cyclopia saxa of Aeneid, i. 201; cum tamen (i. 1, 8) with the indic. as twice in Virgil; Umbria me genuit (i. 23, 9), perhaps from the Mantua me genuit of Virgil's epitaph. These might easily be added to. Ovid in the Metamorphoses has a vast number of imitations of which we select the most striking; Plebs habitat diversa locis (i. 193); Navigat, hic summa, &c. (i. 296); cf. Naviget, haec summa est, in the 4th Aeneid; similisque roganti (iii. 240), amarunt me quoque Nymphae (iii. 454); Arma manusque meae, mea, nate, potentia, dixit (v. 365); Heu quantum haec Niobe Niobe distabat ab illa (vi. 273); leti discrimine parvo (vi. 426); per nostri foedera lecti, perque deos supplex oro superosque neosque, Per si quid merui de te bene (vii. 852); maiorque videri (ix. 269). These striking resemblances, which are selected from hundreds of others, show how carefully he had studied him. Of all other poets I have noticed but two or three imitations in him, e.g. multi illum pueri, multae cupiere puellae (iii. 383), from Catullus; et merito, quid enim...? (ix. 585) from Propertius (i. 17). Manilius also imitates Virgil's language, e.g. acuit mortalia corda (i. 79), Acherunta movere (i. 93), molli cervice reflexus (i. 334), and his sentiments in omnia conando docilis solertia vicit (i. 95), compared with labor omnia vicit improbus: invictamque sub Hectore Troiam (i. 766), with decumum quos distulit Hector in annum of the Aeneid; cf. also iv. 122, and litora litoribus regnis contraria regna (iv. 814); cf. also iv. 28, 37.
NOTE II.--On the shortening of final o in Latin poetry.
The fact that in Latin the accent was generally thrown back caused a strong tendency to shorten long final vowels. The one that resisted this tendency best was o, but this gradually became shortened as poetry advanced, and is one of the very few instances of a departure from the standard of quantity as determined by Ennius. There is one instance even in him: Horrida Romuleum certamina pango duellum. The words ego and modo, which from their frequent use are often shortened in the comedians, are generally long in Ennius; Lucretius uses them as common, but retains homo, which after him does not appear. Catullus has one short o, Virro (89, 1), but this is a proper name. Virgil has sci0 (Aen. iii. 602), but ego, homo, when in the arsis, are always elided, e.g. Pulsus ego? aut; Graius homo, infectos. Spondeo which used to be read (Aen. ix, 294), is now changed to sponde. Pollio is elided by Virgil, shortened by Horace (O. II. i. 14). He also has mentio and dixero in the Satires (I. iv. 93, 104). A line by Maecenas, quoted in Suetonius, has diligo. Ovid has cito, puto (Am. iii. vii. 2), but only in such short words; in nouns, Naso often, origo, virgo, once each. Tibullus and Propertius are stricter in this respect, though Propertius has findo (iii. or iv. 8 or 9, 35); Manilius has leo, Virgo (i. 266), Lucan Virgo (ii. 329), pulmo (iii. 644), and a few others. Gratius first gives the imperative reponito (Cyn. 56); Calpurnius, in the the time of Nero, the false quantities quando ambo, the latter (ix. 17) perhaps in a spurious eclogue; so expecto. In Statius no new licenses appear. Juvenal, however, gives vigilando (iii. 232), an improper quantity repeated by Seneca (Tro. 264) vincendo, Nemesianus (viii. 53) mulcendo, (ix. 80), laudano. Juvenal gives also sumito, octo, ergo. The dat. and abl. sing. are the only terminations that were not affected. We see the gradual deterioration of quantity, and are not surprised that even before the time of Claudian a strict knowledge of it was confined to the most learned poets.
NOTE III.--On parallelism in Virgil's poetry.
There is a very frequent feature in Virgil's poetry which we may compare to the parallelism well known as the chief characteristic of Hebrew verse. In that language the poet takes a thought and either repeats it, or varies it, or explains it, or gives its antithesis in a corresponding clause, as evenly as may be balancing the first. As examples we may take--
(1) A mere iteration:
"Why do the nations so furiously rage together? And why do the people imagine a vain thing?"
(2) Contrast:
"A wise son maketh a glad father: But a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother."
This somewhat rude idea of ornament is drawn no doubt from the simplest attempts to speak with passion or emphasis, which naturally turned to iteration or repetition as the obvious means of gaining the effect. Roman poetry, as we have already said, rests upon a primitive and rude basis, the Greek methods of composition being applied to an art arrested before its growth was complete. The fondness for repetition is very prominent. Phrases like somno gravidi vinoque sepulti; indu foro lato, sanctoque senatu, occur commonly in Ennius; and the trick of composition of which they are the simplest instances, is perpetuated throughout Roman poetry. It is in reality rather rhetorical than poetical, and abounds in Cicero. It scarcely occurs in Greek poetry, but is very common in Virgil, _e.g. _:
"Ambo florentes aetatibus, Arcades ambo, Et cantare pares, et respondere parati."
Similar to this is the introduction of corresponding clauses by the same initial word, e.g. ille (Ecl. i. 17):
"Namque erit ille mihi semper deus: illius aram Saepe tener nostris ab ovilibus imbuet agnus. Ille meas errare boves..."
Instances of this construction will occur to every reader. Frequently the first half of the hexameter expresses a thought obscurely which is expressed clearly in the latter half, or vice versa, e.g. (G. iv. 103):
"At quum incerta volant, caeloque examina ludunt."
Again (Aen. iv. 368):
"Nam quid dissimulo, aut quae me ad maiora reservo?"
at times this parallelism is very useful as helping us to find out the poet's meaning, e.g. (Aen. ii. 121):
"Cui fata parent, quem poseat Apollo."
Here interpretations vary between fata, n. to parent, and acc. after it. But the parallelism decides at once in favour of the former "for whom the fates are making preparations; whom Apollo demands." To take another instance (Aen. i. 395):
"Nunc terras ordine longo Aut capere, aut captas, iam despectare videntur."
This passage is explained by its parallelism with another a little further on (v. 400):
"Puppesque tuae plebesque tuorum Aut portum tenet aut pleno subit ostia velo."
Here the word capere is fixed to mean "settling on the ground" by the words portum tenet. Once more in Aen. xii. 725:
"Quem damnet labor, aut quo vergat pondere letum,"
the difficulty is solved both by the iteration in the line itself, by which damnet labor = vergat letum; and also by its close parallelism with another (v. 717), which is meant to illustrate it:
"Mussantque iuvencae Quis nemori imperitet quem tota armenta sequantur."
This feature in Virgil's verse, which might be illustrated at far greater length, reappears under another form in the Ovidian elegiac. There the pentameter answers to the second half of Virgil's hexameter verse, and rings the changes on the line that has preceded in a very similar way. A literature which loves the balanced clauses of rhetoric will be sure to have something analogous. Our own heroic couplet is a case in point. So perhaps is the invention of rhyme which tends to confine the thought within the oscillating limits of a refrain, and that of the stanza, which shows the same process in a much higher stage of complexity.
NOTE IV.--On the Legends connected with Virgil.
Side by side with the historical account of this poet is a mythical one which, even within the early post-classical period, began to gain credence. The reasons of it are to be sought not so much in his poetical genius as in the almost ascetic purity of his life, which surrounded him with a halo of mysterious sanctity. Prodigies are said, in the lives that have come down to us, to have happened at his birth; his mother dreamt she gave birth to a laurel-branch, which grew apace until it filled the country. A poplar planted at his birth suddenly grew into a stately tree. The infant never cried, and was noted for the preternatural sweetness of its temper. When at Naples he is said to have studied medicine, and cured Augustus's horses of a severe ailment. Augustus ordered him a daily allowance of bread, which was doubled on a second instance of his chirurgical knowledge, and trebled on his detecting the true ancestry of a rare Spanish hound! Credited with supernatural knowledge, though he never pretended to it, he was consulted privately by Augustus as to his own legitimacy. By the cautious dexterity of his answer, he so pleased the emperor that he at once recommended him to Pollio as a person to be well rewarded. The mixture of fable and history here is easily observed. The custom of making pilgrimages to his tomb, and in the case of Silius Italicus (and doubtless others too), of honouring it with sacrifices, seems to have produced the belief that he was a great magician. Even as early as Hadrian the Sortes Virgilianae were consulted from an idea that there was a sanctity about the pages of his book; and, as is well known, this superstitious custom was continued until comparatively modern times.
Meanwhile plays were represented from his works, and amid the general decay of all clear knowledge a confused idea sprung up that these stories were inspired by supernatural wisdom. The supposed connection of the fourth Eclogue with the Sibylline Books, and through them, with the sacred wisdom of the Hebrews, of course placed Virgil on a different level from other heathens. The old hymn, "Dies irae dies illa Solvet saeclum cum favilla Teste David cum Sibylla," shows that as early as the eighth century the Sibyl was well established as one of the prophetic witnesses; and the poet, from the indulgence of an obscure style, reaped the great reward of being regarded almost as a saint for several centuries of Christendom. Dante calls him Virtu summa, just as ages before Justinian had spoken of Homer as pater omnis virtutis. But before Dante's time the real Virgil had been completely lost in the ideal and mystic poet whose works were regarded as wholly allegorical.
The conception of Virgil as a magician as distinct from an inspired sage is no doubt a popular one independent of literature, and had originally a local origin near Naples where his tomb was. Foreign visitors disseminated the legend, adding striking features, which in time developed almost an entire literature.
In the Otia Imperialia of Gervasius of Tilbury, we see this belief in formation; the main point in that work is that he is the protector of Naples, defending it by various contrivances from war or pestilence. He was familiarly spoken of among the Neapolitans as Parthenias, in allusion to his chastity. It was probably in the thirteenth century that the connection of Virgil with the Sibyl was first systematically taught, and the legends connected with him collected into one focus. They will be found treated fully in Professor Comparetti's work. We append here a very short passage from the Gesta Romanorum (p. 590), showing the necromantic character which surrounded him:--
"Refert Alexander Philosophus de natura rerum, quod Vergilius in civitate Romana nobile construxit palatium, in cuius medio palatii stabat imago, quae Dea Romana vocabatur. Tenebat enim pomum aureum in manu sua. Per circulum palatii erant imagines cuiuslibet regionis, quae subiectae erant Romano imperio, et quaelibet imago campanam ligneam in manu sua habebat. Cum vero aliqua regio nitebatur Romanis insidias aliquas imponere, statim imago eiusdem regionis campanam suam pulsavit, et miles exivit in equo aeneo in summitate predicti palatii, hastam vibravit, et predictam regionem inspexit. Et ab instanti Romani hoc videntes se armaverunt et predictam regionem expugnaverunt.
"Ista civitas est Corpus Humanum: quinque portae sunt quinque Sensus: Palatium est Anima rationalis, et aureum pomum Similitudo cum Deo. Tria regna inimica sunt Caro, Mundus, Diabolus, et eius imago Cupiditas, Voluptas, Superbia."
The above is a good instance both of the supernatural powers attributed to the poet, and the supernatural interpretation put upon his supposed exercise of them. This curious mythology lasted throughout the fourteenth century, was vehemently opposed in the fifteenth by the partisans of enlightened learning, and had not quite died out by the middle of the sixteenth.
III. HORACE (65-8 B.C.)
If Virgil is the most representative, Horace is the most original poet of Rome. This great and varied genius, whose exquisite taste and deep knowledge of the world have made him the chosen companion of many a great soldier and statesman, suggesting as he does reflections neither too ideal nor too exclusively literary for men of affairs, was born at or near Venusia, on the borders of Lucania and Apulia, December 8, 65 B.C. [1] His father was a freedman of the Horatia gens, [2] but set free before the poet's birth. [3] We infer that he was a tax-gatherer, or perhaps a collector of payments at auctions; for the word coactor, [4] which Horace uses, is of wide application. At any rate his means sufficed to purchase a small farm, where the poet passed his childhood. Horace was able to look back to this time with fond and even proud reminiscences, for he relates how prodigies marked him even in infancy as a special favourite of the gods. [5] At the age of twelve he was brought by his father to Rome and placed under the care of the celebrated Orbilius Pupillus. [6] The poet's filial feeling has left us a beautiful testimony to his father's affectionate interest in his studies. The good man, proud of his son's talent, but fearing the corruptions of the city, accompanied him every day to school, and consigned him in person to his preceptor's charge, [7] a duty usually left to slaves called paedagogi, who appear to have borne no high character for honesty, [8] and at best did nothing to improve those of whom they had the care. From the shrewd counsels of his father, who taught by instances not by maxims, [9] and by his own strict example, Horace imbibed that habit of keen observation and that genial view of life which distinguish him above all other satirists. He also learnt the caution which enabled him to steer his course among rocks and shoals that would have wrecked a novice, and to assert his independence of action with success even against the emperor himself.
The life of Horace is so well known that it is needless to retrace it here. We shall do no more than summarise the few leading events in it, alluding more particularly to those only which affect his literary position. After completing his education so far in the capital, he went for a time, as was customary, to study philosophy at Athens. [10] While he was there the death of Caesar and the events which followed roused the fierce party spirit that had uneasily slumbered. Horace, then twenty-two years of age, was offered a command by Brutus on his way to Macedonia, which he accepted, [11] and apparently must have seen some hard service. [12] He shared the defeat of the Republicans at Philippi, [13] and as the territory of Venusium, like that of Cremona, was selected to be parcelled out among the soldiery, Horace was deprived of his paternal estate, [14] a fact from which we learn incidentally that his father was now dead.
Thrown upon his own resources, he sought and obtained permission to come to Rome, where he obtained some small post as a notary [15] attached to the quaestors. Poverty drove him to verse-making, [16] but of what kind we do not certainly know. Probably epodes and satires were the first fruits of his pen, though some scholars ascribe certain of the Odes (e.g. i. 14) to this period. About this time he made the acquaintance of Virgil, which ripened at least on Horace's part into warm affection. Virgil and Varius introduced him to Maecenas, [17] who received the bashful poet with distant hauteur, and did not again send for him until nine months had elapsed. Slow to make up his mind, but prompt to act when his decision was once taken, Maecenas then called for Horace, and in the poet's words bade him be reckoned among his friends; [18] and very shortly afterwards we find them travelling together to Brundisium on a footing of familiar intimacy (39 B.C.). This circumspection of Maecenas was only natural, for Horace was of a very different stamp from Varius and Virgil, who were warm admirers of Octavius. Horace, though at first a Platonist, [19] then an Epicurean, [20] then an Eclectic, was always somewhat of a "free lance." [21] His mind was of that independent mould which can never be got to accept on anybody's authority the solution of problems which interest it. Even when reason convinced him that imperialism, if not good in itself, was the least of all possible evils, ho did not become a hearty partisan; he maintained from first to last a more or less critical attitude. Thus Maecenas may have heard of his literary promise, of his high character, without much concern. It was the paramount importance of enlisting so able a man on his own side that weighed with the shrewd statesman. For Horace, with the recklessness that poverty inspires, had shown a disposition to attack those in power. It is generally thought that Maecenas himself is ridiculed under the name Malthinus. [22] It is nevertheless clear that when he knew Maecenas he not only formed a high opinion of his character and talent, but felt a deep affection for him, which expresses itself in the generous language of an equal friend, with great respect, indeed, but totally without unworthy complaisance. The minister of monarchy might without inconsistency gain his goodwill; with the monarch it was a different matter. For many years Horace held aloof from Augustus. He made no application to him; he addressed to him no panegyric. Until the year 29, when the Temple of Janus was closed, he showed no approval of his measures. All his laudatory odes were written after that event. He indeed permitted the emperor to make advances to him, to invite him to his table, and maintain a friendly correspondence. But he refused the office of secretary which Augustus pressed upon him. He scrupulously abstained from pressing his claims of intimacy, as the emperor wished him to do; and at last he drew forth from him the remorseful expostulation, "Why is it that you avoid addressing me of all men in your poems? Is it that you are afraid posterity will think the worse of you for having been a friend of mine?" [23]
This appeal elicited from the poet that excellent epistle which traces the history and criticises the merits of Latin poetry. From all this we may be sure that when Augustus's measures are celebrated, as they are in the third book of the Odes and other places, with emphatic commendation, though the language may be that of poetical exaggeration, the sentiment is in the main sincere. It is a greater honour to the prudent ruler to have won the tardy approval of Horace, than to have enlisted from the outset the enthusiastic devotion of Virgil.
We left Horace installed as one of Maecenas's circle. This position naturally gained him many enemies; nor was his character one to conciliate his less fortunate rivals. He was choleric and sensitive, prompt to resent an insult, though quite free from malice or vindictiveness. He had not yet reached that high sense of his position when he could afford to treat the envious crowd with contempt. [24] He records in the satires which he now wrote, painting with inimitable humour each incident that arose, the attempts of the outsiders to obtain from him an introduction to Maecenas, [25] or some of that political information of which he was supposed to be the confidant. [26] At this period of his career he lived a good deal with his patron both in Rome and at his Tiburtine villa. Within a few years, however (probably 31 B.C.), he was put in possession of what he had always desired, [27] a small competence of his own. This was the Sabine estate in the valley of Ustica, not far from Tivoli, given him by Maecenas, the subject of many beautiful allusions, and the cause of his warmest gratitude. [28] Here he resided during some part of each year [29] in the enjoyment of that independence which was to him the greatest good; and during the seven years that followed he wrote, and at their close published, the first three books of the Odes. [30] The death of Virgil, which happened when Horace was forty-six years of age, and soon afterwards that of Tibullus, threw his affections once more upon his early patrons. He now resided more frequently at Rome, and was often to be seen at the palace. How he filled the arduous position of a courtier may be gathered from many, of the Epistles of the first book. The one which introduces Septimus to Tiberius is a masterpiece; [31] and those to Scaeva and Lellius [32] are models of high-bred courtesy. No one ever mingled compliment and advice with such consummate skill. Horace had made his position at court for himself, and though he still loved the country best, [33] he found both interest and profit in his daily intercourse with the great.
In the year 17 B.C. Augustus found an opportunity of testifying his regard for Horace. The secular games, which were celebrated in that year, included the singing of a hymn to Apollo and Diana by a chorus of 27 boys and the same number of girls, selected from the highest families in the state. The composition of this hymn was intrusted to Horace, much to his own legitimate pride, and to our instruction and pleasure, for not only is it a poem of high intrinsic excellence, but it is the only considerable extant specimen of the lyrical part of Roman worship. Some scholars include under it besides the Carmen Saeculare proper, various other odes, some of which unquestionably bear on the same subject, though, there is no direct evidence of their having been sung together. [34] Whether Horace had any Roman models in this style before him is not very clear. We have seen that Livius Andronicus was selected to celebrate the victory of Sena, [35] and there is an ode of Catullus [36] which seems to refer to some similar occasion. Doubtless the main lines in which the composition moved were indicated by custom; but the treatment was left to the individual genius of the poet. In this case we observe the poet's happy choice of a metre. Of all the varied lyric rhythms none, at least to our ears, lends itself so readily to a musical setting as the Sapphic; and the many melodies attached to odes in this metre by the monks of the Middle Ages attest its special adaptability to choir-singing. Augustus was highly pleased with the poet's performance, and two years' afterwards he commanded him to celebrate the victory of his step-sons Drusus and Tiberius over the Rhaeti and Vindelici. [37] This circumstance turned his attention once more to lyric poetry, which for six years he had quite discontinued. [38] It is not conclusively proved that he wrote all the odes which compose the fourth book at this period; two or three bear the impress of an earlier date, and were doubtless improved by re-writing or revision, but the majority were the production of his later years, and present to us the fruits of his matured judgment and taste. They show no diminution of lyric power, but the reverse; nor is there any ode in the first three books which surpasses or even equals the fourth poem in this collection. Horace's attention was, during the last few years of his life, given chiefly to literary subjects; the treatise on poetry and the epistle to Julius Florus were written probably between 14 and 11 B.C. That to Augustus is the last composition that issued from his pen; we may refer it to 10 B.C. two years before his death.
Horace's health had long been the reverse of strong. Whether from early delicacy, or from exposure to hardships in Asia, his constitution was never able to respond to the demands made upon it by the society of the capital. The weariness he expresses was often the result of physical prostration. The sketch he has left of himself [39] suggests a physique neither interesting nor vigorous. He was at 44 short, fat, and good- natured looking (rallied, we learn, by Augustus on his obesity), blear- eyed, somewhat dyspeptic, and prematurely grey; and ten years, we may be sure, had not improved the portrait. In the autumn of 8 B.C. Maecenas, who had long been himself a sufferer, succumbed to the effects of his devoted and arduous service. His last message confided Horace to the Emperor's care: "Horatii flacci ut mei esto memor." But the legacy was not long a burden. The prophetic anticipations of affection that in death the poet would not be parted from his friend [40] were only too faithfully realised. Within a month of Maecenas's death Horace was borne to his rest, and his ashes were laid beside those of his patron on the Esquiline (November 29, 8 B.C.).
As regards the date of publication of his several books, several theories have been propounded, for which the student is referred to the many excellent editions of Horace that discuss the question. We shall content ourselves with assigning those dates which seem to us the most probable. All agree in considering the first book of the Satires to have been his earliest effort. This may have been published in 34 B.C.; and in 29 B.C. the two books of Satires together, and perhaps the Epodes. In 24 B.C. probably appeared the first two books of Odes, which open and close with a dedication to Maecenas, and in 23 B.C. the three books of Odes complete; though some suppose that all appeared at once and for the first time in this later year. In 21 B.C. perhaps, but more probably in 20, the first book of the Epistles was published; in 14 B.C. the fourth book of the Odes, though it is possible that the last ode of that book was written at a later date. The second book of Epistles, in which may have been included the Ars Poetica, could not have appeared before 10 B.C. It is clear that the latter poem is not complete, but whether Horace intended to finish it more thoroughly it is impossible to say.
In approaching the criticism of Horace, the first thing which strikes us is, that in him we see two different poets. There is the lyricist winning renown by the importation of a new kind of Greek song; and there is the observant critic and man of the world, entrusting to the tablets, his faithful companions, his reflections on men and things. The former poet ran his course through the Epodes to the graceful pieces which form the great majority of his odes, and culminated in the loftier vein of lyric inspiration that characterises his political odes. The latter began with a somewhat acrimonious type of satire, which he speedily deserted for a lighter and more genial vein, and finally rested in the sober, practical, and healthy moralist and literary critic of the Epistles. It was in the former aspect that he assumed the title of poet; with characteristic modesty he relinquishes all claim to it with regard to his Epistles and Satires. We shall consider him briefly under these two aspects.
No writer believed so little in the sufficiency of the poetic gift by itself to produce a poet. Had he trusted the maxim Poeta nascitur, non fit, he would never have written his Odes. Looking back at his early attempts at verse we find in them few traces of genuine inspiration. Of the Epodes a large number are positively unpleasing; others interest us from the expression of true feeling; a few only have merits of a high order. The fresh and enthusiastic, though somewhat diffuse, descriptions of country enjoyments in the second and sixteenth Epodes, and the vigorous word-painting in the fifth, bespeak the future master; and the patriotic emotion in the seventh, ninth, and sixteenth, strikes a note that was to thrill with loftier vibrations in the Odes of the third and fourth books. But as a whole the Epodes stand far below his other works. Their bitterness is quite different from the genial irony of the Satires, and, though occasionally the subjects of them merited the severest handling, [41] yet we do not like to see Horace applying the lash. It was not his proper vocation, and he does not do it well. He is never so unlike himself as when he is making a personal attack. Nevertheless to bring himself into notice, it was necessary to do something of the kind. Personal satire is always popular, and Horace had to carve his own way to fame. It is evident that the series of sketches of which Canidia is the heroine, [42] were received with unanimous approval by the beau monde. This wretched woman, singled out as the representative of a class which was gaining daily influence in Rome, [43] he depicts in colours detestable and ignominious, which do credit to his talent but not to his courteous feeling. Horace has no true respect for woman. Nothing in all Latin poetry is so unpleasant as his brutal attacks on those hetaerae (the only ladies of whom he seems to have had any knowledge) whose caprice or neglect had offended him. [44] This is the one point in which he did not improve. In all other respects his constant self-culture opened to him higher and ever widening paths of excellence.
The glimpses of real feeling which the Epodes allow us to gain are as a rule carefully excluded from the Odes. This is at first sight a matter for surprise. Our idea of a lyric poem is that of a warm and passionate outpouring of the heart. Such are those of Burns; such are those of nearly all the writers who have gained the heart of modern times. In the grand style of dithyrambic song, indeed, the bard is rapt into an ideal world, and soars far beyond his subjective emotions or desires; but to this Pindaric inspiration Horace made no pretension. He was content to be an imitator of Alcaeus and Sappho, who had attuned to the lyre their own hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows of their own chequered life. But in imitating their form he has altogether changed their spirit. Where they indulged feeling, he has controlled it; what they effect by intensity of colour, he attains by studied propriety of language. He desires not to enlist the world to sympathy with himself, but to put himself in sympathy with the world. Hence the many-sidedness, the culture, the broad human stand-point after which he ceaselessly strives. If depth must be sacrificed to attain this, he is ready to sacrifice it. He finds a field wide enough in the network of aims, interest, and feelings, which give society its hold on us, and us our union with society. And he feels that the writer who shall make his poem speak with a living voice to the largest number of these, will meet with most earnest heed, and be doing best the poet's true work. At the same time we must not forget that Horace's public was not our public. The unwieldy mass of labouring millions, shaken to its depths by questionings of momentous interest, cannot be drawn to listen except by an emotion vast as its own; but the society for whom Horace wrote was homogeneous in tone, limited in number, cultivated in intellect, and deeply absorbed in a race of ambition, some of whose prizes, at least, each might hope to win. He was, has been, and intended himself to be, the poet of men of the world.
Among such men at all times, and to an immeasurably greater extent in antiquity than now, staunch friendship has been considered one of the chief of virtues. Whatever were Horace's relations to the other sex, no man whom he had once called a friend had any cause to complain. Admirable indeed in their frankness, their constancy, their sterling independence, are the friendships it has delighted him to record. From the devoted, almost passionate tribute to Maecenas--
"Ibimus ibimus Uteunque praecedes supremum Carpere iter comites parati,"
to the raillery so gracefully flung at an Iccius or Xanthias, for whom yet one discerns the kindest and tenderest feeling, these memorials of Roman intercourse place both giver and receiver in a truly amiable light. We can understand Augustus's regret that he had not been honoured with a regard of which he well knew the value. For the poet was rich who could dispense gifts like these.
Interspersed with the love-odes, addresses to friends and pièces de circonstance, we observe, even in the earlier books, lyrics of a more serious cast. Some are moral and contemplative, as the grand ode to Fortune [45] and that beginning
"Non ebur neque aureum Mea renidet in domo lacunar." [46]
Others are patriotic or political, as the second, twelfth, and thirty- seventh of Book I. (the last celebrating the downfall of Cleopatra), and the fifteenth of Book II. which bewails the increase of luxury. In these Horace is rising to the truly Roman conception that poetry, like other forces, should be consecrated to the service of the state. And now that he could see the inevitable tendency of things, could gauge the emperor's policy and find it really advantageous, he arose, no longer as a half- unwilling witness, but as a zealous co-operator to second political by moral power. The first six and the twenty-fourth Odes of the third book show us Horace not indeed at his best as a poet, but at his highest as a writer. They exhibit a more sustained manliness of tone than is perhaps to be found in any passages of equal length from any other author. Heathen ethics have no nobler portrait than that of the just man tenacious of his purpose, with which the third ode begins; and Roman patriotism no grander witness than the heart-stirring narrative of Regulus going forth to Carthage to meet his doom. Whether or not the third ode was written to dissuade Augustus from his rumoured project of transferring the seat of empire from Rome to Troy, it expresses most strongly the firm conviction of those best worth consulting, and, if the emperor really was in doubt, must, in conjunction with Virgil's emphatic repetition of the same sentiment, [47] have effectually turned him from his purpose. For these odes carried great authority. In them the poet appears as the authorised voice of the state, dispensing verba et voces [48] "the charm of poesy" to allay the moral pestilence that is devouring the people.
No one can read the odes without being struck with certain features wherein they differ from his other works. One of these is his constant employment of the Olympian mythology. Whatever view we may hold as to their appearance in the Aeneid, there can he no doubt that in the Odes these deities have a purely fictitious character. With the single exception of Jupiter, the eternal Father, without second or equal even among the Olympian choir, [49] whom he is careful not to name, none of his allusions imply, but on the contrary implicitly disown, any belief in their existence. In the satires and epistles he never employs this conventional ornament. The same thing is true of his language to Augustus. Assuming the poet's license, he depicts him as the son of Maia, [50] the scion of kindly deities, [51] and a living denizen of the ethereal mansions. [52] But in the epistles he throws off this adulatory tone, and accosts the Caesar in a way befitting their mutual relations; for in declaring that altars are raised to him and men swear by his name, [53] he is not using flattery, but stating a fact. Another point of difference is his fondness in the Odes for commonplaces, e.g. the degeneracy of the age, [54] the necessity of enjoying the moment, [55] which he enforces with every variety of illustration. Neither of these was the result of genuine conviction. On the former he gives us his real view (a very noble and rational one) in the third Satire of the first book, [56] and in the Ars Poetica, as different as possible from the desponding pessimism of ode and epode. And the Epicurean maxims which in them he offers as the sum of wisdom, are in his Epistles exchanged for their direct opposites: [56]
"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum, Sperne voluptates; nocet empta dolore voluptas."
It is clear then that in the Odes, for the most part, he is an artist not a preacher. We must not look to them for his deepest sentiments, but for such, and such only, as admitted an effective lyric treatment.
As regards their form, we observe that they are moulded strictly upon the Greek, some of those on lighter themes being translations or close imitations. But in naturalising the Greek metres, he has accommodated them with the rarest skill to the harmonies of the Latin tongue. The Virgilian movement differs not more from the Homeric, than does the Horatian sapphic or alcaic from the same metres as treated by their Greek inventors. The success of Horace may be judged by comparing his stanzas with the sapphics of Catullus on the one hand, and the alcaics of Statius on the other. The former struggle under the complicated shackles of Greek prosody; the latter move on the stilts of school-boy imitation. In language he is singularly choice without being a purist; agreeably to their naturalised character he has interspersed the odes with Greek constructions, some highly elegant, others a little forced and bordering upon experiments on language. [57] The poetry of his language consists not so much in its being imaginative, as in its employing the fittest words in the fittest places. Its general level is that of the best epistolary or oratorical compositions, according to the elevation of the subject. He loves not to soar into the empyrean, but often checks Pegasus by a strong curb, or by a touch of irony or an incongruous allusion prevents himself or his reader being carried away. [58] This mingling of irony and earnest is thoroughly characteristic of his genius. To men of realistic minds it forms one of the greatest of its charms.
Among the varied excellences of these gems of poetry, we shall select three, as those after which Horace most evidently sought. They are brevity, ease, life. In the first he is perhaps unequalled. It is not only that what he says is terse; in what he omits we recognise the master hand. He knows precisely what to dwell on, what to hint at, what to pass by. He is on the best understanding with his reader. He knows the reader is a busy man, and he says--"Read me! and, however you may judge my work, you shall at least not be bored." We recollect no instance in which Horace is prolix; none in which he can be called obscure; though there are many passages that require weighing, and many abrupt transitions that somewhat task thought. In condensed simplicity he is the first of Latin poets. Who that has once heard can forget such phrases as Nil desperandum, splendide mendax, non omnis moriar, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, and a hundred others? His brevity is equalled by his ease. By this must not be understood either spontaneity of invention or rapidity of execution. We know that he was a slow, nay, a laborious workman.[59] But he has the ars celare artem. What can be more natural than the transition from the praises of young Nero to Hannibal's fine lament? [60] from those of Augustus to the speech of Juno? [61] Yet these are effected with the most subtle skill. And even when the digression appears more forced, as in the well-known instances of Europa [62] and the Danaides, [63] the incongruity is at once removed by supposing that the legend in each case forms the main subject of the poem, and that the occasional introductions are a characteristic form of preamble, perhaps reflected from Pindar. And once more as to his liveliness. This is the highest excellence of the Odes. It never flags. If the poet does not rise to an exalted inspiration, he at least never sinks into heaviness, never loses life. To cite but one ode, in an artistic point of view, perhaps, the jewel of the whole collection-- the dialogue between the poet and Lydia; [64] here is an entire comedy played in twenty-four lines, in which the dialogue never becomes insipid, the action never flags. Like all his love odes it is barren of deep feeling, for which reason, perhaps, they have been compared to scentless flowers. But the comparison is most unjust. Aroma, bouquet: this is precisely what they do not lack. Some other metaphor must be sought to embody the deficiency. At the same time the want is a real one; and exquisite as are the Odes, no one knew better than their author himself that they have no power to pierce the heart, or to waken those troubled musings which in their blending of pain and pleasure elevate into something that it was not before, the whole being of him that reads them.
The Satires and Epistles differ somewhat in form, in elaboration, and in metrical treatment, but on the whole they have sufficient resemblance to be considered together. The Horatian satire is sui generis. In the familiar modern sense it is not satire at all. The censorious spirit that finds nothing to praise, everything to ridicule, is quite alien to Horace. Neither Persius nor Juvenal, Boileau nor Pope, bears any real resemblance to him. The two former were satirists in the modern sense; the two latter have caught what we may call the town side of Horace, but they are accomplished epigrammatists and rhetoricians, which he is not, and they entirely lack his strong love for the simple and the rural. Horace is decidedly the least rhetorical of all Roman poets. His taste is as free from the contamination of the basilica [65] as it is from that of Alexandrinism. As in lyric poetry he went straight to the fountain-head, seeking models among the bards of old Greece, so in his prose-poetry, as he calls the Satires, [66] he draws from the well of real experience, departing from it neither to the right hand nor to the left. This is what gives his works their lasting value. They are all gold; in other words, they have been dug for. Refined gold all certainly are not, many of them are strikingly the reverse; for all sorts of subjects are treated by them, bad as well as good. The poet professes to have no settled plan, but to wander from subject to subject, as the humour or the train of thought leads him; as Plato says--
opae an o logos agoi, tautae iteon.
Without the slightest pretence of authority or the right to dictate, he contrives to supply us with an infinite number of sound and healthy moral lessons, to reason with us so genially and with so frank an admission of his own equal frailty, that it is impossible to be angry with him, impossible not to love the gentle instructor. He has been accused of tolerance towards vice. That is, we think, a great error. Horace knew men too well to be severe; his is no trumpet-call, but a still small voice, which pleads but does not accuse. He was no doubt in his youth a lax liver; [67] he had adopted the Epicurean creed and the loose conduct that follows it. But he was struggling towards a purer ideal. Even in the Satires he is only half an Epicurean; in the Epistles he is not one at all: and in proportion as he has outlived the hot blood of youth, his voice becomes clearer and his faith in virtue stronger. The Epistles are to a great extent reflective; he has examined his own heart, and depicts his musings for our benefit. Many of them are moral essays filled with precepts of wisdom, the more precious as having been genuinely thought out by the writer for himself. Less dramatic, less vigorous, perhaps, than the Satires, they embody in choicest language the maturest results of his reflection. Their poetical merits are higher, their diction more chaste, their metre more melodious. With the Georgics they are ranked as the most perfect examples of the modulation of hexameter verse. Their movement is rippling rather than flowing, and satisfies the mind rather than the ear, but it is a delicious movement, full of suggestive grace. The diction, though classical, admits occasional colloquialisms. [68]
Several of the Satires, [69] and the three Epistles which form the second book, are devoted to literary criticism, and these have always been regarded as among the most interesting of Horace's compositions. His opinions on previous and contemporary poetry are given with emphasis, and as a rule ran counter to the opinion of his day. The technical dexterity in versification which had resulted from the feverish activity of the last forty years, had produced a disastrous consequence. All the world was seized with the mania for writing poetry:
"Scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim."
The young Pisos were among the number. To them the poet gave this friendly counsel, to lock up their creations for nine years, and then publish, or as we may shrewdly suspect he meant--destroy them. Poetry is the one thing that, if it is to be done at all, must be done well:
"Mediocribus esse poetis Non di, non homines, non concessere columnae."
In Horace's opinion none of the old poetry came up to this standard. When he quotes two lines of Ennius [70] as defying all efforts to make prose of them, we cannot help fancying he is indulging his ironical vein. He never speaks seriously of Ennius. In fact he thoroughly disliked the array of "old masters" that were at once confronted with him whenever he expressed a predilection. It was not only the populace who yawned over Accius's tragedies, or the critics who lauded the style of the Salian hymn, that moved his resentment. These he could afford to despise. It was rather the antiquarian prepossessions of such men as Virgil, Maecenas, and Augustus, that caused him so earnestly to combat the love of all that was old. In his zeal there is no doubt he has outrun justice. He had no sympathy for the untamed vigour of those rough but spirited writers; his fastidious taste could make no allowance for the circumstances against which they had to contend. To reply that the excessive admiration lavished by the multitude demanded an equally sweeping condemnation, is not to excuse Horace. One who wrote so cautiously would never have used exaggeration to enforce his words. The disparaging remarks must be regarded as expressing his real opinion, and we are not concerned to defend it.
His attitude towards the age immediately preceding his own is even less worthy of him. He never mentions Lucretius, though one or two allusions [71] show that he knew and was indebted to his writings; he refers to Catullus only once, and then in evident depreciation, [72] mentioning him and Calvus as the sole literature of a second-rate singer, whom he calls the ape of Hermogenes Tigellius. Moreover his boast that he was the first to introduce the Archilochian iambic [73] and the lyric metres, [74] though perhaps justifiable; is the reverse of generous, seeing that Catullus had treated before him three at least of the metres to which he alludes. Mr. Munro's assertion as to there being indications that the school of Lucretius and Catullus would have necessarily come into collision with that of the Augustan poets, had the former survived to their time, is supported by Horace's attitude. Virgil and Tibullus would have found many points of union, so probably would Gallus; but Horace, Propertius, and Ovid, would certainly have been antagonistic. It is unfortunate that the canons laid down by Horace found no followers. While Virgil had his imitators from the first, and Tibullus and Propertius served as models to young aspirants, Horace, strangely enough, found no disciples. Persius in a later age studied him with care, and tried to reproduce his style, but with such a signal want of success that in every passage where he imitates, he caricatures his master. He has, however, left us an appreciative and beautiful criticism on the Horatian method. [75]
It has often been supposed that the Ars Poetica was writen in the hope of regenerating the drama. This theory is based partly on the length at which dramatic subjects are treated, partly on the high pre-eminence which the critic assigns to that class of poetry. But he can hardly have so far deceived himself as to believe that any efforts of his could restore the popular interest in the legitimate drama which had now sunk to the lowest ebb. It should rather be considered as a deliberate expression of his views upon many important subjects connected with literary studies, written primarily for the young Pisos, but meant for the world at large, and not intended for an exhortation (adhortatio) so much as a treatise. Its admirable precepts have been approved by every age: and there is probably no composition in the world to which so few exceptions have been taken.
Here we leave Horace, and conclude the chapter with a very short account of some of his friends who devoted themselves to poetry. The first is C. VALGIUS RUFUS, who was consul in the year 12 B.C. and to whom the ninth Ode of the second book is addressed. Whether from his high position or from his genuine poetical promise, we find great expectations held regarding him. Tibullus (or rather, the author of the poem ascribed to him) [76] says that no other poet came nearer to Homer's genius, and Horace by asking him to celebrate the new trophies of Augustus implies that he cultivated an epic strain. [77] Besides loftier themes he treated erotic subjects in elegiac verse, translated the rhetoric of Apollodorus, [78] and wrote letters on grammar, probably in the form afterwards adopted by Seneca's moral epistles. ARISTIUS FUSCUS to whom the twenty-second Ode of the first book and the tenth Epistle are addressed, was a writer of some pretensions. It is not certain what line he followed, but in all probability the drama. He was an intimate acquaintance of Horace, and, it will be remembered, delivered him from the intrusive acquaintance on the Via Sacra. [79] FUNDANIUS, who is twice mentioned by Horace, and once in very complimentary terms as the best comic poet of the day, [80] has not been fortunate enough to find any biographer. TITUS, one of the younger men to whom so many of the epistles are addressed, was a very ambitious poet. He attempted Pindaric flights from which the genius of Horace shrank, and apparently he cultivated tragedy, but in a pompous and ranting manner. [81] ICCIUS, who is referred to in the ninth Ode of Book I., and in the twelfth Epistle, as a philosopher, may have written poems. JULIUS FLORUS, to whom two beautiful epistles (I. iii. II. ii.) are addressed, is rallied by Horace on his tendency to write love-poems, but apparently his efforts came to nothing. CELSUS ALBINOVANUS was, like Florus, a friend of Tiberius, to whom he acted as private secretary for some time; [82] he was given to pilfering ideas and Horace deals him a salutary caution:--
"Monitus multumque monendus Privatas ut quaerat opes, et tangere vitet Scripta Palatinus quaecunque recepit Apollo." [83]
The last of these friends we shall notice is JULUS ANTONIUS [84] a son of the triumvir, who, according to Acron, [85] wrote twelve excellent books in epic metre on the legends of Diomed, a work obviously modelled on those of Euphorion, whose fourteen books of Heracleia were extremely popular; in a later age Statius attempted a similar task in essaying the history of Achilles. The ode addressed to him by Horace seems to hint at a foolish ambition to imitate Pindar. Besides these lesser known authors Horace knew, though he does not mention, the poets Ovid and Domitius Marsus; probably also Propertius. With Tibullus he was long on terms of friendship, and one epistle and one ode [86] are addressed to him. His gentle nature endeared him to Horace, as his graceful poetry drew forth his commendation.
IV. THE ELEGIAC POETS--GRATIUS--MANILIUS
The short artificial elegy of Callimachus and Philetas had, as we have seen, found an imitator in Catullus. But that poet, when he addressed to Lesbia the language of true passion, wrote for the most part in lyric verse. The Augustan age furnishes a series of brilliant poets who united the artificial elegiac with the expression of real feeling; and one of them, Ovid, has by his exquisite formal polish raised the Latin elegiac couplet to a popularity unparalleled in imitative literature. The metre had at first been adapted to short epigrams modelled on the Greek, e.g., triumphal inscriptions, epitaphs, jeux d'esprit, &c., several examples of which have been quoted in these pages. Catullus and his contemporaries first treated it at greater length, and paved the way for the highly specialised form in which it appears in Tibullus, the earliest Augustan author that has come down to us.
There are indications that Roman elegy, like heroic verse, had two separate tendencies. There was the comparatively simple continuous treatment of the metre seen in Catullus and Virgil, who are content to follow the Greek rhythm, and there was the more rhetorical and pointed style first beginning to appear in Tibullus, carried a step further in Propertius, and culminating in the epigrammatic couplet of Ovid. This last is a peculiarly Latin development, unsuited to the Greek, and too elaborately artificial to be the vehicle for the highest poetry, but, when treated by one who is master of his method, admitting of a facility, fluency, and incomparable elegance, which perhaps no other rhythm combines in an equal degree. In almost all its features it may be illustrated by the heroic couplet of Pope. The elegiac line is in the strictest sense a pendant to the hexameter; only rarely does it introduce a new element of thought, and perhaps never a new commencement in narration. It is for the most part an iteration, variation, enlargement, condensation or antithesis of the idea embodied in its predecessor. In the most highly finished of Ovid's compositions this structure is carried to such a point that the syntax is rarely altogether continuous throughout the couplet; there is generally a break either natural or rhetorical at the conclusion of the hexameter or within the first few syllables of the pentameter. [1] The rhetorical as distinct from the natural period, which appears, though veiled with great skill, in the Virgilian hexameter, is in Ovid's verse made the key to the whole rhythmical structure, and by its restriction within the minimum space of two lines offers a tempting field to the various tricks of composition, the turn, the point, the climax, &c. in all of which Ovid, as the typical elegist, luxuriates, though he applies such elegant manipulation as rarely to over-stimulate and scarcely ever to offend the reader's attention. The criticism that such a system cannot fail to awaken is that of want of variety; and in spite of the diverse modes of producing effect which these accomplished writers, and above all Ovid, well knew how to use, one cannot read them long without a sense of monotony, which never attends on the far less ambitious elegies of Catullus, and probably would have been equally absent from those of CORNELIUS GALLUS.
This ill-starred poet, whose life is the subject of Bekker's admirable sketch, was born at Forum Julii (Fréjus) 69 B.C., and is celebrated as the friend of Virgil's youth. Full of ambition and endowed with talent to command or conciliate, he speedily rose in Augustus's service, and was the first to introduce Virgil to his notice. For a time all prospered; he was appointed the first prefect of Egypt, then recently annexed as a province, but his haughtiness and success had made him many enemies; he was accused of treasonable conversation, and interdicted the palace of the emperor. To avoid further disgrace he committed suicide, in the 43d year of his age (27 B.C.). His poetry was entirely taken from Alexandria; he translated Euphorion and wrote four books of love-elegies to Cytheris. Whether she is the same as the Lycoris mentioned by Virgil, [2] whose faithlessness he bewails, we cannot tell. No fragments of his remain, [3] but the passionate nature of the man, and the epithet durior applied to his verse by Quintilian, makes it probable that he followed the older and more vigorous style of elegiac writing. [4]
Somewhat junior to him was DOMITIUS MARSUS who followed in the same track. He was a member of the circle of Maecenas, though, strangely enough, never mentioned by Horace, and exercised his varied talents in epic poetry, in which he met with no great success, for Martial says [5]--
"Saepius in libro memoratur Persius uno Quam levis in toto Marsus Amazonide."
From this we gather that Amazonis was the name of his poem. In erotic poetry he held a high place, though not of the first rank. His Fabellae and treatise on Urbanitas, both probably poetical productions, are referred to by Quintilian, and Martial mentions him as his own precursor in treating the short epigram. From another passage of Martial,
"Et Maecenati Maro cum cantaret Alexin Nota tamen Marsi fusca Melaenis erat," [6]
we infer that he began his career early; for he was certainly younger than Horace, though probably only by a few years, as he also received instruction from Orbilius. There is a fine epigram by Marsus lamenting the death of his two brother-poets and friends:
"Te quoque Virgilio comitem non aequa, Tibulle, Mors invenem campos misit ad Elysios. Ne foret aut molles elegis qui fleret amores, Aut caneret forti regia bella pede."
ALBIUS TIBULLUS, to whom Quintilian adjudges the palm of Latin elegy, was born probably about the same time as Horace (65 B.C.), though others place the date of his birth as late as that of Messala (59 B.C.). In the fifth Elegy of the third book [7] occur the words--
"Natalem nostri primum videre parentes Cum cecidit fato consul uterque pari."
As these words nearly reappear in Ovid, fixing the date of his own birth, [8] some critics have supposed them to be spurious here. But there is no occasion for this. The elegy in which they occur is certainly not by Tibullus, and may well be the work of some contemporary of Ovid. They point to the battle of Mutina, 43 B.C., in which Hirtius and Pansa lost their lives. The poet's death is fixed to 19 B.C. by the epigram of Domitius just quoted.
Tibullus was a Roman knight, and inherited a large fortune. This, however, he lost by the triumviral proscriptions, [9] excepting a poor remnant of his estate near Pedum which, small as it was, seems to have sufficed for his moderate wants. At a later period Horace, writing to him in retirement, speaks as though he were possessed of considerable wealth [10]--
"Di tibi divitias dederunt artemque fruendi."
It is possible that Augustus, at the intercession of Messala, restored the poet's patrimony. It was as much the fashion among the Augustan writers to affect a humble but contented poverty, as it had been among the libertines of the Caesarean age to pretend to sanctity of life--another form of that unreality which, after all, is ineradicable from Latin poetry. Ovid is far more unaffected. He asserts plainly that the pleasures and refinements of his time were altogether to his taste, and that no other age would have suited him half so well. [11] Tibullus is a melancholy effeminate spirit. Horace exactly hits him when he bids him "chant no more woeful elegies," [12] because a young and perjured rival has been preferred to him. He seems to have had no ambition and no energy, but his position obliged him to see some military service, and we find that he went on no less than three expeditions with his patron. This patron, or rather friend, for he was above needing a patron, was the great Messala, whom the poet loved with a warmth and constancy testified by some beautiful elegies, the finest perhaps being those where the general's victories are celebrated. [13] But the chief theme of his verse is the love, ill-requited it would seem, which he lavished first on Delia and afterwards on Nemesis. Each mistress gives the subject to a book. Delia's real name as we learn from Apuleius was Plania, [14] and we gather from more than one notice in the poems that she was married [15] when Tibullus paid his addresses to her. If the form of these poems is borrowed from Alexandria, the gentle pathos and gushing feeling redeem them from all taint of artificiality. In no poet, not even in Burns, is simple, natural emotion more naturally expressed. If we cannot praise the character of the man, we must admire the graceful poet. Nothing can give a truer picture of affection than the following tender and exquisitely musical lines:
"Non ego laudari curo: mea Delia, tecum Dummodo sim quaeso segnis inersque vocer. Te spectem suprema mihi cum venerit hora: Te teneam moriens deficiente manu." [16]
Here is the same "linked sweetness long drawn out" which gives such a charm to Gray's elegy. In other elegies, particularly those which take the form of idylls, giving images of rural peace and plenty, [17] we see the quiet retiring nature that will not be drawn into the glare of Rome. Tibullus is described as of great personal beauty, and of a candid [18] and affectionate disposition. Notwithstanding his devotion Delia was faithless, and the poet sought distraction in surrendering to the charms of another mistress. Horace speaks of a lady named Glycera in this connection; it is probable that she is the same as Nemesis; [19] the custom of erotic poetry being to substitute a Greek name of similar scansion for the original Latin one; if the original name were Greek the change was still made, hence Glycera might well stand for Nemesis. The third book was first seen by Niebuhr to be from another and much inferior poet. It is devoted to the praises of Neaera, and imitates the manner of Tibullus with not a little of his sweetness but with much less power. Who the author was it is impossible to say, but though he had little genius he was a man of feeling and taste, and the six elegies are a pleasing relic of this active and yet melancholy time. The fourth book begins with a short epic on Messala, the work of a poetaster, extending over 200 lines. It is followed by thirteen most graceful elegidia ascribed to the lovers Cerinthus and Sulpicia of which one only is by Cerinthus. It is not certain whether this ascription is genuine, or whether, as the ancient life of Tibullus in the Parisian codex asserts, the poems were written by him under the title of Epistolae amatoriae. Their finished elegance and purity of diction are easily reconcilable with the view that they are the work of Tibullus. They abound in allusions to Virgil's poetry. [20] At the same time the description of Sulpicia as a poetess [21] seems to point to her as authoress of the pieces that bear her name, and from one or two allusions we gather that Messala was paying her attentions that were distasteful but hard to refuse. [22] The materials for coming to a decision are so scanty, that it seems best to leave the authorship an open question.
The rhythm of Tibullus is smooth, easy, and graceful, but tame. He generally concludes his period at the end of the couplet, and closes the couplet with a dissyllable; but he does not like Ovid make it an invariable rule. The diction is severely classical, free from Greek constructions and antiquated harshness. In elision he stands midway between Catullus and Ovid, inclining, however, more nearly to the latter.
SEX. AURELIUS PROPERTIUS, an Umbrian, from Mevania, Ameria, Assisi, or Hispellum, it is not certain which, was born 58 B.C. or according to others 49 B.C., and lost his father and his estate in the same year (41 B.C.) under Octavius's second assignation of land to the soldiers. He seems to have begun life at the bar, which he soon deserted to play the cavalier to Hostia (whom he celebrates under the name Cynthia), a lady endowed with learning and wit as well as beauty, to whom our poet remained constant for five years. The chronology of his love-quarrels and reconciliations has been the subject of warm disputes between Nobbe, Jacob, and Lachmann; but even if it were of any importance, it is impossible to ascertain it with certainty.
He unquestionably belonged to Maecenas's following, but was not admitted into the inner circle of his intimates. Some have thought that the troublesome acquaintance who besought Horace to introduce him was no other than Propertius. The man, it will be remembered, expresses himself willing to take a humble place: [23]
"Haberes Magnum adiutorem posset qui ferre secundas Hunc hominem velles si tradere. Dispeream ni Submosses omnes."
And as Propertius speaks of himself as living on the Esquiliae, [24] some have, in conformity with this view, imagined him to have held some domestic post under Maecenas's roof. A careful reader can detect in Propertius a far less well-bred tone than is apparent in Tibullus or Horace. He has the air of a parvenu, [25] parading his intellectual wares, and lacking the courteous self-restraint which dignifies their style. But he is a genuine poet, and a generous, warm-hearted man, and in our opinion by far the greatest master of the pentameter that Rome ever produced. Its rhythm in his hands rises at times almost into grandeur. There are passages in the elegy on Cornelia (which concludes the series) whose noble naturalness and stirring emphasis bespeak a great and patriotic inspiration; and no small part of this effect is due to his vigorous handling of a somewhat feeble metre. [26] Mechanically speaking, he is a disciple in the same school as Ovid, but his success in the Ovidian distich is insignificant; for he has nothing of the epigrammatist in him, and his finest lines all seem to have come by accident, or at any rate without effort. [27] His excessive reverence for the Alexandrines Callimachus and Philetas, has cramped his muse. With infinitely more poetic fervour than either, he has made them his only models, and to attain their reputation is the summit of his ambition. It is from respect to their practice that he has loaded his poems with pedantic erudition; in the very midst of passionate pleading he will turn abruptly into the mazes of some obscure myth, often unintelligible [28] to the modern reader, whose patience he sorely tries. There is no good poet so difficult to read through; his faults are not such as "plead sweetly for pardon;" they are obtrusive and repelling, and have been more in the way of his fame than those of any extant writer of equal genius. He was a devoted admirer of Virgil, whose poems he sketches in the following graceful lines: [29]--
"Actia Virgilio custodit (deus) litora Phoebi, Caesaris et fortes dicere posse rates: Qui nunc Aeneae Troianaque suscitat arma, Iactaque Lavinis moenia litoribus. Cedite Romani seriptores, cedite Graii, Nescio quid maius nascitur Iliade! Tu canis umbrosi subter pineta Galesi Thyrsin et attritis Daphnin arundinibus, Utque decera possint corrumpere mala puellas, Missus et impressis haedus ab uberibus. Felix qui viles pomis mercaris amores! Huic licet ingratae Tityrus ipse canat. Felix intactum Corydon qui tentat Alexin Agricolae domini carpere delicias. Quamvis ille sua lassus requiescat avena, Laudatur faciles inter Hamadryadas. Tu canis Ascraei veteris praecepta poetae, Quo seges in campo, quo viret uva iugo. Tale facis carmen, docta testudine quale Cynthius impositis temperat articulis."
The elegies that show his characteristics best are the second of the first book, where he prays his lady to dress modestly; the seventeenth, where he rebukes himself for having left her side; the twentieth, where he tells the legend of Hylas with great pictorial power and with the finest triumphs of rhythm; the beautiful lament for the death of Paetus; [30] the dream in which Cynthia's shade comes to give him warning; [31] and the patriotic elegy which begins the last book. Maecenas, [32] it appears, had tried to persuade him to attempt heroic poetry, from which uncongenial task he excuses himself, much as Horace had done.
In reading these poets we are greatly struck by the free and easy way in which they borrow thoughts from one another. A good idea was considered common property, and a happy phrase might be adopted without theft. Virgil now and then appropriates a word from Horace, Horace somewhat oftener one from Virgil, Tibullus from both. Propertius, who is less original, has many direct imitations, and Ovid makes free with some of Virgil and Tibullus's finest lines. This custom was not thought to detract from the writer's independence, inasmuch as each had his own domain, and borrowed only where he would be equally ready to give. It was otherwise with those thriftless bards so roughly dealt with by Horace in his nineteenth Epistle--
"O imitatores, servum pecus! ut mihi saepe Bilem, saepe iocum movistis."
the Baviad and Maeviad of the Roman poet-world. These lay outside the charmed sphere, and the hands they laid on the works of those who wrought within it were sacrilegious. In the next age we shall see how imitation of these great masters had become a regular department of composition, so that Quintilian gives elaborate rules for making a proper use of it. At this time originality consisted in introducing some new form of Greek song. Virgil made Theocritus and Hesiod speak in Latin. Horace had brought over the old Aeolian bards; Propertius, too, must make his boast of having enticed Callimachus to the Tiber's banks--
"Primus ego ingredior puro de fonte sacerdos Itala per Graios orgia ferre chores." [33]
In the Middle Ages he was almost lost; a single copy, defaced with mould and almost illegible, was found in a wine cellar in Italy, 1451 A.D. Quintilian tells us there were some in his day who preferred him to Tibullus.
The same critic's remark on the brilliant poet who now comes before us, P. OVIDIUS NASO, is as follows: "Ovidius utroque lascivior" and he could not have given a terser or more comprehensive criticism. Of all Latin poets, not excepting even Plautus, Ovid possesses in the highest degree the gift of facility. His words probably express the literal truth, when he says--
"Sponte sua carmen numeros veniebat ad aptos, Et quod tentabam scribere versus erat."
This incorrigibly immoral but inexpressibly graceful poet was born at Sulmo in the Pelignian territory 43 B.C. of wealthy parents, whose want of liberality during his youthful career he deplores, but by which he profited after their death. Of equestrian rank, with good introductions and brilliant talents, he was expected to devote himself to the duties of public life. At first he studied for the bar; but so slight was his ambition and so unfitted was his genius for even the moderate degree of severe reasoning required by his profession, that he soon abandoned it in disgust, and turned to the study of rhetoric. For some time he declaimed under the first masters, Arellius Fuscus and Porcius Latro, [34] and acquired a power of brilliant improvisation that caused him to be often quoted in the schools, and is evidenced by many reminiscences in the writings of the elder Seneca. [35] A short time was spent by him, according to custom, at Athens, [36] and while in Greece he took the opportunity of visiting the renowned cities of Asia Minor. He also spent some time in Sicily, and returned to Rome probably at the age of 23 or 24, where he allowed himself to be nominated triumvir capitalis, decemvir litibus iudicandis, and centumvir, in quick succession. But in spite of the remonstrances of his friends he finally gave up all active work, and began that series of love-poems which was at once the cause of his popularity and of his fall, His first mistress was a lady whom he calls Corinna, but whose real name is not known. That she was a member of the demi-monde is probable from this fact; as also from the poet's strong assertion that he had never been guilty of an intrigue with a married woman. The class to which she belonged were mostly Greeks or Easterns, beautiful and accomplished, often poetesses, and mingling with these seductive qualities the fickleness and greed natural to their position, of which Ovid somewhat unreasonably complains. To her are dedicated the great majority of the Amores, his earliest extant work. These elegant but lascivious poems, some of which perhaps were the same which he recited to large audiences as early as his twenty-second year, were published 13 B.C., and consisted at first of five books, which he afterwards reduced to three. [37] No sooner were they before the public than they became universally popular, combining as they do the personal experiences already made familiar to Roman audiences through Tibullus and Propertius, with a levity, a dash, a gaiety, and a brilliant polish, far surpassing anything that his more serious predecessors had attained. During their composition he was smitten with the desire (perhaps owing to his Asiatic tour) to write an epic poem on the wars of the gods and giants, but Corinna, determined to keep his muse for herself, would not allow him to gratify it. [38]
The Heroides or love-letters from mythological heroines to their (mostly) faithless spouses, are declared by Ovid to be an original importation from Greece. [39.] They are erotic suasoriae, based on the declamations of the schools, and are perhaps the best appreciated of all his compositions. They present the Greek mythology under an entirely new phase of treatment. Virgil had complained [40] that its resources were used up, and in Propertius we already see that allusive way of dealing with it which savours of a general satiety. But in Ovid's hands the old myths became young again, indeed, younger than ever; and people wonder they could ever have lost their interest. His method is the reverse of Virgil's or Livy's. [41] They take pains to make themselves ancient; he, with wanton effrontery, makes the myths modern. Jupiter, Juno, the whole circle of Olympus, are transformed into the hommes et femmes galantes of Augustus's court, and their history into a chronique scandaleuse. The immoral incidents, round which a veil of poetic sanctity had been cast by the great consecrator time, are here displayed in all their mundane pruriency. In the Metamorphoses Jupiter is introduced as smitten with the love of a nymph, Dictynna; some compunctions of conscience seize him, and the image of Juno's wrath daunts him, but he finally overcomes his fear with these words--
"Hoc furtum certe coniux mea nesciet (inquit); Aut si rescierit, sunt O sunt iurgia tanti?"
So, in the Heroides, the idea of the desolate and love-lorn Ariadne writing a letter from the barren isle of Naxos is in itself ridiculous, nor can all the pathos of her grief redeem the irony. Helen wishes she had had more practice in correspondence, so that she might perhaps touch her lover's chilly heart. Ovid using the language of mythology, reminds us of those heroes of Dickens who preface their communications by a wink of intelligence.
His next venture was of a more compromising character. Intoxicated with popularity, he devoted three long poems to a systematic treatment of the Art of Love, on which he lavished all the graces of his wayward talent, and a combination of mythological, literary, and social allusion, that seemed to mark him out for better things. He is careful to remark at the outset that this poem is not intended for the virtuous. The frivolous gallants, whose sole end in life is dissipation, with the objects of their licentious passion, are the readers for whom he caters. But he had overshot his mark; The Amores had been tolerated, for they had followed precedent. But even they had raised him enemies. The _Art of Love _produced a storm of indignation, and without doubt laid the foundations of that severe displeasure on the part of Augustus, which found vent ten years later in a terrible punishment. For Ovid was doing his best to render the emperor's reforms a dead letter. It was difficult enough to get the laws enforced, even with the powerful sanction of a public opinion guided by writers like Horace and Virgil. But here was a brilliant poet setting his face right against the emperor's will. The necessity of marriage had been preached with enthusiasm by two unmarried poets; a law to the same effect had been passed by two unmarried consuls; [42] a moral régime had been inaugurated by a prince whose own morals were or had been more than dubious. All this was difficult; but it had been done. And now the insidious attractions of vice were flaunted in the most glowing colours in the face of day. The young of both sexes yielded to the charm. And what was worse, the emperor's own daughter, whom he had forced to stay at home carding wool, to wear only such garments as were spun in the palace, to affect an almost prudish delicacy, the proud and lovely Julia, had been detected in such profligacy as poured bitter satire on the old monarch's moral discipline, and bore speaking witness to the power of an inherited tendency to vice. The emperor's awful severity bespoke not merely the aggrieved father but the disappointed statesman. Julia had disgraced his home and ruined his policy, and the fierce resentment which rankled in his heart only waited its time to burst forth upon the man who had laboured to make impurity attractive. [43] Meanwhile Ovid attempted, two years later, a sort of recantation in the Remedia Amoris, the frivolity of which, however, renders it as immoral as its predecessor though less gross; and he finished his treatment of the subject with the Medicamina Faciei, a sparkling and caustic quasi-didactic treatise, of which only a fragment survives. [44] During this period (we know not exactly when) was composed the tragedy of Medea, which ancient critics seem to have considered his greatest work. [45] Alone of his writings it showed his genius in restraint, and though we should probably form a lower estimate of its excellence, we may regret that time has not spared it. Among other works written at this time was an elegy on the death of Messala (3. A.D.), as we learn from the letters from Pontus. [46] Soon after he seems, like Prince Henry, to have determined to turn over a new leaf and abandon his old acquaintances. Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, were dead; there was no poet of eminence to assist the emperor by his pen. Ovid was beyond doubt the best qualified by his talent, but Augustus had not noticed him. He turned to patriotic themes in order to attract favourable notice, and began his great work on the national calendar. Partly after the example of Propertius, partly by his own predilection, he kept to the elegiac metre, though he is conscious of its betraying him into occasional frivolous or amatory passages where he ought to be grave. [47] "Who would have thought (he says) that from a poet of love I should have become a patriotic bard?" [48] While writing the Fasti he seems to have worked also at the Metamorphoses, a heroic poem in fifteen books, entirely devoted to mythological stories, mostly of transformations caused by the love or jealousy of divine wooers, or the vengeance of their aggrieved spouses. There are passages in this long work of exceeding beauty, and a prodigal wealth of poetical ornament, which has made it a mine for modern poets. Tasso, Ariosto, Guarini, Spenser, Milton, have all drunk deep of this rich fountain. [49] The skill with which the different legends are woven into the fabric of the composition is as marvellous as the frivolous dilettantism which could treat a long heroic poem in such a way. The Metamorphoses were finished before 7 A.D.; the Fasti were only advanced to the end of the sixth book, when all further prosecution of them was stopped by the terrible news, which struck the poet like a thunderbolt, that he was ordered to leave Rome forever. The cause of his exile has been much debated. The ostensible ground was the immorality of his writings, and especially of the Art of Love, but it has generally been taken for granted that a deeper and more personal reason lay behind. Ovid's own hints imply that his eyes had been witness to something that they should not, which he calls a crimen (i.e. a crime against the emperor). [50] The most probable theory is that Augustus took advantage of Ovid's complicity in the younger Julia's misconduct to wreak the full measure of his long-standing indignation against the poet, whose evil counsels had helped to lead astray not only her but his daughter also. He banished him to Tomi, an inhospitable spot not far from the mouth of the Danube, and remained deaf to all the piteous protestations and abject flatteries which for ten years the miserable poet poured forth.
This punishment broke Ovid's spirit. He had been the spoilt child of society, and he had no heart for any life but that of Rome. He pined away amid the hideous solitudes and the barbarous companionship of Goths and Sarmatians. His very genius was wrecked. Not a single poem of merit to be compared with those of former times now proceeded from his pen. Nevertheless he continued to write as fluently as before. Now that he was absent from his wife--for he had been thrice married--this very undomestic poet discovered that he had a deep affection for her. He wrote her endearing letters, and reminded her of their happy hours. As she was a lady of high position and a friend of the Empress Livia, he no doubt hoped for her good offices. But her prudence surpassed her conjugal devotion. Neither she, nor the noble and influential friends [51] whom he implored in piteous accents to intercede for him, ever ventured to approach the emperor on a subject on which he was known to be inexorable. And when Augustus died and Tiberius succeeded, the vain hopes that had hitherto buoyed up Ovid seem to have quite faded away. From such a man it was idle to expect mercy. So, for two or three years the wretched poet lingered on, still solacing himself with verse, and with the kindness of the natives, who sought by every means to do him honour and soothe his misfortune, and then, in the sixtieth year of his age, 17 A.D., he died, and was buried in the place of his dreary exile.
Much as we may blame him, the severity of his punishment seems far too great for his offence, since Ovid is but the child of his age. In praising him, society praised itself; as he says with natural pride, "The fame that others gain after death, I have known in my lifetime." He was of a thoroughly happy, thoughtless, genial temper; before his reverse he does not seem to have known a care. His profligacy cost him no repentance; he could not see that he had done wrong; indeed, according to the lax notions of the time, his conduct had been above rather than below the general standard of dissipated men. The palliations he alleges in the second book of the Tristia, which is the best authority for his life, are in point of fact, unanswerable. To regard his age as wicked or degenerate never entered into his head. He delighted in it as the most refined that the world had ever known; "It is," he says jokingly, "the true Golden Age, for every pleasure that exists may be got for gold." So wedded was he to literary composition that he learnt the Sarmatian language and wrote poems in it in honour of Augustus, the loss of which, from a philological point of view, is greatly to be regretted. His muse must be considered as at home in the salons find fashionable coteries of the great. Though his style is so facile, it is by no means simple. On the contrary, it is one of the most artificial ever created, and could never have bea attained at all but by a natural aptitude, backed by hard study, amid highly-polished surroundings from childhood. These Ovid had, and he wielded his brilliant instrument to perfection. What euphuism was to the Elizabethan courtiers, what the langue galante was to the court of Louis XIV., the mythological dialect was to the gay circles of aristocratic Rome. [5]
It was select, polished, and spiced with a flavour of profanity. Hence, Ovid could never be a popular poet, for a poet to be really popular must be either serious or genuinely humorous; whereas Ovid is neither. His irony, exquisitely ludicrous to those who can appreciate it, falls flat upon less cultivated minds, and the lack of strength that lies beneath his smooth exterior [53] would unfit him, even if his immorality did not stand in the way, for satisfying or even pleasing the mass of mankind.
The Ibis and Halieuticon were composed during his exile; the former is a satiric attack upon a person now unknown, the latter a prosaic account of the fish found in the neighbourhood of Tomi.
Appended to Ovid's works are several graceful poems which have put forward a claim to be his workmanship. His great popularity among the schools of the rhetoricians both in Rome and the provinces, caused many imitations to be circulated under his name. The most ancient of these is the Nux elegia, which, if not Ovid's, must be very shortly posterior to him; it is the complaint of a walnut tree on the harsh treatment it has to suffer, sometimes in very difficult verse, [54] but not inelegant. Some of the Priapeia are also attributed to him, perhaps with reason; the Consolatio ad Liviam, on the death of Drusus, is a clever production of the Renaissance period, full of reminiscences of Ovid's verse, much as the Ciris is filled with reminiscences of Virgil. [55]
Ovid was the most brilliant figure in a gay circle of erotic and epic poets, many of whom he has handed down in his Epistles, others have transmitted a few fragments by which we can estimate their power. The eldest was PONTICUS, who is also mentioned by Propertius as an epic writer of some pretensions. Another was MACER, whose ambition led him to group together the epic legends antecedent and subsequent to those narrated in the Iliad and Odyssey. There was a Pompeius Macer, an excellent man, who with his son committed suicide under Tiberius, [56] his daughter having been accused of high treason, and unable to clear herself. The son is probably identical with this friend of Ovid's. SABINUS, another of his intimates, who wrote answers to the Heroides, was equally conspicuous in heroic poetry. The title of his poem is not known. Some think it was Troezen; [57] but the text is corrupt. Ovid implies [58] that his rescripts to the Heroides were complete; it is a misfortune that we have lost them. The three poems that bear the title of A. Sabini Epistolae, and are often bound with Ovid's works, are the production of an Italian scholar of the fifteenth century. TUTICANUS, who was born in the same year with Ovid, and may perhaps have been the author of Tibullus's third book, is included in the last epistle from Pontus [59] among epic bards. CORNELIUS SEVERUS, a better versifier than poet, [60] wrote a Sicilian War, [61] of which the first book was extremely good. In it occurred the verses on the death of Cicero, quoted by the elder Seneca [62] with approbation:
Oraque magnanimum spirantia paene virorum In rostris iacuere suis: sed enim abstulit omnis, Tanquam sola foret, rapti Ciceronis imago. Tunc redeunt animis ingentia consulis acta Iurataeque manus deprensaque foedera noxae Patriciumque nefas extinctum: poena Cethegi Deiectusque redit votis Catilina nefandis. Quid favor aut coetus, pleni quid honoribus anni Profuerant? sacris exculta quid artibus aetas? Abstulit una dies aevi decus, ictaque luctu Conticuit Latiae tristis facundia linguae. Unica sollicitis quondam tutela salusque, Egregium semper patriae caput, ille senatus Vindex, ille fori, legum ritusque togaeque, Publica vox saevis aeternum obmutuit armis. Informes voltus sparsamque cruore nefando Canitiem sacrasque manus operumque ministras Tantorum pedibus civis proiecta superbis Proculcavit ovans nec lubrica fata deosque Respexit. Nullo luet hoc Antonius aevo. Hoc nec in Emathio mitis victoria Perse, Nec te, dire Syphax, non fecerat hoste Philippo; Inque triumphato ludibria cuncta Iugurtha Afuerant, nostraeque cadens ferus Hannibal irae Membra tamen Stygias tulit inviolata sub umbras.
From these it will be seen that he was a poet of considerable power. Another epicist of some celebrity, whom Quintilian thought worth reading, was PEDO ALBINOVANUS; he was also an epigrammatist, and in conversation remarkable for his brilliant wit. There is an Albinus mentioned by Priscian who is perhaps intended for him. Other poets referred to in the long list which closes the letters from Pontus are RUFUS, LARGUS, probably the perfidious friend of Gallus so mercilessly sketched by Bekker, CAMERINUS, LUPUS, and MONTANUS. All these are little more than names for us. The references to them in succeeding writers will be found in Teuffel. RABIRIUS is worth remarking for the extraordinary impression he made on his contemporaries. Ovid speaks of him as Magni Rabirius oris, [63] a high compliment; and Velleius Paterculus goes so far as to couple him with Virgil as the best representative of Augustan poetry! His Alexandrian War was perhaps drawn from his own experience, though, if so, he must have been a very young man at the time.
From an allusion in Ovid [64] we gather that GRATIUS [65] was a poet of the later Augustan age. His work on the chase (Cynegetica) has come down to us imperfect. It contains little to interest, notwithstanding the attractiveness of its subject: but in truth all didactic poets after Virgil are without freshness, and seem depressed rather than inspired by his success. After alluding to man's early attempts to subdue wild beasts, first by bodily strength, then by rude weapons, he shows the gradual dominion of reason in this as in other human actions. Diana is also made responsible for the huntsman's craft, and a short mythological digression follows. Then comes a description of the chase itself, and the implements and weapons used in it. The list of trees fitted for spearshafts (128- 149), one of the best passages, will show his debt to the Georgics--more than half the lines show traces of imitation. Next we have the different breeds of dogs, their training, their diseases, and general supervision discussed, and after a digression or two--the best being a catalogue of the evils of luxury--the poem (as we possess it) ends with an account of the horses best fitted for hunting. The technical details are carefully given, and would probably have had some value; but there is scarcely a trace of poetic enthusiasm, and only a moderate elevation of style.
The last Augustan poet we shall notice is M. MANILIUS, whose dry subject has caused him to meet with very general neglect. His date was considered doubtful, but Jacob has shown that he began to write towards the close of Augustus's reign. The first book refers to the defeat of Varus [66] (7 A.D.), to which, therefore, it must be subsequent, and the fourth book contemplates Augustus as still alive, [67] though Tiberius had already been named as his successor. [68] The fifth book must have appeared after the interval of Augustus's death; and from one passage which seems to allude to the destruction of Pompey's theatre, [69] Jacob argues that it was written as late as 22 A.D. The danger of treating a subject on which the emperor had his own very decided views [70] may have deterred Manilius from completing his work. Literature of all kinds was silent under the tyrant's gloomy frown, and the weak style of this last book seems to reflect the depressed mind of its author.
The birth and parentage of Manilius are not known. That he was a foreigner is probable, both from the uncouthness of his style at the outset, and from the decided improvement in it that can be traced through succeeding books. Bentley thought him an Asiatic; if so, however, his lack of florid ornament would be strange. It is more likely that he was an African. But the question is complicated by the corrupt state of his text, by the obscurity of his subject, and by the very incomplete knowledge of it displayed by the author. It was not considered necessary to have mastered a subject to treat of it in didactic verse. Cicero expressly instances Aratus [71] as a man who, with scarce any knowledge of astronomy, exercised a legitimate poetical ingenuity by versifying such knowledge as he had. These various causes make Manilius one of the most difficult of authors. Few can wade through the mingled solecisms in language and mistakes in science, the empty verbiage that dilates on a platitude in one place, and the jejune abstract that hurries over a knotty argument in another, without regretting that so unreadable a poet should have been preserved. [72]
And yet his book is not altogether without interest. The subject is called Astronomy, but should rather be called Astrology, for more than half the space is taken up with these baseless theories of sidereal influence which belong to the imaginary side of the science. But in the exordia and perorations to the several books, as well as in sundry digressions, may be found matter of greater value, embodying the poet's views on the great questions of philosophy. [73] On the whole he must be reckoned as a Stoic, though not a strictly dogmatic one. He begins by giving the different views as to the origin of the world, and lays it down that on these points truth cannot be attained. The universe, he goes on to say, rests on no material basis, much less need we suppose the earth to need one. Sun, moon, and stars, whirl about without any support; earth therefore may well be supposed to do the same. The earth is the centre of the universe, whose motions are circular and imitate those of the gods. [74] The universe is not finite as some Stoics assert, for its roundness (which is proved by Chrysippus) implies infinity. Lucretius is wrong in denying antipodes; they follow naturally from the globular shape, from which also we may naturally infer that seas bind together, as well as separate, nations. [75] All this system is held together by a spiritual force, which he calls God, governing according to the law of reason. [76] He next describes the Zodiac and enumerates the chief stars with their influences. Following the teaching of Hegesianax, [77] he declares that those which bear human names are superior to those named after beasts or inanimate things. The study of the stars was a gift direct from heaven. Kings first, and after them priests, were guided to search for wisdom, and now Augustus, who is both supreme ruler and supreme pontiff, follows his divine father in cultivating this great science. Mentioning some of the legends which recount the transformations of mortals into stars, he asserts that they must not be understood in too gross a sense. [78] Nothing is more wonderful than the orderly movement of the heavenly bodies. He who has contemplated this eternal order cannot believe the Epicurean doctrine. Human generations pass away, but the earth and the stars abide for ever. Surely the universe is divine. Passing on to the milky way, he gives two fanciful theories of its origin, one that it is the rent burnt by Phaethon through the firmament, the other that it is milk from the breast of Juno. As to its consistency, he wavers between the view that it is a closely packed company of stars, and the more poetical one that it is formed by the white-robed souls of the just. This last theory leads him to recount in a dull catalogue the well-worn list of Greek and Roman heroes. Comets are mysterious bodies, whose origin is unknown. The universe is full of fiery particles ever tending towards conglomeration, and perhaps their impact forms comets. Whether natural or supernatural, one thing is certain--they are never without effect on mankind.
In the second book he begins by a complaint that the list of attractive subjects is exhausted. This incites him to essay an untried path, from which he hopes to reap no stolen laurels [79] as the bard of the universe! [80] He next expounds the doctrine of an ever-present spirit moving the mass of matter, in language reflected from the sixth Aeneid. Men must not seek for mathematical demonstration. Considerations of analogy are enough to awaken conviction. The fact that, e.g., shell-fish are affected by the moon, and that all land creatures depend on solar influence, should forbid us to dissociate earth from heaven, or man's activity from the providence of the gods. How could man have any knowledge of deity unless he partook of its nature? The rest of the book gives a catalogue of the different kinds of stars, their several attributes, and their astrological classification, ending with the Dodecatemorion and Oclotopos.
The third book, after a short and offensively allusive description of the labours of preceding poets, sketches the twelve athla or accidents of human life, to each of which is assigned its special guardian influence. It then passes to the horoscope, which it treats at length, giving minute and various directions how to draw it. The extreme importance attached to this process by Tiberius, and the growing frequency with which, on every occasion, Chaldeans and Astrologers were now consulted, made the poet specially careful to treat this subject with clearness and precision. It is accordingly the most readable of all the purely technical parts of the work. The account of the tropics, with which the book closes, is singularly inaccurate, but contains some rather elegant descriptions: [81] at the tropic of Cancer summer always reigns, at Capricorn there is perpetual winter. The book here breaks off quite abruptly; apparently he intended to compose the epilogue at some future time, but had no opportunity of doing it.
The exordium to the fourth book, which sometimes rises into eloquence, glorifies fate as the ultimate divine power, but denies it either will or personality. He fortifies his argument, according to his wont, by a historical catalogue, which exemplifies the harshness that, except in philosophical digressions, rarely leaves his style. Then follow the horoscopic properties of the Zodiacal constellations, the various reasons for desiring to be born under one star rather than another, a sort of horoscopico-zodiacal account of the world, its physical geography, and the properties of the zones. These give occasion for some graphic touches of history and legend; the diction of this book is far superior to that of the preceding three, but the wisdom is questionable which reserves the "good wine" until so late. Passing on to the ecliptic, he drags in the legends of Deucalion, Phaethon, and others, which he treats in a rhetorical way, and concludes the book with an appeal to man's reason, and to the necessity of allowing the mental eye free vision. Somewhat inconsistently with the half-religious attitude of the first and second books, he here preaches once more the doctrine of irresistible fate, which to most of the Roman poets occupies the place of God. The poem practically ends here. He himself implies at the opening of Book V., that most poets would not have pursued the theme further; apparently he is led on by his interest in the subject, or by the barrenness of his invention which could suggest no other. The book, which is unfinished, contains a description of various stars, with legends interspersed in which a more ambitious style appears, and a taste which, though rhetorical and pedantic, is more chastened than in the earlier books.
It will be seen from the above résumé that the poem discusses several questions of great interest. Rising above the technicalities of the science, Manilius tries to preach a theory of the universe which shall displace that given by Lucretius. He is a Stoic combating an Epicurean. A close study of Lucretius is evidenced by numerous passages, [82] and the earnestness of his moral conclusions imitates, though it does not approach in impressiveness, that of the great Epicurean. Occasionally he imitates Horace, [83] much more often Virgil, and, in the legends, Ovid. [84] His technical manipulation of the hexameter is good, though tinged with monotony. Occasionally he indulges in licenses which mark a deficient ear [85] or an imperfect comprehension of the theory of quantity. [86] He has few archaisms, [87] few Greek words, considering the exigencies of his subject, and his vocabulary is greatly superior to his syntax; the rhetorical colouring which pervades the work shows that he was educated in the later taste of the schools, and neither could understand nor desired to reproduce the simplicity of Lucretius or Virgil. [88]
V. PROSE-WRITERS OF THE AUGUSTAN PERIOD
Public oratory, which had held the first rank among studies under the Republic, was now, as we have said, almost extinct. In the earlier part of Augustus's reign, Pollio and Messala for a time preserved some of the traditions of freedom, but both found it impossible to maintain their position. Messala retired into dignified seclusion; Pollio devoted himself to other kinds of composition. Somewhat later we find MESSALINUS, the son of Messala, noted for his eloquent pleading; but as he inherited none of the moral qualities which had made his father dangerous, Augustus permitted him to exercise his talent. He was an intimate friend of Ovid, from whom we learn details of his life; but he frittered away his powers on trifling jests [1] and extempore versifying. The only other name worthy of mention is Q. HATERIUS, who from an orator became a noted declaimer. The testimonies to his excellence vary; Seneca, who had often heard him, speaks of the wonderful volubility, more Greek than Roman, which in him amounted to a fault. Tacitus gives him higher praise, but admits that his writings do not answer to his living fame, a persuasive manner and sonorous voice having been indispensible ingredients in his oratory. [2] The activity before given to the state was now transferred to the basilica. But as the full sway of rhetoric was not established until quite the close of Augustus's reign, we shall reserve our account of it for the next book, merely noticing the chief rhetoricians who flourished at this time. The most eminent were PORCIUS LATRO, FUSCUS ARELLIUS, and ALBUCIUS SILUS, who are frequently quoted by Seneca; RUTILIUS LUPUS, [3] who was somewhat younger; and SENECA, the father of the celebrated philosopher. [4] Fuscus was an Asiatic, and seems to have been one of the first who declaimed in Latin. Foreign professors had previously exercised their own and their pupils' ingenuity in Greek; Cicero had almost invariably declaimed in that language, and there can be no doubt that this was a much less harmful practice; but now the bombast and glitter of the Asiatic style flaunted itself in the Latin tongue, and found in the increasing number of provincials from Gaul and Spain a body of admirers who cultivated it with enthusiasm. CESTIUS PIUS, a native of Smyrna, espoused the same florid style, and was even preferred by his audience to such men as Pollio and Messala. To us the extracts from these authors, preserved in Seneca, present the most wearisome monotony, but contemporary criticism found in them many grades of excellence. The most celebrated of all was Porcius Latro, who, like Seneca himself, came from Spain. There is a special character about the Spanish literary genius which will be more prominent in the next generation. At present it had not sufficiently amalgamated with the old Latin culture to shine in the higher branches. But in the rhetorical schools it gradually leavened taste by its attractive qualities, and men like Latro must be regarded as wielding immense influence on Roman style, though somewhat in the background, much as Antipho influenced the oratory of Athens.
Annaeus Seneca of Corduba (Cordova), [5] the father of Novatus, Seneca, and Mela the father of Lucan, belonged to the equestrian order, was born probably about 54 B.C. and lived on until after the death of Tiberius. [6] The greater part of this long life, longer even than Varro's, was spent in the profession of eloquence, for which in youth he prepared himself by studying the manner of the most renowned masters. Cicero alone he was not fortunate enough to hear, the civil wars having necessitated his withdrawal to Spain. [7] He does not appear to have visited Rome more than twice, but he shows a thorough knowledge of the rhetoricians of the capital, whence we conclude that his residence extended over some time. [8] The stern discipline of Caesar's wars had taught the Spaniards something of Roman severity, and Seneca seems to have adopted with a good will the maxims of Roman life. [9] He possessed that élan with which young races often carry all before them when, they give the fresh vigour of their understanding to master an existing system; his memory, as he himself tells us, was so prodigious that he could recite 2000 names correctly after once hearing them; [10] and, with the taste for showy ornament which his race has always evinced, he must have launched himself without misgiving into the competition of the schools. Nevertheless, in his old age, when he came to look back on his life, he felt half ashamed of its results. His sons had asked him to write a critical account of the greatest rhetoricians he had known; he gladly acceded to their wish, and has embodied in his work vast numbers of extracts, drawn either from memory or rough notes, specifying the manner in which each professor treated his theme; he then adds his own judgment on their merits, often interspersing the more tedious discussions with bon-mots or literary anecdotes. The most readable portions are the prefaces, where he writes in his own person in the unaffected epistolary style. We learn from them many particulars about the lives of the great rhetores and the state of taste and literary education. But in the preface to the tenth book (the last of the series) he expresses an utter weariness of a subject which not even the reminiscences of happier days could invest with serious interest. There are no indications that Seneca rose to the first eminence. His extraordinary memory, diligence, and virtuous habits gained him respect from his pupils and the intimacy of the great. But there is nothing in his writings to show a man of more than average capacity, who, having been thrown all his life in an artificial and narrowing profession, has lost the power of taking a vigorous interest in things, and acquired the habit of looking at questions from what we might call the examiner's point of view. We have remains of two sets of compositions by him; Controversiae, or legal questions discussed by way of practice for actual cases, divided into ten books, of which about half are preserved; and Suasoriae, or imaginary themes, such as those ridiculed by Juvenal:
"Consilium dedimus Sullae, privatus ut altum Dormiret."
These last are printed first in our editions, because, being abstract in character and not calling for any special knowledge, they were better suited for beginners. The style of the book varies. In the prefaces it is not inelegant, and shows few traces of the decline, but in the excerpts from Latro and Fuscus, (which are perhaps nearly in their own words) we observe the silver Latinity already predominant. Much is written in a very compressed manner, reading like notes of a lecture or a table of contents. There is, however, a geniality about the old man which renders him, even when uninteresting, not altogether unpleasing.
We pass from rhetoric to history, and here we meet with one of the great names of Roman letters, the most eloquent of all historians, TITUS LIVIUS PATAVINUS. The exact date of his birth is disputed, but may be referred to 59 or 57 B.C. at Pataviam (Padua), a populous and important town, no less renowned for its strict morals than for its opulence. [11] Little is known of his life, but he seems to have been of noble birth; his relative, C. Cornelius, took the auspices at Pharsalia, and the aristocratic tinge which pervades his work would lead to the same inference. Padua was a bustling place, where public-speaking was rife, and aptitude for affairs common; thus Livy was nursed in eloquence and in scenes of human activity. Nothing tended to turn his mind to the contemplation of nature--at least we see no signs of it in his work,--his conceptions of national development were uncomplicated by reference to the share that physical conditions have in moulding it; man alone, and man as in all respects self-determining, has interest for him. His gifts are pre-eminently those of an orator; the talent for developing an idea, for explaining events as an orderly sequence, for establishing conclusions, for moving the feelings, for throwing himself into a cause, for clothing his arguments in noble language, shine conspicuous in his work, while he has the good faith, sincerity, and patriotism which mark off the orator from the mere advocate. For some years he remained at Padua studying philosophy [12] and practising as a teacher of rhetoric, declaiming after the manner of Seneca and his contemporaries. Reference is made to these declamations by Seneca and Quintilian, and no doubt they were worth preserving as a grade in his intellectual progress and as having helped to produce the artistic elaborateness of his speeches. In 31 B.C. or thereabouts, he came to Rome, where he speedily rose into favour. But though a courtier, he was no flatterer. He praised Brutus and Cassius, [13] he debated whether Caesar was useful to the state, [14] his whole history is a praise of the old Republic, his preface states that Rome can neither bear her evils, nor the remedy that has been applied to them (by which it is probable he means the Empire), and we know that Augustus called him a Pompeian, though, at the same time, he cannot have been an imprudent one, otherwise he could hardly have retained the emperor's friendship. As regards the date of his work, Professor Seeley decides that the first decade was written between 27 and 20 B.C., the very time during which the Aeneid was in process of composition. The later decades were thrown off from time to time until his death at Patavium in 17 A.D. Indications exist to show that they were not revised by him after publication, e.g., the errors into which he had been led by trusting to Valerius Antias were not erased; but he was careful not to rely on his authority afterwards. That he enjoyed a high reputation is clear from the fact recorded by Pliny the younger, that a man journeyed to Rome from Cadiz for the express purpose of seeing him, and, having succeeded, returned at once. [15] The elder Pliny [16] draws a picture of him at an advanced age studying with undiminished zeal at his great work. The "old man eloquent" used to say that he had written enough for glory, and had now earned rest; but his restless mind fed on labour and would not lie idle. When completed, his book at once became the authoritative history of Rome, after which nothing was left but to abridge or comment upon it.
The state of letters at Rome, while unfavourable to strictly political history, was ripe for the production of a work like Livy's. Augustus, Agrippa, and Pollio, had founded public libraries in which the older works were accessible. The emperor took a keen interest in all studies; he encouraged not merely poets but philologians and scientific writers, and he was not indisposed to protect historical study, if only it were treated in the way he approved. Rabirius, Pedo Albinovanus, and Cornelius Severus had written poems on the late wars, Ovid and Propertius on the legends embodied in the calendar; the rival jurists Labeo and Capito had wrought the Juris Responsa into a body of legal doctrine; Strabo was giving the world the result of his travels in a universal geography; Pompeius Trogus, Labienus, Pollio, and the Greeks Dionysius, Dion, and Timagenes, had all treated Roman history; Augustus had published a volume of his own Gesta; all things seem to demand a comprehensive dramatic account of the growth of the Roman state, which should trace the process by which the world became Roman, and Rome became united in the hands of Caesar.
Hitherto Roman history had been imperfectly treated. It is unfortunate that such crude conceptions of its nature prevailed. Even Cicero says, opus hoc unum maxime oratorium. [17] It had been either a register of events kept by aristocratic pontiffs from pride of race, or a series of pictures for the display of eloquence. Neither the flexible imagination, nor the patient sagacity, nor the disinterested view of life necessary for a great historian, was to be found among the Romans. There was no true criticism. For instance, while Juvenal depicts the first inhabitants of the city, according to tradition, as rude marauders, [18] Cicero commends their virtues and extols the wisdom of the early kings as the Athenian orators do that of Solon; and in his Cato Maior makes of the harsh censor a refined country gentleman and a student of Plato! Varro had amassed a vast collection of facts, a formidable array of authorities; Dionysius had spent twenty years in studying the monuments of Rome, and yet had so little intelligence of her past that he made Romulus a philosopher of the Sophistic type! Caesar and Sallust gave true narratives of that which they had themselves known, but they did little more. No ancient writer, unless perhaps Thucydides, has grasped the truth that history is an indivisible whole, and that humanity marches according to fixed law towards a determinate end. The world is in their eyes a stage on which is played for ever the same drama of life and death, whose fate moves in a circle bounded by the catastrophes of cities mortal as their inhabitants, without man's becoming by progress of time either better or more powerful. In estimating, then, the value of Livy's work, we must ask, How far did he possess the qualifications necessary for success? We turn to his preface and find there the moralist, the patriot, and the stylist; and we infer that his fullest idea of history is of a book in which he who runs can read the lesson of virtue; and, if he be a lawgiver, can model his legislation upon its high precedents, and, if he be a citizen, can follow its salutary precepts of conduct. An idea, which, however noble, is certainly not exhaustive. It may entitle its possessor to be called a lofty writer, but not a great historian. This is his radical defect. He treats history too little as a record, too little as a science, too much as a series of texts for edification.
How far is he faithful to his authorities? In truth, he never deserts them, never (or almost never) advances an assertion without them. [19] His fidelity may be inferred from the fact that when he follows Polybius alone, he adds absolutely nothing, he merely throws life into his predecessor's dead periods. Moreover, he writes, after the method of the old annalists, of events year by year; he rarely conjectures their causes or traces their connexion, he is willing to efface himself in the capacity of exponent of what is handed down. Whole passages we cannot doubt, especially in the early books, are inserted from Fabius and the other ancients, only just enough changed to make them polished instead of rude; and it is astonishing how slight the changes need be when the hand that makes them is a skilful one. So far as we can judge he never alters the testimony of a witness, or colours it by interested presentation. His chief authorities for the early history are Licinius Macer, Claudius Quadrigarius, Gn. Gellius, [20] Sempronius Tuditanus, Aelius Tubero, Cassius Hemina, Calpurnius Piso, Valerius Antias, Acilius Glabrio, [21] Porcius Cato, Cincius, and Pictor. [22] These writers, or at least the most ancient of them, Cato and Pictor, founded their investigations on such, records as treaties, public documents--e.g. the annals, censors' and pontiffs' commentaries, augural books, books relating to civil procedure kept by the pontiffs, &c.; [23] laws, lists of magistrates, [24] Libri Lintei kept in the temple of Juno Moneta; all under the reservation noticed before, that the majority perished in the Gallic conflagration. [25] These Professor Seeley classes as pure sources. The rest, which he calls corrupt, are the funeral orations, inscriptions in private houses placed under the Imagines, [26] poems of various kinds, both gentile and popular, in all of which, there was more or less of intentional misrepresentation. For the history after the first decade new authorities appear. The chief are Polybius, Silenus the Sicilian a friend of Hannibal, Caelius Antipater, Sisenna, Caecilius, Rutilius, and the Fasti, which are now almost or quite continuous; and still further on he followed Posidonius, and perhaps for the Civil Wars Asinius Pollio, Theophanes, and others. There is evidence that these were carefully digested, but by instalments. For instance, he did not read Polybius until he came to write the Punic wars. Hence he missed several antiquarian notices (e.g. the treaty with Carthage) which would have helped him in the first decade. Still he uses the authors he quotes with moderation and fidelity. When the Fasti omit or confuse the names of the consuls, he tells us so; [27] when authorities differ as to whether the victory lay with the Romans or Samnites, [28] he notes the fact. In the early history he is reticent, where Dionysius is minute; he is content with the broad legendary outline, where Dionysius constructs a whole edifice of probable but utterly uncertified particulars. In the important task of sifting authorities Livy follows the plan of selecting the most ancient, and those who from their position had best access to facts. In complicated cases of divergence he trusts the majority, [29] the earliest, [30] or the most accredited, [31] particularly Fabius and Piso. [32] He does not analyse for us his method of arriving at a conclusion. "Erudition is for him a mine from which the historian should draw forth the pure gold, leaving the mud where he found it." Many of his conclusions are reached by a sort of instinct, which by practice divines truth, or rather verisimilitude, which is but too often its only available substitute.
So far as enthusiasm serves (and without it criticism, though it may succeed in destroying, is helpless to construct), Livy penetrates to the spirit of ancient times. He says himself, in a very celebrated passage where he bewails the prevailing scepticism, [33] "Non sum nescius ab eadem neglegentia qua nihil portendere deos volgo nunc credunt neque nuntiari admodum ulla prodigia in publicum neque in annales referri. Ceterum et mihi vetustas res scribenti nescio quo pacto antiquus fit animus et quaedam religio tenet, quae illi prudentissimi viri publice suscipienda curarint, ea pro indignis habere quae in meos annales referam." This "antiquity of soul" is not criticism, but it is an important factor in it. In the history of the kings he is a poet. If we read the majestic sentence in which the end of Romulus is described, [34] we must admit that if the event is told at all this is the way in which it should be told. We meet, however, here and there, with genuine insertions from antiquity which spoil the beauty of the picture. Take, e.g., the law of treason, [35] terrible in its stern accents, "Duumviri perduellionem iudicent: si a duumviris provocarit, provocatione certato: si vincent, caput obnubito: infelici arbori reste suspendito: verberato vel intra pomoerium vel extra pomoerium," where, as the historian remarks, the law scarcely hints at the possibility of an acquittal. In the struggles of the young Republic one traces the risings of political passion, not of individuals as yet, but of parties in the state. After the Punic wars have begun individual features predominate, and what has been a rich canvass becomes a speaking portrait. Constitutional questions, in which Livy is singularly ill informed, are hinted at, [36] but generally in so cursory and unintelligent a way, that it needs a Niebuhr to elicit their meaning. And Livy is throughout led into fallacious views by his confusion of the mob (faex Romuli, as Cicero calls it) which represented the sovereign people in his day, with the sturdy and virtuous plebs, whose obstinate insistance on their right forms the leading thread of Roman constitutional development. Conformably with his promise at the outset he traces with much more effect the gradually increasing moral decadence. It is when Rome comes into contact with Asia that her virtue, already tried, collapses almost without a struggle. The army, once so steady in its discipline, riots in revelry, and marches against Antiochus with as much recklessness as if it were going to butcher a flock of sheep. [37] The soldiers even disobey orders in pillaging Phocaea; they become cowards, e.g., the Illyrian garrison surrenders to Perseus; and before long the abominable and detested oriental orgies gain a permanent footing in Rome. Meanwhile, the senate falls from its old standard, it ceases to keep faith, its generals boast of perfidy, [38] and the corrupted fathers have not the face to check them. [39] The epic of decadence proceeds to its dénouement, and if we possessed the lost books the decline would be much more evident. It must be admitted that in this department of his subject Livy paints with a master's hand. But nothing can atone for his signal deficiency in antiquarian and constitutional knowledge. He had (it has been said) a taste for truth, but not a passion for it. Had he gone into the Aedes Nympharum, he might have read on brass the so-called royal and tribunician laws; he might have read the treaties with the Sabines, with Gabii and Carthage; the Senatus Consulta and the Plebi Scita. Augustus found in the ruined temple of Jupiter Fucinus [40] the spolia opima of Cossus, who was there declared to have been consul when he won them. All the authorities represented him as military tribune. Livy, it seems, never took the trouble to examine it. When he professes to cite an ancient document, it is not the document itself he cites but its copy in Fabius. He seems to think the style of history too ornate to admit such rugged interpositions, [41] and when he inserts them he offers a half apology for his boldness. This dilettante way of regarding his sources deserves all the censure Niebuhr has cast on it. If it were not for the fidelity with which he has incorporated without altering his better-informed predecessors, the investigations of Niebuhr and his successors would have been hopelessly unverifiable. The student who wishes to learn the value of Livy for the history of the constitution should read the celebrated Lectures (VII. and VIII.) of Niebuhr's history. Their publication dethroned him, nor has he yet been reinstated. But it must be remembered that this censure does not attach to him in other aspects, for instance as a chronicler of Rome's wars, or a biographer of her worthies. As a geographer, however, he is untrustworthy; his description of Hannibal's march is obscure, and many battles are extremely involved. It is evident he was a clear thinker only on certain points; his preface, e.g., is intricate both in matter and manner.
It remains to consider him shortly as a philosophic and as an artistic historian. On these points some excellent remarks are made by M. Taine. [42] When we read or write a history of Rome we ask, Why was it that Rome conquered the Samnites, the Carthaginians, the Etruscans? How was it that the plebeians gained equal rights with the patricians? The answer to such questions satisfies the intelligent man of the world who desires only a clear and consistent view. But philosophy asks a yet further why? Why was Rome a conquering state? why these never-ceasing wars? why was her cult of abstract deities a worship of the letter which never rose to a spiritual idea? In the resolution of problems like these lies the true delight of science; the former is but information; this is knowledge. Has Livy this knowledge? It does not follow that the philosophic historian should deduce with mathematical precision; he merely narrates the events in their proper order, or chooses from the events those that are representative; he groups facts under their special laws, and these again under universal laws, by a skilful arrangement or selection, or else by flashes of imaginative insight. Livy is no more a philosopher than a critic; he discovers laws, as he verifies facts, imperfectly. The treatment of history known to the ancients did not admit of separate discussions summing up the results of previous narrative; for philosophic views we are as a rule driven to consult the inserted speeches. Livy's speeches often reveal considerable insight; Manlius's account of the Gauls in Asia, [43] and Camillus's sarcastic description of their behaviour round Rome, [44] go to the root of their national character and lay bare its weakness. The Samnites are criticised by Decius in terms which show that Livy had analysed the causes of their fall before Rome. [45] Hannibal arraigns the narrow policy of his country as his true vanquisher. These and the like are as effectual means of inculcating a general truth as a set discussion. To these numerous and perhaps more striking passages bearing on the internal history might be added. [46] But a historian should have his whole subject under command. It is not enough to illuminate it by flashes. The speeches, besides being in the highest degree unnatural and unhistoric, are far too eloquent, moving the feelings instead of the judgment. [47] "For an annalist," to quote Niebuhr, "a clear survey is not necessary; but in a work like Livy's, it is of the highest importance, and no great author has this deficiency to such an extent as he. He neither knew what he had written nor what he was going to write, but wrote at hap-hazard." To put all facts on an equal footing is to be like a child threading beads. To know how to select representative facts, to arrange according to representative principles is an indispensable requisite, as its absence is an irremediable defect in a writer who aspires to instruct the world.
To turn to his artistic side. In this he has been allowed to stand on the highest pinnacle of excellence. Whether he paints the character of a nation or an individual; whether he paints it by pausing to reflect on its elements, as in the beautiful studies of Cato and Cicero, [48] or by describing it in action, which is the poetical and dramatic mode, or by making it express itself in speech, which is the method the orator favours most, he is always great. He was a Venetian, and Niebuhr finds in him the rich colouring of the Venetian school; he has also the darker shadow which that colouring necessitates, and the bold delineation of form which renders it not meretricious but noble. When he makes the old senators speak, we recognise men with the souls of kings. Manlius regards the claim of the Latins for equal rights as an outrage and a sacrilege against Capitoline Jupiter, with a truly Roman arrogance which would be grotesque were it not so grand. [49] The familiar conception we form in childhood of the great Roman worthies, where it does not come from Plutarch, is generally drawn from Livy.
The power of his style is seen sometimes in stately movement, sometimes in lightning-like flashes. When Hannibal at the foot of the Alps sees his men dispirited, he cries out, "You are scaling the walls of Rome!" When the patricians shrink in fear from the dreaded tribunate, the consuls declare that their emblems of office are a funeral pageant. [50] All readers will remember pithy sentences like these: "Hannibal has grown old in Campania;" [51] "The issue of war will show who is in the right." [52]
His rhetorical training discovers itself in the elaborate exactness with which he disposes of all the points in a speech. The most artificial of all, perhaps, and yet at the same time the most effective, is the pleading of old Horatius for his son. [53] It might have come from the hands of Porcius Latro, or Arellius Fuscus. The orator treats truth as a means; the historian should treat it as an end. Livy wishes us not so much to know as to admire his heroes.
His language was censured by Pollio as exhibiting a Patavinitas, but what this was we know not. To us he appears as by far the purest writer subsequent to Cicero. Of the great orator he was a warm admirer. He imitated his style, and bade his son-in-law read only Cicero and Demosthenes, or other writers in proportion as they approached these two. He models his rhythm on the Ciceronian period so far as their different objects permit. But poetical phrases have crept in, [54] marring its even fabric; and other indications of too rich a colouring betray the near advent of the Silver Age.
As the book progresses the style becomes more fixed, until in the third decade it has reached its highest point; in the later books, as we know from testimony as well as the few specimens that are extant, it had become garrulous, like that of an old man. His work was to have consisted of fifteen decades, but as we have no epitome beyond Book CXLII., it was probably never finished. Perhaps the loss of the last part is not so serious as it seems. We have thirty books complete and the greater part of five others; but no more, except a fragment of the ninety-first book, has been discovered for several centuries, and in all probability the remainder is for ever lost. Livy was so much abridged and epitomized that during the Middle Ages he was scarcely read in any other form. Compilers like Florus, Orosius, Eutropius, &c. entirely supplied his place.
A word should perhaps be said about POMPEIUS TROGUS, who about Livy's time wrote a universal history in forty-four books. It was called Historiae Philippicae, and was apparently arranged according to nations; it began with Ninus, the Nimrod of classical legend, and was brought down to about 9 A.D. We know the work from the epitomes of the books and from Justin's abridgment, which is similar to that of Florus on Livy. Who Justin was, and where he lived, are not clearly ascertained. He is thought to have been a philosopher, but if so, he was anything but a talented one; most scholars place his floruit under the Antonines. He seems to have been a faithful abbreviator, at least as far as this, that he has added nothing of his own. Hence we may form a conception, however imperfect, of the value of Trogus's labours. Trogus was a scientific man, and seems to have desired the fame of a polymath. In natural science he was a good authority, [55] but though his history must have embodied immensely extended researches, it never succeeded in becoming authoritative.
Among the writers on applied science, one of considerable eminence has descended to us, the architect VITRUVIUS POLLIO. He is very rarely mentioned, and has been confounded with Vitruvius Cerdo, a freedman who belongs to a later date, and whose precepts contradict in many particulars those of the first Vitruvius. His birth-place was Formiae; he served in the African War (46 B.C.) under Caesar, so that he was born at least as early as 64 B.C. [56] The date of his work is also uncertain, but it can be approximately fixed, for in it he mentions the emperor's sister as his patroness, and as by her he probably means Octavia, who died 11 B.C., the book must have been written before that year. As, moreover, he speaks of one stone theatre only as existing in Rome, whereas two others were added in 13 B.C., the date is further thrown back to at least 14 B.C. As he expressly tells us it was written in his old age, and he must have been a young man in 46 B.C., when he served his first campaign, the nearer we bring its composition to the latest possible date (i.e. 14) the more correct we shall probably be. He was of good birth and had had a liberal education; but it is clear from the style of his work that he had either forgotten how to write elegantly, or had advanced his literary studies only so far as was necessary for a professional man. [57] His language is certainly far from good.
He began life as a military engineer, but soon found that his personal defects prevented him from succeeding in his career. [58] He therefore seems to have solaced himself by setting forward in a systematic form the principles of his art, and by finding fault with the great body of his professional brethren. [59] The dedication to Augustus implies that he had a practical object, viz. to furnish him with sound rules to be applied in building future edifices and, if necessary, for correcting those already built. He is a patient student of Greek authors, and adopts Greek principles unreservedly; in fact his work is little more than a compendium of Greek authorities. [60] His style is affectedly terse, and so much so as to be frequently obscure. The contents of his book are very briefly as follows:--
Book I. General description of the science--education of the architect--best choice of site for a citydisposition of its plan, fortifications, public buildings, &c.
" II. On the proper materials to be used in building, preceded, like several of Pliny's books, by a quasi-philosophical digression on the origin and early history of man--the progress of art--Vitruvius gives his views on the nature of matter.
" III. IV. On temples--an account of the four orders, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite.
" V. On other public buildings.
" VI. On the arrangement and plan of private houses.
" VII. On the internal decoration of houses.
" VIII. On water supply--the different properties of different waters--the way to find them, test them, and convey them into the city.
" IX. On sun dials and other modes of measuring time.
" X. On machines of all kinds, civil and military.
As will be seen from this analysis, the work is both comprehensive and systematic; it was of great service in the Middle Ages, when it was used in an abridged form (sufficiently ancient, however,) which we still possess.
Antiquarian research was carried on during this period with much zeal. Many illustrious scholars are mentioned, none of whose works have come down to us, except in extremely imperfect abridgments. FENESTELLA (52 B.C.-22 A.D.) wrote on various legal and religious questions, on miscellaneous topics, as literary history, the art of good living, various points in natural history, &c. for which he is quoted as an authority by Pliny. His greatest work seems to have been Annales, which were used by Plutarch. It is probable, however, that in these he showed his special aptitude for archaeological research, and passed over the history in a rapid sketch. Special grammatical studies were carried on by VERRIUS FLACCUS, a freedman, whose great work, De Verborum Significatu, the first Latin lexicon conducted on an extensive scale, we possess in an abridgment by Festus. Its size may be conjectured from the fact that the letter A occupied four books, P five, and so on; and that Festus's abridgment consisted of twenty large volumes. [61] It was a rich storehouse of knowledge, the loss of which is much to be lamented. Another freedman, C. JULIUS HYGINUS (64 B.C.-16 A.D.?), who was also keeper of Augustus's library on the Palatine, manifested an activity scarcely less encyclopaedic than that of Varro. Of his multifarious works we possess two short treatises which pass under his name, the first on mythology, called Fabulae, a series of extracts from his Genealogiae, which we have in an abridgment; the second on astronomy, extending, though this is also in an abridged form, to four books. A few details of his life are given by Suetonius. He was a Spaniard by birth, though some believed him to be an Alexandrian, since Caesar brought him to Rome after the Alexandrine War; he attended at Rome the lectures of the grammarian Cornelius Alexander, surnamed Polyhistor. He was an intimate acquaintance of Ovid, [62] and is said to have died in great poverty. It is doubtful whether the works we possess were written by him in his youth, or are the production of an imperfectly educated abbreviator. Bursian, quoted by Teuffel, [63] thinks it probable that in the second half of the second century of the Christian era, a grammarian made a very brief abridgment of Hyginus's work entitled Genealogiae, and to this added a treatise on the whole mythology so far as it concerned poetical literature, compiled from good sources. This mythology, which retained the name of Hyginus and the title of Genealogiae, came to be generally used in the schools of the grammarians.
The demand for school-books was now rapidly increasing; and as the great classical authors published their works, an abundant supply of material was given to the ingenious and learned. The grammaticae tribus, whom Horace mentions with such disdain, [64] were already asserting their right to dispense literary fame. They were not as yet so compact or popular a body as the rhetoricians, but they had begun to cramp, as the others had begun to corrupt, literature. Dependence on the opinion of a clique is the most hurtful state possible, even though the clique be learned; and Horace showed wisdom as well as spirit in resisting it. The endeavour to please the leading men of the world, which Horace professed to be his object, is far less narrowing; such men, though unable to appraise scientific merit, are the best judges of general literature.
The careful methods of exact inquiry, were, as we have said, directed also to law, in which Labeo remained the highest authority. Capito abated principle in favour of the imperial prerogative. They did not, however, affect philosophy, which retained its original colouring as an ars vivendi. Many of Horace's friends, as we learn from the Odes, gave their minds to speculative inquiry, but, like the poet himself, they seem to have soon deserted it. At least we hear of no original investigations. Neither a metaphysic nor a psychology arose; only a loose rhetorical treatment of physical questions, and a careful collection of ethical maxims for the most part eclectically obtained.
SEXTIUS PYTHAGOREUS--there were two born of this name, father and son-- wrote in Greek, reproducing the oracular style of Heraclitus. The gnuomai, which were translated and christianised by Rufinus, were stamped with a strongly theistic character. A few inferior thinkers are mentioned by Quintilian and Seneca, as PAPIRIUS FABIANUS, SERGIUS FLAVIUS, and PLOTIUS CRISPINUS. Of these, Papirius treated some of the classificatory sciences, which now first began to attract interest in Rome. Botany and zoology were the favourites. Mineralogy excited more interest on its commercial side with regard to the value and history of jewels; it was also treated in a mystic or imaginative way.
From this rapid summary it will be seen that real learning still flourished in Rome. Despotism had not crushed intellectual energy, nor enforced silence on all but flatterers. The emperor had nevertheless grown suspicious in his old age, and given indications of that tyranny which was soon to be the rule of government; he had interdicted Timagenes from his palace, banished Ovid, burnt the works of Labienus, exiled Severus, and shown such severity towards Albucius Silo that he anticipated further disgrace by a voluntary death. His reign closed in 14 A.D., and with it ceases for near a century the appearance of the highest genius in Rome.
Appendix
NOTE I.--A fragment translated from Seneca's Suasoriae, showing the style of expression cultivated in the schools.
The subject (Suas. 2) debated is whether the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, seeing themselves deserted by the army, shall remain or flee. The different rhetors declaim as follows, making Leonidas the speaker:--
Arellius Fuscus.--What! are our picked ranks made up of raw recruits, or spirits likely to be cowed, or hands likely to shrink from the unaccustomed steel, or bodies enfeebled by wounds or decay? How shall I speak of us as the flower of Greece? Shall I bestow that name on Spartans or Eleans? or shall I rehearse the countless battles of our ancestors, the cities they sacked, the nations they spoiled? and do men now dare to boast that our temples need no walls to guard them? Ashamed am I of our conduct ashamed to have entertained even the idea of flight. But then, you say, Xerxes comes with an innumerable host. O Spartans! and Spartans matched against barbarians, have you no reverence for your deeds, your grandsires, your sires, from whose example your souls from infancy gather lofty thoughts? I scorn to offer Spartans such exhortations as these. Look! we are protected by our position. Though he bring with him the whole East, and parade his useless numbers before our craven eyes, this sea which spreads its vast expanse before us is pressed into a narrow compass, is beset by treacherous straits which scarce admit the passage of a single row-boat, and then by their chopping swell make rowing impossible; it is beset by unseen shallows, wedged between deeper bottoms, rough with sharp rocks, and everything that mocks the sailor's prayer. I am ashamed (I repeat it) that Spartans, and Spartans armed, should even stop to ask how it is they are safe. Shall I not carry home the spoil of the Persians? Then at least I will fall naked upon it. They shall know that we have yet three hundred men who thus scorn to flee, who thus mean to fall. Think of this: we can perhaps conquer; with all our effort we cannot be conquered. I do not say you are doomed to death--you to whom I address these words; but if you are, and yet think that death is be feared, you greatly err. To no living thing has nature given unending life; on the day of birth the day of death is fixed. For heaven has wrought us out of a weak material; our bodies yield to the slightest stroke, we are snatched away unwarned by fate. Childhood and youth lie beneath the same inexorable law. Most of us even long for death, so perfect a rest does it offer from the struggle of life. But glory has no limits, and they who fall like us rise nearest to the gods. Even women often choose the path of death which leads to glory. What need to mention Lycurgus, those heroes handed down by history, whom no peril could appal? to awake the spirit of Othryades alone, would be to give example enough, and more than enough, for us three hundred men!
Triarius.--Are not Spartans ashamed to be conquered, not by blows but by rumours? 'Tis a great thing to be born a scion of valour and a Spartan. For certain victory all would wait; for certain death none but Spartans. Sparta is girt with no walls, her walls are where her men are. Better to call back the army than to follow them. What if the Persian bores through mountains, makes the sea invisible? Such proud felicity never yet stood sure; the loftiest exaltation is struck to earth through its forgetfulness of the instability of all things human. You may be sure that power which has given rise to envy has not seen its last phase. It has changed seas, lands, nature itself; let us three hundred die, if only that it may here find something it cannot change. If such madmen's counsel was to be accepted, why did we not flee with the crowd?
Porcius Latro.--This then is what we have waited for, to collect a band of runaways. You flee from a rumour; let us at least know of what sort it is. Our dishonour can hardly be wiped out even by victory; bravely as we may fight, successful as we may be, much of our renown is already lost; for Spartans have debated whether or not to flee. O that we may die! For myself, after this discussion, the only thing I fear is to return home. Old women's tales have shaken the arms out of our hands. Now, now, let us fight, among the thirty thousand our valour might have lain hid. The rest have fled. If you ask my opinion, which I utter for the honour of ourselves and Greece, I say they have not deserted us, they have chosen us as their champions.
Marillus.--This was our reason for remaining, that we might not be hidden among the crowd of fugitives. The army has a good excuse to offer for its conduct: "We knew Thermopylae would be safe since we left Spartans to guard it."
Cestius Pius.--You have shown, Spartans, how base it were to fly by so long remaining still. All have their privilege. The glory of Athens is speech, of Thebes religion, of Sparta arms. 'Tis for this Eurotas flows round our state that its stream may inure our boys to the hardships of future war; 'tis for this we have our peaks of Taygetus inaccessible but to Spartans; 'tis for this we boast of a Hercules who has won heaven by merit; 'tis for this that arms are our only walls. O deep disgrace to our ancestral valour! Spartans are counting their numbers, not their manhood. Let us see how long the list is, that Sparta may have, if not brave soldiers, at least true messengers. Can it be that we are vanquished, not by war, but by reports? that man, i' faith, has a right to despise everything at whose very name Spartans are afraid. If we may not conquer Xerxes, let us at least be allowed to see him; I would know what it is I flee from. As yet I am in no way like an Athenian, either in seeking culture, or in dwelling behind a wall; the last Athenian quality that I shall imitate will be cowardice.
Pompeius Silo.--Xerxes leads many with him, Thermopylae can hold but few. We shall be the most timid of the brave, the slowest of cowards. No matter how great nations the East has poured into our hemisphere, how many peoples Xerxes brings with him; as many as this place will hold, with those is our concern.
Cornelius Hispanus.--We have come for Sparta; let us stay for Greece; let us vanquish the foe as we have already vanquished our friends; let this arrogant barbarian learn that nothing is so difficult as to cut an armed Spartan down. For my part, I am glad the rest have gone; they have left Thermopylae for us; there will now be nothing to mingle or compare itself with our valour; no Spartan will be hidden in the crowd; wherever Xerxes looks he will see none but Spartans.
Blandus.--Shall I remind you of your mother's command--"Either with your shield or on it?" and yet to return without arms is far less base than to flee under arms. Shall I remind you of the words of the captive?--"Kill me, I am no slave!" To such a man to escape would not have been to avoid capture. Describe the Persian terrors! We heard all that when we were first sent out. Let Xerxes see the three hundred, and learn at what rate the war is valued, what number of men the place is calculated to hold. We will not return even as messengers except after the fight is over. Who has fled I know not; these men Sparta has given me for comrades. I am thankful that the host has fled; they had made the pass of Thermopylae too narrow for me to move in.
§ On the other side.
Cornelius Hispanus.--I hold it a great disgrace to our state if Xerxes see no Greeks before he sees the Spartans. We shall not even have a witness of our valour; the enemy's account of us will be believed. You have my counsel, it is the same as that of all Greece. If any one advise differently, he wishes you to be not brave men but ruined men.
Claudius Marcellus.--They will not conquer us; they will overwhelm us. We have been true to our renown, we have waited till the last. Nature herself has yielded before we.
The above Suasoria is by no means one of the most brilliant; on the contrary, it is a decidedly a tame one, but it is a good instance of an ordinary declamation of the better sort, and gives passages from most of the rhetoricians to whom reference is made in the text.
NOTE II.--A few Observations on the Treatment of Rhetorical Questions, taken from the Third Book of Quintilian.
"The division of the departments of rhetoric, or to use a more correct term, the classification of causes, is three-fold: They are either laudatory, deliberative, or judicial. This is a division according to the subject matter, not according to the artistic treatment. Correspondingly, there are three requisites for pleading well, nature, art, and practice; and three objects which the orator must set before him, to teach, to move, and to delight. Every question turns either on things or on words; or as it may be expressed in other language, is either indefinite or definite. The indefinite is in the form of a universal proposition (Oesis) which Cicero calls propositum, others quaestio universalis civilis, others quaestio philosopho conveniens, and Athenaeus pars causae. This again is divided under the heads of knowledge and action respectively; of knowledge, e.g. Is the world ruled by Providence? of action, e.g., Is political activity a duty? The definite question regards things, persons, times, circumstances: it is called upothesis in Greek, causa in Latin. It always depends on an indefinite question, e.g., Ought Cato to marry? depends on the wider one, is marriage desirable? Hence it may be a suasoria. And this is true even of cases in which no person is specially mentioned, e.g., the question, Ought a man to hold office under a tyranny? depends on the wider one, Ought a man to hold office at all? And this question refers of necessity to some special tyrant, though it may not mention him by name. This is the same division as that into general and special questions. Thus every special includes a general. It is true that generals often bear only remotely on practice, and sometimes are altogether neutralised by peculiar circumstances, e.g., the question, Is political activity a duty? becomes inapplicable to a chronic invalid. Still, all are not of this kind, e.g., Is virtue the end of man? is equally applicable to every human being, whatever his capacity. Cicero in his earlier treatises disapproved of these questions being discussed by the orator; he wished to leave them to the philosopher; but as he grew in experience he changed his mind.
"A cause is defined by Valgius, after Apollodorus, as negotium omnibus suis partibus spectans ad quaestionem, or as negotium cuius finis est controversia. The negotium (or business in hand) is thus defined, congregatio personarum locorum temporum causarum modorum casuum factorum instrumentorum sermonum scriptorum et non scriptorum. The cause, therefore, corresponds to the Greek upostasis (subject), the negotium to peristasis (surroundings). These are of course closely connected; and many have defined the cause as though it were identical with its surroundings or conditions.
"In every discussion three things are the objects of inquiry, an sit, Is it so? quid sit, If so, what is it? quale sit, of what kind is it? For first, there must be something, about which the discussion has arisen. Till this is made clear no discussion as to what it is can arise; far less can we determine what its qualities are, until this second point is ascertained. These three objects of inquiry are exhaustive; on them every question, whether definite or indefinite, depends. The accuser will try to establish, first, the occurrence of the act in dispute, then its character; and, lastly, its criminality. The advocate will, if possible, deny the fact; if he cannot do that he will prove that it is not what the accuser states it to be; or, thirdly, he may contend--and this is the most honourable kind of defence--that it was rightly done. As a fourth alternative, he may take exception to the legality of the prosecution. All these, and every other conceivable division of questions, come under the two general heads (status) of rational and legal. The rational is simple enough, depending only on the contemplation of nature; thus it is content with exhibiting conjecture, definition, and quality. The legal is extremely complex, laws being infinite in number and character. Sometimes the letter is to be observed, sometimes the spirit. Sometimes we get at its meaning by comparison, or induction; sometimes its meaning is open to the most contradictory interpretations. Hence there is room for a far greater display of diverse kinds of excellence in the legal than in the rational department. Thus the declamatory exercises called suasoriae, which are confined to rational considerations, are fittest for young students whose reasoning powers are acute, but who have not the knowledge of law necessary for enabling them to treat controversiae which hinge on legal questions. These last are intended as a preparation for the pleading of actual causes in court, and should be regularly practised even by the most accomplished pleader during the spare moments that his profession allows him."
Book III
THE DECLINE. FROM THE ACCESSION OF TIBERIUS TO THE DEATH OF M. AURELIUS (14-180 A.D.)