VI. THE REIGNS OF VESPASIAN, TITUS, AND DOMITIAN (A.D. 69-96)…

VI. THE REIGNS OF VESPASIAN, TITUS, AND DOMITIAN (A.D. 69-96)

2. POETS.

The poet is usually credited with a genius more independent of external circumstances than any other of nature's favourites. His inspiration is more creative, more unearthly, more constraining, more unattainable by mere effort. He seems to forget the world in his own inner sources of thought and feeling. As circumstances cannot produce him, so they do not greatly affect his genius. He is the product of causes as yet unknown to the student of human progress; he is a boon for which the age that has him should be grateful, a sort of aerii mellis caelestia dona. Modern literature is full of this conception. The poet "does but speak because he must; he sings but as the linnets sing." Never has the sentiment been expressed with deeper pathos than by Shelley's well-known lines:

"Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."

The idea that the poet can neither be made on the one hand, nor repressed if he is there, on the other, has become deeply rooted in modern literary thought. And yet if we look through the epochs that have been most fertile of great poets, the instances of such self-sufficing hardiness are rare. In Greek poetry we question whether there is one to be found. In Latin poetry there is only Lucretius. In modern times, it is true, they are more numerous, owing to the greater complexity of our social conditions, and the greater difficulty for a strongly sensuous or deeply spiritual poetic nature to be in harmony with them all. Putting aside these solitary voices we should say on the whole that poetry, at least in ancient times, was the tenderest and least hardy of all garden flowers. It needed, so to say, a special soil, constant care, and shelter from the rude blast. It could blossom only in the summer of patronage, popular or imperial; the storms of war and revolution, and the chill frost of despotism, were equally fatal to its tender life. Where its supports were strong its own strength came out, and that with such luxuriance as to hide the props which lay beneath; but when once the inspiring consciousness of sympathy and aid was lost, its fair head drooped, its fragrance was forgotten, and its seeds were scattered to the waste of air.

If Lucan's claim to the name of poet be disputed, what shall we say to the so-called poets of the Flavian age? to Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Statius, and Martial? In one sense they are poets certainly; they have a thorough mastery over the form of their art, over the hackneyed themes of verse. But in the inspiration that makes the bard, in the grace that should adorn his mind, in the familiarity with noble thoughts which lends to the Pharsalia an undisputed greatness, they are one and all absolutely wanting. None of them raise in the reader one thrill of pleasure, none of them add one single idea to enrich the inheritance of mankind. The works of Pliny and Quintilian cannot indeed be ranked among the masterpieces of literature. But in elegant greatness they are immeasurably superior to the works of their brethren of the lyre. Science can seek a refuge in the contemplation of the material universe; if it can find no law there, no justice, no wisdom, no comfort, it at least bows before unchallenged greatness. Rhetoric can solace its aspirations in a noble though hopeless effort to rekindle an extinct past. Poetry, that should point the way to the ideal, that should bear witness if not to goodness at least to beauty and to glory, grovels in a base contentment with all that is meanest and shallowest in the present, and owns no source of inspiration but the bidding of superior force, or the insulting bribe of a despot's minion which derides in secret the very flattery it buys.

These poets need not detain us long. There is little to interest us in them, and they are of little importance in the history of literature. The first of them is C. VALERIUS FLACCUS SETINUS BALBUS. [1] He was born not, as his name would indicate, at Setia, but at Patavium. [2] We gather from a passage in his poem [3] that he filled the office of Quindecimvir sacris faciundis, and from Quintilian [4] that he was cut off by an early death. The date of this event may be fixed with probability to the year 88 A.D. [5] Dureau de la Malle has disputed this, and thinks it probable that he lived until the reign of Trajan; but this is in itself unlikely, and inconsistent with the obviously unfinished state of the poem. The legend of the Argonauts which forms its subject was one that had already been treated by Varro Atacinus apparently in the form of an imitation or translation from the same writer, Appollonius Rhodius, whom Valerius also chose as his model. But whereas Varro's poem was little more than a free translation, that of Valerius is an amplification and study from the original of a more ambitious character. It consists of eight books, of which the last is incomplete, and in estimating its merits or demerits we must not forget the immaturity of its author's talent.

The opening dedication to Vespasian fixes its composition under his reign. Its profane flattery is in the usual style of the period, but lacks the brilliancy, the audacity, and the satire of that of Lucan. From certain allusions it is probable that the poem was written soon after the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus [6] (A.D. 70). There is considerable learning shown, but a desire to compress allusions into a small space and to suggest trains of mythological recollection by passing hints, interfere with the lucidity of the style. In other respects the diction is classical and elegant, and both rhythm and language are closely modelled on those of Virgil. Licences of versification are rare. The spondaic line, rarely used by Ovid, almost discarded by Lucan, but which reappears in Statius, is sparingly employed by Valerius. Hiatus is still rarer, but the shortening of final o occurs in verbs and nominatives, such as Juno, Virgo, whenever it suits the metre. His speeches are rhetorical but not extravagant, some, e.g., that of Helle to Jason, are very pretty. In descriptive power he rises to his highest level; some of his subjects are extremely vivid and might form subjects for a painting. [7] During the time that he was writing the eruption of Vesuvius occurred, and he has described it with the zeal of a witness. [8]

"Sic ubi prorupti tonuit cum forte Vesevi Hesperiae letalis apex; vixdum ignea montem Torsit hiems, iamque Eoas einis induit urbes."

But in this, as in all the descriptive pieces, however striking and elaborate, of the period of the decline, are prominently visible the strained endeavour to be emphatic, and the continual dependence upon book reminiscence instead of first-hand observation. Valerius is no exception to the rule. Nor is the next author who presents himself any better in this respect, the voluptuary and poetaster C. SILIUS ITALICUS.

This laborious compiler and tasteless versifier was born 25 A.D., or according to some 24 A.D., and died by his own act seventy-six years later. He is known to us as a copyist of Virgil; to his contemporaries he was at least as well known as a clever orator and luxurious virtuoso. His early fondness for Virgil's poetry may be presumed from the dedication of Cornutus's treatise on that subject to him, but he soon deserted literature for public life, in which (68 A.D.) he attained the highest success by being nominated consul. He had been a personal friend of Vitellius and of Nero; but now, satisfied with his achievements, he settled down on his estates, and composed his poem on the Punic Wars in sixteen books. Most of the information we possess about him is gathered from the letter [9] in which Pliny narrates his death. We translate the most striking passages for the reader's benefit.

"I have just heard that Silius has closed his life in his Neapolitan villa by voluntary abstinence. The cause of his preferring to die was ill-health. He suffered from an incurable tumour, the trouble arising from which determined him with singular resolution to seek death as a relief. His whole life had been unvaryingly fortunate, except that he had lost the younger of his two sons. On the other hand, he had lived to see his elder and more promising son succeed in life and obtain the consulship. He had injured his reputation under Nero. It was believed he had acted as an informer. But afterwards, while enjoying Vitellius's friendship, he had conducted himself with courtesy and prudence. He had gained much credit by his proconsulship in Asia, and had since by an honourable leisure wiped out the blot which stained the activity of his former years. He ranked among the first men in the state, but he neither retained power nor excited envy. He was saluted, courted; he received levees often in his bed, always in his chamber, which was crowded with visitors, who came attracted by no considerations of his fortune. When not occupied with writing, he passed his days in learned discourse. His poems evince more diligence than talent: he now and then by reciting challenged men's opinions upon them. Latterly, owing to advancing years, he retired from Rome and remained in Campania, nor did even the accession of a new emperor draw him forth. To allow this inactivity was most liberal on the emperor's part, to have the courage to accept it was equally honourable to Silius. He was a virtuoso, and was even blamed for his propensities for collecting. He owned several country-houses in the same district, and was always so taken with each new house he purchased as to neglect the old for it. All of them were well stocked with books, statues, and busts of great men. These last he not only treasured but revered, above all, that of Virgil, whose birthday he kept more religiously than his own. He preferred celebrating it at Naples, where he visited the poet's tomb as if it had been a temple. Amid such complete tranquillity he passed his seventy-fifth year, not exactly weak in body, but delicate."

To this notice of Pliny's we might add several by Martial; but as these refer to the same facts, adding beside only fulsome praises of the wealthy and dignified littérateur, they need not be quoted here. Quintilian does not mention him. But his silence is no token of disrespect; it is merely an indication that Silius was still alive when the great critic wrote.

There is little that calls for remark in his long and tedious work. He is a poet only by memory. Timid and nerveless, he lacks alike the vigorous beauties of the earlier school, and the vigorous faults of the later. He pieces together in the straggling mosaic of his poem hemistichs from his contemporaries, fragments from Livy, words, thoughts, epithets, and rhythms from Virgil; and he elaborates the whole with a pre-Raphaelite fidelity to details which completely destroys whatever unity the subject suggested.

This subject is not in itself a bad one, but the treatment he applies to it is unreal and insipid in the highest degree. He cannot perceive, for instance, that the divine interventions which are admissible in the quarrel of Aeneas and Turnus are ludicrous when imported into the struggle between Scipio and Hannibal. And this inconsistency is the more glaring, since his extreme historical accuracy (an accuracy so strict as to make Niebuhr declare a knowledge of him indispensable to the student of the Punic Wars) gives to his chronicle a prosaic literalness from which nothing is more alien than the caprices of an imaginary pantheon. Who can help resenting the unreality, when at Saguntum Jupiter guides an arrow into Hannibal's body, which Juno immediately withdraws? [10] or when, at Cannae, Aeolus yields to the prayer of Juno and blinds the Romans by a whirlwind of dust? [11] These are two out of innumerable similar instances. Amid such incongruities it is no wonder if the heroes themselves lose all body and consistency, so that Scipio turns into a kind of Paladin, and Hannibal into a monster of cruelty, whom we should not be surprised to see devouring children. Silius in poetry represents, on a reduced scale, the same reactionary sentiments that in prose animated Quintilian. So far he is to be commended. But if we must choose a companion among the Flavian poets, let it be Statius with all his faults, rather than this correct, only because completely talentless, compiler.

To him let us now turn. With filial pride he attributes his eminence to the example and instruction of his father, P. PAPENIUS STATIUS, who was, if we may believe his son, a distinguished and extremely successful poet. [12] He was born either at Naples or at Selle; and the doubt hanging over this point neither the father nor the son had any desire to clear up; for did not the same ambiguity attach to the birthplace of Homer? At any rate he established himself at Naples as a young man, and opened a school for rhetoric and poetry, engaging in the quinquennial contests himself, and training his pupils to do the same. It is not certain that he ever settled at Rome; his modest ambition seems to have been content with provincial celebrity. What the subjects of his prize poetry were we have no means of ascertaining, but we know that he wrote a short epic on the wars between Vespasian and Vitellius and contemplated writing another on the eruption of Vesuvius. His more celebrated son, P. PAPINIUS STATIUS the younger, was born at Naples 61 A.D., and before his father's death had carried off the victory in the Neapolitan poetical games by a poem in honour of Ceres. [13] Shortly after this he returned to Rome, where it is probable he had been educated as a boy, and in his twenty-first year married a young widow named Claudia (whose former husband seems to have been a singer or harpist), [14] and their mutual attachment is a pleasing testimony to the poet's goodness of heart, a quality which the habitual exaggeration of his manner ineffectually tries to conceal.

Domitian had instituted a yearly poetical contest at the Quinquatria, in honour of Minerva, held on the Alban Mount. Statius was fortunate enough on three separate occasions to win the prize, his subject being in each case the praises of Domitian himself. [15] But at the great quinquennial Capitoline contest, in which apparently the subject was the praises of Jupiter, [16] Statius was not equally successful. [17] This defeat, which he bewails in more than one passage, was a disappointment he never quite overcame, though some critics have inferred from another passage [18] that on a subsequent occasion he came off victor; but this cannot be proved. [19]

Statius had something of the true poet in him. He had the love of nature and of those "cheap pleasures" of which Hume writes, the pleasures of flowers, birds, trees, fresh air, a country landscape, a blue sky. These could not be had at Rome for all the favours of the emperor. Statius pined for a simpler life. He wished also to provide for his step-daughter, whom he dearly loved, and whose engaging beauty while occupied in reciting her father's poems, or singing them to the music of the harp, he finely describes. Perhaps at Naples a husband could be found for her? So to Naples he went, and there in quiet retirement passed the short remainder of his days, finishing his opus magnum the Thebaid, and writing the fragment that remains of his still more ambitious Achilleid. The year of his death is not certain, but it may be placed with some probability in 98 A.D.

Statius was not merely a brilliant poet. He was a still more brilliant improvisator. Often he would pour forth to enthusiastic listeners, as Ovid had done before him,

"His profuse strains of unpremeditated art."

Improvisation had long been cultivated among the Greeks. We know from Cicero's oration on behalf of Archias that it was no rare accomplishment among the wits of that nation. And it was not unknown among the Romans, though with them also it was more commonly exercised in Greek than in Latin. The technicalities of versification had, since Ovid, ceased to involve any labour. Not an aspirant of any ambition but was familiar with every page of the Gradus ad Parnassum, and could lay it under contribution at a moment's notice. Hence to write fluent verses was no merit at all; to write epigrammatic verses was worth doing; but to extemporize a poem of from one to two hundred lines, of which every line should display a neat turn or a bon mot, this was the most deeply coveted gift of all; and it was the possession of this gift in its most seductive form that gave Statius unquestioned, though not unenvied, pre- eminence among the beaux esprits of his day. His Silvae, which are trifles, but very charming ones, were most of them written within twenty- four hours after their subjects had been suggested to him. Their elegant polish is undeniable; the worst feature about them is the base complaisance with which this versatile flatterer wrote to order, without asking any questions, whatever the eunuchs, pleasure-purveyors, or freedmen of the emperor desired. They are full of interest also as throwing light on the manners and fashions of the time and disclosing the frivolities which in the minds of all the members o£ the court had quite put out of sight the serious objects of life. They contain many notices of the poet and his friends, and we learn that when they were composed he was at work on the Thebaid. He excuses these short jeux d'esprit by alleging the example of Homer's Battle of the Frogs and Mice and Virgil's Culex. "I hardly know," he says, "of one illustrious poet who has not prefaced his nobler triumphs of song by some prelude in a lighter strain." [20] The short prose introductions in which he describes the poems that compose each book are well worth reading. The first book is addressed to his friend ARRUNTIUS STELLA, who was, if we may believe Statius and Martial, himself no mean poet, and in his little Columba, an ode addressed to his mistress's dove, rivalled, if he did not surpass, the famous "sparrow-poem" of Catullus. He wrote also several other love poems, and perhaps essayed a heroic flight in celebrating the Sarmatian victories of Domitian. [21]

The Silvae were for the most part read or recited in public. We saw in a former chapter [22] that Asinius Pollio first introduced these readings. His object in doing so is uncertain. It may have been to solace himself for the loss of a political career, or it may have been a device for ascertaining the value of new works before granting them a place in his public library. The recitations thus served the purpose of the modern reviews. They affixed to each new work the critic's verdict, and assigned to it its place among the list of candidates for fame. No sooner was the practice introduced than it became popular. Horace already complains of it, and declares that he will not indulge it: [23]

"Non recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus, Non ubivis coramve quibuslibet."

He with greater wisdom read his poems to some single friend whose judgment and candour he could trust--some Quinctilius Varus, or Maecius Tarpa--and he advised his friends the Pisos to do the same; but his advice was little heeded. Even during his lifetime the vain thirst for applause tempted many an author to submit his compositions to the hasty judgment of a fashionable assembly, and (fond hope!) to promise himself an immortality proportioned to their compliments. Ovid's muse drew her fullest inspiration from the excitements of the hall, and the poet bitterly complains in exile that now this stimulus to effort is withdrawn he has lost the power and even the desire to write. [24] Nor was it only poetry that was thus criticised; grave historians read their works before publishing them, and it is related of Claudius that on hearing the thunders of applause which were bestowed on the recitations of Servilius Nonianus, he entered the building and seated himself uninvited among the enthusiastic listeners. Under Nero, the readings, which had hitherto been a custom, became a law, that is, were upheld by legal no less than social obligations. The same is true of Domitian's reign. This ill-educated prince wished to feign an interest in literature, the more so, since Nero, whom he imitated, had really been its eager votary. Accordingly, he patronised the readings of the principal poets, and above all, of Statius. This was the golden time of recitations, or ostentationes, as they now with sarcastic justice began to be called, and Statius was their chief hero. As Juvenal tells us, he made the whole city glad when he promised a day. [25] His recitations were often held at the houses of his great friends, men like Abascantius or Glabrio, adventurers of yesterday, who had come to Rome with "chalked feet," and now had been raised by Caesar to a height whence they looked with scorn upon the scattered relics of nobility. It is these men that Statius so adroitly flatters; it is to them that he looks for countenance, for patronage, for more substantial rewards; and yet so wretched is the recompense even of the highest popularity, that Statius would have to beg his bread if he did not find a better employer in the actor and manager, Paris, who pays him handsomely for the tragedies that at each successive exhaustion of his exchequer he is fain to write for the taste of a corrupt mob. [26] But at last Statius began to see the folly of all this. He grew tired of hiring himself out to amuse, of practising the affectation of a modesty, an inspiration, an emotion he did not feel, of hearing the false plaudits of rivals who he knew carped at his verses in his absence and libelled his character, of running hither and thither over Parnassus dragging his poor muse at the heels of some selfish freedman; he was man enough and poet enough to wish to write something that would live, and so he left Rome to con over his mythological erudition amid a less exciting environment, and woo the genius of poesy where its last great master had been laid to rest.

After Statius had left Rome, the popularity of the recitations gradually decreased. No poet of equal attractiveness was left to hold them. So the ennui and disgust, which had perhaps long been smothered, now burst forth. Many people refused to attend altogether. They sent their servants, parasites, or hired applauders, while they themselves strolled in the public squares or spent the hours in the bath, and only lounged into the room at the close of the performance. Their indifference at last rejected all disguise; absence became the rule. Even Trajan's assiduous attendance could hardly bring a scanty and listless concourse to the once crowded halls. Pliny the younger, who was a finished reciter, grievously complains of the incivility shown to deserving poets. Instead of the loud cries, the uneasy motions that had attested the excitement of the hearers, nothing is heard but yawns or shuffling of the feet; a dead silence prevails. Even Pliny's gay spirits and cheerful vanity were not proof against such a reception. The "little grumblings" (indignatiunculae), of which his letters are full, attest how sorely he felt the decline of a fashion in which he was so eminently fitted to excel. And if a wealthy noble patronised by the emperor thus complains, how intolerable must have been the disappointment to the poet whose bread depended on his verses, the poet depicted by Juvenal, to whom the patron graciously lends a house, ricketty and barred up, lying at a distance from town, and lays on him the ruinous expense of carriage for benches and stalls, which after all are only half-filled!

The frenzy of public readings, then, was over; but Statius had learned his style in their midst, and country retirement could not change it. The whole of his brilliant epic savours of the lecture room. The verbal conceits, the florid ornament, the sparkling but quite untranslatable epigrams which enliven every description and give point to every speech, need only be noted in passing; for no reader of a single book of the Thebaid can fail to mark them.

This poem, which is admitted by Merivale to be faultless in epic execution, and has been glorified by the admiration of Dante, occupied the author twelve years in the composing, [27] probably from 80 to 92 A.D. Its elaborate finish bears testimony to the labour expended on it. Had Statius been content with trifles such as are sketched in the Silvae he might have been to this day a favourite and widely-read poet. As it is, the minute beauties of his epic lie buried in such a wilderness of unattractive learning and second-hand mythological reminiscence, that few care to seek them out. His mastery over the epic machinery is complete; but he fails not only in the ardour of the bard, but in the vigour of the mere narrator. His action drags heavily through the first ten books, and then is summarily finished in the last two, the accession of Creon after Oedipus's exile, his prohibition to bury Polynices, the interference of Theseus, and the death of Creon being all dismissed in fifteen hundred lines.

The two most striking features in the poem are the descriptions of battles and the similes. The former are greatly superior to those of Lucan or Silius. They have not the hideous combination of horrors of the one, nor the shadowy unreality of the other. Though hatched in the closet and not on the battle-field, a defect they share with all poets from Virgil downwards, they have sufficient verisimilitude to interest, and not sufficient reality to shock us. The similes merit still higher praise. The genius of Latin poetry was fast tending towards the epigram, and these similes are strictly epigrammatic. The artificial brevity which suggests many different lines of reminiscence at the same time is exhibited with marked success. As the simile was so assiduously cultivated by the Latin epicists and forms a distinctive feature of their style, we shall give in the appendix to this chapter a comparative table of the more important similes of the three chief epic poets. At present we shall quote only two from the Thebaid, both admirable in their way, and each exemplifying one of Statius's prominent faults or virtues. The first compares an army following its general across a river to a herd of cattle following the leading bull: [28]

"Ac velut ignotum si quando armenta per amnem Pastor agit, stat triste pecus, procul altera tellus [29] Omnibus, et late medius timor: ast ubi ductor Taurus init fecitque vadum, tune mollior unda, Tunc faciles saltus, visaeque accedere ripae."

This is elegant in style but full of ambiguities, if not experiments, in language. The words in italics are an exaggerated imitation of a mode of expression to which Virgil is prone, i.e., a psychological indication of an effect made to stand for a description of the thing. Then as to the three forced expressions of the last two lines--to say nothing of fecit vadum, which may be a pastoral term, as we say made the ford, i.e. struck it--we have the epithet mollior, which, here again in caricature of Virgil, mixes feeling with description, used for facilior in the sense of "kinder," "more obliging" (for he can hardly mean that it feels softer); faciles saltus, either the "leap across seems easier," or perhaps "the woods on the other side look less frowning;" while to add to the hyperbole, "the bank appears to come near and meet them." Three subtle combinations are thus expended where Virgil would have used one simple one.

The next simile exemplifies the use of hyperbole at its happiest, an ornament, by the way, to which Statius is specially prone. It is a very short one. [30] It compares an infant to the babe Apollo crawling on the shore of Delos:

"Talis per litora reptans Improbus Ortygiae latus inclinabat Apollo."

This is delightful. The mischievous little god crawls near the edge of the island, and by his divine weight nearly overturns it! We should observe the gross materialism of idea which underlies this pretty picture. Not one of the Roman poets is free from this taint. To take a well-known instance from Virgil; when Aeneas gets into Charon's boat

"Gemuit sub pondere cymba Sutilis et multam accepit rimosa paludem." [31]

The effect of the "Ingens Aeneas" bursting Charon's crazy skiff is decidedly grotesque. Lucan has not failed to seize and exaggerate this peculiarity. To repeat the example we have already noticed in the first book, [32] when asking Nero which part of heaven he is selecting for his abode, he prays him not to choose one far removed from the centre, lest his vast weight should disturb the balance of the universe!

"Aetheris immensi partem si presseris unam Sentiet axis onus."

Statius, as we have seen, adds the one element that was wanting, namely the abstraction of the heroic altogether; nevertheless, in small effects of this kind, he must be pronounced superior to both Virgil and Lucan.

The Achilleis is a mere fragment, no doubt left as such owing to the author's early death. The design, of which it was the first instalment, was even more ambitious than that of the Thebaid. It aimed at nothing less than an exhaustive treatment of all the legends of which Achilles was the hero, excepting those which form the subject of the Iliad. Its style shows a slight advance on that of the earlier poem; it is equally long- winded, but less bombastic, and consequently somewhat more natural. In one or two passages Statius [33] promises Domitian an epic celebrating his deeds, but probably he never had any serious intention of fulfilling his word. Statius had a high opinion of his own merits, especially when he compared himself with the poet fraternity of his day; but his careful study of Homer and Virgil had shown him that there was a domain into which he could not enter, and so even while vaunting his claims to immortality, he is careful not to aspire to be ranked with the poet of the Aeneid: [34]

"Nec tu divinam Aeneida tenta: Sed longe sequere et vestigia semper adora."

VALERIUS MARTIALIS was born at Bilbilis, in Hispania Tarraconensis (March 1, 43 A.D.), and retained through life an affectionate admiration for the place of his birth, which he celebrates in numerous poems. [35] At twenty- two [36] years of age he came to Rome, Nero being then on the throne. He does not appear to have been known to that emperor, but rose into great favour with Titus, which was continued under Domitian, who conferred on him the Jus trium liberorum [37] and the tribunate, together with the rank of a Roman knight, [38] and a pension from the imperial treasury, [39] probably attached to the position of court poet. It is difficult to ascertain the truth as to his circumstances. The facts above mentioned, as well as his possession of a house in the city and a villa at Nomentum, [40] would point to an easy competence; on the other hand the poet's continual complaints of poverty [41] prove that he was either less wealthy than his titles suggest, or else that he was hard to satisfy. On the accession of Trajan he seems to have left Rome for Spain, it is said because the emperor refused to recognise his genius; but as he had been a prominent author for upwards of thirty years, it is likely that his character, not his talent, was what Trajan looked coldly on. A poet who had prostituted his pen in a way unexampled even among the needy and immoral pickers-up of chance crumbs that crowded the avenues of the palace, could hardly be acceptable to a prince of manly character. At the same time there is this excuse for Martial, that he did not belong to the old families of Rome. He and such as he owed everything to the emperor's bounty, and if the emperor desired flattery in return, it cost them little pains and still less loss of self-respect to give it. Politics had become entirely a system of palace intrigue. Only when the army intervened was any general interest awakened. The supremacy of the emperor's person was the one great fact, rapidly becoming a great inherited idea, which formed the point of union among the diverse non-political classes, and gave the poets their chief theme of inspiration. It mattered not to them whether their lord was good or bad. It is well-known that the people liked Domitian, and it was only by the firmness of the senate that he was prevented from being formally proclaimed as a god. Martial does not pretend to be above the level of conduct which he saw practised by emperor and people alike. Without strength of character, without independence of thought, both of which indeed were almost extinct at this epoch, his one object was to ingratiate himself with those who could fill his purse. Hence the indifference he shows to the vices of Nero. Juvenal, Tacitus, and Pliny use a very different language. But then they represented the old-fashioned ideas of Rome. Martial, indeed, alludes to Nero as a well- known type of crime: [42]

"Quid Nerone peius? Quid thermis melius Neronianis?"

but he has no real passion. The only thing he really hates him for is his having slain Lucan. [43]

Martial, then, is much on a level with the society in which he finds himself; the society, that is, of those very freedmen, favourites, actors, dancers, and needy bards, that Juvenal has made the objects of his satire. And therefore we cannot expect him to rise into lofty enthusiasm or pure views of conduct. His poems are a most valuable adjunct to those of Juvenal; for perhaps, if we did not possess Martial, we might fancy that the former's sardonic bitterness had over-coloured his picture. As it is, these two friends illustrate and confirm each other's statements.

Little as his conduct agrees with the respectability of a married man, Martial was married twice. His first wife was Cleopatra, [44] of whose morose temper he complains, [45] and from whom he was divorced [46] soon after obtaining the Jus trium liberorum. His second was Marcella, whom he married after his return to Spain. [47] Of her he speaks with respect and even admiration. [48] It is possible that his town house and country estate were part of his first wife's dowry, so that on his divorce they reverted to her family; this would account for the otherwise inexplicable poverty in which he so often declares himself to be plunged. While at Rome he had many patrons. Besides Domitian, he numbered Silius Italicus, Pliny, Stella the friend of Statius, Regulus the famous pleader, Parthenius, Crispinus, and Glabrio, among his influential friends. It is curious that he never mentions Statius. The most probable reason for his silence is the old one, given by Hesiod, but not yet obsolete:

kai kerameus keramei koteei kai aoidos aoido.

He and Statius were indisputably the chief poets of the day. One or other must hold the first place. We have no means of knowing how this quarrel, if quarrel it was, arose. Among Martial's other friends were Quintilian, Valerius Flaccus, and Juvenal. His intimacy with these men, two of whom at least were eminently respectable, lends some support to his own statement, advanced to palliate the impurity of his verses:

"Lasciva est nobis pagina: vita proba est."

The year of his death is not certain. But it must have occurred soon after 100 A.D. Pliny in his grand way gives an obituary notice of him in one of his letters, [49] which, interesting as all his letters are, we cannot do better than translate:

"I hear with regret that Valerius Martial is dead. He was a man of talent, acuteness, and spirit, with plenty of wit and gall, and as sincere as he was witty. I gave him a parting present when he left Rome, which was due both to our friendship and to some verses which he wrote in my praise. It was an ancestral custom of ours to enrich with honours or money those who had written the praises of individuals or cities, but among other noble and seemly customs this has now become obsolete. I suppose since we have ceased to do things worthy of laudation, we think it in bad taste to receive it."

Pliny then quotes the verses, [50] and proceeds--

"Was I not justified in parting on the most friendly terms with one who wrote so prettily of me, and am I not justified now in mourning his loss as that of an intimate friend? What he could he gave me; if he had had more he would have gladly given it. And yet what gift can be greater than glory, praise, and immortality? It is possible, indeed, as I think I hear you saying, that his poems may not last for ever. Nevertheless, he wrote them in the belief that they would."

Martial is the most finished master of the epigram, as we understand it. Epigram is with him condensed satire. The harmless plays on words, sudden surprises, and neat turns of expression, which had satisfied the Greek and earlier Latin epigrammatists, were by no means stimulating enough for the blasé taste of Martial's day. The age cried for point, and with point Martial supplies it to the full extent of its demand. His pungency is sometimes wonderful; the whole flavour of many a sparkling little poem is pressed into one envenomed word, like the scorpion's tail whose last joint is a sting. The marvel is that with that biting pen of his the poet could find so many warm friends. But the truth is, he was far more than a mere sharp-shooter of wit. He had a genuine love of good fellowship, a warm if not a constant heart, and that happy power of graceful panegyric which was so specially Roman a gift. Juvenal, indeed, complains that the Greeks were hopelessly above his countryman in the art of praise. But this is not an opinion in which we can agree. Their fulsome adulation may indeed have been more acceptable to the vulgar objects of it than that of the Roman panegyrist, who, even while flattering, could not shake off the fetters of the great dialect in which he wrote; but the efforts in this department by Cicero, Ovid, Horace, Pliny, and Martial, mast be allowed to be master- achievements to which it would be hard to find an equal in the literature of any other nation.

Martial is one of the most difficult of Roman authors. Scarce once or twice does he relax his style sufficiently to let the reader read instead of spelling through his poems. When he does this he is elegant and pleasing. The epicedion on a little girl who died at the age of six, is a lovely gem that may almost bear comparison with Catullus; but then it is spoilt by the misplaced wit of the last few lines. [51] Few indeed are the poems of Martial that are natural throughout. His constant effort to be terse, to condense description into allusion, and allusion into indication, and to indicate as many allusions as possible by a single word, compels the reader to weigh each expression with scrupulous care lest he may lose some of the points with which every line is weighted; and yet even Martial is less perfect in this respect than Juvenal. But then the shortness of his pieces takes away that relief which a longer satire must have, not only for its author's sake, but for purposes of artistic success. He must have read Juvenal with care, and sometimes seems to give a decoction of his satires. [52] It is probable that we do not possess all Martial's poems. It is also possible that many of those we possess under his name are not by him. The list embraces one book of Spectacula, celebrating the shows in which emperor and people took such delight; twelve of Epigrams, edited separately, and partially revised for each edition; [53] two of Xenia and Apophoreta, written before the tenth book of Epigrams, and devoted to the flattery of Domitian. The obscenities which defile almost every book make it impossible to read Martial with any pleasure, but those who desire to make his acquaintance will find Book IV. by far the least objectionable in this respect, as well as otherwise more interesting.

At this time Rome teemed with poets; as Pliny in one of his letters tells us, people reckoned the year by the abundance of its poetic harvest. TURNUS seems to have been a satirist of some note; [54] among others he satirised the poisoner Locusta. SCAEVIUS MEMOR was a tragedian; [55] a Hecuba, a Troades, and perhaps a Hercules, are ascribed to him. VERGINIUS RUFUS wrote erotic poems, and an epigram of his is quoted by Pliny. [56] VESTRICIUS SPURINNA was a lyricist, and had been consul under Domitian; a fine account of him is given by Pliny. [57] The only Roman poetess of whom we possess any fragment, belongs to this epoch, the highborn lady SULPICIA. She is celebrated by Martial for her chaste love- elegies, [58] and for fidelity to her husband Calenus. We suspect, however, that Martial is a little satiric here. For the epithets bestowed by other writers on Sulpicia imply warmth, not to say wantonness of tone, though her muse seems to have been constant to its legitimate flame. We possess about seventy hexameters bearing the title Sulpiciae Satira, supposed to have been written after the banishment of all philosophers by Domitian (94 A.D.). It is a dialogue between the poetess and her muse: she excuses herself for essaying so slight a subject in epic metre, and implies that she is more at home in lighter rhythms. This may be believed when we find that she makes the i of iambus long! However, the poem is corrupt, and the readings in many parts uncertain. Teuffel regards it as a forgery of the fifteenth century, following Boot's opinion. It is full of harsh constructions [59] and misplaced epithets, but on the other hand contains some pretty lines. If it be genuine, its boldness is remarkable. Great numbers of other poets appear in the pages of Martial, Statius, and Pliny, but they need not be named. The fact that verse-writing was an innocuous way of spending one's leisure doubtless drove many to it. CODRUS, or Cordus, [60] was the author of an ambitious epic, the Theseid, composed on the scale, but without the wit, of the Thebaid. The stage, too, engaged many writers. Tragedy and comedy [61] were again reviving, though their patrons seem to have preferred recitation to acting; mimes still flourished, though they had taken the form of pantomime. We hear of celebrated actors of them in Juvenal, as Paris, Latinus, and Thymele.

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Appendix

On the Similes of Virgil, Lucan, and Statius.

The Roman epicists bestowed great elaboration on their similes, and as a rule imitated them from a certain limited number of Greek originals. In Virgil but a few are original, i.e., taken from things he had himself witnessed, or feelings he had known. Lucan is less imitative in form, and he first used with any frequency the simile founded on a recollection of some well-known passage of Greek literature or conception of Greek art. In this Statius follows him; the simile of the infant Apollo noticed in this chapter is a good instance.

We give a few examples of the treatment of a similar subject by the three poets. We first take the simile of a storm, described by Virgil in the first Aeneid, and alluded to by the other two poets (Lucan i. 493):

"Qualis cum turbidus auster Repulit e Libycis immensum syrtibus aequor Fractaque veliferi sonuerunt pondera mali, Desilit in fluctus deserta puppe magister Navitaque, et nondum sparsa compage carinae Naufragium sibi quisque facit."

Here we have no great elaboration, but a good point at the finish. Statius (Theb. i. 370) is more subtle but more commonplace:

"Ac velut hiberno deprensus navita ponto, Cui neque Temo piger, nec amico sidere monstrat Luna vias, medio caeli pelagique tumultu Stat rationis inops; iam iamque aut saxa maliguis Expectat submersa vadis, aut vertice acuto Spumantes scopulos erectae incurrere prorae."

The next simile is that of a shepherd robbing a nest of wild bees. It occurs in Virgil and Statius. Virgil's description is (Aen. xii. 587)--

"Inclusas ut cum latebroso in pumice pastor Vestigavit apes, fumoque implevit amaro; Illae intus trepidae rerum per cerea castra Discurrunt, magnisque acuunt stridoribus iras; Volvitur ater odor tectis; tum murmure caeco Intus saxe sonant: vaeuas it fumus ad auras."

That of Statius (Th. x. 574) presents some characteristic refinements on its original:

"Sic ubi pumiceo pastor rapturas ab antro Armatas erexit apes, fremit aspera nubes: Inque vicem sese stridere hortantur et omnes Hostis in ora volant; mox deficientibus alis Amplexae flavamque domum captivaque plangunt Mella, laboratasque premunt ad pectora ceras."

The smoke which is the agent of destruction is described by Virgil: obscurely hinted at in Statius by the single epithet "deficientibus."

The next example is the description of a landslip by the same two. Virg. Aen. xii. 682.

"Ac velati montis saxum de vertice praeceps Quum ruit avolsum vento, seu turbidus imber Proluit, aut annis solvit sublapsa vetustas, Fertur in abruptum vasto mons improbus actu, Exsultatque solo, silvas armenta virosque Involvens secum."

The copy is found Stat. Theb. vii. 744:

"Sic ubi nubiferum montis latus aut nova ventis Solvit hiems aut victa situ non pertulit aetas; Desilit horrendus campo timor, arma virosque Limite, non uno longaevaque robora secum Praecipitans, tandemque exhaustus turbine fesso Aut vallum cavat, aut medios intercipit amnes."

The additions are here either exaggerations, trivialities, or ingenious adaptations of other passages of Virgil.

The next is a thunderstorm from Virgil and Lucan, (Aen. xii. 451):

"Qualis ubi ad terras abrupto sidere nimbus It mare per medium; miseris, heu, praescia longe Horrescunt corda agricolis; dabit ille ruinas Arboribus stragemque satis, ruet omnia late; Antevolant somtumque ferunt ad litora venti."

The simile of Lucan, which describes one disastrous flash rather than a storm (Phars. i. 150) refers to Caesar:

"Qualiter expressum ventis per nubila fulmen Aetheris impulsi sonitu mundi que fragore. Emicuit, rupitque diem, populosque paventes Terruit, obliqua praestringens lumina flamma: In sua templa furit, nullaque exire vetante Materia, magnamque cadens, magnamque revertens Dat stragem late, sparsosque recolligitignes."

No comparison is more common in Latin poetry than that of a warrior to a bull. All the three poets have introduced this, some of them several times. The instances we select will be Virg. Aen. xii. 714:

"Ac velut ingenti Sila summove Taburno Cum duo conversis inimica in proelia tauri Frontibus incurrunt, pavidi cessere magistri, Stat pecus omne metu mutum mussantque iuvencae, Quis nemori imperitet, quem tota armenta sequantur."

Lucan's simile is borrowed largely from the Georgics. It is, however, a fine one (Phars. ii. 601):

"Pulsus ut armentis primo cerramine taurus Silvarum secreta petit, vacuosque per agros Exul in adversis explorat cornua truncis; Nec redit in pastus nisi quum cervice recepta Excussi placuere tori; mox reddita victor Quoslibet in saltus comitantibus agmina tauris Invito pastore trahit."

That of Statius is in a similar strain (Theb. xi. 251):

"Sic ubi regnator post exulis otia tauri Mugitum hostilem summa tulit aure iuvencus, Agnovitque minas, magna stat fervidus ira Ante gregem, spumisque animos ardentibus effert, Nunc pede torvus humum nunc cornibus aera lindens, Horret ager, trepidaeque expectant proelia valles."

How immeasurably does Virgil's description in its unambitious truth exceed these two fine but bombastic imitations!

These examples will suffice to show that each poet kept his predecessors in his eye, and tried to vie with them in drawing a similar picture. But the similes are not always taken from the common-place book. Virgil, who reserves nearly all his similes for the last six books, occasionally strikes an original key. Such are (or appear) the similes of the sedition quelled by an orator (i. 148), the top (vii. 378), the labyrinth (v, 588), the housewife (viii. 407), and the fall of the pier at Baiae (ix. 707); perhaps also of the swallow (xii. 473); mythological similes are common in him, but not so much, so as in Lucan and Statius. We have those of the Amazons (xi. 659), of Mars' shield in Thrace (xii. 331), condensed by Statius (Theb. vi. 665), of Orestes (iv. 471), copied by Lucan (Ph. vii. 777).

The lion, as may be supposed, furnishes many. We subjoin a further list which may be useful to the reader.

The Lion--Aen. xii. 4; x. 722; ix. 548(?). Phars. i. 206. Theb. ii. 675; iv. 494; v. 598; vii. 670; viii. 124; ix. 739, and perhaps v. 231.

The Serpent, dragon, &c.--Aen. xi, 751; v. 273. Theb. v. 599; xi. 310.

Mythological--Phars. ii. 715; iv. 549; vii. 144. Theb. ii. 81; iv. 140; xii. 224, 270.

The Sea--Aen. xi. 624; vii. 586 (?). Theb. i. 370; iii. 255; vi. 777; vii. 864.

The Winds--Aen. x. 856. Phars. i. 498. Theb. i. 194; iii. 432; v. 704.

The Boar--Aen. x. 707. Theb. viii. 533.

Trees--Aen. ix. 675. Phars. i. 136. Theb. viii. 545.

Birds--Aen. v. 213; xii. 473; xi. 721; vii. 699. Theb. ix. 858; xii. 15.

We may note detached similes like that of the light reflected in water, Aen. viii. 15, imitated in Theb. vi. 578; that of the horse from Homer, Aen. xi. 491, which Statius has not dared to imitate; and others not referable to any of the above groups may easily be found. It is clear that Virgil and Statius attached more importance to this ornament than Lucan. Their verbal elaboration was greater, and thus they both excel him. A careful study of all the similes in Latin poetry would bring to light some interesting facts of literary criticism. That descriptive power in which all the Romans excelled is nowhere more striking than in these short and pleasing cameos.

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VII. THE REIGNS OF NERVA AND TRAJAN (96-117 A.D.)

The death of Domitian was the end of tyranny in Rome. Under Nerva a new régime was inaugurated. Liberty of speech and action was allowed, and authors were not slow to profit by it. The forced repression of so many years had matured, not quenched, the talent of the greatest writers. Virtuous men had pondered in gloomy silence over the wickedness of the time, and they now gave to the world the condensed result of their bitter reflections. Amid the numerous talents of the period three have sent down to us a large portion of their works. These three are all writers of the highest mark, and two of them of commanding genius. For grace, urbanity, and polish, Pliny yields only to Cicero; for realistic intensity directed to a satiric purpose, Juvenal yields to no writer whatever; for piercing insight into the human heart and an imagination which casts its characters as in a white-hot furnace, Tacitus well deserves the name of Rome's greatest historian. Chronologically speaking, Pliny is posterior to the other two. But he is so good a type of this comparatively happy age that he may well come before us first. The other two, occupied with past regrets, reflect in their tone of mind an earlier time.

C. PLINIUS CAECILIUS SECUNDUS, the nephew of Pliny the elder, was born at Novocomum [1] 62 A.D. When he was eight years old his father died, and two years after his uncle adopted him. In the interim he was assigned to the care of his guardian, that Virginius Rufus of whom Tacitus deigned to be the panegyrist. He was brought early to Rome, and placed under Quintilian and other celebrated teachers, among whom was Nicetes of Smyrna, one of the foremost rhetoricians of the day. He served his first campaign in Syria, but seems to have given his time to philosophy more than soldiering. He was even more emphatically a man of peace than Cicero, and it is not easy to fancy him wielding the sword, though we can well picture him to ourselves resplendent in full dress uniform, well satisfied with his appearance, and trying his best to assume the martial air. While in Asia he spent much time with the old philosopher Euphrates, of whose daily life he has given a pleasing description in the tenth letter of his first book.

On his return he studied for the bar, and pleaded with success. He passed through the several offices of state, and prided himself not a little on the fact that he attained the consulate and pontificate at an earlier age than Cicero. Somewhat later he was elected to the college of augurs, an honour which prompts him to remind the world that Cicero had been augur too! In 98 A.D., when Trajan had been two years emperor, Pliny was raised for the second time to the consulate, and was admitted to some share of his sovereign's confidence. The points, it is true, on which he was consulted were not of the most important, but he was extremely pleased, and has recorded his pleasure in more than one of his charming letters. In 103 he was sent to fill the office of proconsul in Pontus and Bithynia; and while there, he kept up the interesting correspondence with Trajan, to which the tenth book of his letters is devoted.

Though eloquence was not what it had been, it still remained the highest career that an ambitious man could adopt. Even under the tyrants it had served as the keenest weapon of attack, the surest buckler of defence. The public accusation, which had once been the stepping-stone to fame, had changed its name, and become delation. And he who hoped to parry its blows must needs have been able to defend himself by the same means. Pliny was ahead of all his rivals in both departments of eloquence. He was the most telling pleader before the centumviral tribunal, and he was the boldest orator in the revived debates of the senate. His best forensic speech, his De Corona, as he loved to style it, was that on behalf of Accia Variola, a lady unjustly disinherited by her father, whom Pliny's eloquence reinstated in her rights. In the senate Pliny rose to even higher efforts. He rejoiced to plead the cause of injured provinces against the extortion of rapacious governors, who (as Juvenal tells us) pillaged the already exhausted wealth of their helpless victims. On more than one occasion Pliny's boldness was crowned with success. Caecilius Classicus, who had ground down the Baeticenses, was so powerfully impeached by him that, to avoid conviction, he sought a voluntary death, and what was better, the confiscated property was returned to its owners. The still worse criminal, Marius Priscus, who in exile "enjoyed the anger of the gods," [2] was compelled by Pliny and Tacitus to disgorge no small portion of his plunder. When carried away by his subject Pliny spoke with such vehemence as to endanger his delicate lungs, and he tells us with no small complacency that the emperor sent him a special message "to be careful of his health." But his greatest triumph was the accusation of Publicius Certus, a senator, and expectant of the consulship. The fathers, long used to servitude, could not understand the freedom with which Pliny attacked one of their own body, and at first they tried to chill him into silence. But he was not to be daunted. He compelled them to listen, and at last so roused them by his fervour that he gained his point. It is true that he risked neither life nor fortune by his boldness; but none the less does he deserve honour for having recalled the senate to a tardy sense of its position and responsibilities.

Roman eloquence was now split into two schools or factions, one of which favoured the ancient style, the other the modern. Pliny was the champion of reaction: Tacitus the chief representative of the modern tendency. Unfortunately, Pliny's best oratory has perished, but we can hardly doubt that its brilliant wit and courtly finish would have impressed us less than they did the ears of those who heard him. One specimen only of his oratorical talent remains, the panegyric addressed to Trajan. This was admitted to be in his happiest vein, and it is replete with point and elegance. The impression given on a first reading is, that it is full also of flattery. This, however, is not in reality the case. Allowing for a certain conventionality of tone, there is no flattery in it; that is, there is nothing that goes beyond truth. But Pliny has the unhappy talent of speaking truth in the accents of falsehood. Like Seneca, he strikes us in this speech as too clever for his audience. Still, with all its faults, his oratory must have made an epoch, and helped to arrest the decline for at least some years. It is on his letters that Pliny's fame now rests, and both in tone and style they are a monument that does him honour. They show him to have been a gentleman and a man of feeling, as well as a wit and courtier. They were deliberately written with a view to publication, and thus can never have the unique and surpassing interest that belongs to those of Cicero. But they throw so much light on the contemporary history, society, and literature, that no student of the age can afford to neglect them. They are arranged neither according to time nor subject, but on an aesthetic plan of their author's, after the fashion of a literary nosegay. As extracts from several have already been given, we need not enlarge on them here. Their language is extremely pure, and almost entirely free from that poetical colouring which is so conspicuous in contemporary and subsequent prose-writing.

The tenth book possesses a special interest, as containing the correspondence between Pliny while governor of Bithynia and the emperor Trajan, to whose judgment almost every question that arose, however insignificant, was referred. [3] As he says in his frank way: "Solemne est mihi, Domine, omnia de quibus dubito ad te referre." [4] The letter which opens with these words is the celebrated one on the subject of the Christians. Perhaps it may not be out of place to translate it, as a highly significant witness of the relations between the emperors and their confidential servants. It runs thus:--

"I had never attended at the trial of a Christian; hence I knew not what were the usual questions asked them, or what the punishments inflicted. I doubted also whether to make a distinction of ages, or to treat young and old alike; whether to allow space for recantation, or to refuse all pardon whatever to one who had been a Christian; whether, finally, to make the name penal, though no crime should be proved, or to reserve the penalty for the combination of both. Meanwhile, when any were reported to me as Christians, I followed this plan. I asked them whether they were Christians. If they said yes, I repeated the question twice, adding threats of punishment; if they persisted, I ordered punishment to be inflicted. For I felt sure that whatever it was they confessed, their inflexible obstinacy well deserved to be chastised. There were even some Roman citizens who showed this strange persistence; those I determined to send to Rome. As often happens in cases of interference, charges were now lodged more generally than before, and several forms of guilt came before me. An anonymous letter was sent, containing the names of many persons, who, however, denied that they were or had been Christians. As they invoked the gods and worshipped with wine and frankincense before your image, at the same time cursing Christ, I released them the more readily, as those who are really Christians cannot be got to do any of these things. Others, who were named to me, admitted that they were Christians, but immediately afterwards denied it; some said they had been so three years ago, others at still more distant dates, one or two as long ago as twenty years. All these worshipped your image and those of the gods, and abjured Christ. But they declared that all their guilt or error had amounted to was this: they met on certain mornings before daybreak, and sang one after another a hymn to Christ as God, at the same time binding themselves by an oath not to commit any crime, but to abstain from theft, robbery, adultery, perjury, or repudiation of trust; after this was done, the meeting broke up; they, however, came together again to eat their meal in common, being quite guiltless of any improper conduct. [5] But since my edict forbidding (as you ordered) all secret societies, they had given this practice up. However, I thought it necessary to apply the torture to some young women who were called ministrae, [6] in order, if possible, to find out the truth. But I could elicit nothing from them except evidence of some debased and immoderate superstition; so I deferred the trial, and determined to ask your advice. For the matter seemed important, especially since the number of those who run into danger increases daily. All ages, all ranks, and both sexes are among the accused, and the taint of the superstition is not confined to the towns; it has actually made its way into the villages. But I believe it possible to cheek and repress it. At all events it is certain that temples which were lately almost empty are now well attended, and sacred festivals long disused are being revived. Victims too are flowing in, whereas a few years ago such things could scarcely find a purchaser. From this I infer that vast numbers might be reformed if an opportunity of recantation were allowed them."

Trajan's reply, brief, clear, and to the point, as all his letters are, is as follows:--

"I entirely approve of your conduct with regard to those Christians of whom you had received information. We can never lay down a universal rule, as if circumstances were always the same. They are not to be searched for; but if they are reported and convicted, they must be punished. But if any denies his Christianity and proves his words by sacrificing to our divinity, even though his former conduct may have laid him under suspicion, he must be allowed the benefit of his recantation. No weight whatever should be attached to anonymous communications; they are no Roman way of dealing, and are altogether reprehensible."

Pliny died in 113. He shone in nearly every department of literature, and thought himself no inelegant poet. His vanity has led him to record some of his verses, but they only show that he had little or no talent in this direction. His long and prosperous life was marked by no reverse. Popular among his equals, splendid in his political successes, in his vast wealth, and his friendship wife, the emperor, Pliny is almost a perfect type of a refined pagan gentleman. In some ways he reminds us of Xenophon. He was in complete harmony with his age; he had neither the harassing thoughts of Seneca, nor the querulousness of his uncle, nor the settled gloom of Tacitus, to overcast his bright and happy disposition. Few works in all antiquity are more pleasing than his friendly correspondence. We learn from it the names of a large number of orators and other distinguished literary men, of whom, indeed, Rome was full. VOCONIUS ROMANUS, [7] SALVIUS LIBERALIS, [8] C. FANNIUS, [9] and CLAUDIUS POLLIO, [10] were among the most renowned. They are mentioned as possessing every gift that could contribute to the highest eloquence; but as Pliny's good nature leads him to praise all his friends indiscriminately, we cannot lay much stress on his opinion. In jurisprudence we meet with PRISCUS NERATIUS, JUVENTIUS CELSUS, and JAVOLENUS PRISCUS. The two former were men of mark, and obtained the consulate. The last was less distinguished, and had the misfortune to offend Pliny by an ill-timed jest. [11] Once, when Statius had given a reading, and had just left the hall, the audience asked Passienus Paulus, who had a manuscript ready, to take his place. Paulus was somewhat diffident, but finally consented, and began his poem with the words, "You bid me, Priscus...," on which Javolenus, who was sitting near, called out, "You mistake! I do not bid you!" The audience greeted this sally with a laugh, and so put an end to the unlucky Paulus's recitation. Pliny contemptuously remarks that it is doubtful whether Javolenus was quite sane, but admits that there are people imprudent enough to trust their business to him. [12] We may think a single jest is somewhat scanty evidence of dementia.

Grammar was in this reign actively pursued. FLAVIUS CAPER was the author of a treatise on orthography, and another "on doubtful words," both of which we possess. He seems to have been a learned man, and is often quoted by the grammarians of the fourth and fifth centuries. VELIUS LONGUS also wrote on orthography, and, as we learn from Gellius, a treatise De Usu Antiquae Lectionis. All the chief grammarians now exercised themselves on the interpretation of Virgil, who was fast rising into the position of an oracle in nearly every department of learning, an elevation which, in the time of Macrobius, he had completely attained. Of scientific writers we possess in part the works of three; that of HYGINUS on munitions, and another on boundaries (if indeed this last be his), which are based on good authorities; that of BALBUS On the Elementary Notions of Geometry; and perhaps that of SICULUS FLACCUS, De Condidonibus Agrorum, all of which are of importance towards a knowledge of Roman surveying. It is doubtful whether Flaccus lived under Trajan, but in any case he cannot be placed later than the beginning of Hadrian's reign.

The only poet of the time of Trajan who has reached us, but one of the greatest in Roman literature, is D. JUNIUS JUVENALIS (46-130? A.D.). He was born during the reign of Claudius, and thus spent the best years of his life under the régime of the worst emperors. His parentage is uncertain, but he is said to have been either the son or the adopted son of a rich freedman, and a passage in the third Satire [13] seems to point to Aquinum as his birth-place. We have unfortunately scarcely any knowledge of his life, a point to be the more regretted, as we might then have pronounced with confidence on his character, which in the Satires is completely veiled. An inscription placed by him in the temple of Ceres Helvina, at Aquinum (probably in the reign of Domitian), has been published by Mommsen. It contains one or two biographical notices, which show that he held positions of considerable importance. [14] We have also a memoir of him, attributed to Suetonius by some, but to Probus by Valla, which tells us that until middle life he practised declamation as an amateur, neither pleading at the bar nor opening a rhetorical school. We are informed also that under Domitian he wrote a satire on the pantomime Paris, which was so highly approved by his friends that he determined to give himself to poetry. He did not, however, publish until the reign of Trajan. It was in the time of Hadrian that some of his verses on an actor [15] were recited, probably, by the populace in a theatre, in consequence of which the poet, now eighty years of age, was exiled under the specious pretext of a military command, the emperor's favourite player having taken offence at the allusion. From a reference to Egypt in one of his later satires, [16] the scholiast came to the conclusion that this was the place of his exile. But it is more likely to have been Britain, though in this case the relegation would have taken place under Trajan. [17] He appears to have died soon after from disgust, though here the two accounts differ, one bringing him back to Rome, and making him survive until the time of Antoninus Pius. The obvious inference from all this is that we know very little about the matter. In default of external evidence we might turn to the Satires themselves, but here the most careful sifting can find nothing of importance. The great vigour of style, however, which is conspicuous in the seventh Satire makes it clear that it was not the work of the poet's old age. Hence the Caesar referred to cannot be Hadrian. He must, therefore, be some earlier emperor, and there can be little doubt it is Trajan. Under Trajan, then, we place the maturity of Juvenal's genius as it is displayed in the first ten Satires. The four following ones show a falling off in concentration and dramatic power, and are no doubt later productions, when years of good government had softened his asperity of mind. The fifteenth, sixteenth, and to a certain extent the twelfth, show unmistakable signs of senility. The fifteenth contains evidence of its date. The consulship of Juncus (127 A.D.) is mentioned as recent. [18] We may therefore safely place the Satire within the two following years. The sixteenth, which treats of the privileges of military service, a very promising subject, has often been thought spurious, but without sufficient reason. The poet speaks of himself as a civilian, appearing to have no goodwill towards the camp, and as Juvenal had been in the army, it is argued that he would scarcely have written so. But to this it may be replied that Juvenal chose the subject for its literary capabilities, not from any personal feeling. As an expert rhetorician, he could not fail to see the humorous side of the relations between militaire and civilian. The feebleness of the style, and certain differences from the diction usual with the author, are not sufficient to found an argument upon, and have besides been much exaggerated. They would apply equally, and even with greater force, to the fifteenth.

The words "ad mediam fere aetatem declamavit," as Martha has justly remarked, form the key to Juvenal's literary position. He is the very quintessence of a declaimer, but a declaimer of a most masculine sort. Boileau characterises him in two epigrammatic lines:

"Juvénal élevé dans les cris de l'école Poussa jusqu'à l'excès son mordant hyperbole."

Poet in the highest sense of the word he certainly is not. The love of beauty, which is the touchstone of the poetic soul, is absent from his works. He rather revels in depicting horror and ugliness. But the other qualification of the poet, viz. a mastery of words, [19] he possesses to a degree not surpassed by any Roman writer, and in intensity and terseness of language is perhaps superior to all. Not an epithet is wasted, not a synonym idle. As much is pressed into each verse as it can possibly be made to bear, so that fully to appreciate the Satires it is necessary to have a commentary on every line. Even now, after the immense erudition that has been expended on him, many passages remain obscure, not only in respect to allusions, but even in matters of language. [20] The tension of his style, which is never relaxed, [21] represents not only great effort, but long-matured and late-born thought. In the angry silence of forty years had been formed that fierce and almost brutal directness of description which paints, as has been well said, with a vividness truly horrible. In preaching virtue, he first frightens away modesty. There is scarce one of his poems that does not shock even where it rebukes. And three of them are so hideous in their wonderful power that it is impossible to read them with any pleasure, though one of these (the sixth) is perhaps the most vigorous piece of writing in the entire Latin language. For compressed power it may he compared to the first chorus of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus, but here the likeness ceases. While the Athenian, even among dreadful scenes, rises to notes of sweet and almost divine pathos, the Roman's dark picture is not relieved by one touch of the beautiful, or one reminiscence of the ideal.

The question naturally arises, What led Juvenal to write poetry after being so long content with declamation? He partly answers us in his first Satire, where he tells us that it is in revenge for the poetry that has been inflicted on himself:

"Semper ego auditor tantum nunquamne reponam?"

But it arises also from a higher motive--

"Facit indignatio versum Qualemcunque potest, quales ego vel Cluvienus."

These two qualities, vexation (vexatus toties, i. 2) and indignation, are the salient characteristics of Juvenal. How far the vexation was righteous, the indignation sincere, is a question hard to answer. There is no denying the power with which they are expressed. But to submit to this power is one thing, to sift its author's heart is another. After a long and careful study of Juvenal's poems, we confess to being able to make nothing of Juvenal himself. We cannot get even a glimpse of him. He never doffs the iron mask, the "rigidi censura cachinni;" he has so long hidden his face that he is afraid to see it himself or to let it be seen. Some have thought that in the eleventh and twelfth Satires they can find the man, and have been glad to figure him as genial, simple, and kind. But it is by no means certain that even these are not mere rhetorical exercises, modelled on the Horatian epistles, but themselves having no relation to any actual event. The fifteenth, again, represents a softer view of life, the thirteenth and fourteenth a higher faith in providence; in these, it has been thought, appears the true nature, which had allowed itself to lie hid among the denunciations of the earlier satires. But, in truth, the character of Juvenal must be one of the incognita of literature. It is a retaliation on Satire's part for the intimate knowledge she had allowed us to gain of Horace and Persius through their works. [22]

In manner Juvenal is the most original of poets; in matter he is the glorifier of common-place. His strength lies in his prejudices. He is not a moralist, but a Roman moralist; the vices he lashes are not lashed as vices simpliciter, but as vices that Roman ethics condemn. This one- sided patriotism is the key to all his ideas. In an age which had seen Seneca, Juvenal can revert to the patriotism of Cato. The burden of his complaints is given in the third Satire:

"Non possum ferre Quintes Graecam Urbem." [23]

While the Greeks lead fashion, the old Roman virtues can never be restored. If only men could be disabused of their strange reverence for all that is Greek, society might be reconstructed. The keen satirist scents a real danger; in half a century from his death Rome had become a Greek city.

In estimating the political character of Juvenal's satire we must not attach too much weight to his denunciation of former tyrants. In the first place "tyrannicide" was a common-place of the schools: [24] Xerxes, Periander, Phalaris, and all the other despots of history, had been treated in rhetoric as they had treated others in reality; Juvenal's tirade was nothing new, but it was something much more powerful than had yet been seen. In the second place the policy of Trajan encouraged abuse of his predecessors. He could hardly claim to restore the Republic unless he showed how the Republic had been overthrown. Pliny, the courtly flatterer, is far more severe on Domitian than Juvenal; and in truth such severity was only veiled adulation. When Juvenal ridicules the senate of Domitian, [25] we may believe that he desired to stimulate to independence the senate of his day; and when he speaks of Trajan, it is in language of enthusiastic praise. [26] Flattery it is not, for Juvenal is no sycophant, nor would Trajan have liked him better if he had been one. Indeed, with all his invective he keeps strictly to truth; his painting of the emperors is from the life. It is highly coloured, but not out of drawing. Juvenal's Domitian is nearer to history than Tacitus's Tiberius.

It is in his delineations of society that Juvenal is at his greatest. There is nothing ideal about him, but his pictures of real life, allowing for their glaring lights, have an almost overpowering truthfulness. Every grade of society is made to furnish matter for his dramatic scenes. The degenerate noble is pilloried in the eighth, the cringing parasite in the fifth, the vicious hypocrite in the second, the female profligate in the sixth. It is rarely that he touches on contemporary themes. His genius was formed in the past and feeds on bitter memories. As he says, he "kills the dead." [27] To attack the living is neither pleasant nor safe. Still, in the historic incidents he resuscitates, a piercing eye can read a reference to the present. Hadrian's favourite actor saw himself in Paris. Freedmen and upstarts could read their original in Sejanus. [28] Frivolous noblemen could feel their follies rebuked in the persons of Lateranus and Damasippus. [29] Even an emperor might find his lesson in the gloomy pictures of Hannibal and Alexander. [30] So constant is this reference to past events that Juvenal's writings may be called historic satire, as those of Tacitus satiric history.

The exaggeration of Juvenal's style if employed in a different way might have led us to suspect him of less honesty of purpose than he really has. As it is, the very violence of his prejudices betrays an earnestness which, if his views had been more elevated, we might have thought feigned. A man might pretend to enthusiasm for truth, or holiness; he would hardly pretend to enthusiasm for national exclusiveness, [31] or for the dignity of his own profession. [32] When Juvenal attacks the insolent parvenu, [33] the Bithynian or Cappadocian knight, [34] the Greek adventurer who takes everything out of the Roman's hands, [35] the Chaldean impostor, [36] we may be sure he means what he says.

It is true that all his accusations are not thus limited in their scope. Some are no doubt inspired by moral indignation; and the language in which they are expressed is noble and well deserves the praise universally accorded to it. But in other instances his patriotism obscures his moral sense. For example, the rich upstarts against whom he is perpetually thundering, are by no means all worthy of blame. Very many of them have obtained their wealth by honourable commerce, which the nobles were too proud to practise, and the rewards of which they yet could not see reaped without envy and scorn. [37] The increasing importance of the class of libertini, so far from being an unmixed evil, as Juvenal thinks it, was productive of immense good. It was the first step towards the breaking down of the party-wall of pride which, if persisted in, must have caused the premature ruin of the Empire. It familiarised men's minds with ideas of equality, and prepared the way for the elevation to the citizenship of those vast masses of slaves who were fast becoming an anachronism.

Popular feeling was ahead of men like Juvenal and Tacitus in these respects. In all cases of disturbance the senate and great literary men sided with the old exclusive views. The emperors, as a rule, interfered for the benefit of the slave: and this helps us to understand the popularity of some even of the worst of their number.

Juvenal, then, was not above his age, as Cicero and Seneca had been. He does protest against the cruel treatment of slaves by the Roman ladies; but he nowhere exerts his eloquence to advocate their rights as men to protection and friendship. Nor does he enter a protest against the gladiatorial shows, which was the first thing a high moralist would have impugned, and which the Christians attacked with equal enthusiasm and courage. We observe, however, with pleasure, that as Juvenal advanced in years his tone became gentler and purer, though his literary powers decayed. The thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth Satires evince a kindly vein which we fail to find in the earlier ones. Some have fancied that in the interval he became acquainted with the teaching of Christianity. But this is a supposition as improbable as it is unsupported.

On the style of Juvenal but little need be added. Its force, brevity, and concision have already been noticed, At the same time they do not seem to have been natural to him. Where he writes more easily he is diffuse and even verbose. The twelfth and fifteenth Satires are conspicuous examples of this. One is tempted to think that the fifteenth, had he written it twenty years earlier, would have been compressed into half its length. The diction is classical; but like that of Tacitus, it is the classicality of the Silver Age. It shows, however, no diminution of power, and the gulf between it and that of Fronto and Apuleius in the next age is immense. Juvenal's language is based on a minute study of Virgil; [38] his rhythm is based rather on that of Lucan, with whom in other respects he shows a great affinity. His verse is sonorous and powerful; he is fond of the break after the fourth foot. Though monotonous, its weight makes it very impressive; it is easily retained in the memory, and stands next to that of Virgil and Lucretius as a type of what the language can achieve.

The resentment that goaded Juvenal to write satire seems also to have inspired the pen of C. CORNELIUS TACITUS. [39] He was born 54 A.D., or, according to Arnold, 57 A.D., probably in Rome. His father was perhaps the same who is alluded to by Pliny [40] as procurator of Belgian Gaul. It is, at any rate, certain that the historian came of a noble and wealthy stock; his habit of thought, prejudices, and tastes all reflect these of the highest and most exclusive society. He began the career of honours under Vespasian [41] by obtaining his quaestorship, and, some years later, the aedileship. The dates of both these events are uncertain--another instance of the vagueness with which writers of this time allude to the circumstances of their own lives. We know that at twenty-one he married the daughter of Cn. Julius Agricola, and that he was praetor ten years afterwards. He was also quindecimvir at the secular games under Domitian (88 A.D.). For some years he held a military command abroad, perhaps in Germany. On his return he was constant in his senatorial duties [42] and we find him joined with Pliny in the accusation of Marius Priscus, which was successful but unavailing. Under Nerva (97 A.D.) he was made consul; but soon retired from public life, and dedicated the rest of his days to literature, having sketched out a vast plan of Roman history the greater part of which he lived to fulfil. The year of his death is uncertain. Brotier, followed by Arnold, thinks he was prematurely cut off before the close of Trajan's reign, but it is possible he lived somewhat longer, perhaps until 118 A.D.

The first remark one naturally makes on reading the life of Tacitus, is that he was admirably fitted by his distinguished military and political career for the duties of a historian. Gibbon said that his year in the yeomanry had been of more service to him in describing battles than any closet study could have been; and Tacitus has this great advantage over Livy that he had helped to make history as well as to relate it. His elevation to the rank of senator enabled him to understand the iniquity of Domitian's government in a way that would otherwise have been impossible; and of the complicity shown by the servile fathers in their ruler's acts of crime, he speaks in the Agricola with something like the shame of repentance. His character seems to have been naturally proud and independent, but unequal to heroism in action. Like almost all literary minds he shrunk from facing peril or discomfort, and tried to steer a course between the harsh self-assertion of a Thrasea [43] and the cringing servility of the majority of senators. This led him to become dissatisfied with himself, with the world, and with Divine Providence, [44] and has left a stamp of profound and rebellious melancholy on all his works.

As a young man he had studied rhetoric under Aper Secundus, [45] and perhaps Quintilian. He pleaded with the greatest success, and Pliny gives it as his own highest ambition to be ranked next, he dare not say second, to Tacitus. [46] Nor was his deliberative eloquence inferior to his judicial. We learn, from Pliny again, that there was a peculiar solemnity in his language, which gave to all he uttered the greatest weight. The panegyric he pronounced on Virginius Rufus, the man who twice refused the chance of empire, "the best citizen of his time," was celebrated as a model of that kind of oratory. [47]

The earliest work of his that has reached us is the Dialogus de caussis corruptae Eloquentiae, composed under Titus, or early under Domitian. It attributes the decay of eloquence to the decay of freedom; but believes in a future development of imperial oratory under the mild sway of just princes, founded not on feeble and repining imitation of the past, but on a just appreciation of the qualifications attainable in the present political conditions and state of the language. The argument is conducted throughout with the greatest moderation, but the conclusion is decided in favour of the modern style, if kept within proper bounds. The time of the dialogue is laid in 75 A.D.; the speakers are Curiatius Maternus, Aper Secundus, and Vipstanus Messala. The point of debate is one frequently discussed in the schools of rhetoric, and the work may be considered as a literary exercise; but the author must have outgrown youth when he wrote it, and its ability is such as to give promise of commanding eminence in the future. The style is free and flowing, and full of imitations of Cicero. This has caused some of the critics to attribute it to other authors, as Pliny the younger and Quintilian, [48] who were known to be Ciceronianists. But independently of the fact that it is distinctly above the level of these writers, we observe on looking closely many indications of Tacitus's peculiar diction. [49] The most striking personal notice occurs in the thirteenth chapter, where the author announces his determination to give up the life of ambition, and, like Virgil, to be content with one of literary retirement. This seems at first hard to reconcile with the known career of Tacitus; but as the dialogue bears all the marks of early manhood, the resolve, though real, may have been a passing one only; or, in comparison with what he felt himself capable of doing, the activity actually displayed by him may have seemed as nothing, and to have merited the depreciatory notice he here bestows upon it.

The work next in order of priority is the Agricola, a biography of his father-in-law, composed near the commencement of Trajan's reign, about 98 A. D. The talent of the author has now undergone a change; he is no longer the bright flowing spirit of the Dialogus, who acknowledged the decline while making the most of the excellences of his time; he has become the stern, back-looking moralist, the burning panegyrist, whose very pictures of virtue are the most withering rebukes of vice. This treatise represents what Teuffel calls his Sallustian epoch; i.e., a phase or period of his mental development, in which his political and moral feeling, as well as his literary aspirations, led him to recall the manner of the great rhetorical biographer. The short preface, in which occurs a fierce protest against the wickedness of the time just past, reminds us of the more verbose but otherwise not dissimilar introduction to the Catiline: and the subordination of general history to the main subject of the composition is earned out in Sallust's way, but with even greater completeness. At the same time the Silver Age is betrayed by the extremely high colouring of the rhetoric, especially in the last chapters, where an impassioned outpouring of affection and despair seems by its prophetic eloquence to summon forth the genius that is to be. Already, in this work, [50] we find that Tacitus has conceived the design of his Historiae, to which, therefore, the Agricola must be considered a preliminary study.

As yet, Tacitus's manner is only half-formed. He must have acquired by painful labour that wonderful suggestive brevity which in the Annals reaches its culmination, and is of all styles the world of letters has ever seen, the most compressed and full of meaning. The Germania, however, in certain portions [51] approximates to it, and in other ways shows a slight increase of maturity over the biography of Agricola. His object in writing this treatise has been much contested. Some think it was in order to dissuade Trajan from a projected expedition that he painted the German people as foes so formidable; others that it is a satire on the vices of Rome couched under the guise of an innocent ethnographic treatise; others that it is inspired by the genuine scientific desire to investigate the many objects of historic and natural interest with which a vast and almost unknown territory abounded. But none of these motives supplies a satisfactory explanation. The first can hardly be maintained owing to historical difficulties; the second, though an object congenial to the Roman mind, is not lofty enough to have moved the pen of Tacitus; the third, though it may have had some weight with him, would argue a state of scientific curiosity in advance of Tacitus's position and age, and besides is incompatible with his culpable laziness in sifting information on matters of even still greater ethnographic interest. [52]

The true motive was no doubt his fear lest the continual assaults of these tribes should prove a permanent and insurmountable danger to Rome. Having in all probability been himself employed in Germany, Tacitus had seen with dismay of what stuff the nation was made, and had foreseen what the defeat of Varus might have remotely suggested, that some day the degenerate Romans would be no match for these hardy and virtuous tribes. Thus, the design of the work was purely and pre-eminently patriotic; nor is any other purpose worthy of the great historian, patrician, patriot, and soldier that he was. At the same time subsidiary motives are not excluded; we may well believe that the gall of satire kindles his eloquence, and that the insatiable desire of knowledge stimulates his research while inquiring into the less accessible details of the German polity. The work is divided into two parts. The first gives an account of the situation, climate, soil, and inhabitants of the country; it investigates the etymology of several German names of men and gods, describes the national customs, religion, laws, amusements, and especially celebrates the people's moral strictness; but at the same time not without contrasting them unfavourably with Rome whenever the advantage is on her side. The second part contains a catalogue of the different tribes, with the geographical limits, salient characteristics, and a short historical account of each, whenever accessible.

Next come the Histories, which are a narrative of the reigns of Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian, written under Trajan. This work, of which we possess only four entire books, with part of the fifth, consisted originally of fourteen books, and was the most authentic and complete of all his writings. The loss of the last nine and a half books must be considered irreparable. In the Germania he had shown the power of that liberty which the barbarians enjoyed, had indicated their polity, in which, even then the germs of feudalism, chivalry, the worship of the sex, troubadour minstrelsy, fairy mythology, and, above all, representative government, existed. In the Historiae he paints with tremendous power the disorganisation, of the Roman state, the military anarchy which made the diadem the gift of a brutal soldiery, and revealed the startling truth that an emperor could be created elsewhere than at Rome.

At this period his style still retains some traces of its former copious flow; it has not yet been pressed tight into the short sententiae, which were its final and most characteristic development, and which in the Annals dominate to the exclusion of every other style.

The Annals, ab excessu divi Augusti, in sixteen books, treated the history of the Empire until the extinction of the Claudian dynasty. They contain two separate threads of history, one internal, the other external. The latter is important and interesting; but the former is both in an immeasurably greater degree. It has been likened to a tragedy in two acts, the first terminating with the death of Tiberius, the second with the death of Nero. Tacitus in this work shows his personal sympathies more strongly than in any of the others. He appears as a Roman of the old school, but still more, as an oligarchical partisan. Not that he indulged in chimerical plans for restoring the Republic. That he saw was impossible; nor had he much sympathy with those who strove for it. But his resignation to the Empire as an unavoidable evil does not inspire him with contentment. His blood boils with indignation at the steady repression of the liberty of action of the old families, which the instincts of imperialism forced upon the monarchs from the very beginning; nor do the general security of life and property, the bettered condition of the provinces, and the long peace that had allowed the internal resources of the empire to be developed, make amends for what he considers the iniquitous tyranny practised upon the higher orders of the state. Thus he writes under a strong sense of injustice, which reaches its culmination in treating of the earlier reigns. But this does not provoke him into intemperate language, far less into misrepresentation of fact; if he disdained to complain, he disdained still more to falsify. But he cannot help insinuating; and his insinuations are of such searching power that, once suggested, they grasp hold of the mind, and will not be shaken off. Of all Latin authors none has so much power over the reader as Tacitus. If by eloquence is meant the ability to persuade, then he is the most eloquent historian that ever existed. To doubt his judgment is almost to be false to the conscience of history. Nevertheless, his saturnine portraits have been severely criticised both by English and French historians, and the arguments for the defence put forward with enthusiasm as well as force. The result is, that Tacitus's verdict has been shaken, but not reversed. The surpassing vividness of such characters as his Tiberius and Nero forbids us to doubt their substantial reality. But once his prepossessions are known and discounted, the student of his works can give a freer attention to the countervailing facts, which Tacitus is too honourable to hide.

After long wavering between the two styles, he adopted the brilliant one fashionable in his time, but he has glorified it in adopting it. Periods such as those of Pliny would be frigid in him. He still retains some traces (though they are few) of the rhetorician. In an interesting passage he complains of the comparative poverty of his subject as contrasted with that of Livy: "Ingentia illi bella, expugnationes urbium, fusos captosque reges libero egressu memorabant; nobis in arcto et inglorius labor. Immota quippe aut modice lacessita pax maestae urbis res et princeps proferendi imperii incuriosus;"--[53] but he certainly had no cause to complain. The sombre annals of the Empire were not less amenable to a powerful dramatic treatment than the vigorous and aggressive youth of the Republic had been. Nor does the story of guilt and horror depicted in the Annals fall below even the finest scenes of Livy; in intensity of interest it rather exceeds them.

Tacitus intended to have completed his labours by a history of Augustus's reign, which, however, he did not live to write. This is a great misfortune. But he has left us his opinion on the character and policy of Augustus in the first few chapters of the Annals, and a very valuable opinion it is. What makes the historian more bitter in the Annals than elsewhere, is the feeling that it was the early emperors who inaugurated the evil policy which their successors could hardly help themselves in carrying out. When the failure of Piso's conspiracy destroyed the last hopes of the aristocracy, it was hardly possible to retain for the later emperors the same intense hatred that had been felt for those whose tyranny fostered, and then remorselessly crushed, the resistance of the patrician party. The Annals, therefore, though the most concentrated, powerful, and dramatic of Tacitus's works, hardly rank quite so high in a purely historical point of view as the Histories; as Merivale has said, they are all satire.

At the same time, his facts are quite trustworthy. We know from Pliny's letters that he took great pains to get at the most authentic sources, and beyond doubt he was well qualified to judge in cases of conflicting evidence. These diverse excellences, in the opinion of Niebuhr and Arnold, place him indisputably at the head of the Roman historians. We cannot better close this account than in the eloquent words of a French writer: [54] "In Tacitus subjectivity predominates; the anger and pity which in turn never cease to move him, give to his style an expressiveness, a rich glow of sentiment, of which antiquity affords no other example. This constant union between the dramatic and pathetic elements, together with the directness, energy, and reality of the language, must act with Irresistible force upon every reader. Tacitus is a poet; but a poet that has a spirit of his own. Was he as fully appreciated in his own day as he is in ours? We doubt it. The horrors, the degeneracy of his time, awake in his brooding soul the altogether modern idea of national expiation and national chastisement. The historian rises to the sublimity of the judge. He summons the guilty to his tribunal, and it is in the name of the Future and of Posterity that he pronounces the implacable and irreversible verdict."

The poetical and Greek constructions with which Tacitus's style abounds, the various artifices whereby he relieves the tedium of monotonous narrative, or attains brevity or variety, have been so often analysed in well-known grammatical treatises that it is unnecessary to do more than allude to them here.

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VIII. THE REIGNS OF HADRIAN AND THE ANTONINES (117-180 A.D.)

We now enter on a new and in some respects a very interesting era. From the influence exerted on the last period by the family of Seneca, we might call it the epoch of Spanish Latinity; from the similar influence now exerted by the African school, we might call the present the epoch of African Latinity. Its chief characteristic is ill-digested erudition. Various circumstances combined to make a certain amount of knowledge general, and the growing cosmopolitan sentiment excited a strong interest in every kind of exotic learning. With increased diffusion depth was necessarily sacrificed. The emperor set the example of travel, which was eagerly followed by his subjects. Hence a large mass of information was acquired, which injuriously affected those who possessed it. They appear, as it were, crushed by its weight, and become learned triflers or uninteresting pedants. By far the most considerable writer of this period was Suetonius, but then he had been trained in the school of Pliny, of whom for several years he was an intimate friend. Hadrian himself (76-138 A.D.), among his many other accomplishments, gave some attention to letters. Speeches, treatises of various kinds, anecdotes, and a collection of oracles, are ascribed to his pen. Also certain epigrams which we still possess, and chiefly that exquisite address to his soul, composed on his death-bed: [1]

"Animala vagula blandula Hospes comesque corporis Quae nunc abibis in loca, Pallidula rigida nudula? Nec ut soles dabis iocos."

Hadrian was also a patron of letters, though an inconstant one. His vanity led him to wish to have distinguished writers about him, but it also led him to wish to be ranked as himself the most distinguished. His own taste was good; he appreciated and copied the style of the republican age; but he encouraged the pedantic Fronto, whose taste was corrupt and ruinously influential. So that while with one hand he benefited literature, with the other he injured it.

The birth year of C. SUETONIUS TRANQUILLUS is uncertain, but may be assigned with probability to 75 A.D. [2] We may here remark the extraordinary reticence of the later writers on the subject of their younger days. Seneca alone is communicative. All the rest show an oblivion or indifference most unlike the genial communicativeness of Cicero, Horace, and Ovid. His father was one Suetonius Lenis, a military tribune and wearer of the angusticlave. Muretus, however, desirous to give him a more illustrious origin, declares that his father was the Suetonius Paulinus mentioned by Tacitus. We learn a good deal of his younger days from the letters of Pliny, and can infer something of his character also. In conformity with what we know from other sources of the tendencies of the age, we find that he was given to superstition. [3] At this time (i.e. under Trajan) Suetonius wavered between a literary and a political career. Pliny was able and willing to help him in the latter, and got him appointed to the office of tribune (102 A.D.). [4] Some years later (112 A.D.), he procured for him the jus trium liberorum, though Suetonius was childless. We see that Augustus's excellent institutions had already turned into an abuse. The means for keeping up the population had become a compensation for domestic unhappiness. [5] Suetonius practised for some years at the bar, and seems to have amassed a considerable fortune. We find him begging Pliny to negotiate for him for the purchase of an estate. [6] Shortly after this he was promoted to be Hadrian's secretary, which gave him an excellent opportunity of enriching his stores of knowledge from the imperial library. Of this opportunity he made excellent use, and after his disgrace, owing, it is said, to too great familiarity with, the empress (119 A.D.), he devoted his entire time to those multifarious and learned works, which gave him the position of the Varro of the imperial period. His life was prolonged for many years, probably until 160 A.D. [7]

The writings of Suetonius were encyclopaedic. Following the culture of his day, he seems to have written partly in Greek, partly in Latin. This had been also the practice of Cicero, and of many of the greatest republican authors. The difference between them lies, not in the fact that Suetonius's Greek was better, but that his Latin is less good. Instead of a national it is fast becoming a cosmopolitan dialect. Still Suetonius tried to form his taste on older and purer models, and is far removed from the denationalised school of Fronto and Apuleius.

The titles of his works are a little obscure. Both, following Suidas, gives the following. (1) peri ton par Ellaesi paidion Biblion, a book of games. This is quoted or paraphrased by Tzetzes, [8] and several excerpts from it are preserved in Eustathius. It was no doubt written in Greek, but perhaps in Latin also. (2) peri ton para Romaiois theorion kai agonon biblia g, an account in three books of the Roman spectacles and games, of which an interesting fragment on the Troia ludus is preserved by Tertullian. [9] (3) peri tou kata Romaious eniautou biblion, an archaeological investigation into the theory of the Roman year. (4) peri ton en tois bibliois saemeion, on the signification of rare words. (5) peri taes Kikeronos politeias, a justification of the conduct of Cicero, in opposition to some of his now numerous detractors, especially one Didymus, a conceited Alexandrine, called Chalcenterus, "the man of iron digestion," on account of his immense powers of work. (6) peri onomaton kai ideas esthaematon kai upodaematon, a treatise on the different names of shoes, coats, and other articles of dress. This may seem a trivial subject; but, after Carlyle, we can hardly deny its capability of throwing light on great matters. Besides, in ancient times dress had a religious origin, and in many cases a religious significance. And two passages from the work preserved by Servius, [10] are important from this point of view. (7) peri dusphaemon lexeon aetoi blasphaemiom, an inquiry into the origin and etymology of the various terms of abuse employed in conversation and literature. This was almost certainly written in Greek. (8) peri Romaes kai ton en autae nomimon kai aethon biblia b, a succinct account of the chief Roman customs, of which only a short passage on the Triumph has come down to us through Isidore. [11] (9) Syngenikon Kaisaron, [12] a biography of the twelve Caesars, divided into eight books. (10) Stemma Romaion andron episaemon, a gallery of illustrious men, the plan of which was followed by Jerome in his history of the worthies of the church. But Suetonius's catalogue seems to have been confined to those eminent in literature, and to have treated only of poets, orators, historians, philosophers, grammarians, and rhetoricians. Of this we possess considerable fragments, especially the account of the grammarians, and the lives of Terence, Horace, and Pliny. (11) peri episaemon pornon, an account of those courtesans who had become renowned through their wit, beauty, or genius. (12) De Vitiis Corporalibus, a list of bodily defects, written perhaps to supplement the medical works of Celsus and Scribonius Largus. (13) De Institutione Officiorum, a manual of rank as fixed by law, and of social and court etiquette. This, did we possess it, would be highly interesting, and might throw light on many now obscure points. (14) De Regibus, in three books, containing short biographies of the most renowned monarchs in each of the three divisions of the globe, treated in his usual style of a string of facts coupled with a list of virtues and vices. (15) De Rebus Variis, a sort of ana, of which we can detect but few, and those insignificant, notices. (16) Prata, or miscellaneous subjects, in ten or perhaps twelve books, which work was greatly admired not only in the centuries immediately succeeding, but also throughout the Middle Ages. It is extremely probable, as Teuffel thinks, that many of the foregoing treatises may really have been simply portions of the Prata cited under their separate names. The first eight books were confined to national antiquities and other similar points of interest; the rest were given to natural science and that sort of popular philosophy so much in vogue at the time, which finds a parallel between every fact of the physical universe and some phenomenon of the human body or mind. They were modelled on Varro's writings, which to a large extent they superseded, except for great writers like Augustine, who went back to the fountain head. [13] It is uncertain whether Suetonius treated history; but a work on the wars between Pompey and Caesar, Antony and Octavian, is indicated by some notices in Dio Cassius and Jerome. All these writings, however, are lost, and the sole work by which we can form an estimate of Suetonius's genius is his lives of the Caesars, which we fortunately possess almost entire.

Suetonius possessed in a high degree some of the most essential qualifications of a biographer. He was minute, laborious, and accurate in his investigation of facts; he neglected nothing, however trivial or even offensive, which he thought threw light upon the character or circumstances of those he described. And he is completely impartial; it would perhaps be more correct to say indifferent. His accounts have been well compared by a French writer to the procès verbal of the law courts. They are dry, systematic, and uncoloured by partisanship or passion. Such statements are valuable in themselves, and particularly when read as a pendant to the history of Tacitus, which they often confirm, often correct, and always illustrate. To take a single point; we see from Tacitus how it was that the emperors were so odious to the aristocracy; we see from Suetonius how it was that they became the idols of the people. Many of the details are extremely disgusting, but this strong realism is a Roman characteristic, and adds to their value. To the higher attributes of a historian Suetonius has no pretension. He scarcely touches on the great historic events, and never ventures a comprehensive judgment; nor can he even take a wide survey of the characters he pourtrays. But he is a faithful collector of evidence on which the philosophic biographer may base his own judgment; and as he generally gives his sources, which are authentic in almost every case, we may use his statements with perfect confidence.

His style is coloured with rhetoric, and occasionally with poetic embellishment, but is otherwise terse and vigorous. The extreme curtness he cultivated often leads him into something bordering on obscurity. His habit of alluding to sources of information instead of being at the pains to describe them at length, while it adds to the neatness of his periods, detracts from its value to ourselves. He rises but rarely into eloquence, and still more rarely shows dramatic power. The best known of his descriptive scenes is the death of Julius Caesar, but that of Nero is almost more graphic. It may interest the reader to give a translation of it. [14] The scene is the palace, the time, the night before his death:--

"He thus put off deciding what to do till next day. But about midnight he awoke, and finding the guard gone, leapt out of bed, and sent round messages to his friends; but meeting with no response, he himself, accompanied by one or two persons, called at their houses in turn. But every door was shut, and no one answered his inquiries, so he returned to his chamber to find the guard had fled, carrying with them the entire furniture, and with the rest his box of poison. He at once asked for Spiculus the mirmillo or some other trained assassin to deal the fatal blow, but could get no one. This seemed to strike him; he cried out, 'Have I then neither friend nor enemy?' and ran forward as if intending to throw himself into the river. But checking his steps he begged for some better concealed hiding place where he might have time to collect his thoughts. The freedman Phaon offered his suburban villa, situate four miles distant, midway between the Salarian and Nomentane roads; so just as he was, bare-foot and clad in his tunic, he threw round him a faded cloak, and covering his head, and binding a napkin over his face, mounted a horse with four companions of whom Sporus was one. On starting he was terrified by a shock of earthquake and an adverse flash of lightning, and heard from the camp hard by the shouts of the soldiers predicting his ruin and Galba's triumph. A traveller, as they passed, observed, 'Those men are pursuing Nero;' another asked, 'Is there any news in town about Nero?' His horse took fright at the smell of a dead body which had been thrown into the road; in the confusion his disguise fell off, and a praetorian soldier recognised and saluted him. Arrived at the post-house, they left their horses, and struggled through a thorny copse by following a track in the sandy soil, but were obliged to put cloths under their feet as they walked. However, they arrived safely at the back wall of the villa. Phaon then suggested that they should hide in a cavern hard by, formed by a heap of sand. But Nero declaring that he would not be buried alive, they waited a little, till a chance should offer of entering the villa unobserved. Seeing some water in a little pool, he scooped some up with his hand, and just before drinking said 'This is Nero's distilled water!' then, seeing how his cloak was torn by the brambles, he peeled off the thorns from the branches that crossed the path. Then crawling on all fours, he passed through a narrow passage out of the cavern into the nearest cellar, and there laid himself on a pallet made of old straw and furnished with anything but a comfortable pillow. Becoming both hungry and thirsty, he refused some musty bread that was offered him, but drank a little tepid water. To free himself from the constant shower of abuse that those who came to gaze poured on him, he ordered a pit to be made according to the measure of his body, and any bits of marble that lay by to be heaped together, and water and wood to be brought for the proper disposing of the corpse; weeping at each stage of the proceedings, and saying every now and then, 'Oh! what an artist the world is losing!' [15]

"While thus occupied a missive was brought to Phaon. Nero snatched it out of his hand, and read that he had been decreed an enemy by the Senate, and was demanded for punishment 'according to the manner of our ancestors.' He asked what this meant. Being told that he would be stripped naked, his neck fixed in a pitchfork, and his back scourged until he was dead, he seized in his terror two daggers which he had brought with him, but after feeling their edge put them back into their sheaths, alleging that the fated hour had not yet come. Sometimes he would ask Sporus to raise the funeral lamentation, then he would implore some one to set him an example of courage by dying first; sometimes he would chide his own irresoluteness by saying--'I am a base degenerate man to live! This does not beseem Nero! We must be steady on occasions like these--come, rouse yourself!' [16] Already the horsemen were seen approaching who had received orders to carry him off alive. Crying out in the words of Homer:

'The noise of swift-footed steeds strikes my ears,'

he drove the weapon into his throat with the help of his secretary Epaphroditus, and immediately fell back half-dead. The centurion now arrived, and, under the pretence of assisting him, put his cloak to the wound; Nero only replied, 'Too late!' and 'This is your loyalty!' With these words he died, his eyes being quite glazed, and starting out in a manner horrible to witness. His continual and earnest petition had been that no one should have possession of his head, but that come what would, he might be buried whole. This Talus, Galba's freedman, granted."

It will be seen that his narrative, though not lofty, is masterly, clear, and impressive.

Besides Suetonius we have a historian, though a minor one, in P. ANNIUS FLORUS, [17] who is now generally identified with the rhetorician and poet mentioned more than once by Pliny, and author of a dialogue, "Vergilius Orator an Poeta," and some lines De Rosis and De Qualitate Vitae. [18] Little is known of his life, except that he was a youth in the time of Domitian, was vanquished at the Capitoline contest through unjust partiality, and settled at Tarraco as a professional rhetorician. Under Hadrian he returned to Rome, and probably did not survive his reign. The epitome of Livy's history, or rather the wars of it, from the foundation of Rome to the era of Augustus, in two short books, is a pretentious and smartly written work. But it shows no independent investigation, and no power of impartial judgment. Its views of the constitution [19] are even more superficial than those of Livy. The first book ends with the Gracchi, after whom, according to the author, the decline began. The frequent moral declamations were greatly to the taste of the Middle Ages, and throughout them Florus was a favourite. Abridgments were now the fashion; perhaps that of Pompeius Trogus by JUSTINUS belongs to this reign. [20] Many historians wrote in Greek.

Jurisprudence was also actively cultivated. We have the two great names of SALVIUS JULIANUS and SEX. POMPONIUS, both of whom continued to write under the Antonines. They were nearly of an age. Pomponius, we infer from his own words, [22] was born somewhere about 84 A.D., and as he lived to a great age, it is probable that he survived his brother jurist. Both enjoyed for several centuries a high and deserved reputation. The rise of philosophical jurisprudence coincides with the decline of all other literature. It must be considered to belong to science rather than letters, and is far too wide a subject to be more than merely noticed here, Both these authors wrote a digest, as well as numerous other works. The best-known popular treatise of Pomponius was his Enchiridion, or Manual of the Law of Nations, containing a sketch of the history of Roman law and jurisprudence until the time of Julian. [23]

The study of grammar and rhetoric was pursued with much industry, but by persons of inferior mark. ANTONIUS JULIANUS, a Spaniard, some account of whom is given by Gellius, [24] kept up the older style as against the new African fashion. His declamations have perished; but those of CALPURNIUS FLACCUS still remain. The chief rhetoricians seem to have confined themselves to declaiming in Greek. The celebrated Favorinus, at once philosopher, rhetorician, and minute grammarian, was one of the most popular. TERENTIUS SCAURUS wrote a book on Latin grammar, and commentaries on Plautus and Virgil. We have his treatise De Orthographia, which contains many rare ancient forms. His evident desire to be brief has caused some obscurity. The author formed his language on the older models; like Suetonius, following Pliny, and through him, the classical period.

Philosophers abounded in this age, and one at least, Plutarch, has attained the highest renown. As he, in common with all the rest, wrote in Greek, no more will be said about them here.

A medical writer of some note, whose two works on acute (celeres passiones) and chronic (tardae) diseases have reached us, is CAELIUS AURELIANUS. His exact date is not known. But as he never alludes to Galen, it is probable be lived before him. He was born at Sicca in Numidia, and chiefly followed Soranus.

The reigns of Antoninus Pius and his son, the saintly M. Aurelius, covered a space of forty-two years, during which good government and consistent patronage did all they could for letters. But though the emperor could give the tone to such literature as existed, he could not revive the old force and spirit, which were gone for ever. The Romans now showed all the signs of a decaying people. The loss of serious interest in anything, even in pleasure, argues a reduced mental calibre; and the substitution of minute learning for original thought always marks an irrecoverable decadence. The chief writer during the earlier part of this period is M. CORNELIUS FRONTO (90-168 A.D.), a native of Cirta, in Numidia, who had been held under Hadrian to be the first pleader of the day; and now rose to even greater influence from being intrusted with the education of the two young Caesars, M. Aurelius and L. Verus. Fronto suffered acutely from the gout, and the tender solicitude displayed by Aurelius for his preceptor's ailments is pleasant to see, though the tone of condolence is sometimes a little mawkish. Fronto was a thorough pedant, and of corrupt taste. He had all the clumsy affectation of his school. Aurelius adopted his teacher's love of archaisms with such zest that even Fronto was obliged to advise a more popular style. When Aurelius left off rhetoric for the serious study of philosophy, Fronto tried his best to dissuade him from such apostasy. In his eyes eloquence, as he understood it, was the only pursuit worthy of a great man. In later life Aurelius arrived at better canons of judgment; in his Meditations he praises Fronto's goodness, [25] but says not a word about his eloquence. His contemporaries were less reserved. They extolled him to the skies, and made him their oracle of all wisdom. Eumenius [26] says, "he is the second and equal glory of Roman eloquence;" and Macrobius [27] says, "There are four styles of speech; the copious, of which Cicero is chief; the terse, in which Sallust holds sway; the dry, [28] which is assigned to Fronto; the florid, in which Pliny luxuriates." With testimonies like these before them, and the knowledge that he had been raised to the consulship (143) and to the confidential friendship of two emperors, scholars had formed a high estimate of his genius. But the discovery of his letters by Mai (1815) undeceived them. Independently of their false taste, which cannot fail to strike the reader, they show a feeble mind, together with a lack of independence and self-reliance. He has, however, a good naturel, and a genial self-conceit, which attracts us to him, and we are not surprised at the affection of his pupil, though we suspect it has led him to exaggerate his master's influence.

Until these came to light, scarcely anything was known of Fronto's works. Five discussions on the signification of words had been preserved in Gellius, and a passage in which he violently attacks the Christians in Minucius Felix. But the letters give an excellent idea of his mind, i.e. they are well stocked with words, and supply as little as possible of solid information. Family matters, mutual condolences, pieces of advice, interspersed with discussions on eloquence, form their staple. The collection consisted of ten books, five written to Aurelius as heir- apparent, and five to him as emperor. But we have lost the greater part of the latter series. Of Fronto's numerous other writings only scattered fragments remain. They are as follows:--(1) Panegyric speeches addressed to Hadrian [29] and Antoninus (among which was the celebrated one on his British victories 140 A.D.). (2) A speech returning thanks to the senate on behalf of the Carthaginians. (3) Speeches for the Bithynians and Ptolomacenses. (4) Speeches for and against individuals. (5) The speech against the Christians quoted by Minucius. (6) Appended to the letters are also some Greek epistles to members of the imperial household, a consolation from Aurelius to Fronto on the death of his grandson, and his reply, which is a mixture of desponding pessimism and philological pedantry. [30] (7) Trifles like the erotikos, a study based on Plato's theory of love, the story of Arion, the feriae alsienses, in which he humorously advises the prince to take a holiday, the laudes fumi et pulveris, a rhetorical exercise, [31] show that he was quite at home in a less ambitious vein.

The best example of his style and habits of thought is found in the letters De Eloquentia on p. 139 sqq. of Naber's edition.

His life was soured by suffering and bereavement. His wife and all his children but one died before him, and he himself was a victim to various diseases. His interest for us is due to his relations with Aurelius and the general dearth at that period of first-rate writers. He died probably before the year 169. With Fronto's letters are found a considerable number of those of Aurelius, but they do not call for any remark. The writings that have brought him the purest and loftiest fame are not in Latin but in Greek. It would therefore be out of place to dwell on them here.

A younger contemporary and admirer of Fronto is AULUS GELLIUS (l25?-175 A.D.), author of the Noctes Atticae, in twenty books, a pleasant, gossiping work, written to occupy the leisure of his sons, and containing a vast amount of interesting details on literature and religious or antiquarian lore. Gellius is a man of small mind, but makes up by zeal for lack of power. He was trained in philosophy under Favorinus, in rhetoric under Antonius Julianus and, perhaps, Fronto, but his style and taste are, on the whole, purer than those of his preceptors. The title Noctes Atticae was chosen, primarily, because the book was written at Athens and during the lucubrations of the night; but its modesty was also a recommendation in his eyes. The subjects are very various, but grammar or topics connected with it preponderate. A large space is devoted to anecdotes, literary and historical, and among these are found both the most interesting and the best written passages. Another element of importance is found in the quotations, which are very numerous, from ancient authors. The reader will appreciate the value of these from the continual references to Gellius which have been made in this work. [32]

The style of Gellius abounds with archaisms and rare words, e.g., edulcare, recentari, aeruscator, adulescentes frugis, elegans verborum, and shows an unnecessary predilection for frequentatives. [33] It is obvious that in his day men had ceased to feel the full meaning of the words they used. As a depraved bodily condition requires larger and stronger doses of physic to affect it, so Gellius, when his subject is most trivial, strives most for overcharged vigour of language. [34] But these defects are less conspicuous in the later books, where his thought also rises not unfrequently into a higher region. The man's nature is amiable and social; he enlisted the help of his friends in the preparation of his little essays, [35] and seems to have been on kindly terms with most of the chief writers of the day. Among the ancients his admiration was chiefly bestowed on Virgil and Cicero as representatives of literature, on Varro and Nigidius Figulus, [36] as representatives of science. His power of criticism is narrowed by pedantry and small passions, but when these are absent he can use his judgment well. [37] He preserves many interesting points of etymology [38] and grammar, [39] and is a mine of archaic quotation. Among contemporary philosophers he admires most Plutarch, Favorinus, and Herodes Atticus the rival of Fronto. He smiles at the enthusiasm with which some regard all that is obsolete, and mentions the Ennianistae [40] with half-disapproval. But his own bias inclines the same way, only he brings more taste to it than they. On the whole he is a very interesting writer, and the last that can be called in anyway classical. He is well spoken of by Augustine; [41] and Macrobius, though he scarcely mentions him, pillages his works without reserve. His eighth book is lost, but the table of contents is fortunately preserved.

A great genius belonging to this time is the jurist GAIUS (110-180 A.D.). His nomen is not known; whence some have supposed that he never came to Rome. But this is both extremely unlikely in itself, and contradicted by at least one passage of his works. He was a professor of jurisprudence for many years, and from the style of his extant works Teuffel conjectures that they originated from oral lectures. It is astonishing how clear even the later Latin language becomes when it touches on congenial subjects, such as agriculture or law. The ancient legal phraseology had been seriously complained of as being so technical as to baffle all but experts in deciphering its meaning. Horace ridicules the cunning of the trained legal intellect in more than one place. But this reproach was no longer just. The series of able and thoughtful writers who had carried out a successive and systematic treatment of law since the Augustan age had brought into it such matchless clearness, that they have formed the model for all subsequent philosophic jurists. The amalgamation of the great Stoic principles of natural right, the equality of man, and the jus gentium, which last was gradually expanding into the conception of international law, contributed to make jurisprudence a complete exponent of the essential character of the Empire as the "polity of the human race." The works of Gaius included seven books Rerum Cotidianarum, which, like the work of Apuleius, were styled Aurei; and an introduction to the science of law, called Institutiones, or Instituta, in four books. These were published 161 A.D., and at once established themselves as the most popular exposition of the subject. Gaius was a native of the east, but of what country is uncertain. The names of several other jurists are preserved. They were divided into two classes, [42] the practicians, who pleaded or responded, and the regularly endowed professors of jurisprudence. Of the former class SEX. JULIUS AFRICANUS was the most celebrated for his acute intellect and the extreme difficulty of his definitions; ULPIUS MARCELLUS for his deep learning and the prudence of his decisions. He was an adviser of the emperor Aurelius. A third writer, one of whose treatises--that on the divisions of money, weights, and measures,--is still extant, was L. VOLUSIUS MAECIANUS. The reader is referred for information on this subject to Teuffel's work, and Poste's edition of the Institutes of Gaius.

Among minor authors we may mention C. SULPICIUS APOLLINARIS, a Carthaginian, who became a teacher of rhetoric and grammar, and numbered among his pupils Aulus Gellius. He and ARRUNTIUS CELSUS devoted their talents for the most part to subjects of archaic interest. Erudition of a certain kind had now become universal, and was discussed with all the formality and exuberance of public debate. The disputations of the mediaeval universities seem to have found their germ in these animated discussions on trivial subjects, such as are described in chapters of Gellius to which the reader has already been referred. [43]

Historical research flagged; epitomizers had possession of the field. We have the names of L. AMPELIUS, the author of an abridged "book of useful information on various subjects," history predominating, called Liber Memorialis, which still remains; and of GRANIUS LICINIANUS, short fragments of whose Roman history in forty books are left to us.

Poetry was even more meagrely represented. Aulus Gellius [44] has preserved a translation of one of Plato's epigrams, which he calls ouk amousos, by a contemporary author, whose name he does not give. It is written in dimeter iambics, an easier measure than the hexameter, and therefore more within the reduced capacity of the time. The loose metrical treatment proceeds not so much from ignorance of the laws of quantity as from imitation of Hadrian's lax style, [45] and perhaps from a tendency, now no longer possible to resist, to adopt the plebeian methods of speech and rhythm into the domain of recognised literature. As the fragment may interest our readers, we quote it:

"Dum semibiulco savio Meum puellum savior, Dulcemque florem spiritus Duco ex aperto tramite; Animula aegra et saucia Cucurrit ad labias mihi, Rictumque in oris pervium Et labra pueri mollia, Rimata itineri transitus Ut transiliret, nititur. Tum si morae quid plusculae Fuisset in coetu osculi Amoris igni percita Transisset, et me linqueret: Et mira prorsum res foret, Ut ad me fierem mortuus, Ad puerum intus viverem."

In the fifth and last lines we see a reversion to the ante-classical irregularities of scansion. The reader should refer to the remarks on this subject on page 20.

Perhaps the much-disputed poem called Pervigilium Veneris belongs to this epoch. [46] It is printed in Weber's Corpus Poetarum, [47] and is well worth reading from the melancholy despondency that breathes through its quiet inspiration. The metre is the trochaic tetrameter, which is always well suited to the Latin language, and which here appears treated with Greek strictness, except that in lines 55, 62, 91, a spondee is used in the fifth foot instead of a trochee. The refrain--

"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit, eras amet,"

may be called the "last word" of expiring epicureanism.

The last writer that comes before us is the rhetorician and pseudo- philosopher, L. APULEIUS. He was born at Madaura, in Africa, 114 A.D. [48] and calls himself Seminumida et Semigaetula. [49] His parents were in easy circumstances, and sent him to school at Carthage, which was fast rising to the highest place among the seminaries of rhetoric. By his father's death he came into a considerable fortune, and in order to finish his education spent some time at Athens, and travelled through many parts of the East hunting up all the information he could find on magic and necromancy, and getting himself initiated into all the different mysteries. About 136 he came to Rome, where he practised at the bar for about two years. He then returned to Madaura; but soon growing discontented determined to indulge his restless craving for travel and acquiring knowledge. He therefore set out for Egypt, the nurse of all occult wisdom, and the centre of attraction for all curious spirits. On his way he fell ill and was detained at Oea, where he met a rich widow named Pudentilla, whom in course of time he married. Her two sons had not been averse to the match, indeed Apuleius says they strongly urged it forward. But very soon they found their step-father an inconvenience, and through their uncle Aemilianus instituted a suit against him on the ground of his having bewitched their mother into marrying him. This serious charge, which was based principally on the disparity of years, Pudentilla being sixty (though her husband maintains she is only forty), Apuleius refutes in his Apologia, [50] a valuable relic of the time, which well deserves to be read. The accusation had been divided into three parts, to each of which the orator replies. The first part or preamble had tried to excite odium against him by alleging his effeminacy in using dentifrice, in possessing a mirror, and in writing lascivious poems, and also by alluding to his former poverty. His reply to this is ready enough; he admits that nature has favoured him with a handsome person of which he is not ashamed of trying to make the best; besides, how do they know his mirror is not used for optical experiments? As to poverty, if he had been poor, he gloried in the fact; [51] many great and virtuous men had been so too, and some thought poverty an essential part of virtue. The preamble disposed of, he proceeds to the more serious charge of magic. He has, so the indictment says, fascinated a child; he has bought poisons; he keeps something uncanny in his handkerchief, probably some token of sorcery: he offers nocturnal sacrifices, vestiges of which of a suspicious character have been found; and he worships a little skeleton he has made and which he always carries about with him. His answer to these charges is as follows:--the child was epileptic and died without his aid; the poisons he has bought for purposes of natural science; the image he carries in his handkerchief is that of Plato's monarch (vous Basileus), devotion to which is only natural in a professed Platonist; and as for the sacrifices, they are pious prayers, offered outside the town solely in order to profit by the peaceful inspirations which the country awakens. The third part of the indictment concerned his marriage. He has forced the lady's affections; he has used occult arts as her own letters show, to gain an influence over her; love-letters have passed between them, which is a suspicious thing when the lady is sixty years of age; the marriage was celebrated out of Oea; and last but not least, he has got possession of her very considerable fortune. His answers are equally to the point here. So far from being unwilling to espouse him or needing any compulsion, the good lady with difficulty waited till her sons came of age, and then brooked no further delay; moreover he had not pressed his suit, though her sons themselves had strongly wished him to do so; as regards the correspondence, a son who reads his mother's private letters is hardly a witness to command confidence; as regards her age she is forty, not sixty; as regards the place of her marriage both of them preferred the country to the town; and as regards the fortune, which he denies to be a rich one, the will provides that on her death it shall revert to her sons. Having now completed his argument he lets loose the flood-gates of his satire; and with a violence, an indecency, and a dragging to light of home secrets, scarcely to be paralleled except in some recent trials, he flays the reputation of uncle and nephews, and triumphantly appeals to the judge to give a verdict in his favour. [52]

We next find him at Carthage where he gave public lectures on rhetoric. He had enough real ability joined with his affectation of wisdom to ensure his success in this sphere. Accordingly we find that he attained not only all the civil honours that the city had to bestow, but also the pontificate of Aesculapius, a position even more gratifying to his tastes. During his career as a rhetorician he wrote the Florida, which consists for the most part of selected passages from his public discourses. It is now divided into four books, but apparently at first had no such division. It embraces specimens of eloquence on all kinds of subjects, in a middle style between the comparatively natural one of his Apologia and the congeries of styles of all periods which his latest works present. In these morceaux, some of which are designed as themes for improvisation, he pretends to an acquaintance with the whole field of knowledge. As a consequence, it is obvious that his knowledge is nowhere very deep. He was equally fluent in Greek and Latin, and frequently passed from one language to the other at a moment's notice.

He now cultivated that peculiar style which we see fully matured in his Metamorphoses. It is a mixture of poetical and prose diction, of archaisms and modernisms, of rare native and foreign terms, of solecisms, conceits, and quotations, which render it repulsive to the reader and betray the chaotic state of its creator's canons of taste. The story is copied from Lucian's Aoukios ae Onos, but it is on a larger scale, and many insertions occur, such as adventures with bandits or magicians; accounts of jugglers, priests of Cybele, and other vagrants; details on the arts; a description of an opera; licentious stories; and, above all, the pretty tale of Cupid and Psyche, [53] which came originally from the East, but in its present form seems rather to be modelled on a Greek redaction. "The golden ass of Apuleius," as the eleven books of Metamorphoses are called by their admirers, was by no means thought so well of in antiquity as it is now. Macrobius expresses his wonder that a serious philosopher should have spent time on such trifles. St Augustine seems to think it possible the story may be a true one: "aut indicavit aut finxit." It is a fictitious autobiography, narrating the adventures of the author's youth; how he was tried for the murder of three leather-bottles and condemned; how he was vivified by an enchantress with whom he was in love; how he wished to follow her through the air as a bird, but owing to a mistake of her maids was transformed into an ass; how he met many strange adventures in his search for the rose-leaves which alone could restore his lost human form. The change of shape gave him many chances of observing men and women: among other incidents he is treated with disdain by his own horse and mule, and severely beaten by his groom. He hears his character openly defamed; his resentment at this, and the frequent attempts he makes to assert his rationality, are among the most ludicrous parts of the book; finally, after many adventures, he is restored to human shape by some priests of Isis or Osiris, to whose service he devotes himself for the rest of his life.

Some have considered this extravagant story to be an allegory, [54] others, again, a covert satire on the vices of his countrymen. This latter supposition we may at once discard. The former is not unlikely, though the exact explanation of it will be a matter of uncertainty. Perhaps the ass symbolizes sensuality; the rose-leaves, science; the priests of Isis, either the Platonic philosophy, or the Mysteries; the return to human shape, holiness or virtue. It is also possible that it may be a plea for paganism against the new religious elements that were gathering strength at Carthage; but if so, it is hard to see why he should have chosen as his model the atheistic story of Lucian. In a similar manner the story of Cupid and Psyche has been made a type of the progress of the soul. Apuleius was one of those minds not uncommon in a decaying civilization, in which extreme quasi-religious exaltation alternates with impure hilarity. He is a licentious mystic; a would-be magician; [55] a hierophant of pretentious sanctity, something between a Cagliostro and a Swedenborg; a type altogether new in Roman literature, and a gloomy index of its speedy fall.

Besides these works of Apuleius, we possess some short philosophical tracts, embodying some of his Platonist and Pythagorean doctrines. They are De deo Socratis, De Dogmate Platonis in three books, and the De Mundo, a popular theologico-scientific exposition, drawn from Aristotle. The general tenor of these works will be considered in the next chapter, as their bearing on the thought of the times gives them considerable importance.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Chapter IX

STATE OF PHILOSOPHICAL AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT DURING THE PERIOD OF THE ANTONINES--CONCLUSION.

During the second century after Christ we have the remarkable spectacle of the renaissance of Greek literature. The eloquence which had so long been silent now was heard again in Dio Chrysostom, the delicate artillery of Attic wit was revived by Lucian, the dignity of sublime thought was upheld by Arrian and Marcus Aurelius. It should be remarked that the Greeks had never quite discontinued the art of eloquence. When their own political independence ended, they carried their talents into other lands, into Egypt, India, Asia Minor, sowing colonies of intelligence wherever they went; but the chief place to which they flocked was Rome. At Rome the hold they gained was such that even tyranny itself could not loosen it. Their light spirits and plastic nature made them adapt themselves to every fashion without difficulty and without regret; even under Tiberius or Domitian there was always something for a cultured Greek to do. [1]

Rhetoric was the inheritance of the dethroned Greek nation, and they clung to it with all the fondness of gratitude. Long after the pacification of the world had destroyed all the subject-matter of oratory, they cherished the form of it, and practised it with a zeal proportioned to its worthlessness. Even in her best days, as we know from Thucydides, Greece had been a victim to fine talking; the words of her delicious language seemed by their mere sound to have power over those that used them; and now that patriotism had ceased to inspire her orators, they naturally sought in the splendour of the Asiatic style an equivalent for the chaste beauties of ancient national eloquence. There were two classes of Greeks at this period who effected in no small degree the general spread of culture. These were the rhetors and the sophists; properly speaking distinct, but often confounded under the general name of sophist.

The rhetors proper have been already described. We need only notice here the gradually increasing insignificance of the themes they chose. In the Claudian era the points discussed were either historical, mythical, or legal. All had some reference, however distant, to actual pleading before a court of law. But now even this element of reality has disappeared. The poetical readings which had been the fashion under Domitian gave place to rhetorical ostentations which were popular in proportion to their frivolity or misplaced ingenuity. The heroes of Marathon, [2] the sages of ancient Greece, had once been the objects of praise. They were now made the objects of derision and invective. [3] Speeches against Socrates, Achilles, or Homer, and in favour of Busiris, were commonly delivered, in which every argument was acutely misapplied, and every established belief acutely combated. Panegyrics of cities, gods, or heroes, had been a favourite exercise of the orator's art. Now these panegyrics were expended upon the most contemptible themes, infames materiae as they were called. Fronto sang the praises of idleness, of fever, of the vomit, of gout, of smoke, of dust; Lucian, in a speech still extant, of the fly; others of the ass, the mouse, the flea! Such were the detestable travesties into which Greek eloquence had sunk. Roman statesmen frequently displayed their talents in this way; but as a rule they declaimed in Greek. These orations were delivered in a basilica or theatre, and for two days previously criers ranged through the city, advertising the inhabitants of the lecturer's name and subject.

Other aspirants to fame, gifted with less refinement, paraded the streets in rags and filth, and railed sardonically at all the world, mingling flattery of the crowd with abuse of the great, and of all the restrictions of society. These were the street preachers of cynicism, who found their trade by no means an unprofitable one. Often, after a few years of squalid abstinence and quack philosophy, they had picked up enough to enable them to shave their beards, don the robes of good society, and end their days in the vicious self-indulgence which was the original inspirer of their tirades.

Every great city was full of these caterers for itching ears, the one sort fashionable, the other vulgar, but both equally acceptable to their audience. Some more ambitious spirits, of whom Apuleius is the type, not content with success in a single town, moved from place to place, challenging the chief sophist in each city to enter the lists against them. If he declined the contest, his popularity was at an end for ever. If he accepted it, the risk was enormous, lest a people tired of his eloquence might prefer the sound of a new voice, and thus force on him the humiliation of surrendering his crown and his titles to another. For in their delirious enthusiasm the cities of Greece and Asia lavished money, honours, immunities, and statues, upon the mountebank orators who pleased them. Emperors saluted them as equals; the people chose them for ambassadors; until their conceit rose to such a height as almost to pass the bounds of belief. [4] And their morals, it will readily be guessed, did not rise above their intellectual capacities. Instead of setting an example of virtue, they were below the average in licentiousness, avarice, and envy. Effeminate in mind, extravagant in purse, they are perhaps the most contemptible of all those who have set themselves up as the instructors of mankind.

But all were not equally debased. Side by side with this truckling to popular favour was a genuine attempt to preach the simple truths of morality and religion. For near a century it had been recognised that certain elements of philosophy should be given forth to the world. Even the Stoics, according to Lactantius, [5] had declared that women and slaves were capable of philosophical pursuits. Apuleius, conspicuous in this department also, was a distinguished itinerant teacher of wisdom. Lucian at one time lectured in this way. But the most eloquent and natural of all was Dio Chrysostom, who, though a Greek, is so pleasing a type of the best popular morals of the time, that we may, perhaps, be excused for referring to him. He was a native of Bithynia, but in consequence of some disagreement with his countrymen, he came to Rome during the reign of Domitian. Having offended the tyrant by his freedom of speech, he was compelled to flee for his life. For years he wandered through Greece and Macedonia in the guise of a beggar, doing menial work for his bread, but often asked to display his eloquence for the benefit of those with whom he came in contact. Once while present at the Olympic festival and silently standing among the throng, he was recognised as one who could speak well, and compelled to harangue the assembled multitudes. He chose for his subject the praises of Jupiter Olympius, which he set forth with such majestic eloquence that all who heard him were deeply moved, and a profound silence, broken only by sobs of emotion, reigned throughout the vast crowd. Other stories are told showing the effect of his words. On one occasion he recalled a body of soldiers to their allegiance; on another he quelled a sedition; on a third he rebuked the mob of Alexandria for its immoral conduct, and, strange as it may seem, was listened to without interruption. When Domitian's death allowed him to return to Rome, he maintained the same courageous attitude. Trajan often asked his advice, and he discoursed to him freely on the greatness of royalty and its duties. He seems to have held a lofty view of his mission; he calls it a proppaesis iera, [6] or holy proclamation, and he speaks of himself as a prophaetaes alaethestatos taes athanatou physeus. [7]

What he taught, therefore, was a popular moral doctrine, based upon some of the simpler theories of philosophy, such as were easily intelligible to the unlearned, and admitted of rhetorical amplification and illustration by mythology and anecdote. Considered in one way, this was a great step in advance from the total neglect of the people by the earlier teachers of virtue. It shows the more humane spirit which was slowly leavening the once proud and exclusive possessors of intellectual culture. By exciting a general interest in the great questions of our being, it paved the way for a readier reception of the Gospel among those classes to whom it was chiefly preached. But at the same time by its want of authority, depending as it did solely on the eloquence or benevolence of the individual sophist, it prevented the possibility of anything like a systematic amelioration of the people's character. This side of the question, however, is too wide to be more than alluded to here, and it is besides foreign to our present subject. We must turn to consider the state of cultured thought on matters philosophical and religious; a point of great importance as bearing on the decline and speedy extinction of literary effort in Rome.

To begin with philosophy. We have seen that Rome had gradually become a centre of free thought, as it had become a centre of vice and luxury. The prejudices against philosophy complained of by Cicero, and even by Seneca, had now almost vanished. Instead of being indifferent, men took to it so readily as to excite the fears of more than one emperor. Nero had persecuted philosophers; Vespasian had removed them from Rome, Domitian from Italy. After Domitian's death, they returned with greater influence than ever. Hadrian and Antoninus were favourable to them. Aurelius was himself one of their number. Philosophy had had its martyrs; [8] and, after suffering, it had turned towards proselytism. The provinces had embraced it with enthusiasm. The narrow prejudice which had envied their intellectual culture [9] now envied their moral advancement; but equally without effect. Long before this, Musonius Rufus, an aristocratic Stoic, had admitted slaves to his lectures, [10] and at the risk of his life had preached peace to the armies of Vitellius and Vespasian. [11] And this wide-spread movement had, as we have seen, been continued by men like Dio, and later still by Apuleius.

But by thus gaining in width it lost greatly in depth. There is a danger when teaching becomes mainly practical of its losing sight of the fundamental laws amid the multitude of details, and attaching itself to trifles. There is a superstition in philosophy as well as in religion. Epictetus gives directions for the trimming of the beard in a tone as serious as if he were speaking of the summum bonum. And stoicism from the very first, by its absurd paradox that all faults are equal, obviously fell into this very snare, which, the moment it was popularized, could not fail with disastrous effect to come to the surface.

Again, the intrusive element of rhetoric greatly impeded strength of argument. In all practical teaching the point of the lesson is known beforehand; it is the manner of enforcing it that alone excites interest. Thus philosophy and rhetoric, which had hitherto been implacable foes, became reconciled in the furtherance of a common object. Seneca had affected to despise learning; Gellius and Favorinus, on the contrary, delighted in its minutest subtleties. Philosophers now declaimed like rhetoricians, and indifferently in either language. But in proportion as they addressed a larger public, it became more necessary to use the Greek, which was now the language of the civilized world. Favorinus, Epictetus, M. Aurelius himself, all wrote and generally spoke in it.

The reconciliation between philosophy and religion was not less remarkable than that between philosophy and rhetoric. It seemed as if all the separate domains of thought were gradually being fused into a kind of popular moral culture. The old philosophers had as a rule kept morals altogether distinct from religion. Epictetus and Aurelius make the two altogether identical. The old philosophers had kept away from the temples, or, if they went, had taken pains to mock the ceremonies they performed and to announce that their conformity was a pure matter of custom. The new philosophers were strictly regular in their religious worship, and not only observed and respected, but earnestly defended the entire popular cult. The nobler side of this "reconciliation" is shown in Plutarch, the grosser and more material side in Apuleius; but in both there is no mistaking its reality. Plutarch's idea of philosophy is "to attain a truer knowledge of God." [12] Philostratus, when asked what wisdom was, replied, "the science of prayers and sacrifices." [13] These men sought their knowledge of the Divine, not, as did Aristotle, in speculative thought, but in the collecting and explaining of legends. Stoicism had sought by compromise after compromise to satisfy the general craving for a religious philosophy reconcilable with the popular superstition. Its great exponents had stretched the elasticity of their system to the uttermost. They had given to their Supreme Being the name of Jove, they had admitted all the other deities of the Pantheon as emanations or attributes of the Supreme, they had justified augury by their theory of fate, they had explained away all the inconsistencies and immoralities of the popular creed by an elaborate system of allegory; but yet they had failed to content the religious masses, who divined as by an instinct the hollow and artificial character of this fabric of compromise. Hence there arose a new school more suited to the requirements of the time, which gave itself out as Platonist. This new philosophy was anything but a genuine reproduction of the thought of the great Athenian. With some of his more popular and especially his oriental conceptions, it combined a mass of alien importations drawn from foreign cults, and in particular from Egypt.

We read how Juvenal deplores the inroads of Eastern superstition into Rome. [14] Syria, Babylon, and Asia Minor had added their mysteries to the Roman ceremonial. Astrologers were consulted by small and great; the Galli or eunuch-priests of Cybele were among the most influential bodies in Rome; and the impure goddess Isis was universally worshipped. [15] Egypt, which in classic times had been held as the stronghold of bestial superstition, was now spoken of as a "Holy Land," and "the temple of the universe." [16] The Stoics had studied in books, or by questioning their own mind; the Platonists sought for wisdom by travelling all over the world. Not content with the rites already known, they raked up obscure ceremonies and imported strange mysteries. Reflection and dialectic were no longer sufficient to ensure knowledge; asceticism, devotion, and initiation, were necessary for divine science. The idea broached by Plato in the Timaeus of intermediate beings between the gods and man, seemed to meet their requirements; and accordingly they at once adopted it. An entire hierarchy of daimones was imagined, and on this a system of quasi-religious philosophy was founded, of which Apuleius is the popular exponent.

The main tenets of this, the last attempt to explain the mystery of the universe which gained currency in Rome, were as follows--it will be seen how completely it had passed from philosophy to theosophy:--The supreme being is one, eternal, absolute, indescribable, and incomprehensible; but may be envisaged by the soul for a moment like a flash of lightning. [17] The great gods are of two kinds, visible, as the sun and stars, and invisible, as Jupiter and the rest; both these are inaccessible to human communion. Then come the daemons in their order, and with these man holds intercourse. Plutarch had adopted a tentative and incomplete form of this doctrine, e.g. he denied the visibility of Socrate's daemon, and spoke of the death of Pan. But Apuleius is much more thorough-going; he supposes all the daemons to be at once immortal and visible. Each great god has a daemon or double, who loves to use his name; and all the stories of the gods are in reality true of their daemons. In a moral point of view, daemons are of all characters--good and bad, cheerful and gloomy. [18] Their interventions, which are perpetual, explain what the stories could not explain, viz. the idea of Providence. In fact the whole current theory of the supernatural is easily explained when the existence of these intermediate beings is admitted. Aware that this theory wandered far from Roman ideas, Apuleius tries to reconcile it with the national religion by calling the daemons genii, lares, and manes, which are true Italian conceptions. To a certain extent the device succeeded; at any rate the new philosophy resulted in making devotees of the higher classes, as superstition had long since done with the people.

It seems incredible that any one who had studied the Platonic dialogues should have fancied theories like these to be their essence. Nevertheless, so it was. Men found in them what they wished to find, and perhaps no greater witness could be given to the immense fertility of Plato's thought. However, when these conceptions came to be imported into philosophy, it is clear that philosophy no longer knew herself. She had become hopelessly unable to cope with the problems of actual life; henceforth there was nothing left but the rigours of the ascetic or the ecstacy of the mystic. Into these still later paths we shall not follow it. Apuleius is the last Roman who, writing in the Latin language, pretends to succeed to the line of thinkers of whom Varro, Cicero, and Seneca, were the chief. It is true he is immeasurably below them. In his effeminate union of licentiousness and mysticism he is far removed from the masculine, if inconsistent, practical wisdom of Seneca, further still from the glowing patriotism and lofty aspirations of Cicero. Still as a type of his age, of that country which already exercised, and was soon to exercise in a far higher degree, an influence on the thought of the world, [19] he is well worthy of attentive study.

We may now, in conclusion, very shortly review the main features in the history of Roman literature from Ennius, its first conscious originator, until the close of the Antonine period.

The end which Ennius had set before him was two-fold, to familiarise his countrymen with Greek culture, and to enlighten their minds from error. And to this double object the great masters of Roman literature remained always faithful. With more or less power and success, Terence, Lucilius, the tragedians, and even the mimists, elevated while they amused their popular audiences. In the last century of the Republic, literature still addressed, in the form of oratory, the great masses to whom scarce any other culture was accessible. But in poetry and philosophy it had broken with them, and thus showed the first sign of withdrawal from that thoroughly national mission with which the old father of Latin poetry had set out. Yet this very exclusiveness was not without its use. It enabled the best writers to aim at a far higher ideal of perfection than would have been possible for a popular author, however scrupulously he might strive for excellence. It enabled the best minds to concentrate their efforts upon all that was most strictly national because most strictly aristocratic, and thus to form those great representative works of Roman thought and style which are found in the writings of Cicero and Livy, and the poetry of Horace and Virgil. The responsibility which the possession of culture involves was now acknowledged only within narrow limits. The motto, "pingui nil mihi cum populo," was strictly followed, and all the best literature addressed only to a select circle. Meanwhile the people, for whom tragedy and comedy had done something, however little, that was good, neglected by the literary world, debased by bribery and the coarse pleasures of conquest, sunk lower and lower until they had become the brutal, sensual mob, inaccessible to all higher influences, which satirists and philosophers paint in such hideous colours, but which they did nothing and wrote nothing to improve. Then came the era of the decline, in which, for the first time, we observe that literature has lost its supremacy. It is still cultivated with enthusiasm, and numbers many more votaries than it had ever done before; nevertheless, its influence is disputed, and with success, by other forces; by tyranny in the first place, by a defiant philosophy which set itself against aesthetic culture in the second, and by revived and daily increasing superstition in the third. This is the beginning of the people's retaliation on those who should have enlightened them. In vain do emperors issue edicts for the suppression of foreign rites; in vain do courtly satirists or fierce declaimers complain that Rome will not be satisfied with ancestral beliefs and ancestral virtues. The people are asserting themselves in the sphere of thought, as they had asserted themselves in the sphere of politics ages before. But the difference between the two peoples was immense. The one had consisted of virtuous peasants and industrious tradesmen, working for generations to attain what they knew to be their right; the other was formed of slaves, of freedmen, many of them foreigners, and others engaged in occupations by no means honourable; of all that motley multitude who lived on Caesar's rations and spent their days in idleness, in the circus, and in crime. Rotten in its highest circles, equally rotten in its lowest, society could no longer be regenerated by any of the forces then known to it. The national superstitions, out of which literature had at first emerged, were replaced by cosmopolitan superstitions of an infinitely worse kind, which threatened to engulf it at its close, and against which in the persons of such men as Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus, it strove for a while with convulsive vigour to make head. But these great spirits only arrested, they could not avert, the inevitable decay. Where public morals are corrupt, where national life is diseased, it is impossible that literature can show a healthy life. The despair that has taken possession of men's souls, which sheds a misanthropic gloom over the writings of the elder Pliny and embitters even the noble mind of Tacitus, results from a conviction that things are incurably wrong, and from a feeling that there is no conceivable remedy. Men of feebler mould strive to forget themselves in exciting pleasures, as Statius and Martial; or in courtly society, as the younger Pliny; or in fond study of the past, as Quintilian; or in minute and pedantic erudition, as Aulus Gellius. The literature of the Silver Age is throughout conscious of its powerlessness; and this consciousness deadens it into tame acquiescence or galls it into hysterical effort, according to the time and temperament of the author. Pliny the younger and Quintilian alone show the happily-balanced disposition of the Golden Age; but what they gain in classic finish they lose in human interest. The decay of Greece had been insignificant, pretty but paltry; the decay of Rome on the other hand is unlovely but colossal. Perhaps in native strength none of her earlier authors equal Juvenal and Tacitus; none certainly exceed them. But they are the last barriers that stem the tide. After them the flood has already rushed in, and before long comes the collapse. In Suetonius and Florus we already see the pioneers of a pigmy race; in Gellius, Fronto, and Apuleius, they are present in all their uncouth dwarfishness. Meanwhile the clamours of the world for guidance grow louder and louder, and there is no one great enough or bold enough to respond to them. The good emperor would do so if he could; but in his perplexity he looks this way and that, bringing into one focus all the cults and ceremonies of the known world, in the vain hope that by indiscriminate piety he may avert the calamities under which his empire groans. But nothing is of any avail. The barbarians without, the pestilence within, decimate his subjects, the hostile gods seem to mock his goodness, and the simple people who look up to him as their tutelary power wonder hopelessly why he cannot save them. And thus on all sides the incapacity of the world to right itself is made clearer and clearer. The gross darkness that had been once partly put to flight by the light of Greek genius when philosophy rose upon the world, and once again had been retarded by the heroic examples of Roman conduct and Roman wisdom, now closed murkily over the whole world. It was indeed time that a new order of thought should arise, which should recreate the dead matter and bring out of it a new and more enduring principle of life, which should give the past its meaning and the future its hope; and, in especial, should reveal to literature its true end, the enlightenment and elevation, not of one class nor of one nation, but of every heart and every intellect that can be made to respond to its influence among all the nations of the earth.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

Appendix

A CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF ROMAN LITERATURE, FROM LIVIUS TO THE DEATH OF M. AURELIUS. [1]

B.C. 240 Livius begins to exhibit. 239 Ennius born. 235 Naevius begins to exhibit. 234 Cato born. 225 Fabius Pictor served in the Gallic War. 219 Pacuvius born. 218 Cincius Alimentus described the passage of Hannibal into Italy. 217 Cato begins to be known. 216 Fabius Pictor sent as ambassador to Delphi. 207 The poem on the victory of Sena entrusted to Livius. 204 Cato quaestor; brings Ennius to Rome. 201 Naevius dies (?). 191 Cato military tribune. 190 Cincius still writes. 189 Ennius goes with Fulvius into Aetolia. 185 Terence born. [2] 184 Cato censor. Plautus dies. 179 Caecilius flourished. 173 Ennius wrote the twelfth book of the Annals. 170 Accius born. 169 Ennius dies. Cato's speech pro lege Voconia. 168 Caecilius dies. 166 Terence's Andria. 165 Terence's Hecyra. 163 Terence's Hautontimorumenos. 161 Terence's Eunuchus and Phormio. 160 Terence's Adelphoe. 159 Terence dies. 154 Pacuvius flourished. 151 Albinus, the consul, writes history (Gell. xi. 8). 150 Cato finishes the Origines. 149 Cato, aged 85, accuses Galba. Dies in the same year. C. Calpurnius Piso Frugi, the historian. 148 Lucilius born. 146 Cassius Hemina flourished. C. Fannius, the historian, serves at Carthage. 142 Antonius, the orator, born. 140 Crassus, the orator, born. Accius, aged 30, Pacuvius, aged 80, exhibit together. 134 Sempronius Asellio served at Numantia. Lucilius begins to write. 123 Caelius Antipater flourished. 119 Crassus accuses Carbo. 116 Varro born. 115 Hortensius born. 111 Crassus and Scaevola quaestors. [3] 109 Atticus born. 107 Crassus tribune. 106 Cicero born. 103 The Tereus of Accius. Death of Turpilius. 102 Furius Bibaculus born at Cremona. 100 Aelius Stilo. 98 Antonius defends Aquillius. 95 First public appearance of Hortensius. Lucretius born (?). 92 Crassus censor. Opilius teaches rhetoric. 91 Crassus dies. Pomponius flourished. 90 Scaurus flourished. 89 Cicero serves under the consul Pompeius. 88 Cicero hears Philo and Molo at Rome. Rutilius resident at Mitylene. Plotius Gallus first Latin teacher of Rhetoric. 87 Antonius slain. Sisenna the historian. Catullus born (?). 86 Sallust born. 82 Varro of Atax born. Calvus born. 81 Cicero pro Quinctio. Valerius Cato Grammaticus. Otacilius, first freedman who attempts history. 80 Pro Roscio. 79 Cicero at Athens; hears Antiochus and Zeno. 78 Cicero hears Molo at Rhodes. 77 Cicero returns to Rome. 76 Asinius Pollio born (?). 75 Cicero quaestor in Sicily. 74 Cicero again in Rome. 70 Divinatio and Actio I. in Verrem. Virgil born. 69 Cicero aedile. 67 Varro wins a naval crown under Pompey in the Piratic War (Plin. N. H. xvi. 4). 66 Cicero praetor. Pro lege Manilia. Pro Cluentio. M. Antonius Gnipho flourished. 65 Pro Cornelia. Horace born. 64 In toga candida. 63 Consular orations of Cicero. Pro Murena. 62 Pro P. Sulla. 61 Annaeus Seneca born. 59 Livy born(?). Aelius Tubero with Cicero in Asia. _Pro A. Thermo. Pro L. Flacco._ 58 Cicero goes into exile. 57 Cicero recalled. Calidius a good speaker. 56 Pro Sextio. In Vatinium. De Provinciis Consularibus. 55 In Calpurnium Pisonem. De Oratore. Virgil assumes the _toga virilis_. 54 Pro Vatinio. Pro Scauro. De Republica. 52 Pro Milone. Lucretius dies(?). [4] 51 Cicero proconsul in Cilicia. 50 Death of Hortensius. Sallust expelled from the senate. 49 Cicero at Rome. Varro lieutenant of Pompey in Spain. 48 Lenaeus satirizes Sallust. Cicero in Italy. 47 Cicero at Brundisium. Hyginus brought to Rome by Caesar. Catullus still living (C. 52). 46 The Brutus written. Calvus dies. Sallust praetor. _Pro Marcello. Pro Ligario._ 45 Cicero's Orator. Pro Deiolaro. 44 The first four Philippics. Death of Caesar. 43 The later Philippics. Death of Cicero. Birth of Ovid. 42 Horace at Philippi. 40 Cornelius Nepos flourished. Perhaps Hor. Sat. i. 2. Epod. xiii. 39 Ateius Philologus born at Athens. Perhaps Virg. Ecl. vi. viii. Hor. Od. ii. 7. Epod iv. 38 Perhaps Ecl. vii. Hor. Sat. i. 3. 37 Varro (aet. 80) writes de Re Rustica. Perh. Ecl. x. Sat. i. 5 and 6. Epod. v. 36 Cornelius Severus(?) Hor. Sat. i. 8, 35 Bavius dies. Hor. Sat. i. 4, 9, 10. 34 Sallust dies. Sat. ii. 2. Epod. iii. 33 Sat. ii. 3. Epod. xi. xiv. 32 Atticus dies. Sat. ii. 4, 5. Epod. vii. 31 Messala consul. Sat. ii. 6. Epod. i. and ix. 30 Gallus made praefect of Egypt. Cassius Severus dies. Tibullus El. i. 3. The Georgics published. Hor. Sat. ii. 7, 8, and perhaps 1, Epod ii. 29 Livy writing his first book. Propertius I. 6. 28 Varro dies. 27 Od. i. 35. Vitruvius writing his work. 26 Gallus dies (aet. 40). Second book of Propertius published (?). [5] 25 Livy's first book completed before this year. Hor. Od. ii. 4. 24 Quintil. Varus dies (= the poet of Cremona, mentioned in the ninth Eclogue [?]). 23 The first three books of the Odes published. 22 Marcellus dies. Virgil reads the sixth Aeneid to Augustus and Livia. Third book of Propertius (?). 21 Hor. writes Ep. i. 20 (aet. 44). 20 First book of Epistles. 19 Virgil dies at Brundisium. His epitaph:

"Mantua me genuit: Calabri rapuere: tenet nunc Parthenope: cecini pascua rura duces."

Tibullus dies. Domitius Marsus writes. 18 Livy working at his fifty-ninth book. 17 Porcius Latro. The Carmen Saeculare. Varius and Tucca edit the Aeneid. 16 Aemilius Macer of Verona dies. Od. iv. 9, to Lollius. 15 Death of Propertius. Victories of Drusus. Od. iv. 4. 14 The fourth book of the Odes(?). 13 Cestius of Smyrna teaches rhetoric. 12 Death of Agrippa. 11 The Epistle to Augustus (Ep. ii. 1). 10 Passienus and Hyginus Polyhistor. 9 Ovid's Amores. 8 Death of Horace. 7 Birth of Seneca (?). 6 Albucius Silo a professor of rhetoric. 5 Tiro, Cicero's freedman, dies (aet. 100). 4 Porcius Latro commits suicide. Ovid now in his fortieth year. 2 Ovid's Art of Love.

A.D. 1 The Remedium Amoris. 2 Velleius Paterculus serves under C. Caesar. 4 Pollio dies. Velleius serves with Tiberius in Germany. 7 Velleius quaestor. 8 Verrius Flaccus, the grammarian, flourished. Ovid banished to Tomi, in December (Tr. 1, 10, 3).

"_Aut hanc me gelidi tremerem cum mense Decembris Scribentem mediis Adria vidita quis._"

9 The Ibis of Ovid. 11 Death of Messala. [6] 12 The Tristia finished. 13 The Epistles from Pontus were being written. 14 Death of Augustus. Velleius praetor. 18 Death of Ovid at 60; of Livy at 76. Valerius Maximus accompanied Sex. Pompeius to Asia. 19 The elder Seneca writes his "recollections." 24 Cassius Severus in exile. Pliny the elder born (?). 25 Death of Cremutius Cordus. Votienus banished. 26 Haterius flourished. 30 Asinius Gallus imprisoned. 31 Valerius Maximus wrote ix. 11, 4 (extern.), soon after the death of Sejanus. 33 Death of Cassius Severus the orator. His works proscribed. Death of Asinius Gallus. 34 Persius born. 40 Lucan brought to Rome. 41 Seneca's de Ira. Exile of Seneca at the close of this year. 42 Asconius Pedianus flourished. 43 Martial born. 45 Domitius Afer flourished. 48 Remmius Palaemon in vogue as a grammarian. 49 Seneca recalled from exile, and made Nero's tutor. 56 Seneca's de Clementia. 57 Probus Berytius a celebrated grammarian. 59 Death of Domitius Afer. 61 Pliny the younger born (?). 62 Death of Persius. Seneca in danger, Burrus being dead. 63 The Naturales Quaestiones of Seneca. 65 Death of Seneca (Ann. xv. 60). 66 Martial comes to Rome. 68 Quintilian accompanies Galba to Rome. Silius Italicus consul. 69 Silius in Rome. 75 The dialogue de Oratoribus, written (C. 17). 77 Pliny's Natural History. Gabinianus, the rhetorician, flourished. 79 Death of the elder Pliny. 80 Pliny the younger begins to plead. 88 Suetonius now a young man, Tacitus praetor. 89 Quintilian teaches at Rome. His professional career extends over 20 years. 90 Philosophers banished. Pliny praetor. Sulpiciae Satira (if genuine). 95 Statii Silv. iv. 1. The Thebaid was nearly finished. 96 Pliny's accusation of Publicius Certus. 97 Frontinus curator aquarum. Tacitus consul suffectus. 98 Trajan. 99 The tenth book of Martial. Silius at Naples. 100 Pliny and Tacitus accuse Marius Priscus. Pliny's panegyric. 103 Pliny at his province of Bithynia. 104 His letter about the Christians. Martial goes to Bilbilis. 109 Pliny (aet. 48) at the zenith of his fame. 118 Juvenal wrote Satire xiii. this year. 132 Salvius Julianus's Perpetual Edict. 138 Death of Hadrian. 143 Fronto consul suffectus. 164 Height of Fronto's fame. 166 Fronto proposes to describe the Parthian war. 180 Death of Marcus Aurelius.

A large number of other dates will be found in the body of the work, especially for the later period; but as they are not absolutely certain, they have not been inserted here.

LIST OF EDITIONS RECOMMENDED. [7]

FOR THE EARLY PERIOD.

WORDSWORTH. Fragments and Specimens of early Latin. 1874. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS. H. Düntzer. Berlin. 1835. NAEVIUS. Ribbeck. Trag. Lat. Relliquiae, p. 5. PLAUTUS. Ritschl or Fleckeisen. Unfinished. ENNIUS. Vahlen. Ennianae Poëseos Relliquiae. PACUVIUS. Ribbeck, as above. TERENCE. Wagner. Cambridge. 1869. Text by Umpfenbach. 1870 TURPILIUS. Fragments in Bothe (Poet. Scen. V. 2, p. 58-76), and Ribbeck's Comic. Lat. Relliq. THE EARLY HISTORIANS. Peter (_Veterum Historicorum Romanorum Relliquiae._ Lips. 1870). CATO. De Re Rustica. _Scriptores rei rusticae veteres Latini, curante_ I. M. Gesnero. Lips. 1735 Vol. 1. CATO. Fragmenta praeter libros de Re Rustica. Jordan. Lips. 1860. THE OLD ORATORS TO HORTENSIUS. H. Meyer. _Oratorum Romanorum Fragmenta. Zürich. 1842. ACCIUS. Tragedies. Fragments in Ribbeck, as above. ----- Praeter Scenica. Lucian Müller. Lucilii Saturaran Relliquiae. Lips. 1872. Lachmann. ATTA. Fragments. Bothe. Scen. Lat. v. 2, p. 97-102. Ribbeck. AFRANIUS. Bothe, p. 156-9. Ribbeck. LUCILIUS. Lucian Müller, as above. SUEVIUS. Lucian Müller, as above. ATELLANAE. Fr. in Ribbeck. Com. Lat. Rel. p. 192. AUCTOR AD HERENNIUM. Kayser. Lips. 1854.

FOR THE GOLDEN AGE.

VARRO. Saturae Menippeae. Riese. Lips. 1865. ----- Antiquities. Fragments in R. Merkel. Introduction to Ovid's Fasti. ----- De Vita Populi Romani. Fragments in Kettner. Halle. 1863. ----- De Lingua Latina. C. O. Müller. Lips, 1833. ----- De Re Rustica. Gesner, as above. See Cato. CICERO. Speeches. G. Long. London. 1862. In four volumes. ----- Verrine Orations. Long, as above. Zumpt. Berlin. 1831. CICERO. Pro Cluentio. Classen. Bonn. 1831. Ramsay. Clarendon Press. ----- In Catilinam. Halm. Lips. ----- Pro Plancio. E. Wunder. 1830. ----- Pro Murena. Zumpt. Berlin. 1859. ----- Pro Roscio. Büchner. Lips. 1835. ----- Pro Sestio. Halm. Lips. 1845. And Teubner edition. ----- Pro Milone. Orelli. Lips. 1826. School edition by Purton. Cambridge. 1873. ----- Second Philippic, with notes from Halm, by J. E. B. Mayor. ----- De Inventione. Lindemann. Lips. 1829. ----- De Oratore. Ellendt. Königsberg. 1840. ----- Brutus. Ellendt. 1844. ----- Philosophical Writings. Orelli. Vol. IV. ----- De Finibus. Madvig. Copenhagen. Second Edition. 1871. F. G. Otto. 1839. ----- Academica (with De Fin.). Orelli. Zürich. 1827. ----- Tusculanae Disputationes (with Paradoxa). Orelli. 1829. ----- De Natura Deorum. Schömann. Berlin. 1850. ----- De Senectute. Long. London. 1861. ----- De Amicitia. Nauck. Berlin. 1867. ----- De Officiis. 0. Heine. Berlin. 1857. ----- De Republica. Heinrich. Bonn. 1828. ----- De Legibus. Vahlen. 1871. ----- De Divinatione. Giese. Lips. 1829. ----- Select Letters. Watson. Oxford. ----- Entire Works. Orelli. Zür. 1845. Nobbe. Lips. 1828. LABERIUS. Ribbeck. Com. Lot. Relliquiae, p. 237. FURIUS BIBACULUS. Weichert. Poet. Lat. Rell., p. 325. SYRI. Sententiae. Woelfflin. 1869. CAESAR. Speeches. Meyer. Orat. Rom. Fragmenta. ----- Letters. Nipperdey. Caesar, p. 766-599. ----- Commentaries. Nipperdey. Lips. 1847-1856. ----- Gallic War. Long. London. 1859. NEPOS. Nipperdey. Lips. 1849. School edition by 0. Browning. LUCRETIUS. Munro. Cambridge. 1866. SALLUST. All his extant works. Gerlach. Basle. 1828-31. VARRO ATACINUS. Fragments in Riese, Sat. Menippeae. CHINA. Weichert. Poetarum Lat. Vitae, p. 187. CATULLUS. R. Ellis. Oxford. 1867 ----- Commentary. R. Ellis. Oxford. 1876. POLLIO. Fragments in Meyer. Orat Rom. Fragmenta. VARIUS. Ribbeck's Tragic. Lat. Relliquiae. VIRGIL. Ribbeck. 4 vols. With an Appendix Virgiliana. Conington. 3 vols. Oxford. A good school edition by Bryce. (Glasgow University Classics.) London. HORACE. Orelli. Third edition, 1850. 2 vols. School editions, by Macleane and Currie, both with good English Notes. Odes and Epodes, by Wickham. 1874. TIBULLUS and PROPERTIUS. Lachmann. Berlin. 1829. TIBULLUS. Dissen. PROPERTIUS. Paley. OVID. Entire Works. R. Merkel. Lips. 1851. 3 vols. ----- Fasti. Paley. ----- Heroides. Terpstra. 1829. Arthur Palmer. Longman. 1874. ----- Tristia and Ibis. Merkel. 1837. ----- Metamorphoses. Bach. 1831-6. 2 vols. GRATIUS. Haupt. Lips. 1838. Including the Halieuticon, &c. MANILIUS. Scaliger. 1579. Bentley. 1739. Jacob. Berlin. 1846. LIVY. Drakenborg. 7 vols. Teubner text. Weissenbom, with an excellent German Commentary. ----- Book I. Professor Seeley. Cambridge. JUSTIN (Trogus). Jeep. Lips. 1859. VERRIUS FLACCUS. C. O. Müller. Lips. 1839. VITRUVIUS. Schneider. Lips. 1807. 3 vols. Rose. 1867. SENECA (the elder). Keissling (Teubner series). Oratorum et Rhetorum sententiae divisiones colores. Bursian. 1857.

THE PERIOD OF THE DECLINE.

GERMANICUS (translation of Aratus). Breysig. Berlin. 1867. VELLEIUS. Kritz. Lips. 1840. Halm. VALERIUS MAXIMUS. Kempf. Berl. 1854. CELSUS. Daremberg. Lips. Teubner. PHAEDRUS. Orelli. Zür. 1831. Lucian Müller. 1876. SENECA. Tragedies. Peiper and Richter. Lips, 1867. ----- Entire Works. Fr. Haase. 3 vols. 1862-71. (Teubner.) ----- Naturales Quaestiones. Koeler. 1818. CURTIUS. Zumpt. Brunsw. 1849. COLUMELLA. In Gesner, Scriptures Rei Rusticae. MELA. Parthey. Berl. 1867. VALERIUS PROBUS. In Keil Grammatici Latini. Vol. I. 1857. PERSIUS. Jahn. Lips. 1843. Conington. Oxford. 1869. LUCAN. C. F. Weber. Lips. 1821. C. H. Weisse. Lips. 1835. PETRONIUS. Bücheler. Berl. 1871. Second edition. CALPURNIUS. Glaeser. Göttingen. 1842, ETNA. Munro. Cambridge. 1867. PLINY. Sillig. Lips. 8 vols. ----- Chrestomathia Pliniana, a useful text-book by Urlichs. Berlin. 1857. VALERIUS FLACCUS. Lemaire. Paris. 1824. Schenkl. 1871. SILIUS. Ruperti. Göttingen. 1795. STATIUS. Silvae. Markland. Lips. 1827. ----- Entire works. Queck. 1854. ----- Thebaid and Achilleid. Vol. I. 0. Müller. Lips. 1871. MARTIAL. Schneidevin. 1842. ----- Select Epigrams. Paley. London. 1875. QUINTILIAN. Bonnell. (Teubner.) 1861. ----- Halm. 2 vols. 1869. ----- Lexicon to, by Bonnell. 1834. FRONTINUS. Text by Dederich, in Teubner edition. 1855. JUVENAL. Heinrich. Bonn. 1839. Mayor. London. 1872. Vol. I. (for schools). Otto Iahn. 1868. TACITUS. Works. Orelli. 1846. Ritter. 1864. ----- Dialogue. Ritter. Bonn. 1836. ----- Agricola. Kritz. Berlin. 1865. ----- Germania. Kritz. Berlin. 1869. Latham. London. 1851. ----- Annales. Nipperdey. Berlin. 1864. PLINY the younger. Keil. Lips. 1870. ----- Letters. G. E. Gierig. 2 vols. 1800-2. ----- Letters and Panegyric. Gierig. 1806. SUETONIUS. Roth. Teubner. 1858. ----- Praeter Caesarum Libros. D. Reifferscheid. Lips. 1860. FLORUS. Jahn. Lips. 1856. FRONTO. Niebuhr. Berl. 1816. Supplement. 1832. S. A. Naber. (Teubner.) 1867. PERVIGILIUM VENERIS. Bugheler. 1859. Riese's Anthologia Latina i. p. 144. GELLIUS. Hertz. Lips. 1853. GAIUS. Lachmann. Berlin. 1842. ----- Institutes. Poste. Oxf. 1871. APULEIUS. Hildebrand. Lips. 1842. 2 vols. ITINERARIUM ANTONINI AUGUSTI ET HIEROSOLYMITANUM. G. Parthey and M. Finder. Berlin. 1848.

QUESTIONS OR SUBJECTS FOR ESSAYS SUGGESTED BY THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. [8]

1. Trace the influence of conquest on Roman literature.

2. Examine Niebuhr's hypothesis of an old Roman epos.

3. Compare the Roman conception of law as manifested in an argument of Cicero, with that of the Athenians, as displayed in any of the great Attic orators.

4. Trace the causes of the special devotion to poetry during the Augustan Age.

5. The love of nature in Roman poetry.

6. What were the Collegia poetarum? In what connection are they mentioned?

7. What methods of appraising literary work existed at Rome? Was there anything analogous to our review system? If so, how did it differ at different epochs?

8. Sketch the development of the Mime, and account for its decline.

9. Criticise the merits and defects of the various forms which historical composition assumed at Rome (Hegel, Philos. of History, Preface).

10. "Inveni lateritiam: reliqui marmoream" (Augustus). The material splendour of imperial Rome as affecting literary genius. (Contrast the Speech of Pericles. Thuc. ii. 37, sqq.)

11. Varro dicit Musas Plautino sermone locuturas fuisse, si Latine loqui vellent (Quintil.). Can this encomium be justified? If so, show how.

12. "Cetera quae vacuas tenuissent carmine mentes." Is the true end of poetry to occupy a vacant hour? Illustrate by the chief Roman poets.

13. The vitality of Greek mythology in Latin and in modern poetry.

14. State succinctly the debt of Roman thought, in all its branches, to Greece.

15. What is the permanent contribution to human progress given by Latin literature?

16. Criticise Mommsen's remark, that the drama is, after all, the form of literature for which the Romans were best adapted.

17. Form some estimate of the historical value of the old annalists.

18. What sources of information were at Livy's command in writing his history? Did he rightly appreciate their relative value?

19. What influence did the old Roman system have in repressing poetical ideas?

20. In what sense is it true that the intellectual progress of a nation is measured by its prose writers?

21. Philosophy and poetry set before themselves the same problem. Illustrate from Roman literature.

22. Account for the notable deficiency in lyric inspiration among Roman poets.

23. Compare the influence on thought and action of the elder and younger Cato.

24. Examine the alleged incapacity of the Romans for speculative thought.

25. Compare or contrast the Italic, the Etruscan, the Greek, and the Vedic religions, as bearing on thought and literature.

26. Compare the circumstances of the diffusion of Greek and Latin beyond the limits within which they were originally spoken.

27. Analyse the various influences under which the poetical vocabulary of Latin was formed.

28. Give the rules of the Latin accent, and show how it has affected Latin Prosody. Is there any reason for thinking that it was once subjected to different rules?

29. "Latin literature lacks originality." How far is this criticism sound?

30. Examine the influence of the Alexandrine poets upon the literature of the later Republic, and of the Augustan Age.

31. What is the value of Horace as a literary critic?

32. Give a brief sketch of the various Roman writers on agriculture.

33. It has been remarked, that while every great Roman author expresses a hope of literary immortality, few, if any, of the great Greek authors mention it. How far is this difference suggestive of their respective national characters, and of radically distinct conceptions of art?

34 What instances do we find in Latin literature of the novel or romance? When and where did this style of composition first become common?

35. Trace accurately the rhythmical progress of the Latin hexameter, and indicate the principal differences between the rhythm of Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace's epistles.

36. Distinguish between the development and the corruption of a language. Illustrate from Latin literature.

37. "Virgilius amantissimus vetustatis." Examine in all its bearings the antiquarian enthusiasm of Virgil.

38. "Verum orthographia quoque consuetudini servit, ideoque saepe mutata est" (Quintil.). What principles of spelling (if any), appear to be adopted by the best modern editors?

39. Show that the letter v, in Latin, had sometimes the sound of w, sometimes that of b; that the sounds o u, e i, i u, e q, were frequently interchanged respectively.

40. Examine the traces of a satiric tendency in Roman literature, independent of professed satire.

41. How far did the Augustan poets consciously modify the Greek metres they adopted?

42. Is it a sound criticism to call the Romans a nation of grammarians? Give a short account of the labours of any two of the great Roman grammarians, and estimate their value.

43. Cicero (De Leg. i. 2, 5) says: "Abest historia a literis nostris." Quintilian (x. i. 101) says: "Historia non cesserit Graecis." Criticise these statements.

44. "O dimidiate Menander." By whom said? Of whom said? Criticise.

45. Examine and classify the various uses of the participles in Virgil.

46. What are the chief peculiarities of the style of Tacitus?

47. "Roman history ended where it had begun, in biography." (Merivale). Account for the predominance of biography in Latin literature.

48. The Greek schools of rhetoric in the Roman period. Examine their influence on the literature of Rome, and on the intellectual progress of the Roman world.

49. In what sense can Ennius rightly be called the father of Latin literature?

50. Can the same rules of quantity be applied to the Latin comedians as to the classical poets?

51. Mention any differences in syntax between Plautus and the Augustan writers.

62. Examine the chief defects of ancient criticism.

53. The value of Cicero's letters from a historical and from a literary point of view.

54. What evidence with regard to Latin pronunciation can be gathered from the writings of Plautus and Terence?

55. Examine the nature of the chief problems involved in the settlement of the text of Lucretius.

56. Compare the Homeric characters as they appear in Virgil with their originals in the Iliad and Odyssey, and with the same as treated by the Greek tragedians.

57. How far is it true that Latin is deficient in abstract terms? What new coinages were made by Cicero?

58. Contrast Latin with Greek (illustrating by any analogies that may occur to you in modern languages) as regards facility of composition. Did Latin vary in this respect at different periods?

59. What are the main differences in Latin between the language and constructions of poetry and those of prose?

60. The use of tmesis, asyndeton, anacoluthon, aposiopesis, hyperbaton, hyperbole, litotes, in Latin oratory and poetry.

61. What traces, are there of systematic division according to a number of lines in the poems of Catullus or any other Latin poet with whom you are familiar? (See Ellis's Catullus).

62. Trace the history of the Atellanae, and account for their being superseded by the Mime.

63. Examine the influence of the other Italian nationalities on Roman literature.

64. Which of the great periods of Greek literature had the most direct or lasting influence upon that of Rome?

65. What has been the influence of Cicero on modern literature (1) as a philosophical and moral teacher; (2) as a stylist?

66. Give some account of the Ciceronianists.

67. What influence did the study of Virgil exercise (1) on later Latin literature; (2) on the Middle Ages; (3) on the poetry of the eighteenth century?

68. Who have been the most successful modern writers of Latin elegiac verse?

69. Distinguish accurately between oratory and rhetoric. Discuss their relative predominance in Roman literature, and compare the latter in this respect with the literatures of England and France.

70. Give a succinct analysis of any speech of Cicero with which you are familiar, and show the principles involved in its construction.

71. Discuss the position and influence of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies in the last age of the Republic.

72. State what plan and principle Livy lays down for himself in his History. Discuss and illustrate his merits as a historian, showing how far he performs what he promises.

73. Give the political theory of Cicero as stated in his De Republica and De Legibus, and contrast it with either that of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavel, or Sir Thomas More.

74. Analyse the main argument of the De Natura Deorum. Has this treatise a permanent philosophical value?

75. How far did the greatest writers of the Empire understand the conditions under which they lived, and the various forces that acted around them?

76. Examine the importance of the tragedies ascribed to Seneca in the history of European literature. To whom else have they been ascribed?

77. How did the study of Greek literature at Rome affect the vocabulary and syntax of the Latin language?

78. The influence of patronage on literature. Consider chiefly with reference to Rome, but illustrate from other literatures.

79. Are there indications that Horace set before him, as a satirist, the object of superseding Lucilius?

80. Compare the relation of Persius to Horace with that of Lucan to Virgil.

81. Account for the imperfect success of Varro as an etymologist, and illustrate by examples.

82. What is known of Nigidius Figulus, the Sextii, Valerius Soranus, and Apuleius as teachers of philosophic doctrine?

83. Sketch the literary career of the poet Accius.

84 What were the main characteristics of the old Roman oratory? What classical authorities exist for its history?

85. Prove the assertion that jurisprudence was the only form of intellectual activity that Rome from first to last worked out in a thoroughly national manner.

86. Compare the portrait of Tiberius as given by Tacitus, with any of the other great creations of the historic imagination. How far is it to be considered truthful?

87. At what time did abridgments begin to be used at Rome? Account for their popularity throughout the Middle Ages, and mention some of the most important that have come down to us.

88. What remains of the writers on applied science do we possess?

89. Is it probable that the great developments of mathematical and physical science at Alexandria had any general effect upon the popular culture of the Roman world?

90. What are our chief authorities for the old Roman religion?

91. Account for the influence of Fronto, and give a list of his writings.

92. Which are the most important of the public, and which ef the private, orations of Cicero? Give a short account of one of each class, with date, place, and circumstances of delivery. How were such speeches preserved? Had the Romans any system of reporting?

93. A life of Silius Italicus with a short account of his poem.

94. Who, in your opinion, are the nearest modern representatives of Horace, Lucilius, and Juvenal?

95. In what particulars do the alcaic and sapphic metres of Horace differ from their Greek models? What are the different forms of the asclepiad metre in Horace? Have any of the Horatian metres been used by other writers?

96. Enumerate the chief imitations of Ennius in Virgil, noting the alterations where such occur.

97. Point out the main features of the Roman worship. (See index to Merivale's Rome, s. v. Religion.)

98. Write a life of Maecenas, showing his position as chief minister of the Empire, and as the centre of literary society of Rome during the Augustan Age.

99. Donaldson, in his Varronianus, argues that the French rather than the Italian represents the more perfect form of the original Latin. Test this view by a comparison of words in both languages with the Latin forms.

100. Give a summary of the argument in any one of the following works:-- Cicero's De Finibus, Tusculan disputations, De Officis, or the first and second books of Lucretius.

101. State the position and influence on thought and letters of the two Scipios, Laelius, and Cato the censor.

102. Give Caesar's account of the religion of the Gauls, and compare it with the locus classicus on the subject in Lucan (I. 447). What were the national deities of the Britons, and to which of the Roman deities were they severally made to correspond?

103. Examine the chief differences between the Ciceronian and Post- Augustan syntax.

104. Trace the influence of the study of comparative philology on Latin scholarship.

105. "Italy remained without national poetry or art" (Mommsen). In what sense can this assertion be justified?

106. What passages can you collect from Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, and Juvenal, showing their beliefs on the great questions of philosophy and religion?

107. Examine the bearings of a highly-developed inflectional system like those of the Greek and Latin languages, upon the theory of prose composition.

108. To what periods of the life of Horace would you refer the composition of the Book of Epodes and the Books of Satires and Epistles? Confirm your view by quotations.

109. What is known of Suevius, Pompeius Trogus, Salvius Julianus, Gaius, and Celsus?

110. Who were the chief writers of encyclopaedias at Rome?

111. How do you account for the short duration of the legitimate drama at Rome?

112. Who were the greatest Latin scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries? In what department of scholarship did they mostly labour, and why?

113. Enumerate the chief losses which Latin literature has sustained.

114. Who were the original inhabitants of Italy? Give the main characteristics of the Italic family of languages. To which was it most nearly akin?

115. Illustrate from Juvenal the relations between patron and client.

116. Contrast briefly the life and occupations of an Athenian citizen in the time of Pericles and Plato, with those of a Roman in the age of Cicero and Augustus.

N.B.--Many other questions will be suggested by referring to the Index.

FOOTNOTES

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Introduction

[1] Quint. I. 5, 72. The whole chapter is most interesting.

[2] How different has been the lot of Greek! An educated Greek at the present day would find little difficulty in understanding Xenophon or Menander. The language, though shaken by rude convulsions, has changed according to its own laws, and shown that natural vitality that belongs to a genuinely popular speech.

[3] See Conington on the Academical Study of Latin. Post. Works, i. 206.

[4] See esp. R. II. Bk. 1, ch. ix. and xv.

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Chapter I

[1] E.g. Finns, Lapps, or other Turanian tribes.

[2] The Latin agrees with the Celtic in the retention of the dat. plur. in bus (Celt, ib), Rigaib = regibus; and the pass. in r, Berthar = fertur.

[3] Cf. Plaut. Cure. 150, Lydi (v. 1, ludii) barbari. So Vos, Tusci ac barbari, Tib. Gracch. apud Cic. de Div. ii. 4. Compare Virgil's Pinguis Tyrrhenus.

[4] It is probable that Sp. Carvilius merely popularised the use of this letter, and perhaps gave it its place in the alphabet as seventh letter.

[5] Inst. Or. 1, 7, 14.

[6] In Cicero's time the semi-vowel j in the middle of words was often denoted by ii; and the long vowel i represented by the prolongation of the letter above and sometimes below the line.

[7] 1, 4, 7.

[8] This subject is well illustrated in the introduction to Masson's ed. of Todd's Milton.

[9] The reader should consult the introduction to Notes I. in Munro's Lucretius.

[10] Var. L. L. v. 85.

[11] Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 86.

[12] E.g. edepol, ecastor.

[13] Prob. an old optative, afterwards used as a fut.

[14] Cf. dic. fer.

[15] L. L. vii. 26, 27.

[16] Oscan estud. This is one of several points in which the oldest Latin approximates to the other Italian dialects, from which it gradually became more divergent. Cf. paricidas (Law of Numa) nom. sing. with Osc. Maras.

[17] Pol. iii. 22. Polybius lived in the time of the younger Scipio; but the antiquity of this treaty has recently been impugned.

[18] Inst. Or. i. 7, 12.

[19] Or, accentuating differently, "quoiús formá virtútei | párisumá fúit." We notice the strange quantity Lucius, which recalls the Homeric uperopliae.

[20] From Thompson's Essay on the Sources and Formation of the Latin Language; Hist. Of Roman Literature; Encyclopaedia Metropolitana.

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Chapter II

[1] The Ludi Romani, as they were afterwards called.

[2] Satura.

[3] The early laws were called "carmina," a term applied to any set form of words, Liv. i. 25, Lex horrendi carminis. The theory that all laws were in the Saturnian rhythm is not by any means probable.

[4] The passages on which this theory was founded are chiefly the following:--"Cic. Brut. xix. utinam extarent illa carmina, quae multis saeculis ante suam aetatem in epulis esse cantitata a singulis convivis de clarorum virorum laudibus in Originibus seriptum reliquit Cato." Cf. Tusc. i. 2, 3, and iv. 2, s.f. Varro, as quoted by Non, says: "In conviviis pueri modesti ut cantarent carmina antiqua, in quibus laudes erant maiorum, et assa voce et cum tibicine." Horace alludes to the custom, Od. iv. 15, 27, sqq.

[5] Poeticae arti honos uon erat: si qui in ea re studebat, aut sese ad convivia adplicabat, grassator vocabatur.--Cato ap. Aul Gell. N.A. xi. 2, 5.

[6] In his epitaph.

[7] See Mommsen Hist. i. p. 240.

[8] It is a term of contempt in Ennius, "_quos olim Fauni vatesque canebant."

[9] Virg. Ecl. ix. 34.

[10] Fest. p. 333a, M.

[11] Ep. ii. 1, 162.

[12] It has been argued from a passage in Livy (ix. 36), "Habeo auctores vulgo tum Romanos pueros, sicut nunc Graecis, ita Etruscis literis erudiri solitos," that literature at Rome must be dated from the final conquest of Etruria (294 B.C.); but the Romans had long before this date been familiar with Etruscan literature, such as it was. We have no ground for supposing that they borrowed anything except the art of divination, and similar studies. Neither history nor dramatic poetry was cultivated by the Etruscans.

[13] Others, again, explain fascinum as = phallos, and regard the songs as connected with the worship of the reproductive power in nature. This seems alien from the Italian system of worship, though likely enough to have existed in Etruria. If it ever had this character, it must have lost it before its introduction into Rome.

[14] Ep. ii. 1, 139, sqq.

[15] vii. 2.

[16] Macr. S. ii. 4, 21.

[17] C. lii.

[18] C. lxi.

[19] Loc. cit.

[20] Juv. viii. 191.

[21] Some have imagined that, as Saturnia tellus is used for Italy, so Saturnius numerus may simply mean the native or Italian rhythm. Bentley (Ep. Phal. xi.) shows that it is known to the Greeks.

[22] The name prochaios, "the running metre," sufficiently indicates its applicability to early recitations, in which the rapidity of the singer's movements was essential to the desired effect.

[23] Attilius Fortunatianus, De Doctr. Metr. xxvi. Spengel (quoted Teuff. Rom. Lit. § 53, 3) assumes the following laws of Saturnian metre:-- "(1) The Saturnian line is asynartetic; (2) in no line is it possible to omit more than one thesis, and then only the last but one, generally in the second half of the line; (3) the caesura must never be neglected, and falls after the fourth thesis or the third arsis (this rule, however, is by no means universally observed); (4) hiatus is often permitted; (5) the arsis may be solved, and the thesis replaced by pyrrhics or long syllables."

[24] The reader will find this question discussed in Wagner's Aulularia; where references are given to the original German authorities.

[25] Dactylic poetry is not here included, as its progress is somewhat different. In this metre we observe: (1) That when a dactyl or spondee ends a word, the natural and metrical accents coincide; e.g.--ómnia, súnt mihi, prorúmpunt. Hence the fondness for such easy and natural endings as claudúntur lúmina nócte, common in all writers down to Manilius. (2) That the caesura is opposed to the accent, e.g.--árma virúmque cáno | Troiae | qui. These anti-accentual rhythms are continually found in Virgil, Ovid, &c. from a fondness for caesura, where the older writers have qui Troiae, and the like. (3) That it would be possible to avoid any collision between ictus and accent, e.g.--scílícet ómnibus ést labor ímpendéndus et ómnes: inveteráscit et aégro in corde senescit, &c. But the rarity of such lines after Lucretius shows that they do not conform to the genius of the language. The correspondence thus lost by improved caesura is partially re-established by more careful elision. Elision is used by Virgil to make the verse run smoothly without violating the natural pronunciation of the words; e.g.--mónstrum horréndum infórme; but this is only in the Aeneid. Such simple means of gaining this end as the Lucretian sive volúptas est, immortáli súnt, are altogether avoided by him. On the whole, however, among the Dactylic poets, from Ennius to Juvenal, the balance between natural and metrical accent remained unchanged.

[26] Most of the verses extant in this metre will be found in Wordsworth's Fragments and Specimens of Early Latin.

[27] A good essay on this subject is to be found in Wordsworth's Fragments p. 580, sqq.

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Chapter III

[1] Scipio quoted Homer when he saw the flames of Carthage rising. He is described as having been profoundly moved. And according to one report Caesar's last words, when he saw Brutus among his assassins, were kahi se teknon.

[2] The reader will find them all in Wordsworth.

[3] Brut. xviii. 71, non digna sunt quae iterum legantur.

[4] Ep. ii. 1, 69.

[5] Liv. vii. 2.

[6] 19, 35. The lines are--

"Etiam purpureo suras include cothurno, Altius et revocet volueres in pectore sinus: Pressaque iam gravida crepitent tibi terga pharetra; Derige odorisequos ad certa cubilia canes."

In their present form these verses are obviously a century and a half at least later than Livius.

[7] Livy, xxvii. 37.

[8] Gell. xvii. 21, 45.

[9] See page 46.

[10] The reader may like to see one or two specimens. We give one from tragedy (the Lycurgus):

"Vos qui regalis corporis custodias Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos, Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita;"

and one from comedy (the Tarentilla), the description of a coquette--

"Quasi pila In choro ludens datatim dat se et communem facit; Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet. Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem, Anulum alii dat spectandum, a labris alium invocat, Alii cantat, attamen alii suo dat digito literas."

[11] The Hariolius and Leo.

[12] Mil. Glor. 211.

[13] Brut. 19, 75.

[14] If immortals might weep for mortals, the divine Camenae would weep for Naevius the poet; thus it is that now he has been delivered into the treasure-house of Orcus, men have forgotten at Rome how to speak the Latin tongue.

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Chapter IV

[1] See Livy, vii. 2.

[2] The most celebrated was that erected by Scaurus in his aedileship 58 B.C., an almost incredible description of which is given by Pliny, N.H. xxxvi. 12. See Dict. Ant. Theatrum, whence this is taken.

[3] A temporary stone theatre was probably erected for the Apollinarian Games, 179 B.C. If so, it was soon pulled down; a remarkable instance of the determination of the Senate not to encourage dramatic performances.

[4] Done by Curio, 50 B.C.

[5] Primus subselliorum ordo.

[6] Otho's Law, 68 B.C.

[7] See Mommsen, Bk. iii. ch. xv.

[8] See prol. to Andria.

[9] Quint. x. 1, Comoedia maxime claudicamus.

[10] Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 170.

"At vestri proavi Plautinos et numeros et Laudavere sales: nimium patienter utrumque Ne dicam stulte mirati."

[11] De Off. i. 29, 104.

[12] iii. 3, 14.

[13] This process is called contamination. It was necessitated by the fondness of a Roman audience for plenty of action, and their indifference to mere dialogue.

[14] Cic. de Sen. 50.

[15] ii. 2, 35.

[16] Poen. v. 1.

[17] Plautus himself calls it Tragico-comoedia.

[18] We find in Donatus the term crepidata, which seems equivalent to palliata, though it probably was extended to tragedy, which palliata apparently was not. Trabeata, a term mentioned by Suet. in his Treatise de Grammat., seems = praetextata, at all events it refers to a play with national characters of an exalted rank.

[19] E.g. trahax, perenniservus, contortiplicati, parcipromus, prognariter, and a hundred others. In Pseud. i. 5; ii. 4, 22, we have charin touto poio, nal nam, kai touto dae, and other Greek modes of transition. Cf. Pers. ii. 1, 79.

[20] One needs but to mention forms like danunt, ministreis, hibus, sacres, postidea dehibere, &c. and constructions like quicquam uti, istanc tactio, quid tute tecum? Nihil enim, and countless others, to understand the primary importance of Plautus's works for a historical study of the development of the Latin language.

[21] De Opt. Gen. Or. 1; cf. Att. vii. 3, 10.

[22] "in eis quas primum Caecili didici novas Partim sum earum exactus, partim vix steti. * * * * * Perfeci ut spectarentur: ubi sunt cognitae Placitae sunt" --Prol. 2, 14.

[23] 2 Hor. Ep, li. 1, 59. Vincere Caecilius gravitate.

[24] Adelph. prol.:

"Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Hunc adiutare, assidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictmn vehemens existimant, Eam laudem hic ducit maximam: cum illis placet, Qui vobis universis et populo placent: Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia."

[25] See prol. to Andria.

[26] Suet. Vit. Ter.

[27] Tu quoque tu in summis, o dimidiate Menander, poneris, &c.--Ib.

[28] Possibly the following may be exceptions:--Andr. 218; Haut. 218, 356; Hec. 543. See Teuffel.

[29] See the first scene of the Adelphoe.

[30] Metriotaes, the quality so much admired by the Greek critics, in which Horace may be compared with Terence. Cf. Aul. Gell. vi. (or vii.) 14, 6.

[31] 1. 37, sqq.

[32] Suet. Vit. Ter.

[33] Sat. 1, 4, 53, referring to the scene in the Adelphoe.

[34] Except in the prologues to the Eun. and Hecyra.

[35] 805, "ut quimus" aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet." The line of Caecilius is "Vivas ut possis quando non quis ut velis."

[36] Georg. iii. 9.

"Tentanda via est qua me quoque possim Toll ere humo victorque virum volitare per ora."

He expresses his aspiration after immortality in the same terms that Ennius had employed.

[37] Eun. v. iv.

[38] Or "Lanuvinus." Those who wish to know the inartistic expedients to which he resorted to gain applause should read the prologues of Terence, which are most valuable materials for literary criticism.

[39] Att. xiv. 20, 3.

[40] Teuffel 103.

[41] Sometimes called Tabernaria, Diomed iii. p. 488, though, strictly speaking, this denoted a lower and more provincial type.

[42] x. 1, 100.

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Chapter V

[1] Quadrati versus. Gell. ii. 29.

[2] Cic. de Sen. 5, 14.

[3] Ep. I. xix. 7.

[4] Nunquam poetor nisi podager.

[5] Quintus Maeonides pavone ex Pythagoreo (Persius).

[6] Greek, Oscan, and Latin.

[7] Ep. II. i. 52.

[8] Fragment of the Telamo.

[9] Aufert Pacuvius docti famam senis.--Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 56.

[10] We learn from Pliny that he decorated his own scenes.

[11] We infer that he came to Rome not later than 169, as in that year he buried Ennius; but it is likely that he arrived much earlier.

[12] De Am. vii.

[13] 1, 77. "Antiopa aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta."

[14] Tusc. II. x. 48.

[15] The Antiopa and Dulorestes.

[16] Quint. I. V. 67-70.

[17] We give the reader an example of this feature of Pacuvius's style. In the Antiopa, Amphion gives a description of the tortoise: "Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera Capite brevi cervice anguina aspectu truci Eviscerata inanima, cum artimali sono." To which his hearers reply --"Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod coniectura sapiens aegre contulit. Non intelligimus nisi si aperte dixeris."

[18] Prob. 94 B.C. when Cic. was twelve years old. In Planc. 24, 59, he calls him "gravis et ingeniosus poeta."

[19] Cf. Hor. Ep. ii. 1, 56; Cv. Am. i. 15, 19. On the other hand, Hor. S. I. x. 53.

[20] Loco = decori, Non. 338, 22.

[21] Compare a similar subtle distinction in the Dulorestes, "Piget paternum nomen, maternum pudet profari."

[22] Propria = perpetua, Non. 362, 2.

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Chapter VI

[1] Vahlen, quoted by Teuffel, § 90, 3; see Gell. xvii. 21, 43.

[2] Post. Works, i. p. 344.

[3] Inest in genere et sanctitas regum, qui plurimum inter nomines pollent, et caerimonia deorum, quorum ipsi in potestate sunt reges.-- Suet. Jul. 6.

[4] "Postquamst morte datus Plautus Comoedia luget: Scaenast deserta; dein Risus, Ludus, Jocusque Et numeri innumeri simul omnes collacrumarunt." --Gell. i. 24, 3.

[5] "Amnem, Troiugena, Cannam Romane fuge hospes," is the best known of these lines. Many others have been collected, and have been arranged with less probability, in Saturnian verse by Hermann. The substance is given, Livy, xxv. 12. See Browne, Hist. Rom. Lit. p. 34, 35. Another is preserved by Ennius, Aio te, Aeacida, Romanes vincere posse.

[6] The shortening of final o, ergo, pono, vigilando, through the influence of accent, is almost the only change made after Ennius except in a few proper names.

[7] Compare that of the horse (II. vi. 506), "Et tum sicut equus qui de praesepibu' fartus Vincla suis magnis animis abrupit, et inde Fert sese campi per caerula laetaque prata Celso pectore, saepe iubam quassat simul altam. Spiritus ex anima calida spumas agit albas," with Virg. Aen. xi. 492.

[8] Lucr. i. 111.

[9] Tr. ii. 424.

[10] Sat. vi. 1.

[11] III. 20, 8.

[12] Imitated respectively, Virg. A. iv. 585; A. i. 539; A. x. 361.

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