Of the ill-fated C. Cornelius Gallus, their predecessor, we have but a
single pentameter remaining. Of the three Tibullus (c. 54-19) is the
most refined and tender. As the poet of love he gives utterance to the
pensive melancholy rather than to the pleasures associated with it. In
his sympathy with the life and beliefs of the country people he shows an
affinity both to the idyllic spirit and to the piety of Virgil. There is
something, too, in his fastidious refinement and in his shrinking from
the rough contact of life that reminds us of the English poet Gray.
Propertius.
A poet of more strength and more powerful imagination, but of less
refinement in his life and less exquisite taste in his art, is Sextus
Propertius (c. 50-c. 15). His youth was a more stormy one than that of
Tibullus, and was passed, not like his, among the "healthy woods" of his
country estate, but amid all the licence of the capital. His passion for
Cynthia, the theme of his most finished poetry, is second only in
interest to that of Catullus for Lesbia; and Cynthia in her fascination
and caprices seems a more real and intelligible personage than the
idealized object first of the idolatry and afterwards of the malediction
of Catullus. Propertius is a less accomplished artist and a less equably
pleasing writer than either Tibullus or Ovid, but he shows more power of
dealing gravely with a great or tragic situation than either of them,
and his diction and rhythm give frequent proof of a concentrated force
of conception and a corresponding movement of imaginative feeling which
remind us of Lucretius.
Ovid.
The most facile and brilliant of the elegiac poets and the least serious
in tone and spirit is P. Ovidius Naso or Ovid (43 B.C.-A.D. 18). As an
amatory poet he is the poet of pleasure and intrigue rather than of
tender sentiment or absorbing passion. Though he treated his subject in
relation to himself with more levity and irony than real feeling, yet by
his sparkling wit and fancy he created a literature of sentiment and
adventure adapted to amuse the idle and luxurious society of which the
elder Julia was the centre. His power of continuous narrative is best
seen in the _Metamorphoses_, written in hexameters to which he has
imparted a rapidity and precision of movement more suited to romantic
and picturesque narrative than the weighty self-restrained verse of
Virgil. In his _Fasti_ he treats a subject of national interest; it is
not, however, through the strength of Roman sentiment but through the
power of vividly conceiving and narrating stories of strong human
interest that the poem lives. In his latest works--the _Tristia_ and _Ex
Ponto_--he imparts the interest of personal confessions to the record of
a unique experience. Latin poetry is more rich in the expression of
personal feeling than of dramatic realism. In Ovid we have both. We know
him in the intense liveliness of his feeling and the human weakness of
his nature more intimately than any other writer of antiquity, except
perhaps Cicero. As Virgil marks the point of maturest excellence in
poetic diction and rhythm, Ovid marks that of the greatest facility.
Livy.
The Augustan age was one of those great eras in the world like the era
succeeding the Persian War in Greece, the Elizabethan age in England,
and the beginning of the 19th century in Europe, in which what seems a
new spring of national and individual life calls out an idealizing
retrospect of the past. As the present seems full of new life, the past
seems rich in glory and the future in hope. The past of Rome had always
a peculiar fascination for Roman writers. Virgil in a supreme degree,
and Horace, Propertius and Ovid in a less degree, had expressed in their
poetry the romance of the past. But it was in the great historical work
of T. Livius or Livy (59 B.C.-A.D. 17) that the record of the national
life received its most systematic exposition. Its execution was the
work of a life prolonged through the languor and dissolution following
so soon upon the promise of the new era, during which time the past
became glorified by contrast with the disheartening aspect of the
present. The value of the work consists not in any power of critical
investigation or weighing of historical evidence but in the intense
sympathy of the writer with the national ideal, and the vivid
imagination with which under the influence of this sympathy he gives
life to the events and personages, the wars and political struggles, of
times remote from his own. He makes us feel more than any one the
majesty of the Roman state, of its great magistracies, and of the august
council by which its policy was guided. And, while he makes the words
_senatus populusque Romanus_ full of significance for all times, no one
realizes with more enthusiasm all that is implied in the words _imperium
Romanum_, and the great military qualities of head and heart by which
that empire was acquired and maintained. The vast scale on which the
work was conceived and the thoroughness of artistic execution with which
the details are finished are characteristically Roman. The prose style
of Rome, as a vehicle for the continuous narration of events coloured by
a rich and picturesque imagination and instinct with dignified emotion,
attained its perfection in Livy.
_Fourth Period: The Silver Age, from A.D. 17 to about 130_.
Characteristics of post-Augustan age.
For more than a century after the death of Augustus Roman literature
continues to flow in the old channels. Though drawing from the
provinces, Rome remains the centre of the literary movement. The
characteristics of the great writers are essentially national, not
provincial nor cosmopolitan. In prose the old forms--oratory, history,
the epistle, treatises or dialogues on ethical and literary
questions--continue to be cultivated. Scientific and practical subjects,
such as natural history, architecture, medicine, agriculture, are
treated in more elaborate literary style. The old Roman _satura_ is
developed into something like the modern prose novel. In the various
provinces of poetry, while there is little novelty or inspiration, there
is abundance of industry and ambitious effort. The national love of
works of large compass shows itself in the production of long epic
poems, both of the historic and of the imitative Alexandrian type. The
imitative and rhetorical tastes of Rome showed themselves in the
composition of exotic tragedies, as remote in spirit and character from
Greek as from Roman life, of which the only extant specimens are those
attributed to the younger Seneca. The composition of didactic, lyrical
and elegiac poetry also was the accomplishment and pastime of an
educated dilettante class, the only extant specimens of any interest
being some of the _Silvae_ of Statius. The only voice with which the
poet of this age can express himself with force and sincerity is that of
satire and satiric epigram. We find now only imitative echoes of the old
music created by Virgil and others, as in Statius, or powerful
declamation, as in Lucan and Juvenal. There is a deterioration in the
diction as well as in the music of poetry. The elaborate literary
culture of the Augustan age has done something to impair the native
force of the Latin idiom. The language of literature, in the most
elaborate kind of prose as well as poetry, loses all ring of popular
speech. The old oratorical tastes and aptitudes find their outlet in
public recitations and the practice of declamation. Forced and distorted
expression, exaggerated emphasis, point and antithesis, an affected
prettiness, are studied with the view of gaining the applause of
audiences who thronged the lecture and recitation rooms in search of
temporary excitement. Education is more widely diffused, but is less
thorough, less leisurely in its method, derived less than before from
the purer sources of culture. The precocious immaturity of Lucan's
career affords a marked contrast to the long preparation of Virgil and
Horace for their high office. Although there are some works of this
so-called Silver Age of considerable and one at least of supreme
interest, from the insight they afford into the experience of a century
of organized despotism and its effect on the spiritual life of the
ancient world, it cannot be doubted that the steady literary decline
which characterized the last centuries of paganism was beginning before
the death of Ovid and Livy.
The influences which had inspired republican and Augustan literature
were the artistic impulse derived from a familiarity with the great
works of Greek genius, becoming more intimate with every new generation,
the spell of Rome over the imagination of the kindred Italian races, the
charm of Italy, and the vivid sensibility of the Italian temperament.
These influences were certainly much less operative in the first century
of the empire. The imitative impulse, which had much of the character of
a creative impulse, and had resulted in the appropriation of the forms
of poetry suited to the Roman and Italian character and of the metres
suited to the genius of the Latin language, no longer stimulated to
artistic effort. The great sources of Greek poetry were no longer
regarded, as they were by Lucretius and Virgil, as sacred, untasted
springs, to be approached in a spirit of enthusiasm tempered with
reverence. We have the testimony of two men of shrewd common sense and
masculine understanding--Martial and Juvenal--to the stale and lifeless
character of the art of the Silver Age, which sought to reproduce in the
form of epics, tragedies and elegies the bright fancies of the Greek
mythology.
The idea of Rome, owing to the antagonism between the policy of the
government and the sympathies of the class by which literature was
favoured and cultivated, could no longer be an inspiring motive, as it
had been in the literature of the republic and of the Augustan age. The
spirit of Rome appears only as animating the protest of Lucan, the
satire of Persius and Juvenal, the sombre picture which Tacitus paints
of the annals of the empire. Oratory is no longer an independent voice
appealing to sentiments of Roman dignity, but the weapon of the
"informers" (_delatores_), wielded for their own advancement and the
destruction of that class which, even in their degeneracy, retained most
sympathy with the national traditions. Roman history was no longer a
record of national glory, stimulating the patriotism and flattering the
pride of all Roman citizens, but a personal eulogy or a personal
invective, according as servility to a present or hatred of a recent
ruler was the motive which animated it.
The charm of Italian scenes still remained the same, but the fresh and
inspiring feeling cf nature gave place to the mere sensuous
gratification derived from the luxurious and artificial beauty of the
country villa. The idealizing poetry of passion, which found a genuine
voice in Catullus and the elegiac poets, could not prolong itself
through the exhausting licence of successive generations. The vigorous
vitality which gives interest to the personality of Catullus, Propertius
and Ovid no longer characterizes their successors. The pathos of natural
affection is occasionally recognized in Statius and more rarely in
Martial, but it has not the depth of tenderness found in Lucretius and
Virgil. The wealth and luxury of successive generations, the monotonous
routine of life, the separation of the educated class from the higher
work of the world, have produced their enervating and paralysing effect
on the mainsprings of poetic and imaginative feeling.
New literary elements.
New elements, however, appear in the literature of this period. As the
result of the severance from the active interests of life, a new
interest is awakened in the inner life of the individual. The immorality
of Roman society not only affords abundant material to the satirist, but
deepens the consciousness of moral evil in purer and more thoughtful
minds. To these causes we attribute the pathological observation of
Seneca and Tacitus, the new sense of purity in Persius called out by
contrast with the impurity around him, the glowing if somewhat
sensational exaggeration of Juvenal, the vivid characterization of
Martial. The literature of no time presents so powerfully the contrast
between moral good and evil. In this respect it is truly representative
of the life of the age. Another new element is the influence of a new
race. In the two preceding periods the rapid diffusion of literary
culture following the Social War and the first Civil War was seen to
awaken into new life the elements of original genius in Italy and
Cisalpine Gaul. In the first century of the empire a similar result was
produced by the diffusion of that culture in the Latinized districts of
Spain. The fervid temperament of a fresh and vigorous race, which
received the Latin discipline just as Latium had two or three centuries
previously received the Greek discipline, revealed itself in the
writings of the Senecas, Lucan, Quintilian, Martial and others, who in
their own time added literary distinction to the Spanish towns from
which they came. The new extraneous element introduced into Roman
literature draws into greater prominence the characteristics of the last
great representatives of the genuine Roman and Italian spirit--the
historian Tacitus and the satirist Juvenal.
On the whole this century shows, in form, language and substance, the
signs of literary decay. But it is still capable of producing men of
original force; it still maintains the traditions of a happier time; it
is still alive to the value of literary culture, and endeavours by
minute attention to style to produce new effects. Though it was not one
of the great eras in the annals of literature, yet the century which
produced Martial, Juvenal and Tacitus cannot be pronounced barren in
literary originality, nor that which produced Seneca and Quintilian
devoid of culture and literary taste.
This fourth period is itself subdivided into three divisions: (1) from
the accession of Tiberius to the death of Nero, 68--the most important
part of it being the Neronian age, 54 to 68; (2) the Flavian era, from
the death of Nero to the death of Domitian, 96; (3) the reigns of Nerva
and Trajan and part of the reign of Hadrian.
Period from Tiberius to Nero.
1. For a generation after the death of Augustus no new original literary
force appeared. The later poetry of the Augustan age had ended in
trifling dilettantism, for the continuance of which the atmosphere of
the court was no longer favourable. The class by which literature was
encouraged had become both enervated and terrorized. The most remarkable
poetical product of the time is the long-neglected astrological poem of
Manilius which was written at the beginning of Tiberius's reign. Its
vigour and originality have had scanty justice done to them owing to the
difficulty of the subject-matter and the style, and the corruptions
which still disfigure its text. Very different has been the fate of the
_Fables_ of Phaedrus. This slight work of a Macedonian freedman,
destitute of national significance and representative in its morality
only of the spirit of cosmopolitan individualism, owes its vogue to its
easy Latinity and popular subject-matter. Of the prose writers C.
Velleius Paterculus, the historian, and Valerius Maximus, the collector
of anecdotes, are the most important. A. Cornelius Celsus composed a
series of technical handbooks, one of which, upon medicine, has
survived. Its purity of style and the fact that it was long a standard
work entitle it to a mention here. The traditional culture was still,
however, maintained, and the age was rich in grammarians and
rhetoricians. The new profession of the _delator_ must have given a
stimulus to oratory. A high ideal of culture, literary as well as
practical, was realized in Germanicus, which seems to have been
transmitted to his daughter Agrippina, whose patronage of Seneca had
important results in the next generation. The reign of Claudius was a
time in which antiquarian learning, grammatical studies, and
jurisprudence were cultivated, but no important additions were made to
literature. A fresh impulse was given to letters on the accession of
Nero, and this was partly due to the theatrical and artistic tastes of
the young emperor. Four writers of the Neronian age still possess
considerable interest,--L. Annaeus Seneca, M. Annaeus Lucanus, A.
Persius Flaccus and Petronius Arbiter. The first three represent the
spirit of their age by exhibiting the power of the Stoic philosophy as a
moral, political and religious force; the last is the most cynical
exponent of the depravity of the time. Seneca (c. 5 B.C.-A.D. 65) is
less than Persius a pure Stoic, and more of a moralist and pathological
observer of man's inner life. He makes the commonplaces of a
cosmopolitan philosophy interesting by his abundant illustration drawn
from the private and social life of his contemporaries. He has knowledge
of the world, the suppleness of a courtier, Spanish vivacity, and the
_ingenium amoenum_ attributed to him by Tacitus, the fruit of which is
sometimes seen in the "honeyed phrases" mentioned by Petronius--pure
aspirations combined with inconsistency of purpose--the inconsistency of
one who tries to make the best of two worlds, the ideal inner life and
the successful real life in the atmosphere of a most corrupt court. The
_Pharsalia_ of Lucan (39-65), with Cato as its hero, is essentially a
Stoic manifesto of the opposition. It is written with the force and
fervour of extreme youth and with the literary ambition of a race as yet
new to the discipline of intellectual culture, and is characterized by
rhetorical rather than poetical imagination. The six short _Satires_ of
Persius (34-62) are the purest product of Stoicism--a Stoicism that had
found in a contemporary, Thrasea, a more rational and practical hero
than Cato. But no important writer of antiquity has less literary charm
than Persius. In avoiding the literary conceits and fopperies which he
satirizes he has recourse to the most unnatural contortions of
expression. Of hardly greater length are the seven eclogues of T.
Calpurnius Siculus, written at the beginning of the reign of Nero, which
are not without grace and facility of diction. Of the works of the time
that which from a human point of view is perhaps the most detestable in
ancient literature has the most genuine literary quality, the fragment
of a prose novel--the _Satyricon_--of Petronius (d. 66). It is most
sincere in its representation, least artificial in diction, most
penetrating in its satire, most just in its criticism of art and style.
Age of Domitian.
2. A greater sobriety of tone was introduced both into life and
literature with the accession of Vespasian. The time was, however,
characterized rather by good sense and industry than by original genius.
Under Vespasian C. Plinius Secundus, or Pliny the elder (compiler of the
_Natural History_, an encyclopaedic treatise, 23-79), is the most
important prose writer, and C. Valerius Flaccus Setinus Balbus, author
of the _Argonautica_ (d. c. 90), the most important among the writers of
poetry. The reign of Domitian, although it silenced the more independent
spirits of the time, Tacitus and Juvenal, witnessed more important
contributions to Roman literature than any age since the
Augustan,--among them the _Institutes_ of Quintilian, the _Punic War_ of
Silius Italicus, the epics and the _Silvae_ of Statius, and the
_Epigrams_ of Martial. M. Fabius Quintilianus, or Quintilian (c. 35-95),
is brought forward by Juvenal as a unique instance of a thoroughly
successful man of letters, of one not belonging by birth to the rich or
official class, who had risen to wealth and honours through literature.
He was well adapted to his time by his good sense and sobriety of
judgment. His criticism is just and true rather than subtle or
ingenious, and has thus stood the test of the judgment of after-times.
The poem of Ti. Catius Silius Italicus (25-101) is a proof of the
industry and literary ambition of members of the rich official class. Of
the epic poets of the Silver Age P. Papinius Statius (c. 45-96) shows
the greatest technical skill and the richest pictorial fancy in the
execution of detail; but his epics have no true inspiring motive, and,
although the recitation of the _Thebaid_ could attract and charm an
audience in the days of Juvenal, it really belongs to the class of poems
so unsparingly condemned both by him and Martial. In the _Silvae_,
though many of them have little root in the deeper feelings of human
nature, we find occasionally more than in any poetry after the Augustan
age something of the purer charm and pathos of life. But it is not in
the _Silvae_, nor in the epics and tragedies of the time, nor in the
cultivated criticism of Quintilian that the age of Domitian lives for
us. It is in the _Epigrams_ of M. Valerius Martialis or Martial (c.
41-104) that we have a true image of the average sensual frivolous life
of Rome at the end of the 1st century, seen through a medium of wit and
humour, but undistorted by the exaggeration which moral indignation and
the love of effect add to the representation of Juvenal. Martial
represents his age in his _Epigrams_, as Horace does his in his
_Satires_ and _Odes_, with more variety and incisive force in his
sketches, though with much less poetic charm and serious meaning. We
know the daily life, the familiar personages, the outward aspect of Rome
in the age of Domitian better than at any other period of Roman
history, and this knowledge we owe to Martial.
Period of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.
3. But it was under Nerva and Trajan that the greatest and most truly
representative works of the empire were written. The _Annals_ and
_Histories_ of Cornelius Tacitus (54-119), with the supplementary _Life
of Agricola_ and the _Germania_, and the _Satires_ of D. Iunius
Iuvenalis or Juvenal (c. 47-130), sum up for posterity the moral
experience of the Roman world from the accession of Tiberius to the
death of Domitian. The generous scorn and pathos of the historian acting
on extraordinary gifts of imaginative insight and characterization, and
the fierce indignation of the satirist finding its vent in exaggerating
realism, doubtless to some extent warped their impressions; nevertheless
their works are the last voices expressive of the freedom and manly
virtue of the ancient world. In them alone among the writers of the
empire the spirit of the Roman republic seems to revive. The _Letters_
of C. Plinius Caecilius Secundus or Pliny the Younger (61-c. 115),
though they do not contradict the representation of Tacitus and Juvenal
regarded as an exposure of the political degradation and moral
corruption of prominent individuals and classes, do much to modify the
pervadingly tragic and sombre character of their representation.
With the death of Juvenal, the most important part of whose activity
falls in the reign of Trajan, Latin literature as an original and
national expression of the experience, character, and sentiment of the
Roman state and empire, and as one of the great literatures of the
world, may be considered closed.
_Later Writers._
Claudian.
What remains to describe is little but death and decay. Poetry died
first; the paucity of writings in verse is matched by their
insignificance. For two centuries after Juvenal there are no names but
those of Q. Serenus Sammonicus, with his pharmacopoeia in verse (c.
225), and M. Aurelius Olympius Nemesianus, who wrote a few feeble
eclogues and (283) a dull piece on the training of dogs for the chase.
Towards the middle of the 4th century we have Decimus Magnus Ausonius, a
professor of Bordeaux and afterwards consul (379), whose style is as
little like that of classical poetry as is his prosody. His _Mosella_, a
detailed description of the river Moselle, is the least unattractive of
his works. A little better is his contemporary, Rufius Festus Avienus,
who made some free translations of astronomical and geographical poems
in Greek. A generation later, in what might be called the expiring
effort of Latin poetry, appeared two writers of much greater merit. The
first is Claudius Claudianus (c. 400), a native of Alexandria and the
court poet of the emperor Honorius and his minister Stilicho. Claudian
may be properly styled the last of the poets of Rome. He breathes the
old national spirit, and his mastery of classical idiom and
versification is for his age extraordinary. Something of the same may be
seen in Rutilius Namatianus, a Gaul by birth, who wrote in 416 a
description of his voyage from the capital to his native land, which
contains the most glowing eulogy of Rome ever penned by an ancient hand.
Of the Christian "poets" only Aurelius Prudentius Clemens (c. 348-410)
need be mentioned. He was well read in the ancient literature; but the
task of embodying the Christian spirit in the classical form was one far
beyond his powers.
Suetonius.
Apuleius.
The vitality of the prose literature was not much greater though its
complete extinction was from the nature of the case impossible. The most
important writer in the age succeeding Juvenal was the biographer C.
Suetonius Tranquillus (c. 75-160), whose work is more valuable for its
matter than its manner. His style is simple and direct, but has hardly
any other merit. A little later the rise of M. Cornelius Fronto (c.
100-175), a native of Cirta, marks the beginning of an African
influence. Fronto, a distinguished orator and intimate friend of the
emperor M. Aurelius, broke away from the traditional Latin of the Silver
and Golden ages, and took as his models the pre-classical authors. The
reaction was short-lived; but the same affectation of antiquity is seen
in the writings of Apuleius, also an African, who lived a little later
than Fronto and was a man of much greater natural parts. In his
_Metamorphoses_, which were based upon a Greek original, he takes the
wonderful story of the adventures of Lucius of Madaura, and interweaves
the famous legend of Cupid and Psyche. His bizarre and mystical style
has a strange fascination for the reader; but there is nothing Roman or
Italian about it. Two epitomists of previous histories may be mentioned:
Justinus (of uncertain date) who abridged the history of Pompeius
Trogus, an Augustan writer; and P. Annius Florus, who wrote in the reign
of Hadrian a rhetorical sketch based upon Livy. The _Historia Augusta_,
which includes the lives of the emperors from Hadrian to Numerianus
(117-284), is the work of six writers, four of whom wrote under
Diocletian and two under Constantine. It is a collection of personal
memoirs of little historical importance, and marked by puerility and
poverty of style. Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330-400) had a higher
conception of the historian's function. His narrative of the years
353-378 (all that now remains) is honest and straightforward, but his
diction is awkward and obscure. The last pagan prose writer who need be
mentioned is Q. Aurelius Symmachus (c. 350-410), the author of some
speeches and a collection of letters. All the art of his ornate and
courtly periods cannot disguise the fact that there was nothing now for
paganism to say.
Christian writers.
It is in Christian writers alone that we find the vigour of life. The
earliest work of Christian apologetics is the _Octavius_ or Minucius
Felix, a contemporary of Fronto. It is written in pure Latin and is
strongly tinged by classical influences. Quite different is the work of
"the fierce Tertullian," Q. Septimius Florens Tertullianus (c. 150-230),
a native of Carthage, the most vigorous of the Latin champions of the
new faith. His style shows the African revolt of which we have already
spoken, and in its medley of archaisms, Graecisms and Hebraisms reveals
the strength of the disintegrating forces at work upon the Latin
language. A more commanding figure is that of Aurelius Augustinus or St
Augustine (354-430), bishop of Hippo, who for comprehensiveness and
dialectical power stands out in the same way as Hieronymus or St Jerome
(c. 331 or 340-420), a native of Stridon in Dalmatia, does for
many-sided learning and scholarship.
Grammarians.
The decline of literature proper was attended by an increased output of
grammatical and critical studies. From the time of L. Aelius Stilo
Praeconinus, who was the teacher of Varro and Cicero, much interest had
been taken in literary and linguistic problems at Rome. Varro under the
republic, and M. Verrius Flaccus in the Augustan age, had busied
themselves with lexicography and etymology. The grammarian M. Valerius
Probus (c. A.D. 60) was the first critical editor of Latin texts. In the
next century we have Velius Longus's treatise _De Orthographia_, and
then a much more important work, the _Noctes Atticae_ of Aulus Gellius,
and (c. 200) a treatise in verse by Terentianus, an African, upon Latin
pronunciation, prosody and metre. Somewhat later are the commentators on
Terence and Horace, Helenius Acro and Pomponius Porphyrio. The tradition
was continued in the 4th century by Nonius Marcellus and C. Marius
Victorinus, both Africans; Aelius Donatus, the grammarian and
commentator on Terence and Virgil, Flavius Sosipater Charisius and
Diomedes, and Servius, the author of a valuable commentary on Virgil.
Ambrosius Macrobius Theodosius (c. 400) wrote a treatise on Cicero's
_Somnium Scipionis_ and seven books of miscellanies (_Saturnalia_); and
Martianus Capella (c. 430), a native of Africa, published a compendium
of the seven liberal arts, written in a mixture of prose and verse, with
some literary pretensions. The last grammarian who need be named is the
most widely known of all, the celebrated Priscianus, who published his
text-book at Constantinople probably in the middle of the 5th century.
Jurists.
In jurisprudence, which may be regarded as one of the outlying regions
of literature, Roman genius had had some of its greatest triumphs, and,
if we take account of the "codes," was active to the end. The most
distinguished of the early jurists (whose works are lost) were Q.
Mucius Scaevola, who died in 82 B.C., and following him Ser. Sulpicius
Rufus, who died in 43 B.C. In the Augustan age M. Antistius Labeo and C.
Ateius Capito headed two opposing schools in jurisprudence, Labeo being
an advocate of method and reform, and Capito being a conservative and
empiricist. The strife, which reflects the controversy between the
"analogists" and the "anomalists" in philology, continued long after
their death. Salvius Julianus was entrusted by Hadrian with the task of
reducing into shape the immense mass of law which had grown up in the
edicts of successive praetors--thus taking the first step towards a
code. Sex. Pomponius, a contemporary, wrote an important legal manual of
which fragments are preserved. The most celebrated handbook, however, is
the _Institutiones_ of Gaius, who lived under Antonius Pius--a model of
what such treatises should be. The most eminent of all the Roman jurists
was Aemilius Papinianus, the intimate friend of Septimius Severus; of
his works only fragments remain. Other considerable writers were the
prolific Domitius Ulpianus (c. 215) and Julius Paulus, his contemporary.
The last juristical writer of note was Herennius Modestinus (c. 240).
But though the line of great lawyers had ceased, the effects of their
work remained and are clearly visible long after in the "codes"--the
code of Theodosius (438) and the still more famous code of Justinian
(529 and 533), with which is associated the name of Tribonianus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The most full and satisfactory modern account of Latin
literature is M. Schanz's _Geschichte der römischen Litteratur._ The
best in English is the translation by C. C. Warr of W. S. Teuffel and
L. Schwabe's _History of Roman Literature_. J. W. Mackail's short
_History of Latin Literature_ is full of excellent literary and
aesthetic criticisms on the writers. C. Lamarre's _Histoire de la
littérature latine_ (1901, with specimens) only deals with the writers
of the republic. W. Y. Sellar's _Roman Poets of the Republic and Poets
of the Augustan Age_, and R. Y. Tyrrell's _Lectures on Latin Poetry_,
will also be found of service. A concise account of the various Latin
writers and their works, together with bibliographies, is given in J.
E. B. Mayor's _Bibliographical Clue to Latin Literature_ (1879), which
is based on a German work by E. Hübner. See also the separate
bibliographies to the articles on individual writers.
(W. Y. S.; J. P. P.)