Book I. Statius makes a dull start with frigid professions of ignorance

The Library of Literary History

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A LITERARY HISTORY OF ROME IN THE SILVER AGE. By J. WIGHT DUFF,

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_THE LIBRARY

OF

LITERARY HISTORY_

A Literary History of Rome

in the Silver Age

_By the same Author_

A Literary History of Rome. _From the Origins to the Close of the Golden

Age._

“Mr. Duff’s wide acquaintance with modern literature is not the least of

his qualifications.... His treatise, full and erudite, yet everywhere

human and interesting, cannot fail to deepen in his readers the sense of

the continuity of literature and the relation of literature to life, and

the debt of the modern world to Rome.”—_The Times._

“Professor Wight Duff compels us to listen. To those who even dimly

remember their Latin there is something irresistible in his style and

arrangement, in his knowledge and in the temperate freshness of his

criticism.”—_The Nation._

“A work of rare scholarship condensed with consummate care and

judgment.”—_Scotsman._

“What particularly marks it out for suggestiveness and vigour is the

broad human platform from which it surveys the progress of Latin poetry

and prose.”—_The Daily Telegraph._

“An author who can render so many diverse authors adequately appeals to

us at once as an understanding critic at any rate.... There is labour and

erudition and a keen sense of literary values.”—_Saturday Review._

“The book is thoroughly up-to-date, and incorporates the results of

recent philological and historical research. It is written in a style

which commands admiration for its lucidity, terseness and vigour.”—_The

Classical Review._

“The taste and skill of his illustrative translations indicate a critic

whose independent judgment of literary quality, and whose divination

of the final and essential charm of a masterpiece are far better worth

recording than is usually the case in works of this sort. As a matter of

fact, however, we have had no works of this sort, at all events, in our

own tongue.”—_American Journal of Philology._

“L’ouvrage s’addresse donc à un large public cultivé, sans exclure

les gens de métier.... Ses jugements sont ceux d’un homme de goût qui

n’accepte pas sans examen les décisions d’autrui.... Il connaît bien ce

dont il parle et il le fait connaître.”—Professor Lejay in _Revue de

philologie de littérature et d’histoire anciennes_.

“Ein sympathetisches und wohl zu lesendes Buch, dessen Recht und Wert

darin legt dass der Verfasser ein persönliches Verhältnis zu den Personen

und Dingen hat über die er schreibt, seine Eindrücke in die Beleuchtung

einer feinen und weiten Bildung rückt, stets das Ganze nicht trüben

lässt, noch auch umgekehrt. Er hat auch Sinn für den Hintergrund und

Zusammenhang der Dinge, wenigstens so weit beides römisch ist.”—Professor

Friedrich Leo in _Deutsche Literaturzeitung_.

[Illustration: ROMAN ART OF THE SILVER AGE.

Reliefs from frieze of temple of Minerva in Nerva’s Forum representing

the goddess’s patronage of domestic arts.

_From photograph by Alinari._]

A Literary History

of Rome in the

Silver Age

From Tiberius to Hadrian

_By_

J. Wight Duff

_M.A., D.Litt. (Oxon.), Hon. D.Litt. (Durham), LL.D. (Aberdeen);

Professor of Classics, Armstrong College (in the University

of Durham), Newcastle-upon-Tyne_

Author of

“A Literary History of Rome to the Close of the Golden

Age” and “Writers of Rome”

T. Fisher Unwin Limited

Bouverie House, Fleet Street

1927

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

LITTERARVM VETERVM

STVDIOSIS AMATORIBVS

HAS QVALESCVMQVE SVNT LVCVBRATIONES

DE AETATE ARGENTEA EXARATAS

LIBENTISSIMO ANIMO

IOANNES WIGHT DUFF

D. D. D.

ID. IVL. MCMXXVII

Preface

The favourable reception accorded in several countries to my work on _A

Literary History of Rome from the Origins to the Close of the Golden

Age_, of which the first edition appeared in 1909, suggested the idea

of continuing on similar principles the study of Latin literature into

the first and second centuries, during which the Roman empire at its

zenith in power and efficiency rendered its greatest services to human

civilisation. The project was dropped throughout the period of the Great

War, when, even if publication had been feasible, duties on a local

Brigade Committee and for a time as Acting-Principal of my College

effectually removed me from the atmosphere of literary criticism. Even

after my publisher, Mr. Fisher Unwin, was good enough to revive the

design, progress was extraordinarily slow, owing to the increasing

demands made upon time by the recurrent problems of a modern university.

As in the former volume, emphasis has here been laid on the national

character imprinted upon Latin literature despite all borrowings from

Greek models; and attention has been carefully devoted to the evidence

for the facts of an author’s life in an endeavour to recreate the

environment amidst which he wrote. Nor have material sources, whether

Greek or Latin, been overlooked: indispensable though some account of

these must be for a true conception of a writer as at once inheritor

and progenitor, it is surprising to note how little in this country

scholarship has concerned itself with the origin of encyclopaedic

learning like that of the elder Pliny. The arrangement adopted is

different from that in Professor Summers’s skilful handling of a

slightly shorter period in his _Silver Age of Latin Literature_ under

headings of various kinds of literature rather than on chronological

lines. In the present work, where historical background and literary

evolution are alike regarded as of vital importance, the treatment has

been not according to _genre_ but mainly in the order of time. While the

limits set for full discussion of authors are A.D. 14–A.D. 138, these

dates are not rigidly observed respecting relevant topics, such as the

survival of an author’s influence till modern times or the continuance of

the Roman educational system; and an epilogue is added to give a brief

conspectus of the literature which followed the Silver Age.

An attempt has been made to secure acquaintance with a reasonable

proportion of the vast number of treatises and pamphlets written in Latin

and in several modern languages upon matters related to the authors

of the period. The obligations incurred to such works may be gauged

from references in the footnotes. But it is obvious that no amount of

reading in books upon books, however valuable in substance, can avail

to produce either a vital chronicle of any age or serviceable estimates

of its writers without first-hand study of the writers themselves and

independent appreciation of their significance. I hope, therefore,

for success in conveying to readers, by summary, by quotation, and by

criticism, something of the impression made on myself during adventures

among the literary products of the Silver Age. The illustrative

translations from Latin into prose or verse are my own, and have been

for the most part composed specially for this volume. Thanks are due to

the Delegates of the Oxford University Press for permission to use a few

verse renderings which I made for my book on _The Writers of Rome_. The

general reader, whose Latin has perhaps grown rusty, may welcome these

translations as supplementing the historical and critical portions,

while he will doubtless realize that it is optional to consult or not to

consult the footnotes.

The bibliographical notes, it should be explained, are intended, not

to be exhaustive, but to give by mention of selected editions some

clue to the history of the printed text of an author and to include

representative modern studies of his literary significance.

I wish to acknowledge kind assistance rendered by Mr. Basil Anderton,

M.A., Public Librarian, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and by Miss Constance

Shipley, M.A., Lecturer in Classics at Armstrong College, in reading

and criticising some of the chapters of this book. My son, Mr. Arnold

M. Duff, M.A., B.Litt.(Oxon.), Assistant Lecturer in Greek in the

University of Aberdeen, has also perused several chapters and made useful

suggestions, while my wife copied for the press either by hand or by

typewriter almost the whole manuscript. Both have helped greatly in the

checking of proofs and in the verification of references. To Professor

Hermann Dessau of Berlin I owe several references to inscriptions which

he sent me some years ago to amplify those in my article on “Roman

Education” in _The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_. In the choice

of a frontispiece, intended to illustrate the art of the period, I had

the great benefit of advice from Mrs. Arthur Strong, Litt.D., LL.D.,

formerly Assistant-Director of the British School at Rome, in whose

penetrating discernment of the true ethos of Roman sculpture I have

found much to reinforce my argument that within the analogous domain of

literature the Romans knew not only how to borrow from Greece but also

how independently to create the beautiful.

It is a satisfaction to observe among scholars a growing insistence upon

the independent vitality of Roman literature and a growing disinclination

to regard it as a pale second-hand reflection of the splendour of Greek

literature. My friend, the late Dr. Warde Fowler, appended to his

Presidential Address on “The Imagination of the Romans,” read at the

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Meeting of the central Classical Association of

England and Wales in 1920, a note to the effect that he was in agreement

with the contentions advocated on the subject in my _Literary History

of Rome_; and only last year a German Professor, Herr Günther Jachmann,

chose as the theme of an inaugural lecture at Köln “Die Originalität der

römischen Literatur”. The value of Roman literature cannot be grasped

without recognition of the extent to which Roman authors found fresh

stimulus in surroundings widened far beyond those assigned by historical

circumstance to the brilliant intellects of Greece.

J. W. D.

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE

_July 1927_

Table of Contents

PAGE

PREFACE ix

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER

I. PROLOGUE 1

II. ROMAN EDUCATION UNDER THE EMPIRE 23

LITERATURE UNDER TIBERIUS, CALIGULA

AND CLAUDIUS, A.D. 14–A.D. 54

I. THE ELDER SENECA: ORATORS AND RHETORICIANS 42

II. VALERIUS MAXIMUS: A REPERTORY FOR SPEAKERS 65

III. VELLEIUS: CURTIUS: HISTORY 82

IV. CELSUS: MELA: MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING 114

V. PHAEDRUS AND FABLE: POETRY OF THE TIME 133

LITERATURE OF THE NERONIAN PERIOD,

A.D. 54–A.D. 68

I. COLUMELLA AND AGRICULTURE 160

II. PETRONIUS: NOVELIST AND POET 169

III. SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER: MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING 196

IV. SENECAN SATIRE AND POETRY: DRAMA OF THE AGE 237

V. PERSIUS: STOIC SATIRE 279

VI. LUCAN: HISTORICAL EPIC 296

VII. CALPURNIUS SICULUS AND MINOR POETRY OF THE NERONIAN AGE 330

LITERATURE OF THE FLAVIAN PERIOD,

A.D. 69–A.D. 96

I. THE ELDER PLINY: FLAVIAN SCIENCE AND HISTORY 347

II. QUINTILIAN: DECLAMATIONS AND ORATORS 387

III. FRONTINUS AND TECHNICAL WRITERS 422

IV. VALERIUS FLACCUS 433

V. SILIUS ITALICUS 452

VI. STATIUS 467

VII. MARTIAL AND MINOR FLAVIAN POETRY 498

LITERATURE UNDER NERVA AND TRAJAN,

A.D. 96–A.D. 117

I. PLINY THE YOUNGER AND MINOR CONTEMPORARIES 531

II. TACITUS 559

III. JUVENAL 599

LITERATURE IN THE REIGN OF HADRIAN,

A.D. 117–A.D. 138

SUETONIUS AND FLORUS 628

CONCLUSION

AN EPILOGUE—THE SECOND CENTURY AND AFTER 650

INDEX 659

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

PROLOGUE

“Silver” and “Gold” in Roman literature—The period

from Tiberius to Hadrian (A.D. 14–138)—Historical

aspects—Cosmopolitan Rome—Tangible remains—Emperors in relation

to literature—Risks in writing—Fresh individual forces in

Silver literature—The conventional in education—Declaiming and

reciting—Epigrammatic point and decorative tinsel—Corrective

factors in real life—Serious thought—Stoicism—The Stoic

opposition—Influence of Stoic doctrine—Influence of the

provinces—Variety in “Silver” themes and style—Changing

features in the language—Concentration on the terse, the

surprising, and the poetic—Grammar and vocabulary—A few summary

reflections.

In the literary history of Rome one of the most brilliant and attractive

epochs is that part of the first and second centuries of the Christian

era which critics have usually distinguished with the epithet of

“Silver.” The Silver Age of Roman Literature is regarded in the present

work as that immediately following the great times of Augustan poetry and

prose. What has been traditionally reckoned the Golden Age coincided with

the productive careers of Cicero and then Livy in prose, and lasted from

Lucretius to Ovid in verse. While, soon after it began, Catullus wrote

his anti-Caesarian lampoons, it reached its fullest glory when Virgil and

Horace by their works threw lustre around the emergence of the imperial

family—_ecce Dionaei processit Caesaris astrum_, in the language of the

Eclogues. Politically, therefore, the Golden Age saw the final overthrow

of the old senatorial republic and the inauguration of state-control by

a single ruler for Rome and the Roman dominions. Such public oratory

as Cicero’s, which adorned the earlier phases of the age amidst the

unfettered interplay of republican politics, had become an impossible

anachronism before its close, when Augustus concentrated in his person

all the significant powers of the ancient magistracies—_munia senatus

magistratuum legum in se trahere_ is the remark of Tacitus. In time,

then, the Golden Age may be dated from 70 B.C. to A.D. 14, a stretch of

eighty-four years.

The Silver Age is a longer period, even when restricted, as some prefer,

to the years between A.D. 14 and 117, that is from the beginning of

Tiberius’s reign to the end of Trajan’s. Here it has been extended to

include the reign of Hadrian, A.D. 117-138, after which Latin literature

is marked partly by sterility, partly by an artificial archaizing

movement, partly by the entirely different train of thought expressed

in Christian apologetics. Historically, this period of a century and a

quarter coincides with the reigns of all but the first two of Suetonius’s

twelve Caesars, and, in addition, the reigns of Nerva, Trajan and

Hadrian, thirteen emperors altogether. If in the preceding age the empire

was still young and so far, under Augustus, only partially tested, now

during these succeeding generations, in spite of the enormities of

individual emperors and in spite of the ghastly interval of bloodshed

among successive candidates for the purple after Nero’s suicide, the

hold of the system upon the world was firmly established, and its

organization perfected, on the whole, for the benefit of mankind. With

the _Pax Romana_ came greater safety for life and limb both in Italy

and in the provinces; governors abroad were more under the central

control; roads were improved to meet the requirements of the imperial

post-service for despatches; the water-supply of Rome and other cities

was diligently cared for; new harbours were constructed; industry and

trade increased, at any rate up to the point at which the policy of

the bread-dole effected moral ruin for the population and in the end

financial ruin for a state in which the value of free agriculture and

free capital was misunderstood. _Nihil est ab omni parte beatum_; and so,

upon examination, it is plain that amidst the material well-being and

felicities of the second century, even in the prosperous Antonine age

with which Gibbon began his history of _The Decline and Fall_, there

lurked elements of disintegration which would lead to the troubles of the

third century.[1]

During the first century events had revealed the state-secret not only

that emperors might be made by other electors than the Senate, but that

they might be made even elsewhere than in Rome. The tendency, in fact,

was towards a military monarchy, as the careers of Galba, Otho, Vitellius

and Vespasian showed. When one considers, it seems well-nigh inevitable

that an emperor’s absolute power abroad should ultimately expand his

theoretically limited power in Italy and Rome towards absolutism.

Between Augustus as first citizen at the opening of the century and

Domitian claiming to be “Lord and God” towards its end vast changes had

intervened. The dyarchy which Augustus was careful to respect had in time

gone far on its way to monarchy; for the senate not infrequently acted

under imperial coercion. More and more, too, it grew evident that the

basis of the ruler’s power was the army—a conception abhorrent to Romans

of the constitutional republic. In this connexion it is significant

that the title _imperator_ became commoner than _princeps_ about

Trajan’s time. Moreover, the worship of emperors during their lifetime

in association with the cult of the goddess Roma, and the deification

of certain emperors after death, outwardly exalted their office. It is,

however, difficult to see how the notion of _apotheosis_ could seriously

survive among thinking readers of Seneca’s satire on the dead emperor

Claudius; and it is a strange contradiction inherent in circumstances

that, while the sacrifice in honour of a Caesar as the public test of

loyalty involved the martyrdom of many Christians, yet the Caesar-worship

from which their faith revolted did actually by its attainment of

official universality prepare the way for the ultimate predominance of

the Christian religion.

The crucial problem for the empire was, as Augustus foresaw, one

of consolidation rather than aggrandisement; and the only notable

departures from this policy during the whole period were connected with

the annexations in Britain begun by Claudius and those in Dacia and the

East carried out by Trajan. Trajan’s Oriental conquests in the first

quarter of the second century, though soon abandoned by his successor,

brought the Roman Empire to its widest extent, and marked the extremity

of contrast between the primitive pastoral settlement near the Tiber

and the capital of world-wide dominions into which it had evolved.

Rome had in the first century become more cosmopolitan than ever—a

phenomenon sufficient to illustrate in the eyes of a Seneca the essential

brotherhood of mankind, but in the eyes of a Juvenal the objectionable

ubiquity of the alien interloper. It has been argued that, early in the

second century, when Juvenal and Tacitus wrote, “a very small percentage

of the free plebeians on the streets of Rome could prove unmixed Italian

descent.”[2] Here at once we meet a feature of importance for literature.

Rome possessed a wonderful power of nationalizing the foreigner; but

there was sure to be a reaction on her own life and thought. This large

cosmopolitan and international element in the capital contributed towards

a widening of their horizon for literary men, and to it the human note

unquestionably observable in the Silver Age owed a great deal.

The whole period has been made very real to us by writers within recent

times who have investigated its political, constitutional, social,

religious and artistic history.[3] Modern inquiry has combined with

ancient documents to recreate the historical background requisite for

appreciation of the literature, in such a way that few epochs of the

past are so intimately known. In some degree this clear view is due to

the strikingly human note, the living interest in man and his concerns,

which is characteristic of the ablest writers in the Silver Age. Much

of its history and many of its personages have been made to live for

us by Tacitus and Suetonius; its society by Petronius’s novel, the

miscellaneous poems of Statius, the younger Pliny’s letters, Martial’s

epigrams and Juvenal’s satires; its science by the elder Pliny; its

rhetoric by the elder Seneca and Quintilian; its practical ethics by

Seneca the younger. Inscriptions and coins tell their tale; the Colosseum

remains the most imposing monument to the Flavian dynasty; Pompeii puts

before us the dwellings, decorations and the very street-paving of the

time; and Hadrian is brought nearer through his magnificent villa, a

veritable _urbis opus_, close under Tivoli, his gateway at Athens, his

wall in Britain, and his mausoleum familiar now as the Castel Sant’

Angelo at Rome.

Before passing from the historical aspects of the age, one may observe

how the emperors comported themselves in relation to literature.[4] They

were well-educated men, and several of them showed literary talent.

Tiberius in early life cultivated the acquaintance of M. Valerius

Messala Corvinus, the friend of Horace and Tibullus, and modelled his

oratorical style on Messala’s. It was said that he imitated the pathetic

love-stories of Parthenios of Nicaea, who taught Virgil Greek. Tiberius’s

successor Caligula was no author, but he had a turn for shrewd criticism,

discernible in his sharp remark about Seneca’s style as “sand without

lime;”[5] and he recognized classic greatness in literature well enough

to be insanely jealous of it. The next two emperors, Claudius and Nero,

displayed ability as writers, the one in prose, the other in verse. If

we then turn to the Flavian emperors, we find that, although none of the

three felt so enthusiastic for literature as either Claudius or Nero

had done, yet they all extended a certain limited patronage to authors.

Vespasian, _bourgeois_ man of business though he might be, was not

unskilled in Greek eloquence, and composed memoirs. Titus, we know, wrote

a poem on a comet; while his brother Domitian was devoted to poetry in

youth, and later fostered poetic rivalry by the Capitoline and Alban

contests. That competition, when the right circumstances co-operate,

can give health to literature is evident from the lasting greatness of

Athenian drama: unfortunately, the spirit of Domitian’s reign was such as

mainly to favour mediocrity or truckling in its poets. Trajan, without

profound culture himself and no very active patron of letters, at least

maintained friendly relations with such authors as the younger Pliny and

the Greek Dion Chrysostom. His successor Hadrian, versatile and Hellenic

in taste, dabbled in Latin poetry; but, to judge from the surviving

fragments, never so successfully as at the last, when he composed his

death-bed adieu in half a dozen lines to his soul.

Even such a cursory glance at rulers of the time indicates that the

drawback for literature consisted not in their particular unfitness

to play the literary patron but in a generally untoward environment.

Artistic creation of the very freest and highest order was little likely

to thrive in the atmosphere of the first century. The risk of danger

always lay hidden in the unfathomable temperament of an emperor; and in

the very essence of the new _régime_ there wrought elements inimical to

the safe production of literary work. The outspoken oratory of the past

was unacceptable; history was capable of giving offence in high quarters;

even drama could be frowned upon for a line misconstrued as a political

allusion. At a time when Phaedrus’s beast-fables were denounced as

libellous insults, it is not surprising that histories of human affairs

should be adjudged to the flames. The prospects for literary men must

often have appeared dark during the sway of the Julio-Claudian dynasty

in situations such as were created by the espionage which Tiberius

permitted in his later days, by the incalculable caprice of Caligula,

the uncertainties of policy under the wives and freedmen of Claudius,

and the egotistic vanity of Nero. The wonder is not that we have so

small a yield from times so difficult, but that we have so much that has

proved worth preserving. Fortunately, writers took risks. Under Nero,

Petronius was safe, up to a point, in writing a novel of low adventure,

and Seneca was safe, again up to a point, in writing essays on high

moral principles, though even these might be interpreted as implied

reproofs. Lucan, on the other hand, was clearly on the thinnest ice in

writing an epic about Pompey’s heroism in his warfare against Julius

Caesar. This was doubly dangerous; because while the poem might very

well be regarded as anti-imperial, it might also stir the jealousy of

a poet-emperor. Later, under the Flavians, no one could be sure when

the court might grow too suspicious to tolerate philosophers any longer

in Rome, as happened in A.D. 75 and 90. Deep intellectual speculation

has always been liable to enmity as unsettling: and so many members of

noble houses had in troublous times found consolation in Stoicism that

its teaching particularly tended to be associated with opposition to the

imperial system. Apart from this aspect, it may be noted in passing how

Stoic thought shows itself in such poets as Persius, Lucan and Juvenal,

and in such prose writers as Seneca, the elder Pliny and Tacitus. The

period of terror during the later part of Domitian’s reign, fifteen years

of “silence” as Tacitus viewed it, pressed most severely upon history.

But it was not impossible to write securely, if an author chose remote

epic themes as Statius did, or composed scores of occasional epigrams

as Martial did. Indeed, there never was a time when dilettanti recited

more energetically their latest productions before a select circle of

friends. After Domitian’s death, history and oratory recovered a modicum

at least of their old freedom. Nerva’s principate was too brief to affect

literature deeply, though it brought that welcome release from tyranny

which bore fullest fruit in the historical labours of Tacitus under

Trajan. This fresh impulse, however, seemed almost spent by the reign of

Hadrian; for Suetonius and Florus were artistically but poor successors

to Tacitus. Under Hadrian a revival of interest in Hellenism and the

prominence of authors writing in Greek combined with the emperor’s

example to act as positive setbacks to the fashion of writing in Latin.

In its literary aspects the whole age makes a fascinating study. Its

appropriate epithet of “Silver” concedes the classic superiority of the

Golden Age (_aurea prima sata est aetas ... subiit argentea proles_);

but silver, viewed as metal or as literature, retains a value of its

own, and the metaphorical title, whether it calls to mind a glittering

style or a literary convention already somewhat silvered with time, is

both picturesque and instructive. No apology is needed for a survey

of literary works created during the greatest period of the Roman

Empire. Parallel with its administrative triumphs and its permanent

services to civilization, we discover, in an adventure among its

masterpieces, artistic production of high quality, thought commensurate

with the achievement of the times, and engrossing portrayal of life.

Convention has been alluded to, and we may trace much of it at work

among authors; yet it is only fair to point out that the Silver Age

had its unique geniuses. Nowhere else is a Tacitus or a Juvenal to be

found, each uttering an individual note, and each among the greatest

names in the domains of historical prose and poetic satire respectively.

Phaedrus in fable, Petronius in the novel, Martial in epigram, Pliny in

letter-writing were all fresh forces; nor is there any Seneca elsewhere

in Latin, whether we like his style or not. Even the massive proportions

of some works composed during this age are impressive though sometimes

forbidding—it is so much easier, and commoner, to criticize than to read

the thirty-seven books of Pliny’s _Natural History_ or the seventeen of

Silius’s epic. Before the incessant industry of the elder Pliny, less

hard-working generations might, like his nephew, stand abashed. But such

phenomenal diligence is not necessarily attractive; and probably what

most draws readers to the Silver Age is that human note already mentioned

which, in the midst of widespread artificiality elsewhere, makes many of

the authors interesting to all periods. No one can take up Petronius,

Juvenal, Martial or Tacitus without feeling that real life and real

things are being described and without feeling absorbed by that reality.

The chief formative factors of this complex literature may be rapidly

passed under review. Foremost of all the influences at work was the

contemporary education in letters and rhetoric.[6] While the general

training in letters opened up the treasures of Greek and Latin

literature as sources of inspiration for prospective writers, the special

training in the principles and practice of speaking profoundly affected

style. The predominant study of poets in the rhetorical academies tended

to obliterate the true demarcation between prose and poetry, leaving upon

prose the indelible poetic tint which is characteristic of the Silver

Age. The imitation of Virgil, traceable in Lucan, well-marked in Valerius

Flaccus, and still more so in Silius and Statius, was by no means

confined to these epic writers; it spread to occasional verse, epigram

and satire; and it invaded prose, so that the style of Tacitus must be

viewed in relation to Virgilian influence. Nor was this only a matter of

poetic colour: the bones, as it were, of the language were affected in

the altered grammar and syntax which have presently to be discussed and

illustrated.

Manner of expression came to be deeply modified by the systematic

instruction in rhetoric and by the declamatory exercises (especially the

_controuersia_ and _suasoria_) composed by the student practising the

use of figures of speech, exclamations, apostrophes, interrogations,

and innumerable other artifices, which he had been taught by a rhetor

to consider effective for the purposes of argument or display. The

declamation wore more than one aspect. A serious ingredient in the

educational system, it was an exercise to be regularly practised by

learners as a training in argument; and, whatever its futility under

some instructors, sensible authorities like Quintilian had in view the

solid kind of argument useful in a law-court.[7] It combined certain

of the functions of a modern essay with those of a debating society.

It had even a romantic side; for not a few of its themes anticipated

elements in medieval tales and modern novels. But it was open to attack

from the first. The Romans indeed showed their common sense in calling

the exercise _declamatio_—something of loud-voiced overstatement was

implied in that half-derogatory term. Being a pillar of the educational

fabric it was, like most things in education, pretty sure to be

criticized. However much pleasure it might give an admiring parent to

hear his son exhibit his eloquence on speech day, this supreme test of

the school career and reputed passport to success in life was subjected

to incisive attacks, examples of which may be read in Petronius and

Tacitus. No one could deny the readiness attainable by such practice

in the rhetorical academy, any more than one could fairly overlook

the metaphysical importance of some at least of the themes with which

medieval Scholasticism was concerned; but in the one case, as in the

other, a ceaseless immersion in verbiage caused stagnation of thought.

Obscurantist professors of what was in itself an excellent art checked

the progress of eloquence and robbed it eventually of life. Yet for

generations it defied detraction, and in spite of defects, produced a

long line of capable speakers. Unduly elaborated subtlety was at the

worst wearisome: it was not destructive like the shameless perversion of

the art practised by professional informers (_delatores_), who saw in the

share of confiscated goods allowed to them by the Government a handsome

reward for misapplying rhetoric towards compassing convictions on charges

of treason.

Two sets of circumstances reinforced this rhetorical influence; one,

the not uncommon habit of continuing exercise in declamations, either

privately or under a master, long after college days; the other, an

author’s custom, derived from Augustan times, of holding _recitationes_

of his compositions in prose or verse before an invited gathering of

friends, partly to elicit criticism, partly to advertise a forthcoming

work, and also very largely to impress the audience. Under this last

aim lay many pitfalls. Literature designed for a kind of parade tended

to repeat the qualities of the academic show-piece. The ideal coveted

was the production of telling effects. Hence ingenuity was expected in

narrative, description and argument, with the result that a wide entrance

stood open for the precious and far-fetched. A discourse, an oration,

or a poem had to exhibit its author’s ability in elaborating academic

commonplaces into surprisingly terse epigrams or _sententiae_; it had

to wear the variegated adornments of rhetoric so that the style often

became outrageously rococo in taste. Of the worst excesses of the Silver

Age one feels as did Alceste in _Le Misanthrope_, when he expressed his

disdain for Oronte’s sonnet:

“Ce n’est que jeu de mots, qu’ affectation pure,

Et ce n’est point ainsi que parle la nature.”

Artificiality driven to such extremes meant a divorce from plain common

sense; for natural feeling met its death in the exuberant riot of

epigram, word-play, antithesis, apostrophes and other devices. Similarly,

when presenting a hypothetical case in a _controuersia_ or _suasoria_,

the speaker’s temptation was to cast about for novel arguments; and the

quest after something novel was apt to lead far away from reality into

unnatural extravagances of perverted ingenuity. Both defence and attack

in the _controuersiae_ reported by the elder Seneca give, we shall find,

many examples of those incredibly smart inventions. Rhetorical gymnastics

of this sort, while they had the merit of ensuring a high degree of

readiness and finish in speech and in style as a whole, yet fostered

in some speakers and authors an empty glibness from which no great

literature could grow. The contemporary complaints about the decadence

of oratory are significant. Despite all the attention lavished upon it,

eloquence deteriorated. Over-cultivation would contribute to a measure of

staleness, and political conditions had taken the heart out of the old

type; but, beyond all that, the rhetoric of the schools was too remote

from truth to produce good style.

It was well for literature, therefore, that actual life counteracted

the cramping effects of rhetorical training. Many a promising academic

speaker got his first salutary awakening when he had to plead a real case

in a law-court. Furthermore, contact with the multiplicity of life in

Rome, and with the various peoples included in the empire, was certain to

stimulate and deepen an interest in man as such. It would be a profound

mistake to overlook the complex nature of the Silver literature, or to

imagine that we could sum up its qualities as if they were solely those

of clever rhetoric, or to forget the realists of the time—Petronius,

Juvenal, Martial. Of these three, while Petronius proves that he could

compose in the conventional vein when he liked, it is Juvenal who makes

the most interesting blend, because he can be at once declamatory and

realistic. If the worst manner of the declamations reappears in some

of the rant which disfigures Seneca’s tragedies, Juvenal on the other

hand is not mastered by but master of the declamatory element. This

simply indicates that rhetorical artifice could be turned to different

purposes by different hands: while it was used with mechanical precision

by Valerius Maximus and with oppressive ingenuity by Lucan, it attained

a miraculous brilliance under the pen of Tacitus. One feels with relief

that Tacitus avoids Lucan’s besetting sin of overdoing the epigrammatic;

for no Latin author is so absorbingly possessed by the passion for

point as Lucan. Like Ovid in his quest after cleverness, Lucan casts

about among several ways of saying the same thing, serves up obscure

subtleties, and inserts digressions favourable to erudite description.

As in his fellow epic-writers Valerius, Statius, Silius, this love of

description again and again beguiles the author into subordinating the

artistic unity of the whole to the elaboration of separate passages.

It has been pointed out that, alongside of this prevalence of the

academic, there was the corrective element of genuine interest in man

to give permanent value to much of the Silver Literature. While direct

observation of life was the best antidote to unreal rhetoric, there were

other factors which made for serious thought in preference to merely

smart expression. One, already mentioned, was the Stoic philosophy,

which offered to its followers an ordered view of the world as well as

guidance in matters of conduct, especially at a crisis in life. Now

grown more practical and therefore more Roman, since it had abandoned

its extremest paradoxes, neo-Stoicism counted among the influences

which encouraged a fellow-feeling amongst mankind. Between Stoicism

and Cynicism, which the earlier Stoics had admitted to be a short cut

to virtue,[8] there was much in common. In agreement broadly, although

not in detail, concerning virtue, reason (_logos_), cosmopolitanism and

freedom of will, both disciplines reckoned numerous adherents in the

early empire. They now definitely overshadowed the neo-Pythagoreans

and neo-Sceptics. Other schools also had lost ground. The prestige of

Epicureanism was waning, while pure Platonism and pure Aristotelianism

failed to attract the Roman mind. But Stoicism contained elements more

commendably intelligible. Above all things, it emphasized conduct: it was

an applied science of life, offering for troublesome enigmas a solution

which, even if not finally satisfying, claimed a true accord with nature,

and in the experience of many was found workable. With less demand upon

intellectual subtlety than Platonism, practical Stoicism more adequately

suited the Roman temperament as a preparation for facing the things that

may happen.[9] For many thinking Romans it must have been a consolation

to realize that, though they might feel repelled from activity in the

political sphere controlled by a Caesar, they yet remained citizens of

a cosmopolis—a world-state, wherein they were fellow-citizens with God,

participators in the divine essence and free by reason of a freedom

divinely conferred. “God is near you,” writes Seneca, “with you, within

you. This I say, Lucilius: a holy spirit abides within us, watcher of our

deeds good or evil, and guardian over us.”[10] In the spiritual realm,

then, the Stoic was an intellectual aristocrat, conscious of an eternally

virtuous power which enabled him to disdain misfortune and defy a Nero

or a Domitian. Nor was this position the outcome of tumid rhetoric or

ingenious theorizing: it was put to the proof: it was a faith in which

men died and women faced exile.

Theoretically the Stoic creed did not prevent its followers from being

loyal citizens of the empire; but in practice there was certain to be

conflict. Their exaltation of virtue and their austere regimen in life

were implicit rebukes to a luxurious emperor or court: the not uncommon

actual abstention of Stoics from politics and their half-cynical

attitude of independence gave further grounds for suspicion. Julius

Kanus offended Caligula by uncompromising argument, and Thrasea under

Nero was charged with disbelief in the deification of Poppaea and with

contempt for state-religion. Besides, the historical outlook of many

Stoics as _laudatores temporis acti_ tended to give umbrage in high

imperial quarters. Revolutionary sympathies might not illogically be

suspected in enthusiasts for “Romans of the olden times.” It had been

dangerous to call Cassius “last of the Romans”: it was scarcely less

dangerous to drink toasts to the memory of Brutus and Cassius on their

birthdays.[11] There lay significance in the fact that Helvidius Priscus,

who had been banished by Nero, renewed under Vespasian his subversive

propaganda in favour of what was termed democracy, but was really planned

to be a government of Rome by the senatorial class in consonance with

philosophical ideas.[12] It is scarcely surprising then that Vespasian

expelled all philosophers except Musonius.[13] Only after Domitian did

the imperial government become reconciled with Stoicism, which in the

second century was the prevailing creed of educated Romans and found one

of its classic exponents in the Greek reflections of an emperor.

The concept of a Stoic opposition under the empire must not call up the

picture of a regularly organized party of disaffection. The Stoic might,

like Seneca, take service with a Caesar. But among several features of

the empire which provoked hostility two at any rate stand out. A Stoic

could not avoid feeling repelled at once by Caesar-worship, and by the

development of a largely mechanical bureaucracy in which the individual

lacked scope for the competent performance of duty. Now Stoicism claimed

to supply the very competence for which there was little or no safe

outlet in imperial employment. The strong tendency among Roman Stoics

of the first century to accentuate the individual came less from an

aggressive Cynic standpoint than, as in Seneca, from a conception of the

inward development of personality effected by rigorous self-examination.

It did not amount to an assertion of the individual as an absolute

and independent entity; nevertheless, it encouraged that doctrine of

self-sufficiency and that portion of disdain for others which can be

illustrated from both Lucan and Persius.

Nor should the senatorial opposition under the Caesars be mistaken for

lineal representatives of the nobles of the republic. The old families

died out fast: some of their scions, as Tacitus and Juvenal show, lapsed

into indigence and menial occupations. The patrician houses of the senate

in Julius’s day are almost extinct by Hadrian’s time: Aemilii, Claudii,

Fabii, Manlii and Valerii are gone: it is almost a surprise to find

Cornelii. This disappearance of the ancient blood was due not so much to

tyranny as to that voluntary childlessness which imperial legislation had

attempted to discourage. A large proportion, then, of the new aristocracy

was not of the old republican stock, but represented a fresh strain drawn

from the industrial democracy of Caesar’s age: it was destined in turn to

collapse through its own prosperity.

Both on contemporary and on subsequent thought neo-Stoicism exercised

an almost incalculable influence. The insistence on a moral order in

nature to which man must conform made for salutary discipline, and the

doctrine of the immanence of the divine reason ennobled the conception

of duty. The recognition of moral progress, in contrast to the

uncompromising tenet of sudden perfection held by the early Stoics, was

a more practical, a more encouraging, a more human view which possessed

a tonic value beyond the reach of outworn paradoxes. Again, while the

Stoic teaching on the brotherhood of man fostered kindliness, that on

the equality of man fostered fairness of treatment.[14] These and other

doctrines of value colour the deep Stoic influence on Roman law. In

the field of religion, Stoicism proved ultimately to be a solvent of

polytheism; for though Stoics might profess belief in the divinities of

traditional paganism, they yet turned to allegory as an explanation of

the myths, and thus tended to undermine an unquestioning acceptance of

the gods. Stoicism, therefore, with its pantheistic trend contributed to

the annihilation of traditional religion among the intellectuals without

fully establishing monotheism to replace the polytheistic system.

Another of the more serious influences of the age, largely, though, as

we shall find, not entirely independent of rhetorical artifice, was the

practical interest in learning of an encyclopaedic sort, exemplified in

Celsus, the elder Pliny and the lost works of Suetonius. The discontent

repeatedly expressed over men’s waste of time is another reminder that

the more serious thinkers were unlikely to reap permanent satisfaction

either from social amenities or from vapid rhetoric. We have something

like a gospel of work if we combine Phaedrus’s scoffing remarks on the

fussy _ardaliones_, Seneca’s distaste for spending energy on trifles,

the elder Pliny’s nervous husbandry of hours for study, his nephew’s

grumblings about encroachments upon leisure, and even Martial’s regrets

over procrastination and lost opportunities—_soles ... nobis pereunt et

imputantur_, as he so humanly says.

Yet another influence which must not go unnoticed is that of the

provinces, and especially the influence exercised by the old province of

Spain. With some claim to have developed a partially independent culture

of its own, it spoke a Latin which naturally retained certain idioms,

words and sounds used by previous generations of soldiers and colonists.

Latin which had grown old-fashioned at Rome might still in these days be

heard in Spain. It is not altogether fanciful to detect a Spanish note

in parts of the Silver Literature; for among Romano-Spaniards of the

time were the Senecas and Lucan, Columella, Quintilian, Martial, besides

several rhetors of standing. Trajan was a native of the Spanish Italica,

where Hadrian’s ancestors had lived since the days of the Scipios. It

is significant of the contribution being made by the provinces to Rome

that the Spanish influence is observable in the first century, to be

followed by the development of an African Latinity in the second, and

the flourishing of Romano-Gallic rhetoric in the third. The contemporary

influence of Greece also acted externally upon Rome in so far as it was

exerted by Greeks who taught or wrote in the city. History has recorded

how responsive to personal contact with Greece itself were emperors

like Nero and Hadrian; but the deeper Hellenic influence lay imbedded

in the literature of the past, constantly lectured upon and assimilated

generation after generation in Rome.

The wonderful variety of the Silver literature depends on the

intermingling of such currents of influence, old and new. Tradition

and inheritance, both Greek and Roman, operate side by side with fresh

problems and interests. It was no age of stagnation. Distinctive, though

conventional, voices are heard in the epics of Lucan and of his three

successors, Valerius, Statius and Silius, whether, as in the case of the

first and the last of these, they chose a historical theme, or, as in

the case of the other two, they had recourse to mythology. Virgilianism

acted there, as it also did in the eclogues by which Calpurnius Siculus

transmitted pastoral poetry to Nemesianus. The drama of the day, never

very great, has left, besides the _Octauia_, which is the single extant

historical play in Latin, only Seneca’s mythological tragedies based

on the Greek dramatists. Far more individual power is shown in satire.

Persius, a convinced young Stoic student of Horace, fulminates in

crabbedly compressed sermonettes against moral backsliding; and later,

Juvenal, proclaiming himself to belong to the literary lineage of

Lucilius and Horace, displays his unsurpassable strength of invective.

Satire may be said to have taken a new turn early in the first century

when Phaedrus used the iambics of his beast-fables to suggest with

mischievous irony the foibles of mankind, and once more a new turn

when, in the last quarter of the century, Martial perfected the epigram

with the stinging close after the fashion which has ever since made him

famous. In the revival of the Menippean satire, formerly associated with

the name of Varro, we again encounter the medley of verse and prose. This

type is represented in Seneca’s skit on the deification of Claudius and

in Petronius’s picaresque novel.

As regards prose style, the names of Seneca and Petronius mark two

different tendencies traceable throughout the period—Seneca, usually

artificial, though less so in his satire; and Petronius, as becomes a

portrayer of manners, more influenced by the spoken Latin of his day. It

might have been expected that encyclopaedic, scientific and technical

learning should be uniformly conveyed in the simple style; but it is

not always so. Straightforward expression, as a rule, characterized

Celsus in the medical part of his encyclopaedia (and presumably also

in the lost parts), besides Columella in his agricultural treatise,

and Frontinus writing about aqueducts; whereas one detects, on the

other hand, the lure of the purple patch when the elder Pliny pauses

for intervals of reflection in his gigantic _Natural History_. So too

Pomponius Mela’s geographical manual is needlessly decorated with flashes

of intended eloquence; while Valerius Maximus’s handbook of stories

for rhetoricians would have been more entertaining, had he told the

stories in plainer style, leaving embellishment to the rhetoricians for

whom he collected them. In history restraint of style is far to seek.

Velleius Paterculus is convicted by his excessive superlatives alone,

though one forgives him much for his surprisingly original interest in

certain aspects of literary history. Curtius Rufus, handling the grand

subject of Alexander’s campaigns, shows his ability in semi-romantic

description rather than in historical inquiry. During the Neronian era,

we meet the epigrammatic manner in Seneca’s philosophy. The brilliant

neatness of his sentences lent them a quotability which essayists in

later literatures have loved. But this is a manner whose qualities cloy;

and a revulsion from his style soon took place, when in the Flavian era

Quintilian’s lectures warned students against the seductions of Senecan

prose and beckoned them back to Cicero’s rounded periods as the true

models for composition. A modified Ciceronianism is, therefore, visible

in Quintilian, and a still more modified Ciceronianism in his pupil, the

younger Pliny. It also marks Tacitus’s early dialogue on oratory; but

his characteristic style, that of his historical writing, is notoriously

the triumph of an original genius in verbal parsimony. The closing phase

of the Silver Age still exhibits the two tendencies side by side in

Suetonius’s business-like sentences and in Florus’s feeble echoes of

rhetorical utterance.

The language which was the medium for this literature may be briefly

surveyed. Some aspects of Silver Latinity have been incidentally touched

upon in connexion with the preponderating amount of poetry read at

school, which bore fruit not merely in poetic phraseology and Virgilian

imitations, but in constructions (like the familiar dative of the agent

with a passive verb) now transferred from poetry to prose. No doubt

some of the typical usages and idioms which we shall find illustrated

in Silver authors are due to the inevitable change which any living

language must undergo. Old words gain a new meaning:[15] new words are

introduced. The Latin of Cicero could not have been, either in vocabulary

or in sentence-structure or in grammar, the Latin of five generations

later:[16] hence we are prepared to observe in Tacitus and other writers

of the Silver Age alterations in the employment of the subjunctive mood,

fresh meanings of prepositions (like _circa_ and _citra_), new usages of

and new positions for connective particles.[17]

In tracing differences between Silver and earlier Latin, it is difficult

to assess the relative importance of the universal tendency in language

towards change and of such special influences as the systematic drill

in rhetoric and poetry. Some apparent changes such as are noticeable

in the position of _igitur_, in a seemingly strange word, or strange

meaning, or in the use of a mood, are in reality inheritances from one

or two prose writers of the Golden Age, especially Sallust and Livy:

what had once been an exception has become, if not the rule, at least

much commoner. Apart, however, from the inevitable laws of development,

the Latin language of the first century and a half of the Christian

era was most deeply affected by three fixed attitudes of mind—the

rhetorical passion for terseness, the rhetorical passion for novel modes

of expression, and the rhetorical concentration of study upon poetic

authors. Of these, compression was especially admired in the clause or

phrase with epigrammatic point, but its pursuit was accountable not only

for the shorter sentence in vogue, but for all sorts of ellipses[18] in

grammar and for a copious employment of asyndeton. The avoidance of the

stereotyped made for the introduction of new words and meanings, greater

freedom in the handling of moods, and a departure from the more regularly

balanced clauses and phrases of Ciceronian Latin. Many of the changes

in vocabulary are due to the individual genius of prose writers who

invented words, or, by adopting them from the common speech, gave them

a literary _cachet_. Under this head, Tacitus is an excellent example

both as innovator and as lover of the rare word. Probably few who use the

term “accumulator,” in speaking of modern apparatus, know that it was

invented by Tacitus to describe one who heaps up wealth. The liking for

the unusual which pervades his sentence-structure, his expression and his

syntax descends into his selection of words. Thus, when there is a choice

between noun-forms ending in _-men_ and _-mentum_, he characteristically

decides for the more uncommon form: he actually invents _imitamentum_,

though _imitamen_ had the poetic sanction of Ovid.

The wholesale invasion of prose by the poetic element already emphasized

calls only for a few illustrations in a preliminary survey. It is poetic

example that leads Seneca to write _senium_ for _senectus_, _Venus_ for

_amor_, _iuuenta_ for _iuuentus_, and leads Tacitus to use Lucretian

words like _insatiabiliter_, Virgilian words like _breuia_ (“shoals”),

and adjectives like _indefessus_ and _intemeratus_ which both Virgil and

Ovid had used before him. It is the poetic turn of expression also that

fostered the increasing boldness of personification in prose, the use of

abstract nouns in a concrete or personal sense,[19] and the substantival

use of a neuter adjective.[20] Poetry affected the grammar of cases and

tenses as well. Thus the Latin perfect used in a general sense, like the

gnomic “aorist of experience” in Greek, was in Augustan Latin still a

poetic usage of which Virgil was fond in the _Georgics_; but by Seneca’s

time it had passed into imperial prose.[21] These and other instances,

too many for citation here, make it evident that the language no less

than the literature of the Silver Age has the interest of possessing

distinctive features of its own.

A few reflections may fitly form a summary and conclusion to this

introduction. When considering the Silver Age, in style so easily

contrasted with its golden predecessor, one must beware of so isolating

its artificialities as to produce an impression that it teems with

faults. The truth rather is that the Silver Age does by a natural

process of literary evolution continue tendencies already present in

Augustan times. There is in Horace an artificiality which in some measure

anticipates Persius and Statius; there are in Ovid ingenuities prophetic

of Seneca and Lucan; and in Sallust and Livy aspects of prose which

foreshadow Tacitus. There was no violent break; but in time, if only

by reason of a gradual and apparently cyclic exhaustion of genius, the

changes become too obvious to miss. It is perfectly reasonable, it is

indeed incumbent, to state the differences; but they must be so stated

as to include not merely signs of stylistic variation but fresh notes

of wider outlook in certain later writers who come close to the general

human heart, perhaps because less exclusively aristocratic than the elder

Romans. A catholic criticism must do justice to their strength as well as

to their weakness.

Such a caveat is needful, because the factors of national deterioration,

even though they worked slowly, were unquestionably manifold. They were

not merely political and economic: they were physiological and, what is

of deep significance for literature, they were psychological. Though it

is easy to to take an exaggerated view of vice under the empire, there

is nevertheless significance in the fact that the most powerful voices

in the whole period are the voices of protest raised by Juvenal and

Tacitus: satire and irony inevitably flourished in such an environment.

There is a strong temptation to see little but proof of decadence in the

conventional imitators among the poets of the age, its literary conceits,

and unreal rhetoric, and even in its occasional recourse to the opposite

tendency towards innovation, which French criticism has taught us to

associate, as much as imitation, with decadent literature. Broadly the

undeniable truth is that the Silver poets, whatever their literary skill,

have fallen off in sheer artistic achievement. To turn from Lucretius

and Virgil to Valerius Flaccus and Statius is to recognize an inferior

quality of soul. The Silver poets have less whereon to feed man’s higher

nature. Virgil’s profundity of feeling and reflection is something more

enduring than refinements based on rhetorical commonplaces. Enough has,

however, been said to lay stress upon the variety of the Silver Age,

and upon the unfairness of estimating it solely as an age of decadence.

One can no more affix a single label on a composite era than one can

indict a nation. If the feeble echo or the falsetto note is often heard,

it is not the only sound. The literature of the time must be judged

positively by its own appeal to the world. Under this aspect, the

Silver Age has its unique luminaries, the individuality of whose genius

ensures them permanent fame. The mark of the true classic is the power

of giving pleasure to the young and old of many generations through

some fascinating and constantly renewed testimony to the indestructible

continuity of human nature. Its interest is therefore universal, and its

popularity unrestricted to an epoch. Readers of different countries at

different epochs find in such work a source of eternal delight: it is not

alien to them, nor they to it. In so far as authors of the Silver Age

can address themselves successfully to mankind, and some of them beyond

challenge retain this power, their place is secure among the immortals.

CHAPTER II

ROMAN EDUCATION UNDER THE EMPIRE

Connexion of Roman Education with Literature—Evolution through

three periods—Emergence of three grades in education—Some

problems of elementary education—Suitable nurses and

reading-books—“Secondary” training under _grammatici_—Province

of “grammar”—Exercises prescribed—Authors taught by

_grammatici_—The higher training in rhetoric—Exercises

preliminary to declamation—The _suasoria_—The

_controuersia_—Ingenuity and unreality combined—The broad

basis of sound oratory—Subjects included in Roman schemes

of education—Spread of the traditional system in imperial

times—Decay of Greek in the West—Growth of governmental

interest in education—Attitude of emperors towards provincial

academies and the later fortunes of the old education.

The main clue to the literary qualities of Silver Latin is to be found

in education, and particularly in rhetorical education. No social

or political factor exercised so determining an influence upon the

literature of imperial Rome. It cannot be too clearly realized how

potent must have been the effect of a training which was undergone by

the writers, speakers and civil servants of each generation, and which

had for its cardinal aims, first, to secure a thoroughly appreciative

acquaintance with the best poetry in the literatures of Greece and Rome,

and, next, to equip students with the power of effective and persuasive

speech. A connected account of the education in vogue is, therefore, a

fitting prelude to the evidence for the rhetorical system which may be

drawn from such sources as the _Controuersiae et Suasoriae_ collected by

the elder Seneca, Quintilian’s _Institutio Oratoria_, Tacitus’s _Dialogus

de Oratoribus_ and the notes by Suetonius _De Grammaticis_ and _De

Rhetoribus_.

* * * * *

Roman education, viewed in its continuity, underwent certain well-defined

processes of evolution.[22] Its history from first to last, from simple

to complex, possesses the interest of showing how the primitive domestic

discipline made way for a cosmopolitan culture imparted in great measure

by skilful foreigners, and how the ancient training of what we should

call a primary type came to be amplified by a “secondary” curriculum,

and still further by advanced courses of a “University” character.

Interesting, however, as is the whole of this development, it is with

definite phases and periods that we are here concerned. One may, in

fact, conveniently think of Roman education as falling broadly into

three ages, ending, each in its turn, with the Punic Wars, the reign of

Hadrian (_circ._ A.D. 120), and the close of the Western Empire. Here

we are mainly concentrating attention on the earlier generations of the

Christian era; and what we find, as regards education, is that, before

the opening of our period, scholastic training at Rome had gone through

its most progressive stage, and, in range of subjects and interest,

had left far behind the ancient parental instruction. That old type of

instruction is best exemplified by the rigid, unromantic and severely

practical method according to which the elder Cato brought up his

son,[23] and which, despite limitations, was well adapted to the mind,

body and estate of the older Romans. It was a grounding in the elements

of reading, writing and arithmetic, coupled with sound physical and

moral instruction, and had been entrusted by custom largely to those

agents of education in the home whom Seneca happily calls the “domestic

magistrates.”[24] In those early times which the younger Pliny[25]

recalls with admiring regret, it was possible that every parent should be

an instructor and that the intimate companionship between father and son

should be relied upon to guarantee not only proficiency in the barest

essentials of intellectual education, but also ability to serve in the

army, knowledge of the laws and of religious rites, propriety of conduct

and experience helpful in advising or controlling men.

As the ages passed, however, increased complexity of social conditions,

together with the influx of Greeks whether bond or free, tended

inevitably to relegate the work of equipping youthful minds to cultured

slaves under parental supervision, and, at a later stage, very often to

grammarians, rhetoricians and philosophers who settled in Rome eager to

convey knowledge. Besides, the Romans, as conquest brought them nearer

to world-dominion, were shrewd enough to recognize that a training

which had suited the burgher of a city-state stood in need of generous

extension, if it were to mould the citizens of a governing power charged

with imperial responsibilities. The momentous agent of expansion in Roman

education was the influence of Greece.[26] The expansion itself may be

fairly gauged from the acquaintance with the principles of Greek rhetoric

common among the upper classes at Rome by the middle of the second

century B.C., and from the establishment of three several grades of

education controlled respectively by the _litterator_, the _grammaticus_

and the _rhetor_. These correspond roughly to the elementary, secondary

and University standards of modern days.[27] While, however, literary

and rhetorical education had reached a high pitch of proficiency long

before our period opens and ceased to alter much in method, there are,

on the other hand, before our period closes, signs of a changed attitude

towards education on the part of the imperial authorities—signs, in fact,

indicating some amount of endowment and control by municipalities and by

the Emperor.

Allusion has been made to the emergence of three grades of education.

Of these, the “secondary” and “University” grades possessed under the

Empire the deepest significance for their effects upon literature because

of the attention bestowed upon the grammatical and aesthetic study of

authors, upon rhetoric and upon philosophy. But while the bearing on

literature is necessarily closer at these second and third stages in the

educational fabric, still one cannot ignore the “primary” training, which

contained features of fundamental importance for thought and literary

production. It is not germane here to consider, as Quintilian does in

the first book of his treatise, the methods of conveying to children the

rudiments of reading, writing and arithmetic,[28] or to comment on the

awkwardness of the Roman numerals.[29] Perhaps, in passing, it may be

worth remark that the proportion of illiterates in ancient Rome was less

than many might be disposed to guess; for elementary education must have

been fairly extensive by the time of Polybius to admit of the circulation

of military orders in writing; and the scribblings on walls in Pompeii

argue a widespread ability to read and write in the first century

A.D. But two problems in the most elementary education are not to be

passed over, for they appeared to ancient thinkers to be vital in their

influence upon character and taste. These were the choice of a nurse,

and, at a subsequent stage, the choice of books from which reading should

be taught. To Quintilian both were matters of serious consideration.

Although primitive custom preferred, and learned authors[30] argued, that

mothers should suckle their own infants, and although the devoted care

of a mother remained up to imperial times an appreciable and appreciated

factor in shaping youthful lives,[31] still there is evidence for the

employment, at an early period in Rome, of both foster-mothers and dry

nurses. At a later period the large number of household nurses may be

inferred from inscriptions.[32] Their province, it was recognized, was

not confined to sound alimentation; they helped to form character for

better or worse, and to eliminate bad habits, mischievous notions and

incorrect pronunciations. Hence the emphasis laid upon the selection

of suitable nurses in Quintilian and in the treatise _De Educatione_

ascribed to Plutarch.

The other matter in the elementary education which bears on literary

equipment is the choice of reading-books. The scarcity of literary texts

in Latin, which stimulated Livius Andronicus in the third century B.C.

to translate the _Odyssey_, had long since ceased to trouble teachers;

the difficulty came to lie rather in the embarrassing wealth of available

material. Quintilian is emphatic in his counsel that for the earliest

lessons good authors should be selected; and his preference is for

Greek.[33] He believed in the stimulus obtainable from great literature,

even where the pupils are too young to appreciate its full meaning and

beauty. In any case there were simple fables and extracts from standard

authors in abundance to serve as convenient lesson-books.

The second and third stages of education were entrusted to a

_grammaticus_ and a _rhetor_ respectively; here the methods and subjects

produced manifest effects upon literary men in Rome. Age-limits for

the different grades of study varied considerably owing to individual

capabilities and the overlapping of which Quintilian complained; but

commonly a pupil passed from elementary instruction to the “grammar

school” at about twelve or thirteen, and then to the school of rhetoric

at about sixteen. The function of “grammar” was to train pupils in the

intelligent and effective reading of standard authors both Greek and

Latin; and the teachers themselves were of diverse origin and rank. Most

of the series of _grammatici_ mentioned by Suetonius were Greeks, and

many were freedmen;[34] but there were native Romans quick enough to

adopt the principles of criticism illustrated by Crates in his lectures

upon Greek literature about 165 B.C., and to transfer them to their own

poets, with the result that Naevius, Ennius and Lucilius speedily became

school authors.[35] Though instances occurred of Roman knights taking up

such work, still, as a rule, a profession of meagre returns and meagre

repute attracted only a motley concourse of strange fellows—the retired

apparitor, the unsuccessful pantomime-actor or the ex-boxer.[36] But that

the demand for instruction was considerable is plain from the mention by

Suetonius of the time when there were twenty flourishing grammar schools

in the capital.[37] Many Greek _grammatici_ in Rome towards the end of

the Republic added to their duties the teaching of Latin; thus, the

freedman Ateius Philologus, a native of Athens, was called by Asinius

Pollio _nobilis grammaticus Latinus_,[38] and Gnipho who taught Cicero

was _non minus Graece quam Latine doctus_.[39] Specialism, however, in

the one or the other literature was usual in the schools of the Empire,

and the testimony of inscriptions proves the existence of separate

masters for Greek and for Latin.[40]

The implications and functions of ‘Grammar’ were wider than with us.

Its two main concerns, as we shall find in Quintilian, were the correct

employment of language (_recte loquendi scientia_) and the appreciative

criticism of poetry (_poetarum enarratio_).[41] The former comprised

study of the parts of speech, accidence, metres, and faulty usages in

word, idiom, pronunciation or spelling. The latter involved much more

than knowledge of literature; for, since its aim was the elucidation

of a poet’s complete value and meaning, it demanded acquaintance with

subsidiary subjects like music, geometry, astronomy, physics and

philosophy.[42] One feature in the training which had lasting effects

upon literature and which coloured diction under the Empire, is the

signal preference for lecturing on poets rather than on prose-writers:

this was an old tendency, for Cicero had raised his voice against the

comparative neglect of history.[43] It is also of interest to recollect

the attraction which even the drier and more detailed aspects of Grammar

possessed for many great Romans, for scholars like Varro, leaders of men

like Caesar, and emperors like Claudius. Keil’s _Corpus Grammaticorum

Latinorum_ may be said to establish the study as one of the monuments

of the Roman genius; and such representative commentators upon Virgil

as Macrobius and Servius are good examples of the mode in which capable

grammarians were expected to annotate a classic.

The main exercises prove the attention given to composition. They

included the re-telling of Aesop’s fables by word of mouth or in writing,

paraphrases, training in moral maxims (_sententiae_), extracts of

ethical import (_chriae_), sketches of character (_ethologiae_), brief

stories (_narratiunculae_) of a poetic order where the momentous thing

was information rather than style.[44] The treatment of literature—on

which ancient “grammar” laid very great stress—embraced expressive

reading (_lectio_) free from sing-song and provincialisms;[45] the

elaborate explanation (_enarratio_) of subject-matter; textual criticism

(_emendatio_); and literary criticism (_iudicium_).

The authors taught by the professor of grammar were largely the same as

those taught subsequently by the professor of rhetoric. The tenth book

of Quintilian, therefore, gives a representative list, subject to the

qualification that rhetoric required more prose than grammar did. The

difference lay not so much in the authors as in the mode of treatment:

the _grammaticus_ taught literature, the _rhetor_ taught oratorical

effect. In Greek it was traditional to start with Homer, as in Latin,

under the Empire, with Virgil. Other usual Greek authors were Hesiod,

who was valued for his practical maxims; the lyric poets, in excerpts

“bowdlerised” to minimize the erotic element; the masters of Attic

tragedy; and the comic writers, particularly Menander, in selections.

Among Latin authors, Livius Andronicus’s translation of the _Odyssey_

into saturnians still held its ground when Horace went to school; and

generations of schoolboys were reared on the older epic poets Naevius

and Ennius, and on the dramatists Plautus, Caecilius, Terence, Pacuvius,

Accius, Afranius. Virgil was introduced into the course by Caecilius

Epirota, the freedman of Cicero’s friend Atticus, and soon took a premier

position. Horace, too, speedily realized his own alarmed anticipation

of becoming a text-book; and a passion for novelty, combined with a

revulsion from the archaic, helped to bring about lectures on the

works of Lucan, Statius and Nero himself, while the authors were still

alive. Reaction was a recurrent feature in Roman literary taste as in

education. It was a protest against the predominance of the moderns

in the second century A.D. that actuated the revived enthusiasm for

ante-Augustan poetry. The poets, then, on the whole, played rather too

oppressive a part at this stage of education; and it was inevitable that

the rhetorician should adjust the balance, for his pupils were to be

concerned mainly with prose as their medium. Cicero had become a model

in his own day, and Quintilian regards him as a fine exemplar from the

outset (_iucundus incipientibus quoque et apertus_). Of the historians,

Quintilian prefers Livy to Sallust because the latter, he considers,

demands a more advanced intelligence. Here it is but right to say he has

in view especially the needs of students of declamation.

If we class philosophy, especially when pursued by Romans abroad, as a

kind of “post-graduate” study, we may regard the formal education in Rome

as culminating in rhetoric. The training under the _rhetor_ was designed

to equip pupils for the vocations of public life—for deliberative and

forensic oratory; and, despite obvious faults, it undoubtedly furnished

in the best days of the Empire a constant supply of men of affairs,

magistrates and lawyers, wielding speech with a standard of efficiency

beyond the prevalent attainments of civil servants in modern times. The

Roman, inheriting a native turn for oratory, had been easily drawn to

the study of Greek rhetoric, which was based upon prolonged theorizing

and practice in Sicily, Athens and Asia Minor. So insistent appeared

to be the demands of rhetoric that teachers were constantly tempted to

initiate their pupils into it too soon,[46] when they ought to have been

continuing grammar; and this overlapping was the natural occurrence in

the old days before any line of professional demarcation had been drawn

between the provinces of grammar and rhetoric.[47] But even much later,

it often remained a point of honour with grammarians to give boys at the

grammar school practice in rhetoric so that they might do themselves

and their masters credit when they joined the rhetorical academy.[48]

The training in rhetoric at Rome had been in touch with Greek methods

from the second century B.C.; but education was profoundly affected by

the introduction early in the first century B.C.[49] of the composition

declaimed on a purely imaginary theme; and in time the Latin term

_declamatio_, which had signified the forcible delivery of a speech,

came to be applied to the academical exercise in rhetoric on an invented

subject. Thenceforward declamation was the supreme test and crowning

exercise in rhetoric, success in which was the ambition of pupils and the

pride of parents.[50] Practice in it spread from Italy to the schools of

the west, in Gaul and Spain.

Before students were matured for declamation, they had to pass through a

prescribed series of preliminary exercises.[51] These included narratives

less poetic in cast than those of the “grammar school,” investigation of

debateable questions in history, panegyric and invective, examination

of good and bad laws, comparison of character, moral studies or “common

places,” (_communes loci_) serviceable for attacking vices, questions

of a general type for debate (_theses_, _e.g._ “Is town life preferable

to country life?” “Is forensic or military renown the greater?”), and

questions involving reasons for particular facts (_coniecturales causae_,

which Quintilian recollected from his student days as entertaining

exercises, and which he illustrates by the example, “Why is Cupid winged

and furnished with arrows and torch?”)[52] Lectures on great masters in

oratory and history were also requisite; and here models like Cicero and

Livy might be studied with the maximum of profit. Quintilian maintained

that the student should memorize passages from the masterpieces of

standard authors instead of wasting energy on “cold cabbage heated

up”—the _crambe repetita_ of the pupil’s own show-pieces.[53]

The two most advanced exercises were the _suasoria_ and the harder

_controuersia_—the former intended to prepare for deliberative oratory,

the latter for pleading in the law-courts.[54] Ample illustrations of

their nature are furnished by the seven _suasoriae_ and five books of

_controuersiae_ which have come down, along with excerpts from five

lost books, out of the collection of the elder Seneca. Quintilian

cites examples of stock themes, and there exist also the declamations

of the pseudo-Quintilian and excerpts from Calpurnius Flaccus. The

_suasoria_ was an imagined consideration of the action suitable at

a historical crisis: sometimes it was a supposed soliloquy, _e.g._

“Alexander deliberates whether he shall cross the ocean,” “Agamemnon

deliberates if he should sacrifice Iphigeneia,” “Cicero deliberates

whether he should burn his works to secure his safety from Antony”;[55]

sometimes it was a supposed joint deliberation, _e.g._ “The three hundred

Spartans at Thermopylae consider whether they ought to retreat,” “The

Conscript Fathers discuss the propriety of surrendering the Fabii to the

Gauls”;[56] at other times it was a supposed address conveying counsel of

the kind which Juvenal remembered offering to the dictator Sulla by way

of exercise in the academy where he suffered the cane.[57] Similarly,

many a junior aspirant after eloquence composed an advisory speech to

Hannibal urging him to advance straight upon Rome after Cannae.[58]

Seneca[59] records some interesting facts concerning Ovid’s attitude to

this exercise. After commenting on the influence of the schools upon

Ovid’s poetry and on the young poet’s reputation as a declaimer, he tells

us that Ovid rarely declaimed _controuersiae_, and in any case only those

of a psychological nature (_non nisi ethicas_): his preference was for

the _suasoria_, and he found arguing irksome.[60] These illuminating

remarks explain both the aspect of Ovid’s genius exhibited in the

_Heroides_, and his failure to carry out his father’s wish that he should

become a lawyer. For entire success, it should be noted, this hortatory

declamation required historical knowledge, psychological insight, some

dramatic power, and distinct gifts of imagination and style.

In the _controuersia_ one has passed from monologue to a debate which

professed to represent the pleadings in an imaginary suit or criminal

trial, where, as Addison’s Sir Roger would have it, “much might be

said on both sides.” The students virtually acted an invented case in

a sham court. They argued for or against—sometimes, to gain additional

readiness and thoroughness, they argued first on one side, then on

the other. Though there was a semblance of observing legal forms,

yet the circumstances, the laws assumed to be applicable, and the

standing characters were largely drawn from a realm of imagination

which undeniably evoked marvellous ingenuity in argument, but merited

the strictures in Petronius and Quintilian because of its divorce from

actual life. Magicians, pirate chiefs, and their susceptible daughters,

preternaturally hard-hearted fathers, and unconscionably cruel tyrants

appear and reappear. Suetonius[61] cites two specimens of the less

extravagant _controuersiae_. The first concerns the disputed ownership of

a treasure which happens to be dragged up in a fishing-net after certain

youths have, by way of speculation, purchased in advance that particular

cast from the fishermen—are the purchasers entitled to the fish plus the

gold, or to the fish only? The other concerns the disputed freedom of a

slave from the East so valuable that the dealer disguised him and falsely

declared him as a free man at Brindisi to escape the duty exigible by the

Customs officers—has the slave been legally emancipated in virtue of his

owner’s declaration before witnesses?[62] In Seneca the situations are

often more unreal. Take his very first case:—One of two brothers who were

at variance had a son; when his uncle fell into poverty, the kind-hearted

nephew helped him, but was disinherited by his father for so doing:

he was, however, adopted by his uncle, who luckily had a great estate

left to him: meanwhile the young man’s father came to want, and though

forbidden by his uncle, the lad now insisted on helping his father: in

consequence, he is disinherited by his uncle—the question is, can he

successfully impugn his uncle’s decision?[63]

Such exercises, incredible though the situations might be, imparted,

through the mental gymnastics involved, a nimbleness of mind, a quickness

in propounding or refuting arguments, a versatility in treatment, and a

finish of speech which again and again fell little short of the amazing.

The adept could equip himself with skilful mastery from the whole armoury

of rhetoric. Yet, whatever merits may be claimed for rhetoric here or in

the chapter on the elder Seneca, the training had obvious drawbacks. For

its range was narrow and unreal: it handled things and persons such as

never were on land or sea: and these same unreal cases were handled an

infinite number of times, so that the depressing round of declamation, as

pupil after pupil rose from the bench, was calculated, Juvenal says, to

bore luckless professors to death![64] Any ambitious pupil had to take

refuge in innovations upon the threadbare theme; and his most promising

chance lay in suggesting some _colour_, some ingenious line of defence

undreamt of by any predecessor. Hence the far-fetched absurdities with

which the pleadings teem. At any cost, old material had to receive a new

dress, bedizened with all the frippery of rhetoric; and this compulsion

produced an inordinate concentration upon tricks of expression to the

detriment of matter and sense. A frequent result was an inartistic

phantasmagoria of artificialities, conceits, antitheses and quibbles.

Nor was the effect upon morals always better than upon aesthetics, for

such a system was at times apt to engender a heedlessness of truth or

falsity in fact, and callousness to the justice or injustice of a plea,

provided only it could be made telling. Another dangerous fruit was

pretentious glibness of speech of the kind which the staid author of

the _De Educatione Liberorum_ repeatedly denounced as obnoxious;[65]

and—most far-reaching of all the consequences—the rhetorical declamations

were largely accountable for the unreal pose and mannerisms of the Latin

literature of the Silver Age.

For such artificiality the best cure lay in extended knowledge. No sound

critic ever based oratory on mere tricks of speech. Practised judges like

Quintilian and Tacitus complained that true eloquence had deteriorated

owing to the extravagance and ignorance of declaimers. Agreeing with

Cicero, Quintilian views ideal oratory as founded upon a strong moral and

intellectual basis; for to Quintilian, as to Cato generations earlier,

the effective orator was the good man skilled in speaking (_uir bonus

dicendi peritus_).[66] Mere plausibility or claptrap is ruled out by his

insistence upon the orator’s knowledge of the subject on which he is to

speak. Put this way (_mihi satis est eius esse oratorem rei de qua dicet

non inscium_), Quintilian’s requirements seem more moderate than Cicero’s

sweeping demand for wide knowledge of all great subjects (_omnium rerum

magnarum atque artium scientiam_),[67] yet Quintilian too believes in

the study of subjects outside the professional training in rhetoric,

especially ethics, physics and dialectic, law, and history.[68]

At a much earlier period, indeed, Romans of the better class had been

expected to cover a wide field of knowledge. Cato, for instance,

included in his scheme oratory, agriculture, law, war and medicine.

A century later, Varro’s nine departments of education were grammar,

dialectic, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, music, medicine and

architecture. In the first three of these one recognizes the “trivium”

and in the next four the “quadrivium” of the medieval education, while

Cato’s subjects of agriculture, law and war have come to be regarded

as professional. Medicine would tend to be more and more superficially

studied, by reason of the number of Greek practitioners who came to Rome.

The inclusion of architecture in the list is a testimony to the interest

taken in the principles of a fine art which constituted an integral

portion of Roman civilization, and reminds one of the broad education

which Vitruvius believes should go to the training of an architect. But

one may assume that architecture was in practice a special profession,

and that an encyclopaedic education became less and less attainable, as

knowledge deepened, although, under the Empire, writers like Celsus and

Pliny still made an encyclopaedic appeal, at least to mature readers.

It was, indeed, largely in philosophy that the abler youths followed

“post-graduate” courses, either at Rome itself, where Epicurean, Academic

and Stoic thought had long been represented, or abroad, especially at

Athens, as the time-honoured fountain-head of the schools. Under the

later Republic, the custom of seeking breadth in education is well

exemplified by the studies which famous authors had pursued. Thus

Virgil, besides his literary reading, worked at rhetoric, philosophy,

mathematics, medicine and law; and study at a “foreign University,” which

became common under the Empire, is illustrated in the careers of Caesar,

Cicero and his son, Horace and Ovid.

Our present concern, however, is not with philosophy under the Empire but

with grammar and rhetoric; and this for two reasons—firstly, grammar

and rhetoric affected literary style more than philosophy ever did,

deep though the influence of Stoicism was in imperial days; secondly,

it was the time-honoured curriculum in grammar and rhetoric which was

most widely diffused in the Roman world, and which was, especially at

many Western seats of learning, taught to the absolute exclusion of

philosophy. In the Greek portions of the Empire, the so-called “Second

Sophistic” was represented in the second century A.D. by itinerant

rhetoricians presenting their displays of eloquence before audiences

whose powers of criticism proved the continuance and diffusion of the

ancient education.[69] In the Western portions, it is interesting to note

that the ancient system of grammar and rhetoric came to be preserved

particularly at Carthage in Africa and in the academies of Gaul.

Marseilles, Autun, Lyons, Bordeaux, and, later, Toulouse, Narbonne and

Trèves were typical centres of instruction. The educational movement was

of old standing in Gaul, where Marseilles had long exercised a magnetic

attraction. Memories of the sound education which he had enjoyed at

Marseilles doubtless weighed with Agricola when, about A.D. 80, he

established schools in Britain for the sons of chieftains;[70] and

there was in Britain doubtless a serious enthusiasm for Roman culture,

although Juvenal makes game of it by his jesting allusions to the

influence of Gallic eloquence on British advocates and to the talk in

the “Farthest North” about establishing a chair of rhetoric.[71] Later

in the second century, the regular three grades with some amplifications

are illustrated in the studies of Marcus Aurelius; his early lessons

from the _litterator_ were varied by others from an actor and a tutor

who taught both music and mathematics; next, he worked under professors

of grammar, one of Greek and three of Latin; and at the later stage he

had three Greek masters of rhetoric, among whom was Herodes Atticus,

and one Latin master, who was Fronto. He studied philosophy under many

teachers, and devoted much attention to law. Public declamation also had

an attraction for him.[72] The firm hold obtained by such courses as we

have described is plainly seen for many generations beyond our period.

Alexander Severus early in the third century passed through just such a

course as Marcus Aurelius had done.[73] The instruction which many of

the Christian Fathers underwent in youth was on the old pagan lines, and

the _Confessiones_ of St. Augustine are typical from this standpoint,

because they are the vivid reminiscences of one who had been a student

of rhetoric at Carthage and a professor at Milan. The conditions of

education in Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries are best known

from the writings of Ausonius and Sidonius Apollinaris.[74] Christians

and non-Christians then found a bond of union in the literary studies

familiar during their “college days”; so that some measure of vitality

was left to the old training despite the degeneration consequent upon its

bondage to unreal and conventional dexterities.

One life-giving element of our period, however, gradually vanished out

of the Western schools. That was Greek. Whereas Seneca includes Greek

arguments in his _Controuersiae_, and whereas, in the days of Apuleius

and Tertullian, scholars knew Greek as well as Latin, yet by the fourth

century both in Africa and in Gaul it was little taught. St. Augustine,

for instance, had no liking for or proficiency in Greek, and read Plato

mainly in Latin translations.[75] This severance of the two literatures

was prophetic of the approaching division of the Empire and of the usual

Latin curriculum in the Middle Ages.

A highly interesting feature in education during imperial times is the

closer _rapprochement_ of the government therewith. This was a growing,

though a slowly growing, tendency. The state had shown solicitude over

morality by enacting sumptuary laws and encouraging marriage, but

had been reluctant to patronize education directly. The Caesars had,

however, foreshadowed a new policy. Julius paid respect to erudition by

granting citizenship to _peregrini_ who settled in Rome as medical men

or teachers of the liberal arts.[76] Augustus exempted teachers from an

edict banishing foreigners, and he transferred Verrius Flaccus with his

school to the Palatium at a handsome salary, so that he might instruct

the imperial grandchildren.[77] Tiberius and Claudius were personally

interested in grammatical studies; but the next practical step towards

imperial patronage consisted in the fixing by Vespasian of an annual

stipend of 100,000 sesterces for Greek and Latin rhetors. Whether

Vespasian’s decree was intended to apply beyond the walls of the capital,

and how soon it actually came into force inside the walls is not quite

clear; at any rate, Jerome says Quintilian was the first professor at

Rome to receive payment from the _fiscus_, and he sets this down to a

year in Domitian’s reign.[78] Trajan, recognizing the value of education

as a means of training the future citizens of a state, decided to secure

public instruction for five thousand poor boys.[79]

But it was left for Hadrian to take that new departure which constitutes

his reign an epoch in educational history. Versed in literature, a

skilled musician and painter, fond of declamation, the emperor had a

taste for keeping learned men at Court, and fellow-feeling made him

kind to them. Upon teachers who had grown too old for duty he conferred

a retiring allowance.[80] At Rome he housed rhetoric handsomely in his

famous Athenaeum, and in the provinces he founded schools, awarded them

subventions, and made appointments of teachers to them. It is worth while

to trace the tendency beyond the limits of our period. Hadrian’s active

policy of generous interest was continued by Antoninus Pius, who improved

the status and income of professors of rhetoric and philosophy all over

the Empire.[81] Furthermore, he exempted from certain state-imposts

rhetors, philosophers, grammarians and physicians, defining the number

of teachers entitled to such immunity in different towns—thus, the

minimum _personnel_ for the smallest place touched by his edict consisted

of five physicians, three sophists and three grammarians.[82] This

imperial measure bears witness to the connexion of both central and

municipal authorities with a local educational staff. In fact, the burden

of maintaining local academies fell on the municipalities, and what

an emperor did was by special benefits to stimulate local educational

policy. It seems, therefore, natural that Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 176

should have devoted money towards the establishment of professorial

chairs at Athens.[83] Beyond his reign it must suffice to indicate

only the most significant symptoms.[84] Alexander Severus in the third

century introduced a bursary system for deserving lads.[85] In the next

century, repeated edicts exhibit emperors in the light of protectors of

underpaid or irregularly paid teachers against the penurious economies

and dilatory finance of local bodies. Beneficence had established rights

of control: hence, at the end of the third century, when Constantius

Chlorus nominated Eumenius as principal of the reorganized school at

Autun, the town accepted the emperor’s action as a matter of course.

Julian in 362 explicitly claimed the prerogative of appointing professors

to chairs, and, although he entrusted the sifting of candidates to the

municipalities, he subjected them to the first definite restriction

imposed by an emperor on local liberty of selection, when he forbade

the teaching of literature by any Christian. Gratian’s edict—which is

of interest as showing the hand of his adviser and old tutor, the poet

Ausonius—fixed the emoluments for different grades of teachers; thus, a

rhetor was to be paid twice as much as a grammarian. Virtually in this

way, although the Government did not make direct grants, yet money for

educational salaries was earmarked in the municipal budgets. So the

chronicle of the imperial organization of public instruction proceeds;

and, if it did little to affect the methods in vogue, still the patronage

was of value in keeping learning alive. The last great event in this

connexion was the establishment by Theodosius II at Constantinople of

a University staff consisting of thirty-one professors. Little over a

century later came the dissolution by Justinian.

LITERATURE UNDER TIBERIUS, CALIGULA AND CLAUDIUS

A.D. 14–A.D. 54

CHAPTER I

THE ELDER SENECA: ORATORS AND RHETORICIANS

Rhetoric in operation—The elder Seneca’s life—Character and

tastes—His surviving _Controuersiae_ and _Suasoriae_—His

marvellous memory—Value of the prefaces—Their portrayal

of rhetoricians—Critical views—Unpractical nature

of declamations—Recollections—The academic and the

forensic—Seneca’s method—Cases criminal, civil, social—Immoral,

romantic, incredible elements—Sources—Literary ability—Effect

of the exercises—Ingenuity—Interest of digressions—Silly

arguments—Qualities of declamations in relation to Silver

Literature.

Speakers of two generations—The emperors Tiberius, Caligula and

Claudius—Some rhetoricians and orators of the time—Informers.

A study of the elder Seneca[86] is invaluable, not merely for the light

which he sheds upon the methods pursued by professional speakers,

but also for his knowledge (illustrated by a wealth of anecdote

and reminiscence) concerning the individual literary qualities or

even mannerisms of orators and rhetors both Augustan and Tiberian.

Acquaintance with the system represented in his collection of

_Controuersiae_ and _Suasoriae_ is indispensable for an appreciation

of the position and prospects of oratory reflected in Quintilian’s

treatise and Tacitus’s dialogue. But Seneca’s work is much more than an

illuminating introduction to works about oratory: it constitutes the

great exemplar of the Roman rhetorical education in operation, which

must be grasped in order to estimate the stylistic merits or demerits of

verse and prose in the Silver Age. Seneca is a gateway through which the

history of Latin expression must pass towards Lucan as well as towards

Tacitus, and to examine the academic exercises recorded by him is to

go far on the path to understand the style of two centuries; for, like

much subsequent prose and verse, they contain elements pointed to the

degree of monotony, ingenious to the degree of unreality, and sometimes

half-poetic in virtue of a spice of far-fetched romanticism.

L. Annaeus Seneca[87] was born at Corduba, an ancient patrician colony

of Rome in Spain—a town with literary traditions in Cicero’s time,

and by Martial’s days able to boast of having produced three noted

members of a single family, namely, the two Senecas and Lucan.[88] This

provincial family had attained equestrian rank, as we learn from words

assigned to the younger Seneca.[89] The elder Seneca was prevented by

the civil wars from hearing Cicero[90] declaim “with his great pupils in

their _praetextae_,” _i.e._ during the consulate of Hirtius and Pausa

in 43 B.C.; and, since the young Spaniard could not well have attended

declamatory performances under the age of twelve, it is not likely

that he was born later than 55 B.C. He was a boy (_puer_, _Contr._, I,

_praef._ 3) when he first reached Rome, probably in 42 B.C., after the

battle of Philippi. He may have come with his Spanish friend, Porcius

Latro: in any case, they were classmates in the rhetorical school of

Marullus,[91] who was perhaps recommended to them by his Spanish origin

more than by outstanding merit. But Seneca did not restrict himself to

one teacher. He had Arellius Fuscus for one of his early masters, and

he evidently made a practice of listening to all available speakers, if

we may judge from his wide acquaintance with their modes of argument

and expression in the _Controuersiae_. This implies long residence in

Rome, though there is no proof to support his frequent designation as

a “rhetor.” Guess-work would assign to him the official duties of a

procurator, and would by the call of such duties explain his return to

Spain for a period. It was in Spain that he married Helvia, the mother

of his three sons—M. Annaeus Novatus, who took the name of his adoptive

father Gallio and, as pro-consul of Achaea, had the apostle Paul brought

before him;[92] L. Annaeus Seneca, the philosopher; and M. Annaeus Mela,

Lucan’s father.

Clearly Seneca was in Rome at a date between 29 and 24 B.C., when he

heard Ovid declaiming under Arellius Fuscus;[93] and still later in 17

B.C., when he heard Latro’s embarrassing reference to the subject of

adoption in the presence of Augustus and Agrippa.[94] He was back in

Rome before Asinius Pollio died, A.D. 5; for he mentions having heard

Pollio’s youthful oratory and afterwards the oratory of his old age.[95]

The date of his death is to be inferred approximately. His allusion to

the extinction of the Scaurus family (_Suas._ ii. 22) cannot be earlier

than A.D. 34; and we can feel reasonably sure that he outlived Tiberius;

for the account of that emperor’s death given by Suetonius[96] on the

authority of “Seneca” is plausibly referred to the lost historical

work, which, as we know from a fragment of the younger Seneca, his

father composed. The outspoken criticism on the policy of burning books

(_Contr._ X. _praef._ 7) suggests that publication did not precede

Tiberius’s death in 37. On the other hand, when the younger Seneca was

banished in A.D. 41, his mother was a widow;[97] so that the father can

be presumed to have died at an age well over ninety, between A.D. 37 and

41.

A man of old-fashioned austerity,[98] the elder Seneca recalls Cato the

Censor, whom he admired. It is provincial virtue more than a love of

rhetorical commonplace that speaks when he censures the moral decadence

of the times; and one cannot but admire the straightforward sincerity

in his manner of addressing his sons for whom he put together the

_Controuersiae_. Even if public service interested him for part of his

life, he can confidently be described as a scholar by preference. Not

modern enough in his tastes to sympathize with the higher education of

women, he discouraged Helvia from devoting herself to those philosophical

studies in which their second son was destined to see a remedy for

most of the ills of existence. Yet the attraction of the past did not

render him hostile to the imperial system, which, under Augustus, he

found compatible with reasonable liberty:[99] and, while repressive

book-burning stirred his anger, he declined to waste pity on speakers

who would give utterance to treasonable words at the risk of their

lives.[100] His patriotism burned strongly enough to give him pleasure

in pitting the epoch of his model Cicero against the oratorical claims

of “arrogant Greece.”[101] In general, he distrusted the smart levity

of Greek rhetoricians,[102] and his occasional compliments to them were

oftener than not accompanied with a qualification.[103]

Of his ten books of _Controuersiae_, five (III, IV, V, VI and VIII)

are represented only by the headings and excerpts of a fourth-century

epitomator,[104] with the fortunate addition, however, of prefaces to

books III and IV. The other five books (I, II, VII, IX, X) survived in

spite of being summarized and give a reasonably full presentation of the

arguments used in different declamations, though gaps are especially

noticeable in the transcription of the debating points made in Greek. The

prefaces to these five books have also survived, except that the preface

to IX is incomplete. The survival of excerpts for the fuller books

enables us to survey the method followed in epitomizing. The total number

of subjects debated is seventy-four, of which thirty-nine are represented

by excerpts only. The number of _Controuersiae_ in a book varies from

six to nine. There are seven _suasoriae_ (perhaps part of a larger

collection), of which the first has lost its beginning. These exercises

have been defined and illustrated in the chapter on Roman education: it

remains to examine Seneca’s subjects, method and judgements.

This elaborate collection of arguments on rhetorical themes was the

compilation of his old age, and evidence has been cited to show that

some parts were written after A.D. 37. It does not follow, however, that

the whole was put together at the beginning of Caligula’s reign by a man

over ninety:[105] it is more likely that the author had begun his task

years before when his sons would be practically interested in rhetorical

exercises, and that he spread its composition over the later period of

Tiberius’s reign without publishing until the emperor was dead. The

_Suasoriae_ were composed after the _Controuersiae_.[106]

Seneca’s purpose is stated in his first preface, which is addressed to

all three sons, and yet meant for the public at large.[107] It was to

recall the manner and diction of declaimers of the older school, and to

represent speakers whom his sons could not have heard. Impressing on

these young men the wisdom of taking bygone rhetoric into account along

with contemporary rhetoric, he is conscious of a decadence in oratory

to be measured against the greatness of Cicero and his times. To the

author the causes appear to be three: luxurious laziness; the fact that,

since oratory came to offer fewer rewards, men turned to pursuits less

honourable but more profitable; and a natural law of reaction. Realizing

the scarcity of works representative of the greatest declaimers and,

still worse, the circulation of forgeries (_quod peius est, falsi_), he

declares it his duty to rescue noble names from oblivion. Hence it is

natural to respond with pleasure to his sons’ request that he should

undertake so extensive a task.[108] Only a marvellous memory could have

achieved it; but Seneca possessed a Macaulay-like gift of remembrance,

and, as he remarks with obvious truth, it was the distant past he

recalled the more surely. There had been a time when he was capable of

repeating a list of 2000 names read over once. This is partly the secret

of his proficiency in citing arguments from about 120 different speakers,

though one is not precluded from believing that he had preserved notes,

and that he consulted published collections.

The seven prefaces possess great interest. One may weary of the

seventy-four themes and the often scrappy arguments, even although they

are genially diversified by criticism, digression and reminiscences;

but the prefaces are eminently readable in respect of subject-matter

and style. They are valuable for characterization of speakers, for

critical judgements, and for their record of facts otherwise unknown to

literary history: they are attractive for their entertaining stories.

Besides, they give the best opportunity of weighing Seneca’s own literary

qualities in contradistinction to the text of his _themata_, where he

is for the most part professedly reporting the words of others. His

Latinity, in its pleasant freedom from artifice, is worthy of an author

who consistently revered Cicero and was aware that an inferior type of

eloquence had emerged. This alone would constitute him an important link

between the Golden and the Silver Age. Indeed, the first preface shows

his realization of that change from oratory to declamation for which the

principate was largely accountable. Commenting on the alteration of the

Ciceronian _causae_ into the later _controuersiae_, he proceeds to draw

the distinction between the public speaking of an orator (_uera actio_)

and the private exercise (_domestica exercitatio_) of a declaimer. The

new declamation, he notes, was a product of his own period.

Each preface, as a rule, treats one rhetor prominently, and in the

succeeding book that rhetor’s arguments are reported with considerable

fullness. Thus, the opening preface sketches a delightfully graphic

picture of Seneca’s friend, Porcius Latro, his bodily strength and strong

voice, his ineradicable Spanish ways, his passion for work in defiance

of the laws of digestion, his memory for written notes, his mastery

over historical detail, and his method of practising the artifices of

his craft. Such realistic portrayal cannot but rivet our attention upon

his advocacy in the _controuersiae_ which follow; and Seneca explains

that the first controversy in his collection was so placed because

he remembered it to be the earliest of Latro’s declamations in the

academy of Marullus. Similarly, the next preface describes Fabianus,

the teacher of the younger Seneca, and in Book II a special effort is

made to recall his arguments. The preface to III deals particularly with

Cassius Severus; that to IV deals with a pair, Asinius Pollio and Q.

Haterius; that to VII is mainly on Albucius; that to IX considers why

Votienus Montanus did not practise declamation; and the last preface,

when Seneca is tiring of his subject, gives rapid impressions of various

speakers—Mamercus Scaurus (a great orator spoiled by laziness); Labienus,

nicknamed “Rabienus,” a Pompeian in spirit who had his books publicly

burned; Musa, objectionable for unnatural rhetoric; a group consisting

of Moschus, Pacatus, Sparsus, Bassus, Capito; and finally the Spanish

declaimers Gavius Silo and Turrinus Clodius.

Seneca’s admirable criticisms are well seen in his second preface which

contrasts Fabianus with his master Arellius Fuscus. Here he commends

the study of rhetoric as a fitting pursuit for his favourite son Mela,

whose talents he rated more highly than those of his two brothers, then

preparing for public life. Among instructive features in the preface

to III are the demarcation of forensic from academic speaking, and the

explanation offered by Cassius Severus of his relative inferiority as a

declaimer. Severus, it may be noted, was a good extempore speaker, and

anger improved his pleading. After arguing that _non omnia possumus

omnes_, that the individual’s gifts are often confined to a single field,

that Cicero’s style was inferior in verse and Virgil’s in prose, he

accounts for his success at the bar in words which implicitly censure the

whole method of declamation:

“I have been accustomed to address not an audience, but a judge; I

have been accustomed to answer not myself, but an opponent. I avoid

superfluous words as much as inconsistent ones. In scholastic speaking

what may not be considered superfluous, when the whole thing is a

superfluous practice?... When I speak in court, I am doing something;

when I declaim, I seem to be toiling in dreamland (_in somniis

laborare_).... Declaimers are like hot-house plants that droop in the

open (_uelut adsueta clauso et delicatae umbrae corpora sub diuo stare

non possunt_).... There is nothing to be said for testing an orator in

such a childish exercise. What would you think of judging a pilot on a

fish-pond?”[109] Seneca, then, is by no means blind to the unpractical

nature of declamation. Elsewhere he records instances of the absurdity of

some rhetorical figures in a law-court,[110] and the inability of even a

practised declaimer to plead in the forum under the open sky without the

familiar associations of four enclosing walls.[111]

Part of the charm in the prefaces depends on random recollections.

We grow familiar with Seneca’s _Memini_.[112] It is not the least of

their merits that some of the reminiscences are humorous and satiric.

He takes care to chronicle Severus’s amusing attitude to the conceited

Cestius, whose modern declamations students got up by heart, though in

Cicero they studied only speeches to which Cestius had composed replies.

“One day I remember entering his lecture-room when he was to deliver

a speech against Milo (_i.e._ a rejoinder to Cicero’s _Pro Milone_).

Self-satisfied as usual, Cestius was saying, ‘If I were a Thracian

gladiator, I should be a Fusius; if I were a pantomime-actor, I should

be a Bathyllus.’ Unable to check my wrath I burst out, ‘Yes, and if you

were a drain, you’d be the main drain!’—huge guffaws from everybody!

The pupils gazed, curious to see what uncouth sort of creature I was.

Cestius, ready to answer Cicero, had no answer for me!”[113]

Other interesting points occur in the preface to IV. They include a

glance at the select audiences of Asinius Pollio, who was the first

to give _recitationes_ before invited guests; Seneca’s recollection

of Pollio’s instructing his grandson how to look on both sides of a

declamation; and references to the extempore declamations by Q. Haterius,

“the one among all Romans known to me,” he says, “who transferred Greek

facility to Latin.” His speed of utterance made Augustus remark, “Our

friend Haterius needs a brake put on” (_sufflaminandus est_). The sketch

of Albucius in the preface to VII is diverting. He was fearless in his

employment of ordinary words: “sour wine” and “flea-bane,” “fallow

deer” and “rhinoceros,” “latrines” and “sponges” came all alike to him

in speaking. A chameleon orator, for ever adopting fresh styles, he

sometimes proved unlucky in his figures, as when he asked rhetorically

“Why is a cup smashed if it falls, and why is a sponge not?,” on which

Cestius commented, “To-morrow he’ll give a declamation on why thrushes

fly and gourds don’t!” It was Albucius who, in the debate about a

parricide set adrift in a boat, invented the far-fetched joke of calling

the boat “the wooden sack” (_culleum ligneum_) instead of the real sack

used in the punishment of parricides.

The incomplete preface to IX resumes the criticism of declamation as

unpractical. Seneca recognizes the defects afterwards emphasized by

Petronius and Tacitus,[114] when he points out that the dominant aim in

declamation is to please, not to carry conviction (_non ut uincat sed

ut placeat_). This is why it hunts for alluring ornaments (_lenocinia

conquirit_) and avoids solid reasoning. Declamations composed on the

assumption that one has only fools for opponents (_aduersarios quamuis

fatuos fingunt_) must provide a poor training for a court of law. The

conditions of practice are too easy in an academic exercise: gladiators,

it should be remembered, train with heavier weapons than those with which

they fight in the arena.

The final preface is notable for the author’s frank confession that he

had exhausted his recollections and they him (_fatebor uobis: iam res

taedio est_). Indignant at the governmental revenge taken on the writings

of Scaurus and of Labienus, he yet thanks heaven that these punishments

of genius did not begin until genius itself was deteriorating. Musa’s

extravagance of language is illustrated and condemned:

I remember his saying “Birds that fly, fish that swim, beasts

that run, find graves in our insides. Ask now why we men die

suddenly—we live by deaths!”

Freeman though he was, Musa, in Seneca’s view, richly deserved flogging

like the veriest slave for such artificiality. “Much, I consider,

must be allowed to talent,” he adds; “one must allow faults, but not

monstrosities.”

The traditional title _Oratorum et Rhetorum Sententiae Diuisiones

Colores_ indicates the method. On a case propounded, the sentiments

(_sententiae_) and contentions of a number of speakers for or against are

given, often mere jottings; then a skeletonic mapping out (_diuisiones_)

of _quaestiones_ involved; and, finally, a selection of more or less

plausible conceptions (_colores_) designed to put a special complexion

on certain acts under review. Invention and ingenuity find their best

opening in the third group, but the ingenuity often overleaps itself into

absurdity. A few extracts from II. i. may serve by way of illustration.

A rich man who has already disinherited no fewer than three sons, asks

for a poor man’s only son in order to adopt him: the poor man says

“yes;” but the son says “no,” and is thereupon disowned by his father.

Arguments from eleven speakers in favour of the son are cited, among them

those of Porcius Latro and Arellius Fuscus, whose arguments on the other

side are afterwards given. Latro opens for the youth: “And this is my

fate—disowned and adopted at the same moment! The home that sheltered my

father up to old age cannot admit me!... (_To the rich man_) You suppose

gold and silver to be riches, but they are the playthings of fortune.

I give you warning: even if I come to you, I shall take care—and it is

a very easy thing in _your_ house—to get disinherited! Strange things

do happen, but I never dreamt that my father would hate children, or

the rich man want them. I desire no patrimony: happiness is a frail

fleeting thing”—and he cites examples. Vibius Rufus makes the young man

argue: “The very father that does not like keeping his children, judges

it necessary to have children! I invited his disinherited sons into

our humble abode. Am I going to rob them of their home after promising

them mine? What am I to do? If I obey, I shall get disinherited: if I

don’t obey, I shall get disinherited. I love my father: and that is my

offence.” Among Fuscus’s points are these: “(_To the rich man_) You ask

for a son: well, there are crowds of youths without a father! (_To his

father_) Lay on me any command you choose: I shall go to sea, go on

war-service, provided that, wherever I am, I remain yours”; and much of

his oration turns on the perils of wealth. Then Fabianus also declaims

against the corrupting influence of riches, and uses his noted gift

of description to contrast domestic decoration with natural landscape

scenery, which is the possession of the poor. When Latro in turn argues

for the father, he represents him as saying: “If I did not know what an

evil poverty is, I should understand it now: my son does not dread being

disowned. Adoption amalgamated the families of the Fabii, the Aemilii

and the Scipios. From the foundation of Rome to our own days our famous

patrician nobility has depended on it. Adoption cures the wounds of

fortune (_adoptio fortunae remedium est_).” The marshalling of arguments

under the _diuisio_ follows: _e.g._ Pompeius Silo began, on behalf of the

reluctant son, with the trite question, “Is a father to be obeyed in all

things? And even if in all things, does this include an act that would

make him no longer one’s father? Can a son be handed over for adoption

against his will? If he cannot, can he be disowned for exercising his

own will?” and so through logical alternatives on to his proof that the

proposed adoption was, firstly, disgraceful; secondly, useless; thirdly,

dangerous. When the _colores_ are reported, Seneca comments on their

risky allurements and adduces warning examples of silliness. He does

not mince words when he disapproves. This is a _color_ from Latro in

defence of the young man, who is supposed to say: “I was always friendly

with the three disowned sons: I am their friend still. When they were

disinherited, I advised them to keep quiet and by yielding soften their

father. I told them, ‘As soon as you think it the right time, my father

will entreat yours.’ Well, now they assure me that the most favourable

moment is here. They are right: my father cannot find any more favourable

moment for the reconciliation: the rich man is seeking sons.” And here is

Latro’s _color_ when he spoke on the other side: “This,” says the father

to his son, “is my aim: I want to hand you over for adoption, so that

the disowned sons may be by your means more readily reconciled to their

father.”

While the exact point at issue varies greatly in the _Controuersiae_, the

general question under debate falls into one of three types—criminal,

civil, social. The fourth book may illustrate this division, as well as

the unlikelihood of the themes. Of its eight cases, three are criminal,

three civil, and two involve questions of public status. The criminal

cases are: (IV. i.) A man is dragged from the grave of his three children

by a wild young roysterer who plays upon him the prank of forcibly

shaving him, dressing him in festal attire and compelling him to take

part in a banquet; (iv.) During war-time a man who has lost his weapons

in battle seizes weapons from a hero’s tomb, fights bravely and restores

them: he is charged with sacrilegious violation of the monument; (vi.) A

man’s wife dies in giving birth to a boy: the father marries soon after,

and the boy borne by the second wife has a remarkable resemblance to

his half-brother. Both are brought up in the country and become almost

indistinguishable. After many years, on their reappearance in town,

the father, who knows which is the elder, will not tell his wife which

is her child: he is charged with cruelty. The civil cases are: (iii.)

The ravisher of a girl secures from her exiled father a command that

she shall elect to marry him, but her brother at home insists on her

claiming the culprit’s death: the brother is disinherited for opposing

his father’s will; (v.) A stepson, who is a doctor, declines to attend

his stepmother, and his father disinherits him; (viii.) A proscribed

master in time of civil war is sheltered by a faithful freedman to whom

he promises remission of all future claims on his service; when he is

restored to his belongings, he makes demands on the freedman, which the

latter resists. The two cases of status are: (ii.) Metellus, in rescuing

the Palladium from the burning temple of Vesta, has lost his eye-sight:

as a blind man, he is refused the right to exercise the priesthood;

(vii.) A man taken in adultery by a tyrant wrests his sword from him,

kills him, and claims a public prize as a tyrannicide.

In the whole collection the criminal charges predominate: of the 74,

there are 30 criminal, 26 civil, while 18 affect status. But many side

issues are involved. There are about a score of cases concerning immoral

relations such as adultery, seduction, outrage and prostitution: almost

as many turn on the disinheriting of children; seven on poisoning; seven

on tyrants, a theme more at home in Greece. Pirates add a mild flavour

of danger to some, but again and again the imagined circumstances

are hopelessly unnatural and bizarre, and encourage extravagance of

treatment and style. Certain _controuersiae_ sound like sketchy novels

with impossible plots, and must have been so handled in the _narratio_

of a clever rhetor, who aimed at the diversion of a leisured and _blasé_

audience. One instance[115] combines the following episodes: a tyrant is

slain; an illicit _liaison_ results in homicide; a father’s intercessions

are rejected by a son, who is afterwards captured by pirates; they

demand a ransom, but the unforgiving father replies that, if they cut

off their prisoner’s hands, he will pay twice the amount; the captive is

eventually liberated by the gang; later the father falls into beggary;

and finally his son refuses to help him. Anything may be expected in such

a jumble—rhetorical outbursts, Homeric quotations, a plea of insanity,

or the _color_ devised by a professor with a voice like a hundred

nutmeg-graters (_centum raucorum uocem_) that the father’s offer to the

pirates “You will be paid double for cutting his hands off” was merely a

regrettable secretarial error (_librario una syllaba excidit ‘non’_) for

“You will be paid double for _not_ cutting his hands off!”

The ultimate sources of most of the themes are undiscoverable. Many had

become stereotyped in Greek rhetorical schools, and, with little or no

modification, were transmitted through generations at Rome. Thus, actual

Greek history supplied material for the _suasoria_ on Alexander’s entry

into Babylon, and Greek tragedy for Agamemnon’s deliberation whether

he shall immolate his daughter. Sometimes the historical kernel was

of the smallest. It is, for instance, an invention that the Athenians

deliberated about removing their Persian trophies under Xerxes’s threat

to return with his army. Sometimes the law invoked was a genuine one

from the Attic code: often, however, it was a figment of the schools. An

example is the debate on whether the priestess convicted of immorality

who was thrown from a rock and survived might be subjected to punishment

a second time: by Roman law a guilty priestess was buried alive. From

Sulla’s time onwards there had been a growing accumulation of material

for the free use of declaimers either to thrash out on Greek lines or

to fuse with Roman elements. The treatise _Ad Herennium_ and Cicero’s

_De Inuentione_ supply a long list of themes drawn from Roman as well as

from Greek history; but details were liberally altered in declamations to

secure rhetorical effect; for a good point counted more than historical

accuracy. Mythology was also a source: and fertile imagination yet

another.

Seneca’s ability as a writer is shown both in his suggestive comments

and in a Boswellian aptitude for reproducing the words and style of

others. In criticism nothing could be sounder than his grasp of that

psychological endowment which made Ovid successful in a _suasoria_, of

the wilfulness which made that poet love the bizarre lines which others

censured, and the quality in his lost oratory which made it poetic

prose (_solutum carmen_, _Contr._ II. ii. 8). Most illuminating are

the remarks on Montanus’s passion for repetitions: he was “the Ovid of

orators” because he could not let well alone (_nescit quod bene cessit

relinquere_, _Contr._ IX. v. 17). It argues a genuine feeling for style

that Seneca, besides characterizing good and bad speakers, can also

represent their actual manner, such as Latro’s exclamatory qualities

in Book I or his outburst on Popillius’s barbarity in killing Cicero

in Book VII. Similarly in the case of the Roman official who had a man

beheaded at a banquet to satisfy the curiosity of a _fille de joie_,

Seneca reproduces Murredius’s tetracolon which ended in nonsense “to

complete the rhythm”—“Justice was subservient to the bed-chamber, a

praetor to a harlot, prison to a banquet, day to night” (_Seruiebat forum

cubiculo, praetor meretrici, carcer conuiuio, dies nocti_, IX. ii. 27).

The heartlessness of the same scene is vividly brought home by Seneca’s

illustration of Vibius Gallus’s realism, “A toast was drunk to the

headsman for his deft stroke” (_lictori quia bene percusserat propinatum

est_, IX. ii. 23).

The pernicious effect of some of the subjects upon the morality of pupils

may easily be overstated. It is doubtful whether there was more of the

violent and the illicit in them than is illustrated on a modern cinema

film, which does not provide an equal stimulus towards thought and

expression. Much, indeed, in ancient declamations was morally sound and

bracing, even if rather commonplace: there was a healthy spirit in the

denunciations of luxury and of tyranny, which might pass safely in an

academic exercise, but might spell ruin in a historical work under the

Empire. It is, besides, doubtful whether students altogether failed to

realize the unreality of their controversial world; even the far-fetched

elements may be said to have been attempts to satisfy the perennial human

desire for romance. With so many stock subjects common to the successive

periods represented by Seneca, Quintilian and the pseudo-Quintilian,

by Calpurnius Flaccus,[116] and later in Greek by Libanius, it was

inevitable that sensible arguments should run dry, and relief from

the hackneyed should be sought either in artificial embroidery or in

capricious invention. The incentive to invent operated often without the

check of common sense: so that one is reminded of nothing so much as of

the pedantically ingenious questions which were devised by the fantastic

imagination of the Troubadours to be pleaded and decided in a Court of

Love.

Ingenuity is so characteristic of the Silver Age that it deserves to be

noted in the making. It is most observable in the cunningly contrived

rebuttal of a charge. At first sight, one might condemn as beyond all

excuse the scandalous practical joke already mentioned which was played

upon a man at his children’s grave. Subjected forcibly to a fashionable

toilette, the mourner had been presented by an unruly young reveller

to his boon companions and coerced into attending their banquet in a

neighbouring garden. What fair complexion shall an enterprising defence

put upon such conduct? One answer to the prosecution follows these

lines: Was it not reasonable to be touched by the old man’s mourning and

loneliness? Was it not heart-breaking to notice that he had no kinsman

to console him? Now when it is too late, the offenders, of course, can

see that his friends must have deserted him, because they knew he was

mad. In fact, “all was meant in kindness” is the explanation offered by

this misunderstood young gentleman! “It was a festive occasion, and I

was entertaining some of my good friends, when one of them said, ‘Why

do we let that poor fellow in the cemetery kill himself with grief?

Nobody can make up his mind spontaneously to abandon sorrow: people are

bashful about it: they want compulsion....’” To prove the continuance

of his friendly attitude, the defendant assures the complainant: “I’m

perfectly ready to give you more consolation of the same sort—only, you’d

just accuse me again!” The danger of such smartness in rhetoric and in

literature is that it constantly tends to be overdone. Ingenuity of idea

and phrase palls even in Ovid and in Lucan; but, indulged in by the

smaller mind of a rhetorician in quest of specious argument or pointed

epigram, it becomes grotesque, as Seneca shows by his censures.

The seven deliberative exercises, or _Suasoriae_, exhibit similar

rhetorical qualities to those in the _Controuersiae_, and furnish

continued proof of the attraction which digressive anecdotes, luckily

for his readers, possessed for Seneca. At times he conscientiously pulls

himself up (_longius me fabellarum dulcedo produxit; itaque ad propositum

reuertar_, _Suas._ i. 7); but to his deviations from the strict lines of

argument we owe interesting comments, _e.g._ on Virgil’s avoidance of

bombast (i. 12); Pedo’s lines describing Germanicus’s voyage (i. 15);

Arellius Fuscus’s description of the moon in contrast with Virgil’s

simpler and happier words (iii. 4); Gallio’s amusingly nonchalant

attitude towards impassioned oratory at which he jested as “plena deo”

(iii. 6-7); the records of Pollio’s hostility to Cicero’s reputation (vi.

14); an extract from Livy on the death of Cicero (vi. 17); Cornelius

Severus’s hexameters on the same subject (vi. 26); and Cestius’s praise

of Cicero’s services in exalting the Latin language over Greek (vii. 10).

Seneca had not spared foolish arguments in the _Controuersiae_.

Murredius, quoted in the seventh book for a foolish point regarding

Popillius, the ungrateful murderer of Cicero, and for another ineptitude

on a poisoning charge, is declared to be “as silly as ever” in the ninth

book.[117] In the murder mystery, where a woman is found wounded, her

husband killed, and a breach made in the wall between the house and

the neighbouring one, Seneca justifiably stigmatized as fatuous the

bit of description “My father had holes made in him as if he were the

wall” (_pater meus tamquam paries perfossus est_).[118] So it is with

absurdities in the _Suasoriae_. The deliberations of the 300 Spartans

in the pass whether to retreat or face the Persian are marked both by

excellences and by inanities. “Whither will you, hoplites, flee, who are

yourselves the walls of Sparta?”—that, in four neat words,[119] is cited

by Seneca as the best hit made by any Greek speaker in this _suasoria_.

On the other hand, his strictures upon overstrained point are severe; for

he says the prize-winner for puerility (_inter has pueriles sententias

uidetur palmam meruisse_) was the speaker who played with the conceit

that the inscription to the fallen Spartans was written in blood squeezed

from their wounds—“ink,” he exclaimed, “worthy of a Spartan!” (where

the Latin _atramentum_ gives a more violent contrast to the red blood).

The last _suasoria_ concludes with two remarks from “that most likeable

fool” Gargonius, “than which not even he had ever said anything sillier.”

Turgid rhetoric receives corresponding castigation. The author, in making

fun of his namesake Seneca “Grandio” (ii. 17), so called because he liked

everything big from sandals to a sweetheart, recalls his handling of the

300 Spartans at bay. Lifting his arms and rising on his toes (that was

his way of making himself bigger!) he declaimed in swelling accents a

Spartan’s imaginary soliloquy: “So all Greece has abandoned us. So much

the better, I am glad, I am glad.” We wondered, remarks Seneca drily,

what there was to be glad about. “Why? Because I shall now have the

Persian to myself. That monarch, Xerxes, who has stolen seas with his

armada, who has confined the earth but extended the deep, whose orders

impose a new aspect upon universal nature, that monarch may doubtless

encamp over against the heavens; but I shall have the gods for comrades!”

If the elder Seneca’s good sense had been more widely shared, such

bombast would have been frowned out of existence.

From these exercises, then, one may take an inventory, as it were, for

the literary stock-in-trade of Silver Latin. There are exclamatory

and high-flown outbursts typified in the apostrophe to the monster of

cruelty who maimed foundlings to make money out of their begging;[120]

common-places on themes like the mutability of fortune,[121] or the

effect of calamity on the mind; _sententiae_, embodying ancient wisdom

in proverbial form, such as “The cure may be worse than the disease”

(_quaedam remedia grauiora ipsis periculis sunt_), “There are many

paths to death,” “Innocence is a protection in danger,” “Nature has

given none the breath of life for ever”;[122] the purple patches in

elaborate descriptions of ocean or tempest or natural scenery;[123]

the brief and pointed epigram designed to surprise by ingenuity or

paradox, “Weeping is a modest curse directed against human calamity”

(_fletus humanarum necessitatum uerecunda exsecratio est_);[124] and

the frequently allied antithesis, “the greatest runaways among the

brave, the greatest laggards among runaways” (_inter fortes fugacissimi,

inter fugaces tardissimi_).[125] The indictment which lies against

rhetoric for extravagance in the use of these and other artifices,

and for its frequent self-divorce from real life, must not blind us

to the good services which it rendered. Though but a simulacrum of

the old free oratory, it was cherished by the Romans with almost

pathetic assiduity, and from their devotion to it as an end in itself

they gained at least sharpened wits and facility of expression. The

rhetorical training maintained in the Empire a high standard of ability

in the use of language. This was not its sole advantage. Declaimers

were not, as a rule, politicians, but the declamations afforded a safe

outlet for a certain amount of social criticism and even a certain

amount of republican feeling. Some of the themes, we have seen, gave

the mind the satisfaction of entering upon mildly romantic adventures.

The very fact that the law assumed in a case was not the actual law of

Rome aided the growth of a new sentiment of equity. Further, there was

ethical value in the moral and humane reflections of an experienced

declaimer, while the attacks made upon luxury and riches were in keeping

with a literary exaltation of the poor and the humble, which implied a

broadening conception of the worth of the individual. To suppose that the

declamations produced merely expert phraseology and did not stimulate

thought is a profound mistake.

* * * * *

Seneca places before us the speakers of two generations in Rome, who by

their various nationalities—Italian, Greek, Spanish and Gallic—indicate

the cosmopolitan hold obtained by rhetoric. Most of the older generation,

as Augustans, are outside our present limits; some speakers belong to

both generations; and some definitely to the reign of Tiberius. Of the

quartette (τετράδιον) placed by Seneca in the highest rank[126]—Porcius

Latro, Arellius Fuscus, Albucius Silus and Junius Gallio—the first

three had been recognized as eminent before the Christian era began.

Ovid studied under Latro and Fuscus, and doubtless a subtle portion of

their rhetorical influence descended through the poet to his imitators

in the first century. Fuscus also had for a pupil Papirius Fabianus, a

philosopher still more than a speaker, who taught the younger Seneca.

Gallio, whose arguments are often exemplified in the _Controuersiae_, was

noted for a jingle (_tinnitus_) of style in speaking. One of his writings

was an answer composed to Labienus’s invective against Bathyllus, the

favourite of Maecenas; and other publications of his were declamations

and a treatise on rhetoric. He was exiled in A.D. 32. Though Cestius

Pius from Smyrna was pre-Tiberian, his pupils, Surdinus, Aietius

Pastor, Quintilius Varus (son of the general crushed by the Germans in

A.D. 9), formed a group towards the beginning of Tiberius’s reign; and

Argentarius, his assiduous ape (_Cestii simius_), belonged clearly to the

same time. Cestius had a swarm of followers who, we have seen, learned by

heart his speeches in preference to Cicero’s.

In passing to speakers definitely under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius,

it is worth while to remember that the emperors themselves were by

education products of the rhetorical system. Tiberius,[127] as a student

of rhetoric under Theodorus of Gadara, imbibed new principles—very

different from those which his predecessor Augustus had learned from

Apollodorus of Pergamum. The Apollodoreans, emphasizing _narratio_,

stood for regularity in the division and structure of a speech,

whereas the Theodoreans, eager for greater freedom, were content if

the _argumentatio_ alone was adequately handled. Tiberius’s years

of retirement at Rhodes, before he was emperor, had perfected his

acquaintance with Greek rhetoric; and his skill in the diplomatic and

even cryptic use of language is apparent in the reports of his senatorial

speeches given by Tacitus.[128] In Latin, his tendency was to prefer

archaic to foreign words and to base his oratory on the manner of

Messalla Corvinus. Among his literary compositions were memoirs, while

his verses showed the influence of Euphorion and other Greek poets.

His successor, C. Caesar Caligula, from whose insane jealousy sprang

his desire to annihilate the works of Homer, and his scathing attacks

upon Virgil as well as Livy, did not publish works, though he was well

trained in rhetoric, capable as a speaker especially when stimulated

by anger, and critically contemptuous of the younger Seneca’s style as

“sand minus mortar.”[129] His uncle Claudius, the next emperor, was a

voluminous writer in Greek and Latin. An early taste which he evinced

for history had been fostered by Livy; and his learning in other fields

was extensive. Now a play, now a book on gambling, now an apology for

Cicero against the strictures of Asinius Gallus, came from his pen. He

even proposed three additional letters, the inverted digamma (Ⅎ) for

consonantal _u_, antisigma (Ↄ) for _ps_, and the left half of H (Ⱶ) for

the _y_ sound between _i_ and _u_.[130] Part of the speech delivered by

Claudius before the senate in A.D. 48, supporting the admission of Gallic

nobles to Roman offices, was found recorded on a bronze tablet at Lyons

in 1524, and forms an interesting subject of comparison with the version

by Tacitus (_Ann._ XI. xxiv). Claudius’s consort, Agrippina, wrote

memoirs, which the elder Pliny and Tacitus consulted.[131]

Of rhetoricians at least partly of the time of Tiberius, like Asprenas,

Bruttedius, Turrinus and Capito, it is enough to distinguish the last for

his declamation regarding Cicero’s murderer Popillius, which remained in

circulation and was erroneously ascribed to Latro.[132] Many speakers

published collections of their speeches or manuals on speaking. Junius

Otho, praetor in A.D. 22, was the author of four books on _Colores_;[133]

and Rutilius Lupus, towards the end of Seneca’s lifetime, brought out

an abridged translation of a work on figures of speech by Gorgias,

who taught at Athens in the first century B.C. Alfius Flavus, one of

Cestius’s pupils, wrote also in verse. Senatorial eloquence under

Tiberius was (in addition to Junius Otho) represented by Asinius Gallus,

son of Asinius Pollio, and inheritor of his caustic style; Aeserninus,

Pollio’s grandson; Valerius Messallinus Cotta, younger son of the

Augustan Messalla Corvinus, and consul in A.D. 20, a pleasure-seeker

with gifts in verse-making and in pleading (Ovid in exile had read a

speech which he had delivered in court); Mamercus Scaurus, the easygoing

aristocrat whose friendship with Sejanus and authorship of a tragedy,

_Atreus_, proved his ruin; Q. Haterius, who died an old man in A.D. 26

and whose startlingly rapid delivery called forth Augustus’s remark

already mentioned, that he needed a brake put on;[134] L. Arruntius,

a man of ability at once academic and forensic; Votienus Montanus,

from Narbo, who made his mark in an inheritance case for Galla Numisia,

and was exiled for treason in A.D. 25; and L. Calpurnius Piso, one of

the most dignified characters of the day, who alarmed Tiberius on one

occasion by denouncing the infamy of informers and threatening to quit

Rome in disgust.

To the time of Caligula and Claudius belongs Crispus Passienus, son of

the Augustan Passienus. His published speeches were among those familiar

to students in Quintilian’s boyhood.[135] It is notable that Caligula

allowed the condemned works of certain Augustan orators and historians,

T. Labienus, Cremutius Cordus and Cassius Severus, to circulate

again.[136] Of these Cremutius belongs to the annals of history.

Labienus, more noted as an orator than as a historian, was disliked for

exceeding the due limits of free speech, and his enemies were pleased

when his books were given to the flames by senatorial decree about A.D.

12.[137] The blow was one which he refused to survive. Cassius Severus,

another prominent orator in the _Controuersiae_, had offended Augustus by

libels upon men and women of high station, and died in miserable poverty

after twenty-five years of exile. There are reasons for believing that

his death happened about A.D. 37, five years later than the date assigned

by Jerome. Tacitus connects with his condemnation Augustus’s first

attempt to repress literature.[138]

Many orators were occupied rather as political accusers than as literary

creators, finding it lucrative to place delation at the service of

any emperor whose aim was to ruin the potentially dangerous scions of

aristocratic families, the so-called opposition under the Caesars. Some

were unquestionably able persons, like Domitius Afer of Nemausus (Nîmes),

who pleaded in the law-courts, occupied high positions in several reigns,

and was known for legal writings _De Testibus_, and for published

speeches mentioned by Quintilian. He had begun his career as an accuser

by A.D. 26, and lived into Nero’s times (A.D. 59).[139] P. Suillius, one

of the dreaded informers under Claudius, eventually fell himself under

sentence of banishment. Vibius Crispus, already by Claudius’s time active

in the nefarious intrigues of the delator, survived until about A.D. 90,

one of many links between this period and the Flavian age.

CHAPTER II

VALERIUS MAXIMUS—A REPERTORY FOR SPEAKERS

Valerius Maximus—His date—His nine books and their aim—A

collection for rhetoricians—Method and arrangement—National

subject-matter and spirit—Sources—Survival of his

influence through abridgements—Limitations in historical

outlook—Adulation of the Caesars—Moralizing and sententious

reflections—His style a mirror of the period—The poetic

element—Rhetorical exclamations and declamations—Balanced

structure—Artificial conceits—Language—Abstractions—Vocabulary

and syntax.

Little can be surmised regarding the life of Valerius Maximus,[140] the

compiler of a significant repertory for rhetoricians; but that little is

enough to settle his period. Vossius,[141] rejecting the suggestion that

he belonged to the third century A.D., proved that he must be referred

to the age of Tiberius; and there is not much to add to his arguments.

Aulus Gellius, in the second century, cites from the eighth book of

Valerius.[142] Further, what are almost the only explicit personal

reminiscences in Valerius’s work afford evidence of date; for his great

friend, the eloquent Sextus Pompeius, with whom he visited Asia and to

whose kindly patronage he pays a tribute in his chapter on friendship, is

identical with one of the consuls in the last year of Augustus’s and the

first year of Tiberius’s reign, A.D. 14.[143] Pompeius was also a friend

of Germanicus, and the patron to whom Ovid addressed certain epistles

from Pontus:[144] he became proconsul of Asia about A.D. 27. Besides, the

tone in which Brutus and Cassius are charged with “parricide” for their

share in the assassination of Julius Caesar savours of the repressive

times of Tiberius.[145] Confirmatory impressions may be derived from

Valerius’s style; and, finally, if more precision in dates be desired for

an author not so lavish in their use as Velleius Paterculus was, then two

passages may be cited bearing on the time of composition. The prefatory

remarks to his treatment of _pudicitia_ must have been written before

Livia’s death in A.D. 29; and the denunciation directed against Sejanus

(though it does not name him) must have been written after his downfall

in A.D. 31.[146] Valerius’s work, then, appeared at latest within a few

years after the publication of Paterculus’s history in A.D. 30; for

its dedication to Tiberius, who is the Caesar addressed[147] and often

flattered, shows that it was not subsequent to the close of his reign in

A.D. 37.

His work, _Facta et Dicta Memorabilia_, consists, as we have it, of nine

books; and though his epitomator, Julius Paris, implies there were ten,

this is most likely an error. The author’s aim will be best understood in

the light of a summary of the contents:—

Book I. Religion, auspices, omens, prodigies and marvels

ranging from more to less awe-inspiring instances—from a

mysterious utterance or miraculous intervention of a god, to

such merely curious cases as those of the man who forgot how to

read, or the princess with a double row of teeth, or a heart

stuffed with hairs!

Book II. A _pot-pourri_ of subjects, perhaps in this book

more loosely interrelated than in any—marriage, magistracies,

military regulations and discipline, public games, foreign

customs, censorial strictness, and so on.

Book III. Mental and moral endowments, bravery, endurance, rise

from humble origin to greatness, degeneracy, self-confidence,

etc.

Book IV. Moderation, abstinence, conjugal love, friendship,

generosity, etc.

Book V. Clemency, gratitude, ingratitude, filial duty,

brotherly affection, patriotism, paternal love and severity.

Book VI. Chastity, outspoken retorts, strict punishments,

weighty words and acts, justice, national honour, fidelity of

wives and of slaves (where the comment _quo minus exspectatam

hoc laudabiliorem fidem_ speaks eloquently of the prevailing

distrust felt by masters), and mutability of fortune.

Book VII. Good fortune, wise sayings or acts, smart sayings or

acts, military _ruses_, defeat at elections, the straits of

necessity, wills cancelled or ratified.

Book VIII. A book covering an extensive range, but furnishing

only a few brief examples under some of its headings—Acquittals

and convictions in public trials, famous private law-suits,

women who pleaded cases, testimony borne in court, those who

committed faults which they punished in others, industry,

leisure, eloquence, expression and gesture, striking effects

of the arts, memorable old age, desire of glory, magnificent

honours conferred.

Book IX. Luxury and lust, cruelty, anger and hatred, avarice,

arrogance, perfidy, temerity, mistakes, vengeance, wicked

sayings and doings, deaths out of the common, desire of life,

enrolment in families by fraud.

The utility of this fairly full, but not exhaustive, list rests on its

indication of the author’s intention to illustrate subjects likely to be

touched on by an orator. The design relates the work to the rhetoric of

the times. Here was ready for use a collection of noteworthy anecdotes

constituting a serviceable _Vade mecum_ for speakers or teachers. And

this aim, easily discernible from a table of contents, is openly avowed

by the compiler: his task, he tells us, was to make a handy digest of

memorable deeds and sayings with a view to saving his readers the trouble

of hunting among the scattered authorities whose writings he himself had

to consult.[148] It is a fair guess that he was a professor of rhetoric.

Dividing each book into chapters on separate topics, Valerius generally

subdivides each chapter into Roman and foreign examples. The latter

(_externa_) are fewer and are sometimes omitted.[149] Occasionally he

confesses to a sense of perplexity between the mass of available material

(_sermo infinitis personis rebusque circumfusus_) and the claims of

reasonable brevity:[150] and so he feels bound under certain heads to

reduce the number of examples (_satietas modo uitanda est_).[151] Some

parts of the work show little sign of systematic dovetailing: others

exhibit closer interconnexion. From time to time he is at pains to

indicate his method of grouping illustrations; thus, he exemplifies

self-confidence, first in war, next in peace, then introduces the poet

Accius avowedly as a link between Roman and foreign instances.[152] Or,

again, just as he is about to pass to foreign examples, some insistent

Roman illustration may arrest his attention with a demand to be recorded

(_ad externa ... transire conanti M. Bibulus ... manus inicit_);[153] and

equal emphasis marks his transition from Book IV to V—from generosity

to its “fit companions, humanity and clemency.” These and other such

instances prove that he had an artistic regard for unity, and that

it would be unfair to view him as an accumulator of higgledy-piggledy

miscellanea.

In subject-matter, and in spirit no less, he is decidedly national. The

predominance of examples from native life, custom and history makes

this inevitable; yet it is, after all, but one aspect of the Roman in

him. He is Roman in the practical aim wherewith he composed his digest

for rhetoricians and their pupils; in the typical position assigned

to religion at the forefront of the work; and in the conservative

note upon which his text opens. This Roman conservatism animates his

dignified pride in recording the ancestral habit of referring intricate

ceremonial to pontifical wisdom, the sanction for action to augural

observation, oracular responses to prophetic books, and the fit treatment

for portents to the lore of Etruria. About illustrations from foreign

history he is conscious that, if they do not make the same direct appeal

as national examples, still they introduce a pleasant variety in the

Latin subject-matter (_attingam igitur externa; quae, Latinis inserta

literis, ut auctoritatis minus habent, ita aliquid gratae uarietatis

afferre possunt_). No less patriotic is the enthusiasm with which, after

mentioning the lays of ancient Rome once sung at banquets, he praises the

old Roman training, and with a rhetorical climax turns his list of great

families so educated into a compliment to the Caesars:

_Maiores natu in conuiuiis ad tibias egregia superiorum opera

carmine comprehensa pangebant, quo ad ea imitanda iuuentutem

alacriorem redderent. Quid hoc splendidius, quid etiam utilius

certamine?... Quas Athenas, quam scholam, quae alienigena

studia huic domesticae disciplinae praetulerim? Inde oriebantur

Camilli, Scipiones, Fabricii, Marcelli, Fabii: ac ne singula

imperii nostri lumina simul percurrendo sim longior, inde,

inquam, caeli clarissima pars diui fulserunt Caesares._

A similar spirit pervades his record of the honour secured for Latin

as the official and imperial language everywhere;[154] his apostrophe

eulogizing Marius’s disdain for Greek eloquence;[155] and his genuine

admiration for the old national deliberative body:

“The Senate-house was the trusty deep-set heart of the commonwealth,

fortified, walled all round with the healthiness of silence. As men

crossed its threshold, they cast aside personal and put on national

affections.”[156] So too one notes his pride in “the most tenacious

bond of military discipline,” which he pronounces “the especial glory

and mainstay of the Roman power, having been by salutary steadfastness

kept untarnished and unscathed to the present time.”[157] It is the same

with his panegyrics upon Rome;[158] his gratified consciousness of the

progressive evolution from “Romulus’s small hut” (_paruula Romuli casa_)

to “the pillar of the world” (_terrarum orbis columen_);[159] his belief

in the generosity of the Roman people;[160] his rhapsodic outbursts like

_O munificentiam gentis Romanae, deorum benignitati aequandam!_[161] or

his satisfaction in Roman justice.[162]

In the absence of systematic acknowledgment of his borrowings, it is

impossible to give an exact account of the sources of Valerius. Any

reader will observe that Livy has been largely drawn upon, even though

he is mentioned but once.[163] Cicero is mentioned oftener;[164] but

the mere occurrence of his name is no gauge of the extent to which he

was used. Varro must have been an authority in many instances.[165] We

may also infer the consultation of Sallust and Asinius Pollio, and, for

foreign examples, of Trogus.[166] Besides mention of such poets as Livius

Andronicus and Accius, there are references to the historian Caelius

(Antipater), to the _Collecta_ of Pomponius Rufus, and to M. Scaurus’s

autobiographic _Memoirs_.[167] Cato’s work on _Origines_ is cited

definitely in one passage,[168] and may elsewhere be reasonably thought

to have supplied material. That work, as well as Cato’s _Orations_, must

have been in Valerius’s mind when he wrote the words _ornata sunt ab eo

(sc. Catone) literarum Latinarum monimenta_.[169] About a score of Greek

authors are cited. His treatment of sources varies. The original may

be copied with fidelity, or paraphrased and rhetorically embellished,

or condensed, or sometimes misrepresented thanks to bungling; for

superficiality betrays him into many confusions.

Yet, blemishes notwithstanding, there are, as testimonies to a great

measure of utility and vitality in his work, at least two well-known

abridgements[170] of it—one by Julius Paris, made about the fourth

century, and intended, like the ampler original, for schools; the other

by Januarius Nepotianus, the extant form of which breaks off in the third

book (III. ii. 7), but which was evidently drawn from a manuscript of the

original superior to any now extant, because it summarizes the gap in

the first book (I. i. _ext._ 4–I. iv. _ext._ 1). Possibly the C. Titius

Probus, to whom is ascribed in some MSS. the summary on Roman names at

the end of Valerius, was an earlier epitomizer than Julius Paris and may

have left an epitome afterwards combined with his; but, as the summary on

names cannot by any stretch of imagination be called literature, there is

scant profit in discussing the date of Titius Probus or his relationship

to Julius Paris.[171] Suffice it to add that the existence of late

abridgements and the number of MSS. of the full text which have come down

are indications of its hold upon medieval education. Niebuhr, indeed,

declares that Valerius “was considered the most important book next to

the Bible throughout the Middle Ages; it was the mirror of virtues and

was translated into all the languages of Europe.”[172] Teuffel[173] more

cautiously remarks that he was not rarely read (_nicht selten gelesen_)

in the Middle Ages; but even this modified statement is an illustration

of the continued enthusiasm for Roman history.

His outlook on the world and his attitude towards historical questions

do not argue a penetrating or independent genius. He relates omens and

miracles in a spirit of unquestioning superstition; _e.g._ after his

record of prodigies sent by Jupiter to dissuade Pompey from resistance to

Caesar, Valerius asserts that “the overmastering principles of destiny

prevented a heart not otherwise possessed by folly from weighing the

prodigies aright.”[174] He is also uncritical in his acceptance of

traditional stories; if they are ancient, he argues that antiquity should

secure credit for them, while it is his own function not to reject as

idle such tales as gained the sanction of famous literary documents.[175]

On many historical matters his attitude is distorted by bias. He is

an apologist for Caesarism, animated by an unconcealable dislike for

inflammatory agitations conducted by the tribunes of the people in the

days of the republic.[176] Thus, although he admits the moderation

of Tiberius Gracchus, he elsewhere brands him “an enemy of his

fatherland.”[177] Gaius Gracchus he regards as one who might have

been a champion of the state, but who preferred to be its impious

disturber.[178] Consistently with this anti-democratic leaning, his

attitude towards the imperial family is throughout one of such fulsome

adulation that the author deteriorates into a toady; and this without,

so far as we know, the excuse which may be offered for the flatteries

of his contemporary Paterculus, on whose personal notice war had forced

some of the admittedly able traits in Tiberius. Valerius’s invocation

had described the reigning emperor as one “whose heavenly foresight

guarantees a kindly fostering care for the virtues about which I am to

speak”; and he delights to note that Tiberius has nobly united the blood

of the Nerones with that of the Livii (_in ortum salutaris principis

nostri conflueret_).[179] Again, he makes allusions to the blessings of

contemporary life under an excellent emperor;[180] but his enthusiasm

embraces the whole kith and kin of the Caesars—they are heavenly

luminaries risen from the time-honoured Roman training.[181] So Julius

Caesar is mentioned or addressed in terms of religious adoration, well

seen in the apostrophe[182] _Tuas aras tuaque sanctissima templa, Diue

Iuli, ueneratus oro_, ending with an artificially balanced reference

to the assassination: “Then burst forth the parricidal act of those

whose design to subtract thee from the number of mankind involved

thine addition to the conclave of the gods!” Elsewhere Caesar’s good

qualities are declared to have given him the _entrée_ into heaven,

and his repurchase from pirate captors in earlier days is noted as a

strange transaction on the part of Fortune; for then she ordained that

a small ransom should buy back “the brightest star in the universe”:

why, then, should ordinary men complain concerning Fortune, if she does

not spare even the Caesars, “sharers in her own divinity”?[183] This

commendation of Caesarism lasts up to the end of the work:[184] now the

author couples Julius and Augustus as _patrem et filium ... diuinitatis

fastigio coniunctos_;[185] now it is on Augustus that he concentrates

attention;[186] now on the palace, as a hallowed abode—_ad Augustam

domum, beneficentissimum et honoratissimum templum_.[187] Sycophany

reaches its acme of enormity in his shameless association of Chastity

with the marriage-bed of the princess Julia.[188]

In another way the narrowness of Valerius’s outlook is discernible. He

is given to moralizing, a habit which in itself might afford a thinker

opportunities for philosophic criticism of men, conduct and events.

As it is, the actual pronouncements cannot hide the shallowness of

the author’s intellect. His denunciations of luxury, partly perhaps

sincere and usually justifiable, are also partly perhaps suggested by

conventional _sententiae_ within the cognizance of all educated Romans.

These reflections, many of them second-hand or ready-made, constitute

practically all his philosophy. He takes few steps towards scientific

history. Eagerness to make a point renders him indifferent to healthy

doubt; for his aim is to teach, if not history, at least rhetoric, by

examples.[189] With almost a fabulist’s fondness for pointing a moral,

he enjoys conveying lessons on the degeneracy of his fatherland. He

has praise for the old-fashioned _probitas_ and _continentia_ once

under censorial scrutiny and by him regarded as the righteousness

that strengthens a nation—_quid enim prodest foris esse strenuum, si

domi male uiuitur?_[190] Incidentally his protests afford glimpses of

social history. He remarks on the advance in luxury at Rome since the

days when Rufinus, an ex-consul, was struck off the senatorial roll

for acquiring ten pounds’ weight of silver plate;[191] and he glances

at the contemporary craze for building-sites more extensive than the

farm-lands of Cincinnatus.[192] So, too, after dating the growth of Roman

pleasure-seeking from the close of the Second Punic War and the conquest

of Macedon, he contends that the abrogation of the Oppian law regulating

the expenses of women was the thin end of the wedge which made an opening

for greater extravagance in adornment.[193] Another passage emphasizes

the spread of luxurious customs within a single generation—_cuius

adulescentia priscos mores uidet, senectus nouos orsa est_.[194]

Occasions are fastened upon to inculcate venerable saws on the “riches of

him who hath no desires” (_omnia nimirum habet qui nihil concupiscit_),

or on the necessity of checking vice at the start (_neque enim ullum

finitur uitium ibi ubi oritur_).[195]

His reflections, however, are not confined to the topic of effeminacy;

for there is a wealth of general truths and half-proverbial sayings.

They have the pointed expression suitable for clinching an argument or

adorning a speech: _e.g._ “Necessity makes the most effectual hardening

for human weakness” (_humanae imbecillitatis efficacissimum duramentum

est necessitas_), or “There is a standing antipathy between valour and

poltroonery” (_sic enerues animos odisse uirtus solet_).[196] Similarly,

of Theramenes’s bravado in toasting his enemy Critias out of the very

poison he had been sentenced to drink, “To face punishment with such ease

is assuredly to free oneself from punishment” (_profecto est supplicio

se liberare, tam facile supplicium perpeti_);[197] of the harm done

to oneself by indulgence in angry passion (_dolorem cum inferre uult,

patitur_);[198] or of the altogether admirable bravery that comes from

true philosophy (_illa uehemens et constans animi militia_);[199] or yet

again, of the vital interconnexion between home and country.[200] Among

more elaborate passages of this reflective cast is one (with a typical

mixture of metaphors) upon the fleeting nature of human blessings:

Too perishable and frail, too much resembling the toy rattles

of children, are your so-called human strength and human

wealth. Their rising tide is as instantaneous as their ebb

is sudden: at no place and in no person do they stand firmly

fixed to steadfast roots; but, driven hither and thither by the

wayward blast of fortune, they miserably plunge in an abyss

of disaster those whom they have raised aloft and who are now

deserted by an unforeseen retreat. And so things which by their

loss double the bitterness of the hardships inflicted ought to

be neither considered nor called blessings.[201]

To sum up, although he is superstitious, uncritical, time-serving and

in his moralizing somewhat hackneyed, yet Valerius is not to be denied

credit for protesting against luxury, whether in an independent spirit

or from sympathy with the emperor’s policy; and occasionally his genuine

appreciation of the greatness of Rome may condone his rhetoric.

This leads to a consideration of his style. Wearing the characteristic

guise of the period, it is rhetorical to the verge of bombast; it is

metaphorical; it is, as we have seen, given to _sententiae_; and marked

by artifice especially in its penchant for the balanced and epigrammatic.

At his briefest he does not hold us—the curt paragraphs allotted to

some illustrations are little better than a catalogue; and at times

he is himself conscious of the defects attendant upon this mode of

treatment.[202] Many examples are incidents compressed from such authors

as Livy and, it must generally be added, spoiled in the compressing.

How much more effective, for instance, and dramatic is Livy’s handling

of the trick whereby a Roman cheated a Sabine out of a cow intended

for a sacrifice to bring good fortune![203] Still, justice compels the

admission that sometimes Valerius relates a story both briefly and

well—particularly where there is a neat dialogue to introduce. Such

merits, however, as he has fail to raise his conglomerate of anecdotes

into an aesthetic whole.

The influence of the rhetorical schools dominates his poetic and

exclamatory vein, and not seldom beguiles him into turgidity. A piece

representative of his occasional touch of poetic fancy follows his story

about the symbolic wheat-grains heaped by ants into the mouth of the

sleeping infant, Midas:

To the ants of Midas I incline with justice and reason to

prefer the bees of Plato; for the former proved harbingers

of a prosperity perishable and frail; but the bees foretold

prosperity solid and everlasting, when they placed the honey

inside the lips of the little child asleep in his cradle. On

hearing of what had befallen, the interpreters of prodigies

declared that from his mouth should flow a dulcet eloquence

unparalleled. Yet to my thinking it was not on Mount Hymettus,

fragrant with thyme blossom, that these bees fed, but on the

Heliconian mountain-slopes verdant with learning of every kind,

and so by the inspiration of the goddesses they instilled into

a noble genius the sweetest nourishment of the most exalted

eloquence.[204]

Uncurbed by artistic repression, he indulges too freely in the

exclamatory. This tends to inflation, and through over-employment

becomes wearisome. Take the outburst (_O spectaculum admirabile!_) on

the preparations for carrying out the sentence of scourging passed by

the dictator Papirius upon his insubordinate master of the horse; or the

apostrophe to the dictator Postumius, who adjudged his own son to death

for disobedience to a military command.[205] Touching the Macedonian

envoys to Rome, who volunteered to carry the funeral bier of Aemilius

Paullus, the author exclaims:

Twice did Macedonia show our city, Paullus, that you were an

illustrious man; during your life, by its spoils; on your

death, by its shoulders![206]

It is a forced point made at the expense of simplicity. The section on

the praises of poverty ends in characteristic tones:

Why then do we lacerate with daily invective a moderate

fortune, as if that were an especial hardship for mankind?...

Let us rather rise in spirit and with the memory of the olden

times refresh our souls enfeebled by gazing upon money; for by

the hut of Romulus, and by the modest dwellings of the ancient

Capitol, and by the everlasting hearths of Vesta, content to

this day with earthen vessels, I swear that no riches can be

preferred to the poverty of such men![207]

If the passage were not so declamatory one might accept the suggested

implication that the author’s means were moderate; as it stands, its

autobiographic significance may be doubted.

Akin to the rhetorical element in Valerius are the copiousness

and boldness of his metaphors. Their free introduction without a

semi-apologetic _uelut_ or _quoddam_ or _ut ita dicam_, if un-Ciceronian,

is in a stylistic sense more modern. The metaphors may be violent, or

overdone, or actually mixed. One of many instances occurs in the contrast

between Euripides and a self-confident contemporary proud of his powers

in rapid composition:

The writings due to the fertile rush (_fertilis cursus_) of the

one have collapsed without reaching the first turning-posts of

memory (_intra primas metas memoriae_); the work of the other,

a product of the lamp and of the hesitating pen, shall be borne

with the full sails of fame along the passage of all time.[208]

Again, the degeneracy of Scipio’s son is “a birth of darkness from

the lightning” (_Di boni, quas tenebras ex quo fulmine nasci passi

estis!_);[209] and the break in the even tenour of Polycrates’s happiness

is thus expressed: “Once only did he change countenance, shaken with a

very brief jolt of sadness” (_semel dumtaxat uultum mutauit perquam breui

tristitiae salebra succussum_).[210]

The balance so representative of his time is a favourite device in

summing up illustrations, as _inimicorum existimatione punitus, suo

iudicio finitus_ (of the death of Theramenes), or _ita alteri tectum

mendacium, alteri ueritas aperta finis uitae fuit_,[211] or in his

prologue to Book I, “the other gods we have received, the Caesars we have

given” (_deos enim reliquos accepimus, Caesares dedimus_). In a later

book he remarks that the difference between the poet Accius and Julius

Caesar lay in books not busts (_ibi uoluminum non imaginum certamina

exercebantur_), while of Virginius resolved to deliver his daughter from

the designs of Appius Claudius he says: _puellam occidit pudicaeque

interemptor quam corruptae pater esse maluit_.[212]

His artificiality is largely due to the inveterate habit of hunting for

effective contrasts, and to a passion for the epigrammatic in expressing

facts and reflections.[213] Overreaching his aim, he constantly falls

into far-fetched conceits. Some of these smart sayings are as heartless

and tasteless as the headlines of certain modern newspapers. Take his

comment on the intended result of the punishments inflicted upon Romans

who had surrendered to a force of slaves: the object was, he says grimly,

that those who had been lured by the desire for life into

permitting runaways richly deserving crucifixion to set up

trophies over them, those who had not blushed to have the

ignominious yoke imposed upon their own liberty by the hands of

slaves, should now find that their share in the light of day

could be embittered, and should now have a manly longing for

that death of which they had felt a womanish dread.[214]

Here the final antithesis between _effeminate timuerant_ and _uiriliter

optarent_ is singularly unnatural and strained. He is scarcely less

artificial when he declares that “from the gallant wounds” of Cato of

Utica “flowed more glory than blood,” and that by falling on his sword he

taught mankind “how the upright should prefer honour without life to life

without honour.”[215] The tendency resembles Dryden at his earliest and

worst, and the riot of conceit during one phase of English literature in

the seventeenth century.

No less in the narrower aspect of vocabulary and constructions does the

Latin of Valerius Maximus bear the stamp of the Silver Age. His prose

shares the fondness noticeable in Phaedrus’s verse for abstract turns

of expression. As Phaedrus uses _maiestas ducis_ for “the Emperor,” so

Valerius uses _mea paruitas_ for “my humble self.”[216] This liking

for the abstract, conjoined with abundance of metaphor, contributes to

give his phraseology a more modern ring than the strictly classical

Latin idiom has. When Marius is described as hostile to the upholders

of ancient lineage, Valerius merges such persons in the abstract term

_uetustas_, and the incompetent warriors who belittled successful

men risen from lowly origins are grouped under the phrase _militaris

ignauia_.[217] He refers to Aemilius Lepidus despatched by the senate

to be a guardian for a young Egyptian prince as _amplissimique et

integerrimi uiri sanctitatem_.[218] In similar fashion, he mentions “men

who have slipped into this deviation (of luxury) unknown to old-world

temperance,” where a simpler and earlier style of Latin might have said

“unknown to our temperate ancestors.”[219]

As might be expected, new words rise into prominence and old words are

used in changed senses. For example, he appears to favour _sugillare_,

which, like _sugillatio_,[220] is a Livian word—a significant point when

it is remembered that Livy marks the transition between republican and

Silver Latinity.[221] Valerius gets the unusual and “post-classical”

word _uaframentum_ (“a trick”) into his head at VII. iii. _ext._ 2,

and repeats it in the fourth and seventh paragraphs of the chapter.

Indeed, he is given to this repetition of words and expressions which

capture his fancy. Symptoms of the change coming over the language may

be detected in his invention or acceptance of fresh meanings and fresh

usages. Thus he widens the metaphorical use of words: _e.g._ _Cimonis

incunabula opinione stultitiae fuerunt referta_ (VI. ix. _ext._ 2) is a

more artificial employment of _referta_ than in Cicero’s _uita undique

referta bonis_ (_Tusc. Disp._ V. xxxi. 86). The adjective _numerosus_,

too, appears in its late Latin sense.[222] Nor are his constructions

those of stricter days. As in Phaedrus, _persuadere_ is used personally

in the passive;[223] and infinitives are joined freely with verbs which

in the Golden Age took a dependent _ut_ and subjunctive.[224] In all

such linguistic matters Valerius is as symptomatic of his age as when

he serves the needs of disputants and declaimers, or makes his verbal

obeisances before imperial authority. So, while he is not a thinker

even to the limited extent that Paterculus is, while he is casual in

investigation, superficial in comment, and too often showy in style, yet,

as a literary landmark, he possesses historical importance sufficient to

justify an attentive examination of his work.

CHAPTER III

VELLEIUS, CURTIUS AND HISTORY

Minor historians of the period—Cremutius Cordus, Aufidius

Bassus and others.

Velleius Paterculus—Ancestry—Interest in literature and

in the East—Military service under Tiberius—Scheme of the

compendium—Obligation to be brief—Sources—Subjective factors of

interest in Velleius—Symptoms of Silver Latin—The rhetorical

element—Epigrammatic antitheses—Literary conceits—Merits

of style—Sententious sayings—Defects and merits as

historian—Subjective historical method—Character-pieces—His

picture of Tiberius—The close on an imperial note.

Q. Curtius Rufus—The puzzle of his identity—Probable date

under Claudius—Eight surviving books—The attractive theme of

Alexander the Great—Curtius, Plutarch and Arrian in relation

to sources—Want of critical method and historical grasp—Gift

of narration—The hero’s character—A psychological study in

deterioration—Fortune and Fate—Stoicism in Curtius—Freedom from

superstition—Rhetorical element—Some features of style.

MINOR HISTORIANS

Under Tiberius, Caligula and Claudius history did not greatly flourish:

under Nero, we shall find, it flourished still less. There are only two

historians of note in the period—Velleius and Curtius. Before considering

them, we may pause on a few minor names. Cremutius Cordus illustrates

the danger of historical composition in the early Empire, especially if

a writer gave offence to a powerful minister like Sejanus. Cremutius was

charged with praising Brutus in his annals, and with calling Cassius

“last of the Romans.” He starved himself to death, and the senate had

his books burned in A.D. 25, though Tacitus says copies were hidden and

published.[225] Similarly, the downfall of the republic and the initial

phases of the Empire occupied Aufidius Bassus in Tiberius’s reign. He

gave attention to Rome’s wars with the Germans, and his work is cited and

continued by the elder Pliny.[226] The elder Seneca’s lost historical

work has been recorded as containing an account of the end of Tiberius.

A later group includes Caligula’s victim Gaetulicus, who governed Germany

for ten years, but whose writings on Germans and Britons may, like

other works of his, have been in verse;[227] then, in Claudius’s time,

Servilius Nonianus who wrote on recent as well as contemporary history,

and Bocchus who treated chronology and the marvels of Spain.

VELLEIUS PATERCULUS

The circumstance that C.[228] Velleius Paterculus[229] was quaestor

elect in A.D. 6[230] warrants the inference that his birth took place

not later than 19 B.C. After A.D. 30, the year of the consulate of M.

Vinicius, to whom he dedicated his history and whom he often addresses

in its course, we know nothing of Velleius; and, indeed, he seems to

have played no prominent part in the reign of Tiberius, for throughout

the sixteen years which elapsed after his nomination as a _candidatus

Caesaris_ for the praetorship in the year of Augustus’s death[231] we

have no information about him. Then comes the fact that he published his

book; and as to his biography the rest is silence. For us, therefore, his

activity lies within narrow limits of time: its outstanding feature, that

which determined his outlook on history, was his career in the public and

especially the military service during the first fourteen years of the

Christian era.

He came of a family which, as he is at pains to remind his readers, had

been strenuous in civic life and in the profession of arms. Dealing

with the Italian franchise war, he declares that mistaken modesty

(_uerecundia_) shall not deter him from doing justice to the part

played by an ancestor (_atauus_), Minatius Magius, who in turn was the

grandson of a notable Campanian, Decius Magius. This more distant forbear

figures in Livy’s pages at Capua as a stubborn advocate of fidelity to

Rome despite the threats of Hannibal.[232] The author’s grandfather,

C. Velleius, a _praefectus fabrum_, had been honoured by Pompey and

remained so keen an anti-Caesarian that he ran himself through with

his sword, when by reason of years he felt unable actively to support

Tiberius Nero (the future emperor’s father) after his defeat by Octavian:

“I shall not defraud my own grandfather,” says Velleius admiringly

with a Johnsonian emphasis, “of a testimony which I should give to a

stranger.”[233] He notes elsewhere that his father, like himself, had

been _praefectus equitum_.[234] Again, he records the assistance given

by Capito, his uncle (_patruus meus_), a man of senatorial rank, to

Agrippa in prosecuting C. Cassius after the assassination of Caesar.[235]

To his brother, Magius Celer Velleianus, he makes several allusions,

chronicling his recognized ability as lieutenant-general under Tiberius

Caesar in Dalmatia and his association with the author both in attending

Tiberius’s triumph, and later as one among “Caesar’s candidates” for the

praetorship.[236]

Concerning his formal education we have scant knowledge; yet,

considerable rhetorical training may be argued from his artifices of

style; and he must have imbibed an interest in books and authors, to

judge from his pronouncements on Homer, Hesiod and Cicero, and from

excursuses on literary men of the Gracchan, Ciceronian and Augustan

periods.[237] About the beginning of our era he was a young officer

(_tribunus militum_) who had gained preliminary insight into military

life under Vinicius’s father in Thrace and Macedonia, and was next on

service in the East.[238] Such service doubtless provided a stimulus

towards writing the now mutilated compendium upon Oriental and Greek

affairs near the outset of his history. Elsewhere, too, we meet

transient suggestions of Oriental colour and memories—as when he recalls

his good fortune in beholding a gorgeous Durbar held on an island in

the Euphrates between C. Caesar and the Parthian monarch;[239] or when

there flashes on his inward eye the pleasant recollection of “so many

events, places, nations and cities” of the East;[240] or when he recounts

Antony’s luxurious chariot-ride through the streets of Alexandria as

the new Father Bacchus, “ivy-wreathed, clad in a golden robe, thyrsus

in hand, and buskins on his legs;”[241] or again when, _con amore_, he

devotes picturesque touches to his description of the extravagant mummery

of Antony’s quondam friend, Plancus, who acted Glaucus “naked and painted

sea-green, wearing a chaplet of reeds on his head, dragging a tail after

him and crawling upon his knees.”[242]

But no experience left upon his history so distinctive an imprint as

his military service under Tiberius. This meant contact virtually for

eight years on end with a powerful and able personality.[243] For his

commander’s greatness he conceived and expressed unbounded enthusiasm

in an almost eighteenth-century sense of the term. It is an enthusiasm

which amounts to a bias for Tiberius in particular and for the Caesars

in general. The question of the character of Tiberius may be with

greater appropriateness raised in considering Tacitus; but at least

more light and shade might have been expected from Velleius, if, as an

actual observer (_spectator_), he aimed at producing an impartial and

realistic picture of the man. What one can say without prejudice is

that he had abundant opportunity for estimating the merits of Tiberius

as a general, and that both the author and the subject of his eulogies

were men of proved military experience. The future historian went out

as a cavalry officer with Tiberius to Germany in A.D. 4; two years

later, when quaestor-elect, he took charge of reinforcements despatched

from Rome to Tiberius, who was then coping with the danger threatening

Italy from Dalmatia and Pannonia; and after the quaestorship at Rome

he acted as _legatus_ under him.[244] “What battalions of the enemy

did we not behold in that first year!” exclaims Velleius proudly.[245]

The ultimate surrender of Pannonia confined war-like operations to

Dalmatia, where Velleius and his brother were assisting Tiberius.[246]

Scarcely was Dalmatia pacified in A.D. 9 when the appalling disaster

to the Roman arms under Varus in Germany summoned Tiberius thither to

the rescue of imperial fortunes, or, to follow Velleius’s artificial

expression, as the _patronus_ who took up the case of his client, the

state: “the never-failing champion of the Roman Empire undertakes the

cause so familiar to him.”[247] With Velleius’s attendance at Tiberius’s

triumph in the winter of A.D. 12-13 the record of his career as a soldier

fittingly closes.

It is natural that, like Livy on a larger scale, Velleius should treat

with greater fulness events nearest to his own day; but his treatment

of early history would look less disproportionate, if his compendium

had come down in more perfect form. As it stands, Book I has lost its

opening; and only eight chapters have survived to represent the affairs

of the East and Greek and Tyrian enterprise before the foundation of

Rome. An allusion to the rape of the Sabine maidens is interrupted by a

gap of well-nigh six hundred years in the narrative, which is resumed

in the second century B.C., at the period of the second Macedonian war.

Then ten extant chapters of Book I include the fall of Carthage and

Corinth, an account of Roman colonies, reflections on the multiplicity

of geniuses at certain epochs and remarks on Roman literature and

oratory. Book II, in 131 chapters, ranges over more than a century and

a half from Tiberius Gracchus to Tiberius Caesar. The last definite

historical allusion is to the emperor’s bereavement by the death of

the dowager-empress Livia, which happened in A.D. 29.[248] The tone of

encomium adopted towards Sejanus would prove, even if we did not know the

date of Vinicius’s consulate, that the work ended before his fall in A.D.

31.[249]

In reviewing the literary and historical qualities of Velleius, one

must keep before one the intentionally compendious nature of his work.

Readers are indeed not likely to forget it; for he repeatedly pauses to

explain that he is in haste, harping on the point till it sounds like a

refrain among his themes. This brevity was a kind of literary fashion,

comparable with that to which Phaedrus lays claim at the same period.

Velleius seems desirous of illustrating the merits of his compendious

system when applied to a serviceable digression upon Roman colonies

(_non inutili rerum notitia in artum contracta_).[250] At another time,

he feels impelled to digress on the recurrence of periods distinguished

for special talent, although he is sensible that the “headlong rapidity”

of his composition, “like the revolution of a wheel, or the downrush

of a torrent, admits of no halt, and involves rather the exclusion

of necessary details than the acceptance of the superfluous.”[251]

Similarly he realizes the necessity laid upon him by his limits to

deal succinctly with even such a subject as the greatness of Pompey

(_operis modus paucis eam narrari iubet_);[252] while the greatness of

Caesar forces him to stop despite his urgency (_quamlibet festinantem

in se morari cogit_.)[253] Again, he offers a condensed account of the

outbreak of the Civil War in contradistinction to the copious volumes

of others;[254] almost apologetically he regrets that his promise to be

brief involves racing over details in Caesar’s campaigns against the

Pompeians;[255] with equal regret he exclaims that the boons conferred

upon the world by the victory at Actium could not have justice done them

in so rapid a survey as his abridgement;[256] and elsewhere he asserts

the impossibility of describing adequately the magnificence of Octavian’s

triumphant return to Rome “even in the compass of a regular history, let

alone a work so abbreviated as this.”[257] But it is in connexion with

Tiberius that he becomes still more insistent upon his obligation to

be concise; thus, he promises to discuss in a different work Pannonia,

Dalmatia and other countries subdued by Tiberius;[258] he reserves,

presumably for the same intended work, the circumstances attending that

prince’s withdrawal from Rome into temporary seclusion at Rhodes;[259]

he looks forward to conveying an impression of the popular joy over his

adoption “in that regular history” (_in illo iusto opere_); so too with

further Dalmatian and Pannonian victories and the Varian disaster which

called Tiberius to Germany.[260] The alarming effect of Augustus’s death

he avers to be beyond description: “I have no leisure in so precipitate a

narrative to portray it, and he who has leisure is unable to do it.”[261]

All this may savour of protesting too much on the part of one who would

be brief; yet it has its importance as a proof that he had a conception

of, and perhaps yearnings after, a different method of writing history;

while, to some extent, his confessedly compendious aim disarms criticism

or, at least, palliates certain blemishes and omissions. It is beside

the point to reproach him with sketchiness when his plain object is to

be sketchy; nor is it surprising that in his hurry he should be at times

careless in composition, awkward in structure, conversational in tone,

and given to tasteless repetition in word and phrase.[262]

In a work which makes no pretence to be exhaustive we cannot expect

an enumeration of authorities. Some sources he does, in fact, mention;

others we are left to infer. Discussing the foundation of Capua and Nola

(in a manner half suggesting that he belonged to the former town),[263]

he cites vaguely “some authors,” and then descends in particular upon

Cato, whose _Origines_ he is certain to have found useful, and from whom

he dissents “with all due deference to his carefulness.”[264] He alludes

to the _Annales_ of Hortensius as authoritative upon the Italian war

of Sulla’s time; to an inscription, in proof of a religious ceremony

performed by Sulla; to ampler details “in the larger volumes of others”

who had treated the outbreak of the Civil War; and to the autobiographic

memoirs of Augustus.[265] The effect of the annalists’s method is

observable in his inclusion of a survey of Greek colonization; and we may

readily suppose, since the works of Atticus, Cornelius Nepos and Pompeius

Trogus[266] were available, that he made use of them. Livy, who was

republican enough to be dubbed “Pompeian” by Augustus, would not possess

the pro-Caesarian enthusiasm likely to commend him to Velleius.

The curtness of the specially compendious parts does not conduce to

interest, and for this reason one welcomes occasions when summary gives

place to slightly more spacious digressions such as those on colonies,

on early Roman literature and the natural law regulating the emergence

of genius, on literature and oratory at the Gracchan period, on great

authors of the Augustan age, on Roman provinces, and on the boons of

the Augustan _régime_.[267] But it is only fair to say that the general

effect compares favourably with that of most compendium-writers in Latin.

For instance, his compendium is of much greater force and individuality

than that of Florus. Velleius can at least be spirited and interesting

(even if over-enthusiastic), when he relates his personal impressions

of Tiberius. This may be due to an excess of that subjectivity which

is a characteristic of the Silver Age; but it has the merit of winning

attention. He leaves us under no misapprehension as to his likes or

dislikes. He is no democrat: he hates the ‘pernicious’ agitations of

the Gracchi; he detests Marius and Cinna and the tribune of the people,

Manilius (_semper uenalis et alienae minister potentiae_);[268] on

the other hand, he is full of admiration for Marcus Cato, while his

affection for the Caesars emerges at every opportunity, continuously

from the chapter recording Octavius’s birth, on through the appreciative

comparison of Julius Caesar’s achievements in Gaul with the subsequent

exploits of Tiberius, until he reaches those passages where he sounds the

praises of the _princeps_ or of his minister Sejanus.[269] Now, while

these antipathies and sympathies imply partiality, they by no means make

the historian less entertaining. It is one thing to be trustworthy, and

another to be readable. Besides, as we shall find, the very style, faults

notwithstanding, has a good deal of colour and variety: it is no dead

monotony in its choice of words and ideas.

Already in his prose there are evidences of the change which had set

in towards Silver Latinity. Traces of such tendencies may be remarked

in Livy,[270] but in Velleius they are more prominent; for the old

massive and, on the whole, straightforward periods are largely replaced

by briefer sentences where pointed phrase and emphatic contrast argue

a style at once disdainful of absolute simplicity and ambitious of

attracting notice to the manner of expression. Where he attempts the long

sentence, the inferiority of his literary architecture becomes patent:

it is often an ill-built fabric of clumsy patchwork. Thus, the character

of Julius Caesar is portrayed in a rambling sentence where the first

word “hic” is separated from the closing verb “elapsus est,” to which

it is nominative, by nearly 130 words forming an overcrowded series of

subordinate clauses and phrases.[271]

The evolution of Latin prose during the first century A.D. is so closely

wrapped up with the educational training undergone by writers, that

one instinctively looks for traces left by the rhetorical school upon

Velleius. They are not far to seek among his plentiful exclamations and

interrogations: _e.g._ the apostrophe denouncing Antony for Cicero’s

murder:

“You gained nothing, however, Mark Antony (for indignation bursting

from heart and spirit compels me to depart from the regular form of my

history), you gained nothing, I tell you, when you paid the hire for

cutting off a divine gift of utterance and a most noble head, or when

you procured for a ghastly wage the assassination of a man once the

preserver of the commonwealth, once a consul so illustrious! You robbed

Cicero on that day of a life of trouble, of an age in the yellow leaf,

of an existence more pitiable under your domination than death could be

under your triumvirate; but his reputation, the renown of his actions and

words, these, instead of taking away, you enhanced. He lives and will

live in the memory of all the ages; and as long as, whether framed by

chance or providence or by what means soever, there shall endure unharmed

this fabric of the universe, which he almost alone of Romans could see in

the mind’s eye, could grasp with his genius, and could illustrate by his

eloquence, so long shall it carry the praise of Cicero as the companion

of its own continuance. All posterity will admire his writings against

you, and will curse your conduct towards him!”[272]

The poetic element in his diction is an allied feature; and another

kindred symptom is an inordinate fondness for superlatives.[273]

But it is his habitual quest after the striking and epigrammatic that

classes Velleius’s Latin as definitely Silver.[274] His antitheses—and

some are excellent—would impress one more, if they were fewer; their

frequency palls, and amid such an embarrassment of material, one need

but select the examples first to hand. “Scipio, by the destruction of

Carthage and Numantia, freed us from the dread of the one, and the

insults of the other” (_excisa Carthagine ac Numantia ab alterius nos

metu, alterius uindicauit contumeliis_).[275] A little more elaborate is

the studied contrast of nouns, adjectives and tenses observable in the

following:

_ne quid usquam malis publicis deesset, in qua ciuitate semper

uirtutibus certatum erat, certabatur sceleribus, optimusque

sibi uidebatur qui fuerat pessimus_.[276]

Another chapter contains a balanced summary of the rivals’ position at

the outbreak of the Civil War:

_alterius ducis causa melior uidebatur, alterius erat

firmior; hic omnia speciosa, illic ualentia: Pompeium senatus

auctoritas, Caesarem militum armauit fiducia_,[277]

in reading which one cannot help thinking of Lucan’s famous antithesis

concerning the same struggle, _Victrix causa deis placuit sed uicta

Catoni_, and the fuller comparison between the protagonists which follows

that line.[278] So one might quote the distinction drawn between Brutus

and Cassius, or the portions of the chapter on Actium where he piles

antithesis upon antithesis.[279]

Sometimes his artificiality lies in straining after an affectedly remote

way of conveying a mental picture; and such literary conceits may or may

not be combined with the trick of antithesis. He introduces a fanciful

idea of the solace which the outcast Marius might derive from the ruins

of Carthage, each contemplating, each comforting the other (_cum Marius

aspiciens Carthaginem, illa intuens Marium, alter alteri possent esse

solacio_).[280] When Catulus asphyxiated himself, he found a death rather

after the wish than the design of his enemies (_mortem magis uoto quam

arbitrio inimicorum obiit_).[281] Similar anxiety to compass a smart

saying animates the conceit implying that Catiline’s end had cheated

the executioner: “gallantly fighting, he yielded up the breath of life

already due to capital punishment” (_fortissime dimicans quem debuerat

supplicio spiritum reddidit_).[282] So of Sextus Pompey, the son of the

pirate-crusher turned pirate, as Velleius must remind us: so, of the

heroic lady, who “bringing about a premature death by swallowing live

coals was compensated for death by deathless fame” (_uiuo igni deuorato

praematura morte inmortalem nominis sui pensauit memoriam_).[283]

His prose style demands attention, both as a type of its period and as

the subject of strictures which have sometimes been too unqualified.

Although nowise comparable to the _lactea ubertas_ of Livy, yet a careful

examination will show that it cannot fairly be dismissed as absolutely

meagre. There are qualities which recall Sallust: and that must be

imputed to Velleius for literary virtue. His very artifices save him

from baldness, while, as a military author, he displays, with all his

faults and affectations, more sense of style than, for instance, the

continuators of Caesar.[284]

His semi-proverbial sayings, which read like so many condensations of a

reflective wisdom, rather heighten than otherwise one’s opinion of him

as an author. Such pronouncements as the following imply, not absolute

invention, but a faculty of insight and expression: “rivalry nurtures

talent” (_aluntur aemulatione ingenia_); “continuance at the height of

perfection is hard” (_difficilis in perfecto mora est_); “what one cannot

overtake one ceases to follow” (_quod assequi non potest sequi desinit_);

“precedents do not stop where they start” (_non ibi consistunt exempla

unde coeperunt_); “men are indulgent critics of themselves” (_familiare

est hominibus omnia sibi ignoscere_); “any port in a storm” (_exitialem

tempestatem fugientibus statio pro portu_); “ease is the deadliest foe

to discipline” (_res disciplinae inimicissima otium_); “great tasks

need great helpers” (_magna negotia magnis adiutoribus egent_).[285]

On at least two occasions he propounds the ancient notion that those

predestined to calamity are forced upon foolishness by some higher power,

be it “God” or “Destiny’s force that none may wrestle against.”[286]

For his historical method at large profundity cannot be claimed. He

does not appreciate great movements in history; he does not exhibit the

essential nexus or continuous evolution between periods; and though his

eye to their relationship in time is noticeable in the frequent insertion

of a date, even this laudable habit is discounted by inconsistencies

in chronology. On the other hand, if he shows no keen discernment for

the causal link conjoining ages, he can grasp and criticize certain

political, social or economic developments which constitute differences

between them: thus, he remarks forcibly upon the increase at Rome of

civil broils (II. iii.), aestheticism (I. xiii.), luxury (I. xi.,

xv.),[287] and house-rents (II. x.). And while the vital significance

of great movements is not made luminous, he at least realizes the

duty of assigning causes, as in his speculation upon the contemporary

emergence of great geniuses (I. xvii.). It adds to his merits that he

recognizes the play of human passions and in virtue thereof remains no

mere chronicler, but becomes a discerner and recorder of motives—as in

the case of the outbreak of the Civil War, where he accounts for Pompey’s

attitude, or where he states the respective objects of Pompey, Caesar and

Crassus in forming their triumvirate.[288] If, then, it may be admitted

that Velleius writes history without deep penetration into what Teuffel

calls “the internal connexion of things”;[289] yet it is going too far to

say that “his interest centres upon individuals only.” For, surely, his

actual search for motives must relate the individual to his surroundings;

and, as indicated, he is not entirely neglectful of the need for tracing

causes. Besides, his serviceable digressions, already glanced at, arise

expressly from his sense of the inferior force of isolated details in

history as compared with their effect when grouped together.[290]

With these qualifications, however, the truth remains that his history is

written mainly from a personal or subjective standpoint; and its cardinal

method is the biographic, with some of the merits and most of the defects

entailed. It is, then, not highly scientific or philosophic: on the other

hand, though Velleius believes in the universal sway of fortune,[291]

there is in such a character-loving method little danger of representing

historical figures as mere puppets controlled by some indefinable but

apparently inexorable “Will of the Age.” With him prominent men are no

tools of impersonal forces, but living actors who logically deserve

moral blame or commendation when their qualities come to be weighed.

So, through his own interest in character, he increases his readers’

interest in his personages and seldom leaves a doubt as to his opinion

for or against a man. Strong sympathies, indeed, may be consistent with

a claim to be candid and dispassionate.[292] Velleius is, however,

too enthusiastic to realize the extravagance of his praises. Bias has

blinded the judge. Tiberius was doubtless an able soldier, but Velleius

damages the emperor’s character by excessive eulogy. Perilously endowed

with an inexhaustible capacity for laudation and an insatiable thirst

for superlatives, he resembles a professional writer of testimonials in

favour of the Caesars.[293]

The likes and dislikes are not confined to persons. He is almost

Puritanic in his suspicion of art and wealth as detrimental to the

community;[294] and yet this distrust of aestheticism does not conceal

from him the crass ignorance (although he is too grave to see the

humour) which Mummius showed in serving his celebrated notice upon the

contractors for the removal of pictures and statues from Corinth to

Rome, to the effect that any masterpiece lost must be replaced![295] He

is scathing in his denunciation of proscription, and sarcastic on the

tendency to minimize contemporary greatness and on homage rendered to

high place.[296] Still, it is upon his character-drawing that one should

focus attention. His briefer character-pieces, containing many neat

strokes, include, in the first book, that of Scipio (xii.-xiii.); in the

second, Marius (xi.); Mithradates (xviii.); Cinna (xxiv.); Cato, finely

called “the very likeness of Virtue” (_homo uirtuti simillimus_, xxxv.);

Clodius (xlv.); Curio, “a most ingeniously good-for-nothing person”

(_homo ingeniosissime nequam_, xlviii.); Caelius, who resembled Curio

and was not _minus ingeniosissime nequam_ (lxviii.); Brutus and Cassius

(lxxii.); Lepidus (lxxx.), Shakespeare’s “slight unmeritable man,”

called by Velleius “the biggest of fools without a single good quality

to deserve the long indulgence of fortune”; Maecenas, whose voluptuous

effeminacy during leisure-hours is noted in _otio ac mollitiis paene

ultra feminam fluens_, and his sleepless vigilance at an emergency in

the no less striking words _ubi res uigiliam exigeret, sane exsomnis_

(lxxxviii.). The sketch of Drusus comes later (xcvii.). Fuller portrayals

are given of Pompey (II. xxix.) and Caesar (xli.). Still more elaborate

is the character of Tiberius conveyed in different chapters; and to this

picture we now turn, remembering that a complete estimate of the real

Tiberius involves the attitude of Tacitus. Tiberius is introduced in a

comparison with Julius and Augustus;[297] but we get our first historical

glimpse of him when, a child of two, he lay in the arms of his mother

Livia, then a fugitive from the troops of the man whose consort she was

one day to be.[298] Really, however, he enters on Velleius’ stage in his

nineteenth year, announced with a fanfare of praise as a quaestor of

promise:—

“Tiberius Claudius Nero ... brought up on a system of the loftiest

principles, a youth of high birth, good looks and imposing stature,

thoroughly equipped with an excellent education and superior talents, who

from the outset had awakened expectations equal to his present greatness,

and even to the eye had proclaimed himself a prince.”[299] For almost

forty chapters Tiberius is the dominating figure; but it is mainly his

career previous to his accession which Velleius describes; for it is

only in five closing chapters that he touches briefly on his reign. This

brevity is the more disappointing in view of the account which Tacitus

gives in the _Annals_; and those at least who accept it must charge

Velleius with _suppressio ueri_. About twenty chapters are occupied with

Tiberius as a soldier.[300] They contain material illustrative of his

greatness, such as the indescribable enthusiasm for him as a general:—

The very sight of him drew tears of joy from the soldiers. They

were all eagerness, with a sort of unexampled rapture in their

salutation and a passion for touching his hand: they could

not restrain themselves from immediately adding ‘Is it really

you, General? Have we got you back in safety?’ and then, ‘_I_

was with you in Armenia, General,’ ‘_I_ was in Raetia,’ ‘_I_

had a reward from you in Vindelicia,’ ‘_I_ in Pannonia,’ ‘_I_

in Germany’—a scene not to be expressed in words, and perhaps

scarcely capable of winning belief.[301]

This forms an effective prelude to his military successes in Germany.

Another impressive incident is that of the tall and aged German chieftain

who in a native “dug-out” paddled half across the river between the

enemy and the Roman camp to request the privilege of looking upon

Tiberius.[302] Tiberius’s solicitude for the health of subordinates (his

provision of an ambulance for sick officers is one illustration), and

his self-discipline on active service, are among the admirable traits

emphasized.[303] Apart, however, from handling his prowess, Velleius has

ways of elevating his hero. He touches on Tiberius’s dignified leisure at

Rhodes, the disturbing effect exercised upon the peace of the world by

this retirement, the widespread joy over his adoption by Augustus, and

his modest reluctance to accept imperial sovereignty.[304] Then, looking

back from A.D. 30 over Tiberius’s years upon the throne, in a passage

whose textual variations fortunately do not impair the sense, our author

paints in _couleur de rose_ his picture of the reign:

“Of the transactions of these last sixteen years, massed (_ingerantur_,

Ellis; _inhaereat_, Kritz) as they are before the eyes and mind of

everyone, who shall venture upon a detailed account? Our emperor secured

the consecration of his sire not by authority, but by scrupulous

reverence (_non imperio sed religione_); he did not simply give

Augustus a divine title—he made him a god. Financial stability has been

recalled to our public life and political disaffection cleared out of

it (_summota_), as bribery has been from the elections, and strife from

the senate-house. Justice, equity, industry, long buried and cumbered

with mould (_sepultaeque ac situ obsitae_), have been restored to the

state. There has been an enhancement of prestige for the authorities

(_magistratibus_ instead of _militibus_), of grandeur for the senate,

and of dignity for the law-courts. Rioting in the theatre has been put

down, and upright conduct has been either the aim inspired in all or a

necessity imposed upon them: integrity is honoured and irregularities

are punished. The humble man respects the powerful without fearing him,

while the powerful takes precedence of a humbler man without despising

him. When were provisions more moderate in price? When was peace richer

in blessings? Spread over the regions of east and west and everywhere

within the bounds of south or north, the Augustan Peace to the uttermost

corner of the earth preserves men immune from the dread of brigandage.

Accidental losses sustained not only by individuals but by cities are

made good through the generosity of our prince. Cities in Asia have

been repaired; provinces have been secured against the wrong-doing of

governors. Office is the ready reward of merit; crime is certain to meet

with punishment, even if it comes late. Influence is surpassed by a

fair claim, and intrigue by desert; for our best of princes by his own

practice teaches his countrymen to act aright, and while he is greatest

in power, he is even greater as an example.”[305]

Later we read his panegyric upon Tiberius composed in exclamatory fashion:

“With what precepts did he equip his dear Germanicus and imbue him

with the principles of campaigning in his own company long before he

welcomed him back as the conqueror of Germany! What were the honours

which he heaped upon his young manhood, when the style of his triumph

corresponded to the greatness of his exploits! How often has he honoured

the people with donations, and how willingly, when he could do it with

the approval of the senate, has he made good a deficiency in a senator’s

income without either offering inducements to extravagance or allowing

honourable poverty to be deprived of dignity!... What a formidable war,

stirred up by the Gallic chieftain Sacrovir and Julius Florus, did he

suppress with a rapidity and a gallantry so marvellous that the Roman

people found itself a conqueror before it was conscious of being at

war, and the messenger of victory outstripped the news of danger! The

highly alarming conflict in Africa, too, despite its daily increase in

seriousness, was, under his auspices and direction, speedily laid to

rest. What public works has he erected of his own (_sua_ rather than

_suo_), or in the name of his family! With what dutiful generosity,

surpassing human belief, is he rearing a temple to his sire!... Anything

that has at any time enjoyed eminent renown, he considers to have the

claim of kindred upon his protection. With what liberality on other

occasions, but, especially at the recent conflagration on the Caelian

Mount, has he out of his own patrimony come to the rescue of the losses

of people in every rank! How little are the public disturbed when,

without the consternation involved in a levy, he organizes the raising of

troops, a matter of prolonged and peculiar alarm!”[306]

Having thus belauded his talent for training youth in military science,

his benefactions, energy, businesslike grasp, filial piety, and gift for

organization, Velleius proceeds humbly to protest his wonderment that the

gods should permit plots to be formed against so good a ruler, and to

bemoan the sorrowful bereavements and shameful domestic trials which have

befallen the emperor.

So the historian praises not wisely but too well. There is no whisper

about unfair treatment of Germanicus to besmirch the spotlessness of the

emperor: nor is there a suggestion of fault in Sejanus, for the powerful

minister had not yet fallen. In the pages of Tacitus we look upon a

different portrayal of the emperor and his times. But with Velleius

all is right in the Roman world. As an old soldier he is unflinching

in loyalty to his _imperator_. He could not belong to the political

opposition. From the first warmly affected towards the Caesars, he shows

his favourable attitude to the Empire in his sketch of the benefits

conferred by the Augustan _régime_.[307] Consistently with this feeling

of approval a sense of the continuity of Rome animates and dignifies his

closing prayer. This is an appeal for national preservation and defence

addressed to Jupiter of the Capitol, to Mars as author of the Roman name

and mainstay of its power, to Vesta as warden of the ever-burning fires,

and finally to all those majestic divinities who had conferred imperial

destiny upon Rome:

_Voto finiendum uolumen est. Iuppiter Capitoline, et auctor

ac stator Romani nominis, Gradiue Mars, perpetuorumque custos

Vesta ignium, et quidquid numinum hanc Romani imperi molem

in amplissimum terrarum orbis fastigium extulit, uos publica

uoce obtestor atque precor: custodite, seruate, protegite hunc

statum, hanc pacem, hunc principem._[308]

Q. CURTIUS

A story is told about Alfonso V of Aragon and I of Sicily and Sardinia

that once, when ill, he had Quintus Curtius’s narrative of the exploits

of Alexander the Great read to him, and that the result proved to be

more than relaxation; for the King was cured. This anecdote of a ruler

in the fifteenth century notable for kindness to scholars who fled from

Constantinople to escape the Turks is one which indicates the right

approach to Curtius. He is to be read rather for entertainment than for

exact instruction; yet, after all, this is to certify his possession

of a considerable literary gift. The manuscripts give his name as Q.

Curtius Rufus;[309] but details of his life are not forthcoming and

his date is a matter of inference. There seems no way of settling his

relationship to or identity with the Curtius Rufus[310] in Tacitus who

was son of a gladiator, gained a triumph for overworking his soldiers at

silver mines in Germany, beheld an ominous midday vision recorded[311]

by both Tacitus and Pliny, and eventually became proconsul of Africa.

It has been argued that, if he had been a writer, Tacitus would have

mentioned the fact; that a proconsul might have been expected to be more

proficient in military history than our Curtius is; and that an imperial

official characterized by a “sullen sycophancy towards superiors”

(_aduersus superiores tristi adulatione_) would not have been so

independent in criticisms on Alexander’s arrogance, and on his courtiers’

subservience—“the perpetual curse of princes, whose power has been

overthrown oftener by flattery than by foes.”[312] Plausible answers can

be framed to each of these arguments; for example, it is unfortunately

too innocent (and Sallust will serve as an instance) to assume that a

writer’s morality is equal to his moralizing. But, all things considered,

no absolute conclusion can be reached. Rather more satisfactory is

the contention that he wrote under Claudius; for the two contemporary

references[313] traceable in his work best suit that period. One arises

out of the siege of Tyre, “now that prolonged peace restores all things,

Tyre, reborn after her destruction, finds repose beneath the protecting

clemency of Rome”; and the other contrasts the dissolution of Alexander’s

dominions after his death with the happier condition of the Roman Empire:

“Rightly does the Roman people acknowledge a debt of safety to a prince

that shone forth like a new star of the night which wellnigh proved our

last: most truly it was his rising, not the sun’s, that restored light to

a world in gloom (_caliganti_) when, deprived of their head, its members

were in conflict and panic.” The most satisfactory explanation of the

second passage is that it refers to the night in January, A.D. 41, when

Caligula was murdered and Claudius found himself suddenly elevated to

the throne; and the suggestion has been made that _caliganti_ is a play

on the dead emperor’s name. The “prolonged peace” of the earlier passage

applies appropriately to the period up to 41: and if the historian is

the Curtius Rufus given between Porcius Latro and Valerius Primanus

in Suetonius’s list in _De Rhetoribus_, then the order of names would

suggest a similar date.[314]

Of the ten books which Curtius composed on Alexander’s exploits,

the first two are lost. Other gaps occur at the end of Book V and

beginning of VI, and there is a break in the last book. Freinsheim in

the seventeenth century wrote Latin supplements for the missing parts,

drawing his material from many authors including Plutarch and Arrian. The

eight surviving books narrate Alexander’s career from 333 B.C., when he

was twenty-three and had reached Phrygia in his Asiatic expedition, up to

his death at Babylon in 323 with the resultant confusion and rivalries.

Falling short of first-rate history, the work is yet a wonderful and

often enthralling pageant of adventure, diplomacy, barbarity, kindliness,

privation, battle and sieges with “scapes i’the imminent deadly breach.”

We need not read far in the existing Latin text before Alexander

characteristically cuts the Gordian knot; and the will-power thereby

displayed is soon triumphantly seizing the passes of Cilicia, winning the

battle of Issus, and capturing the Persian queen and queen-mother (Book

III.). Tyre falls after protracted siege-operations calling forth many

inventions. In Egypt Alexander visits the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, is

declared the god’s son, founds Alexandria, and on his return into Asia

defeats King Darius at Arbela (IV.). The great cities of Babylon, Susa,

Persepolis, fall into the victor’s hands, and Darius, to Alexander’s

indignation, is murdered by two of his own commanders (V.). Oriental

luxury increases its hold on the conqueror; and he has to face danger

from conspirators (VI.). An emissary is despatched to kill Parmenio, his

general in Media, whose son had been, on insufficient evidence, put to

death for treason. Then Alexander carries his conquests into the heart of

Asia (VII.). His murder of Clitus is the outcome of quarrelling over the

wine-cups, and his domineering arrogance is depicted as on the increase.

Besides, his espousal of an Oriental bride, Roxane, causes widespread

disapproval. The next episode is the invasion of India, and a description

of the country is attempted as a preliminary. The Indus is crossed and

King Porus defeated (VIII.). After continued operations in the Punjaub,

the army protests against proceeding further and Alexander reluctantly

sanctions withdrawal. Nearchus is told off to investigate the Indian

Ocean (IX.). Mutinous outbreaks hamper Alexander’s schemes of universal

conquest and at Babylon he dies. After much scheming and counter-scheming

Perdiccas divides the lands overrun by Alexander as provinces to be ruled

by different generals, and Ptolemy transfers the embalmed body of the

monarch to Alexandria (X.).

The barest summary of such achievements serves as a reminder, though

not as an explanation, of the greatness which the ages have conceded to

Alexander. This unique personality remains an enigma: how much was due

to personal ambition or actually to blood-lust, how much to thirst for

adventure, how much to any definite or indefinite notion of disseminating

Greek culture through the absorption of many ancient sovereignties into

one far-extended empire, historians have found it hard conclusively

to decide. But though the motives are beyond exact measurement, and

though they palpably changed amidst the growing brilliance of repeated

triumphs, the general results are unmistakable. Alexander’s was a career

destined to alter the course of civilization, and open a new epoch for

the world. Naturally, then, history has always felt the attraction of

his name. Professional writers accompanied his expedition and, like

modern war-correspondents, employed their eyes and ears to advantage;

official records were kept of Macedonian affairs, of campaigns by land,

of coasting voyages, and survived long enough to be documents for later

research; so that, between authors with war experience and authors of

the study, a gigantic literature was composed on the conqueror in the

Alexandrian epoch. The theme in turn fascinated Rome. Livy, jealous of

the Macedonian’s fame, makes a patriotic digression[315] to argue that he

would not have had the success against Rome that he had against Persia

and India: and Livy’s contemporary, Pompeius Trogus, concerned himself

with Macedon, as is plain from the epitome by Justinus. Some realization

of the adventurous element in his career prompted the academic exercise

recorded by the elder Seneca “Alexander deliberates whether he should

cross the ocean.”[316] Finally, the extent to which the glamour of his

life fascinated the Middle Ages is shown in Chaucer’s words:

The storie of Alisaundre is so comune

That everie wight that hath discrecioun

Hath herd somewhat or al of his fortune.

Curtius, therefore, entered upon a great inheritance. Yet he cannot

be said to have made full use of his available sources. Only in two

passages[317] does he name authorities: in both Clitarchus is mentioned,

and in one of them Timagenes as well. It is possible indeed that he

drew from Clitarchus (_c._ 300 B.C.) mainly through Timagenes (_c._ 55

B.C.). But, supposing he drew directly, Clitarchus was not a first-rate

source; for it is an erroneous inference from Diodorus[318] and Strabo

that he actually served under Alexander. Further, he was turgid rather

than veracious, and Cicero[319] thinks poorly of him, counting it against

Sisenna that he was content with imitating Clitarchus, an inferior model

at the best. In many respects, Curtius seems to have less historical

method than the two authors who not long after treated the same subject

in Greek, namely, Plutarch and Arrian. Plutarch (born _c._ A.D. 40) at

the outset of his _Life of Alexander_ records his consciousness of the

mass of material available, but is careful to add that he is writing

“not histories but biographies.” All the same, he shows more critical

acumen than Curtius, and does not necessarily accept, on a disputed

point, the opinion of the majority. Arrian (_c._ A.D. 90-170), the latest

classical historian of Alexander, possessed qualities which made him on

the whole the best. His training in Stoic philosophy under Epictetus,

his experiences as a soldier, his ability to write on _Tactics_, and the

good sense with which he amply fulfils the promise of his proem to rely

upon the evidence of Aristobulus and Ptolemy, both of whom served with

Alexander—all contribute to the success of his story.[320]

Most of Curtius’s defects lie on the surface. His geography is not

infrequently at fault, his accounts of military operations are less

than satisfying, his understanding of politics is far from profound,

and his speeches are not individualized, but sound the same rhetorical

note irrespective of variations in nationality and character. Virtually

he renounces all claim to be critical when, relating the tenacity

wherewith an Indian dog even with amputated limbs holds on to a lion,

he declares,[321] “Certainly I transcribe more than I believe; for I

cannot bring myself to affirm what I doubt, nor to suppress what I have

received.” In connection with the plain speaking of Scythian envoys[322]

who reproached Alexander for rapacity, Curtius professes to give it

accurately (_incorrupta_), adding “though their speech be despised,

our integrity ought not to be.” Laudable enough so far; but faithful

reproduction of selected material (if indeed it was selected with

discrimination) would for him preclude actual invention, and yet freely

permit literary embellishment. Such negation of any high standard of

critical inquiry is in keeping with his weakness of historical grasp. He

takes no synoptic view of the meaning and results of Alexander’s career:

thus, although he does contrast the posthumous dissolution of his power

with the unity of the Roman Empire,[323] he never attempts to estimate

the debt of civilization to the wars of Alexander.

Notwithstanding such limitations, he displayed literary virtue. Above

all, he can tell a story well. He had an inkling of the romance inherent

in so intrepid an invasion of the gorgeous but perilous East, and

his incidents are telling, sometimes positively exciting. Rhetorical

erudition prompts him to over-indulge in descriptions: so that he

enters with zest into details of difficulties overcome—a river reckoned

impassable, a jungle wellnigh impenetrable, a rocky hill-fort to all

appearance unscalable, the hazards of snowdrift and frostbite, or of

sun-scorched wastes. He shows, however, to most advantage where he

can best import dramatic movement; _e.g._ in V. xii., the treacherous

conspiracy against Darius carried out at night when the monarch is

deserted by his guards and a portentous silence broods over his tent; VI.

vii.-xi., the plot against Alexander, involving its thrill of intrigue

and discovery, with the pleading for life before the army, the hideous

tortures to extort confession, and a final spice of mystery concerning

the guilt or innocence of Philotas; VII. ii., the camel-ride of Polydamas

disguised as an Arab across the desert, and his fulfilment of Alexander’s

crafty scheme of murdering Parmenio without trial as he reads a forged

letter purporting to be from his son Philotas; VII. xi., the scaling of

the rock-fastness in Sogdiana; VIII. i., the fatal quarrel at the banquet

when Clitus, annoyed at Alexander’s boastfulness, quotes Euripides on

Greek kings who monopolize the glory of others and then with drunken

licence goes on openly to denounce Alexander’s murder of Parmenio and to

mock at Alexander’s claim to be a son of Zeus; VIII. vi., the scheme of

the pages of the bedchamber to assassinate the king after a carousal, the

long wait for the expected chance, and the melodramatic interruption of

their plan by a woman reputed to be a crazed prophetess; and, in IX. ix.,

the struggle against an unforeseen tide from the ocean.

Another element of interest is furnished by Curtius’s conception of his

hero’s character. From one standpoint the work is a psychological study

in progressive deterioration caused by prosperity. Here is a favourable

sketch of Alexander which comes in the first of the surviving books:[324]

“It is not easy to describe, apart from their inborn reverence for their

monarchs, how far the people surrendered themselves to an admiration

for this monarch in particular, or, you might equally say, burned with

affection for him. To begin with, it looked as if he could essay nothing

without heaven lending assistance: as luck was everywhere at his side,

his very rashness had turned to his glory. Then, even his years were

scarcely ripe for achievements of such moment, and yet they were more

than enough, for they threw a halo round all his exploits; and things

that are commonly thought insignificant not infrequently find their way

to the common soldiers’ heart. He took his physical exercise among them;

his dress and style were little different from the ordinary man’s; while

he possessed true military energy. Such were the natural endowments or

mental skill that had secured for him an equal share of affection and

respect.”

Henceforward the author’s task is to display the effect of constantly

triumphant warfare on such a character: and his method throughout is to

record noble and chivalrous qualities in Alexander, but at the same time

to produce the impression that gradually, under the influence of success,

luxury and drink, the king yielded oftener to arrogant, arbitrary and

cruel impulses, so that Jekyll-like he found it increasingly difficult

to return from his inferior to his better nature. Hence a sort of

alternation between good and bad strikes the reader as the tale is

unfolded. The demoralization of the army at Babylon (V. i. 36-39) is a

significant presage; still the conqueror feels qualms (V. ii. 13-15)

about setting his feet on a table at which Darius used to dine, and he

shows tactful respect for the feelings of the captive mother and queen

of Darius (V. ii. 18-22) when he apologizes for his unfortunate, and to

Persians impossible, suggestion that the royal ladies should work at

woollen clothes like those from Macedonia. Similarly the moderation which

marked one part of his career (V. iii. 15, _moderationem clementiamque

regis quae tunc fuit_) becomes evident in his mercy to enemies at the

intercession of Darius’s mother. Then falls a dark shadow: his fine

traits of endurance, activity, honour and clemency are sullied by his

insuperable passion for wine, and the drunken advice of the harlot Thaïs

leads to the wanton burning of Persepolis, for the royal guests “rise

from table intoxicated to fire a city which they had spared when they

had arms in their hands” (V. vii. 5, _surgunt temulenti ad incendendam

urbem cui armati pepercerant_). In the next book, Curtius pronounces

Alexander a victim of luxury; “the man whom Persian arms had not broken

was defeated by vice” (VI. ii. 1, _quem arma Persarum non fregerant,

uitia uicerunt_); nevertheless he is still considerate towards captives

(_ibid._), and, out of courtesy to Artabazus, an old Persian in his

ninety-fifth year, orders a horse for both, forgoing his well-known

preference for marching on foot (VI. v. 5). It is noted that his outward

appearance disappointed the Amazonian queen (VI. v. 29), as it afterwards

did the Scythian envoys (VII. viii. 9), being in both cases “not at all

proportionate to his reputation.” Meanwhile, Oriental tastes and habits

(VI. vi.) were driving him in the direction of ostentatious pomp. Luxury,

however, did not prevent the king from sharing the privations of his

men. The same chapter (VII. v.) which relates his merciless barbarity

at Branchidae relates also his self-abnegation, despite the pangs of

thirst, in declining water meant for some young men in the army. Yet this

temperate warrior became an insufferable boaster in his cups, lauding

his own exploits and belittling his royal sire Philip (VIII. i. 22).

True, he undergoes agonies of remorse after his hasty murder of Clitus

(VIII. ii.); but now that Clitus’s unbridled tongue has led to his doom,

frankness in presence of the king becomes impossible (VIII. iv., _sub

fin._, _post Cliti caedem libertate sublata_). Alexander succumbs to the

charms of Roxane, because “amid fortune’s subservience to him, he could

less control his desires now” (VIII. iv. 24, _minus iam cupiditatibus

suis imperantis inter obsequia fortunae_). Scheming to be proclaimed a

god, he resents Macedonian objections (VIII. v.). “His greed for glory

and insatiate lust for fame grew intolerant of all obstacles” (IX. ii.

9, _auaritia gloriae et insatiabilis cupido famae nihil inuium nihil

remotum uideri sinebat_). The chronicle reveals a grotesque chaos of

pleasure and pain: immediately after the riotous Bacchanalian march

of Alexander’s army in the East, Curtius remarks “This pomp had the

executioner at its heels, for the satrap Aspastes already mentioned was

ordered to be put to death: so cruelty is no bar to luxury, nor luxury

to cruelty” (IX. x. _sub fin._). A similar strain is heard in the last

book: “He began to be impetuous in executing punishments, and likewise

in believing ill of people. Prosperity, it is plain, has power to alter

one’s nature, it being a rarity for anyone to be sufficiently guarded

in respect of good fortune” (X. i. 39-40). In the final summary of his

character (X. v. 26-37) we read “it is plain to all fair judges of the

king, that his merits were due to nature, and his faults to fortune or

his time of life,” and later in his estimate Curtius elaborates this. For

on the one hand he attributes to “fortune” failings such as Alexander’s

claim to equal the gods or his exaction of divine honours—sins of pride,

in fact, generated by his victories; and on the other hand he views his

irascibility and intemperance as slips of youth which time would have

abated. “It must, however, be allowed that while he owed a very great

deal to merit, he owed more to fortune, whom he alone of mortal men held

within his power.”

This raises a fundamental question touching the historian’s conception of

Alexander’s whole career.[325] The ascription of virtues to “nature” and

faults to “fortune” takes us but a little way towards explaining a great

man. The antithesis resembles Plutarch’s account of Alexander’s success

as due to fortune (τύχη) combined with generalship (_Alex._ xx. 675), and

it does not obviously fit into the Stoic view which Curtius elsewhere

professes to be his solution for the enigma of life. “Fortune” indeed

counts for much with Curtius. It was what we should call sheer luck that

the enemy did not attack and crush Alexander’s troops while they revelled

on Mount Meros. “It is incontestable that glory is oftener the gift of

fortune than of merit” is the comment (VIII. x. 18, _quis neget eximiam

quoque gloriam saepius fortunae quam virtutis esse beneficium?_). So,

too, of a week’s Bacchanalian progress when the revelling host might

have been an easy prey, “Fortune who ordains the credit and value of

things here also turned a military scandal into glory” (IX. x. 28,

_fortuna quae rebus famam pretiumque constituit ..._). Alexander’s aims

against Spitamenes were secured without exertion on his part, because

“fortune, never weary of favouring him, managed the matter without

his presence” (VIII. iii. 1, _fortuna indulgendo ei numquam fatigata

..._)—a personification like that implied in the “homage paid by fortune”

(_obsequia fortunae_, VIII. iv. 24) which, as already shown, rendered him

less master of his passions when he met Roxane, the satrap’s daughter.

The king’s quick decision to segregate the Macedonian grumblers over

Parmenio’s death proved, like everything else, fortunate for him, because

they always afterwards fought gallantly to remove the stigma (VII. ii.

37, _consilium temerarium forsitan ... sicut omnia alia felicitas regis

excepit_): and in his last adventure oceanwards “the one consolation of

his rashness was his unfailing success” (_unum erat temeritatis solacium

perpetua felicitas_). Little wonder, then, that Alexander should believe

in his _felicitas_ (VII. vii. 28) or his _fortuna_ (_fortunam cui

confidat_, VII. ix. 1, _fortunae suae confisus_, VII. xi. 27) like Julius

Caesar after him.

In some of these instances Curtius may appear to imply little more than

luck. But logically he is no believer in chance. He is a fatalist in his

view of human life and is clearly influenced by Stoicism: so that his

“fortune” in the last resort would be merged in “fate.” The inevitability

of fate is a thought repeated in various contexts: of Alexander’s risk

of a wound he says, “but to my mind, fate is unavoidable” (IV. vi. 17,

_sed, ut opinor, ineuitabile est fatum_); of Darius’s incapacity to take

advice that would rescue him, he says, “he is doomed to his own lot” (V.

xii. 8, _destinatus sorti suae_), and of an intrigue to ruin an innocent

man, “destiny, whose appointment is inevitable, was at hand” (X. i. 30.,

_fatum cuius ineuitabilis sors est appetebat_). His theory of history is

made explicit apropos of the failure of Patron, the Greek, to save Darius

by warning him against the treachery of Bessus:

This incident may afford amusement to those whose conviction

it is that human affairs roll on driven by blind haphazard.

I favour the belief that every series of events follows by

immutable law its course as the result of eternal ordinance and

the nexus of mysterious causes long since preordained.[326]

An aspect of Curtius’s thought commonly overlooked is a certain

enlightenment of mind which argues his emancipation from some of the

superstitious obsessions of antiquity. He condemns as unacceptable to

the gods the ancient Tyrian sacrifice of a freeborn boy (IV. iii. 23):

he remarks, on the recourse to a soothsayer about an accident to a

crow, that Alexander’s “mind was not without its touch of superstition”

(IV. vi. 12, _ut erat non intactae a superstitione mentis_), and on the

consultation of the oracle of Hammon that “the prophet had set himself

to flatter” (IV. vii. 26, _uates in adulationem compositus_). He dubs

the employment of diviners for a military problem as “the outcome of a

superstitious mind” (V. iv. 1, _a superstitione animi_). A noticeable

example occurs in the introductory description of the judicious Cobares

who, after reminding the Persian satrap Bessus incidentally that a dog’s

bark may be worse than its bite and that still waters run deep, advocates

coming to terms with Alexander: “there was at the feast one Cobares, of

Median nationality, more renowned for his profession of the magical art

(if it really is an art and not a jest at the expense of the silliest)

than for any knowledge thereof” (VII. iv. 8). Plainly Curtius would

have one take note that such things mean weakness: it was when ill and

confronted with serious menaces that Alexander, “who had, since Darius’s

overthrow, given up the consultation of soothsayers and prophets,

fell back on that superstition—the delusion of mankind” (VII. vii. 8,

_humanarum gentium ludibria_). It must have given Curtius satisfaction to

record later how Alexander dismissed the warnings of a fortune-teller as

unseasonable hindrances (IX. iv. 27-30).

Speeches and descriptions yield Curtius his readiest outlet for rhetoric.

Not offensively overdone, it is most patent in the sententious remarks

introduced into narrative and speeches alike. Of gallant fighting in a

tight corner he says “necessity, I hold, sharpens even cowardice, and

despair is often the cause of hope” (V. iv. 31, _ut opinor, ignauiam

quoque necessitas acuit et saepe desperatio spei causa est_). When

Alexander tried to win indulgence for his Oriental luxury by generous

gifts, the comment is, “but, I hold, to the free the price of slavery

is unwelcome” (VI. vi. 11, _sed opinor, liberis pretium seruitutis

ingratum est_). The story of a poor scion of a royal race brought from

garden-work to a throne calls forth an almost Juvenalian cynicism:

“the cause of his poverty was as usual—honesty” (IV. i. 20, _causa ei

paupertatis, sicut plerisque, probitas erat_). Two instances may be given

from a speech: “Those bear afflictions best who conceal them” (V. v.

11, _optime miserias ferunt qui abscondunt_) and “no man loyally loves

one he disdains, for calamity is querulous and prosperity proud” (V. v.

12, _nemo fideliter diligit quem fastidit, nam et calamitas querula est

et superba felicitas_). Some of the inserted epistles have a rhetorical

ring, as in Alexander’s haughty words to Darius: “I know both how to

conquer and how to consider the conquered ... when you write to me,

remember that you are writing not only to a king, but to your king” (IV.

i. 10-14).

As regards the technique of his prose, Curtius’s sentence-endings show a

distinct preference for a cretic followed by spondee or trochee, a rhythm

which perhaps no contemporary employs so often. An ending about half

as often used—though still comparatively common—is the double cretic;

next to that, the cretic followed by a tribrach, and then the double

trochee.[327]

His style in general is influenced by Sallust, Virgil and, most of

all, by Livy. But there is in him a sameness of expression for similar

situations which becomes monotonous, and marks his inferiority in prose

to Livy’s brilliant variety. One cannot read far without noticing his

pluperfect indicatives, his employment of a future participle in Greek

fashion to denote purpose, his loose ablatives absolute, his repetition

of the connectives _ceterum_ and _quippe_. Some rhetorical constituents

of his style have already been illustrated. Yet it must be conceded that

neither mannerisms, nor the poetic strain in him debar him from being

generally clear: not seldom he is even vivacious.

CHAPTER IV

CELSUS: MELA: MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

Cornelius Celsus—Contents of his encyclopaedia—The eight

books, _De Medicina_—Sources—Relation to his times—Common

Sense—Curiosities of Celsian medicine—Style.

The first Roman Geography—Pomponius Mela—The coasting

method—Some aspects of his treatment—Faults and

merits—Sources—Enlivening touches—Description of customs

and marvels—Mela on tides—Rhetorical elements and his

rhythm—Miscellaneous learning of the age.

CELSUS

The biography of A. Cornelius Celsus,[328] the encyclopaedist, is a

blank; and, in the absence of details, inquiry must rest satisfied with

the guarantee of his gentile name through its occurrence in Columella and

the elder Pliny.[329] Celsus was a senior contemporary[330] frequently

mentioned by Columella, who belongs to the time of Claudius. Pliny’s

statement that Julius Graecinus made use of the agricultural work of

Celsus suggests that at least the books on farming were written before

the close of Tiberius’s reign; for Graecinus was executed under Caligula

about A.D. 39.[331] The subsequent books on medicine may be presumed to

precede A.D. 47, when Scribonius Largus published among his prescriptions

a cure for quinsy which Celsus declares he has not found in medical

treatises.[332]

The encyclopaedic habit of Cato and Varro[333] descended to Celsus. His

labours included agriculture, medicine, military tactics, rhetoric,

jurisprudence and philosophy—all subjects of traditional importance in

the higher education of a Roman. To each he devoted several books;[334]

but the one surviving portion is the _De Medicina_ in eight books.

His military writings, whether in the encyclopaedia or in separate

pamphlets composed as late as Nero’s reign, were consulted by Vegetius

and Lydus.[335] The books on philosophic systems, in which (Augustine

informs us) the aim was rather exposition than refutation, may have been

included in the encyclopaedia; but he evidently wrote other treatises

on philosophy.[336] Quintilian, who bestows modified praise upon

Celsus’s style in discussing philosophy, cites his opinions on rhetoric,

frequently to disagree with them.[337] This is not unnatural when it

is remembered that Celsus’s cursory treatment of rhetoric would not be

calculated to satisfy a specialist like Quintilian; and it may be guessed

that Celsus’s rhetorical portion was in fact eclipsed by the fuller

treatment of the great professional authority and so sank into oblivion.

Regarding the order of parts in this encyclopaedia, we can be certain

that the five books _De Agricultura_ opened the work, and that the _De

Medicina_ followed, forming Books VI to XIII[338] of the whole _corpus_.

Detached from the encyclopaedia, they possess the unique importance

of representing the healing art in classical Rome. At the close of an

introduction, which is an epitome and criticism of prevailing tendencies

in medical science, Celsus summarizes his own position and announces

his plan of handling first rules of health and next phenomena and cures

of disease. To this end Book I is largely of diet; II of symptoms and

therapeutics; III of fevers; IV of internal diseases, considered in order

from the head to the joints of the feet; V and VI of drugs and ailments

for which they are specifics (with numerous prescriptions); VII and VIII

of surgical operations.

His sources are mainly, but not entirely, Greek; and among those

the influence of Hippocrates and Asclepiades is pre-eminent. The

authority of the former is recognized in the preface to Book II;

his teaching on massage, Celsus notes, was in nowise superseded by

the more diffuse Asclepiades; and again his magnanimous avowal of a

professional mistake is admired, but without any such encomiastic

fanfaronade as to justify the nickname “Hippocrates’s ape” sometimes

given to Celsus.[339] Asclepiades is also in high favour: his books on

preservation of health and on general remedies are cited; his cure for

a tertian fever is approved for its rejection of the faulty method of

Cleophantus; he is quoted in contrast with Erasistratus to show that

doctors differ about the treatment of hemorrhage or about the stress to

be laid on diet.[340] Erasistratus is another medical authority often

mentioned.[341] Prescriptions are ascribed to an imposing array of

practitioners—especially in the pharmacy of the fifth book.[342] Further,

the punctiliousness with which Celsus introduces Greek synonyms indicates

the origin of much of his reading.[343] Yet it would be a mistake to

suppose that he confined himself to the older Hellenic sources. He had

the work of recent practitioners, both native and foreign, like Cassius

or Themison, to draw from; he had his own observation, though this plays

no great part; so he introduces, sometimes with emphasis, his individual

views and criticisms, and throughout displays a practical common sense

which is typically Roman.

Some of these points demand attention, as illustrations of the author’s

relation to his times. Indeed, it is not surprising that Celsus, who

in another field incurred the disapproval of Quintilian because of an

“excessive passion for novelty,”[344] should have in medicine shown

himself abreast of the latest tendencies and discoveries. Thus, though

he does not always agree, he takes pains to record Themison’s advice

as something modern;[345] and in his preface remarks on the attitude

of his followers (_Themisonis aemuli_) to the vexed question of theory

_versus_ practice. Cassius, again, is singled out for characterization as

“the most talented leech of our age,” and is elsewhere mentioned as the

proud discoverer of a remedy for disease of the larger intestine.[346]

The opening remarks by Celsus upon the diverse views of contemporary

schools, and subsequent comparisons between medical practices of his

own day and those of predecessors, prove that he was alive to advances

or at least changes in the healing art.[347] Sometimes he inserts

original examples, such as the method of inducing perspiration pursued

near Baiae.[348] At other times his personal opinions or results of

his observation are stated with a dogmatism that would do credit to

wide practical experience.[349] Scaliger, indeed, believed that Celsus

practised; but this has been stoutly denied, and one notices nothing in

him that a vigilant eye and a perusal of medical books might not have

yielded. It is difficult to credit that, if he had been a practising

physician or surgeon, he would have refrained from quoting cases which

he had attended. Undoubtedly, however, he gains in interest by combining

an individual note with a continual suggestion of his environment. It

is Celsus himself who speaks when the increased recourse to bleeding is

noted as a novelty, and especially when he proceeds with his cautionary

remarks on its unsuitability in certain cases and its murderous results

in others.[350] Like most contemporary writers, he feels impelled to

stigmatize the two great moral and hygienic perils of the Empire—idleness

and luxury.[351] As a whole, his background forms for modern readers an

attractive index to other days and other lands. The risks to health in

autumn are naturally important to one writing in Rome: the mention of a

siesta at midday comes from a southern clime: the careful description of

the way to extract an arrow revives pictures of antiquated warfare: and

the stress laid upon reading aloud as an exercise beneficial or injurious

in certain bodily affections takes the reader back to the declamatory

_recitatio_ which once played its great part in the Roman social and

educational system.[352]

The common sense noticeable in Celsus is in part an inheritance from

earlier medical systems and ancient human experience; but in part

an individual trait of tone and attitude. The wisdom evident in the

preface must be credited to the author himself; for there, after an

able statement of the issue between empirics and theorists in medicine,

he holds the balance fairly, and votes for a combination of experience

(_usus, experimenta_) with science (_rationalis ars_). Proposing,

therefore, a _uia media_ as likeliest to lead to truth, he sagely argues

that the great doctors of the past were not made doctors by scientific

investigation independently of practice, but were by the fusion made

greater doctors still.[353] Among enlightened points in the same

introduction are his freedom from the superstitious notion that diseases

originate in divine wrath (a supposition logically denounced as a barrier

to medical research and progress); his insistence upon the quest for

true causes; and the emphasis laid upon anatomy and dissection. Celsus

is indeed scientific enough to state principles which were ultimately

to antiquate and supersede him: thus, under the head of dissection, he

advocated the acquisition of a knowledge destined in due time to convict

him of errors; for his anatomy, when he comes to it, is not beyond

reproach. His remarks on vivisection are interesting. While he states

the argument for experimenting upon condemned criminals, he also states

with sympathy, and even some tenderness, the contrary argument on behalf

of those surgeons who aim at “cure, not kill” (_prudentem medicum non

caedem sed sanitatem molientem_), who recognize that the chances of

the arena or war or an affray often provide a view of internal organs

during life without dependence upon the scalpel of some “ruffian bandit

of a doctor,”[354] and who are content “to learn through pity what

others have come to know by fiendish cruelty” (_idque per misericordiam

discere quod alii dira crudelitate cognouerint_). His final verdict

is that vivisection is superfluous, but dissection imperative.[355]

On many matters his counsels may involve no more than an ability to

profit by ordinary human experience and medical tradition; yet, they

are counsels which require continual restatement and are violated in

all ages. Instances may be found in his rules for preservation of

health, in the limits assigned to bodily exercise, in the reduction of

food after hard work, in the advantages of a rest cure,[356] or in the

physiological restrictions incumbent upon the scholar’s burning of the

midnight oil—restrictions, more salutary,[357] if less romantic, than the

enthusiasm of the student in Bailey’s _Festus_,

When night hath set her silver lamp on high,

Then is the time for study.

With equal plausibility he advocates the benefits of change: it is good

for a cough, while the climate that made one ill is the very worst for

the invalid:[358] similarly a voyage is recommended for consumption.

Noteworthy acumen, too, marks his insistence on the fundamental position

that strong probability is enough to justify a belief in the power of

medicine.[359] There is, however, no attempt to overestimate the value

of drugs; for he bears in mind the curative efficacy of nature,[360] and

in another connexion declares the best medicine to be diet seasonably

given.[361] Other illustrations of sound sense are his reminder of the

tact requisite in a physician about to take an invalid’s pulse, his

admission that the confident quack may succeed with another’s patients

better than with his own (_quos ratio non restituit temeritas adiuuat_),

and his suspicion of too rigid a theory concerning “critical days” during

an illness as being apparently due to the misleading influences of

Pythagorean numbers upon medical calculations.[362] Throughout his work

he gives the impression that he set himself in a business-like manner to

illustrate the aims which Asclepiades ascribed to a capable physician and

which Celsus approves as an ideal _uotum_, namely, “to effect a cure with

safety, despatch, and pleasantness” (_ut tuto, ut celeriter, ut iucunde

curet_).[363]

The person likely to reap the maximum of enjoyment from Celsus would be

a medical man with historic instincts and a liking for straightforward

Latin. A perusal will not recompense the seeker after either elaborate

style or unquestionably sound advice; but to any reader passably

acquainted with modern medical theory and practice his pages offer

much in the way of interest, and occasionally of entertainment. Celsus

represents the stage of medical knowledge attained in the early Empire,

and the regimen and prescriptions found in his work indicate the method

of treating or maltreating Roman citizens unlucky enough to need

professional attendance. In a system so many centuries prior to the

germ-theory of disease or to antiseptic and anaesthetic surgery, all

sorts of quaint precautions and quaint remedies are advocated. There

is a difference of atmosphere which, once felt, exerts a fascination,

partly in spite of and partly in virtue of its errors. It is true that

his teaching on anatomy leaves much to be desired; but the lay reader

soon forgives mistakes such as those regarding the spleen.[364] His

surgery takes one back to a period ages before chloroform or ether,

when one essential merit of the operator was intrepidity sufficient “to

resist being influenced by the patient’s shrieks into hurrying more than

the case demanded or cutting less than was needful,”[365] and when, in

an operation for cataract, the head had to be held fast to prevent a

movement which might be permanently fatal to the eyesight.[366] Among

curiosities of Celsian medicine may be cited blood-letting for the

spitting of blood,[367] and a queer precaution against headache, to

wit, the avoidance of moonlight particularly before the conjunction of

sun and moon.[368] Some pronouncements on diet are extraordinary—pork

is the lightest and beef the heaviest of foods (_leuissima suilla est,

grauissima bubula_).[369] His recipe for quinsy is to eat a young

swallow salted, burned, and administered as a powder in hydromel; and

his comment here implies by contrast that, as a rule, book-knowledge

rather than practice is the basis of his pharmacy—“although I have

not read this in medical treatises, still I believe it ought to be

included in this work of mine.”[370] The powdered liver of a fox[371] for

asthmatic troubles is comparable to the roast mouse still recommended

in parts of Norfolk for whooping-cough. Not the least interesting

are those prescriptions which, like so many survivals from primitive

magic-healing, belong to what may be called excremental medicine.

Prominent ingredients in his pharmacopoeia are not only such as deer’s

marrow, bull’s suet, hog’s lard, but also the ordure of various animals.

Lizard’s dung and pigeon’s blood are among the purgatives; and the dung

of lizard, pigeon, ring-dove, swallow and sheep among caustics.[372] As

an encyclopaedic summarizer of previous and current medicine, Celsus

could not be expected to go beyond his own age; but at least this may

be urged that his emancipation from a number of earlier superstitions

and his sensible attitude on the combined merits of theory and practice

were far-off presages of a time when medicine should abandon the copious

blood-letting and clysterizing of coprophagous patients. An illustration

of the mark left by Celsus upon medicine was the implicit claim to have

eclipsed him which was made in the name “Paracelsus” assumed some four

centuries ago by the clever Swiss alchemist and quack Theophrastus

Bombast von Hohenheim. If in the twentieth century Celsian medicine

lies under a cloud, it is mainly because, notwithstanding his professed

anxiety to give fair-play to both theory and experiment, he does not

convince practising doctors that he founded his work sufficiently upon

observation. Book-learning and the experience of others do not, from

the standpoint of science, counterbalance this absence of a commanding

personal authority.

We have seen that Quintilian, who would be most prone to appraise

Celsus by his work on rhetoric, did not consider him an author of

eminent genius. Without, however, exalted merit, Celsus had a sanity

which is reflected in his style. One aspect of his good sense is that

gift of straightforward expression which differentiates him from the

artificiality of contemporary Latin. He states a plain fact or counsel or

argument in a plain way. Some, indeed, of his readers, attracted by the

elegance of his brief sentences, have declared that more store should

be set by his Latinity than by his medicine. It is an elegance which

consists in no literary adornment beyond what comes of lucid, facile and

neat exposition in sound Latin.[373] There is almost nothing in the way

of literary allusion. Quite exceptional in this respect is the passing

reference to the poets’ accounts of Ajax or Orestes as illustrating

the creations of a disordered imagination.[374] Apropos of swallow’s

blood prescribed for an injured eye he mentions the _fabula_ which

told how the old birds healed the eyes of their young with a herb, but

_fabula_ here may mean popular tradition rather than the literary fable.

Signs of the usages of Silver Latin occur: _igitur_ begins sentences

in the manner of Sallust and Tacitus: _frequens_ is used in its later

sense: and occasionally he shows the tendency to use abstracts for

concretes.[375] But he keeps clear of contemporary mannerisms. When he

uses balance, as in his opening words, it is not so much for ornament

as for clearness;[376] and herein he presents a strong contrast to such

writers as Velleius Paterculus and Valerius Maximus. A well-sustained

example of his style is his introduction, where he is free to discuss

general subjects at some length and to state his views. In it, the

sentences are short and direct—well adapted, without artifice, to the

subject in hand. He is not concerned to avoid the repetition of a word

or phrase by hunting after remote equivalents. Once, indeed, he seems

to hesitate on a matter affecting his choice of words: it is, however,

a hesitation animated not by rhetorical motives but by those qualms of

modesty in expression which led many cultured Romans to avoid the Stoic

outspokenness in “calling a spade a spade” and to reject even innocent

collocations of sounds capable of conveying indecent suggestion. The

question from this latter standpoint is discussed in the well-known

letter by Cicero where he furnishes a salutary motto in the opening

phrase _amo uerecundiam_.[377] It will be readily gathered that the

difficulty for Celsus arises not in collocations of sounds, but in terms

which he feels he must use in certain delicate parts of his subject.[378]

His quandary is to secure clearness with a due observance of the dictates

of modesty and the requirements of medicine.[379] Finally he decides in

the interests of health that his treatment must be open and exhaustive;

and it is noteworthy that, while he regards Greek terms in such

connexions as more acceptable, he prefers in fact to use Latin words.

One may conclude with a passage on the duties of a physician, where the

_clausulae_ of two sentences recall the Ciceronian _esse uideatur_:

In the case of these (external injuries), it is beyond

everything imperative upon a medical man to know which are

incurable, which involve difficulty, which greater ease

in treatment. For the wise doctor’s duty is, first, to

decline handling a patient ill beyond the possibility of

recovery, and so avoid the appearance of having killed one

who was already cut off by his own fate; next, where there

is serious apprehension—falling short, however, of absolute

hopelessness—to inform the relatives of the person in danger

that the case is risky, so that, if his skill is baffled by the

malady, he may not produce the impression either of ignorance

or of deception. But, just as this is the fitting attitude for

a wise man, so on the other hand it is worthy of a charlatan to

magnify a trivial case in order to produce the impression of a

greater achievement.[380]

POMPONIUS MELA

Pomponius Mela[381] makes at least this claim on attention that his

is the first Roman geography which has come down. A study holding a

central position between natural sciences such as physics, astronomy,

geology, zoology on the one hand and human sciences such as history,

anthropology, ethnology, sociology on the other, might reasonably have

been expected through its multifarious orientation to appeal to the

didactic tendencies of Roman writers. One might have expected that upon

the physical, mathematical and ethnographical foundations laid by the

Greeks, imposing edifices would be raised by a people whose commercial

and military interests opened the world to them, and that the continuous

expansion of Rome beyond Italy would stimulate geographical inquiry.

No doubt Varro did contribute to the subject, and Caesar, at any rate,

incidentally. But for generations systematic investigation remained in

the hands of Greeks and made little advance upon the knowledge attained

in the times of Alexander and Alexandria. It is significant, then, that

at a date when the Romans held the greater part of Britain, they had

added scarcely anything to the facts learned by the voyage in northern

waters made by Pytheas of Massilia about 330 B.C. Much later, indeed,

when Pompey’s operations against Mithridates opened out the lands in Asia

between the Black Sea and the Caspian, the opportunity for recording

fresh geographical results had been seized not by any Roman but by the

general’s Hellenic comrade Theophanes from Mytilene. Later still, the

newly consolidated Roman Empire of the Augustan era received a systematic

description from a Greek of Pontus, the renowned Strabo, who, friendly

to Rome as he was, entertained but a poor opinion of Roman geographers,

remarking that they imitated Greeks without much success, and without

bringing to the subject much love of inquiry.[382] These considerations

render such Roman works on the subject as exist the more noteworthy;

and time has left to us only two, first, the _Chorographia_ (or, as it

is sometimes called, _De Situ Orbis_) by Pomponius Mela, largely an

unoriginal compendium, and later, the portions in the _Natural History_

of Pliny which handle geography in no very scientific manner, though

their author has too high a regard for truth to acquit Roman writers of

falsification or carelessness in their investigations.[383]

Pomponius Mela was, he tells us,[384] a native of Tingentera in Spain,

not far from Gibraltar. A slight balance of evidence[385] suggests that

he wrote his description of the world under Claudius and that he refers

to that emperor and his triumph of A.D. 44, rather than to Caligula,

when he says: “About the nature of Britain and the nature of her sons it

will not be long before more definite and better ascertained details are

given. Closed for ages, Britain is now being opened up by the greatest

of emperors,[386] victorious over tribes not only unconquered before

his own day, but actually unknown. The evidence of its peculiarities

which he aimed at in his campaign, he brings home to render clear by his

triumph.”[387]

The method of Mela was prompted by the coasting survey of early

travellers, and the tradition of such works as the partially genuine

_Periplus_ or “Cruise” of Scylax[388] in the fourth century B.C. In the

first two of his three books Mela follows the Mediterranean seaboard

from west to east along the southern shores and then back from east to

west along the northern shores: the third book is left for countries

outside this scheme which, though it could not possibly be exhaustive,

still with a certain appropriateness had for its hinge the Mediterranean,

the ancestral home of geography. Thus, his brief introduction over,

Mela deals in Book I with the main divisions of the world, and, after a

summary description of Asia, Europe and Africa, turns to a particular

description, starting with Morocco, and from Egypt and Arabia proceeding

by the coast of the Levant, Aegean, and Black Sea round Asia Minor until

in Scythia he reaches Europe. In Book II the course is in the main

westwards from European Scythia by Thrace, Greece, Italy, Southern Gaul

to Spain with a digression on islands of the Mediterranean suggested

by the “Gades insula.” Book III is concerned with coasts and countries

outside the Mediterranean. The ocean brings him to the subject of tides,

and he next follows the outer seaboard of Spain, proceeds by Gaul and the

Baltic (his Codanian Gulf) to Germany, Sarmatia and Northern Scythia,

then notices the islands of the ocean (including Britain and Thule),

India, the Persian Gulf, and by a short circuit of Africa works his way

back to the part of Mauretania bordering on the Atlantic, so that he ends

where he began.

The Mediterranean (_nostrum mare_) is viewed as a continuous sea

contracting at the Hellespont (Dardanelles), expanding in the Propontis

(Sea of Marmora), narrowing again in the Bosporus, but once more

widening into the Black Sea. The method of an imaginary voyage has the

disadvantage of greatly neglecting interior countries (_e.g._ in Asia,

Assyria); and Mela, in the later part of his work, feels compelled to

leap eastwards to seas which shall secure him contact with India and

Ethiopia. Being a Spaniard, he treats Spain with comparative fulness.

In some other cases he holds that the reputation of a city or region

dispenses him from elaborate description: Athens, for instance, is too

famous to require notice (_clariores quam ut indicari egeant Athenae_),

and Italy is handled in a matter-of-fact way without bursts of enthusiasm

for the land of his adoption. He will be brief, he promises, concerning a

country the treatment of which is demanded rather by the claims of system

than by a need for exposition, since here “all is known” (_nota sunt

omnia_).

He blunders in thinking that the Danube flows into the Adriatic and that

the Alps bound Germany, and he is unscientific in blending mythology with

geography; but he has the merit of knowing about the north-western sweep

of the Gallic coast and about northern seas and the Orkneys (_Orcades_).

Of Mela’s sources we have scanty information. He quotes Cornelius Nepos

twice,[389] and mentions a report by Hanno the Carthaginian after a

voyage of discovery, for which Mela’s authority may be Nepos. The

knowledge of Spain acquired by Varro, when a Pompeian officer in that

country, may possibly have been accessible to the author,[390] who in

turn became a source for the elder Pliny. He is cited on Ireland by the

scholiast on Juvenal and on the channels of the Ganges by Servius in

opposition to Seneca.[391]

With something like a grudge the author in his proem declares that

his task is of a sort which does not admit eloquent treatment; as it

involves an array of names, its subject-matter is tedious rather than

genial (_longa est magis quam benigna materia_). At the same time, it

is well worth study (_aspici cognoscique dignissimum_) and calculated

to recompense attention through the very thought put into it, if not

through the talents of the author.[392] Though the work be dry and little

susceptible of ornament (_facundiae minime capax_), Mela does grasp

opportunities of embellishing and enlivening his theme; and the alert

reader may, among geographical details, discover and even welcome a

rhetorical word-picture or record of wonders.

One of these purple patches is the description of the cavern of

Corycus[393] in Cilicia, environed by charming greenery and entered by

a narrow and difficult footpath which descends among rustling trees and

dancing rivulets to a grotto within a grotto, darker and more mysterious,

filled with a sound as of crashing cymbals, where a great river seems

to issue forth only to vanish again: and beyond are the depths of the

cavern unmeasured and inexplorable. What otherwise would be a catalogue

is lighted up by passing allusions to famous battlefields, scenes with

historical, poetic or legendary associations, birthplaces of celebrities,

and monuments to the mighty dead; and no little entertainment may be

got from his mention of customs[394] and of marvels. It is not every

geography that provides readable fare like the strange fountain of the

Sun in Cyrenaica which boils at midnight and is icy cold at noon (I.

viii.); queerly illogical African tribes who curse the Sun both at his

rising and at his setting, and who have no individual names and are a

dreamless people; or cave-dwellers feeding on serpents; or headless

creatures with faces in their chests; the Pyramids (I. ix.), and the

Mausoleum of Halicarnassus (I. xvi.)—representative wonders of the world;

birds that shoot their wing-feathers like arrows (II. vii.); the land

of the midnight Sun (III. v.); the rich pastures of Ireland on which

flocks might feed till they burst (III. vi.); the island of “hairy

women” (presumably some species of apes, III. ix.); and the well that

brings on a fatal laugh (III. x.). One may read how to defy the serpents

of Colubraria (II. vii., _ad fin._); or may be half persuaded, apropos

of the rocky district of the Lapideum (Le Crau) in Southern France,

to believe the old fable that it once rained stones there (II. v.).

The attraction of the marvellous is for Mela irresistible; Syracuse,

for example, interests him not for its situation or history, but for

the legend of Arethusa: and perhaps, if he could not be completely

scientific, it was well that he should thus frankly display his not

unengaging limitations.

Yet he can be serious and perspicacious. He notes the German love of war

for little or no reason (_ex libidine_) except the desire of having a

desolation round a country where might is right (_ut circa ipsos quae

iacent uasta sint; ius in uiribus habent_); and he apologizes that he

cannot give German geography exhaustively, because the names are too

barbarous for Roman lips to pronounce (_quorum nomina uix est eloqui ore

Romano_, III. iii.). His description of the Atlantic tides,[395] with his

alternative theories about their cause, may be translated:

“A vast limitless sea, stirred by great tides (that is the term for

its movements) at one time floods the plains, at another uncovers them

widely and retreats. It does not work so on plain after plain in turn;

it does not by alternate advances sweep round in full rush first on

these and next on those; but after pouring out from its centre upon the

shores of all countries and islands alike, however far apart, it quits

them, and again massing towards its centre returns upon itself. Such is

the regular force of the incoming tide that it drives back even mighty

rivers, and either overtakes land animals or leaves sea-creatures high

and dry. So far there is no definite decision whether this is the action

of the universe through its own heaving breath, attracting and repelling

the waters everywhere (on the assumption of savants that the world is a

single animate being); or whether there exist some cavernous depressions

for the ebb-tides to sink into, thence to well out and rise anew; or

whether the moon is responsible for currents so extensive.”

The traces of rhetoric are visible not only in descriptions, but also

in balanced clauses and exclamatory parentheses which recall Valerius

Maximus. Of the bridging of the Hellespont by the Persians he exclaims

“marvellous and mighty feat!” (_mirum atque ingens facinus!_), and of

the devotion of the Carthaginian brothers buried alive to settle a

boundary dispute in their country’s favour, “Marvellous feat most worthy

of remembrance!” (_mirum et memoria dignissimum facinus!_).[396] But he

is not long-winded, and indeed has caught some of Sallust’s brevity, as

where he remarks of the rivers Simois and Scamander near Troy that for

them “fame has done more than nature” and so gives pithy expression to

a feeling which many a traveller on the Trojan plain must have shared.

Nor is Mela a mere echo of others: his prose has a rhythm of its own.

Even without careful enumeration one is struck in reading his Latin by

the frequency of double cretic and dactylic endings to his sentences.

Closer investigation has shown that while he quite remarkably avoids the

double trochee endings which are so much more common in Celsus, Curtius,

the Senecas and Tacitus, he almost as markedly exhibits a preference

for closing on a cretic followed by an anapaest or tribrach (–⏑–⏑⏑⏓) or

on one of the favourite types of Greek _clausulae_, the double dactyl

(–⏑⏑–⏑⏑).[397]

MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

In the miscellaneous learning of the age may be included its philosophy,

criticism and grammar, jurisprudence and medicine. To take the last

first, one recognizes in Scribonius Largus,[398] court physician to

Claudius, a sort of pendant to Celsus; for about A.D. 47 he made his

collection of medical prescriptions. The jurists included Ateius Capito’s

pupil, Masurius Sabinus, who gave his name to the “Sabinian” school, and

influenced legal thought through his three books on the _ius ciuile_.

In contrast with him M. Cocceius Nerva, the emperor’s grandfather,

trained by Labeo, the great Augustan rival of Capito, was a forerunner

of Proculus from whom the “Proculians” took their name.[399] Among the

grammarians were Julius Modestus, Hyginus’s freedman, who followed

his master’s broad conception of grammar; the strict purist Pomponius

Marcellus;[400] and the successful but immoral teacher, Q. Remmius

Palaemon (_flor._ A.D. 48), whose handbook (_Ars_) had a great vogue,

and with whom Persius and Quintilian studied. Columella drew from Julius

Atticus and Julius Graecinus, both writers on vine-culture in the time of

Tiberius; and the botanists Caepio and Antonius Castor were used by the

elder Pliny.

Apicius, pre-eminent as the ideal gourmet, belonged to the reign of

Tiberius. His culinary lore was, as we know from Seneca and from a note

on Juvenal,[401] committed to writing. The work, however, on cookery in

ten books which passes under his name (_Apicius de re coquinaria_)[402]

is a compilation of some centuries later, poorly and even ungrammatically

written, although entertaining for its astounding variety in ingredients

and modes of dressing fish, flesh and fowl, as well as for such naïve

receipts as that for improving honey: “mix two parts of good honey with

the bad and put on the market.”

In philosophy the austere morality of the Sextii, father and son, in

the Augustan age, had been transmitted through their adherent Papirius

Fabianus to the youthful Seneca. Celsus, as we have seen, also wrote on

philosophy. Theoretical speculation, however, might prove politically

disastrous; for the uncompromising arguments of Julius Kanus, or

Canus, led to his being sentenced to death by Caligula:[403] it was

a philosopher who attended him to the place of execution, Julius

undertaking that, if he discovered the condition of souls in the other

world, he would revisit his friends to inform them. But the Stoics in the

time of Nero form a more powerful group of thinkers, and, as we shall

see, left a permanent mark on literature.

CHAPTER V

PHAEDRUS AND FABLE: POETRY OF THE TIME

Phaedrus—His Life—Books of Fables and “Appendix”—Text

incomplete—His Greek exemplar—Relationship to Aesop—Novelties

introduced by Phaedrus—Anecdotes based on Roman

life—Political allusions and prosecution by Sejanus—The

gentle art of making enemies—The injustices of life—Human

weaknesses—The serious and the humorous—Perennial interest

in fable—Realism—Phaedrus as man of letters—Fable in the

later Roman world—Style—Art—Phaedrus and La Fontaine—Metre—A

concluding view.

The poems of Tiberius—Germanicus Caesar’s _Aratea_—Mythological

Astronomy—Albinovanus Pedo—Decadent forms of drama—Mime,

Atellan farces and _Fabulae Salticae_—Pomponius Secundus.

PHAEDRUS: THE FABULIST OF ROME

Phaedrus,[404] the fabulist of Roman literature, was an alien slave of

Thracian, or, to use his own adjective, “Pierian” origin. The lines[405]

in which he laid claim to birth “almost in the very school of the

Muses” are to be taken, according to the spirit of the context, in the

strict geographical sense and not as a metaphorical anticipation of

the Tennysonian conception that “the poet in a golden clime is born.”

Perhaps the plain prose of the matter is that his birthplace was the

Roman colony of Philippi. Evidently he was brought to Italy when

young; for he refers to studying Ennius in boyhood.[406] His Latin and

Greek education followed the customary routine, to judge from the fact

that, although fables do not readily lend themselves to a display of

erudition, yet his yield proof of acquaintance with such authors as

Virgil, Euripides and Simonides.[407] Hardly mentioned in classical

literature, his name first appears as a nominative, “Phaedrus,” in a

prefatory letter of Avianus;[408] but some have argued that it is more

in accord with linguistic usage and inscriptional evidence to call him

“Phaeder.” Inasmuch, then, as he became a freedman in the household of

Caesar Augustus, one may consider his full name C. Julius Phaeder or

Phaedrus.[409] Concerning the limits of his life, and its scanty details,

we are dependent upon deductions from his writings. There is a prevalent

consensus among critics that the first two of his five books were

published during the reign of Tiberius,[410] perhaps together, perhaps

separately, as Professor Ellis supposed,[411] and that the third book

appeared under Caligula, some time between A.D. 37 and the beginning of

41. Now, since passages[412] in that book suggest that the author was

already conscious of approaching age, there is justification for guessing

that he was born some fifteen years before the Christian era.[413]

Although in Book III he had decided to relinquish authorship, he explains

his change of mind in the prologue to the next book,[414] and even after

that we possess a fifth, the product of his advanced years.[415]

The two opening books, which explain in their prologues the relationship

between the present fables and those of Aesop, may be regarded as

dedicated to readers at large;[416] but the rest were dedicated to

individuals; namely, Book III to Eutychus, plausibly identified with the

chariot-driver of the Greens prominent under Caligula;[417] IV to one

Particulo, for whom Phaedrus entertained a respect enhanced, doubtless,

by gratification at being quoted in his compositions;[418] and Book V to

a certain Philetes, or Philetus, who is pointedly expected to see the

applicability to the aged author of the tale about the old hunting-dog

past its best:

Praise what we _were_, if what we _are_ you blame:

Nicely, Philetes, you can grasp my aim.[419]

In addition to these five books, for which (discounting the recorded

readings of the lost _Remensis_ and three imperfect codices) only a

single manuscript[420] is extant, there is an “Appendix” of about thirty

fables. These, although they look tinctured with medieval colour and

show signs of having been supplemented from the Greek collection of

Babrios, are considered to have been drawn by Perotti in the fifteenth

century from a subsequently lost abridgement of Phaedrus.[421] Twenty

so-called “New Fables” gained from the prose paraphrases associated

with the name of the medieval Romulus, appeared in Nilant’s edition

early in the eighteenth century. The traces discernible therein of their

original verse-form led scholars like Dressier and Lucian Müller to

rewrite them in metre.[422] Recently Zander in his _Phaedrus Solutus_

has reclaimed thirty fables which he has re-written in senarii after a

careful investigation of the three prose-collections—the Ademarian, the

Wissemburgensis and “Romulus.” Zander has aimed at separating Phaedrian

and non-Phaedrian elements in the prose paraphrases; he has isolated the

traces of fifth-century or sixth-century Latin comparable with what is to

be found in Salvianus or Gregory of Tours; and, following principles of

Phaedrian metric expounded by Havet, he has made a rather more successful

iambic reconstruction of missing fables than some of his predecessors in

this field.

Much of Phaedrus, then, is lost. This is a safe conclusion, if only

from gaps in our existing text and from the disproportionate length of

the books—the total of 93 fables in the five books being made up of the

constituent numbers 31, 8, 19, 25 and 10. Besides, an objection of the

imaginary matter-of-fact critic forestalled by Phaedrus[423] is that “not

merely beasts but trees do speak” in his fables; yet, in such of the

surviving tales as are incontestably by Phaedrus, trees nowhere appear

among the interlocutors.[424]

If Phaedrus had been asked what was the origin of his material, he would

have answered “Aesop” without hesitancy or qualification. Yet the true

answer is not so simple. On the one hand, the well-springs lay far deeper

in primeval Aryan tales than Phaedrus could have dreamed, and on the

other hand the fables which he assumed to be by Aesop consisted largely

of accretions subsequent to Aesop’s time. The primitive beast-story,

so widespread an element in folklore, becomes literary when it is

shaped either to satiric or to moral purpose. Some such shaping of the

beast-fable lies at the root of the renown of the Samian slave, the

actual “Aisopos,” who flourished in the middle of the sixth century

B.C. From tradition and experience—that great repository of practical

morality—the Greek observer drew his store. But in the history of

literature “Aesop” became gradually a vague name; for later tales were

freely ascribed to him as a kind of father of fable, and such tales

enjoyed wide popularity among Greek democracies both as a convenient

cloak for social criticism and as a simple form of amusement. In this

respect, then, there is an “Aesopic” just as there is a “Homeric”

Question. The supposed Aesopic fables (λόγων Αἰσωπείων συναγωγαί) were

gathered about 300 B.C. by Demetrius of Phaleron, once tyrant at Athens,

and afterwards _savant_ at Alexandria, where he did much to establish

the great library. This Greek prose collection it was—altered and

interpolated by Alexandrine scholars—which formed the basis of Phaedrus’s

neat version in Latin iambics. The same collection, it may be inferred

from the reappearance of several stories in Plutarch (or in writings

attributed to him), was a source common to Phaedrus and Plutarch (or the

pseudo-Plutarch).[425] Further, there is ground for holding that the

modern “Aesop” contains actually more of Phaedrus than of Aisopos, thanks

to the influence exerted by Phaedrus in medieval times, mainly if not

entirely through the prose-forms to which his verses had been reduced.

Phaedrus was not the first who used the fable in Roman literature. It

had been employed incidentally by Ennius, Lucilius and Horace.[426]

Phaedrus, however, was the first to compose separate volumes of fables

in Latin: this was the one Hellenic form not yet taken over. Drama,

epic, didactic, elegy, lyric, history presented no fresh openings; but a

limited claim to originality might be based on free poetic adaptations

of Greek prose-fables current under the name of “Aesop.” The attitude

of Phaedrus to “Aesop” was not one which paused critically to examine

the implications of the name, but evidently accepted “Aesop” as the

personality responsible for the fables ascribed to him. Phaedrus,

therefore, felt that, however much he might modify or add, he

individually owed Aesop a debt for the substance at least of the fables;

and this relationship to the Greek sage is proclaimed at the outset:

Matter which first old Aesop did rehearse

Hath Phaedrus polished in iambic verse.

Two boons my book hath: it can laughter raise,

And gives sage counsel in life’s wildering maze.

Howbeit, should one think to criticize,

Since beasts, nay even trees, here sermonize,

Let him remember that in fables we

Divert ourselves with unreality.[427]

Indeed, throughout we are continually being reminded of his model. The

epilogue to the second book—an _envoi_ to the volume which began with the

piece just cited—gives utterance to his admiration in the sentiment which

possessed a strong attraction for De Quincey:

To Aesop Athens reared a statue great,

And set on lasting marble base a slave——[428]

a proof, says Phaedrus, that the pathway of honour lies open to all and

that glory depends on merit instead of birth. If he follows in Aesop’s

steps, it is in no spirit of envy, but in one of fair emulation:

If Latium shall countenance my task,

More authors shall she have to match with Greece.[429]

The prologue of the next book shows that this ambitious desire of

bringing honour to Roman literature harmonizes with his own patriotic

appreciation of Hellenic traditions:

If Phrygian Aesop by his genius,

If Scythian Anacharsis could by his

Build deathless glory, why should I, who am

Of nearer kin to literary Greece,

Forsake in idle sleep my country’s fame?[430]

In a later poem, he pictures Aesop brought out in “the fresh buskins” of

the tragic trimeter;[431] elsewhere,[432] he protests against carping

detractors who set successes among the fables to Aesop’s account but

failures to Phaedrus’s own account. The last prologue offers the

explanation that he employs Aesop’s name to recommend his works, as great

artists’ names might be inscribed on productions not by themselves: this

is virtually to amplify his remark in another place that the fables are

not “Aesop’s, but Aesopian.”[433]

It may well be, as Lucian Müller suggested,[434] that Phaedrus used a

more complete Aesop than is now available, and that we therefore cannot

know how much he owed; but, however extensive his debt, it does not

amount to servile borrowing. Independence is not surprising in an author

who explicitly recognizes individuality in literature,[435] and who,

while he undertakes to imitate Aesop’s principle of instruction through

examples, at the same time engages to introduce novel and diverting

anecdotes:

The sage’s method I shall keep with care:

Yet should it please me add some incidents

Whereby variety may charm the taste,

I pray thee, reader, take it courteously.[436]

By such promised anecdotes, some from bygone Greek life, some from

contemporary Rome, and by allusions to current events sufficiently

caustic to bring trouble upon his head, Phaedrus added greatly to the

living force of his work. Bent on his twofold purpose of amusement and

counsel, he could not, without becoming a dull second-hand plagiarist,

shut his eyes to his own times. Occasionally, indeed, the Roman setting

is plainly revealed. It is so in the case of the too-credulous father

who slew his son under a misapprehension, and then by his suicide left

his suspected wife to be haled before the _centumuiri_: it is so in the

tale of the conceited flute-player called “Princeps,”[437] who used to

play accompaniments to the _pantomimus_ Bathyllus and who, with sublime

assurance, mistook for plaudits in his own honour the acclamations of the

theatre intended for the real _princeps_, the emperor. Equally Roman, or

at least Italian, is the atmosphere in the entertaining tale about the

peasant who competed in pig-squeaking on the stage against a professional

ventriloquist, and, despite his ingenious precaution of keeping a

live porker hidden beneath his clothes to be pinched surreptitiously,

was howled down by the audience as defective in realism! The closing

situation is one of delicious irony when he turns the laugh against his

judges by openly displaying the authentic grunter:

Look ye, this shows what critics you must be.[438]

Again, the painted “history” of the warfare between mice and weasels[439]

seems to allude to wall-paintings of a comic or burlesque nature such

as can be illustrated from Pompeii. Another instance is a hit at the

_ardaliones_,[440] the fussy triflers and ineffectual meddlers of Roman

society. They are derided under the semblance of an officious slave who,

by forcing his gardening labours upon the attention of his imperial

majesty, tried hard to curry favour and possibly win the ceremonial slap

(_alapa_) that conferred liberty:

A tribe of busy-bodies lives at Rome,

Hot-headed bustlers, pressed mid idleness,

Panting _sans_ effort, and with much ado

Effecting naught, a plague unto themselves

And most detestable to other men.

This tribe, if I but can, I would reform

By this true tale, which will repay your care.

Tiberius Caesar once, when Naples-bound,

Had reached his villa at Misenum’s Cape,

Which, by Lucullus on the headland built,

Gazes far over the Sicilian main,

And looks right down upon the Tuscan Sea.

The Prince was strolling ’mid its pleasant glades,

When one of his high-girt domestic slaves,

Whose tunic of Egyptian linen fell

Loose from his shoulders with its drooping fringe,

Started with wooden watering-pot to spray

The droughty ground, and for parade of work

Got laughed at. Then by well-known cuts he gained

Another terrace, quick to lay the dust.

Caesar observed the man and grasped his game

Of counting on some profit to be earned.

“Come here!” the Emperor cried; the knave skipped up,

Brisk with the joy of sure gratuity.

Then his Imperial Highness had his jest:

“You’ve not scored much, and all your fuss is lost:

Far more with me the slaps of freedom cost!”[441]

But Phaedrus’s satire was not merely social: it invaded politics. In

one passage he refers to fable as a literary invention which might be

of service when one dare not be outspoken;[442] and though it would be

an exaggeration to consider him an organ of political opposition, he

clearly did give umbrage in high quarters by criticisms. There are always

people ready to fit the satiric cap on their heads; and much in Phaedrus

could be deemed offensive by a bad conscience. Some doubtless detected

a political allusion where none was intended; yet there were lines which

inevitably summoned up before the mind recent chapters in Roman history.

No one, for instance, with republican sympathies in his heart could avoid

putting his own interpretation and comment upon the lines:

Amid a change of government in states

Poor folk change nothing but their master’s name.[443]

Besides, certain fables definitely entered on dangerous ground. Thus, the

familiar tale of the Wolf and the Lamb is explicitly levelled at false

accusers, deriving special significance from the increase of informers

(_delatores_), eager to secure convictions for treason, and encouraged by

the authorities.[444] Nor is hatred of _delatores_ under Tiberius far to

seek in the story of the evil end which befell the Wolf who bore false

witness to support the Dog as plaintiff in his invented claim against

the Sheep for a loan.[445] Indeed, there is a good deal of fun in the

fables at the expense of law-courts and judges. The problem whether

the emperor liked the anecdote (previously translated) concerning his

snub administered to the officious slave must remain undetermined; and

equally insoluble is the question whether he recognized his portrait in

the dread King Water-snake sent to succeed King Log, the _roi fainéant_

against whom the Frogs had petitioned;[446] but, at any rate, for the

emperor’s minister Sejanus there was decidedly unpalatable reading in the

first two books. Sejanus was very like the upstart Jackdaw in peacock’s

feathers and his projected alliance with Livia, widow of the younger

Drusus, possibly lent a sting to the protests of the Frogs against

the marriage of the Sun who, even as things were, dried up the pools:

“what will result if he have progeny?”[447] Whichever may have been the

offending fables in the volume of Bad Beasts, Sejanus assuredly did

institute proceedings against the author, who resented the indignity of

suffering “calamity” at such hands.[448] There is no evidence as to the

punishment inflicted—whether it was banishment or imprisonment or even a

return to slavery—but Phaedrus’s tone proves that it left him sore; and

the incident is one among many illustrations of the repressive influence

of the imperial _entourage_, a circle where few dared say the thing they

felt.

It was not only through political strictures that Phaedrus made enemies.

As we shall find, his very style, his love of brevity and pith, incurred

hostile criticism, and, like Terence, he felt bound to devote portions of

his prologues to answering detractors. Annoyance was also given by the

manner in which his fables upheld honesty and justice:

Hard task it is one’s feeling to restrain,

When, conscious of sincere integrity,

’Tis badgered by the insolence of knaves.

“Who are they?” you will ask: well, time will show.

There is a motto which I learned at school:

“An open growl from common folk is crime.”

While I have wits, I shall remember well.[449]

Perhaps he is over-insistent on the didactic element in his work and on

the lessons derivable from regarding him seriously:

You take my work for jest; with naught to do

More grave, I wield an airy pen, ’tis true:

Howbeit, scan my trivial lays with care,

And how great profit shall you gather there![450]

It is an important aspect of his relation to his times, and a powerful

factor in his social criticism, that he emphasizes the ubiquitous

presence and frequent triumph of injustice. It would be too much to call

him gloomy or pessimistic; yet his figures move in a beast-world where,

notwithstanding the moral sermonettes, much hardship and unfairness are

perforce endured. The Wolf tyrannizes unmolested: the Lion insists that

the whole spoil is his “share” and defies his allies to demur: the Ass,

captured by robbers, feels no worse for the change of owner than, as a

rule, Rome might when she gets a new emperor.[451] When the great fall

out, humble people have to suffer—so argue the Frogs about the battles of

the Bulls.[452] In a life so troublous, resignation is assumed to be a

wise precaution—the Frogs, oppressed by their terrible King Water-snake,

after lazy King Log, come to realize that it is best to let well

alone, or even if things are not well, to bear the ills one has.[453]

Accordingly, there is much acceptance of fate. This is a wicked world,

and must be recognized as such; for so far are rogues from infallibly

getting their deserts that their success is often a good advertisement

for villainy (_successus improborum plures allicit_, II. iii. 7).

Phaedrus, however, looked beyond the Rome of his day to that wider sphere

of human nature which the best fables always illustrate and to which they

owe much of their perennial attraction:

My scheme will brand no individual,

But life itself and human ways describe

—“A heavy task to promise,” one may say.[454]

This relation to life at large comes to a great extent under the second

of his professed objects—sound counsel. For example, it is with becoming

seriousness that he treats the idea of the two wallets for human

shortcomings familiar in Catullus’s allusion and forming the ancient

analogue to Burns’ aspiration:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

In Phaedrus it takes this shape:

Two wallets Jove on us hath slung—

One stuffed with faults ourselves have made

He set upon our back; and hung

Before our breast the other, weighed

Down with all other people’s vice.

Hence our own frailty ’scapes our eyes:

Let neighbours slip—we criticize![455]

With similar seriousness of tone he uses the instance of the

treasure-dragon to introduce his impressive apostrophe to the miser.[456]

In another poem we find the wise pilot’s advice for voyagers across the

ocean of life:

Rejoice restrainedly and murmur slow;

For life is one long blend of weal and woe.[457]

There is also a note of pathetic truth to human experience and of wistful

yearning in the little piece on the rarity of affection in ordinary life:

The name of friend is common; friendship, rare.

When a small home was built by Socrates

(I would not shun his death to win his fame,

I’d yield to odium, if but cleared when dust),

One of the people—name unknown, of course—

Asked “Why so small a house for one so great?”

The answer came “’Twill hold my real friends.”[458]

Yet it would be unfair to leave the impression that even in his satire on

human nature Phaedrus constantly wears a sober face. He does not forget

that one of his objects is amusement; and although there may be little

enough of the “laughter” which he promised, still many subjects are

treated lightly and pleasantly. In such manner he handles the recurrent

foibles of humanity exemplified in braggarts, in public gullibility, in

interested advisers, in the old lady with a weakness for drink, and so

forth.[459] Here is his glance at good-looking and lucky fools:

Sir Reynard once a tragic mask espied:

“How fine a face to have no brain inside!”

Said he. And so with those to whom their fate

Gives rank and glory, but an empty pate.[460]

Here again, a little more fully than in the Horatian _parturiunt montes,

nascetur ridiculus mus_, we have a vivid illustration of “much cry and

little wool”:

A mountain once was brought to bed

With frantic groans of labour torn.

Earth in excitement lost its head—

When lo! a tiny mouse was born!

This story is designed for one

Of mighty threats, fulfilment none.[461]

There is humour, too, as of some irresolute Sir Roger de Coverley, in Mr.

Justice Ape’s summing up of a case where prosecutor and defendant are

alike disreputable, and there has been unscrupulous cross-swearing. After

hearing two clever but conflicting perorations, the Justice pronounces

with Gilbertian comicality for both sides:

“You, Wolf, it seems, ne’er lost what now you claim:

I find, glib Fox, you stole it all the same!”[462]

One must not overlook another source of charm. Good fables have a right

to be read for the story alone. Now, as has been pointed out, much in

Phaedrus comes down through Aesop from the primitive beast-story and

folklore of the Aryans: much is but the residuum of what prehistoric

fancy was capable of inventing and believing in far-off times when

quadruped, reptile and bird were supposed to talk. Phaedrus gave classic

expression in verse to tales which have appealed to countless generations

of children, and which hold their own in the modern nursery. For, as M.

Reinach would like us to believe, our youngsters love such tales because

they are unconscious totemists![463] To read Phaedrus, therefore, is like

meeting friends that everyone must know, because the stories illustrate

the common experience of mankind. So, granted a judicious ability to

overlook the obtrusion of a moral first or last in a fable, one never

tires of The Wolf and the Lamb, The Jackdaw in Peacock’s Feathers, The

Lion’s Share, The Ambitious Frog and the Ox, The Sham Hospitality of Fox

and Stork, The Mule with the Load of Gold and the Mule with the Load of

Barley, The Wolf at Large and the Dog with a Collar,[464] The Pearl in

the Dung-heap, Aesop tossing Nuts or All Work and No Play, The Fox and

the Sour Grapes, The Viper and the File, The Snake in the Bosom, The

Forelock of Opportunity, and Old Bald-pate with the Fly or Adding Insult

to Injury.[465]

Human realism, in fact, has been imparted to the beast-fable. Constantly

forgetting that one is reading about animals, one does not care if the

doings and sayings are inconsistent with the laws of physics or natural

history. It matters little that a swimming dog is unlikely to see his

reflexion in the water, and that cats do not habitually eat young

pigs.[466] The passions, wiles and talk of the animals are convincing

because of the resemblance to mankind. In this sense, how natural it all

is—how true to life! The cynical ingratitude of the bitch after borrowing

shelter for herself and whelps; the mortally wounded pride of the old

lion who endures a double death (_bis uideor mori_) when kicked by the

ass; the much to be suspected outburst of sudden generosity on the part

of designing persons in contrast with the staid fidelity of a watchdog;

the dignified contempt wherewith the boar declines to avenge a lewd

insult (_inquinari nolo_)—these[467] and many such have close parallels

in actuality. Little wonder, then, that contemporaries not infrequently

beheld themselves under the disguise. So entirely apposite were many

stories that, as already seen, offence was sure to be taken where none

was meant.

Without being among the great in achievement, Phaedrus yet exhibits

the genuine attitude of a man of letters. He is intensely sensitive to

unfriendly criticism; he repeatedly makes retorts on cavillers;[468] he

is proud of literary qualities like brevity;[469] believes he has his

place as the introducer of a new form in Roman literature;[470] and has

confidence in the survival of his writings.[471] He takes pleasure in his

vocation; for it is with obvious satisfaction that he recounts the value

of literature to Simonides.[472] Yet, equipped as he was with talent and

self-reliance, and likely to secure an initial recommendation from his

connexion with the imperial court, he admits that he made his way with

difficulty. The admission occurs in the passage where, after mentioning

his birth, he avows his disdain for wealth and his devotion to poetry:

I came to birth on that Pierian hill,

Whereon the hallowed dame, Mnemosyne,

Nine times a mother, bore to Thunderer Jove

The Muses’ Choir. Though almost in that school

I first saw light, though from my breast I have

Erased all lust for gain, and with fair fame

Undimmed, have set my heart on my career,

Still ’tis but grudging welcome I receive.[473]

In face of opposition, however, he feels the superiority of his own

unappreciated pearls: it is like throwing them on a dung-hill to offer

fables to unresponsive readers:

Once in a dung-heap, as for food it sought,

A barnyard fowl a pearl to light had brought:

“Ah, what a gem to lie so low!” he cried;

“If found by one for thy true worth keen-eyed,

Long since thou hadst regained thy pristine pride.

But I, thy finder, much prefer my food:

Nor I to thee, nor thou to me dost good!”

I mean the present fable to allude

To those who Phaedrus have not understood![474]

The tardy acceptance of his writings during his lifetime seems in harmony

with the silence regarding him in the classics at large. Seneca, writing

about A.D. 43, pronounces the fable to be work “unattempted by the

_Roman_ genius.”[475] Possibly in this remark he may definitely have the

Greek Phaedrus in mind, though he does not name him. Quintilian, while

he finds a place for fable in his scheme of education,[476] does not

mention Phaedrus. Before Avianus, who wrote in the fourth century, the

single allusion generally cited as applicable to him, namely, Martial’s

_an aemulatur improbi iocos Phaedri?_ is not beyond dispute. While it is

appropriate in Martial to call the fables _ioci_, as their author does,

the epithet _improbus_, if it seriously means “shameless,” is remarkably

inappropriate as a fair description of our moralist, even when we grant

that he can be coarse. It is just possible that the coarsest in him has

not survived; but unless one adopts a supposition of this sort, there

is a temptation to fancy that the Phaedrus whom Martial meant may have

been some obscure writer of mimes.[477] More justice was done to his

reputation in later centuries when abridgements were in vogue; and in the

Middle Ages he may said to have had his revenge.

This is a suitable point at which to note briefly the later fortunes of

fable in the Roman world. It was not till after the time of Augustus

that a group of Indian beast-stories with ethical applications was

brought to Alexandria by a Cingalese embassy. Translated as the “Libyan

Fables” of one “Kybises,” they had pithy conclusions pointing the moral

to be deduced. In the days of Marcus Aurelius, a rhetor at his court,

Nicostratus, formed a _corpus_ out of the old Greek collection of

Demetrius and the Libyan collection of “Kybises.” This body of fable from

the nearer and the farther East was next turned into Greek choliambics by

Valerius Babrius, about whose date there has been considerable dispute,

but who was perhaps tutor to the young son of Alexander Severus. It is

the Libyan element, rather than the Aesopic, which predominates among

the forty-two fables done into Latin elegiacs by Flavius Avianus in the

fourth century; and his uninspiring verses close the ancient records on

this subject. With the later and more fascinating history of fable we are

not concerned except to observe that in the Middle Ages it was Phaedrus

who was especially read and paraphrased among fabulists. About eighty of

his fables were collected in prose, perhaps in the ninth century,[478]

and went under the name of “Romulus.” The prose collection which once

belonged to the monk Ademar of Chabannes or Chabanais,[479] and was

possibly written by himself early in the eleventh century, possesses the

historic interest of preserving some portions of Phaedrus otherwise lost;

elsewhere among its contents are prose versions of existent verse fables

in Phaedrus with but slight alterations.[480]

The outstanding qualities of the style and art of Phaedrus are his direct

simplicity of language and unpretentious neatness of phrase and line. On

brevity, as already indicated, he plumed himself, though on occasion he

is half-apologetic over it. Brevity, we know, is not necessarily simple;

but his brevity is. With him, condensation was not purchased at the

expense of clearness; for his style is on the whole flowing and easy.

Its natural turns, which seem to grow out of the nature of the subject,

are at once appropriate to his animal speakers and a contrast to the

artificial rhetoric beginning to inundate Latin literature. At the same

time, he was aware of this increasing tendency towards the high-flown

and the far-fetched; for in a passage[481] where he makes telling retort

on the hypercriticism launched at him, he composes a specimen of the

tragic manner, and proclaims the impossibility of pleasing a fastidious

Cato[482] of a critic by means of either _fabellae_ (fables) or _fabulae_

(plays). It is, then, vastly to his credit that, while he thus affords

proof of what he could do in aping tragic diction, he yet so avoids

inflation and preciosity as to attain a strict and almost Attic sobriety

of style comparable with the clear-cut and restrained work of Terence

in the drama or of Caesar in prose. His use of antithesis, which is not

tediously overdone, may be cited in illustration of his restraint; _e.g._

Strangers he gulls, but friends make fun of him

(_Ignotos fallit, notis est derisui_, I. xi. 2)

or

Bores to themselves, to others _caviare_

(_Sibi molesta et aliis odiosissima_, II. v. 4).

In a certain fondness for abstract[483] turns of expression one remarks

a resemblance to the style of Valerius Maximus, and therefore a symptom

of the movement in the language towards Silver Latinity. In general,

despite his foreign origin, the Latin of Phaedrus obeys correct canons,

though there are occasional vulgarisms and instances of loose grammatical

usage.[484]

He does not possess in any remarkable degree the artist’s eye. The

picturesque may be said to begin and end for him in a few vivid

synonyms like “long-ears” (_auritulus_) for an ass, “the wizened one”

(_retorridus_) for an old mouse, or in epithets like those in “branching

antlers” (_ramosa cornua_) of a stag, or “lightning-flashing tusks”

of the wild boar (_fulmineis dentibus_).[485] He may pause to give a

condensed description; but it is rare to find anything so full in this

kind as Juno’s summary of the peacock’s advantages:

Thou bear’st the palm for beauty as for size;

The gleam of emerald illumes thy neck;

A tail thou spread’st with brilliant plumes begemmed.[486]

Nor does he trouble, we have seen, to keep true to nature; except in

wonderland, cow, she-goat and sheep make a curious triple alliance

for a lion on a carnivorous expedition. Really, Phaedrus is in Roman

fashion bent upon moralizing so that his readers shall reap benefit

(_utilitatem_);[487] and this domination of the moral is one factor which

prevents any free and accurate study of animals. Not one of the world’s

mighty sages, he has rather a thin philosophy to propound; and on his

narrow stage the beasts sometimes display no more vitality than wooden

marionettes. This renders his psychology too naïve—his animals reason

in a manner patently subordinate to the intended lesson. The doves, for

instance, harried by the kite, see at last the error of their ways and

acknowledge the justice of their punishment:[488] and the outcome has a

smack suggestive of a death-bed repentance in accord with the distinctly

self-regarding morality inculcated.

Although the parallel of La Fontaine’s fables must cross the mind

insistently during a study of Phaedrus, yet any elaborate comparison

between the two would be futile. There is so much that is incommensurate.

The claim of Phaedrus had been to polish in iambic verse the prose of

“Aesop”; and it may be granted that his fables have more picturesque

turns than their Greek originals. But they pale before the masterpieces

of the French writer. Phaedrus does not possess the knowledge, the

penetration, the dramatic power, the sense of style—he has not, in short,

the genius which makes La Fontaine a great poet at a great epoch, and

_par excellence_ the thinker and artist among fabulists. The Russian

fabulist Kriloff, who is manifestly under obligations both to La Fontaine

and to Aesop, may in one striking way be said to continue the Phaedrian

tradition; for, whereas La Fontaine’s fables are impersonal, Kriloff’s

had a frequent and pointed bearing on affairs and circumstances in the

Russia of his time.

The metre of Phaedrus is the iambic senarius throughout. It is not the

iambic line favoured by Catullus, Bibaculus or Horace, but broadly that

employed by the ancient comic writers. He may have been influenced by

Publilius Syrus, to whose sententious manner the moral of a fable often

bears resemblance. We meet with a different type of iambic trimeter in

Seneca, who, owing to Ovidian influence,[489] composed lines unlike the

early Roman tragic iambic; for neatness and monotony have in the Senecan

iambic replaced the strong rough lines of Ennius, Pacuvius and Accius.

But it is the ancient iambic line, as used in comedy by Plautus and

Terence, which descends lineally to Phaedrus. Only, while he may offend

a fastidious ear by admitting spondees in the second and the fourth

feet, he is generally careful to avoid overloading his verse with long

syllables and to secure variety of sound by introducing other metrical

feet[490] and by attention to elision.

Regarding the fables as a whole, Dr. Mackail contends that “their

chief interest is as the last survival of the _urbanus sermo_ in Latin

poetry”;[491] but perhaps this view too exclusively estimates them from

the linguistic and stylistic side. Slight from the standpoint of purely

literary merit, the fables of Phaedrus do however possess considerable

historical importance. They hold their place in the chronicle of European

fable-literature; they form a chapter in the book of Rome’s debt to Greek

models; they contain a significant amount of original material, with a

virile bearing upon contemporary life; and, farther, it is not the least

of their claims to attention that they wielded a potent influence in

medieval times, and, if only as one of those lesson-books which sink deep

into the memory, they have been beloved by many generations of readers.

POETRY OF THE TIME

To the exiguous body of minor poetry during his own times Tiberius

contributed a lyric lament on the death of L. Caesar, and poems in the

late Greek manner.[492] It has already been observed that the emperor had

profited by his studies in rhetoric, under Theodorus and others, enough

to acquit himself proficiently in speaking and in writing, though he

cultivated at times a halting and obscure manner. Towards the close of

Augustus’s reign, Manilius[493] had written his _Astronomica_, viewing

the universe on Stoic principles and displaying a style not uninfluenced

by Ovidian dexterity.

A famous but ill-starred prince has a niche in the history of that

particular type of didactic poetry which descended from Cicero and

Manilius. The emperor’s nephew and adopted son, Germanicus[494] (15

B.C.–A.D. 19), added to military ability a command of his own language

as speaker and poet.[495] He wrote Greek comedies which have perished,

and in both languages elegiac epigrams, a few of which have been

preserved, including a Latin one on a boy who met with a fatal accident

on ice. To him are usually assigned the hexameter translations or

adaptations of the Greek poems by Aratus of Soli in Cilicia on astronomy

and weather-forecasts (Φαινόμενα and Διοσημεῖα) which have come down,

some 700 and 200 lines respectively, under the name of “Claudius

Caesar.” There is ancient authority for the ascription to Germanicus;

Lactantius, for instance, quotes a line from “Germanicus Caesar in his

Aratean poem.”[496] An apostrophe to Augustus in the poem (l. 558)

implies the death of that emperor, and _genitor_ in l. 2 is applicable

to his adoptive father Tiberius. Rutgers’s advocacy for the authorship

of Domitian (who did not take the title “Germanicus” until after his

campaign against the Chatti in A.D. 84) has found little acceptance.

Astronomy formed in antiquity an integral part of a liberal education:

a cultured Roman in reading about the heavens was far from being so

helpless as is the average reader of to-day, nor was the ancient so

ignorant when he looked at the starry sky. The work translated and

amplified by Germanicus is, in effect, an indication of a different type

of knowledge, requirement and interest from that usual in modern times,

and its compound of astronomy and mythology cannot retain the attraction

which it once exercised. A heavenly body is not merely mentioned in its

position or for its influence: it is connected with the legend from

which its name is derived, and so the didactic is lit up with faint

gleams of poetry, in which perhaps Germanicus excels his original. Thus

the deteriorating ages of the world appear as in Ovid, and the name of a

constellation like Andromeda leads away from science into fancy:[497]

The picture of her woe abides: she still extends

Her arms as once when bound to cruel cliff.

Long ago, Frey[498] pointed out the prince’s free treatment of his Greek

original, his correction of mistakes in the light of later knowledge,

and his insertion of passages of his own composition, somewhat in the

fashion observable in Coleridge’s rendering of Schiller’s _Wallenstein_.

If time-honoured legends are not subjected to critical examination, they

are at least sometimes introduced apologetically: “if an old tale may

find favour,” “if in truth Juppiter was suckled as a child,” “if in truth

Atlans upholds the realms of Jove.”[499] This independence of method and

spirit is one of the features which distinguishes Germanicus’s version of

the _Aratea_ from the preceding attempt by Cicero and the later one by

Avienus in the fourth century.

A poem concerned with Germanicus may appropriately be mentioned here,

because it connects the age of Augustus and that of Tiberius. It is a

fragment in hexameters which stops short in the twenty-third line as

quoted by the elder Seneca[500] to illustrate Latin power in describing

the ocean. The verses are by Albinovanus Pedo,[501] a poet of Ovid’s

set, who had written a _Theseid_ and elegies, including a consolation

to Livia on the death of Germanicus’s father, Drusus, some twenty-four

years earlier than this poem on the expedition under Germanicus into

the North Sea. Tacitus has described the storm which befell this same

expedition in the _Annals_ (II. xxiii.). In turgid style Pedo aims at

conveying the nervous alarm of adventurers braving the unknown hazards

of high latitudes, with a sense of being exiled (_extorres_) beyond the

known limits of the globe into sunless realms where Ocean “bears enormous

monsters ’neath its sluggish tides”: They exclaim:

Heaven calls us back, forbidding mortal eyes

To know the boundary of the world: why force

With oars those alien seas and haunted waves?[502]

Though Pedo is mainly Augustan, his declamatory lines composed under

Tiberius possess the interest of forming a link between the rhetorical

qualities observable in Ovid and the epic poetry of the Silver Age.

The rarity of names of contemporary playwrights is a reminder that the

drama, usually at Rome outrivalled by less intellectual entertainments,

had fallen upon evil days. The popular dramatic performances, in favour

of which comedy[503] had virtually disappeared, were now the mime and the

Atellan farce. The mime, realistic and often coarse though it was in its

picture of life, yet, according to the opinion of so staid a philosopher

as Seneca, shared with ancient classical tragedy and comedy the merit of

conveying impressive lessons of practical wisdom;[504] and there is a

familiar anecdote told of the death-bed scene when Augustus asked those

around him whether he had played the “mime” of life well, capping his

query with Greek verses which solicited their applause.[505] A writer

of Caligula’s time named Catullus composed mimes, two of which were

_Phasma_ (“The Spectre”) and _Laureolus_, whose title-rôle of a bandit

was on one occasion sustained by a wretched criminal who underwent a

real crucifixion upon the stage.[506] The Atellan farce held its ground

during several reigns,[507] and was presumably all the more acceptable

because some line or lines might strike the audience as covertly directed

against an emperor.

Tragedy can scarcely be said to have had a real survival in the atrophied

forms of _fabulae salticae_ and dramatic recitations.[508] The _fabula

saltica_ expressed action, feeling and character, sometimes no doubt

with marvellous dexterity, through the dancing, gesture and garb of a

_pantomimus_, while the words of the play were assigned to a chorus.

Had the librettos come down, some might conceivably have entered into

literary history: we know, for instance, that Lucan wrote fourteen such

librettos; and, later, Statius wrote an _Agaue_ for the dancer Paris.

Many pieces, however, were based on the most unsavoury stories in

mythology, and represented a Pasiphaë, a Myrrha, or a Leda. As regards

the pathetic recitations extracted from plays or composed specially to

recite, this mutilated or attenuated form of drama became one of the

great amusements of Nero both as writer and performer.

Dramatic composition under the Empire was in reality no safer for authors

than history was. If a mere line about a ruler’s folly in a tragedy

apparently so remote from contemporary politics as his _Atreus_ involved

the downfall of Mamercus Scaurus,[509] it is hardly matter for surprise

that an equivocal jest in an Atellan farce should lead Caligula to have

its luckless author burned in the amphitheatre.[510] The friendship

of P. Pomponius Secundus[511] with a son of Sejanus had rendered him

suspect under Tiberius, and for years he remained under surveillance with

enforced leisure for literary creation. Outliving Tiberius, he again

became a public figure. The elder Pliny speaks of him as of consular

rank, served under him against the Germans, and wrote his biography. Why

the mob in the theatre attacked the dramatist in A.D. 47 is not clear.

Quintilian, at any rate, considered him far the best tragic poet he had

seen. A single title of his plays survives—the _Aeneas_, presumably a

_praetexta_ dramatizing portions of the legendary history of Rome.[512]

LITERATURE OF THE NERONIAN PERIOD

A.D. 54–A.D. 68

CHAPTER I

COLUMELLA AND AGRICULTURE

Columella’s works—His date—Subjects treated in _De Re

Rustica_—His outlook on agriculture—Vivid glimpses of

farm-life—Attitude to sources—Prose style—Feeling for

colour—His verse-book on gardens—Things useful and things

beautiful.

The _De Re Rustica_ of L. Junius Moderatus Columella[513] is our best

witness to methods of husbandry in the earlier Empire. A Spaniard by

birth—his native place was Gades[514] (Cadiz)—he took both a family and

a personal interest in farming. His uncle, “the most diligent husbandman

in the province of Baetica,”[515] whom he several times cites with

respect, gained great experience in land-owning: and when Columella

himself acquired estates in Italy,[516] he added practical knowledge

to his study of Greek, Carthaginian and Roman writers on the subject.

An inscription[517] tells that he was of the Galerian tribe and served

as an officer in the _legio sexta ferrata_; so it is a reasonable

conjecture that, when that legion was stationed in Syria, he took the

opportunity of observing agricultural operations which he recalled when

he came to write.[518] Besides his _De Re Rustica_ in twelve books

(originally designed to end with the tenth book which is in verse), he

had previously written a manual on agriculture, of which the second

book, _De Arboribus_, is left. A work now missing was his counterblast

to fortune-telling, _Adversus Astrologos_ (XI. i. 31); and he at least

had it in mind to compose[519] an account of rituals followed in farming,

which would have been of great value for a student of Roman religion.

He wrote after Julius Graecinus and Cornelius Celsus (the agricultural

part of whose encyclopaedia he often quotes), but before the elder

Pliny, who in turn used Columella. One other chronological point can be

determined, which shows he was writing in Nero’s reign. In the third

book of the _De Re Rustica_ he mentions Seneca, “a person of excellent

genius and learning,” as holding a Nomentan estate[520] not far from his

own; and, as Seneca acquired this late in life but must have already

held it long enough to make it known for its abundant vintage-yield, the

inference is that this book was written not much before Seneca’s death in

A.D. 65.

Briefly these are the subjects of the twelve books:

I, General rules for country life, _e.g._ on choosing land, securing

water and staffing a farm; II, treatment of land, ploughing, manuring,

various crops; III-IV, vineyards and vines; V, land dimensions, elms,

olives, fruit-trees; VI, cattle, horses, mules; VII, sheep, goats, and

(after a chapter on cheese-making) swine and dogs; VIII, poultry and

fish-ponds; IX, wild cattle and bees; X, gardens (in verse); XI, duties

of a farm-bailiff, work for different months, and gardens (in prose);

XII, duties of a bailiff’s wife—provisions, pickling, fruit-preserving;

on mead, cheese, figs, raisins, making and treatment of wines, savoury

olive marmalade, salting swine’s flesh.

From the mere headings one can see at once that such work is technical

rather than literary; yet there is much in it to recreate important

aspects of the environment of the Romans in the first century. Columella

was conscious that agriculture, the traditional strength of Rome, was

being sapped by the multiplication of parks and country-seats and by

wasteful mismanagement of estates through incompetence. He is very

insistent on the abuses due to absentee landlords, and equally insistent

on the need for practical farming and personal control. The owner who

manages for himself ought to secure better returns than he would by

letting to tenant-farmers, though this latter method avoids some of the

risks consequent on running the farm by slave-labour under a farm-bailiff.

A summary examination of his preface to the first book illustrates his

general outlook and his advocacy of restored attention to agriculture,

for which he has imbibed a traditional Roman veneration. The old Roman

practice, he says, of land-tilling in which a consul or a dictator

used to take personal delight, the pursuit which might be called “own

sister to philosophy” (_quasi consanguinea sapientiae_), has fallen

on evil days. There are teachers for all other sciences and arts,

including trumpery, luxurious, and even disreputable ones; but, he adds,

“of agriculture I have never known any to profess themselves either

instructors or students.” Mother earth is foolishly alleged to have

declined in fertility, whereas the true reason is that skilled labour

is not being devoted to her. Feeble old town-slaves will be banished to

do country work, although rural toil demands both knowledge and “green

age” capable of standing fatigue. In contrast with olden times, we Romans

“have crept (_correpsimus_) inside the city-wall and ply our hands rather

in circuses and theatres than among crops and vineyards.” We misspend our

days and nights and “consider ourselves lucky because we never see a

sunrise or a sunset.” Things are come to such a pass that “in this Latium

and Saturnian land we let out by public auction the importation of corn

from our provinces.” Agriculture is no easy thing to excel in; but the

right attitude is not despair in face of its vast variety (_tam variae

tamque uastae scientiae_), but determination to use the knowledge handed

down by Greek and Roman writers (many of whom Columella names),[521]

and to make diligent practical experiment. As he remarks in his first

chapter, “practice and experience are masters in the arts”: books and

rules are only auxiliary: nothing benefits the farm so much as the

master’s own presence.

Naturally the didactic value in such work outweighs the artistic; but

there is a great deal of old-world information which can hardly fail

to interest, though it may but concern the right contrivance of an old

Italian hen-house, the food proper for poultry, recipes for preserving

pears, the way to make mead of the very best honey, or the mode of

reasonably encouraging treatment which Columella found efficacious with

his slaves. It is something to have thus brought home to the mind what

life meant on farms in the imperial period, to learn that a shepherd’s

dog should be white so that it could be distinguished on dark mornings

or at evening twilight from the dangerous wolf, to note the frugality

and energy laid down as ideally requisite in a competent farm-bailiff,

to admire the methodical regularity declared to be equally essential in

the farm-bailiff’s wife as in a chorus of singers or (as the author says,

no doubt with a touch of personal reminiscence) in the army. One of the

truly Roman features in Columella is his maintenance of a standard of

hard work, fortified by his citation from Cato, “by doing nothing men

learn to do evil.” It is true his science is far from impeccable: some

of his cures are appallingly foolish, and his astronomy little likely to

produce a sound calendar. But then even blunders may have the merit of

affording amusement; and, besides, there is in him a modesty which half

disarms criticism. It appears very prettily in his final sentence, when,

now an old man, and conscious of the magnitude of his theme, he comes to

say good-bye to it:

As a conclusion of my work now accomplished, I think it not

improper, Publius Silvinus, to declare to my readers (if truly

any be found who deign to take cognizance of such affairs)

that I nowise doubted the existence of wellnigh an infinity

of matters capable of being ingrafted upon this subject, but

that I judged it right that only such as seemed most necessary

should be handed down to remembrance. Nature has not, however,

bestowed even on grey hairs insight into all things; for even

whosoever have been esteemed the wisest of mortals are said to

have known many things, but not all.[522]

Columella’s sources include, besides Greek authorities and Mago, the

Carthaginian, whose work the senate of the republic had ordained to

be translated into Latin, Cato,[523] the Sasernae (father and son),

Tremellius Scrofa, Varro, Virgil, Hyginus, and among later writers

Graecinus, Julius Atticus and Cornelius Celsus. The two last he

characterizes as “the most celebrated authors of our age.”[524] He often

adduces Celsus’s opinions, just as he often quotes Virgil’s _Georgics_.

Columella is noticeably more specific, in fact more honest, touching his

sources than many writers of antiquity were. Nothing could be more open

than his introductory remarks on bees and beehives. It is solely for the

sake of completeness, he explains, that he must include the theme: for on

it “no precepts can be given more carefully than have been delivered by

Hyginus, nor more gracefully than by Virgil, nor more elegantly than by

Celsus.”[525]

Columella writes on a practical subject in a practical way. Of course

there must be rare technical words drawn from operations that fall to be

described, like _abnodare_ (“cut off knots,” IV. xxii. 4, IV. xxiv. 10),

_decacuminare_ (“cut tops off,” IV. vii. 3, V. vi. 12), _canteriatae_

(of vines supported by trellis-work, V. iv. 1, _cf._ _canterius_, IV.

xii. 1), _impedatio_ (“propping,” IV. xiii. 1), _scabrata_ (of a vine

roughened by pruning, IV. xxiv. 22), _glocire_ (of a hen’s clucking,

VIII. v. 4).[526] His sentences are clear and business-like, though

without the archaic and bare jerkiness of Cato. Generally his most

polished style appears in his prefaces; and, where he aims at finish,

the influence of Cicero can be traced. Even without exact statistics,

the ear detects the cadences of his _clausulae_—a liking for cretics

(or resolved cretics) followed by trochee or double trochee, spondee or

double spondee. One feature anyway is refreshing: he does not weary his

reader with purple patches or with the artifices of his age. There are

allusions to Spanish habits and Spanish names, but there is no Spanish

rhetoric. When he is enthusiastic, his enthusiasm is natural, and that is

why one can honestly welcome a certain poetic vein in him. Independently

of his constant quotations from Virgil and his verse-book on gardens, an

artistic sentiment stirs within the author, and his eye does not fail

to mark nor his pen to convey the colours of an Italian vineyard in

autumn:[527]

Even the greatest stranger to rural life, should he come into

your grounds planted in due season, must with a transport of

pleasure marvel at the kindliness of Nature, to see there

the Bituric vines rich in fruitage, and here their rivals,

the pale yellow vines, match each other.... Bounteous earth,

rejoicing over the annual return of the season, as it were some

eternal child-bearing, offers to mankind her breasts distended

with new wine. Amidst all, while Bacchus favours the pregnant

vine-branches whether of the white kind or golden and ruddy,

or agleam with purple brightness, everywhere doth Autumn shine

lustrous, laden with parti-coloured fruits.

This feeling for colour is met with again in his verses:

Plant many-colour’d blooms, those stars of earth—

White gilly-flower and gold-eyed marigold,

The fair-tress’d daffodil and “lion’s maw”

Fierce gaping, lilies too that keep

Their greenness in grey baskets, hyacinths

Or snowy-white or blue. Add violets

Pale-creeping or with gold and purple proud,

And roses over-full of modest blush.[528]

His treatment of horticulture in the tenth book, like his motive for

writing it, was partly utilitarian, partly, but only partly, poetic. He

was scarcely free enough in soul to take a garden, as Bacon did, for

“the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man”; nor would Bacon’s

threefold division of “a greene in the entrance, a heath or desart in

the going forth, and the maine garden in the midst” ever have occurred

to Columella. The luxury of contemporary banquets shocked him, he says

in his preface; no poor man could afford such extravagance. Yet thrifty

use might be made of a garden, and this would have been handled in

prose but for Silvinus’s request that Columella should write in verse

what Virgil expressly bequeathed in the fourth _Georgic_ for literary

posterity. Parts of the subject seemed so insignificant that the author

feared its treatment might resemble “making ropes out of sand”; and thus

throughout the 436 hexameters there may be traced a sort of conflict

between the desire to give serviceable advice concerning a market-garden

and an artistic yearning after beauty. Columella, indeed, succeeds, as

Martial did after him, in making some at least of his vegetables poetic.

Flowers are a godsend to him. Besides, there are Virgilian echoes from

_Eclogues_, _Georgics_ and _Aeneid_, but also occurrences of compound

adjectives proportionately rather more frequent than in Virgil.[529]

The start is made on useful topics—soil proper to a garden, trees

indicative of suitable ground, the wall or fence, the undesirability of

statues save of the protective wooden Garden-God; then, after a pause

to utter a conventional invocation, the author advocates digging and

ploughing regardless of mercy for “mother earth.” The season

When nesting swallows twitter “Spring is come”[530]

calls for the employment of manure, hoe, rake and spade, and for the

planting of gay flowers, as in the passage already translated. Herbs of

various potency, different kinds of cabbage, watering of young plants and

the management of a dry hill-plot lead to his insistence on work at the

right moment:

Be wakeful, men! noiseless the Seasons ply

Their pace, and all the year turns round unheard.[531]

Then follows a procession of vegetables—parsley, leeks, parsnips and

lettuces, with a side-glance directed to the “thousand hues” secured by

the skilled gardener, till the fertility of spring wakes a rhapsody on

the dominion of Venus as reminiscent of Lucretius and of Virgil’s second

_Georgic_, as it is anticipative of the _Peruigilium Veneris_:

Hence ocean, hence the hills, hence all the world

Do keep spring-time; hence lust in man and herd

And fowl: the fire of love lit at the heart

Rageth within the marrow, till o’ercloy’d

Venus fulfils the fruitful frame and gets

Manifold offspring, peopling still the world

With young, lest in a barren age it faint.[532]

Here, however, the poet checks himself: let such themes be reserved for a

bard inspired to sing of nature’s mysteries: he must answer the call to

humbler matters:

Knit strains with slender thread such as ’mid toil

The pruner, bending o’er his shrubs, may sing

Attuned, or gardener in his pleasaunce green.[533]

So we find ourselves among cresses, artichokes, pomegranates and beet;

till again the brilliant array of spring-blossom fills the poet with glee

over the flower-harvest:

Yea, harvest presseth on the scented blooms:

Now is spring gaudy, now the bounteous earth

Is glad to deck her brows with coronal

Of all the proud-pied increase of the year.

Now Phrygian lotus shows its gem-like face,

And violet-beds unclose their winking eyes.

The “lion” yawns and, tinged with nature’s blush,

The rose unveils her maiden cheek to pay

The gods due worship and their sanctuaries

Perfume with blended scents of Araby.[534]

So for the moment he is on the verge of fairyland invoking the nymphs.

Then comes the thought that in workaday Italy and in its market towns

there is money to be made from the produce; so one must remember the

tasks appropriate as the day lengthens and the southern heat increases:

one must be on guard against inroads of insects and danger to ripe fruits

from rain and hail, and must grow cucumbers and melons, plums, peaches

and figs, not forgetting Vulcan’s feast in autumn. But, at this autumnal

allusion, the vintage beckons us away from gardens to obey the summons

of Bacchus, and with that Columella finishes his task self-imposed in

pursuance of the behest of Virgil, the Roman Hesiod,

Who sang through Roman towns the Ascraean lay.[535]

CHAPTER II

PETRONIUS: NOVELIST AND POET

The remains of the _Satyricon_—The name Petronius Arbiter—The

Petronius of Nero’s time—Identity of the author—Menippean

form—Earlier adventures of three ne’er-do-wells in the

extant text—The banquet of Trimalchio—Arrival of guests and

host—Courses surprising and excessive—Conduct of the host—His

blunders and egotism—Talk of the guests—Adventures resumed

after the banquet—Sea-voyage and shipwreck—The impostors

at Crotona—Love-episodes and closing scenes—The dramatic

date—Sources and the author’s originality—Traces of literary

convention even in first realistic romance—Morals and

realism—Elements picaresque and sensual—Qualities anticipative

of modern novels—Certain contrasts with Apuleius—Latin of the

_Satyricon_—Plebeian speech—Examples in Petronius—Contrast

with certain contemporary tendencies—His poetry—_De Bello

Ciuili_—Short poems attributed to him—Nature and love.

An intensely interesting, though fragmentary, work, now by common

consent ascribed to Nero’s reign, is usually entitled the _Satyricon_ or

_Satiricon_ (originally a Greek genitive plural), though the fragments

are in the manuscripts also called _satirae_ or _satyri_, and referred

to Petronius Arbiter as author. Like the _editio princeps_ of about

1482,[536] several editions appeared without the famous “Banquet of

Trimalchio,” which was recovered at Trau in Dalmatia only in the middle

of the seventeenth century. In that unique manuscript (_Traguriensis_)

an entry had been made to the effect that the fragments belong to Books

XV and XVI of Petronius’s “Satyri”; if this is trustworthy, then merely

a fraction of a long work has come down to us. Since that thrilling

discovery at Trau, all claims to have found additions have proved to

be based on forgeries, like the passages published at Paris in 1693 by

Nodot, who pretended they were contained in a manuscript from Belgrade.

Quotations from “Arbiter” or “Petronius” are made by several ancient

scholars (_e.g._ Diomedes, Servius, Priscian); Fulgentius cites him as

“Petronius Arbiter”; Terentianus Maurus calls him “Arbiter disertus,”

and Sidonius Apollinaris classes him among renowned masters _eloquii

Latini_; but the process of excerpting (like epitomizing, often fatal

to an original) probably accounts for the disappearance of the complete

work about the seventh century. The limited Petronius now extant was

presumably the portion known to Eugenius Vulgarius in the tenth century,

to John of Salisbury in the twelfth, and to Vincentius of Beauvais in the

thirteenth.

Niebuhr’s opinion that the work was of the third century and Beck’s that

it belonged to the time of Augustus or Tiberius have by general consent

given place to the established belief that it was written in Nero’s

age.[537] Its social atmosphere, its style, its echoes of Seneca, Lucan

and even of the emperor, all point the argument in the same direction.

Likewise it is in the highest degree probable that the author is the

Petronius whose death is dramatically recorded by Tacitus and whose

character is attractively idealized by Sienkiewicz in “Quo Vadis?” Gaius

(or as Nipperdey[538] preferred, Titus) Petronius was one of a series of

Nero’s victims in A.D. 66, and Tacitus devotes two chapters[539] to the

career and end of a very remarkable man:

With him day passed in sleep, night in the duties and

amusements of life. Energy makes some men’s reputation, but

idling had made his: he was considered, not a debauchee and

spendthrift like most squanderers of their wealth, but a man

of polished luxury. The freer his sayings and doings and the

more seeming carelessness they displayed, the more cordially

were they construed as looking like straightforwardness. Yet

when governor of Bithynia and afterwards when consul, he showed

himself alert and a match for business. Then, falling back

on vice or aping vice, he was selected by Nero to be one of

his small inner circle, his judge of etiquette (_elegantiae

arbiter_); for the emperor thought nothing charming and

elegantly voluptuous, unless Petronius had given him approval

of it.

As ill luck would have it, he roused the dangerous jealousy of

Tigellinus, who proceeded to compass his ruin through a false charge.

Nero was in Campania when Petronius received an ominous command to

confine himself to Cumae. He was not the man to tolerate fluctuations of

fear and hope: on the other hand he was little disposed to fling life

away by precipitate suicide: so he alternately opened and bandaged his

veins, exactly as he chose, held receptions for his friends and indulged

in conversation neither serious nor suggestive of stoical virtue.

He listened as they repeated, not views on the immortality

of the soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light

poetry and sportive lines. To some of his slaves he gave

generous gifts, to others a flogging. He went in to dinner,

then indulged in sleep so that, though forced upon him, his

death might appear the result of chance. Even in his will he

did not, like most doomed men, flatter Nero or Tigellinus or

any other powerful personage; instead, he wrote a description

of the prince’s scandalous excesses, prefixing the names of

the profligates and the women concerned, and detailing every

immoral novelty; then sealed the document and sent it to Nero.

This _chronique scandaleuse_ written in Petronius’s last hours cannot,

as some have hastily surmised, be the _Satyricon_, a far more elaborate

production, which must have demanded prolonged leisure for its

composition. But the _Satyricon_ enables one to imagine the pith and

realism of the terrible indictment hurled at the depraved despot by one

who had been his minister of amusements. Certainly, in the qualities

ascribed to Petronius by Tacitus, there is nothing to render it unlikely

that the ascription of the fragments in the manuscripts to Petronius

Arbiter refers to any other person than the Petronius who is called

by the historian the emperor’s _elegantiae arbiter_. It is immaterial

that Tacitus did not allude to any previous literary work by him: the

historian’s grave judgement might not have considered its tone worth

mention, and, in any case, it is not his way to record the writings of

historical figures. We should never, for instance, have known about

Seneca’s voluminous compositions from Tacitus. On the positive side

it may be affirmed that the Tacitean portrait of Petronius wears the

very features to be expected in the author of a novel depicting low

and vicious life in tones which argue intimacy of knowledge and at the

same time the almost cynically detached spirit of a spectator. This

Mephistophelian _insouciance_ of attitude has the artistic merit of

leaving the wickedest and vulgarest characters of the story to act in

an absolutely natural way, and exactly fits the brilliant courtier for

whom, in spite of a spasmodic energy suggestive of higher capacities,

the favourite business of life was the invention, organization and

criticism of sensuous enjoyments. A psychology thus complex may well

have baffled his closest friends. It might amuse so great a master of

facile accomplishment to surprise Rome by an unsuspected talent for

administration abroad. The controller of the revels may have been able

at will to listen with assumed gravity to philosophical discussions and

rhetorical performances, or even take part in what might one day furnish

material for satire; in all probability he narrowly observed Seneca

and Lucan at court as potential “copy”; but his real affair was to be

the ultimate authority on pleasures for exalted society, and, with a

defiant unconcern, to live the life of an expert in everything that could

contribute towards passing time gaily away.

What remains of the _Satyricon_ is (like the contemporary

_Apocolocyntosis_ by Seneca) in the form of the Menippean satire taken

over into Roman literature by Varro[540] from the Cynic philosopher

Menippus of Gadara, and therefore in prose interspersed with verses. Its

story of adventures, many of them unutterably disreputable, is related

by Encolpius, one of a trio on a round of escapades among the half-Greek

cities of Southern Italy. His fellow-wanderers, rogues like himself,

are Ascyltus, a young freedman, and Giton, a handsome serving-boy, who

is a bone of contention between them. The narrative is diversified with

a few entertaining tales—about a werewolf, about witches substituting

a straw changeling for a boy, and the famous one of the widow of

Ephesus[541]—digressive stories within a story, which long remained a

convention of the novel, like the history of “the man of the hill” in

_Tom Jones_.

Our present text opens somewhere on the coast of Campania—perhaps,

if indeed it is necessary to locate the scene, at Cumae,[542] though

Naples, Puteoli and Misenum are among the rival suggestions. Encolpius,

a student of rhetoric for the time being, is delivering a tirade against

the unreality and futility of a rhetorical education totally divorced

from the business of the actual world. Professor Agamemnon, who is in

his company, argues in defence that teachers have to suit current taste

or close their academies. The faulty training of the day he ascribes

to parents’ insistence on an easy and quick road to proficiency;

and, breaking into verse, he recites choliambics on the simple life

advisable for an orator, and hexameters on the needful study of Socratic

philosophy and Demosthenes. Meanwhile Ascyltus had slipped off, and a

crowd of students pour into the colonnade. Encolpius starts in pursuit

of his comrade; asks his way of a greengrocer-woman, who guides him to

a disorderly establishment, where he discovers his friend, and soon

afterwards enters on one of a series of jealous wrangles with him over

Giton. In the market-place the pair meet with exciting experiences, told

in Latin so admirably natural as to place everything before our eyes. A

brawl breaks out because the pair are taxed with being in possession of

a stolen cloak (_pallium_), and because at the same time they challenge

a countryman wearing a lost tunic of their own, threadbare indeed but

very precious for the secret stock of gold coins sewed into it. Folk are

much puzzled with the strangers’ willingness to renounce the cloak for

the shabby tunic. They just escape arrest, and, when they have reached

their inn, are visited by one Quartilla, who, preceded by her servant

and attended by a little girl, has come to declare that they owe her

penance for disturbing her ritual in the chapel of Priapus. Later, the

scene changes to her house, where an orgy leads to general drowsiness,

broken at length by the entry of two burglars. When their depredations

are interrupted, the robbers pretend to snore, and the convivial

licentiousness is renewed.

Then comes the morning of Trimalchio’s banquet (§§ 26-78)—a free repast

secured for the adventurers through Agamemnon. Out of the existing

total of 141 sections, over 50 are concerned with this episode, whose

details vividly recreate an extravagantly vulgar dinner-party given by

a wealthy _parvenu_ of the freedman class to people of similar standing

and to uninvited guests. It reads like an excursion into an ancient and

not unreal land of Cockaigne. There is scarcely a dull piece among all

the kaleidoscopic changes from incident to incident between the opening

glimpse of the host,

a bald old man in a reddish shirt, playing at a game in which

he never stooped to pick up a ball, if it touched the ground,

but had a slave to supply fresh ones from a bag,

and the final scene during which, amidst the confusion caused by the

irruption of the fire-brigade, Encolpius and his friends, surfeited and

bored, made good their escape.

Four decorated lackeys precede the great man’s litter, which brings

him home in a scarlet woollen wrap from the preliminary bath, while a

musician plays small pipes close by, so that Trimalchio shall have music

wherever he goes. The guests reach the entrance:

There stood a porter in green, with a cherry-coloured belt,

shelling peas in a silver dish. Over the doorway hung a golden

cage and a spotted magpie in it greeted arrivals.

These splashes of colour make a fitting prelude to the exuberant

profusion throughout. Everywhere is a lavish parade of wealth and such

an over-plentiful variety of viands that one feels of Trimalchio as of

Chaucer’s frankeleyn:

It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,

Of alle deyntees that men coude thinke.

Trimalchio is drawn as the representative of a new rich class whose

social aspiration in any community must always be entrance at all costs

into the envied circle of people of quality—that old caste which it

must ape in default of manners and traditions of its own and whose

culture it must affect with a nervous sense of inferiority imperfectly

concealed under blatant self-assertion. A huge chained dog painted on the

wall with large letters above, “CAVE CANEM,” played on guests the same

mild joke as the familiar mosaic at one of the thresholds in Pompeii.

This was, however, merely an introduction to other decorations, which

represented Trimalchio in the slave-market, Trimalchio guided to Rome by

Minerva, Trimalchio learning book-keeping, Trimalchio appointed steward,

Trimalchio at various stages in his successful rise, “and just where the

wall-space of the colonnade gave no more room, Mercury had lifted him by

the chin and was hurrying him to his elevated official dais (as a sevir

Augustalis).” No wonder that Fortune should be there with a horn of

plenty and the three Fates spinning golden threads. Trimalchio was one of

those who find in their own career a substitute for ancestors. His name

reappears incessantly inscribed on as many things as possible: one part

of the dining-room door-posts ended in a sort of ship’s beak bearing the

legend “presented by the steward Cinnamus to Gaius Pompeius Trimalchio,

priest of the college of Augustus”; besides, silver dishes might be noted

with the host’s name and their weight scrupulously engraved on the edges.

The diners take their places and have _hors d’oeuvres_ served without

Trimalchio, who arrives purposely late to the strains of music, his

shaven head peeping out above a scarlet cloak and a fringed napkin

round his neck—an irresistibly funny figure at which any guest off his

guard was sure to laugh (_expressit imprudentibus risum_). His display

of rings, bracelet and bangle indicated no better manners than his

explanation to his guests that it was inconvenient for him to come so

soon, but that he had sacrificed his own pleasure to avoid keeping them

waiting. Even so, he means to finish his game with crystal pieces on a

draughts-board of terebinth wood.

From this point the banquet proceeds through a whirl of surprise courses

and surprise incidents. The pea-hen’s eggs distributed from under a

wooden hen prove, though doubtful-looking at first, to contain a fat

beccafico wrapped in spiced yolk of egg. A slave-boy is boxed for

troubling to pick up a silver entree-dish that had fallen—by orders of

the host it must be thrown down again and swept away. To ensure a fair

field as in war, he has arranged that each guest shall have a separate

table: “so the stinking slaves will make us less hot by crushing past

us” (_obiter et putidissimi serui minorem nobis aestum frequentia sua

facient_). When his fine old Falernian, labelled one hundred years

in bottle, is produced, he indulges in one of his ill-bred remarks,

“Yesterday I didn’t supply such a good brand, and there were far

more genteel people at dinner” (_heri non tam bonum posui, et multo

honestiores cenabant_). The old wine, like other incidents of the dinner,

sets the host moralizing. “Ah me, so wine lives longer than poor mankind:

so let’s have a good ‘wet’ (_tengomenas_). Wine is life”; but next moment

a slave brings in another reminder of death, a mechanically jointed

silver skeleton, on which Trimalchio reflects in verse:

Alack for us poor men! man’s little all

Is naught: so shall we all be when we pass

Below. Then let us live while luck allows.[543]

One can but summarize, without entering into details, the fare provided.

A Zodiac dish with symbolic dainties above for each of the twelve signs

(on which the host insisted on giving a rambling astronomical lecture

afterwards) has much finer delicacies concealed underneath. A wild boar

on a tray is attended by huntsmen and hounds, and when the boar is

opened, the birds begin to fly—thrushes, to wit, limed by fowlers in the

dining-room for the astonished banqueters. Three white pigs are driven

in, one of them to be turned into a dinner on the spot. Soon after, a pig

is served up, to all appearance ungutted, and when by a prearranged jest,

the seemingly negligent _chef_ has been stripped for punishment, a stab

at the animal releases a tumbling mass of cooked sausages! What promises

to be a last course (_epideipnis_) consists of thrushes of fine meal

stuffed with raisins and nuts, followed by quinces stuck all over with

little spikes to resemble hedgehogs; but to their horror and loathing the

sated guests are next confronted with a fat goose garnished ostensibly

with fish and different birds, and yet all made, as Trimalchio boasts, by

his expert cook Daedalus out of the same ingredient, namely, hog’s flesh!

Suddenly two slaves fall a-fighting and smash the waterpots that hang

round their necks, thus revealing oysters and mussels to be handed round

presently in competition with the cook’s snails on a silver gridiron.

Still more entertainment is derivable from the conduct and talk of the

diners than from the conglomerate _menu_. The host at one time inflicts

on his guests a hideous tune from a mime; he must crack his joke in

shouting “Carve ’er!” (_Carpe_) at his slave “Carver” (_Carpus_), he

talks very plainly on subjects customarily thought delicate; he needs to

be told by his wife to remember his dignity; and yet later in the meal

lets a favourite slave mount on his back and slap him. Loving to create

astonishment, he has an enormous hoop let down from an opening in the

ceiling to convey golden crowns and perfume-boxes as souvenirs; and he

has cakes and fruits prepared to spurt out saffron. After acrobatic

performances come Homeric reciters clashing spear and shield. Trimalchio

tries to follow their Greek in some sort of Latin _Iliad_, until he

thinks fit to explain the situation by his own fatuous version of the

tale of Troy:

“You know the story they’re doing? Diomede and Ganymede were

two brothers. Their sister was Helen. Agamemnon ran off with

her and palmed off a hind on Diana in her place. So Homer is

now telling of the fighting between Trojans and Parentines. Of

course Agamemnon won, and married his daughter Iphigenia to

Achilles. That’s what drove Ajax out of his mind, and he’ll

make the sequel clear in a second.”[544]

And so a charger is carried in bearing a calf boiled whole and helmeted

for a raving “Ajax” to slash at and divide on the point of his sword

among the onlookers.

Another curious recitation is that by a young slave-boy of Habinnas’s,

who, with his wife Scintilla, had arrived late in the evening, mellow

from a wake. The boy starts with the opening line of _Aeneid_ V., but,

being a foreigner, soon makes blunders and actually sandwiches in between

Virgilian pieces scraps from Atellane farces “so that for the first time

in my life,” comments the smart Encolpius, “even Virgil hurt my finer

feelings” (_ut tunc primum me etiam Vergilius offenderit_).[545] This

production is, however, in keeping with Trimalchio’s own standard of

attainment; for it is one of the signs of his vulgarity that he pretends

to a learning which he does not possess. He attempts literary talk with

the professor present, claiming culture on the ground that he owns two

collections of books—one Greek, one Latin.[546] He used to read Homer

when a boy, he adds; and with what effect is evident from the “howlers”

in his story of the origin of Corinthian bronze, which bears some

resemblance to that of Charles Lamb regarding roast-pig:

“When Troy fell, that charlatan and big rascal Hannibal heaped

all the statues of bronze, gold and silver on to a single

funeral pile and set them on fire: they turned into one

amalgam of bronze. From this mass artificers took pieces and

made cups, dishes and statuettes.”[547]

Such mixed history prepares one for his mixed mythology when he boasts of

his ownership of a round hundred beakers

“engraved with Cassandra killing her children—and the little

boys are lying dead so naturally that you’d think they were

alive.[548] I have also a thousand cups, which Mummius left to

my late master; and on them Daedalus is shutting Niobe into the

Trojan Horse.”

The proud egotism of the self-made man who has risen in the social scale

is admirably made to betray itself by such means as the engagement-book

displayed prominently, the daily gazette of events on his estates read

at dinner,[549] his narrative of how he got on in business, or even his

attempts at pathos by reading his will, the directions for his tombstone

and his own epitaph:[550]

HERE RESTS

C. POMPEIVS TRIMALCHIO MAECENATIANVS:

NOMINATED TO THE AUGUSTAL PRIESTHOOD

IN ABSENCE, HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MEMBER

OF ANY CIVIL GUILD IN ROME, BUT DECLINED.

DUTIFUL, BRAVE, FAITHFUL,

HE STARTED WITH LITTLE, BUT LEFT THIRTY MILLIONS:

YET HE NEVER HAD A COLLEGE EDUCATION.

FAREWELL BOTH HE AND THOU!

The talk of the guests makes a refreshing change from what would

otherwise be intolerable gorging. Here the author proves his dramatic

realism by drawing from the spoken Latin of the day, introducing its

colloquialisms and faulty grammar. A few translated extracts may suggest

the off-hand character of the conversation:

“I couldn’t eat any more so I turned to my neighbour to get

all the news I could, and started raking up stories and asking

him who the woman was that was bustling up and down. ‘That’s

Trimalchio’s wife,’ says he, ‘her name’s Fortunata, and she

measures her shekels by the bushel. And what was she just a

little while ago? Well, you must excuse my saying it, but

you wouldn’t have taken a bit of bread from her hand. Now—I

can’t say why or wherefore—she’s in the seventh heaven: she’s

Trimalchio’s _factotum_ (_topanta_). The truth is, she’s only

got to tell him at high noon that it’s dark, and he’ll believe

it. He hasn’t a notion of what he owns—he’s such a plutocrat;

but this lynx of a woman keeps a look-out on everything, even

where you wouldn’t think it.’”

And he proceeds to describe her as sober and thrifty, but a shrew and

capable of inflicting, like Mrs. Caudle, curtain-lectures on her husband

(_est tamen malae linguae, pica puluinaris_).[551]

Nowhere do we hear more of the true ring of chatter than when the host’s

temporary retirement removes all restraint:[552] Dama bawls for an extra

tankard:

“Day doesn’t count: it’s night before you can turn about. So

the best you can do is to go right from bed to dinner. And nice

chilly weather we’ve had. Hot baths has scarcely warmed me up.

(_uix me balneus calfacit_). After all, hot drinks is equal

to an overcoat. I’ve had some good pulls, and am absolutely

tight (_plane matus_). Wine’sh gone to my head” (_uinus mihi in

cerebrum abiit_).

Seleucus breaks in—he has been at a funeral:

“Well, well, he’s joined the majority (_abiit ad plures_).

The doctors did for him, or rather his evil stars has done it

(_immo magis malus fatus_). A doctor’s only a comfort to the

mind. Still he had a fine funeral ... and the mourning was

jolly good—he left several slaves their freedom—even if the

widow was stingy with her tears. What if he didn’t treat her

over well? Woman taken all round is a bird of prey. One should

never do a good turn: it’s just like chucking it down a well.

But an old love nips like a crab.”[553]

One bore is interrupted by another; “Let’s remember the living,” shouts

Phileros, but he too is soon talking about the dead man and his brother.

Next Ganymedes insists on having his growl over profiteers and high

prices until Echion, the rag-merchant, the optimist of the party, brings

him to book:

“Do give up whining. Now it’s this way, now it’s that, as

the countrymen said when he’d lost the spotted pig. What one

doesn’t get to-day, one will to-morrow—that’s how life pushes

on. S’help me, ye couldn’t mention a better country, if only

it had the right people.... If you emigrate, you’ll be telling

how pigs trot round at home ready-cooked. And, mark ye, we’re

going to have a topping gladiatorial show (_munus excellente_)

in three days more—the public holiday.”[554]

And, reckless of grammar, he rattles on about gladiatorial matches, till

he takes to chaffing the professor:

“Now, Agamemnon, I fancy you’re saying ‘what’s this bore

blethering about?’ Folks like you that’s able to speak doesn’t.

You don’t belong to our sort, and so you jeer at the remarks of

we ’umble people. We know as how much learning doth make you

mad.”[555]

With their escape from this maelstrom of junketing, the youths recommence

their adventures. It was no easy task after hard drinking to find the way

back to their inn in the dark through a strange town. Luckily Giton had

made chalk-marks on columns in the daytime, and the white could be seen.

Renewed quarrels between Encolpius and Ascyltus give place to a fresh set

of incidents. Encolpius in a picture-gallery has met a shabbily dressed

and unprincipled old poet Eumolpus. He can talk effectively on the decay

of art[556] owing to the disappearance of the ancient times of rivalry

in hard work, when unselfish toil for posterity contrasted with the

modern love of wine, women and wealth. Seeing Encolpius interested in

a picture of the taking of Troy, he recites sixty-five iambics on this

_Troiae Halosis_, introducing the Trojan horse and Laocoon with the

serpents as in _Aeneid_ II, and thus briefly handling a theme which had

interested Nero. His verses have a way of bringing a shower of stones

about his head, but he remains an incorrigible versifier, even later

when in imminent danger from shipwreck. Encolpius has deemed it wise to

share Giton’s favour with Eumolpus, and the three have made their way

aboard ship when Encolpius discovers to his alarm that the ship belongs

to an old enemy, Lichas, and that he, with Tryphaena, another deadly

enemy made in a lost part of the story, is actually on the vessel. To

avoid detection, Encolpius and Giton agree to be shaven and branded to

look like slaves; but a sea-sick passenger notices in the moonlight the

shaving—an evil omen at sea—and discovery follows, with a free fight in

which passengers and crew take part until a treaty of peace is made.

Then there are rejoicings aboard, and Eumolpus indulges in elegiacs and

hendecasyllabics on the tonsure of the youths, for whom wigs and false

eyebrows have to be obtained. To illustrate fickleness, Eumolpus recounts

the tale of the apparently inconsolable widow of Ephesus and the kindly

soldier. In a storm Lichas is blown overboard and drowned, and the voyage

ends in shipwreck.

The closing scenes are laid in Crotona, whither Encolpius and Giton

accompany Eumolpus with much bravado and assurance to practise fraud

and wilful imposition for their livelihood. Legacy-hunting is the

great industry of the city (_nam aut captantur aut captant_, 116). The

strangers have decided that Eumolpus shall act the part of a fabulously

wealthy landed proprietor from Africa who has unfortunately been

shipwrecked, but who can presumably more than repay in the long run any

hospitality received at Crotona. Before the impostors set to work, a

pause in the narrative permits Eumolpus to propound critical doctrines

on historical poetry in his remarks introductory[557] to nearly three

hundred hexameters[558] upon the _Bellum Ciuile_ of 49 B.C. It is in the

mouth of Eumolpus that the author places the famous phrase about the

studied grace of Horace (_Horatii curiosa felicitas_).

Adventures are to the adventurous; and Encolpius, now called Polyaenus,

is not long in Crotona before a serving-maid makes amorous overtures to

him on behalf of her mistress, and his introduction[559] to this fair

Siren named Circe is related with a romantic beauty which deserves to be

linked with a less unsavoury intrigue:

“It was not long before she ushered her mistress from her hiding-place

and escorted to my side a lady perfect beyond all dreams. There is no

language that can contain her charm: words of mine must fall short—her

tresses all over her shoulders, a cascade of nature’s own curls; a low

forehead with the hair turned back from it; eyebrows running on to the

line of her cheeks and, between the eyes, almost united again; eyes

brighter than the gleaming stars when there is no moon; just a curve on

the nose; and sweet lips such as Praxiteles imagined Diana had. And then

her chin, her neck, her hands, and the whiteness of those feet set in a

tiny band of gold—she had eclipsed the marble of Paros. I had long loved

Doris: I thought nothing of Doris now.”

The meetings with Circe end, however, disastrously for her lover, whom

her servants finally expel with ignominy as an unsatisfying swain. Other

troubles are in store when he has the misfortune to kill one of three

sacred geese, but the imperfections of the text give a disjointed effect

to the remaining episodes, which close with a very natural uneasiness

on the part of the tricksters that they may be found out, and the grim

jest which Eumolpus plays upon expectant beneficiaries under his will by

making it a condition in one of the clauses that his heirs shall after

his death slice him up and eat him!

* * * * *

While the period of composition may be taken as Neronian, the time of the

events related is most likely not much earlier. Though Mommsen put the

dramatic date under Augustus, Friedländer prefers the close of Claudius’s

reign or beginning of Nero’s; and this proposition fits the case of

Trimalchio “Maecenatianus,” freed in boyhood by his patron Maecenas, who

died in 8 B.C. Petronius describes Trimalchio as old (_senem caluum_,

27) at the time of his entertainment; hence it may be imagined to have

happened about the middle of the first century.

On possible literary sources of the _Satyricon_ perhaps too much has

been written in view of the fact that whatever the borrowing, suspected

or unsuspected, the work remains a monument of originality for its

realistic portrayal of certain grades of contemporary Italian life. The

debt to that human fund of material and to the author’s unique genius for

artistic handling eclipses any debt to literary sources. Of these sources

the most obvious concerns his method of relieving prose with verse after

Varro’s Menippean fashion: and to this particular medley (without any

claim to the Varronian spirit) the title of _saturae_ may allude. There

are also a few burlesque echoes of epic,[560] although, in the absence

of the missing books, one cannot be justified in accepting the theory of

“The Wrath of Priapus”[561] as a motive comically analogous to a Homeric

“Wrath of Poseidon,” and thereby imagined to link the escapades into a

unity suggestive of an obscene Odyssey. Persecution by an offended deity

of sex-lust may plausibly be considered to operate for part of the story

in the spirit of the lines,

Angry Priapus of the Dardanelles

Hunts me on earth and where grey Ocean swells;[562]

but it remains problematic whether it dominates the whole.

Other literary forms have been put forward as credible sources of

influence on the _Satyricon_—the serious heroic romance, stories of

adventure implied in certain rhetorical exercises among the elder

Seneca’s collection, the prologue of comedy, and, with more plainly

apposite bearing, the mime for its realism and the erotic Milesian

tales[563] in Greek, if not in Sisenna’s adaptations from Aristides.

The hypothesis that Petronius travestied such Greek love-romances as

are represented by the Ninos story[564] recovered on a first-century

papyrus can scarcely hold good where we find no structure clearly

suggesting parody to a reader: manifestly the tone of Petronius is far

removed from that of the conventional courtships, piracies, voyages,

shipwrecks, separations and reunions in the love-stories of later Greek

literature.[565] Time has even been spent on an endeavour to prove that

picaresque Greek novels existed from which Petronius might have borrowed

his rascally heroes. No doubt he owed much: there is equally no doubt

that he created the realistic novel; for before him such prose fiction as

had appeared in the form of fable, parable or anecdote fell far short of

a sustained romance well filled with incident and characterization.

But just as the _Satyricon_ as a whole, however original in spirit, owed

something to literary convention, so the _Cena_ repeats stock-features

of Greek banquets like the performances by acrobats and reciters, the

appearance of the uninvited guest (Habinnas), the quarrel, and the

dog-fight.[566] The _Cena_ in Roman Satire had a tradition beginning

perhaps in Ennius, but certainly established by Lucilius and developed

by Horace; and between Nasidienus’s banquet in Horace and Trimalchio’s

dinner-party there are points of resemblance[567] enough to prove

how fresh and independent Petronius could be even when he handled a

tralatician idea like that of a rich and ill-bred parvenu, or reckless

extravagance, or an accident at the feast, or the efforts of guests

to smother laughter at their entertainer, or the obvious freedom from

restraint among the guests during their host’s temporary withdrawal.[568]

A sentence written in the eighteenth century makes a good introduction

to much of the criticism passed on Petronius: “I told him that, in my

opinion, he wrote with ease and vivacity, but was withal so lewd and

indecent that he ought to find no quarter or protection among people

of morals and taste.” So Smollett makes Roderick Random answer Earl

Strutwell when he has raised the question of Petronius’s “taste in

love” as “generally decried and indeed condemned by our laws.”[569] The

judgement has the interest of occurring in a novel which presents a

parallel to the _Satyricon_ in its spirit of adventure into more than

questionable companies and in its background of rascality and immorality.

Petronius’s own line,

You damn a work of fresh outspokenness[570]

may be taken as an anticipation of the attitude of many. In this faithful

picture of seamy aspects of Italian life and manners there is much that

is loathsome, but there is much that is merely vulgar, much that is

innocuously humorous, while as a true presentment all of it retains its

value in the history of society. It should be noted too that if Petronius

does not condemn, neither does he commend. As a recording spectator with

a patrician’s half-amused cynicism and a jaded voluptuary’s thrill from

contemplating low life in contrast to court ceremonial and luxury, he was

justifiably conscious that he had inaugurated something new in literature.

Any who may entertain misgivings about the title of Petronius’s work to

rank as a realistic romance would do well to consider Guy de Maupassant’s

preface to _Pierre et Jean_. There he states and defends the position

of the realistic artist among novel writers. The realist, because

misunderstood, is sometimes injudiciously condemned. No mere slavish

copying of contemporary life will produce an adequate sense of simple

reality; for an endeavour to incorporate within the limits of a book

the whole truth and nothing but the truth would inevitably result in

desperate entanglement among an endless number of insignificant details.

So the artistic realist, as surely as he values art and under pain of

becoming a commonplace verbal photographer, must select characteristic

details only, must communicate some meaning which underlies the

bewildering miscellany of apparently incongruous incidents, and must, by

his readjustment of actualities, compose a synthesis more intelligible

and more cogent than life itself. This is a task which genius alone

has power successfully to achieve; and, indeed, so subtle is the

genius demanded that the higher order of realists must, as Maupassant

suggested, prove themselves to be illusionists. In this connexion, one

conceives that Petronius’s presentment of Trimalchio’s dinner-party is

more effective and more memorable than the exact record of an actual

dinner-party would have been. The quality of the host’s character and

motives is grasped best from the artist’s manipulation of incidents;

for without recourse had to elaborate psychological analysis there can

be unmistakeably conveyed, by means of such conversation, behaviour and

gestures as the author’s foresight has introduced, a convincing picture

of the mental endowment of persons under observation. And, if this is

the case with character, so too the events may be chosen and marshalled

in such a way as to suggest their special significance in the narrative.

These a realist like Petronius will choose and marshal with unabashed

candour, disdaining nothing that is common to humanity, and unhindered by

qualms of gingerly prudishness.

It is his mode of representing life that places Petronius in the company

of Rabelais, Fielding and Smollett. His is a gay, outspoken, unashamed

sensuality, flitting naturally from pleasure to pleasure and accepting

for his characters without hesitancy the experiences of the world which

come their way. This is the true spirit of the picaresque romance. Now

one thinks of Gil Blas as a parallel, now of some of Dumas’s adventurers.

An amour, a fight, a theft, a carousal, come all alike to Encolpius;

and it is among the author’s distinctive merits that without pointless

embroideries or reflective digressions he uses an accumulated experience

of cities and men to fashion a straightforward and life-like story. It is

briskly told, and because its characters seem flesh and blood it smacks

of truth. Its living people reveal themselves in part through their

doings or misdoings, in part through natural talk; they are, in fact,

the sport of their own weaknesses, whether they be the wandering rogues

Encolpius and Ascyltus or the self-satisfied profiteer Trimalchio or some

of his fellow-freedmen in affluent or in reduced circumstances. From the

pen of an adept in sternly realistic treatment of figures and situations

the reader must expect the shocking as well as the mirth-provoking;

so that frank avowals and naked abandonment of reticence give to the

_Satyricon_ some of that kind of realism which is discoverable in certain

French and Russian novels. The sensuality is, however, by no means sexual

only. There is something Gargantuan, as there is certainly intended to

be something satiric, in the overdone profusion which marks Trimalchio’s

hospitality; and yet its variety and surprises imply that sort of sensual

delight in good food which animates Anatole France’s description, in his

_Histoire Comique_, of the Castelnaudary stew a-cooking twenty years

till the added ingredients in the pan imparted a quality like that in

the women’s amber-flesh of old Venetian masters. This Roman, this Gallic

interest in food is not understood in England, where people do not talk

about meals as they did at Rome and do in France; but then the renown of

England does not lie in her cookery.

It is as a novelist that Petronius must be appreciated. A full judgement

on his achievement is prevented by the loss of much the greater part of

his work, though enough survives to prove his mastery of some qualities

felt to be most enjoyable in the modern novel; such as his humour of

situation and dialogue, often as pronounced as in Dickens; his restrained

irony of attitude, not tragic as in Hardy, but verging towards Meredith’s

comic spirit; his creation of incidents lively and varied, carrying the

reader along as rapidly as in Dumas; and his management of pervading

atmosphere in consonance with incidents and characters—a great secret in

all the most effective tales. But in these light chapters of ancient life

let no reader look for depth of thought or passion, or any of that pity

and tenderness which make the strength of some of the greatest modern

fiction.

The _Metamorphoses_ or _Golden Ass_ of Apuleius in the second century

is the only other fictitious narrative in Latin prose. One must place

in a separate category _The Marriage of Philology and Mercury_ written

by Martianus Capella in the fifth century. That work was designed by

Capella to precede his educational encyclopaedia on the _triuium_ and

_quadriuium_. It follows the Menippean form, as the _Satyricon_ did, but

is a pedantic allegorical fantasia. _The Golden Ass_ and the _Satyricon_

are alike of a higher imaginative order than the stereotyped romances of

erotic adventure which subsequently became common in Greek; but, though

they are both more readable than the loves of Theagenes and Chariclea in

Heliodorus’s _Aethiopica_ or of Daphnis and Chloe in Longus’s elegant

prose pastoral, the _Satyricon_ excels _The Golden Ass_ because of its

greater originality and its more typically Roman colour. _The Golden

Ass_ betrays more of the influence of Greek Milesian tales, notably in

its long[571] but charming episode of _Cupid and Psyche_; and, while

it may be considered a satiric romance in its mockery of contemporary

superstition, priestly imposture, and a weak police-system under which

brigands enjoyed too much licence, still its atmosphere of the marvellous

and the magical is widely dissimilar to the prevailing realism of the

_Satyricon_, which, except in incidental tales concerning werewolf or

witches, seldom departs from fidelity to actual life. Lucius, the hero

of the later romance, whose lubricity and prying are responsible for his

transformation into an ass, is, no doubt, as the victim of the mismanaged

spell, brought into contact with different classes of individuals,

different homes, and different religious rites including the mysteries

of Isis so finely described towards the close; but the realism is less

telling in Apuleius than in Petronius, because the incidents are related

in a bizarre African style, whose colour and ring contrast markedly with

the natural Latin of the _Satyricon_.

This Latin of the _Satyricon_ has a natural ring, partly because, even

where Petronius writes in literary Latin, he is, as a rule, simple,

direct and non-rhetorical; partly because he constructs a life-like

framework of easygoing remarks; partly because he employs the actual

words of everyday conversation. His style is not a unity. He is master of

two styles—one educated, the other colloquial.[572] Encolpius, like the

rhetorical professor Agamemnon and the poet Eumolpus, expresses himself

usually in the polished urbane Latin, which, without being over-formal,

is still distinct from the vulgar Latin in which the freedmen speak.

Even within this latter sphere, difficulties have been encountered in

rigidly demarcating ordinary colloquial elements from plebeian and

possibly dialectic elements. It is unlikely that Petronius took pains to

manufacture an accurate mosaic of Campanian words: enough, that through

broad strokes imitative of the locutions of humble folk he produced an

effect like that of the “racy genuine language” which Borrow somewhere

admires in criminals’ accounts of themselves; and, in fact, there are

echoes as of an ancient Newgate Calendar. This dialogue is as true to

life as the talk in Kipling’s “Soldiers Three” or in Conrad’s “Nigger

of the Narcissus.” One of the great values, therefore, of Petronius is

that his realistic novel, along with comedy, satire and the less formal

letters of Cicero, affords examples of that popular Latin which is so

important for understanding the genesis of the Romance languages. To take

the most familiar instance, it is significant that _caballus_, which

descends as the word for “horse” into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,

French and Roumanian, should be found in writers like Lucilius, Horace

and Juvenal as well as in Petronius.[573]

This _sermo plebeius_, then, Petronius causes to live again for his

readers with just admixture enough of Greek[574] to remind us that we

are supposed to be in Campania. And so the freedmen, while they dine and

revel, speak slangily and ungrammatically, uttering their thoughts in too

casual and disconnected a manner to trouble about logical subordination

of clauses or periodic form, and interspersing their talk quite

appropriately with saws or scraps of popular wisdom, rare compounds and

diminutives,[575] irregular inflectional endings and false genders. The

sententious is rolled off by Trimalchio with a negligence of grammar

which can be paralleled, if not exactly echoed, in English:

“My friends, even slaves are human beings, and they drinks the

same milk as us, even if their evil stars has downed them.”[576]

Commending his wine, he declares “Fishes must swim” (_pisces natare

oportet_). Ganymedes grumbles “This district’s going down as the calf’s

tail grows” (_haec colonia retrouersus crescit tanquam coda uituli_).

“One good turn deserves another” (_manus manum lauat_) says the next

guest, who concludes in Latin less commendable than the sentiment,

“Education’s a treasure and culture never dies” (_litterae thesaurum est

et artificium nunquam moritur_, 46).

The spoken language, being conservative no less than innovating,

retained, as it does in many countries, a proportion of archaisms, so

that Petronian diminutives and other formations find parallels in early

Latin writers. _Gaudimonium_, 61, and _tristimonium_, 63, remind one of

words like _mercimonium_ in Plautus; and there is an old-fashioned sound

in _sestertiarius_, 45, _dupunduarius_, 58 and 74, _linguosus_, 43 and

63, _dignitossus_, 57, with adverbs like _improbiter_, 66, _largiter_,

71, and _urceatim_, 44. Similarly, several frequentative and intensive

verbs are of the sort used by comic authors, and may be referred to

the _sermo cotidianus_ rather than to the _sermo rusticus_.[577]

Plebeian speech was also, like comedy, rich in transitives of the first

conjugation (_e.g._ _argutare_, 46, 57; _aginare_, 61) and in compounds

(_recorrigere_, 43, shared with Seneca and Tertullian; _adcognoscere_,

69; _domusio_, 46; _caldicerebrius_, 45, _nesapius_, 50). To the vulgar

speech we may set down most of the departures from classic grammatical

form, such as 3rd declension nouns transferred to 1st, _e.g._ the Greek

words _schemas_, 44, _stigmam_, 45, 69; 2nd declension nouns transferred

to 1st, _triclinia_, 71, _intestinas_, 76; 1st to 2nd _margaritum_,[578]

63; 3rd to 2nd _uasus_, 57, _pauperorum_, 46. _Bouis_, 62, and _Iouis_,

58 appear as nominatives: so too _lacte_, 38, which with the adjective

in _munus excellente_, 45, is almost Italian. Changes of gender are

seen in _caelus_, 39, 45; _uinus_, 41; _balneus_, 41; _fatus_, 42, 71,

77; _fericulus_, 39 (= _ferculum_ with epenthetic vowel from vulgar

pronunciation); _lorus_, 57. Notable verb-forms are _uinciturum_, 45,

for _uicturum_; _fefellitus sum_, 61; _faciatur_, 71; _mauoluit_, 77.

Alterations in voice occur; _e.g._ _potes loquere_, _non loquis_, 46;

_pudeatur_, 47. As might be expected, old words are used in new senses;

_e.g._ _notaui_, 6 (= “I noticed”),[579] and departures are made

from standard syntax; _e.g._ _temptemus si adhuc sorbilia sunt_, 33;

_persuadeo hospitem_, 62.

True as he is to certain phases of life and speech, Petronius is yet a

contrast to contemporary literary tendencies. In this very realism of his

he is independent, and in large measure it must have rescued him from the

risk of indulgence in the rhetorical artificialities of the period. He

is, besides, a sort of flippant Epicurean counterfoil to the grave Stoic

thought in Seneca’s treatises, and he is out of sympathy with Lucan’s

manner in composing a historical poem.

Petronius is himself one of the figures in the poetry of the Neronian

age. His own poetical attainments were considerable. The mere skill

is evident from the varied verse-passages, long or short, in the

_Satyricon_. Some of these have a literary bearing like Agamemnon’s

didactic lines on the training of an orator, or Eumolpus’s iambics _On

the Sack of Troy_—uninspired in face of the inevitable comparison with

Virgil, but undeserving of that shower of stones which Petronius merrily

makes the reciter earn. The longest piece consists of 295 hexameters

to illustrate Eumolpus’s dogmas concerning the dangers which beset a

poem on the _Bellum Ciuile_. Without naming Lucan, these pronouncements

imply a criticism on his epic, especially in their objection to taking

actual facts for poetic material and in their advocacy of divine

interventions (_deorum ministeria_) which the _Pharsalia_ had eschewed.

The poem itself cannot be read without thoughts of Lucan, particularly

in its description of portents and panic. The alarm in Rome over

Caesar’s approach is described in a passage characterized by rhetoric,

artificialities and monotony in phrase and metre,[580] while it contains

pithy sentences recalling Lucan’s style: _e.g._ “as each man fears, so

great his flight” (_quantum quisque timet, tantum fugit_), and “slays, if

prayers could slay, his absent foe” (_absentem uotis interficit hostem_).

More poetic feeling is shown in some of the shorter pieces, such as the

lines picturing the love of Circe and Encolpius in a flowery setting like

that of Mother Earth in Jove’s embrace:

Forth flashed rose, violet, and iris soft,

And from the meadow green white lilies laughed:

So bright the ground that to the lush grass called

Our love: and day grew fairer to befriend

Our hidden sighs.[581]

Apart from verses in the _Satyricon_, there are short poems which,

with different degrees of authority and in different number, have been

considered Petronian. Bährens gives 37.[582] Sixteen pieces follow the

epigrams assigned to Seneca in the Codex Vossianus Q. 86, and include

two guaranteed as Petronian by Fulgentius, who quotes from them; eleven

others were drawn by Binet from a now lost MS. which apparently ascribed

them to Petronius, from whom Fulgentius in any case cites one; and they

were followed by eight in regard to which at most a stylistic argument

can be used; while four more (including, however, two from our mutilated

_Satyricon_) are entitled as by Petronius in a different MS., Codex

Vossianus F. 111. There is fair reason to believe that these, with a

few possible exceptions, are his work, and they may be excerpts from

vanished portions of the _Satyricon_. Not unnaturally they vary in theme,

metre and style, so that an appropriate motto is furnished by one of the

couplets:

Find here what each desires: men’s pleasure goes

Strange ways: one pulls a thorn and one a rose.[583]

The fear that created gods, the emigrant with the world before him,

the triumph of worthlessness, an old man’s torrent of tears, betrayal

of secrets, perils of the sea, nature’s infinite variety, sympathy in

suffering, a sweetheart’s gift of apples, a parrot from India, and a

theory of dreams, are among the subjects. A few end in epigrammatic

manner with a line which has some of the point though not all the

sharpness of Martial. Nowhere, however, can we more readily believe that

we have the genuine accents of Petronius than in poems which imply a

cordial delight in natural beauty. It is more than a sated epicure’s itch

for change from town, because in some a truer poet speaks than in the

pastorals of his contemporary Calpurnius Siculus. Thus, Petronius leads

his brief description of an autumn scene up to a neat final line:

All the year’s promise stood before our eyes.[584]

Or he pictures his simple country house lovingly indeed, but with a sense

of disillusion and an almost Senecan consciousness of wasted time:

Care-free the shelter of my cottage-roof;

And wine-rich clusters hang from fertile elm.

Red apples and ripe cherries load their boughs;

Pallas’ own olive breaks with fruited branch....

Go to now: sell the fleeting hours of life

For rich repasts! I pray my waiting end

May find me here to answer for my hours.[585]

In another poem he hails the sea-side with rapture

O strand more sweet to me than life! O sea!

Blest he who visits oft thy neighb’ring shores.

O lovely day! Once in this scene I used

To rouse the Naiads with alternate stroke.

Here’s depth of pool, there’s seaweed from the bay,

Here trusty haunt for passion unrevealed.

My life is lived; for grudging fortune ne’er

Shall filch from me what happier hours bestowed.[586]

But he has nothing finer than his sonnet-like poem in fourteen lines on

the tyranny of love:

In night’s first silence couched, scarce had I found

Repose and given to Sleep o’erwearied eyes,

When cruel Love clutches my hair and cries:

“Keep vigil thou, I say, for all thy wound.

Canst thou, my slave, by thousand amours bound

Alone, alone, thou block, lie sluggard-wise?”

Thereat, barefoot, with tunic loose, I rise

And try all paths, but follow no path round.

I run, I slacken speed, I half retrace

My tracks, then in the highway blush to wait.

Lo! hushed are human sounds and traffic’s roar,

And note of bird and trusty pack that bays.

Alone of all, both sleep and couch I hate,

Heeding, great Cupid, thy imperial lore.[587]

CHAPTER III

SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER: MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

Widely varied problems regarding Seneca—His

family—Education—His relations with Caligula, Claudius and

Nero—Retirement from the imperial court—Character—Works lost

and extant—Vexed questions of chronology—Brief survey of his

prose writings—Style in theory—Style in practice—Seneca as

essayist—The pithy sentence—Composite language—Ancient traces

of his influence—The exponent of Latin Stoicism—Vitality of the

Stoic creed—The human and the humorous—Bracing spirit of his

philosophy.

Contemporary learning—History, jurisprudence and

philosophy—Stoics of the day—Scholarship—Asconius and

Probus—Orators, informers and rhetoricians.

SENECA THE PHILOSOPHER

The jungle of literature which has grown up around Seneca[588] testifies

to the manifold inquiries stimulated by his personality and works.

The bare enumeration of representative treatises or essays on Senecan

subjects becomes oppressive. In Latin and in many modern languages they

have dealt with problems of his life—the cause of his exile, his moral

character, his inconsistencies, his political significance and control

or want of control over Nero; they have dealt with the chronology of his

writings; with his theology, philosophy and cosmology, so that what he

thought of God, man and the world has been scrutinized in relation to

Stoicism as well as to those eclectic modifications which were always

typical of the practical Roman; they have dealt, too, with his science,

with aspects of his style, his characteristic prose, his gift of piquant

satire, his poetic and tragic powers; with difficulties, still unsolved,

in his text; with questions of his influence upon Christian literature,

European drama and modern essay-writing. There is, then, no lack of

Senecan themes, and his influence makes him one of the most prominent

figures in the history of letters.

The Seneca family belonged to Corduba, the chief city of Baetica, which

was the most civilized province of Spain. There, about 4 B.C.,[589] L.

Annaeus Seneca,[590] second son of the so-called “rhetor,” was born.

His mother Helvia, we learn in the _Consolatio_ sent to her by her

exiled son, had a philosophical bent—a contrast in this respect to her

husband, whose interest lay in rhetoric. The family was well-to-do and

talented. The elder Seneca and Helvia had three sons. The eldest was

Novatus, to whom his brother dedicated his treatises _On Anger_ and _On

A Happy Life_: he became “Gallio” through adoption by L. Junius Gallio,

the orator, and, when governor of Achaea in 51-52, happened to have the

apostle Paul brought before his tribunal.[591] The second son, called

“Seneca” by his father, became, as a statesman and writer, the most

famous bearer of the name. The youngest son, Mela, of whose ability his

father[592] held a high opinion, was of a more retiring disposition,

but, without courting senatorial honours, proved himself a successful

money-maker, and possesses his best title to fame as father of Lucan.

Seneca was brought when a child, in the arms of an affectionate

aunt,[593] to Rome, whither his parents either preceded or followed him.

His preliminary training under a _grammaticus_ left him with a memory

of much barren detail and a pronounced distaste for verbal criticism

or the _minutiae_ of book learning;[594] his subsequent training in

rhetoric by such masters as Mamercus Scaurus, Gallio, Musa, Julius

Bassus,[595] and under the auspices of his father, made an indelible

impress upon his genius. No doubt his true intellectual love was

reserved for philosophy, and he saw the weaknesses of declamation;[596]

but we have his father’s evidence that all three sons were captivated

by rhetorical _sententiae_,[597] and Seneca’s own style—disconnected,

pointed, antithetic, metaphorical and piquant—is the best proof of its

own origin. With his philosophical studies came a fuller satisfaction

for intellect and spirit. Seneca was thoroughly Roman in emphasizing the

practical aspect of philosophy. “Philosophy,” he says, “consists not

in words but in realities. She sits at the helm and steers the voyage

through the hazards of the waves.”[598] More and more Seneca was drawn

to it, not merely as a guide to conduct, but as something that filled a

profound need of the soul. To him it signified the divine way, truth,

and life: it made, especially through the Neo-Stoicism which he accepted

and developed, a religious appeal. For the elect there was a turning

away from the world,[599] a disdain of earthly things,[600] the duty

of self-examination,[601] the joys of conversion,[602] the apostolic

call to enlighten others.[603] There were ascetic privations,[604]

hard at first in their disciplinary stringency, although afterwards

joyously welcomed: there were ecstatic possibilities of drawing close

to God.[605] The boy might not at once grasp all the implications of

the higher teaching, and in life he may have practised very imperfectly

the doctrines to which he gave eloquent and noble expression; yet it

is certain that from the outset his philosophical masters exercised a

deep influence upon him. They were three disciples of the Sextii—Sotion,

Attalus and Fabianus. Sotion, arguing on Pythagorean principles,

persuaded Seneca to become vegetarian; Attalus, the Stoic, with a

contempt for luxury, induced him to renounce perfumes, wines, oysters,

mushrooms and a soft bed; while Fabianus, who had given up a career as

a speaker to devote himself to philosophical discussion, conveyed to

him much of his own enthusiasm. Seneca was the first to arrive for a

lecture, and last to leave: his abstinence and fasts were so rigorous

that his health, never of the best,[606] began to suffer, and his father

intervened with the timely reminder that he might be mistaken for a

devotee of the foreign superstitions which Tiberius had endeavoured to

extirpate about A.D. 19. If Seneca sighed as a theorist, he obeyed as a

son. Fits of melancholy drove him to thoughts of suicide, which Stoicism

permitted in certain circumstances: only regard for his father prevented

him from losing control over himself. The state of his health may have

accounted for visits to Pompeii and to Egypt, where an aunt was wife of

the Governor.[607] One of his early works, a lost treatise on Egyptian

religious practices (_De Ritu et Sacris Aegyptiorum_), must be put down

to his stay in the country. His aunt was more than a good nurse; she

could use her influence for her nephew, and on his return to Rome about

A.D. 31 helped to secure the quaestorship for him. Then his career

as a speaker at the bar began. Some years passed, and his oratorical

performances drew upon him the jealousy of Caligula, who, not content

with sneering at them as “mere competitive exercises” and “sand without

lime,”[608] would have put Seneca to death but for the whisper from one

of the emperor’s favourites that he was in any case doomed to die soon

from consumption.[609] Threatened men, however, live long, and Seneca’s

future fame lay in other fields than the dangerous one of oratory.

By degrees his own preference turned him to literature and

philosophy.[610] Some of his lost works belong to this period—collections

of discourses and poems, a physical treatise _De Motu Terrarum_, a

biography of his father, who died about A.D. 39, and perhaps the

_Consolation to Marcia_. Most likely, too, the material for the three

books _On Anger_ was collected about the same time, and published, with

its bitter allusions to Caligula,[611] soon after that emperor was safely

dead. Seneca was not a recluse: a measure of self-effacement may have

been judicious under Caligula, but Seneca’s own choice was to make the

student’s loneliness alternate with social engagements. “There should be

a blend, an alternation of solitude and society: the former will cause

us to want human kind, the latter to want ourselves. And the one will be

a cure for the other: solitude will heal dislike for a crowd, a crowd

will heal the weariness of solitude.”[612] The school of the world was

essential to the thinker on wisdom. He was a good business man, able to

advance his financial interests; and he had gifts of elegant expression

which fitted him to mix with the highest circles in Rome. At court, after

Caligula’s murder, Seneca occupied a prominent position as an asset in

the party of the princesses, Julia Livilla and Agrippina, daughters of

Germanicus and nieces of the emperor. His happiness was short-lived. A

charge was brought against him of an immoral intrigue with Julia.[613]

Messalina, the unscrupulous empress, is not unreasonably suspected

of having for political reasons invented the accusation to weaken a

rival faction. It involved Julia’s death ultimately, and Seneca’s trial

before a subservient senate, where the death-sentence was at Claudius’s

suggestion commuted to banishment. So for eight years, from 41 to 49, he

underwent the punishment of “relegation” in Corsica.

In writing his _Consolation to Helvia_, probably a good many months

later, he endeavours to cheer his mother by philosophical arguments

that exile is quite tolerable, and very much what the exiled person

makes it; but his real feelings of weary despondency are expressed in

certain epigrams and in his _Consolation to Polybius_ of A.D. 43, when

his sympathy proffered to Claudius’s learned Secretary for Petitions

(_a libellis_) and his cringing flattery of the emperor were designed,

though in vain, to facilitate his recall. Certainly, he had books

and literary pursuits to occupy his mind; slaves may have been in

attendance; and his friend Caesonius Maximus seems to have stayed with

him for a time; but there was much that was depressing. He had lost his

father, his wife and a child: like other ancients, he could take little

pleasure in rugged scenery: and there was a limit to his interest in

the ethnology of the island. For a capitalist, diplomat and courtier,

for a literary man with social instincts, banishment meant the same

poignancy of suffering as Ovid knew on the shores of the Black Sea. But

relief came for Seneca as it never came for Ovid. In 49 he was recalled

and made praetor, through the influence of Agrippina, who realized that

a man of his literary reputation would make a suitable tutor for her

boy Nero.[614] The young prince’s education consisted of all available

subjects of culture, with two chief limitations according to Suetonius:

Nero’s mother disapproved of philosophy for a future ruler, and Seneca

jealously discouraged the study of the old orators, so that his own

modern style might remain Nero’s ideal.[615] When Claudius was done

to death in 54, it fell to the imperial tutor to compose a suitable

panegyric for his pupil, the new emperor, to deliver: and so began the

period of five years—the _quinquennium_[616] praised long afterwards by

Trajan—during which Seneca, aided by the good sense of Burrus, prefect of

the guard, kept Nero on paths of comparative decency and moderation.[617]

Part of Seneca’s policy was directed towards keeping Nero free from

undue interference on the part of his imperious mother,[618] who hotly

protested against “the claim of the cripple Burrus and the exile Seneca

to govern mankind with a maimed hand and a scholar’s tongue.”[619] At

this period Seneca’s influence as a statesman reached its zenith; and

it is a reasonable conjecture that for a time he contrived to mould

governmental policy in the spirit of his own broadminded cosmopolitanism.

It was of some service to the world that the author of the _De

Clementia_, addressed to Nero when he was eighteen, should now be his

chief adviser. Dio himself, who is usually a hostile witness where

Seneca is concerned, gives to him and Burrus credit for able and fair

administration.[620] There were, however, black crimes which Seneca,

whether privy to them or not, had to condone. Britannicus, the true heir

to the purple, had been got rid of by poison at the emperor’s table in

55; and in 59 came Agrippina’s murder by her son’s command. State policy,

the historical cloak for many infamies, might argue a case on behalf of

both acts: the one removed a rival and secured the throne, the other

ended a woman’s ascendancy and secured the emperor’s freedom.[621] It

was Seneca who composed for Nero the statement to be read in the Senate

respecting his mother’s death. One can only guess what acquiescence meant

for a man who could both think and feel. To his credit be it said that

he seems at least to have pleaded with Nero to save his cruelly maligned

empress Octavia in A.D. 62.

That was the year of Burrus’s death and of Tigellinus’s elevation, when

Nero had begun to lean upon worse advisers, who urged him to shake off

his mentor.[622] The mentor himself, recognizing that his influence was

undermined, placed before Nero his request to retire.[623] The wealth of

a professing Stoic made an easy target for criticism,[624] and a tempting

lure for an avaricious emperor. Seneca’s speech, therefore, at his

interview, as reported by Tacitus, took mainly the form of an _apologia

pro diuitiis suis_. His wealth amassed in these years of service was an

index surely of his Majesty’s bounty; and, now that he was old, it should

return to his Majesty. Nero’s own ability to give a ready rejoinder he

adroitly set to the credit of his excellent teacher, who was not nearly

so old that his imperial pupil could think of dropping his pilotage and

whose wealth he could not possibly accept—for what would people say?[625]

Fair dissembling words did not deceive Seneca. From that day he changed

his mode of life: he no longer kept open house or made public appearances

attended by troops of friends. He had some three years yet to devote to

studious retirement: and to this period, A.D. 62-65, can be assigned

with confidence his essay _On Leisure_ (_De Otio_), his elaborate _Moral

Letters_ (_Epistulae Morales_), the seven books of the _Quaestiones

Naturales_, and with less certainty some other works. Once again he made

an offer of his substance to the emperor: it was in A.D. 64 when he

proposed to help in repairing the devastation caused by the burning of

Rome.[626] He was not however destined to escape the despot. In 65, on

an allegation of complicity in Piso’s conspiracy—and there were some who

said that the next emperor was intended to be the philosopher[627]—the

old man was ordered to put himself to death. What Tacitus records of the

last hours of Seneca, his dignified calm, his reliance upon philosophy,

his farewell advice to friends, his devoted wife’s desire to die with

him, the too slow ebbing of life from the chill, attenuated frame, is an

account few can read unmoved.[628]

The character of Seneca presents anomalies comparable to those which

are notorious in Lord Bacon’s case. If Seneca does not merit to the

full the absolute superlatives which Pope applied to Bacon, “the

wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind,” still the noble grandeur of his

theoretical morality was deplorably sullied by lapses in actual life.

Many of the charges date from his own time; and never was the calumny

of enemies more rife, more gross, more readily believed than in the

days when creatures like Suillius threw their slanderous mud. Among

the historians, Dio is too biased to be trusted in his enumeration of

the immoralities and inconsistencies laid to Seneca’s account. The

story of improper relations with Julia so obviously served Messalina’s

machinations that it cannot be accepted as incontrovertible fact, while

the suggestion of an amour with Agrippina is even more incredible.

That Seneca was privy to the deaths of Claudius, of Britannicus and of

Agrippina was whispered and repeated, but the rumours can be neither

proved nor disproved. His weak condonation of such deeds very naturally

subjects him to suspicion. That he advocated the contempt of wealth and

yet accumulated it, is not to be gainsaid; even so, and granted that he

lent money on interest, we are not bound to believe Dio’s statement that

Seneca caused an insurrection in Britain by suddenly calling in the huge

sum of forty million sesterces. If he was a thrifty financier all his

life, he at least thereby escapes the accusation of a vicious abuse of

his money in an age of luxury.

While, however, some of the blackest charges may be parried as not

proven, one count in the indictment is beyond denial, even if it be

capable of extenuation. Outside the study, he lacked true moral bravery.

Nothing could transcend the elevation of his ethical theory; but this

emphatic assertor of moral principles tamely saw them trampled upon at

court. Circumstances overbore his protests, perhaps even his qualms: his

wisdom failed in courage and his prudence degenerated into pusillanimity.

A voluptuous court, it must be allowed, had no atmosphere of bracing

discipline in which an austere philosopher could practise virtue: its

extravagant opulence and titanic depravity were better calculated to

stifle the moral sense with a rankly perfumed sultriness. The danger

was twofold: at one time, the aesthetic taste and social charm of Nero

might lull the conscience to rest; at another, his tigerish nature might

unnerve any counsellor. Let it be admitted that Seneca was incapable

of maintaining an impolitic opposition, and that he was, in Carlyle’s

words, “so wistfully desirous to stand well with Truth and yet not

ill with Nero” that he remains “our perhaps niceliest proportioned

half-and-half, the plausiblest plausible on record.” Such scathing words

may be glibly repeated by critics who are safe from Nero. But is no

allowance to be made, if Seneca failed to transfer the dogmatism of the

schools to an emperor’s acts? The philosopher’s heart at least was on

the side of goodness. Nero’s court, life, policy must have often caused

inexpressible pain to a believer in the Fatherhood and Providence of

God, the brotherhood of man, the divine spark within all, the sovereign

excellence of virtue, the vanity of worldly goods, the sin of luxury; and

it must have been hard to adapt to Neronian orgies Seneca’s own ascetic

preferences and practices. But a personality endowed with philosophic

will, like Seneca’s, aimed sincerely at a higher life for himself and a

better world for others: it could not choose but exert some influence.

When one complains of Seneca’s inconsistencies, is one prepared to say

that he would have served Rome better by avoiding court? To say this

is to forget the good he did. To his credit stand Nero’s promising

_quinquennium_, a policy of toleration in religion, and an endeavour to

lessen cruelty in gladiatorial shows: besides, he preached clemency in

life, as the author of the _Octauia_ makes him do in the play. Nero’s

deterioration after Seneca’s retirement is in itself a testimony to his

previous authority.

Perhaps it is not merely fanciful to trace a dynamic evolution in

Seneca’s character determined by his continuous struggle against

hindrances and failures. If a worldling like Petronius came in time to

feel out of touch with the vanity of court life, what of Seneca, who

realized its vanity from the outset? In spite of much to disillusionize

and to disgust, he persevered at court until his prospects of influencing

Nero faded into nothingness, and his offered renunciation of riches

had been hypocritically declined. His very faults made him in a sense

a better man, and so acquired a spiritual value; for a recognition of

his own backsliding and cowardice showed the force of temptation and

taught indulgence towards human frailty. This is why Seneca is less

bigoted, less overbearing than most of his fellow-Stoics. His habit of

self-examination must have often revealed his faults to him, so that one

outcome was a tolerance which might well be imitated in judging him. “We

have all done wrong,” he says in the _De Clementia_[629]—_peccauimus

omnes_. It is then, more charitable, as well as more profitable, to

forget his imperfections and omissions in favour of positive qualities

like his humility[630] and humanity—to forget his timidities in favour of

his bravery at the end. In one of his later years he wrote to Lucilius:

“Before old age my aim was a good life; in old age my aim is a good

death.”[631] And in another letter there is an utterance of dignified

courage on which the hour of trial set the final seal of validity:

Without dread, then, I am composing myself for that day on

which, laying aside shifts and subtleties, I shall have to

judge respecting myself whether I merely speak or really feel

as brave men should, whether all my insolent words hurled

against fortune were mere pretence and mumming. Discount

man’s opinion: it is uncertain and partial. Discount the

philosophical pursuits of a lifetime: it is death that is

to pass judgement on you. ’Tis true: discussions, literary

conversations, words collected from the precepts of sages, and

learned discourse do not exhibit the true strength of the mind.

The greatest cowards can talk big. What you have achieved will

then be made plain when you come to die. I accept the terms: I

do not shrink from the decision.[632]

Besides his tragedies, short poems and the satire on Claudius, which

are to be considered in another chapter, the following prose works

by Seneca are extant—twelve so-called _Dialogues_, two books _On

Clemency_, seven _On Benefits_, seven books of _Natural Problems_,

and 124 _Moral Epistles_. His works that are lost, or survive only in

fragments, trenched on the provinces of geography, physics, natural

history, biography and ethics. Among these were _De Situ Indiae_, _De

Ritu et Sacris Aegyptiorum_, _De Motu Terrarum_, _De Forma Mundi_, _De

Piscium Natura_, _De Vita Patris_, _De Superstitione_, _De Immatura

Morte_, _Moralis Philosophiae libri_. Some of his _Orationes_ and

additional books of _Letters_ also circulated. The twelve _Dialogi_

collected in the Ambrosian MS. are given in the following order: _De

Prouidentia_, _De Constantia Sapientis_, _De Ira libri_ III, _Ad Marciam

de Consolatione_, _De Vita Beata_, _De Otio_, _De Tranquillitate Animi_,

_De Breuitate Vitae_, _Ad Polybium de Consolatione_, _Ad Heluiam

Matrem de Consolatione_. Unfortunately, these are not in the sequence

of composition; had they been so, fuller light would have been shed

on the author’s intellectual development. Much labour has been spent

on the chronology of the works, and respecting some of them at any

rate the conclusions reached by inquirers are vain and conflicting.

Several avenues of approach have been explored along the lines of

internal evidence drawn from statement, expression or rhythm. But

contemporary allusions (apart from those sometimes merely imagined in the

searcher’s enthusiasm) are scarce in Seneca, as if to remind us that the

treatises are concerned with themes which are independent of the years.

Similarities of thought yield inconclusive criteria of contemporaneous

composition in an author who, on some subjects, expressed himself in

much the same manner from first to last throughout his career, but who

conversely, on other subjects, contradicted himself within the range

of the same treatise. Then, again, statistics, like M. Bourgery’s,

showing relative frequency of definite metrical sentence-endings form

an unsubstantial foundation on which to base theories of earliness or

lateness in composition. M. Pichon[633] in 1912 considered that, on the

chronology of the works, Gercke in his _Seneca-Studien_ of 1895 had to

a great extent superseded Jonas’s dissertation of 1870; and now it is

suggested[634] that M. Albertini[635] has made it almost unnecessary

to consult Gercke. If one constructs a table to exhibit the dates

assigned by different critics to the works, the variation of opinion is

at first sight bewildering. For instance, the _Consolatio Ad Marciam_,

which Lipsius placed after the exile, was, according to others, written

during it (41-49); and, according to Albertini, before it (A.D. 40). All

three books of the _De Ira_ were, according to Jonas, published in 41,

but, according to Lehmann and Rossbach, in 49 after the recall; or—to

take what marks perhaps the maximum of divergence—the _De Prouidentia_,

in which Waltz sees a similarity of tone linking it with the _De

Constantia_, is referred by him to the first months of exile, 41-42,

while Albertini, agreeing with Gercke that it is “_après la disgrâce_,”

gives A.D. 63. Respecting dates for the tragedies, opinions are equally

at variance. The general proportion of uncertainty is so great that one

is tempted to fall back upon Madvig’s dictum of 1873, _librorum Senecae

praeter paucos tempora incerta sunt_.[636] Yet, after all, there are

points on which we can lay firm hold. Few of the extant prose works were

written before Seneca’s exile in 41, and most of the best-known ones

belong to the sixteen years which he had to live after his recall, when

he was well over fifty years of age. There is much to say for believing

that the _Consolatio Ad Marciam_ is the oldest of the surviving treatises

(A.D. 40), and that at least two books of the _De Ira_ were composed in

41. We can be quite certain that the other two _Consolations_, namely _Ad

Heluiam_ and _Ad Polybium_, belong to the early part of the exile, the

one to 41-42, the other to 43. No other work can be, without challenge,

ascribed to this Corsican period, although some authorities think that

to it belong the _De Breuitate Vitae_ as well as the _De Constantia_ and

the _De Prouidentia_. As to the period after Seneca’s recall in 49, there

is no doubt that the _De Clementia_ was written early in Nero’s reign,

probably in 55 (Albertini thinks 56). It is generally agreed that the _De

Otio_, _Epistulae Morales_, and the _Quaestiones Naturales_ follow the

retirement of A.D. 62, the composition of the last two works spreading

over more than one year.

Realizing, then, that a full and exact chronology is unattainable, we

proceed to a brief survey of the works.[637] Of the twelve _Dialogi_[638]

it may be convenient to consider the three _Consolations_ first, then the

three books _On Anger_, and finally the remaining half-dozen treatises.

The _Consolations_ are not spontaneous expressions of sympathy, but

literary efforts following broadly a scheme. It was a Greek invention

thus to cure one of the maladies of the soul—grief; and the philosophers

of different schools[639] who composed such exercises were in time joined

by the rhetoricians, so that two streams of influence converged in what

was a kind of popular philosophy, with general features of similarity.

Among these features were eclecticism in argument; insistence upon

our inability to control external circumstances in contrast with the

possession of our own reason and will; the employment of rhetorical _loci

communes_ and historical examples, as in a declamation; and a typical

structure. Usually this structure consisted of an introduction, on the

evil to be remedied; the main body of the consolation, on the cause of

the affliction and the person afflicted; and a conclusion. It is evident

that this species of moral pharmacy, based on an established science of

consolation, possessed its time-honoured conventions alike in plan and

thought. While, therefore, in Seneca the colour borrowed from Stoics and

others is pronounced, it is fruitless to endeavour to trace his sources

in detail. What gave a _Consolation_ its distinctive value was very much

what gives value to any work of art—the genius of its author and his

power, within the limitations of an old form, to achieve a fresh result.

The special circumstances deplored, the personality of the individual

consoled, sometimes even digressions indulged in, and the signal mastery

of style displayed, might all open up paths to an original effect.

The _Ad Marciam_ is addressed to the brave daughter of Cremutius Cordus,

who published some of the writings of her dead father, one of Sejanus’s

victims. Its design is to console her in her continued mourning for her

son, whom she had lost three years earlier. Between its exordium and its

peroration it contains a fairly systematic reasoning based on examples

of other mothers in grief and on precepts for the control of grief.

Seneca’s hand, however, is not so sure as it is in the _Ad Heluiam_, the

most regularly arranged and, at the same time, the cleverest and most

readable of the three _Consolations_. Once he has passed the exordium and

a recapitulation of the troubles which have already taught his mother,

Helvia, to be courageous, he addresses himself to the immediate task of

consoling her under the loss of her exiled son—himself. The situation,

it will be observed, was unique; for the person whose loss is mourned

comforts the mourner. His ingenuity and prevailing Stoicism are apparent

in the defence of the two main positions. On the one hand, the exile

himself is not really unfortunate, because he has been trained not to

mind the deprivation of external blessings; banishment is but a change of

place which cannot affect virtue; enforced poverty does not hurt the sage

(an argument which gives a handle for invectives against luxury); and

the disgrace of exile lies only in man’s opinion. On the other hand, his

mother is not really unfortunate; it cannot be that she laments her son’s

support, since her affection has always been disinterested; her natural

pangs over the separation give her an excellent chance of displaying

fortitude after the manner of other courageous women whom Seneca proceeds

to cite; her melancholy can be dispelled through her favourite studies

in philosophy, and through the affection of the dear ones who are

left. Seneca’s recognition here of ordinary human feelings outside the

chill reason of the Stoics makes the one truly touching portion of his

_Consolation_. For himself, he is happy to have leisure both for the

study of the universe and for light literary work.

In the _Ad Polybium_, written about the middle of A.D. 43, he is far

less cheerful. Here the object is to comfort Polybius, a learned and

influential freedman at court, on the death of a brother. Apart from the

reasoned consolation, two features stand out—the author’s acknowledgement

of his misery in a remote corner (_angulo_) of the world, where his very

Latin might suffer,[640] and his flatteries of the emperor in the hope

of securing a remission of his sentence. The inconsistency with his

previous fortitude and the undignified abasement in respect of Claudius

have made all Seneca’s admirers wish that he had never written this

treatise. Diderot’s denial of Seneca’s authorship in the eighteenth

century has, however, received only slight support in modern times. The

manner is Seneca’s, and there are not wanting memorable sayings; _e.g._

on the obligations of high rank, “great fortune is great servitude”

(_magna seruitus magna fortuna_, vi. 5); on a dilemma for mourners, “to

lament one in bliss is jealousy; to lament the non-existent, insanity”

(_beatum deflere inuidia est, nullum dementia_, ix. 3); on life as a

torture (_omnis uita supplicium est_, ix. 6), at the beginning of a

fine passage on the troublous ocean of life whose one final haven is

death; respecting the dead man, “he has not left us but gone before”

(_non reliquit ille nos sed antecessit_, ix. 9); and on the grumbler

under a reversal of fortune, “the man who gives to the close of a spell

of pleasure the name of injustice has no gratitude” (_ingratus est qui

iniuriam uocat finem uoluptatis_, x. 2).

The three books _De Ira_ (which have certain gaps) were dedicated

to Seneca’s brother, Novatus. They investigate the characteristics,

uselessness and curability of anger. The plan, although the author

several times indicates his line of treatment and his transitions, is not

satisfactory.[641] There are repetitions and contradictions,[642] and

the relation of Book III to the preceding couple presents difficulties.

The work must be later than Caligulas’s reign; for it contains frank

criticism on his mad anger, I. xx. 8-9, and on his barbarities, III.

xviii. 3-4 and xix. 1-2. In the last passage Seneca indulges in the

bitter climax: “Caligula tortured his victims by means of all the

grimmest things in the world, with the cord, boot, rack, fire, and with

that face of his (_uultu suo_).” Possibly the first two books were

written, as Albertini suggests, in 41, just before the banishment;

and Book III, which reads as if it came from Nero’s preceptor, may

have been added in 49 to the work interrupted eight years before.

Seneca’s handling of so unfortunately common a human frailty could not

fail to possess interest. He reminds us that ungovernable rage is the

one passion that seizes a nation as a whole and so leads to war.[643]

The gift of apt illustration which marks the _Letters to Lucilius_ is

already noticeable. Irascible men, he suggests, ought not to meddle with

the more exacting sorts of task, or, if they do, should stop short of

weariness: their tempers need to be softened with milder pursuits; “for

who does not know that clarions and trumpets are irritants, just as some

airs are lullabies to soothe the mind? Green is good for wearied eyes

(_confusis oculis prosunt uirentia_), and some colours are restful for

weak sight, while the brilliancy of some is dazzling.”[644] There is the

gift too of graphic description and anecdote. A reader never forgets

the opening chapter, where, after citing the sage who called anger “a

brief insanity,” the author gives his tellingly repulsive portrayal of

the outward symptoms of mad wrath leading up to his words of dismissal,

“You could not tell whether the vice is more hateful or ugly.”[645] Nor

does one forget the idle Sybarite who was annoyed over seeing a labourer

hard at work, and who complained about the discomfort caused him by the

rumpling of some of the rose-leaves on which he lay.[646]

Years elapsed before Seneca indited to the same brother the now

imperfect _De Vita Beata_. Novatus had become Gallio by adoption, as the

superscription _Ad Gallionem_ shows: most likely his governorship of

Achaea was over. Two main questions are propounded—what makes life happy?

and what is the way to the happy life? Happiness for Seneca consists not

in what the many, but in what Stoic sages, think happy. It is “to live

according to nature,”[647] in possession of a sound mind, true courage,

true patience, and a true estimate of things, so reaping “an immense

joy, unshaken and equable, along with peace and harmony of spirit,

greatness of mind and gentleness; for all savagery is the outcome of

weakness.”[648] From another point of view, happiness is to practise

virtue. Against pleasure a polemic is directed, although Seneca takes

up a broadminded attitude towards the Epicurean system when properly

interpreted (ch. xii). The mode of attainment to happiness is not clearly

formulated, but the essay develops a spirited retort to those who yelp

(_conlatrant_) at philosophy on the ground that philosophers do not

perform what they preach.[649] In particular a defence is needed for the

ownership of wealth by the sage who affects to despise it. For himself

Seneca can reply that he does not claim the virtuous perfection of the

sage, but a wise use of wealth justifies its retention. Even in high

estate a virtuous life may be led. Since the impression is given that the

author is answering criticisms levelled at him as a rich man, a plausible

date is 58 or 59, after Suillius’s attack upon Seneca.

The three treatises _De Constantia Sapientis_, _De Tranquillitate Animi_,

and _De Otio_ were addressed to a recipient, whose name, Serenus, fits

the tenets conveyed. Annaeus Serenus died as prefect of Nero’s _uigiles_

during one of Seneca’s later years: he had been accommodating enough

to lend himself as a screen to prevent Agrippina from detecting Nero’s

passion for the freedwoman Acte. Waltz,[650] following Hense, has pointed

out that the three treatises mark progressive stages of philosophical

attitude in Seneca’s pupil. In the _De Constantia_ Serenus is Epicurean;

in the _De Tranquillitate_, he is already Stoic in sympathy, though

restless; in the _De Otio_, he is a convinced disciple. The fuller

title for the _De Constantia_, states its theme, “that the wise man can

receive neither wrong nor insult” (_nec iniuriam nec contumeliam accipere

sapientem_). Not unnaturally, considering its subject, some have referred

it to the early months of exile; but a reference to a recent discussion

on Cato[651] implies Rome rather than Corsica as the place of writing.

As the purpose is to prove a paradox—admittedly a hard saying for

Serenus—Seneca begins by explaining that Stoic doctrine is too manly to

aim at attractiveness. The answers to the supposed adversary’s objections

involve a good deal of hair-splitting; but there is a fine confidence

in the emphasis laid upon the calm of the sage amidst the storm of war;

“for no siege-engines can be invented to shake the well-established mind”

(_nulla machinamenta posse reperiri quae bene fundatum animum agitent_),

and he sums up:

See, then, Serenus, that the perfect man, full of virtues human

and divine, can lose nothing: his goods are girt with solid

and unscalable ramparts.... You cannot compare with them the

walls of Babylon which Alexander entered, nor the battlements

of Carthage or Numantia.... Those which protect the sage are

safe from fire and invasion: they yield no passage: they tower

impregnable, equalling gods. You have no ground for saying, as

you are wont to do, that this sage of ours is nowhere found. We

invent no such unreal glory of human genius (vi. 9-10).

At the opening of the _De Tranquillitate_, Serenus confesses his uneasy

vacillation in the pursuit of peace of mind. What, for instance, should

be the attitude of man amidst luxury? What are the claims of leisured

retirement against the worries of public life? What satisfaction comes

from literary fame? The answer gives Seneca’s views on the attainment

and maintenance of such an unruffled course that the mind shall take

pleasure in itself and in its surroundings. An extraordinary amount of

human wisdom is contained in this treatise, which seeks to provide a

cure for ennui and nerves. Among the interesting topics are failures in

life; the restless traveller in quest of change; the teacher who performs

genuine social service (_in priuato publicum negotium agit_); the value

of friendship (_nihil aeque oblectauerit animum quam amicitia fidelis

et dulcis_); property as a source of anxiety (a theme illustrated with

characteristic fertility); foolishness in book-collecting (_multoque

satius est paucis te auctoribus tradere quam errare per multos_); the

defiance of fortune; the vanity of human wishes; the interest in the

condition of spirits beyond death; the proper estimate of human failings

and sorrows; the torment of an artificial life; and the advisability of

a little nonsense now and then to obviate the dullness produced by all

work and no play (_danda est animis remissio ... nascitur ex assiduitate

laborum animorum hebetatio quaedam et languor_).

The _De Otio_ (mutilated at beginning and end) defends the moral value

of leisure from affairs, in reply to Serenus’s statement of the strict

Stoic position. Seneca’s plea is that at every age it is permissible

to renounce action for philosophical meditation; but most of all is it

permissible for those who have grown old in active service. Amid general

corruption, such withdrawal is countenanced on both Stoic and Epicurean

principles. We each belong to two commonwealths, and in retreat the sage

may usefully serve the universal cosmopolis, the world at large, through

his speculative life in accord with nature. Especially may he with profit

devote himself to satisfying that inquiring disposition implanted in man

by Nature herself. Nature has produced us to be spectators of her vast

works: her beauty and complexity are not meant to pass unobserved. So by

the right path of research, man must “discover something more ancient

than the world itself” (_aliquid ipso mundo inueniat antiquius_); for

“our thought bursts through the battlements of heaven, dissatisfied

with knowing merely what is shown” (_cogitatio nostra caeli munimenta

perrumpit nec contenta est id quod ostenditur scire_). The scientific

impulse here is that which animates the _Quaestiones Naturales_, and the

general tone befits the statesman who has resigned all responsibility for

public policy.

There is a link between the _De Otio_ and the much earlier _De

Breuitate Vitae_; for its final advice to Paulinus, controller of the

grain-supply for Rome, is that he would make the best use of life by

retiring to cultivate philosophy. Such advice could hardly come with

full effectiveness from an exile; while, on the other hand, a reference

shows that the treatise must have been written before Claudius extended

the _pomerium_ of the city on January 24th, A.D. 50. Its date lies,

therefore, presumably somewhere in 49 between the author’s recall and

his acceptance of a regular appointment.[652] Paulinus perhaps was

related to Seneca’s second wife.

The treatise is full of good things. Nowhere in literature are there

to be read pithier remarks on the value of time. The first century of

our era displayed a peculiarly keen sense of the way in which days

are wasted. Under Tiberius, Phaedrus, we have seen, made fun of those

fussy triflers, the _ardaliones_; and late in the century Pliny chafes

against the petty but innumerable inroads made on leisure, while Martial

betrays the same nervous spirit. Here Seneca speaks for the Neronian

period. Life is short: yes, but it is we who make it so: life is long

enough, if well employed. The general blindness to the worth of time is

amazing: men will resist encroachments on land or money, but will let

people trespass freely on their time, which is in reality their life.

They are spendthrifts with the one thing in which greed is honourable

(_profusissimi in eo cuius unius honesta auaritia est_). We live, in

fact, as if we were to live for ever. You hear men coolly postponing

leisurely reflection till after fifty or sixty: should they not blush to

reserve for the sovereign duty of reflection the mere remnants of a life

no longer fit for business? Drusus once declared that he was the only

person who had never had holidays even when a boy: precocity like that

must have an evil end. But the really great man will not let his hours

be filched away from him; and his life will be long because devoted to

self-improvement. Many a wrinkled grey-haired man has merely existed,

not lived, a long time (_non ille diu uixit, sed diu fuit_). Yet for

all men’s extravagance with this most precious of things, confront them

with the peril of death, and how they plead for more time! For what

purpose? To learn how to live and how to die demands a lifetime; but the

paramount concern is laid aside in favour of toilsome exertions for a

future on which no one can count. Thus the true life suffers from that

procrastination which is the thief of our to-days (_expectatio quae

pendet ex crastino perdit hodiernum_): so old age comes as a surprise,

and death as a terror, to those who have been busy (_occupati_) over

the wrong things, and have squandered time on luxury, affectation or

vice. That man has true leisure who has the sense of leisure: its secret

lies with philosophy, through whose study one may master centuries that

are past and commune with all the ages and all the sages. Those great

thinkers—not the arrogant snobs whom some court in Rome—constitute the

true society of the world; and yet, Seneca reminds us, as Ruskin did

long afterwards in _Sesame and Lilies_, none of those great thinkers

will refuse access to him. The communicable wisdom of the ages points

the right path towards immortality, and what philosophy has hallowed is

beyond the reach of injurious time.

The remaining dialogue is the _De Prouidentia_, given first in the

Milan MS. It is addressed, like the _Naturales Quaestiones_ and

the _Epistulae_, to Seneca’s friend Lucilius, a man with literary

tastes,[653] who had held procuratorial offices in various parts of the

Roman world, including Sicily, and in whom some have seen the author

of the _Aetna_. The subject discussed is summarized in the fuller

title—why any misfortunes befall good men, when a Providence exists

(_quare aliqua incommoda bonis uiris accidant, cum prouidentia sit_).

From the Stoic doctrine of a providential government of the universe, it

follows that suffering must serve a good purpose. Discipline is one of

the ends subserved: misfortune is a school for virtue, and a spectacle

noble enough for the gods to witness is that of good men struggling with

adversity—_non miror si aliquando impetum capiunt spectandi magnos uiros

conluctantis cum aliqua calamitate ... ecce par deo dignum, uir fortis

cum fortuna mala, utique si et prouocauit_. The last clause “especially

if he has actually thrown out the challenge,” is an addition symptomatic

of a rhetorical over-statement too common in this essay. The imperfect

way in which some points in the argument are worked out has led certain

critics to hold that a portion is lost at the end.[654]

Of the _De Clementia_, once in three books, we possess the first and a

portion of the second. The idea of writing on clemency was suggested

to Seneca through recollecting Nero’s words, when he reluctantly signed

a death-warrant, “Would that I had never learned to write!”[655] If one

is tempted to jeer at Seneca’s compliments to Nero and his expectations

that a better era had dawned, one must in fairness remember the high

hopes reposed and realized during the earlier years of the young prince’s

reign. Book I discusses the need for clemency in a ruler. The emperor, as

war-lord, is urged to recognize his responsibilities. He should follow

the model of the gods: things a subject might do, a monarch cannot,

in the full light that beats upon a throne (_multa contra te lux est,

omnium in istam conuersi oculi sunt_). Cruelty makes a tyrant; but the

affection of subjects is a stronger defence for a prince than their

fear. Book II degenerates into tedious attempts at the definition of

_clementia_ in contrast with what the Stoic condemns as weaknesses—mercy

(_misericordia_) and pardon (_uenia_).

The seven books _De Beneficiis_ addressed to Aebutius Liberalis were

not issued together. An allusion towards the close of Book I[656] shows

that Claudius was dead, and it is likely that the first four books had

appeared some years after 54; being followed by the remaining books,[657]

perhaps by V and VI together, as Gercke thinks, before the retirement

of 62, and by VII still later.[658] The praise of Demetrius in VII.

viii.-xii. best suits Seneca’s closing years. Based upon Hecaton,

Panaetius and other Stoics, the treatment of _Benefits_ is marked by

insight into human nature and generosity of impulse rather than by

strict method. It may be too much to say that the work is incapable of

analysis,[659] but it is safe to say that an attempted analysis shows the

absence of exact system.

There are repetitions and anticipations, apparently because the author,

instead of punctiliously exhausting a particular aspect of his subject,

preferred to record, as they came, in characteristically concise and

striking language, his thoughts upon points which he left himself free

to illuminate again as occasion might offer. He is not unaware of such

repetitions.[660] He is aware, too, of his digressions, on which he

imposes a closure in such terms as, “Let us now return to the theme set

before us,” or “My enthusiasm is carrying me away rather too far, for

the subject is a tempting one.”[661] Even his initial definition of a

benefit is unduly deferred (I. vi. 1) until after five somewhat rambling

chapters. Such traits, although they may be adjudged faults in logic,

actually contribute to the easiness and readability of his work.[662]

Besides, some of his best thoughts are repeated in such varied form that

they cannot fail to arrest the attention and impress themselves on the

memory. Despite, then, a dearth of method, no man can rise from the most

casual reading of a tractate by Seneca without having grasped its spirit.

The redoubled beats, so keen and insistent in their staccato, ensure that

effect.

The commonness of ingratitude is in Book I put down largely to the

wrong mode of conferring benefits. The essence of a benefit lies in

the attitude of the giver, and two points need consideration, the kind

of benefits to be conferred and the mode of giving. The latter point

is dealt with in Book II which turns to the mode of receiving, a topic

involving that of the ungrateful disposition. Book III continues the

subject of ingratitude, stating and answering problems: “Can ingratitude

be prosecuted?” No. “Can a slave benefit a master?” Yes. “Can children

confer on a parent more benefits than they have received?” Yes. Book IV,

dealing with aspects of benefits and gratitude, puts the query, “Should

one benefit the ungrateful?” The later books, from their investigation of

_quaestiones_, are casuistic in character, but by no means uninteresting.

Book V asks “Is it a shame to be surpassed in benefits?” then takes up

the Stoic paradoxes “No one can be ungrateful,” “All are ungrateful”;

and proceeds to find fresh puzzles, “Must a son be grateful for benefits

done to his father?” “Is that a benefit which was not intended?” Among

the problems in Book VI are “Do we owe gratitude to one who has benefited

us against his will?”, or “without knowing it?”, or “incidentally in

furthering his own interests?,” and in the last book “Can one benefit the

sage who possesses all?” and “What is the position where the giver has

forgotten the benefit conferred?” Although many of the problems end in

unfruitful refinements, there is much to treasure in Seneca’s permanently

valuable and shrewd criticism of human conduct. He is genuinely anxious

to correct by his counsels one of the most detrimental and heartbreaking

mistakes made in life; for he well realises how much pain is caused by

ignorance in conferring or in receiving a benefit. A few citations will

illustrate some aspects of his attitude:

“I should find it hard to say whether it is meaner for the

recipient to repudiate a benefit, or for the giver to press for

its repayment, inasmuch as a benefit is a sort of loan whose

return absolutely depends on the spontaneous action of the

debtor.”

“We find many people ungrateful; yet we make more people so,

because at one time we are insistent and harsh in our claims

for return, at another time we are fickle enough to regret

our generosity. By such conduct we spoil the whole favour....

A benefit is felt to be a debt in the same spirit as that in

which it is bestowed.”

“If a man does not give because he does not receive, he must

have given in order to receive, and that justifies ingratitude.

How many there are who are unworthy of the light of day, and

nevertheless the sun rises.”

“Persevere in your generosity. Assist one with your means,

another with credit, another with your favour, or your advice,

or a word in season. Is he ungrateful for one benefit?

After receiving a second, perhaps he will not be so. Has he

forgotten two? Perhaps the third kindness will bring back the

recollection of those that slipped his mind.”

“The reality of a benefit lies not in gold, nor silver, but in

the goodwill of the giver.”

“What is a benefit? It is the doing of a kindness which gives

pleasure and in the giving gets pleasure.... The spirit

animating the act is what exalts trivial things, throws lustre

on ordinary things, while it can discredit great and highly

valued ones.”

The _Naturales Quaestiones_ is in Seneca’s eyes an excursion into the

highest speculation; for such physical inquiries concern God’s universe,

whereas moral philosophy concerns man. The subject had occupied Seneca in

Corsica,[663] and for many years he must have collected material to be

combined (not over methodically) in these seven books. At the opening of

Book II he gives his threefold division of the knowledge of nature into

astronomy, meteorology, and geography, according as the investigation

is directed to phenomena in the heavens (_caelestia_), or between the

heavens and earth (_sublimia_), or upon the earth (_terrestria_). He

does not, however, treat these subjects equally or in order, as a glance

at the contents of the different books will prove. Indeed, the order

of these books is much disputed.[664] It is possible that Seneca never

finally settled their succession; for the work may have been ultimately

issued by Lucilius, to whom it was dedicated. The time of composition can

be determined within limits. Book III shows that it was the work of the

author’s old age after his retirement in 62, and the opening of Book VI

records the earthquake at Pompeii in February of 63.

The main themes are distributed among the books thus: I, Fire (meteors,

rainbow, mock sun, etc.); II, Air (Thunder and Lightning); III, Water in

various forms; IV, The rise of the Nile and (after a sudden break) snow,

hail, and rain; V, Wind and atmospheric movement; VI, Earthquakes; VII,

Comets.

The historical importance of the work is considerable. Here Seneca

is in the succession to the Augustan Sextii, who had some reputation

for scientific inquiry. Their influence and that of the “pneumatic”

physicians, who took a Stoic view of the mechanism of physiology,

contributed to keep physical speculation alive in the first century.

Science, however, was still too much a literary manipulation of

material bequeathed by predecessors to facilitate real advance. This

in the main applies to the compiler of the _Naturales Quaestiones_.

Although he undoubtedly developed germs of independence (_e.g._ in

ridiculing the divination with which he could not irrevocably break),

he is not possessed by his subject, as the Epicurean poet Lucretius

was. For Western Europe, in default of direct access to Aristotle,

the work remained during the Middle Ages the prevalent authority on

cosmology; but scientific, according to modern standards, it certainly

is not. The absence of the exact equipment nowadays available rendered

nice experiment impossible, and with the best will in the world the

observer was exposed to all the risks attendant on the inaccuracy of

sense-perception. To the utmost of his ability, nevertheless, Seneca

sought to secure trustworthy data; _e.g._ with respect to a comet (VII.

ii.); he was a searcher after causes, and stated fairly the points of

conflicting theories; eclectic by preference, he even rejected the

explanations of his own Stoic school when he deemed them incorrect; and

he realized that generations of workers might be needed to reach truth

in complex subjects (VII. xxv.). On the other hand, he never learned

to divorce ethics from physics, and consequently some of the most

interesting parts of the _Naturales Quaestiones_ are his unscientific

digressions. Thus, lightning suggests other presages and leads to

discussions on fate and religion in Book II. Closing the same book, he

recognizes that some would rather be delivered from the fear of lightning

than know its origin, and, conceding that a moral should attach to every

study, he proceeds to reason against the dread of death. Again, the

chafing of the sea, he believes, indicates that Nature will ultimately

inundate the world to make a new world. Lucilius is admonished at the

beginning of Book IV that he must not be arrogant, although governor of

Sicily; for the island is “a province, not an empire”; and the topic

of snow occasions one of his tirades against the despicable luxury of

effeminate Romans who would bathe in it or use ice to cool their thirst.

In such passages the physicist has reverted to the moral philosopher.

Much labour has been spent in arguing that the 124 _Epistles to Lucilius_

were not real letters. In the last resort, the question is hardly a

vital one; for supposing the form were proved to be fictitious, Seneca

must at least have meant the collection to be taken for a budget of

correspondence despatched by him to his friend, because he introduces

references to letters received.[665] Several scholars[666] have followed

Lipsius in his denial of the reality of the correspondence; but it

is more satisfactory to accept the epistles as representing a real

correspondence subjected to the author’s editorial suppression of the

regular opening or closing phrases, of very intimate passages, and

of certain personal names. They were written in A.D. 63 and 64, and

sent, as written, to Lucilius. At different points in the collection a

subject is often reopened, and there are inconsistencies in thought, so

that no logical order is to be looked for, although it is possible to

trace certain chronological groups[667] according to Seneca’s change of

reading or residence. Thus, the model of Epicurus’s letters to Idomeneus

especially pervades the first twenty-nine letters, most of which close

with an Epicurean maxim sent to Lucilius under some such jocular labels

as “a little gift” (_munusculum_), “a windfall” (_lucellum_) or “toll”

(_portorium_). Similarly, we note the effect of his concurrent study of

Posidonius in many letters after No. 78. About forty letters (Nos. 49-87)

seem to have been composed in Campania, and the subsequent letters in

Rome or the neighbourhood. Some are brief notes: others treatises many

pages long. Seneca remarks on the difference between Cicero’s epistolary

notes[668] about current politics and his own letters discussing moral

and intellectual problems. Promising Lucilius a literary immortality[669]

through the publication of the correspondence, he keeps his eye fixed on

posterity as firmly as ever the younger Pliny or Madame de Sévigné did.

The variety of interest is great, when it is remembered that the

prevailing object is the consideration of philosophical points, and that,

therefore, many personal details were intentionally excluded. Nothing

stands out more, throughout a perusal, than Seneca’s faith in the eternal

and inestimable value of philosophy, for which everything should be

sacrificed. Philosophy is the guide of life (xvi.) and its joy (xxiii.):

more vital than any physical exercise, it promotes the health of the mind

(xv.), guarantees a pleasant old age (xii.), and teaches how to face

death (a recurrent topic): it offers the glory of literary immortality

(xxi.), and deserves to be made a man’s life-work (lxxii.). Hunger and

poverty must be endured cheerfully in the quest after wisdom (xvii.), and

social pleasures rigidly renounced to win the needful seclusion (_recede

in te ipse quantum potes_, vii. 8). Such seclusion involves hard mental

toil, not for oneself but for posterity (viii.), to increase the store

of human wisdom. Philosophy must be studied earnestly in Stoic writings

as a whole, not in merely convenient anthologies (_flosculi_, xxxiii.);

for Stoics decline to practise window-dressing (_ocliferia_: “We don’t

trick a purchaser, so that, when he has entered the shop, he’ll find

nothing beyond what was hung up in front,” xxxiii. 3). The time-honoured

traditions of philosophy stamp it as a gradual achievement of

civilization (xc.). It is no self-regarding morality, but has duties to

discharge—the reclaiming of backsliders (xxv.) and help for the wretched

(xlviii.). Genuine philosophy is in touch with human kind (v.), despite

the risk of debasement from mixing with the mob (vii.): truly democratic,

it is no respecter of pedigrees (_stemma non inspicit_, xliv. 1), and it

is an occupation of the heart, not a pose marked by outward peculiarities

(v.).

His counsels are couched in terms of winning modesty. He is not perfect,

he confesses (xxvii.); if he ventures to prescribe remedies, he is in

the same infirmary (_ualitudinario_, xxvii. 1) talking with other moral

invalids about common ailments of the soul and their cure. This note of

sympathy with frailty in utter forgetfulness of dogmatic Stoicism is

one of the most likeable traits in Seneca: it increases his hold over

us and his power of doing us good. So he preached abstinence (xviii.)

more effectively than many a temperance bigot; recommended the right

behaviour for travel (_i.e._ learn to be at home everywhere as a citizen

of the world, xxviii. 4); and pleaded the duty of kindness to slaves

(“_slaves?_—nay, our humble friends: _slaves?_—nay, our fellow-slaves,

for the real slavery is that of the mind, and no slavery is baser than

self-imposed slavery in high rank,” xlvii. 1). He was too sensible to

be misled by Stoic paradoxes about the self-sufficing sage who had no

need of a friend (ix. and cix.): there had to be a _uia media_ between

contamination amidst the madding crowd (vii.) and deterioration in

solitude: alone with oneself, he reminds us, one might be in bad company

(x.). Thus he writes:

When friendship is made, one must trust; before it is made,

one must judge. There is a topsy-turvy confusion in your folk

who, in disobedience to the rule of Theophrastus, judge one

after making a friend of him instead of making him their friend

after judging him. Ponder long whether a given person is to be

admitted to your friendship: when you have decided that he is

to be so, welcome him with all your heart. Converse with him as

boldly as with yourself (iii. 2).

The human appeal of the letters is intensified by the light thrown

on contemporary life. They place before us the loathsome butchery at

gladiatorial shows (vii.), the seductions of a seaside resort (li.),

the arrival of mailboats from Alexandria (lxxvii.), the treatment of

runaway slaves (cvii.), the pleasure of travelling light in contrast to

the overpowering magnificence of some travellers (lxxxvii.). No less

enlivening are personal details which bring the author nearer to us—even

his asthma (liv.) and other ailments (lxxviii.), depressing attacks

of fever, and his decision to be careful out of consideration for his

wife’s solicitous feelings (civ.), sea-sickness on a trip in the Bay of

Naples (liii.), an outing in a litter (lv.), trying experiences during

a day of mud and dust in a tunnel near Naples (lvii.), lodgings over a

noisy public bath (lvi.), feelings on the death of a friend (lxxvii.

and lxiii., 1 and 4, “at a friend’s loss the eyes should be neither dry

nor streaming ... let us see to it that the recollection of our lost

ones is a pleasant one”), attendance at philosophy lectures when old

(lxxvi.), thoughts suggested by a wrestling-school or Scipio’s villa

(lxxxvi.). Here the work on Italian fields is put before us (“It’s late

June ... this very day I noticed peasants harvesting beans and sowing

millet,” lxxxvi. 16); and another letter gives Seneca’s own experiences

in vine-grafting (cxii.). Elsewhere we find reminiscences of his teachers

with entertaining anecdotes (cviii.), or a hint to Lucilius that he must

climb Aetna (lxxix.). His attitude to the government of the day appears

in exhortations to practise circumspection and avoid offence (xiv.).

It is noteworthy that he says nothing to indicate whether he looked

back with satisfaction upon his public life. No doubt, his own tastes

preferred the serene detachment of an onlooker portrayed in the following

passage:

You dun me for more frequent letters: let’s compare

accounts—you’ll not be solvent! The bargain, of course, was

that _you_ were to start—_you_ were to write, I was to write

back. But I’m not going to make difficulties: I know you’re

safe for credit, and so I’ll pay in advance, and not do as that

master of style, Cicero, tells Atticus to do—write anything

that rises to his lips, even if he has got no news. I can never

be at a loss for matter, though I skip all the details that

fill Cicero’s letters—what candidate is in difficulties; who

is fighting with other people’s backing, who with his own;

who is standing for the consulship in reliance on Caesar or

on Pompey or on a money-chest; what a skin-flint Caecilius

is, out of whom his own relations can’t shift a coin under

twelve per cent. No, it’s better to handle one’s own troubles

than other folk’s, better to examine oneself to see in how

many affairs one is a candidate, and yet decline to vote.

This, my dear Lucilius, is the noble line—the line that means

tranquillity and freedom—to compete for nothing, and entirely

to give the elections of fortune the go-by. How great do you

take the pleasure to be when the assembly of the tribes has

been summoned, when the candidates are on tenterhooks within

their respective quarters, when one is offering money, another

acting through an agent, another smearing with kisses the hands

of folk to whom he’ll refuse his handshake after election, when

all are waiting in dumb amazement for the crier’s voice—how

great the pleasure to stand at one’s ease, a spectator of that

Vanity Fair without either buying or selling anything?[670]

The discussions frequently bear, like St. Paul’s epistles, the mark of

the Stoic diatribe. Objections are supposed to be raised (_inquis_) by

Lucilius or by an imaginary opponent to be scrutinized and refuted.

And there is something Bionean in sharp sarcasms recalling those of

the _Apocolocyntosis_. The philosopher makes great game of the futile

queries raised by pedantic teachers (lxxxviii. 7-8 and 37); of brainless

pleasure-seekers in Rome, the human “antipodes” who turn night into day

(cxxii.); of an outrageously vulgar parvenu freedman who purchased highly

educated slaves to enable him to parade learning by proxy (xxvii.); of a

philosophical lecturer’s rapid delivery, which was too like the glibness

of a cheap-jack (xl. 3, _istam uim dicendi rapidam atque abundantem

aptiorem esse circulanti quam agenti rem magnam ac seriam docenti_); or

of luxurious baths hot enough to parboil a condemned criminal (lxxxvi.

10).

The remarks on style in various letters are instructive, as coming from

one whose own style has provoked severe criticism in ancient and modern

times. Letter 84 discusses the assimilation of reading, and states a

theory of style in the making: bee-like we should gather widely, but

the combined products must finally be made our own. In Letter 100,

writing for the soul is contrasted with writing for the ear, and Seneca

distinguishes the prose of Fabianus with the artificially inverted prose

of the day. Letter 114 examines decadence in style, which is explicable

on the hypothesis that it is a mirror of morals. Seneca’s citations here

illustrate the loose and undisciplined compositions which, he argues,

reflected the character of Maecenas. With the spread of luxury the

affected manner in literature keeps pace, and eccentricity of expression

captures the cultivated public as well as the common herd. There is no

absolute standard: fashion sways style. While some ape the diction of

earlier generations, others cannot abide the old-fashioned; and Seneca

points the distinctions between the long rhythmic sentences of Cicero

and the terse abruptness of Sallust. In the next letter, 115, he warns

Lucilius not to be over-anxious to attain to a fine style: matter is more

than manner—the question should be “what?” not “how?” Then, anticipating

the famous _Le style est de l’homme même_, he declares that style is the

yield of a man’s mind (_oratio cultus animi est_).

This raises the question of Seneca’s own prose. The stress laid on

the “what,” rather than the “how,” goes some way, though not all the

way, towards explaining why he wrote, as many would have it, so badly.

Quintilian, the champion of a phase of restored Ciceronianism in the

next generation, may be taken to speak for the hostile critics. In a

well-known passage[671] he examines Seneca’s merits and demerits. In

Quintilian’s eyes Seneca’s style was spoilt by all sorts of blemishes,

and he felt it his duty to point his students to stricter standards of

taste. Tacitus afterwards recorded Seneca’s power of appealing to his

contemporaries.[672] This very attractiveness Quintilian recognized, but

feared: “he charmed because of his faults only” (_placebat propter sola

uitia_). Conceding Seneca’s ready and rich intellect, his learning and

versatility, brilliant _sententiae_ and moral value, he at the same time

indicates his weaknesses—liability to be misled by those who “devilled”

for him in scientific inquiries (_aliquando ab his quibus inquirenda

quaedam mandabat deceptus est_); want of strict accuracy in philosophy;

and a style all the more pernicious because full of fascinating faults

(_eo perniciosissima, quod abundant dulcibus uitiis_). Yet Quintilian

considers that, in spite of wilful mannerisms, Seneca is safe reading

for those of maturely trained judgement, for he allows there is much

in him to approve and to admire. Next century, when an archaising

movement had set in, Fronto condemns his style more sweepingly for its

“fever-producing plums” (_febriculosis prunuleis_), while Gellius records

some readers’ dislike for his glib vulgarity as well as other alleged

defects, and censures Seneca for having, in the now lost twenty-second

book of the _Epistles_, dared to pass unfavourable criticisms on Ennius,

Cicero and Virgil.

It is clear that a lover of Cicero’s polished amplitude will not feel

drawn to the Senecan sentence which, by comparison, must appear offhand,

and, despite frequent use of pointed balance, to a large extent

formless. In order that a sententious thought might go home impressively

and might be easily recalled and quoted, a premium was set upon its smart

and brief formulation. The literary fashion was everything by fits and

starts and nothing long; for the copious rounded periods of the older

oratory had for the time lost their power of attraction. So eloquence

no longer flowed in a full broad stream, but glittered iridescent like

intermittent jets shot into sunlight from a cleverly contrived fountain.

Seneca himself writes[673] that he would like his _Letters to Lucilius_

to be as natural in tone as if he were chatting with his friend seated or

walking at his side; and so colloquial words and phrases do not surprise

us. Indeed they fit the easygoing argument, as homeliness fits some

sermons. But Seneca adheres to this simple model no more rigidly than

Wordsworth to his theory of “a selection of the language really spoken

by men.” Seneca is far from avoiding the artificial; and his style, like

his character, has complexities and inconsistencies. It is intelligible,

then, that critics should distinguish good and bad qualities in his

composition, but perhaps it is more profitable to ask whether, with

his style, he fulfilled his main object in writing. He had to face the

fresh problem of composing readable tracts on ethical questions mainly

Stoic: so, as an experimenter and innovator, he was sure to depart from

traditional lines. Yet sometimes it looks as if he were censured for not

being another Cicero. In literature, however, there are many mansions.

The opening for Seneca was to create the Latin philosophical essay; and

here he is, on the whole, a success.

To this success his power of awakening interest greatly contributed;

for he is not a dull writer. He secures varied effects by neglecting

logical method, so that he becomes pleasantly discursive; he diversifies

his science with rhetorical descriptions; he illuminates a point with

wonderful fertility in examples; and he holds the attention by his lively

manner in arguing a question. Homeliness of expression alternates with

elevation of thought. It is a personal and unmistakeable style, crowded

with those disconnected, jerky, antithetic and epigrammatic sentences

which made Macaulay say: “to read him straightforward is like dining on

nothing but anchovy sauce.” After all, those same forcible and quotable

sentences have the merit of leaving Seneca’s position clear. Now, the

virtue of an essay, in the true and original sense, lies largely in this,

that, while it may not exhaust a subject, it must, if a good essay,

convey a lucid impression. The qualities here noted are parallel to those

in the writings of Montaigne and Bacon, and constitute Seneca one of the

most admirable essayists in the world.

Everywhere we meet with such terse sayings as these:[674] “A life is

not incomplete, if it is honourable”; “it is not an important matter to

live—it is important to die honourably, wisely, courageously”; “as a

play, so is life—it matters not how long, but how good the acting is”;

“success is a restless thing ... it intoxicates in more ways than one”

(_res est inquieta felicitas ... mouet cerebrum non uno genere_); “a

humiliating and grotesque sight is an old man at his A B C” (_turpis

et ridicula res est elementarius senex_); “old age is an ailment for

which there’s no cure” (_senectus insanabilis morbus est_). There are

paradoxes like “some people have stopped living before they could start”

(_quidam ante uiuere desierunt quam inciperent_); or balanced clauses,

“in a multitude of books is distraction—so, as you can’t read all you’ve

got, it’s enough to have as much as you can read”; or pieces of workaday

wisdom, “what’s the good of meeting one’s trouble halfway? You’ll have

the trouble fast enough when it comes” (_quid iuuat dolori suo occurrere?

satis cito dolebis cum uenerit_), or “if you don’t want a man to lose his

head in a crisis, you should give him practice beforehand.”[675]

Superabundant terseness of this sort leaves the reader dazzled and

fatigued. Seneca’s is a prose which produces an effect analogous to that

of his nephew Lucan’s hectic verse.

His language,[676] as we might expect, is an amalgam of the literary

and the vulgar. On the one hand, there is the contribution of rhetoric

and learning—poetic words, archaisms, philosophical terms, Hellenisms;

on the other hand, the contribution of spoken Latin. A good deal of

his vocabulary he shares, not with the more literary authors, but with

Varro, Columella and the elder Pliny. From trade come such words as

_botularius_ (“sausage-maker”) and _libitinarius_ (“undertaker”); and

from agriculture, such as _folliculus_ (“pod”) and _retorridus_ (“parched

up”). There are colloquial words like _pilicrepus_ (“ball-player,” found

in inscriptions), _scordalus_ (“brawler,” in elder Seneca and Petronius),

and diminutives like _centunculus_ (“a little patch”). There are also

rare words, not known before Seneca, like _collatrare_ (“yelp at”) and

_perpessicius_ (“much enduring”). To other words he gives a new meaning.

Traces of Seneca’s influence are found in Juvenal and Tacitus; and early

Christian writers[677] like Tertullian, Lactantius and Jerome were

attracted by the spirit and words of one who was for long believed to

have corresponded with St. Paul. His prose style is definitely echoed in

Tertullian’s _Apologeticum_; for its peroration, fiercely triumphant in

its eulogy upon martyrdom, contains antitheses, exclamations, historical

instances and short crisp utterances which ring as if they might have

come from a converted Seneca.

If only as the exponent of Latin Stoicism, Seneca deserves lasting fame.

The spirit of the later Stoicism can be gathered from his Latin essays

and epistles, and in Greek from the _Discourses of Epictetus_ recorded

by Arrian and from the _Meditations_ composed by the Emperor Marcus

Aurelius. In the eyes of all three, the Stoic mode of thought guarantees

healing for the wounds of life. But internal peace can be attained only

by hard-won victories over self and over circumstance, by persevering

progress towards virtue—a progress which, Seneca wisely insists, is in

itself virtue—by trust in Providence, by acceptance of the Divine Will,

by harmonizing oneself with Nature. The precept of Epictetus, “endure

and abjure” (ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου), expresses much of this ascetic faith.

The tranquillity which the stricter Stoics of Greece would confine to

the perfect sage is, in the more sensible Roman spirit, claimed by

Seneca for him also who is advancing and has made some headway. It is a

hard fight to advance, he says, but “you are sworn to make yourself a

good man”[678] and the very striving is virtue.[679] This is typical of

the Roman rejection of the more pedantic early Stoicism. In Seneca the

system has become an enlightened and broadened one, too practical to

mistake paradoxes for genuine intellectual or moral sustenance. So too

Seneca’s breadth of sympathy indicates the widening of the moral ideal;

for cosmopolitanism has transcended the old opposition between Greek

and barbarian. The claims of others are infinitely heightened, when in

each fellow-man there is recognized, notwithstanding imperfections, some

spark of an all-pervading divine essence. Forbearance, kindliness and

true humanity are the fruits of such a creed: so out of a once rigid and

unbending system disdainful of feeling, intolerant of human frailty, was

evolved the Neo-Stoicism which could not but be moved by the sorrows and

follies of the world, and could not look upon a distressed gladiator or

a sick slave without seeing a kinsman deserving commiseration. It was a

great gain for the world that at Rome the strength of Stoicism had grown

less harsh, its exaltation less arrogant, its integrity less priggish,

its calm less unfeeling.

At first it is not unnatural that in the restrained and self-confident

Stoic philosophy a reader might seem to encounter a remote and even

repellent quality as of a system too unreal to be literally practical.

Yet in fact this is a mistake. The Roman Stoicism of the first century

was no mere theoretic elaboration: it was a faith which offered genuine

consolation amidst desperate afflictions. It could confer upon a believer

the victory in defiance of the most malignant arrows of fortune. In such

a faith some men could steel themselves, for the sake of the state,

to help the work of government in trying times, and some could die

triumphant over human injustice. History bears the clearest testimony to

the inspiring vitality of the creed; and it is from this standpoint that

one can best observe the human side of Seneca. Behind his preaching of

Stoic doctrine there worked a powerful earnestness which goes far to

justify the iteration of counsels throughout the massive corpus of his

treatises and letters.

The very seriousness of this philosophy, then, related it to life: it

is in part the outcome of actual and often dangerous experience in dark

times. It is a seriousness which makes the lighter human touches rarer

and more precious. No doubt the sage cannot descend so easily to earth

from an Olympian superiority as the ordinary _littérateur_ who may be

content to view mankind from the plain rather than from the heights; and

one realizes that is was easier for Cicero and Pliny to unbend in their

_Letters_ than for Seneca in his. It is, then, all the more to the credit

of Seneca’s good sense, as it certainly adds to his interest, that,

though the _Letters_ primarily subserve the purpose of permanent ethical

instruction, he is by no means wanting in “small talk” and humour. The

same breadth of mind that saved him from being a rigid dogmatist taught

him to discover material for comment everywhere—vegetarianism, study in

rowdy surroundings, slops for an invalid, the invasion of a dining-room

by kitchen appliances to keep dainties hot.[680] He can make fun of

and, at the same time, defend the Stoic annihilation of emotion: with

a touch of mischief he reports the young man’s question to Panaetius,

“Should the good Stoic fall in love?”[681] Never interested in logic,

he jests at syllogisms more than once:[682] they are not applicable, he

insists, to the supreme question of human good and human conduct: “such

subtleties make savants rather than saints” (_non faciunt bonos sed

doctos_). A similarly jocular vein at the expense of pedants runs through

his letter on virtues viewed as _animalia_,[683] where he leads the Stoic

argument by a _reductio ad absurdum_ to the conclusion that to make a

wise speech in the senate is an “animal.” Referring to his sea-sickness,

he remarks facetiously that if he had regularly to be put ashore, as he

was after one brief trip on the Bay of Naples, then a voyage anywhere

would take him twice as long as Ulysses’s wanderings lasted, and with

mock seriousness he affects to think that we owe the elaborate _Odyssey_

ultimately to the hero’s _mal de mer_.[684] So, too, he drops the

philosophic mantle to give us vivid pictures like that of his picnic with

a friend,[685] or a tissue of exaggerations in satirizing the luxury

of the day: “We have reached such a pitch of luxury that we decline to

tread on anything but precious stones” (_eo deliciarum peruenimus ut nisi

gemmas calcare nolimus_, lxxxvi. 7).

Such ordinary human notes strengthen Seneca’s power over us when we turn

to his grave and elevated thought. He does not work out systematically

for us the whole body of the Stoic doctrines; but few can rise after

reading in his books without feeling the better for it. A tonic bracing

of the spirit comes from the serene forbearance advocated in the _De

Ira_; the uncalculating generosity so estimably pervading the _De

Beneficiis_; the princely, if Stoically guarded, clemency recommended in

the _De Clementia_; the widely sympathetic understanding of human nature

evident in the _Letters_; the virtuous conquest of desire proclaimed

as the secret of bliss in _The Happy Life_; and the complete mastery

of the soul indispensable for _The Constancy of the Wise Man_ or for

_The Tranquillity of the Mind_. The closing words of his last letter to

Lucilius show the true Stoic independence of worldly standards:

I shall give you in brief a rule whereby to measure yourself,

whereby to gauge your development: in that day you will come to

your own, when you realize that the successful are of all men

most miserable. Good-bye.

MISCELLANEOUS LEARNING

After the study of achievement so manysided as Seneca’s in philosophy,

oratory and natural science (apart from his contribution to satire and

drama), a brief sketch of contemporary learning is appropriate. In

history the Neronian period did not shine. The impressions of Domitius

Corbulo in Asia, of C. Suetonius Paulinus in Mauretania, of Ti. Claudius

Balbillus in Egypt, and of L. Antistius Vetus in Germany made little

mark. Agrippina, the emperor’s mother, composed memoirs which the elder

Pliny and Tacitus quote. Works by jurists were not directly literary; but

they were so frequently influential on Roman thought and its formulation

that it is right to record the names of the younger Nerva, father of

the future emperor; Proculus from whom the “Proculians” took their name,

and, among their “Sabinian” rivals, C. Cassius Longinus. Much philosophy

continued to be written in Greek, as was done by Musonius Rufus and by

Cornutus, who also was the author of works on grammar and rhetoric. But

Latin was employed for philosophical purposes not only by Seneca but by

Papirius Fabianus and Celsus. Stoicism, whether in formal exposition

or in the actual lives of its professors, became one of the mighty

intellectual and moral forces of the time. The independence of spirit,

too, which the system fostered made its followers suspect: some of their

tenets might readily be misconstrued as those of a political opposition,

while a defiantly courageous manner of dying gave to many victims of an

emperor’s cruelty a semi-religious halo of martyrdom. Among such victims

were Barea Soranus, and Paetus Thrasea of Patavium, author of a panegyric

upon the younger Cato which Plutarch used. Thrasea’s ruin in A.D. 66

involved his son-in-law Helvidius Priscus in banishment; but Helvidius

returned when Galba had succeeded Nero, impeached twice unsuccessfully

his father-in-law’s accuser, and brought upon himself a second exile

under Vespasian.

It was to Nero that Caesius Bassus dedicated his metrical treatise: he

may, as mentioned elsewhere, be identical with Persius’s poet-friend.

Scholarship was also represented by Q. Asconius Pedianus (A.D. 3-88)

and M. Valerius Probus of Berytus. The former proved himself a thorough

investigator into the subject-matter and meaning of classical writers

in his _Liber contra obtrectatores Vergilii_ and his commentaries upon

Cicero’s speeches. We possess, in impaired form, his commentaries on

five speeches.[686] One most valuable portion is his introduction to the

_Pro Milone_. On Cicero’s Verrine orations notes of a very different

character, as superficial as the genuine Asconius is satisfying and as

grammatical as he is historical, have come down along with the other

comments, but are usually referred to a “Pseudo-Asconius” of the fifth

century. The eminent grammarian Valerius Probus[687] belongs to the

Neronian period, though he outlived it by many years.[688] His provincial

education had brought him under the influence of older Latin books, and

as a teacher in Rome he retained that interest in the style of the past

which guaranteed linguistic equipment for his editions of Latin authors.

He left a miscellany of notes upon archaic Latin;[689] and Gellius, who

often cites him, shows that he delivered lectures to his pupils on the

subject. He elucidated, with critical notes, Terence, Lucretius, Virgil,

Horace and Persius.

The oratory of the day recalls the names of the Stoic speakers in the

Senate, Paetus Thrasea and Helvidius Priscus. Eprius Marcellus made

himself notorious as a _delator_; the rhetorician Julius Africanus we

shall find praised by Quintilian[690] and coupled with Domitius Afer;

Galerius Trachalus had his talents used by the Emperor Otho in the

composition of speeches.[691] Fabricius Veiento, who was accused in

A.D. 62 for his satiric codicils directed against senators and priests,

was banished by Nero, and had his books burned, but was in Rome again

practising delation under Domitian. Among the professors of rhetoric

were Clodius Quirinalis from Arelate (Arles); Antonius Liberalis who

maintained a feud with Palaemon; and Verginius Flavus, the eminent

teacher, who had Persius for a pupil.[692]

CHAPTER IV

SENECAN SATIRE AND POETRY: DRAMA OF THE AGE

_Apocolocyntosis_—A summary—Title and conclusion—Spirit and

purpose of the skit—Menippean qualities—Style and metres.

Seneca’s short poems—The nine tragedies—Authenticity—When

written—Not intended for the stage—Contrast with Greek

spirit—Sources of the tragedies—Deviations in plot from Greek

originals—Influence of previous Latin dramatists—Influence

of Euripides—Outstanding defects—The unintentionally

ludicrous—Effective qualities of style—Thrust-and-parry

lines—The epigrammatic—Poetry—Philosophical

passages—Stoicism—Roman colour—Metre—Seneca’s influence

on Italian and French drama—Seneca and Elizabethan

tragedy—Transmission of stock characters and horrors—A quieter

stream of influence.

The _Octauia_ play—Date and authorship—Historical

content—Misplaced erudition.

Comic drama of the age—Emperor and theatre—Curiatius Maternus

and other tragic poets.

SENECAN SATIRE, POETRY AND DRAMA

The _Apocolocyntosis_,[693] or “pumpkinification” of the Emperor

Claudius, being, as a Menippean Satire, to some extent in verse, is a

convenient link between Seneca the prose-writer and Seneca the poet.

Many light and flippant touches in this skit, coupled with the metrical

facility shown when prose is dropped, enable us to believe that he could

have also written the verse-epigrams ascribed to him. A summary may

convey some notion of its contents and spirit.

“I wish,” he begins, “to record the proceedings in heaven on October

13th in the new year which opens this fortunate era. No concession is to

be made to malice or favour. It’s simple truth.” Then the author pokes

fun at historians, philosophers and poets. One may inquire if this is

to be a true story of Claudius’s translation? But who ever demanded

witnesses from a historian? The exact hour of day? Well, you may

expect philosophers will say the same thing before clocks will! Was it

afternoon? Oh, these poets! not content with raving about a sunrise or a

sunset, they must interfere with our noontide:

Now Phoebus’ car had passed its mid career.

That was the very time when Claudius lay dying, and he was an

unconscionable time over it. Mercury had to remonstrate with one of the

Fates: “Isn’t the poor wretch ever to have a rest? Why, it’s sixty-four

years since he started gasping. What grudge have you got against him and

the nation?” But Clotho remarked, “I wanted to give him a tiny bit of

time longer, till he should confer Roman citizenship on the two or three

left without it!...” However, she consents to leave a few foreigners in

the world, just as a kernel (_in semen_):

Round the foul spindle then she twined the thread

And snapped the life-span of Prince Dunderhead.

Meanwhile Lachesis has a new golden thread to manipulate—Nero’s; and

Apollo is there to chant approval:

Ye Fates, cut not this short: let him outlive

The span of mortal life, like me in face,

Like me in grace, my peer in voice and song....

“Nothing loth to look kindly on a handsome man, Lachesis went on spinning

by the handful, and presented Nero with many extra years, on her own

(_annos de suo donat_). Just then Claudius bubbled forth (_ebulliit_)

the ghost, and consequently ceased to convey even the impression of

being alive! He breathed his last as he was listening to a company of

comedians, so there’s good reason for dreading _them_!”

(_The scene shortly after changes._)

“Now listen to what took place in heaven. My informant will guarantee

my accuracy (_fides penes auctorem erit_). Jupiter had got word that

a person had arrived—a rather tall person and rather grey: he was

threatening something or other, it was thought, for he was constantly

shaking his head: he dragged the right foot. They’d asked what his

country was, but couldn’t make his answer out. He wasn’t a Greek; he

wasn’t a Roman—didn’t belong to any known race, in fact.”

So, at Jupiter’s suggestion, Hercules, who had travelled the whole

world over, was told off to interview this outlandish stranger. Greatly

troubled, Hercules thought a thirteenth labour was upon him! Still, as

the new arrival looked like some sort of human being (_uisus est quasi

homo_), he tried him with Greek—a line from Homer. Claudius was delighted

to find savants (_philologos_) in heaven; there would therefore be

some room for his own works on history! So he answered in Greek, and,

Roman-like, claimed Troy as his place of origin. Unluckily for this

remark, the Goddess Malaria, who had attended him from Rome, interrupted

with a flat contradiction, “It’s an absolute lie. He was born at Lyons:

he’s a genuine Gaul: so, of course, he took Rome—the proper thing for a

Gaul to do!” Thereat Claudius blazed out in anger and (like the Queen

of Hearts in _Alice in Wonderland_) shouted, “Off with her head!” But

you might have fancied the bystanders were his own freedmen for all the

notice they took! Thereupon Hercules called him to order: “You just mark

my words. Drop playing the silly ass. You’ve come where mice nibble iron.

Make a clean breast of it—else I’ll bang the _sottise_ (_alogias_) out

of you.” And to look more awful, Hercules assumed the tragic rôle, and

declaimed:

What place of birth you vaunt, be quick to show;

Else felled to earth this club shall lay you low.

This club has often butchered fiery kings!

Why babble these uncertain murmurings?...

Claudius’s reply, as far as it could be understood, was an attempt to

mollify Hercules, reminding him of days spent by the emperor on law-cases

near his temple.

His success in this attempt must have been described in a passage now

lost; for we are suddenly present at the debate in heaven concerning

Claudius’s eligibility for deification. Some deity is quizzing Hercules

on his proposal:

“Only do tell us what sort of a god you want that creature made. He

can’t be an Epicurean god; for such a one _ne dérange ni soi-même ni

les autres_ (οὔτε αὐτὸς πρᾶγμα ἔχει τι οὔτε ἄλλοις παρέχει). There’s

a bit of the Stoic deity in him, I can see; for he’s got neither heart

nor head.... Is this person to make our crooked ways straight? Why,

he doesn’t know what to do in his own bedroom, and now he ‘scans the

purlieus of the sky’—wants to be a god! He’s not content with having a

temple in Britain and with savages for worshippers!”

At this point Jupiter “spies strangers” in the House, and in accordance

with the rules Claudius has to retire. Janus, on being asked to express

his views, makes a long speech too fast for the shorthand writer to

keep up with (_quae notarius persequi non potuit_). Arguing that the

honour of being a god must not be given to the _canaille_, he proposes

a motion of exclusion in general terms. The next speaker, Diespiter,

moves that Claudius be made a god in view of his relationship to Augustus

and Augusta, and in view of Romulus’s need for a comrade in devouring

boiled turnips! Many speeches are made and Hercules canvasses the gods in

Claudius’s favour; but Augustus opposes in an oration of scathing irony:

“I call you to witness, Conscript Fathers, that since I was made a god,

I have never uttered a word. I always mind my own business. But I can no

longer disguise my feelings. Was it for this that I secured peace on land

and sea?... Words fall short of my indignation.... This man, Conscript

Fathers, who looks as though he couldn’t disturb a fly, used to kill folk

as readily as a dog squats down.”

Claudius is then denounced as a murderer of Augustus’s descendants, and

is apostrophized with the question why he passed death-sentences in cases

that were untried:

“Where is this usual? It’s not done in heaven. Look at Jupiter. He’s

been ruler for ever so many years, but Vulcan’s the only person whose

leg he has broken. He lost his temper with his wife and hung her up, but

he didn’t kill her, did he?... Who’s going to worship Claudius as a god?

Who’s to believe in him? Make a god of such as he is, and nobody will

believe you are gods yourselves!”

Augustus’s motion for deportation is carried, and Claudius is haled

off to the lower regions by Mercury. As they pass down the Via Sacra,

they can see Claudius’s funeral in progress—a lovely (_formosissimum_)

funeral and an extravagant one, obviously the obsequies of a god (_plane

ut scires deum efferri_). And now Claudius realizes that he is dead,

since there is din enough for him to hear the anapaestic dirge:

Pour out your weepings, your sorrows make known:

Deafen the forum with many a groan!...

O weep for the dead, for none had the head

To settle suits faster, and every point master,

Tho’ only one side of the case had been tried,

And oft he had heard from neither a word!

Who now will be drudge, and thro’ the year judge?

All this was most enjoyable. Claudius would have liked to watch his

funeral longer, but he is hurried off below. Now, who should be in the

lower world to meet him but his freedman Narcissus, spick and span,

fresh from his bath? He had got ahead by a short cut (_antecesserat

compendiaria_), and says he, “What have _gods_ to do with mere mortals?”

But Mercury breaks in: “Be sharp and tell them we’re coming.” Narcissus

flies off faster than you could say the word. Everything slopes in hell,

you must know: it’s easy going down. So Claudius, gouty though he was,

arrived at Pluto’s door in a twinkle. Cerberus, “the hundred-headed

brute” to use Horace’s phrase (_ut ait Horatius, belua centiceps_),

was on the scene; and it was a little trying to face a shaggy black

monster-dog after being used to a small whitish pet-bitch (_subalbam

canem in deliciis habere adsueuerat_). But Narcissus shouted the

announcement “Claudius is coming!” and immediately there was a throng

of his victims to give him a reception! Then, as they crowd round,

consuls, prefects, relatives and freedmen, the absent-minded emperor

remarks, “_Voici mes amis partout!_ How did _you_ come here?” to which

they answer, “Who but yourself sent us, you assassin of all your friends?

To court with him!” So he is brought before Aeacus, and statistics are

produced of those he had put to death: and Aeacus, being a person of

perfect fairness, judges Claudius on Claudian principles; that is, he

hears only the case for the prosecution! The verdict is “Guilty.” What

should the sentence be? A new sort of penalty is wanted, and, after

discussion, Aeacus decrees that Claudius must rattle dice for ever

in a box with no bottom. The convict had already begun this fruitless

task, when all of a sudden Caligula appeared on the scene to claim him

as a slave. Witnesses prove that they had seen Caligula thrashing him:

so clearly he must have been in servitude, and is therefore assigned

to Caligula, who gives him as a gift to that most righteous judge,

Aeacus: and Aeacus hands him over to his Greek freedman Menander to be a

law-clerk in attendance upon cases for evermore.

So the satire ends. Some critics will not allow the author to be funny

in his own way, and they express dissatisfaction. They gravely point

out that Claudius is not turned into a pumpkin, a metamorphosis which

they understood was promised in the title: therefore they urge that

perhaps the real conclusion is lost, or perhaps the real pumpkinification

belonged to another pamphlet altogether.[694] There is no need to be

so literal: Claudius, an imperial applicant for divine honours, is

sufficiently metamorphosed when he is degraded from heaven to a trumpery

post in hell, and when throughout the satire he is treated as a silly

pumpkin-head[695] of a man. The title in the best MS. (Sangallensis)

is _Diui Claudii incipit Apotheosis_ (spelt Ἀποθήοσις) _Annei Senece

per satiram_, which does not, at first sight, square with the title

_Apocolocyntosis_ recorded by Dio Cassius.[696] Yet, on examination,

the MS. title betrays a confirmatory corruption. It is tautological,

as it stands, for one does not deify a deified emperor; all, however,

is intelligible if it be, as Bücheler guessed, a contamination of an

original superscription _Diui Claudii Apocolocyntosis_ with a gloss,

_Apotheosis per satiram_, to explain the parody implicit in the rare word.

The conclusion has been otherwise impeached.[697] Some have thought the

Caligula episode illogical after Claudius had been sentenced to perpetual

dice-playing: others have thought the end too abrupt to be effective.

Logic, however, is not to be demanded from a merry jest, and the fun

lies exactly in its inconsequent suddenness. So far is the _dénoûment_

from being pointless that in reality its point is double. Firstly, it

represents a ruler who had yielded excessive power at his court to

freedmen, as being now adjudged a slave, and transferred, like the

veriest chattel, to be a freedman’s underling; secondly, it represents

one who had a passion for acting the judge on earth as doomed to remain a

mere law-clerk (_a cognitionibus_) in the infernal regions till the end

of time. Several references to Claudius’s freedmen in the body of the

satire are in keeping with this conclusion, especially the ironical gibe

at their contemptuous disobedience;[698] similarly, there are previous

references to his performances in law which make the finale perfectly

appropriate.[699]

The question of Seneca’s authorship involves different problems. Is

the satire a likely product of his genius? How could he consistently

write such an attack after his grovelling adulation of Claudius in the

_Consolatio ad Polybium_,[700] and after composing the funeral laudation

for Nero to pronounce at the ceremonial sanctification of Claudius?[701]

The two questions of ability and consistency must be kept separate.

About Seneca’s versatility and control of brilliant style there can be

no doubt, while humorous and satiric qualities are not wanting in his

_Letters_: about his consistency it must be allowed that this never was

his strong point. Few philosophers are more vulnerable than the Stoic who

amassed wealth and the moralist who drafted exculpatory orations to be

delivered by a tyrant. Modern feeling cannot but see indecency in this

bitter invective against a deceased sovereign. Seneca laughs mercilessly

at the dead emperor’s frailties, mental and physical—his pedantic

stupidity, offensive absent-mindedness, capricious temper, unreasoning

tyranny, shambling gait, and stammering utterance. The unprepossessing

picture is painted with increasing bias until in Augustus’s denunciation

of Claudius the author takes full opportunity for venting his spleen.

There is no intention of being any fairer than Aristophanes was to

Euripides or Socrates. One must expect nothing about the better aspects

of Claudius’s policy or scholarship, or about the building schemes

of his reign, nor any pity for the deep damnation of his taking off.

Cunningly his contemptuous dismissal by the Fates is set in juxtaposition

with Apollo’s praise of his young successor. A feeble dotard had gone:

with the new _princeps_ a golden era would return. Ignoble we may call

it, but it can at any rate be explained. Years before, to suit his own

longings for recall from exile, Seneca had resorted to gross flattery

of Claudius in addressing Polybius; he had by request composed a formal

speech on the dead emperor to suit the immediate state-occasion; but

now, shortly after, he was quick enough to see that no reverence was

shown to Claudius’s memory. His own oration, spoken by Nero, had been

received with undisguised merriment when it mentioned “the foresight and

sagacity”[702] of the departed prince; and Nero’s conscience over the

poisoning of Claudius troubled the emperor so little that he came to

joke[703] about mushrooms as food for the gods—had not Claudius gone by

that means to heaven? On the whole, however, it suited the poisoners,

Nero and Agrippina, that Seneca should take an opportunity of adopting

their official version of the death and say nothing awkward about

mushrooms. At the same time, if he depreciated Claudius and magnified

Nero, so much the better: the predecessor would be the less missed, and

the successor the more commended on the threshold of his reign. So at

last Seneca’s chance came for unmasking his true attitude. He detested

Claudius:[704] he had an old score to wipe out: he probably felt a

sincere contempt for his pedantry: and thus a clever and venomous

pasquinade was written by a man of flesh and blood, a Spaniard who could

let his feelings—especially those of hatred—go. It rings as if it must

have been written very soon after the official deification which it

burlesques, _i.e._ soon after the middle of October, A.D. 54.[705] The

latest occurrence to which the author refers is the death of the imperial

freedman Narcissus, whose removal followed hard upon that of his master.

The idea of a visit to the other world was familiar in ancient epic and

drama, and could be made to serve either a serious or a comic purpose.

The gods are treated by Seneca cavalierly; but Lucilius, Lucretius,

even Cicero, had accustomed readers to such literary irreverence, and

in Seneca no systematic attack on state religion was contemplated.

Combined with the spirit and form of Menippean satire, such a framework

and such an attitude gave excellent promise of burlesque effect; for the

Menippean satire, thanks to Cynic traditions, encouraged the outspoken,

the abrupt, the inconsequent, the startling in manner. Inherited from

Menippus of Gadara and transmitted through Varro, it could be employed

as an irresponsible and defiant medley. Seneca’s satire is less akin to

the generally good-natured outlook of Varro[706] than to that Cynicism

in Menippus which is the secret of the Gadarene’s attraction for

Lucian.[707] But while Seneca shared in the spirit and conventions of

the traditional Menippean, his place in this succession must not obscure

his originality. The _Apocolocyntosis_ is far too fresh and lively, too

direct in its satiric bearing upon an actual personality, to be anything

but work of an individual stamp. Obviously it is in many respects a

contrast to the contemporary Menippean of Petronius. It had its own

descendants, too: long after the classic age, two definite imitations of

Seneca’s satire appeared; one, Lipsius’s _Satura Menippea_ towards the

end of the sixteenth century; the other Cunaeus’s _Sardi Venales_ in 1612.

Critics have differed about the style of the _Apocolocyntosis_ in

comparison with that of Seneca’s philosophical works. But two things have

to be remembered: Menippean Satire does not claim the finish of style

that suits philosophy; on the other hand, so expert a writer as Seneca

had the ability to produce a fresh type of prose, if necessary, and to

sprinkle it with homely proverbs, colloquialisms, slang plebeian grammar

and a plebeian want of syntax.[708] Adroitness in turning from higher to

lower style is nowhere better seen than in his contemporary Petronius.

The versification is that of a skilled hand. The interspersed hexameters

are comparable in quality with those of the epigrams and minor poems

ascribed to Seneca. Behind the anapaestic dirge on Claudius lies the

author’s facility gained in writing choral odes for his tragedies,[709]

and even the fourteen iambic _senarii_ exhibit the same fondness for

anapaests[710] which marks his dramatic speeches and dialogues.

* * * * *

Seneca as poet must be judged not only by his dramas but by a collection

of brief pieces[711] in the _Anthologia Latina_ compiled at Carthage in

the sixth century. Of the opening seventy-three poems three are assigned

by the MSS. to Seneca; but most, or indeed all, of the seventy-three may

be his. Except a few in hendecasyllables, the poems are elegiac. They

touch on miscellaneous themes—the mutability of things, a quiet life,

the hardships of exile, republican heroes like Cato and Pompey, the true

friendship of such as Crispus (presumably Passienus Crispus, the able

orator who was consul a second time in A.D. 44), the false friendship of

the great, imperial victories, luxury, riches, and the evils of civil

warfare. While the reader is prepared for Stoic lines on simplicity of

life and the dissolution of the universe, he is perhaps surprised to

find erotic poems in the collection, until he realizes that Seneca was

no exception to the common practice whereby Romans amused themselves

with composing verses inferior in morality to their authors’ actual

behaviour.[712] Even in the amorous pieces, however, it is a moralist

that professes to speak—he sets limits to immodesty, and admires the

fair one who relies on natural rather than artificial charms (_naturae

simplicitate ualet_). There is, at the same time, in other poems much

that fits the true Seneca—lines to his native Corduba (xix.), a reference

to his two brothers (v. 14), and, elsewhere, to his little nephew,

plausibly identified with Lucan:

Our sweetly prattling Marcus will, I pray,

Challenge both uncles’ eloquence some day.[713]

He curses Corsica, the island

That terrifies at summer’s earliest glow,[714]

and can be yet crueller as the season advances. Amidst a plentiful lack

of blessings, there are only two things to find there, “the place of

exile and the exile’s self” (_exul et exilium_). He asks merely for an

undisturbed existence: “Let the praetorship fall to those who wish it,”

he says, and it is significant that Seneca had not risen higher than

quaestor before his banishment. His fulsome and repeated eulogies on

Claudius’s victories are partly redeemed by their romantic association

with distant Britain “severed by the dreary sea” (_uasto disiuncta

Britannia ponto_),

Where the chill constellation of the North

Outshineth aye the stars that do not set.[715]

The nine plays[716] ascribed to Seneca in the Codex Etruscus and other

MSS. of the same family are given in the following order: _Hercules_

(_Furens_), _Troades_, _Phoenissae_, _Medea_, _Phaedra_, _Oedipus_,

_Agamemnon_, _Thyestes_, _Hercules_ (_Oetaeus_). Inferior MSS. give the

alternative titles of _Thebais_ for _Phoenissae_ and _Hippolytus_ for

_Phaedra_. They add the _Octauia_, which cannot be by Seneca for reasons

to be mentioned later.

The testimony to the manysidedness of Seneca[717] is so strong that

there is no need to pay attention to Sidonius Apollinaris’s blunder in

separating Seneca the dramatist from Seneca the philosopher. It is true

that Quintilian does not give Seneca’s name in his list of dramatists;

but he certifies his interest in tragic diction (VIII. iii. 31), and

quotes part of a line from the _Medea_ as Seneca’s (IX. ii. 8). Six

plays, _Medea_, _Hercules Furens_, _Troades_, _Phaedra_, _Agamemnon_ and

_Thyestes_, are cited by Latin authors or grammarians. The remaining

three, _Oedipus_, _Phoenissae_ and _Hercules Oetaeus_ are, like the

others, regarded in the MSS. as by Seneca. These three have had their

authenticity attacked, but scholars generally accept all but portions

of the _Hercules Oetaeus_. This last play extends, as we have it, to

nearly 2000 lines, and its very length, along with echoes of previous

plays, arouses suspicion: further investigation into such a feature as

its double chorus (in which it resembles Seneca’s _Agamemnon_) or into

its change of scene leads to the conclusion that it is a patchwork due,

in part, to other hands than Seneca’s. The attribution of the plays as

a whole to Seneca is confirmed by internal evidence. The short pointed

_sententiae_ both in form and in expression resemble his prose: and there

are frequent parallels in thought, especially if, as often occurs, the

thought assumes a Stoic cast.[718]

The question when Seneca wrote the tragedies is one which has received

various and inconclusive answers. It has been dogmatically asserted[719]

that most of them were composed after 54 and none before 49.

Recently,[720] fresh emphasis has been laid on Quintilian’s recollection

of hearing _praefationes_ in which the propriety of a phrase for tragedy

was discussed between Seneca and Pomponius Secundus. The plausible

suggestion is made that these _praefationes_ were spoken, not written,

introductions to public readings of tragedies. Quintilian mentions the

incident as a reminiscence from his youth, and, as he was born about A.D.

35, this implies a date in the early fifties of the first century. The

point bears on the two problems whether Seneca’s dramas were meant for

the stage and when they were composed. It may be that some of Seneca’s

plays, like some by Secundus, were read, if they were not written, in the

early fifties, and a desire to foster in his pupil Nero an interest in

Greek adaptations might explain why Seneca should give tragic readings

about that period; but it does not follow that all the plays are to

be so dated. Pomponius Secundus had been in Germany in 50 and 51, and

his debate with Seneca may therefore have followed his return. He had,

however, produced plays or at least some kind of dramatic compositions

before, as we know from the storm raised against him in the theatre in

A.D. 47.[721] So too Seneca, who returned from banishment in 49, may have

written plays during his years of enforced leisure in Corsica. It is

not surprising that this is the period of his life to which prevailing

guess-work has ascribed the tragedies. But the problem appears insoluble:

there was abundant time for Seneca to have written tragedies even

before he was exiled, a man of over forty, and there are elements in

the tragedies more nearly akin to a clever student’s rhetoric than to

philosophical maturity. Nor would it be easy to disprove a contention

that some at least of the plays consisted of early material worked over

and touched up at a later date.

That Seneca intended his dramas for the stage is incredible. No doubt

there were still in the Neronian period tragic representations, but many

of Seneca’s elaborate speeches would have been unsuitable in a theatre,

and some scenes would not act as they stand. It was one thing for Seneca

merely to imagine Medea slaying her children in public, but another thing

to have this shown before actual Roman audiences, accustomed though

they were to horrors. The author’s retention of three actors is not so

much an attempt to meet theatrical conditions as an adherence to Greek

convention. On the other hand, the rhetorical dexterity and descriptive

power exhibited in the tragedies suited the taste of literary coteries

before whom dramatic compositions could be read with effect.

As an adapter of Greek tragedy, Seneca was attracted most to the blend

of realism and romance which characterises Euripides. Out of nine plays

his model is definitely Euripides in four, _Hercules Furens_, _Troades_,

_Medea_ and _Phaedra_. Besides, in the imperfect and inconsistent remains

of the _Phoenissae_, Euripidean material is drawn from the Greek play of

that name, though there are also contributions from Aeschylus’s _Seven

Against Thebes_ and Sophocles’s _Oedipus at Colonus_. On Aeschylus was

based the _Agamemnon_, and on Sophocles the _Oedipus_ as well as the

drearily long _Hercules Oetaeus_, whose authenticity has most been

called in question. The _Thyestes_ has no equivalent among extant Greek

plays. These Latin plays are in no sense versions of the Greek: Seneca

did not feel himself bound to adhere to the original plot in detail, but

either introduced departures or followed Roman predecessors in their

departures.[722] The essential contrast, however, is one of spirit, which

no reader can fail to realize, if he turns from Aeschylus’s _Agamemnon_,

Sophocles’s _Oedipus Tyrannus_ and Euripides’s _Medea_ to their Senecan

descendants. In the Latin plays one has entered a new world, where genius

has been replaced by cleverness, and an eminently classic directness

of expression by rhetoric. Despite the recurrence of philosophical

sentiments, there is no longer felt, like a pervasive force, the old

Aeschylean preoccupation with fundamental themes of life and destiny, an

atmosphere of altitude in thought and emotion whence a poet can survey

the deepest problems concerning God and man, sin and suffering; there is

no longer that combination of serenity and of tense drama which makes

the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ one of the greatest of plays; nor is there any

longer the wide Euripidean humanity to win full sympathy for the outraged

wifehood of Medea.

The most cursory comparison of Seneca’s plays with extant originals will

indicate the nature and sometimes the object of his alterations. The

_Hercules Furens_ dramatises the hero’s madness which is with terrible

irony turned upon his own wife and children after his triumphant return

from the underworld in time to rescue them from the tyrant Lycus. For the

sentence of death against the absent hero’s sons in Euripides the Roman

dramatist has substituted a compulsory, and defiantly refused, offer of

marriage from the tyrant to Hercules’s wife Megara; and he has introduced

Theseus, not towards the close, as in the Greek play, but much earlier,

so as to facilitate a long description of adventures shared by Theseus

with Hercules during their raid upon the infernal regions. Another

significant contrast is that Seneca treats Hercules’s slaying of wife and

children as an exhibited part of the dramatic action, and not as material

for narration in accord with Greek usage.

The _Troades_, on afflictions which befell the captive dames of Troy,

combines material from the play of the same name by Euripides with parts

of his _Hecuba_. In fact, Seneca’s play is cited under the title of

_Hecuba_ by Probus. The sacrifice of the princess Polyxena, which the

ghost of Achilles demands shall be made at his tomb before the Greeks

sail away, is based on the _Hecuba_. To it Seneca adds from the _Troades_

the Greek precautionary execution of Astyanax, the little son of Hector

and Andromache. The extent of Seneca’s originality in what is one of

his best plays could not be absolutely assessed without more knowledge

than we are ever likely to obtain of two lost plays by Sophocles—the

_Polyxena_ and the _Captive Women_ (Αἰχμαλωτίδες).

The presence among Accius’s plays of an _Astyanax_ and a _Troades_ raises

the question of a possible influence of the older Roman tragic writers

upon Seneca. It is certain that in his prose works Seneca occasionally

cites them, either from direct knowledge or indirectly through Cicero.

Some doubt may be felt whether earlier Roman tragedy retained all the

prestige ascribed to it by Ribbeck; for, though it may not have entirely

vanished from the stage, the taste of the Neronian age was even more

pronounced than that of the Augustan in regarding it as old-fashioned and

uncouth. If the fragments of Accius indicate departures from Euripides

in which Seneca resembles him, this does not prove positively the

influence of the earlier Latin poet: they may have used a common source

in Sophocles. At best, however, all this is conjecture, though it has

been gravely made material for learned tractates.[723] There remains

the obligation to remember that one need not find a source for every

departure made by Seneca from extant Greek plays. He is entitled to

credit for a measure of originality and a desire to entertain readers

or hearers with inventive variations of his own on a familiar plot as

well as with ingenious rhetorical points. This is his express theory of

literary borrowing; for he advocates, it will be remembered, a bee-like

diligence in blending borrowed materials into a new and distinctive

flavour, so that even if the original source is manifest, the product

shall be something different.[724]

The fragmentary _Phoenissae_ presents puzzling features. The title

suggests that Seneca contemplated importing from the Greek a chorus

of Phoenician damsels. Its 664 lines fall into two portions. The

earlier portion presents, as in Sophocles’s _Oedipus at Colonus_, the

self-blinded and self-exiled king wandering under the guidance of his

daughter Antigone, who has vowed never to desert him. With a rhetorical

echo of Roman Stoicism, he claims volubly the right of self-murder, a

right which, during three years of misery, he has not exercised and

which Antigone is at pains to refute by argument. A sudden break, where

a choral ode might have been expected, leads to a brief episode in which

Oedipus bitterly prays that his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, at war

with each other, may act worthily of such a miserable father. From l.

363 a new episode, partly akin to the situation in Aeschylus’s _Seven

against Thebes_, represents Antigone as now in Thebes, no longer with

her father, but with her mother Jocasta, who has not committed suicide

as in Sophocles’s _Oedipus Tyrannus_ or in Seneca’s _Oedipus_, and whose

feelings are torn between the two brothers at enmity:

But though I love both sons with equal warmth—

Where pulls the stronger cause and poorer luck,

There bends a heart that ever aids the weak.

Woe makes the sufferer dearer to his kin.[725]

The hopelessness of her attempt to conciliate the pair is seen in

Eteocles’s theory of power which is propounded, and in Senecan manner

expanded, towards the close of the fragment:

Who fears being hated wills not to be king.[726]

A reference to the literature[727] on the _Phoenissae_ shows how some

have held these passages are excerpts from one or more completed dramas;

others that they are fragments of one or more dramas never completed;

others again that they are only dramatic studies or sketches not designed

to be worked up into play-form.

The main differences of plot-construction which distinguish Seneca’s

_Medea_ from Euripides’s play are that, for the chance visit of King

Aegeus to Corinth when he promises to protect Medea during her imminent

exile, Seneca substitutes a scene in which Medea’s wonder-working powers

are described; and that, while in the Greek play the children of Jason

and Medea are sentenced to exile along with their mother, in the Latin

she begs in vain to be allowed to take them with her. Jason’s confession

that he could not live without his children suggests to her the most

terrible part of her revenge:

Thus doth he love the boys? ’Tis well. He’s caught.

The spot for wounding him hath been laid bare.[728]

How far these and other changes either in plot-management or in

expression are due to Seneca himself is past finding out. Medea’s story,

dramatized half a dozen times in Greek, was a theme that attracted

several Latin writers. Long after Ennius and Accius it had been handled

by Ovid, both in the _Heroides_ and in a play now lost; later, in

Seneca’s time, it occupied the attention of his nephew, Lucan, and of

Curiatius Maternus. Seneca’s admiring imitations of Ovid, demonstrable

elsewhere in his writing, render it likely that here too he owed him much.

A subject not nearly so congenial to Roman tastes as Medea’s revenge

was the guilty passion of Queen Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus, an

almost Puritanic devotee of the chase, for whom life in the open air

meant everything and woman nothing. The extant version of this romantic

theme by Euripides is his famous _Hippolytus_ of 428 B.C., which has been

designated _Hippolytus Crowned_ (Ἱππόλυτος στεφανηφόρος or στεφανίας) to

distinguish it from his previous and less successful drama _Hippolytus

Veiled_ (Ἱππόλυτος καλυπτόμενος). It is an interesting literary point

that Seneca seems to have been attracted to the earlier version;[729]

for he restored in the plot of his _Phaedra_ what Euripides apparently

cancelled in deference to Athenian censure—the personal avowal of her

love by Phaedra to her stepson. In the extant play by Euripides the nurse

takes it upon herself to open Hippolytus’s eyes to the Queen’s feelings;

and, after his horrified recoil, the shame-stricken Phaedra strangles

herself, leaving a note with false charges against the innocent youth.

But in Seneca, as she has in person confessed her love, so in person does

she malign him to her husband Theseus; and so again, when Hippolytus has

met an undeserved death, it is Phaedra in person (not, as in Euripides,

the goddess Artemis) who reveals her crime and clears Hippolytus.

In incidents, structure, and spirit, the _Oedipus_ is a woeful falling

off from Sophocles’s thrilling development of the steps in the revelation

of the king as the unwitting murderer of his father. In Sophocles the

seer Teiresias is sent for in time of crisis, and, when forced to speak,

declares, though he is not believed, that Oedipus is the criminal sought

for: in Seneca much space is laboriously wasted upon the description of

gloomy sacrifices and necromancy. Instead of announcing, as in the Greek,

the suicide of the queen, Seneca towards the close brings face to face

the two chief victims of tragic circumstance, before Jocasta openly kills

herself. But the very construction of the play is inferior. Devoting over

300 lines to lyric portions and over 200 to details of sacrifices and

necromancy, the Roman writer has left himself only some 500 lines for the

disentanglement of a complicated dramatic story.

Equally disappointing, when contrasted with its renowned Greek original

by Aeschylus, is the _Agamemnon_. The disproportion of 1012 Latin lines

to 1673 Greek could be compensated for by nothing short of vastly

superior literary power; and of that there is no sign. The prevailing

absence of genuine thought and feeling in choric songs and invocations

based on a frigid mythology is in strong contrast to the profound

reflections in the choruses of Aeschylus. It may be that, as Leo

thinks,[730] this was Seneca’s first essay in drama, and the _Oedipus_

his second. In any case, the deviations from Aeschylus are noticeable.

Instead of the watchman, who in the Greek announces the beacon-sent

tidings of Troy’s capture, there is substituted a much more typically

Senecan figure—the ghost of Thyestes, filled with the spirit of revenge

against his hated brother Atreus, father of Agamemnon, and therefore

urging Aegisthus, the queen’s paramour, to perform his destined part

in the hour of Agamemnon’s triumphant return from war. Clytemnestra,

in the episode which follows, seems disposed to listen to the advice

of her nurse—another typically Senecan figure—and abandon the design

of murdering her husband. Less strong-willed than the Aeschylean

Clytemnestra, she is confirmed in her purpose by Aegisthus. A further

Senecan trait is the detailed description by the herald of the appalling

storm which overtook the Greeks on their homeward voyage. Appearing late

in the play (l. 782)—considerably after the band of captive Trojan women

led by Cassandra—Agamemnon makes his exit less than 30 lines further

on. One misses the famous and symbolic scene of the purple carpet in

Aeschylus: it is replaced by brief and unheeded warnings of Agamemnon’s

impending death from Cassandra. One misses too the single line of final

anguish from the victim within. The Latin play represents Cassandra,

not as murdered along with her captor, but as relating outside the

palace the crime that is being perpetrated. An exciting moment occurs

when Electra hurries from the palace and succeeds in sending her young

brother Orestes, the future avenger, away into safety under the care of

King Strophius, who has opportunely arrived in his chariot on his way

home from an Olympic victory. Aeschylus represents the boy as already

staying at the court of Strophius. His sister Electra, who at the close

of Seneca’s play is sent to imprisonment while Cassandra is sent to her

death, makes no appearance in the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus. Some of these

variations are foreshadowed in the fragments of Livius Andronicus’s

_Aegisthus_, and Accius’s _Clutemestra_[731]—a coincidence which suggests

either Seneca’s knowledge of the older Latin plays, or his use, in common

with Andronicus, of a Greek play by a dramatist junior to Aeschylus.

There is no surviving Greek original with which to compare Seneca’s

_Thyestes_, a gruesome play on the fiendish revenge wrought by Atreus

upon his ambitious and adulterous brother Thyestes. But some parts at

least of this dark story touching the accursed house of Pelops, son

of Tantalus, had been dramatized by Sophocles and Euripides in plays

entitled _Thyestes_. It was a common theme for Roman writers. Three at

least had handled it before Seneca: Ennius in his _Thyestes_; Accius in

his _Atreus_, containing the cynical words _oderint dum metuant_; and,

more famous still, Horace’s contemporary Varius in his _Thyestes_, which

was praised by Quintilian as worthy to be set beside any of the Greek

tragedies.[732] Whether the earlier Latin plays influenced Seneca or

not, it is barely conceivable that he should have missed reading Varius.

But even after Seneca the subject continued to attract. Under Vespasian,

Curiatius Maternus composed a _Thyestes_ as he did a _Medea_, and in the

_Dialogus de Oratoribus_ is rallied by Aper for wasting his time on such

material. Presumably the Ligurinus addressed in Martial III. 45, and

certainly the Bassus twitted by him in V. 53, had handled the theme of

Thyestes.

Occasional brilliance in expression and occasional loftiness in thought

fail to outweigh those bombastic utterances and those innovations in

incident or character-drawing which rob the _Hercules Oetaeus_ of the

delicacy exhibited by Sophocles in the _Trachiniae_. As we have it,

patched by Seneca himself or another,[733] it runs to a length of

almost 2000 lines—over 700 more than there are in Sophocles’s play.

In particular, the character of Deianira has suffered under Roman

hands. From a heroine who was in the beginning tenderly attracted with

Hellenic sweetness towards the captive Iole, and who was only by degrees

tempted into jealousy, she is transformed by Seneca into one who hates

at first sight—“like to one maddened and with lowering gaze,” in her

uncontrollable anger “a tigress” or “a Maenad,”[734] full of malevolence

towards rival and husband. It is impossible to give to Seneca’s Deianira

the sympathy felt for the broken-hearted wife in Sophocles when she

realizes too late that the promised love-charm must mean death to

Hercules. Other additions are the introduction of the hero’s mother,

Alcmena, to bewail his sufferings, and the incorporation into the

play of his deification at the burning pyre on the summit of Oeta.

There are, besides, signs that Seneca drew from Ovid’s _Heroides_ and

_Metamorphoses_.[735]

Even the brief glances here directed at Seneca’s deviations from

well-known Greek originals serve to suggest many of his characteristics.

His affinity with Euripides already indicated is significant. In truth,

Seneca may be said to have, in great measure, although with inferior

dramatic genius, pursued the path along which Euripides led. There was

much to link together those two spirits, separated though they were by

four centuries. There was above all a common interest in speculative

philosophy and in live humanity. Already in Euripides there is the

same craving after variety and effect, betrayed in situations intended

to be telling, in pathetic or even harrowing detail, in picturesque

descriptions, in smart argument, in sententious reflections. Here, if

in any field, Seneca’s rhetorical training equipped him. Even when he

breaks away from Euripides, he is but following his example in the

quest of variety. The more he changes, the more he imitates. It would,

therefore, be difficult to overrate the Euripidean influence upon him,

and this should be remembered in any estimate of Senecan influence upon

the literature of the Renaissance. On the other hand, while historically

carrying on a late development in Greek drama, Seneca is the child of his

own age, imbued with Latin rhetoric, and capable of using it alike with

imposing and with futile effect. It cannot be contested that in his free

treatment of borrowed material he leaves his individual impress for good

or bad upon his plays. There is a Senecan ring, for which he must himself

accept credit or discredit, in his curtailment or expansion of plots, his

elaboration of descriptions, his choice of impressive dramatic moments,

and in that aim at heightened colour which is betrayed by his fondness

for the weird, for ghosts, for incantations, and by his introduction of

death as an integral part of the action.

His faults lie on the surface. Mythological conventionality in plots

which were already, despite variations, fully exhausted in Greece;

feebleness of moral significance; monotony of character; lack of nature’s

infinite variety and lack of fidelity to much of the human nature

selected for portrayal—such defects hinder the plays from powerfully

enchaining the interest. The positive influence of rhetoric too is

responsible for many far-fetched dialogues, high-flown declamations,

and pedantic recitals. Seneca’s Medea may be regarded as an epitome of

his method. Barbaric though she is by hypothesis, she is yet in Seneca

too little a woman and too much a sorceress: we miss the more natural

evolution of character given in Euripides: from the outset her fury is

rhetoric, and, while we loathe the craven ingratitude of Jason, her

wrongs fail to move us fully, because her transports of insane hatred

are demonstrably manufactured. Medea can pause to weigh her anger

mythologically:

What Scylla, what Charybdis swallowing

Italian or Sicilian tides, or what

Mount Aetna o’er a gasping Titan poised,

Shall boil with threats like mine?[736]

Mythology is one of Seneca’s besetting perils. Jason is extravagantly

praised as handsomer than Bacchus or Apollo;[737] and the choric song

praying that he may never be a victim of misfortune like his Argonautic

comrades is too learnedly allusive,[738] though not so irrelevant as the

chorus upon the labours of Hercules which follows the tardy and brief

appearance of Agamemnon in the play bearing his name. One mythological

group of which Seneca never can have enough is that of the familiar

sufferers of punishment in Hades—Ixion, Sisyphus, Tantalus and Tityos:

mentioned in the _Medea_ without Tityos, they recur in at least four

other plays, and are taken over for literary ornament by the author of

the _Octauia_.[739] This may be a little tiresome, but nothing to the

dreary boredom which reigns over long speeches like Medea’s catalogue

of the charms needed for her murderous purposes, in which the author

is determined that his acquaintance with ancient geography and legend

shall be unmistakable. Some such over-elaboration, some such inability to

tell a plain and simple tale, explains the account, too ludicrous to be

pathetic, of the piecing together of the mutilated remains of Hippolytus

as if they were a jigsaw puzzle:

CHORUS. The scattered limbs of that torn frame do thou,

His sire, in order set, and straggling parts

Put duly back; here for his strong right hand

Is place; here set the left, skilled guide of reins;

Of his left flank I recognize the marks.

How great a part is missing for our tears!

THESEUS. My nervous hands, be firm for task of woe:

Be dry, my cheeks, and stay the flowing tear,

The while a father portions to his son

His limbs and makes a body. What is this—

Shapeless and ugly, maimed with many a gash?

What piece of thee, I know not: yet ’tis thine.

Here put it—not in place, but where there’s room.[740]

It is a dangerous realism which produces unintentional comicalities. What

shall we say about the ghost of Thyestes who, because during his life he

had been served with the hideous meal of his slaughtered children, could

grotesquely claim to be “full of three sons buried in me?”[741] No less

peculiar is the chorus on the universal sway of love which reaches the

climax of absurdity among enamoured whales and elephants:

Love holds the raving sea’s leviathan,

Love holds the Lucan kine.[742]

A similar desire to be at once literal and smart leads to the silliness

of Hercules’s words on recovering his wits after he has slain his family:

“I have lost all,” he cries, “lost soul, arms, honour, wife, children—and

madness too!”[743] A deeper sense of humour would have made Seneca

more tragic. Further, more self-criticism in the light of common sense

would have spared us much of what fatigues us in him—the pedantry, the

senseless bombast,[744] the epigrams which so inevitably come, no matter

who is speaking; for a nurse will talk like a manual of rhetoric or

like Seneca the moralist.[745] When Phaedra’s nurse sagely reflects on

love-madness and on inordinate desire as the companion of high estate,

she adorns her remarks about luxury with semi-proverbial wisdom, and

proceeds, through a contrasted picture

Why dwelleth hallowed love in lowly homes?

to her epigrammatic conclusion

Excessive power seeks power beyond its power.[746]

As in set speech or soliloquy, so too in dialogue, there is displayed

an allied and wonderful cleverness, but it is preternatural. The reader

is not captured, as he should be, by the dramatic illusion: he never

quite forgets that beings of real flesh and blood are not so ingenious

in tragic situations. He is, besides, positively wearied with Ovidian

elaboration of the same picture by fresh strokes, or choral platitudes

ringing changes on the same idea.[747]

Yet all is not exaggeration in sentiment and style. When the worst has

been urged against Seneca, there remain speeches that are spirited,

descriptions that are effective, and thoughts that are memorable. The

style is in general lucid, and, if epigrammatic, is founded on pure

Latin and on harmonious versification. Perhaps no better example of the

dramatic speech in Seneca can be given than that from the _Troades_ in

which Agamemnon pleads against the proposed sacrifice of the Trojan

maiden Polyxena at Achilles’s tomb. The arguments, put with clearness

and vigour, are characteristically fortified by _sententiae_ and

antitheses:

Why stain with murder foul the noble shade

Of that famed chief? First shouldst thou learn

What victor ought to do, what vanquished dree.

None keeps a sway of violence for long:

’Tis self-restraint endures. The higher Chance

Hath raised and magnified the power of man,

The more ’tis fitting he should curb his joy

And quake at chequered circumstance, afraid

Of gods too kind. Conquest hath taught me how

A moment ruins greatness. And doth Troy

Swell us with over-daring pride? We Greeks

Stand on the spot Troy fell from. Once, I own,

Self-willed I bore my kingship haughtily.

But Fortune’s smile, in others cause belike

For pride, hath tamed in me such arrogance.

Thou, Priam, mak’st me proud—but frightened too!...

I will confess, (thy pardon, Argive land,

For these my words!) I wished our Phrygian foes

Mastered and crushed; but ruin, that hath laid

Their town in dust, I fain had warded off ...

Enough, and more, of penalty is ta’en.

That now a royal maid should fall, a gift

Given to a tomb, and with her blood bedew

Dead ashes, yea, that crime so hideous

Be called a marriage, I will ne’er allow.

On Agamemnon comes the guilt of all.

Who stops not crime, tho’ able, orders it.[748]

A few other illustrations chosen from the same play are the more

appropriate because nowhere so much as in the _Troades_ does he hold

his own in rivalry with his Greek sources. It is characteristic that

the agonized mother, Andromache, concealing her boy in her husband’s

sepulchre with the hope of eluding the murderous foe, should make the

antithetic point:

If fate helps misery, here is escape:

If fate deny thee life, here is thy tomb.[749]

There is plausible rhetoric in the alliterative excuse which Helen

proffers for luring Polyxena into an expectation of marriage when she is

really to be executed:

Death without dread of death is welcome death;[750]

and Helen’s own plea for her guilty self is a clever appeal suggesting

that she was more sinned against than sinning:

Was I the cause of wars and all the wreck

That came on Troy?...

Yet if triumphant Aphrodite gave

Helen to be a guerdon to her judge,

Then pity that poor prey;[751]

nor does one lightly forget the single utterance by the doomed

boy—_miserere, mater_.[752] One wonders, too, whether Seneca was

thinking of his own almost miraculous rescue from Caligula’s

death-warrant when he declared:

This cause alone hath fended many a man

From doom—belief that he was dead.[753]

Another dramatic feature often dexterously managed consists of the

thrust-and-parry strokes in single lines—the Greek _stichomythia_. A

suitable example comes from the passage where the nurse urges Medea to

drop her daring resolution:

MEDEA. Fortune doth dread the brave: cowards she quells.

NURSE. Courage that finds its hour must win applause.

M. Never can courage fail to find its hour.

N. For ruined cause no hope reveals a way.

M. With naught to hope, of naught should one despair.

N. Thy Colchians are gone; thy lord is false;

Of thy resources naught is left to thee.

M. Yet is MEDEA left: in her thou hast

Sea, land, sword, fire and gods with thunder-flame!

N. Beware the king!

M. My father was a king.

N. Fear’st thou not arms?

M. Not though from earth they rise.

N. ’Tis death!

M. I wish it.

N. Flee!

M. Flight I’ve forsworn.[754]

An allied neatness of expression, not uncommonly strengthened by

antithesis, marks the sententious epigrams found in isolated verses

throughout. The following are a few from three plays:[755]

Crime ever finds its safest path through crime.

What reason cannot, oft delay hath cured.

Best follow hazard when the mind’s at fault.

Nor throne nor bridal bed brooks rivalry.

Too late to be on guard in peril’s hour.

To wish for healing is the half of health.

Success gives certain crimes the stamp of right.

Light pangs are eloquent: deep pangs are dumb.

Sometimes the whole of a character’s attitude in a given dramatic

situation is summed up in a single line, as in Medea’s words,

My crime-won home I must in crime forsake,

or her appeal to Jason later in the play,

Hold thou her sinless who has sinned for thee![756]

Compared with such a plethora of ingenious epigram, the flights into

poetry are rare. Yet Seneca’s eye was not closed to nature. He paints

daybreak in its colour and its human significance:

Dawn sprinkles red on thorny brake

And Phoebus’ sister doth forsake

Till night the sky:

Hard toil uprises and doth wake

A world of cares and housefolk make

Their work to ply.[757]

Some instinct, too, as of a seer, may have inspired his well-known

prophecy:

Late in the years an age will dawn

When Ocean must all things unseal,

And earth lie ope like one great lawn,

When Tethys must new worlds reveal

And Thule be Earth’s End no more.[758]

In view of the doubt sometimes needlessly cast upon Seneca’s authorship

of these dramas, it is of importance to note the strong tincture of

philosophic thought which colours many of the speeches and choral

odes. The _Troades_ presents us with a chant on the doctrine of utter

annihilation:

Can it be truth that we utterly die?

Is there no part of us left, when the soul

At the final breath-flicker soars into the air,

Mingling with cloudland so soon as the torch

Lays fingers of fire on the corpse lying bare?...

After our death there is naught. Death is naught

But the finishing goal of a race quickly run....

The way into Hell and the cruel King’s realm

And Cerberus guarding the Perilous Gate

Are idlest of gossip and meaningless words—

A fable that sounds like a feverish dream.

Dost thou ask where thou liest when death sets thee free?

Thou shalt lie where the things lie that have not been born.[759]

A familiar Stoic dogma suggested the lines upon true kingship in the

_Thyestes_:

Treasures do not a monarch make,

Nor garb of Tyrian hue,

Nor diadem on royal brow,

Nor portals bright with gold.

A king is whoso quelleth fear

And curséd guilt of heart,

Who mid ambition’s wild caprice

And mid the wayward cheers

Of hot-head mob abides unmoved;

and a little later the sage’s serenity is limned:

Set in security of place,

He vieweth all beneath:

With a will he meets his fate

Nor murmureth to die.[760]

Similarly Stoic are the notions of freedom, of equality with monarch and

with God, and of the right to abandon life at will, which are propounded

in the _Agamemnon_:

All slavish bonds he’ll burst in twain

Who can capricious gods disdain,

Who on black Acheron’s countenance

And on the Stygian gloom can glance

Untouched by gloom himself, and dares

To fix the close of earthly cares.

Peer of a king—of gods, is he.

Know how to die and so be free![761]

It is this creed of the open door leading out of life on which Oedipus

harps in the _Phoenissae_[762] and which the guilty queen proclaims in

the _Phaedra_,

Death ne’er can fail the man who wills to die.[763]

As we should expect, it is stated in the prose works[764] of Seneca, and

so brings him into touch with contemporary history; for it is but the

theoretical formulation of that right to suicide which many of the Roman

Stoics in opposition during the darkest days of imperial tyranny not only

claimed but exercised.

While, however, much of the philosophic colour in the plays reflects

their author’s Stoicism, Seneca is dramatist enough to introduce

non-Stoic views also. He allows, for instance, the chorus in the

_Phaedra_ to adopt an Epicurean and pessimistic attitude. It comes in an

ode addressed to Nature and to “Olympus’s Lord,” beseeching a solution to

one of the riddles of the universe—why it is that external nature is so

regularly controlled by law, whereas the Ruler of all things appears to

be indifferent to man, and human affairs appear to be a chaotic realm of

chance.[765]

Philosophy, whether Stoic or not, is, after all, one of the personal

notes imported by Seneca into his adaptations from Greek drama. Like his

yet more pervasive rhetoric, it is of Roman cast, and, if anachronistic

in its Hellenic environment, it is but an additional sign of his

independence of his originals. He is not at pains to avoid national

colour: and thus, reckless of inconsistency, he puts into the mouth of

Mycenaean elders certain terms redolent of Roman political history; turns

the thought of a Theban chorus towards the _clientes_ and _patroni_

of Rome, and, later in the same play, towards a Roman rather than a

Greek holiday; represents the ex-king of Thebes as quoting, like a

_paterfamilias_, his power of life and death;[766] and—more surprising