In the last paper we took up for consideration some of the Roman metrical
epitaphs. These compositions, however, do not include all the productions
in verse of the common people of Rome. On temples, altars, bridges,
statues, and house walls, now and then, we find bits of verse. Most of the
extant dedicatory lines are in honor of Hercules, Silvanus, Priapus, and
the Cæsars. Whether the two famous inscriptions to Hercules by the sons of
Vertuleius and by Mummius belong here or not it is hard to say. At all
events, they were probably composed by amateurs, and have a peculiar
interest for us because they belong to the second century B.C., and
therefore stand near the beginning of Latin letters; they show us the
language before it had been perfected and adapted to literary purposes by
an Ennius, a Virgil, and a Horace, and they are written in the old native
Saturnian verse, into which Livius Andronicus, "the Father of Latin
literature," translated the Odyssey. Consequently they show us the
language before it had gained in polish and lost in vigor under the
influence of the Greeks. The second of these two little poems is a
finger-post, in fact, at the parting of the ways for Roman civilization.
It was upon a tablet let into the wall of the temple of Hercules, and
commemorates the triumphant return to Rome of Mummius, the conqueror of
Corinth. It points back to the good old days of Roman contempt for Greek
art, and ignorance of it, for Mummius, in his stupid indifference to the
beautiful monuments of Corinth, made himself the typical Philistine for
all time. It points forward to the new Greco-Roman civilization of Italy,
because the works of art which Mummius is said to have brought back with
him, and the Greeks who probably followed in his train, augmented that
stream of Greek influence which in the next century or two swept through
the peninsula.
In the same primitive metre as these dedications is the Song of the Arval
Brothers, which was found engraved on a stone in the grove of the goddess
Dea Dia, a few miles outside of Rome. This hymn the priests sang at the
May festival of the goddess, when the farmers brought them the first
fruits of the earth. It has no intrinsic literary merit, but it carries us
back beyond the great wars with Carthage for supremacy in the western
Mediterranean, beyond the contest with Pyrrhus for overlordship in
Southern Italy, beyond the struggle for life with the Samnites in Central
Italy, beyond even the founding of the city on the Tiber, to a people who
lived by tilling the soil and tending their flocks and herds.
But we have turned away from the dedicatory verses. On the bridges which
span our streams we sometimes record the names of the commissioners or the
engineers, or the bridge builders responsible for the structure. Perhaps
we are wise in thinking these prosaic inscriptions suitable for our ugly
iron bridges. Their more picturesque stone structures tempted the Romans
now and then to drop into verse, and to go beyond a bare statement of the
facts of construction. Over the Anio in Italy, on a bridge which Narses,
the great general of Justinian, restored, the Roman, as he passed, read in
graceful verse:[62] "We go on our way with the swift-moving waters of the
torrent beneath our feet, and we delight on hearing the roar of the angry
water. Go then joyfully at your ease, Quirites, and let the echoing
murmur of the stream sing ever of Narses. He who could subdue the
unyielding spirit of the Goths has taught the rivers to bear a stern
yoke."
It is an interesting thing to find that the prettiest of the dedicatory
poems are in honor of the forest-god Silvanus. One of these poems, Titus
Pomponius Victor, the agent of the Cæsars, left inscribed upon a
tablet[63] high up in the Grecian Alps. It reads: "Silvanus, half-enclosed
in the sacred ash-tree, guardian mighty art thou of this pleasaunce in the
heights. To thee we consecrate in verse these thanks, because across the
fields and Alpine tops, and through thy guests in sweetly smelling groves,
while justice I dispense and the concerns of Cæsar serve, with thy
protecting care thou guidest us. Bring me and mine to Rome once more, and
grant that we may till Italian fields with thee as guardian. In guerdon
therefor will I give a thousand mighty trees." It is a pretty picture.
This deputy of Cæsar has finished his long and perilous journeys through
the wilds of the North in the performance of his duties. His face is now
turned toward Italy, and his thoughts are fixed on Rome. In this "little
garden spot," as he calls it, in the mountains he pours out his gratitude
to the forest-god, who has carried him safely through dangers and brought
him thus far on his homeward way, and he vows a thousand trees to his
protector. It is too bad that we do not know how the vow was to be
paid--not by cutting down the trees, we feel sure. One line of Victor's
little poem is worth quoting in the original. He thanks Silvanus for
conducting him in safety "through the mountain heights, and through Tuique
luci suave olentis hospites." Who are the _hospites_? The wild beasts of
the forests, we suppose. Now _hospites_ may, of course, mean either
"guests" or "hosts," and it is a pretty conceit of Victor's to think of
the wolves and bears as the guests of the forest-god, as we have ventured
to render the phrase in the translation given above. Or, are they Victor's
hosts, whose characters have been so changed by Silvanus that Victor has
had friendly help rather than fierce attacks from them?
A very modern practice is revealed by a stone found near the famous temple
of Æsculapius, the god of healing, at Epidaurus in Argolis, upon which
two ears are shown in relief, and below them the Latin couplet:[64] "Long
ago Cutius Gallus had vowed these ears to thee, scion of Phœbus, and now
he has put them here, for thou hast healed his ears." It is an ancient
ex-voto, and calls to mind on the one hand the cult of Æsculapius, which
Walter Pater has so charmingly portrayed in Marius the Epicurean, and on
the other hand it shows us that the practice of setting up ex-votos, of
which one sees so many at shrines and in churches across the water to-day,
has been borrowed from the pagans. A pretty bit of sentiment is suggested
by an inscription[65] found near the ancient village of Ucetia in Southern
France: "This shrine to the Nymphs have I built, because many times and
oft have I used this spring when an old man as well as a youth."
All of the verses which we have been considering up to this point have
come down to us more or less carefully engraved upon stone, in honor of
some god, to record some achievement of importance, or in memory of a
departed friend. But besides these formal records of the past, we find a
great many hastily scratched or painted sentiments or notices, which have
a peculiar interest for us because they are the careless effusions or
unstudied productions of the moment, and give us the atmosphere of
antiquity as nothing else can do. The stuccoed walls of the houses, and
the sharp-pointed stylus which was used in writing on wax tablets offered
too strong a temptation for the lounger or passer-by to resist. To people
of this class, and to merchants advertising their wares, we owe the three
thousand or more graffiti found at Pompeii. The ephemeral inscriptions
which were intended for practical purposes, such as the election notices,
the announcements of gladiatorial contests, of houses to rent, of articles
lost and for sale, are in prose, but the lovelorn lounger inscribed his
sentiments frequently in verse, and these verses deserve a passing notice
here. One man of this class in his erotic ecstasy writes on the wall of a
Pompeian basilica:[66] "May I perish if I'd wish to be a god without
thee." That hope sprang eternal in the breast of the Pompeian lover is
illustrated by the last two lines of this tragic declaration:[67]
"If you can and won't,
Give me hope no more.
Hope you foster and you ever
Bid me come again to-morrow.
Force me then to die
Whom you force to live
A life apart from you.
Death will be a boon,
Not to be tormented.
Yet what hope has snatched away
To the lover hope gives back."
This effusion has led another passer-by to write beneath it the Delphic
sentiment: "May the man who shall read this never read anything else." The
symptoms of the ailment in its most acute form are described by some Roman
lover in the verses which he has left us on the wall of Caligula's palace,
on the Palatine:[68]
"No courage in my heart,
No sleep to close my eyes,
A tide of surging love
Throughout the day and night."
This seems to come from one who looks upon the lover with a sympathetic
eye, but who is himself fancy free:
"Whoever loves, good health to him,
And perish he who knows not how,
But doubly ruined may he be
Who will not yield to love's appeal."[69]
The first verse of this little poem,
"Quisquis amat valeat, pereat qui nescit amare,"
represented by the first couplet of the English rendering, calls to mind
the swinging refrain which we find a century or two later in the
_Pervigilium Veneris_, that last lyrical outburst of the pagan world,
written for the eve of the spring festival of Venus:
"Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit eras amet."
(To-morrow he shall love who ne'er has loved
And who has loved, to-morrow he shall love.)
An interesting study might be made of the favorite types of feminine
beauty in the Roman poets. Horace sings of the "golden-haired" Pyrrhas,
and Phyllises, and Chloes, and seems to have had an admiration for
blondes, but a poet of the common people, who has recorded his opinion on
this subject in the atrium of a Pompeian house, shows a more catholic
taste, although his freedom of judgment is held in some constraint:
"My fair girl has taught me to hate
Brunettes with their tresses of black.
I will hate if I can, but if not,
'Gainst my will I must love them also."[70]
On the other hand, one Pompeian had such an inborn dread of brunettes
that, whenever he met one, he found it necessary to take an appropriate
antidote, or prophylactic:
"Whoever loves a maiden dark
By charcoal dark is he consumed.
When maiden dark I light upon
I eat the saving blackberry."[71]
These amateur poets do not rely entirely upon their own Muse, but borrow
from Ovid, Propertius, or Virgil, when they recall sentiments in those
writers which express their feelings. Sometimes it is a tag, or a line, or
a couplet which is taken, but the borrowings are woven into the context
with some skill. The poet above who is under compulsion from his blonde
sweetheart, has taken the second half of his production verbatim from
Ovid, and for the first half of it has modified a line of Propertius.
Other writers have set down their sentiments in verse on more prosaic
subjects. A traveller on his way to the capital has scribbled these lines
on the wall, perhaps of a wine-shop where he stopped for refreshment:[72]
"Hither have we come in safety.
Now I hasten on my way,
That once more it may be mine
To behold our Lares, Rome."
At one point in a Pompeian street, the eye of a straggler would catch this
notice in doggerel verse:[73]
"Here's no place for loafers.
Lounger, move along!"