Jealous of these brilliant successes, and recognizing in Cæsar a

dangerous opponent of his schemes for political aggrandizement, Pompey

prevailed on the senate to demand the resignation of his victorious

rival. This brought matters to a crisis. Cæsar with his legions crossed

the Rubicon, which separated Cisalpine Gaul from Italy (49 B.C.), and

was soon in Rome, whence Pompey and his friends had fled. The battle

of Pharsalia the next year decided the question in favor of Cæsar;

Pompey’s party was overthrown in Africa and Spain, and the Roman world

remained the prize of the conqueror.

Not long, however, did he enjoy it. Fearing his ambition, or

pretending to do so, a number of “liberators” conspired against his

life. On the 15th of March, 44 B.C., he fell pierced by their daggers

at the foot of Pompey’s statue, as that last cry, wrung from his

heart by the ingratitude of a trusted friend, resounded through the

senate-house,—“Thou, too, Brutus, my son!”

We can hardly see how, amid the excitements of such a career, Cæsar

found any time to devote to literary pursuits; yet his name is hardly

less eminent in letters than for statesmanship and military genius.

He seems to have had the rare ability of “employing at the same time

his ears to listen, his eyes to read, his hand to write, and his voice

to dictate.” While crossing the Alps, on one occasion, he wrote a

grammatical treatise of no little merit.

The greatest of Cæsar’s works are his “Commentaries” on the Gallic and

the Civil War—the former in seven books, to which an eighth was added

at the author’s request by his fellow-soldier HIRTIUS. In “the Gallic

War,” Cæsar not only recounts his successes and feats of engineering

skill, but also entertains us with pleasing descriptions of the

countries he visited and the tribes he encountered. He always aims at

justifying himself, and so plausibly defended his course in “the Civil

War” as to carry conviction even to the prejudiced. (_See Froude’s

“Cæsar;” Trollope’s “Cæsar.”_)

In Cæsar’s style, conciseness goes hand in hand with simplicity and

perspicuity. Dispensing with ornament, he uses every word to the

best advantage—and this despite the fact that he wrote with amazing

rapidity. Though, perhaps, he lacks vivacity and energy, there is no

purer Latin than his. We subjoin some interesting paragraphs from the

Commentaries on the Gallic War, relating to the customs of

THE ANCIENT GAULS AND GERMANS.

“The whole nation of Gauls is extremely addicted to superstition;

whence, in threatening distempers and the imminent dangers of war,

they make no scruple to sacrifice men, or engage themselves by vow to

such sacrifices. In these they make use of the ministry of the Druids:

for it is a prevalent opinion among them that nothing but the life of

man can atone for the life of man, insomuch that they have established

even public sacrifices of this kind. Some prepare huge colossuses of

osier twigs, into which they put men alive, and setting fire to them,

those within expire amid the flames. They prefer for victims such as

have been convicted of theft, robbery, or other crimes, believing them

the most acceptable to the gods; but, when criminals are wanting, the

innocent are often made to suffer.

Mercury is the chief deity with them; of him they have many images,

account him the inventor of all arts, their guide and conductor in

their journeys, and the patron of merchandise and gain. Next to him

are Apollo and Mars, Jupiter and Minerva. Their notions in regard to

these are pretty much the same as those of other nations. Apollo is

their god of physic, Minerva of works and manufactures; Jove holds the

empire of heaven, and Mars presides in war. To this last, when they

resolve on a battle, they commonly devote the spoil. If they prove

victorious, they offer up all the cattle taken, and set apart the rest

of the plunder in a place appointed for that purpose; it is common

in many provinces to see these monuments of offerings piled up in

consecrated places. Nay, it rarely happens that any one shows so great

a disregard of religion as either to conceal the plunder or pillage

the public oblations; and the severest punishments are inflicted on

such offenders.

The Gauls fancy themselves to be descended from the god Pluto; which,

it seems, is an established tradition among the Druids. For this

reason they compute the time by nights, not by days; and, in the

observance of birthdays, new moons, and the beginning of the year,

always commence the celebration from the preceding night. In one

custom they differ from almost all other nations, that they never

suffer their children to come openly into their presence until they

are old enough to bear arms; for the appearance of a son in public

with his father before he has reached the age of manhood is accounted

dishonorable.

Whatever fortune the woman brings, the husband is obliged to equal it

out of his own estate. This whole sum, with its annual product, is

left untouched, and falls always to the share of the survivor. The

men have power of life and death over their wives and children; and,

when any father of a family of illustrious rank dies, his relations

assemble, and, on the least ground of suspicion, put even his wives to

the torture like slaves. If they are found guilty, iron and fire are

employed to torment and destroy them. Their funerals are magnificent

and sumptuous, according to their quality. Everything that was dear to

the deceased, even animals, are thrown into the pile; and, formerly,

such of their slaves and clients as they loved most sacrificed

themselves at the funeral of their lord.

The Germans differ widely in their manners from the Gauls; for

neither have they Druids to preside in religious affairs, nor do

they trouble themselves about sacrifices. They acknowledge no gods

but those that they can see, and by whose power they are apparently

benefited: the sun, the moon, fire. Of others they know nothing, not

even by report. Their whole life is addicted to hunting and war;

and from their infancy they are inured to fatigue and hardships.

Agriculture is little regarded among them, as they live mostly on

milk, cheese, and the flesh of animals. Nor has any man lands of

his own, or distinguished by fixed boundaries. The magistrates and

those in authority portion out yearly to every canton and family

such a quantity of land, and in what part of the country they think

proper; and the year following remove them to some other spot. Many

reasons are assigned for this practice; lest, seduced by habit and

continuance, they should learn to prefer pillage to war; lest a desire

of enlarging their possessions should gain ground, and prompt the

stronger to expel the weaker; lest they should become curious in their

buildings, in order to guard against the extremes of heat and cold;

lest avarice should get footing among them, whence spring factions and

discords; in fine, to preserve contentment and equanimity among the

people, when they find their possessions nothing inferior to those of

the most powerful.

It is accounted honorable for states to have the country all around

them lie waste and depopulated; for they think it an argument of

valor to expel their neighbors, and suffer none to settle near them;

at the same time that they are themselves also the safer, as having

nothing to apprehend from sudden incursions. When a state is engaged

in war, either offensive or defensive, they make choice of magistrates

to preside in it, whom they arm with the power of life and death. In

time of peace there are no public magistrates; but the chiefs of the

several provinces and clans administer justice, and decide differences

within their respective limits. Robbery has nothing infamous in it

when committed without the territories of the state to which they

belong; they even pretend that it serves to exercise their youth,

and prevent the growth of sloth. The laws of hospitality are held

inviolable among them. All that fly to them for refuge, on whatever

account, are sure of protection and defence.”—DUNCAN.

=Sallust= (86-34 B.C.).—Another historian, whose name is as familiar as

Cæsar’s to classical students, is Caius Sallustius Crispus, popularly

known as Sallust. From his native town Amiternum, in the country of the

Sabines, he came to Rome, ambitious of public honors, and gradually

worked his way up to a seat in the senate. Alleged immorality, however,

caused his expulsion from that body, and not until he had rendered

important service to Cæsar in the civil war did he recover his good

standing. Cæsar made him governor of the rich province of Numidia (46

B.C.), which Sallust pretty thoroughly plundered during his one year

of office, returning to Rome with fabulous riches. It was fortunate

for him that, when a Numidian commission arrived to prosecute him for

extortion, his powerful patron interposed to save him from punishment.

On the assassination of Cæsar, Sallust retired from public life and

devoted part of his ill-gotten gains to the erection of a splendid

mansion on one of the seven hills. It was surrounded by lovely

pleasure-grounds, adorned with baths, statues, and other magnificent

works of art, prominent among which, on exquisitely chiselled columns,

rose a temple, paved in mosaic, and set off with Grecian marbles. “The

Gardens of Sallust” were preferred by many of the Roman emperors to the

imperial palace itself.

Here or at his Tiburtine villa, our author, thoroughly convinced of the

vanity of political honors, and filled with remorse for his youthful

indiscretions, spent the last nine years of his life in the compilation

of historical works which give us a high opinion of his abilities.

His first effort was “the Conspiracy of Catiline,” the facts of which

were vividly impressed upon his memory, since, when a student at Rome,

he was a witness of its thrilling scenes. “The Jugurthine War,” which

followed, treats of the struggle which the Roman people carried on with

Jugurtha, king of Numidia. This unscrupulous prince had made his way

to an undivided throne over the murdered bodies of his two cousins,

allies of the Romans, securing impunity for a time by buying up the

senate. Having, however, caused the assassination of another kinsman in

the very streets of Rome, whither he had been summoned, on the pledge

of the public faith, to expose those who had taken his bribes, he was

ordered to quit Italy. It was on leaving the capital that Jugurtha,

looking back, uttered those words so significant of the prevalent

corruption: “O venal city and destined soon to perish, if you can but

find a purchaser!”

A Roman army followed him into Africa; but little was effected until

the consul Metellus assumed the command, and, proof against Numidian

gold, prosecuted the war in earnest. After five years’ continuance,

it was successfully terminated by Marius. Sallust’s history ends with

the betrayal of Jugurtha to the Romans, and the triumph of the consul

Marius, “on whom the hopes of the state were then placed.” Plutarch

adds that, after figuring in the procession, Jugurtha was set upon by

the people, who tore the rings from his ears and even stripped him

of his clothes; then he was pushed into a damp dungeon to starve,

shuddering as he cried to the bystanders with a maniacal laugh, “How

cold is this bath of yours!”

Another work of Sallust was a History of Rome from 78 to 66 B.C.,

fragments of which remain.

SALLUST’S STYLE, modelled after that of Thucydides, is sententious,

energetic, and an improvement on the original in clearness.

Condensation without obscurity is its crowning excellence; and its

finish, though too plainly showing marks of labor, is always attractive.

The forte of Sallust lay in delineating character; his portraits of

Catiline and Jugurtha are as vivid as if the men themselves stood

before us. Especially striking are his pictures of remorse. Catiline,

who murdered his own son to induce an infamous beauty to become his

wife, “at peace with neither gods nor men, finds no comfort either

waking or sleeping; his complexion is pale, his eyes haggard, his walk

sometimes quick and sometimes slow, and distraction is apparent in

every look.” Jugurtha, red with the blood of many victims, “fears his

subjects and his enemies alike, is ever on the watch, starts from his

sleep to seize his arms, and is so agitated by terror as to appear

under the influence of madness.”

Sallust also affects the moralist, and throughout his works is as

loud in the praises of virtue as in his life he was careless of her

interests. From “the Jugurthine War” we take an interesting account of

the

CAPTURE OF A NUMIDIAN FORT.

“Not far from the river Mulucha, which separated the kingdoms of

Jugurtha and Bocchus, there stood, in the midst of a plain, a small

fort, on a rock of considerable breadth, and of prodigious height,

naturally as steep on every side as art or labor could render it;

it had no access, except at one place, and that was by means of a

narrow path. As the king’s treasure was deposited in this place,

Marius exerted his utmost efforts to reduce it; and succeeded, more by

accident than by prudent management.

The castle was abundantly provided with men, arms, provisions, and a

spring of water; its situation rendered it impossible to make use of

mounds and turrets, and the machinery usually employed in a siege;

the path to it was very narrow, with a precipice on each side. The

moving galleries were pushed forward with infinite hazard, and to no

purpose; for, when they advanced toward the garrison, they were either

destroyed by fire or crushed by prodigious stones. The soldiers could

neither maintain their footing nor make use of their batteries without

exposing themselves to continual danger. The most adventurous were

either slain or wounded, and the rest were greatly discouraged.

Marius, having thus spent many toilsome days, now hesitated whether

he should abandon his enterprise, which had proved unsuccessful, or

wait the interposition of fortune, which had so frequently befriended

him. While these reflections day and night occupied his mind, a

Ligurian, a common soldier of the auxiliary cohorts, who had gone out

of the camp in search of water, happened to observe, not far from

the opposite side of the castle, some periwinkles creeping among the

rocks; gathering one, then another, and still climbing to procure

more, he was led insensibly almost to the top of the mountain, where,

perceiving all was quiet in that quarter, the natural desire of

viewing unknown objects prompted him to proceed.

It chanced that an oak-tree, of considerable magnitude, here grew out

of the side of the rock, and, bending its trunk downward near the

root, then taking a turn, mounted upward, as is natural to trees in

such situations.

By the help of this, the Ligurian, laying hold of the branches of

the tree or of the prominences of the rock, was at length enabled

to survey the whole plan of the castle, without being disturbed by

the Numidians, who were all engaged on that side on which the attack

had been made. Having carefully examined whatever he thought would

be useful to him in the execution of his design, he returned the

same way; not hastily, as he went up, but pausing at every step, and

observing everything with the utmost care.

On his return to the camp, he hastened to Marius, informed him of what

he had done, pressed him to make an attempt on the castle on that side

where he himself had mounted, and promised that he would lead the

way, and be the first to face the danger. Marius despatched some of

those who attended him, accompanied by the Ligurian, to examine the

spot; and, although their reports varied as to the facility or the

difficulty of the undertaking, the consul, encouraged by the hope of

success, determined to make the attempt. He accordingly selected, from

among the trumpeters and cornet-blowers of the line, five of the most

active and enterprising men, together with four centurions to support

them, and, putting the whole under the command of the Ligurian, he

ordered them to be in readiness to set out on the following day.

At the time appointed the party left the camp, having previously taken

such measures as were necessary for the expedition. The centurions,

according to the instructions which they had received from their

guide, had changed their arms and dress, and marched with their heads

and feet bare, that they might have the freer prospect, and climb

with more facility. Their swords and bucklers were slung across their

shoulders; the latter, of the Numidian kind, and covered with hides,

as well for the sake of lightness, as that all noise might be avoided

if they struck against the rock.

The Ligurian, leading the way, fixed cords about the stones, and

such roots of trees as appeared proper for the purpose, to assist

the soldiers in climbing; stretching his hand, from time to time, to

such as were discouraged at so rugged a march. When the ascent was

more steep than ordinary, he would send them up before him unarmed,

and then follow himself with their arms. Wherever it appeared more

dangerous to climb, he went foremost; and, by ascending and descending

several times, encouraged the rest to follow him, and retired to make

way for them. At length, after much tedious labor, they gained the

castle, which was quite deserted on that side, the Numidians being all

employed in the opposite quarter.

When Marius was informed of the success of the Ligurian, although he

had kept the garrison employed the whole day by a continued attack,

he now, encouraging the soldiers, sallied from under the moving

galleries, and, drawing up his men in the form of a shell, rushed

forward to the castle; while the slingers and archers poured their

volleys from a distance, and the engines incessantly played on the

besieged. The Numidians, who had often before broken to pieces and

even burned the Roman galleries, did not now defend themselves within

their battlements, but passed whole days and nights without their

walls; they railed at the efforts of the Romans, upbraided Marius with

madness, and in the height of their exultation threatened to make our

men slaves of Jugurtha.

While both sides were warmly engaged in this vigorous struggle for

glory and empire on the one hand, and life and liberty on the other,

the trumpets on a sudden sounded in the enemy’s rear. The women and

children, who had come out to see the engagement, first fled in

dismay; after them, such as were nearest the walls; and at last the

whole, armed and unarmed, fairly gave way. The Romans now pressed

onward with greater vigor, overthrowing the enemy, and wounding most

of them; then, advancing over the heaps of slain, they flew to the

walls, all thirsting for glory, and each striving to be foremost,

without regard to plunder. Thus did accidental success justify the

rashness of Marius, while his imprudence contributed to heighten his

glory.”

=Cornelius Nepos= (74-24 B.C.), though inferior to the writers just

treated, deserves mention for his “Lives of Eminent Commanders,”

his only extant work. These sketches, especially the biography of

Pomponius Atticus, are clearly written and furnish valuable information

respecting the times to which they relate; but Nepos was not an

accurate compiler, and dependence cannot always be placed on his

statements. As a specimen of his style, we quote from his “Lives”.

THE CHARACTER OF ALCIBIADES.

“Nature seems to have tried in him what she could do. For it is agreed

upon among all who have written about him, that nobody was more

extraordinary than he, either in vices or in virtues; being born in

a very great city, of a great family, much the handsomest man of his

time, fit for all things, and abounding in judgment for the management

of affairs. For he was a very great commander, both by sea and land;

so eloquent that he mightily prevailed in speaking; and such was the

plausibility of his elocution and language that in haranguing nobody

was able to stand before him.

The same man, when occasion required, was laborious, hardy, generous,

splendid no less in his equipage than his diet, affable, fawning, very

cunningly serving the times. The same, when he had unbent himself, and

there was no reason why he should take upon him any labor of thought,

was found to be luxurious, dissolute, and intemperate, in so much that

all wondered that in the same man there should be so much unlikeness

to himself, and natures so different.”—JOHN CLARKE.

POETS OF THE CICERONIAN PERIOD.

=Lucretius= (95-55 B.C.).—Meanwhile Italy produced two poets of high

rank, Lucretius and Catullus. Of Lucretius we have little trustworthy

information. A native of Italy, he appears, in accordance with the

common practice, to have studied philosophy at Athens, where he

became the classmate of Memmius. From his poetry, we may infer his

indifference to all things transient, alike to social pleasures and the

stormy sea of politics that surged around him; his life was probably

one of deep thought, tinged with sadness. In dignity he was a true

Roman; in sympathy for his kind, a true man. With nature he must have

held frequent converse, for Homer alone of ancient writers excels him

in description. His life ended with suicide.

The only work of Lucretius was what Macaulay styles “the finest

didactic poem in any language,” “On the Nature of Things.” It was

dedicated to his school-friend Memmius, at whose suggestion it is said

to have been written. The old story that, having been crazed by a

love-philter administered through the jealousy of his wife, the poet

composed this work during the temporary returns of reason, is now

discredited as a fabrication of later times.

The poem is divided into six books, and embodies the dogmas of

Epicurus, which Lucretius vivified with the spirit of poetry and

beautified with its most attractive drapery. Pleasure, the chief

end of existence, is to be sought by banishing care and distressing

thoughts. God created not; but eternal atoms, variously and ceaselessly

active, constitute all existing things. The soul dies with the body; it

behooves us, therefore, to make the most of the little time allotted

us, by dividing it between moderate enjoyment and philosophical

contemplation. (_See Masson’s “The Atomic Theory of Lucretius.”_)

Lucretius also accounted for the origin of the universe, whose

government by a Divine Being he scouted; for that of plants, men, and

animals, teaching the survival of the fittest; for that of language and

the arts. To elevate his readers above degrading superstitions and the

cowardly fear of death is his primary aim; and “the constant presence

of this practical purpose imparts to his words that peculiar tone

of impassioned earnestness to which there is no parallel in ancient

literature.” In one of many passages on the subject, he thus speaks of

THE DREAD OF DEATH.

“Were then the Nature of Created Things

To rise abrupt, and thus repining man

Address:—’O mortal! whence these useless fears?

This weak, superfluous sorrow? why the approach

Dread’st thou of death? For if the time elapsed

Have smiled propitious, and not all its gifts,

As if adventured in a leaky vase,

Been idly wasted, profitless, and vain—

Why quitt’st thou not, thou fool! the feast of life

Filled, and with mind all panting for repose?

But if thyself have squandered every boon,

And of the past grown weary—why demand

More days to kill, more blessings to pervert,

Nor rather headlong hasten to thine end?’

Were Nature thus to address us, could we fail

To feel the justice of her keen rebuke?

So true the picture, the advice so sage!

But to the wretch who moans the approach of death

With grief unmeasured, louder might she raise

Her voice severe:—’Vile coward! dry thine eyes—

Hence with thy snivelling sorrows, and depart!’

Should he, moreo’er, have passed man’s mid-day hour—

‘What! thou lament, already who hast reaped

An ample harvest? By desiring thus

The past once more, the present thou abhorr’st,

And life flies on imperfect, unenjoyed,

And death untimely meets thee, ere thy soul,

Cloyed with the banquet, is prepared to rise.

Leave, then, to others bliss thy years should shun;

Come, cheerful leave it, since still leave thou must.’

Justly, I deem, might Nature thus reprove:

For, through creation, old to young resigns,

And this from that matures; nor aught descends

To the dread gulfs, the fancied shades of hell.

The mass material must survive entire

To feed succeeding ages, which, in turn,

Like thee shall flourish, and like thee shall die;

Nor more the present ruins than the past.

Thus things from things ascend; and life exists

To none a freehold, but a use to all.

Reflect, moreo’er, how less than naught to us

Weighs the long portion of eternal time

Fled ere our birth: so, too, the future weighs

When death dissolves us. What of horror, then,

Dwells there in death? what gloomy, what austere?

Can there be elsewhere slumber half so sound?”

JOHN MASON GOOD.

Lucretius reasons plausibly, but on some points, it is too evident,

unsatisfactorily even to himself. His work contains much that is

worthy of praise, but this only makes its atheistical tendencies more

dangerous. It was left unfinished at the poet’s death, to be revised

and edited by other hands.

The style of Lucretius is not uniformly harmonious; some of his verses

lack polish, and he inclines to antique forms. Yet it is dignified,

luminous, and animated; glows with all the poet’s enthusiasm, and is

marked by tenderness and pathos. The pictures drawn are so real as

to awaken the emotions that would be experienced on beholding the

originals. Schlegel gives Lucretius high praise: “As a painter and

worshipper of nature, he is the first of all the poets of antiquity.”

In the extract given below, the touching description of the cow

searching for her calf that has been offered in sacrifice, will show

how he dignifies commonplace subjects:—

VARIETY IN NATURE.

“Thus Nature varies; man, and brutal beast,

And herbage gay, and silver fishes mute,

And all the tribes of heaven, o’er many a sea,

Through many a grove that wing, or urge their song

Near many a bank of fountain, lake, or rill,

Search where thou wilt, each differs in his kind,

In form, in figure differs. Hence alone

Knows the fond mother her appropriate young,

The appropriate young their mother,’mid the brutes,

As clear discerned as man’s sublimer race.

Thus oft before the sacred shrine, perfumed

With breathing frankincense, the affrighted calf

Pours o’er the altar, from his breast profound,

The purple flood of life. But wandering wild

O’er the green sward, the dam, bereft of hope,

Beats with her cloven hoof the indented dale,

Each spot exploring, if, perchance, she still

May trace her idol; through the umbrageous grove,

With well-known voice, she moans; and oft reseeks,

Urged by a mother’s love, the accustomed stall.

Nor shade for her, nor dew-distended glebe,

Nor stream soft gliding down its banks abrupt,

Yields aught of solace; nor the carking care

Averts, that preys within; nor the gay young

Of others soothe her o’er the joyous green:

So deep she longs, so lingers for her own.

Thus equal known, thus longed for, seek, in turn,

The tender heifer, tremulous of voice,

And the gay bleating lamb, their horned dams,

Lured by the milky fount that nurtures life.”

=Catullus= (87-54 B.C.).—Verona in Cisalpine Gaul gave birth to

Catullus, the first great Roman lyrist. It was no doubt to avail

himself of the superior advantages Rome offered, that while still in

the greenness of his youth he exchanged his provincial quarters for

the capital. Here we catch occasional glimpses of him—moving among the

_élite_ as the equal of men like Nepos, Hortensius, and Cicero; or as

the reckless sensualist throwing himself at the feet of some dissolute

siren.

Upon the notorious “Lesbia,” who stole, our poet sung,

“The charms most rare of every fair

To frame a perfect whole,”

Catullus wasted alike his love and the finest lyrics of which the

Latin boasts. The coquettish beauty at first gloried in her conquest

of Rome’s most popular poet, and appears for a time to have been true.

Then she grew cold, and cast him off for new admirers. But Catullus,

though outraged by her fickleness, could not overcome his unworthy

passion:—

“I curse her every hour sincerely,

Yet hang me—but I love her dearly.”

At last, however, he renounced his faithless mistress, bidding her

adieu in an ode which closes with one of his most beautiful similes:—

“Nor give that love a thought which I

So nursed for thee in days gone by,

Now by thy guile slain in an hour,

E’en as some little wilding flower,

That on the meadow’s border blushed,

Is by the passing ploughshare crushed.”

Catullus spent his hours of relaxation at his villa in the suburbs

of the Latian town of Ti’bur, or at his favorite Sirmio on a lovely

lake in northern Italy, the subject of one of his most graceful odes.

Toward the close of his life, in the hope of refilling a purse which

his extravagance had depleted, he went to Bithynia in Asia Minor as a

staff-officer of the prætor Memmius, to whom Lucretius inscribed his

poem. But in consequence of the selfishness of his superior, Catullus

came back with wallet still lighter. Of two friends who went to Spain

on a similar errand, he archly inquired:—

“And have you netted—worse than worst—

A good deal less than you disbursed;

Like me, who following about

My prætor, was—in fact—cleaned out?”

The death of a brother to whom he was devotedly attached plunged

Catullus in grief; and now with nothing to live for, sated with worldly

pleasure, in which he found the vanity of vanities, he longed for the

fate that soon overtook him.

THE STYLE OF CATULLUS, called by the ancients “the Accomplished,” is

lively, graceful, and vigorous; he writes in the language of nature,

and excels in suiting his words to the sentiments expressed. The

musical measures of the Greeks, adapted by him to his native tongue,

lent intensity to his words, and there were “lutes in his very lines.”

From the Greek writers, particularly Sappho and Callimachus of

Alexandria, he borrowed largely. One of his odes to Lesbia is evidently

an imitation of Sappho’s celebrated love-song quoted on p. 169:—

TO LESBIA.

“The equal of a God he seems to me,

Surpassing wealth doth his blessed lot appear,

Who, sitting often opposite to thee,

May gaze and hear.

The radiance of thy smile from me hath reft,

From miserable me, all sense away,

For when I look on Lesbia naught is left

That Love can say.

My tongue is dumb, while through each trembling limb

The thin flame mounts, till self-wrought murmurs rise

To fill mine ears, and night grown doubly dim

Veils o’er mine eyes.”—C. N. GREGORY.

His book of poems, 116 in number, was dedicated to Cornelius Nepos.

Their subjects are as various as the metres in which they are written,

for they reflect the passing emotions of the poet, now lighted with

gayety, now clouded with sorrow, anon ablaze with love.

Among the other pieces of Catullus must be mentioned his cutting

satires, in which even Cæsar was not spared; his exquisite

_epithalamia_, or marriage-hymns; and the “Atys,” a weird poem

remarkable for its metrical effects. Our poet’s lyric powers may be

further judged of by the following

ELEGY ON LESBIA’S SPARROW.

“Loves and Graces, mourn with me,

Mourn, fair youths, where’er ye be!

Dead my Lesbia’s sparrow is,

Sparrow, that was all her bliss,

Than her very eyes more dear;

For he made her dainty cheer,

Knew her well, as any maid

Knows her mother, never strayed

From her lap, but still would go

Hopping round her to and fro,

And to her, and her alone,

Chirrup’d with such pretty tone.

Now he treads that gloomy track,

Whence none ever may come back.

Out upon you, and your power,

Which all fairest things devour,

Orcus’ gloomy shades, that e’er

Ye should take my bird so fair!

Oh! poor bird! Oh! dismal shades!

Yours the blame is, that my maid’s

Eyes, dear eyes! are swoll’n and red,

Weeping for her darling dead.”

THEODORE MARTIN.

POETRY OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE.

As prose reached its highest development in the last years of the

Republic, so many causes contributed to perfect Latin verse in the

reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Secured upon the throne

by his triumph at Actium (31 B.C.), Augustus pursued a conciliatory

course, with a view to winning the love of his subjects, and he was

eminently successful. All classes, tired of civil war and its attendant

proscriptions and massacres, hailed with delight the return of peace;

and under the patronage of the emperor, seconded by his minister

Mæcenas, poetry revived.

Augustus was as fortunate in finding at Rome a number of youthful

poets, many of them in humble circumstances and of provincial origin,

as in the possession of a minister who could appreciate and foster

their talents. Mæcenas knew the value of genius too well to let it

die of neglect; and his name, as the patron of art and letters, has

passed into a proverb. His luxurious gardens were the haunt of poets

and savants, and round his sumptuous table sat an inspired circle who

poured their grateful tributes into the ears of their master and his.

Thus the munificence of Augustus and Mæcenas, themselves both critics

and writers, combined with the political quiet that gave leisure for

literary pursuits, to make their period the golden age of poetry.

Prose, on the other hand, declined. Political eloquence was powerless

in the face of despotism; while the veracious historian must needs

tread a dangerous path, or seal his lips.

The poets of the Augustan era were deficient, as a rule, in that

creative genius which characterized the age of Pericles in Greece,

their works being rather the fruits of art and industry. A long and

careful training, in which Greek studies played a prominent part,

prepared them for their high profession; Horace tells us that at the

age of twenty-three he was still “seeking the truth among the groves

of Academus.” Works on various subjects could now be consulted in the

public libraries of Rome; and Alexandrian models helped to mould the

literary taste of the day. (_Compare Sellar’s “Roman Poets of the

Augustan Age.”_)

=Virgil.=—In the little village of Andes near Mantua, on the 15th

of October, B.C. 70, Rome’s greatest poet, Virgil (Publius Virgilius

Maro), first saw the light. His boyhood was spent on the banks of the

winding Mincio in a quiet round of rural pursuits; his father, as owner

of a small farm, being among those whom the poet subsequently pictured

as the happiest of men.

[Illustration: ROMANS OF THE AUGUSTAN AGE (Becker’s “Gallus.”)]

Alive to the importance of education, Virgil’s parents set aside a

portion of their slender means to provide for his instruction; and when

he reached the age of twelve, his father entered him in a school at

Cremona. In his seventeenth year he went to Rome, and there prosecuted

the higher studies, familiarizing himself with the Greek poets, and

spending his leisure in the composition of lyric pieces. Having

completed his education, Virgil returned to his native place, where,

amid the natural attractions that surrounded him, he conceived the idea

of rivalling Theocritus in bucolic poetry, and in 42 B.C. began his

Eclogues.

After the victory of the Triumvirs in the civil war, the lands about

Cremona and Mantua were divided among the soldiers who had served

against Brutus, and the estate of Virgil, neutral though he had been,

was taken from him. On the poet’s application to Octavius, however,

it was restored, and in one of his Eclogues he gave utterance to his

sincere gratitude. Shortly after, Virgil was ejected again, and this

time narrowly escaped with his life by swimming the Mincio. Nor does

he appear to have ever been reinstated. Octavius, however, loaded him

with favors; and a house in Rome near the palace of his friend Mæcenas,

with a lovely villa in the suburbs of Naples, where the climate agreed

better with his delicate constitution than the damp air of the north,

reconciled him to the loss of his boyhood’s home.

The Eclogues, published about 37 B.C., established Virgil’s reputation

as a pastoral poet, and gained him no mean place among the literary and

political celebrities that crowded the house of Mæcenas. It was by the

advice of this statesman that the poet undertook the most finished and

original of all his productions,—the Georgics,—a work which, though

only about 2200 lines in length, occupied him for seven years.

Having declared in this poem that “he would wed Cæsar’s glories to

an epic strain,” Virgil was held to his promise by the emperor, at

whose solicitation he gave the rest of his life (eleven years) to the

composition of the Æneid. In this great epic, like the Odyssey a sequel

to the Iliad, the origin of Rome is traced back to ancient Troy, and

the genealogy of Augustus to her greatest surviving hero, “the pious

Æneas.” Death stopped the poet’s pen when three years’ labor was yet

necessary, in his estimation, to perfect his work.

It appears that in the year 19 B.C. Virgil undertook a tour through

Greece and Asia Minor, to acquaint himself with the geography of the

countries described in the Æneid; but meeting Augustus at Athens, he

changed his plans and started with the emperor for Rome. On the way he

was seized with a mortal illness, and only lived to reach the harbor

of Brundisium in southern Italy. On his death-bed, Virgil besought his

friends to bring him the manuscript of his epic, that he might consign

it to the flames; but they wisely saved a masterpiece which the modesty

of its author would have condemned to oblivion.

Virgil was interred at Naples. A simple vault, overgrown with ivy and

wild myrtle, still marks his grave. On a marble slab set in the rock

opposite is the inscription which Dryden has thus rendered:—

“I sung flocks, tillage, heroes: Mantua gave

Me life; Brundisium, death; Naples, a grave.”

Virgil has been described as a tall, dark-complexioned man, careless

of his dress, and with awkward country airs. His life was that of a

student; and despite the fact that he was a martyr to dyspepsia and

pulmonary disease, he did not allow his delicate health to interfere

with his literary labors. Of gentle, unassuming manners, he would fly

from the admiring crowds that followed him in the streets; and none

would have inferred from his appearance or conversation that he was a

great poet. He was more than a great poet—he was a pure, unselfish,

honest man, uncontaminated by the prevailing vices. Not the least among

his virtues was filial piety. His countrymen felt how great and noble

he was, when they rose in the theatre and paid him equal honor with the

emperor himself.

Had he lived, it was Virgil’s purpose, after completing the Æneid, to

study philosophy, the love of which he had imbibed in early life from

the verses of Lucretius. The investigation of truth was his highest

aim; and there are reasons for believing that he had in mind the

preparation of a grand philosophical poem that might have cast into the

shade the stately treatise “On the Nature of Things.”

Such liberality had Virgil experienced from his friends that he left

a fortune of $400,000, to be divided, as he never married, among his

brother, Augustus, Mæcenas, and others of his associates.

THE ECLOGUES.—Virgil was the first Roman writer to cultivate pastoral

poetry, and his Eclogues (_selections_), or more properly Bucolics

(_shepherd poems_), are mostly dialogues, in imitation of the idyls

of Theocritus. Various subjects are charmingly discussed by imaginary

shepherds, in whom one sometimes recognizes the poet and his friends.

The least understood of Virgil’s Eclogues is the one entitled “Pollio,”

from the name of the consul to whom it is addressed. It was written

B.C. 40, and predicts the coming of a wondrous Child, whose birth would

usher in a golden age of peace and happiness. Some have seen in this

child an unconscious allusion to the Babe of Bethlehem, whose advent

the Sibylline oracles are believed to have foretold. Perhaps Virgil

had heard of the Hebrew prophecies indirectly through the Alexandrian

Greeks, and recast them in Latin verse; perhaps it was but a Roman

infant—Pollio’s child—whose birth he sung in an exaggerated strain.

However this may be, we may remember that the heathen as well as the

Jewish world at this time expected a great reformer, who should restore

the innocence and bliss of by-gone ages.

EXTRACT FROM THE POLLIO.

“Comes the Last Age, of which the Sibyl sung—

A new-born cycle of the rolling years;

Justice returns to earth, the rule returns

Of good King Saturn; lo! from the high heavens

Comes a new seed of men. Lucina chaste,

Speed the fair infant’s birth, with whom shall end

Our age of iron, and the golden prime

Of earth return; thine own Apollo’s reign

In him begins anew. This glorious age

Inaugurates, O Pollio, with thee;

Thy consulship shall date the happy months;

Under thine auspices the Child shall purge

Our guilt-stains out, and free the land from dread.

He with the gods and heroes like the gods

Shall hold familiar converse, and shall rule

With his great father’s spirit the peaceful world.

For thee, O Child! the earth untilled shall pour

Her early gifts, the winding ivy’s wreath,

Smiling acanthus, and all flowers that blow.

The ground beneath shall cradle thee in blooms,

The venomed snake shall die, the poisonous herb

Perish from out thy path.

So, when the years shall seal thy manhood’s strength,

The busy merchant shall forsake the seas—

Barter there shall not need; the soil shall bear

For all men’s use all products of all climes.

The glebe shall need no harrow, nor the vine

The searching knife, the oxen bear no yoke;

The wool no longer shall be schooled to lie,

Dyed in false hues; but, coloring as he feeds,

The ram himself in the rich pasture-lands

Shall wear a fleece now purple and now gold,

And the lambs grow in scarlet. So the Fates,

Who know not change, have bid their spindles run,

And weave for this blest age the web of doom.”

W. L. COLLINS.

THE GEORGICS.—Having shown his powers in the Eclogues, Virgil was not

unwilling to put them to a further proof, when Mæcenas suggested a work

on husbandry, which should dignify that ancient art and revive a love

for the simple pursuits of the fathers of the Republic.

Taking Hesiod’s “Works and Days” as his model, he added the artistic

Georgics (_agricultural poem_) to the works of Cato and Varro on rural

life. No less elevated in tone than theirs, it possesses an additional

attraction in its dress of verse, glows with the author’s love of

nature, and displays his ardent zeal to check the national decay.

Virgil labored upon the Georgics for seven years, it being his habit to

rise betimes and dictate in the early morning verses which he spent

the rest of the day in polishing and condensing.

The Georgics is a didactic poem, and as such, with the work of

Lucretius, represents the only department in which the Romans excelled

both the Greeks and all modern nations. The first of its four books is

devoted to tillage; it gives directions for ploughing (early and often,

was Virgil’s motto), sowing, and fertilizing, and explains the signs of

the weather. We learn from it that the pests of the modern farmer were

not unknown to the old Roman husbandman:—

“With ponderous roller smooth the level floor,

And bind with chalky cement o’er and o’er;

Lest springing weeds expose thy want of art,

And worn in many a chink the surface part:

There builds the field-mouse underneath the ground,

And loads her little barn with plunder crowned;

There works the mole along her dark abode,

There in its hollow lurks the lonely toad,

There wastes the weevil with insatiate rage,

There the wise ant that dreads the wants of age.”

Arboriculture is treated minutely in the second book, the vine

receiving the principal share of attention. Here we have the most

beautiful of those digressions which lend an enchanting variety to the

style of the Georgics—the poet’s glowing eulogy of his native land.

PRAISES OF ITALY.

“Yet nor the Median groves, nor rivers, rolled,

Ganges, and Hermus, o’er their beds of gold,

Nor Ind, nor Bactra, nor the blissful land

Where incense spreads o’er rich Panchaia’s sand,

Nor all that fancy paints in fabled lays,

O native Italy! transcend thy praise.

Though here no bulls beneath the enchanted yoke

With fiery nostril o’er the furrow smoke,

No hydra teeth embattled harvest yield,

Spear and bright helmet bristling o’er the field;

Yet golden corn each laughing valley fills,

The vintage reddens on a thousand hills,

Luxuriant olives spread from shore to shore,

And flocks unnumbered range the pastures o’er.

Hence the proud war-horse rushes on the foe,

Clitumnus! hence thy herds, more white than snow,

And stately bull, that, of gigantic size,

Supreme of victims, on the altar lies,

Bathed in thy sacred stream oft led the train

When Rome in pomp of triumph deck’d the fane.

Here Spring perpetual leads the laughing Hours,

And Winter wears a wreath of summer flowers:

The o’erloaded branch twice fills with fruits the year,

And twice the teeming flocks their offspring rear.

Yet here no lion breeds, no tiger strays,

No tempting aconite the touch betrays,

No monstrous snake the uncoiling volume trails,

Or gathers orb on orb his iron scales.

But many a peopled city towers around,

And many a rocky cliff with castle crowned,

And many an antique wall whose hoary brow

O’ershades the flood that guards its base below.

All hail, Saturnian earth! hail, loved of fame,

Land, rich in fruits and men of mighty name!

For thee I dare the sacred founts explore,

For thee, the rules of ancient art restore,

Themes once to glory raised again rehearse,

And pour through Roman towns the Ascræan verse.”

SOTHEBY.

The raising of cattle and the management of bees form the subjects of

the remaining books of the Georgics.

THE ÆNEID narrates in epic verse the adventures of Æneas, the legendary

ancestor of the Romans. Virgil sums up his plot in the opening lines:—

“Arms and the man I sing, who first,

By Fate of Ilian realm amerced,

To fair Italia onward bore,

And landed on Lavinium’s shore:—

Long tossing earth and ocean o’er,

By violence of heaven, to sate

Fell Juno’s unforgetting hate:

Much labored too in battle-field,

Striving his city’s walls to build,

And give his Gods a home.

Thence come the hardy Latin brood,

The ancient sires of Alba’s blood,

And lofty-rampired Rome.”

Æneas, the son of Venus by the Trojan shepherd Anchi’ses, escaped from

burning Troy with his aged father, little son, and household gods. He

lay concealed for a time in the mountains; and, when the victorious

Greeks had all withdrawn, took ship with the remnant of his people

to found a new Troy in the west. After seven years of hardships and

mistakes, the Trojans embark from Sicily for “the Hesperian shore.”

Here the Æneid takes up the story. In the first book we see the

Trojan fleet driven by a tempest, sent at Juno’s solicitation, on the

opposite coast of Africa, near the rising walls of Carthage. Dido, its

queen, whom the murder of her husband Sichæus by her unnatural brother

had driven from Tyre, receives the strangers hospitably, and by the

strategy of Venus conceives a passionate love for Æneas. At her request

the Trojan prince tells the pathetic story—the fall of his native city

through the wiles of the Greeks, and his subsequent trials.

Æneas returns Dido’s love, but only at last to betray his confiding

hostess, and fly with his vessels under cover of the night, in

obedience to a warning from Mercury, the messenger of Jove. Too “pious”

to disregard the heavenly command, he left Dido to end her sorrow on

the funeral pyre.

After a temporary sojourn in Sicily, where he celebrates funeral games

to his father’s memory, Æneas at length reaches Cumæ in Italy, and at

once seeks the Sibyl. She informs him that his trials are not over, and

takes him to the lower world that he may hold an interview with his

father Anchises. There he descries among other shades the injured Dido,

to whom he endeavors to excuse his conduct.

“’Mid these among the branching treen

Sad Dido moved, the Tyrian queen,

Her death-wound ghastly yet and green.

Soon as Æneas caught the view

And through the mist her semblance knew,

Like one who spies, or thinks he spies,

Through flickering clouds the new moon rise,

The tear-drop from his eyelids broke,

And thus in tenderest tones he spoke.

‘Ah Dido! rightly then I read

The news that told me you were dead,

Slain by your own rash hand!

Myself the cause of your despair!

Now by the blessed stars I swear,

By heaven, by all that dead men keep

In reverence here ’mid darkness deep,

Against my will, ill-fated fair,

I parted from your land.’”

CONINGTON.

But Dido averts her eyes “that neither smiled nor wept,” and moves away

in silence to join Sichæus, who “gives her love for love.”

Æneas learns from the lips of Anchises the future of his race, and

beholds the shadowy forms of kings, generals, and statesmen that are to

shed glory on the Roman name. “Augustus Cæsar, god by birth,” figures,

as we should expect, the proudest of the throng. At last he espies the

great Marcellus, “the Sword of Rome,” glittering in the spoils of the

Punic War; and by his side

“A youth full-armed, by none excelled

In beauty’s manly grace.”

In answer to the inquiry of Æneas, Anchises tells his son that this

youth is “our own Marcellus,” and eulogizes his virtues. Thus Virgil

immortalized the name of a Roman prince of great promise, son of

Octavia, the emperor’s sister, whose premature death had filled the

Roman world with sorrow. When, at the request of Augustus, the poet

read this portion of his epic before the royal family, all were moved

to tears, and the bereaved mother fainted. She afterward showed her

appreciation of Virgil’s genius by presenting him about $400 for each

of the twenty-seven lines. The passage is well worth repeating here:—

VIRGIL’S TRIBUTE TO MARCELLUS.

“Seek not to know (the ghost replied with tears)

The sorrows of thy sons in future years.

This youth (the blissful vision of a day)

Shall just be shown on earth, then snatched away.

The gods too high had raised the Roman state,

Were but their gifts as permanent as great.

What groans of men shall fill the Martian field!

How fierce a blaze his flaming pile shall yield!

What funeral pomp shall floating Tiber see,

When rising from his bed, he views the sad solemnity!

No youth shall equal hopes of glory give,

No youth afford so great a cause to grieve.

The Trojan honor, and the Roman boast,

Admired when living, and adored when lost!

Mirror of ancient faith in early youth!

Undaunted worth, inviolable truth!

No foe, unpunished, in the fighting field

Shall dare thee, foot to foot, with sword and shield!

Much less in arms oppose thy matchless force,

When thy sharp spurs shall urge thy foaming horse.

Ah! couldst thou break through Fate’s severe decree,

A new Marcellus shall arise in thee!

Full canisters of fragrant lilies bring,

Mixed with the purple roses of the spring:

Let me with funeral flowers his body strow;

This gift which parents to their children owe,

This unavailing gift, at least I may bestow!”—DRYDEN.

From Cumæ the Trojan chief sails to Latium, the land of his destiny,

and there he receives from King Lati’nus the promise of his daughter

Lavinia’s hand. But this provokes a war with Turnus, a neighboring

prince, to whom Lavinia had been secretly plighted by the queen-mother.

Not until he had subdued Turnus and his Latin allies did Æneas make

Lavinia his own and rule as king of Latium. The poem ends with the fall

of Turnus in a duel between the rival chiefs. To finish the story, Alba

Longa was built by Æneas’ son Iulus, from whose royal line in later

ages sprung Romulus, founder of Rome, the _Julian_ family, and their

great hero _Julius_ Caesar.

The passion of Dido, as portrayed in the fourth book of the Æneid, is

the most masterly piece of Virgil’s handiwork. We present below the

closing scenes that sealed her sad fate.

THE DEATH OF DIDO.

“Now, rising from Tithonus’ bed,

The Dawn on earth her freshness shed:

The queen from off her turret height

Perceives the first dim streak of light,

The fleet careering on its way,

And void and sailless shore and bay;

She smites her breast, all snowy fair,

And rends her golden length of hair:

‘Great Jove! and shall he go?’ she cries,

‘And leave our realm a wanderer’s mock?

Quick, snatch your arms and chase the prize,

And drag the vessels from the dock!

Fetch flames, bring darts, ply oars!—yet why?

What words are these, or where am I?

Why rave I thus? Those impious deeds—

Poor Dido! how your torn heart bleeds.

Too late! it should have bled that day

When at his feet your sceptre lay.

Lo here, the chief of stainless word,

Who takes his household gods on board,

Whose shoulders safe from sword and fire

Conveyed his venerable sire!

Oh! had I rent him limb from limb

And cast him o’er the waves to swim,

His friends, his own Ascanius killed,

And with the child the father filled!

Yet danger in the strife had been:—

Who prates of danger here?

A death-devoted, desperate queen,

What foe had I to fear?

No, I had sown the flame broadcast,

Had fired the fleet from keel to mast,

Slain son and sire, stamped out the race,

And thrown at length with steadfast face

Myself upon the bier.

If needs must be that wretch abhorred

Attain the port and float to land,

If such the fate of heaven’s high lord,

And so the moveless pillars stand;

Scourged by a savage enemy,

An exile from his son’s embrace,

So let him sue for aid, and see

His people slain before his face;

Nor when to humbling peace at length

He stoops, be his or life or land,

But let him fall in manhood’s strength

And welter tombless on the sand.

Such malison to heaven I pour,

A last libation with my gore.

And, Tyrians, you through time to come

His seed with deathless hatred chase:

Be that your gift to Dido’s tomb:

No love, no league ’twixt race and race.

Rise from my ashes, scourge of crime,

Born to pursue the Dardan horde

To-day, to-morrow, through all time,

Oft as our hands can wield the sword:

Fight shore with shore, fight sea with sea,

Fight all that are or e’er shall be!’

She ceased, and with her heart debates

How best to leave the life she hates.

Then to Sichæus’ nurse she cried

(For hers erewhile at Tyre had died):—

‘Good nurse, my sister Anna bring:

O’er face and body bid her fling

Pure drops from lustral bough:

So sprinkled come, and at her side

The victims lead: you too provide

A fillet for your brow.

A sacrifice to Stygian Jove

I here perform, to ease my love,

And give to flame the fatal bed

Which pillowed once the Trojan’s head.’

Thus she: the aged dame gives heed,

And, feebly hurrying, mends her speed.

Then, maddening over crime, the queen,

With bloodshot eyes, and sanguine streaks

Fresh painted on her quivering cheeks,

And wanning o’er with death foreseen,

Through inner portals wildly fares,

Scales the high pile with swift ascent,

Takes up the Dardan sword and bares,

Sad gift, for different uses meant.

She eyed the robes with wistful look,

And, pausing, thought awhile and wept;

Then pressed her to the couch, and spoke

Her last good-night or ere she slept.

‘Sweet relics of a time of love,

When fate and heaven were kind,

Receive my life-blood and remove

These torments of the mind.

My life is lived, and I have played

The part that Fortune gave,

And now I pass, a queenly shade,

Majestic to the grave.

A glorious city I have built,

Have seen my walls ascend,

Chastised for blood of husband spilt

A brother, yet no friend.

Blest lot! yet lacked one blessing more,

That Troy had never touched my shore.’

Then as she kissed the darling bed,

‘To die! and unrevenged!’ she said,

‘Yet let me die: thus, thus I go

Exulting to the shades below.

Let the false Dardan feel the blaze

That burns me pouring on his gaze,

And bear along, to cheer his way,

The funeral presage of to-day.’

Thus as she speaks, the attendant train

Behold her writhing as in pain,

Her hands with slaughter sprinkled o’er,

And the fell weapon spouting gore.

Loud clamors thrill the lofty halls:

Fame shakes the town, confounds, appalls:

Each house resounds with women’s cries.

And funeral wails assault the skies:

E’en as one day should war o’erthrow

Proud Carthage or her parent Tyre,

And fire-flood stream with furious glow

O’er roof, and battlement, and spire.”

CONINGTON.

Virgil’s epic was the pride of his countrymen, who, with a pardonable

national vanity, pronounced it superior to Homer’s. Tenderness,

grace, elegance, rhythmical perfection, brilliance of description, it

certainly possesses; yet, with all its beauties, it is not faultless.

We miss the wonderful imagination that plays through every page of

the Iliad; indeed, Homer furnished the originals of many of its most

striking figures. Nor did Virgil disdain levying on Latin authors

also. Whatever recommended itself to him in the poetry of others, he

borrowed for his own. And yet he must not be regarded as a plagiarist;

doubtless it was his intention to enshrine in a national epic literary

monuments of all the great minds of his country.

Æneas, his hero, too often appears as the boaster or the heartless

hypocrite, rather than as the ideal of greatness and piety it was

designed to draw. The author himself seems to have felt the inferiority

of his epic to the Iliad, and hence his wish to destroy it. We are told

that it was first written in prose; and then the artist, having a clear

conception of the whole, threw different portions into verse as the

spirit moved him. (_See Nettleship’s “Introduction to the Study of the

Æneid.”_)

=Horace= (65-8 B.C.).—The great lyric poet of Rome was Horace (Quintus

Horatius Flaccus), a freedman’s son, of Venusia on the roaring

Au’fidus. That he might enjoy the best educational advantages, his

father took him to Rome at the early age of twelve. Here he was placed

in charge of a famous schoolmaster, called by his pupils “the Flogger;”

under whose rod the country lad made the acquaintance of Ennius and

Homer. To the watchful care and liberality of his parent, who remained

to guard him from the temptations of the metropolis, he gratefully

acknowledged that he owed everything.

Horace was at Athens, finishing his course, when Cæsar fell beneath

the daggers of the conspirators. With a number of hot-headed

fellow-students he promptly espoused the cause of Brutus the Liberator,

and served in the civil war as military tribune. But Horace’s courage

could not stand the touch of cold steel; he ignominiously fled from the

field of Philippi, and his estate was confiscated as a reward for his

patriotism. Poverty now compelled him to take a clerkship at Rome; and

to add to his slender income he began writing verses. This brought him

into notice, and in 38 B.C. he had the honor of an introduction to the

social circle that gathered round Mæcenas. His little farm, fifteen

miles from Tibur, the ruins of which are still pointed out to tourists,

was the gift of his munificent patron.

This “Sabine farm” was at once Horace’s joy and pride. Between Rome

and Tibur, therefore, he made frequent journeys, and the simple

country-folk, won by his affability, hailed with delight the occasions

when, tired of city excitements, he sought relaxation among them. Beset

by the throng of gossips and favor-seekers who haunted his footsteps

as the friend of Mæcenas, Horace in his Sixth Satire breaks out into

enthusiastic praises of his rural home, with its simple fare and

freedom from annoyances:—

“This fortune’s favorite son (’tis cried)

Is ever by Mæcenas’ side,

Companion wheresoe’er he goes,

In rural sports or festal shows.

Should any rumor, without head

Or tail, about the streets be spread,

Whoever meets me gravely nods,

And says,‘As you approach the gods,

It is no mystery to you;

What do the Dacians mean to do?’

‘Indeed I know not.’—’How you joke,

And love to sneer at simple folk.’

‘Then, pr’ythee, where are Cæsar’s bands

Allotted their long-promised lands?’

Although I swear I know no more

Of that than what was asked before,

They stand amazed, and think me then

The most reserved of mortal men.

Bewildered thus amidst a maze,

I lose the sunshine of my days,

And often wish: Oh! when again

Shall I behold the rural plain?

And when with books of sages deep

Sequestered ease and gentle sleep,

In sweet oblivion, blissful balm!

The busy cares of life becalm.

Oh! when shall Pythagoric beans

With wholesome juice enrich my veins?

And bacon, ham, and savory pottage,

Be served within my simple cottage?

O nights that furnish such a feast

As even gods themselves might taste!”

FRANCIS.

The loss of his friend Virgil cast a shadow over Horace’s latter years.

His own death was sudden. A short month before, Mæcenas had breathed

his last; and thus the promise of the poet not to survive his patron

was almost literally fulfilled. In an ode to Mæcenas, Horace had sung,

“Should you, alas! be snatched away,

Wherefore, ah! wherefore should I stay,

My value lost, no longer whole,

And but possessing half my soul?

One day (believe the sacred oath)

Shall lead the funeral pomp of both;

With thee to Pluto’s dark abode,

With thee I’ll tread the dreary road.”

The remains of the poet were laid by the side of his friend; and thus,

devoted to each other in life, they slept together in the grave. (_Read

Milman’s “Life of Horace.”_)

Horace, in his youth, was a free liver, a voluptuary; such, indeed,

were the men of his day, Virgil alone excepted. Time, however,

corrected his tastes, and at the close of his life we find him playing

the part of the moralist. If there is much to condemn in his character,

there is also much to admire,—his even temper, contented disposition,

and independent spirit. Quick to resent an affront, he was as ready

to forgive an injury. His friends found him ever a genial, frank,

warm-hearted companion.

As to his personal appearance, we may judge from his own accounts that

he was gray in advance of his years, short, corpulent, and withal

blear-eyed. This last defect furnished Augustus with a ready joke, when

he had Horace on one side and the asthmatic Virgil on the other: “I sit

between sighs and tears,” he used to say.

WORKS OF HORACE.—The earliest poetical efforts of Horace were Satires,

which, though written in hexameter verse, he called _prose-poems_.

Holding up to contempt the follies of fashionable society,

fortune-hunting, extravagance, avarice, etc., they pleased the Romans

and rapidly grew in popularity. But Horace merely derides, he does

not chastise, the vices of his day, evidently deeming ridicule a more

effective weapon than denunciation.

In his Epodes, Horace aimed his blows at individuals with something

like the force of Archilochus. But personal satire was not the author’s

forte, and his Epodes are hardly equal to his other productions.

It is to his Odes, in the lyric metres of Alcæus and Sappho, whose

poetry he not only loved, but recast after his own ideas in his

native tongue, that Horace owes his renown. Always brief and to the

point, clear and elegant in their condensation, graceful, spicy, true

to nature, these poems have been read with pleasure for nineteen

centuries. They deal with a great variety of subjects—the grand as well

as the commonplace; and, whatever the theme, their author is equally

admirable. He paints pictures of moral beauty and sublimity with

singular impressiveness. Nowhere in the classics is a nobler character

sketched than that drawn by Horace of a man firm in the cause of

justice (Book III., 3). Byron presents it in an English dress:—

“The man of firm and noble soul

No factious clamors can control;

No threat’ning tyrant’s darkling brow

Can swerve him from his just intent:

Gales the warring waves which plough

By Auster on the billows spent,

To curb the Adriatic main,

Would awe his fixed, determined mind in vain.

Ay, and the red right arm of Jove,

Hurtling his lightnings from above,

With all his terrors then unfurled,

He would unmoved, unawed behold:

The flames of an expiring world

Again in crashing chaos rolled,

In vast promiscuous ruin hurled,

Might light his glorious funeral pile:

Still dauntless, ’mid the wreck of earth he’d smile.”

Horace began writing his odes at the age of thirty-five, and was seven

years in completing the first three books; they were issued 23 B.C.

That he designed them to include all his lyric productions is evident

from the following ode, with which the third book closes:—

“And now ’tis done: more durable than brass

My monument shall be, and raise its head

O’er royal pyramids: it shall not dread

Corroding rain or angry Boreas,

Nor the long lapse of immemorial time.

I shall not wholly die: large residue

Shall ’scape the queen of funerals. Ever new

My after-fame shall grow, while pontiffs climb

With silent maids the Capitolian height.

‘Born,’ men will say,‘where Aufidus is loud,

Where Daunus, scant of streams, beneath him bowed

The rustic tribes, from dimness he waxed bright,

First of his race to wed the Æolian lay

To notes of Italy.’ Put glory on,

My own Melpomene, by genius won,

And crown me of thy grace with Delphic bay.”

CONINGTON.

The odes of the fourth book were written at the request of Augustus,

who commissioned the favorite poet to celebrate the victories of his

step-sons over a German tribe. After publishing the original three

books, Horace wrote his Epistles, the most finished of all his works.

They bear the ripe fruits of his experience, and are full of wise

reflections which do credit to his knowledge of men and manners.

Sprightliness and wit constitute their charm. Their subjects are

various, several of them being literary criticisms; the longest, called

“the Art of Poetry,” possesses the greatest value.

The works of Horace have maintained their popularity in all ages; his

sententious sayings have become aphorisms; and to-day he is a greater

favorite with scholars than ever. Few classical poets have been so

fortunate in their translators.

ODE TO MÆCENAS.

“Strong doors, wakeful watch-dogs, securely had barred

Danaë in her tower of brass,

If Venus and Jove had not laughed at such guard

And the shower of gold caused to pass.

Through an army of guards will bright gold make its way;

It will pierce through the thickest of walls;

More power it has and may strike more dismay

Than the lightning from heaven that falls.

Through lucre the house of the Argive seer[46] fell:

Philip forced cities’ gates with his gold;

The power of rivals with bribes he could quell:

We know, too, how fleets have been sold.

The increase of wealth ever brings with it care

And hungry ambition for more;

Thus, Mæcenas, O knight with whom none can compare!

Great fortune I ever forswore.

The more that a man to himself shall deny,

The more he shall have from the gods;

Poor, I seek for the home of contentment, and fly

With joy from the wealthy abodes.

With my stream of pure water, few acres of wood,

And secure that my harvest will pay,

A pleasure I have more substantial than could

Be to him that o’er Afric holds sway.

Though for me never works the Calabrian bee,

Though for me is no Formian wine,

Though no sheep in the pastures of Gaul feed for me.

Yet poverty never is mine.

Much must that man want ever who much shall demand;

What he gains whets the covetous vice;

Happy he to whom God with a niggardly hand

Has granted what yet will suffice.”—YARDLEY.

TO PYRRHA.

“What scented stripling, Pyrrha, wooes thee now

In pleasant cavern, all with roses fair?

For whom those yellow tresses bindest thou

With simple care?

Full oft shall he thine altered faith bewail,

His altered gods; and his unwonted gaze

Shall watch the waters darken to the gale

In wild amaze,

Who now believing gloats on golden charms;

Who hopes thee ever kind and ever void;

Nor, hapless! knows the changeful wind’s alarms,

Nor thee, untried.

For me, let Neptune’s temple wall declare

How, safe escaped, in votive offering

My dripping garments own, suspended there,

Him Ocean-king.”

GLADSTONE.

=Varius= (74-14 B.C.).—Older than Horace or Virgil in the Augustan

galaxy was Varius, the friend who introduced them both to Mæcenas. An

epic on the death of Cæsar, highly esteemed by his countrymen,—and a

tragedy entitled “Thyestes,” classed with the finest Greek dramas,—have

won for Varius an enviable fame.

Both are lost; but we still have the benefit of the poet’s labors as

the editor of Virgil’s Æneid.

=Albius Tibullus= (59-19 B.C.), another poet of the Augustan age,

perfected the erotic elegy which Catullus had introduced from Greece.

The meagre accounts that remain of his life inform us that he was a

knight, and lost his estates near Rome for political reasons, after

the overthrow of Pompey. These he partially recovered, it is supposed

through the influence of Messa’la, a noble of the old school, whose

praises he never tired of sounding. As aide-de-camp, he accompanied

Messala in his expedition against the rebellious Aquitanians, and

doubtless figured in the triumph decreed his victorious friend by the

emperor.

A peaceful life, however, was more in accordance with his tastes. The

hills and dales, the corn-fields, vineyards, and meadows, possessed

greater charms for him than the favor of Augustus, who vainly sought to

attract Tibullus to his court. Hence we find the poet generally living

at his country-seat, amid rural enjoyments.

The elegies of Tibullus preserve the names of two Roman

beauties—“Delia,” the early mistress of his heart, and “Nem’esis,”

her successor. Delia, “with her queenly charms and golden locks,”

first brought him to her feet, and he wooed her in his most finished

strains. But, like Catullus, he soon found occasion to lament his fair

one’s inconstancy. Delia jilted him for a richer lover, and Tibullus

transferred his affections to the imperious Nemesis.

The style of Tibullus is sweet and polished. A pensive, almost

melancholy tone pervades his verses. In the following plaintive elegy,

the injured but forgiving poet recalls to his false one how tenderly

he nursed her through a critical sickness, picturing his dream of

happiness with her installed as the mistress of his rural home, and his

rude awakening:—

ELEGY TO DELIA.

“Oh! I was harsh to say that I could part

From thee; but, Delia, I am bold no more!

Driven like a top, which boys with ready art

Keep spinning round upon a level floor.

Burn, lash me, love, if ever after this

By me one cruel, blustering word is said;

Yet spare, I pray thee by our stolen bliss,

By mighty Venus and thy comely head.

When thou didst lie, by fell disease o’erpowered,

I rescued thee, by prayers, from death’s domain;

Pure sulphur’s cleansing fumes I round thee showered,

While an enchantress sung a magic strain.

Yes—and another now enjoys the prize,

And reaps the fruit of all my vows for thee:

Foolish, I dreamed of life ’neath golden skies,

Wert thou but saved—not such great heaven’s decree.

I said—I’ll till my fields, she’ll guard my store

When crops are threshed in autumn’s burning heat;

She’ll keep my grapes in baskets brimming o’er,

And my rich must expressed by nimble feet.

She’ll count my flock; some home-born slave of mine

Will prattle in my darling’s lap and play:

To rural god ripe clusters for the vine,

Sheaves for my crops, cates for my fold, she’ll pay.

Slaves—all shall own her undisputed rule;

Myself a cipher—how the thought would please!

Here will Messala come, for whom she’ll pull

The sweetest apples from the choicest trees;

And, honoring one so great, for him prepare

And serve the banquet with her own white hands.

Fond dream! which now the east and south winds bear

Away to far Armenia’s spicy lands.”

CRANSTOUN.

=Propertius.=—With the name of Tibullus is often linked that of

Propertius, who was born about 50 B.C. at Assisium, among the

Umbrian mountains. In this lovely spot he was prepared for the study

of the law, which he afterward adopted as his profession at Rome.

But Propertius found this calling distasteful; relinquishing it,

accordingly, for the pursuits of literature, he aspired to be a Roman

Callimachus, and grounded himself in the principles of Alexandrian

verse. But too much study made him artificial, and his numerous

mythological allusions and digressions encumber rather than embellish.

He lacks the sweetness, simplicity, and tenderness, of Tibullus.

Catullus had his “Lesbia;” Tibullus, his “Delia;” and Propertius,

profiting not by the example of his brother bards, lavished his

affections on the accomplished but fickle “Cynthia,” who played him

false as soon as a rich prætor laid a fortune at her feet. Cynthia

was the single theme of our poet’s love-lays, all rapture or gentle

reproach. In an elegy to Mæcenas, who had pressed him to attempt an

epic, he sings:—

“You ask me why love-elegy so frequently I follow,

And why my little book of tender trifles only sings:

It is not from Calliope, nor is it from Apollo,

But from my own sweet lady-love my inspiration springs.

If in resplendent purple robe of Cos my darling dresses,

I’ll fill a portly volume with the Coan garments’ praise;

Or if her truant tresses wreathe her forehead with caresses,

The tresses of her queenly brow demand her poet’s lays.”

In another elegy he describes his Cynthia’s charms:—

“’Twas not her face, though fair, so smote my eye

(Less fair the lily than my love: as snows

Of Scythia with Iberian vermeil vie;

As float in milk the petals of the rose);

Nor locks that down her neck of ivory stream,

Nor eyes—my stars—twin lamps with love aglow;

Nor, if in silk of Araby she gleam

(I prize not baubles), does she thrill me so,

As when she leaves the mantling cup to thread

The mazy dance, and moves before my view,

Graceful as blooming Ariadne led

The choral revels of the Bacchic crew.”

The death of Propertius is supposed to have taken place about 15 B.C.

Of his elegies, there is none better than

LOVE’S DREAM REALIZED.

“Not in his Dardan triumph so rejoiced the great Atrides,

When fell the mighty kingdom of Laomedon of yore;

Not so Ulysses, when he moored his wave-worn raft beside his

Beloved Dulichian island-home—his weary wanderings o’er;

As I, when last eve’s rosy joys I ruminated over:

To me another eve like that were immortality!

Awhile before with downcast head I walked a pining lover—

More useless I had grown, ’twas said, than water-tank run dry.

No more my darling passes me with silent recognition,

Nor can she sit unmoved while I outpour my tender vow.

I wish that I had sooner realized this blest condition;

’Tis pouring living water on a dead man’s ashes now.

In vain did others seek my love, in vain they called upon her,

She leaned her head upon my breast, was kind as girl could be.

Of conquered Parthians talk no more, I’ve gained a nobler honor,

For she’ll be spoils, and leaders, and triumphal car to me.

Light of my life! say, shall my bark reach shore with gear befitting,

Or, dashed amid the breakers, with her cargo run aground?

With thee it lies: but if, perchance, through fault of my committing,

Thou giv’st me o’er, before thy door let my cold corse be found.”

CRANSTOUN.

=Ovid= (43 B.C.-17 A.D.).—Publius Ovidius Na’so, the last of the

Augustan poets, was a knight of Sulmo, an ancient Samnite town in the

eastern part of Italy. Designed for the legal profession, he was sent

to Rome to be educated; but the writing of verses was more congenial

than rhetorical studies; and an eminent critic of the day, on hearing

one of his early declamations, described it as “nothing else than

poetry out of metre.”

After the death of an elder son, his father consented that Publius

should follow the bent of his own inclinations, and the poet went

abroad to study in Greece and travel in Asia Minor. Returning to Rome,

he began his literary career as the glory of the Augustan age was

beginning to fade.

For twenty-two years Ovid wasted his talents on the composition of

licentious love-poems. In the “Loves” (Amo’res), the earliest of his

works, one Corinna is addressed throughout. The hearty reception with

which these loose songs met at Rome is a sad comment on the degeneracy

of the public taste and morals. They were followed by the “Hero’ides,”

a collection of twenty-one imaginary love-letters, inscribed by the

heroines of the past to their absent or unfaithful lords—an original

idea with Ovid. Penelope indicts an epistle to Ulysses, Medea to Jason,

Sappho to Phaon, etc. In the one last named, translated by Pope, the

Lesbian poetess informs the youth of her resolve to take the Lover’s

Leap.

“A spring there is, where silver waters show,

Clear as a glass, the shining sands below;

A flowery lotus spreads its arms above,

Shades all the banks, and seems itself a grove:

Eternal greens the mossy margin grace,

Watched by the sylvan genius of the place.

Here as I lay, and swelled with tears the flood,

Before my sight a watery virgin stood:

She stood and cried,‘O you that love in vain,

Fly hence, and seek the fair Leucadian main!

There stands a rock, from whose impending steep

Apollo’s fane surveys the rolling deep;

There injured lovers, leaping from above,

Their flames extinguish and forget to love.

Hence, Sappho, haste! from high Leucadia throw

Thy wretched weight, nor dread the deeps below.’

She spoke, and vanished with the voice—I rise,

And silent tears fall trickling from my eyes.

I go, ye nymphs, those rocks and seas to prove:

And much I fear; but ah! how much I love!

To rocks and seas I fly from Phaon’s hate,

And hope from seas and rocks a milder fate.”

In the “Art of Love,” Ovid again overleaped the bounds of propriety,

and threw so brilliant a coloring into his pictures of vice that his

readers were fain to linger over them, to enjoy, and to admire, with

manifest danger to their own morals. When even a daughter of the

imperial line was corrupted by them, Augustus, the professed defender

of virtue, felt that it was time to stop the dissemination of such

principles, and visited the poet with his displeasure. In consequence

of a subsequent and more serious offence, in some way connected with

the royal family, but the nature of which we can only conjecture, Ovid

suddenly received notice to quit the capital forever, and retire to

To’mi, a dreary and desolate village on the Black Sea, A.D. 9. Despite

his urgent prayers, the decree of banishment was never revoked.

The works of his eight years’ exile are the “Tristia,” or Sorrows,

“Letters from Pontus,” and some shorter poems; they prove his genius to

have been crushed, his spirit broken. Tomi gave Ovid a grave; even his

request to be buried in Italy was refused.

The best of Ovid’s works were the “Fasti,” or Roman Calendar, a

pleasant almanac in verse, and the “Metamorphoses,” ingenious in

both conception and expression. While engaged on the Fasti, which he

intended to complete in twelve books, one dedicated to each month,

the poet was surprised by the decree of banishment, and left his work

unfinished.

The Metamorphoses, from which modern writers have largely drawn, gives

an account of the transformations of ancient mythology, such as the

changing of Io into a heifer, Daphne into a laurel, the sisters of

Phaëton into the poplars of the Po, and Atlas into a mountain of stone

by the gorgon-head of Perseus. One of the prettiest of these poems

relates to the metamorphosis of the ivory statue wrought by Pygmalion,

into a living bride, by the goddess of beauty, in answer to the

sculptor’s prayer:—

PYGMALION’S STATUE.

“The sculptor sought

His home, and, bending o’er the couch that bore

His Maiden’s life-like image, to her lips

Fond pressed his own—and lo! her lips seemed warm,

And warmer, kissed again; and dimpling to his touch

The ivory seems to yield,—as in the sun

The waxen labor of Hymettus’ bees,

By plastic fingers wrought, to various shape

And use by use is fashioned. Wonder-spelled,

Scarce daring to believe his bliss, in dread

Lest sense deluded mock him, on the form

He loves again and yet again his hand

Lays trembling touch, and to his touch a pulse

Within throbs answering palpable: ’twas flesh!

’Twas very life!—Then forth in eloquent flood

His grateful heart its thanks to Venus poured!

The lips he kissed were living lips that felt

His passionate pressure; o’er the virgin cheeks

Stole deepening crimson; and the unclosing eyes

At once on heaven and on their lover looked!”

HENRY KING.

With the death of Ovid, the flourishing period of poetry terminated.

Among his contemporaries, we may mention, in passing, the epic poets

ALBINOVA’NUS author of the These’id, and CORNELIUS SEVE’RUS, who

wrote an heroic on the war between Augustus and Sextus Pompey. The

didactic poets GRATIUS and MANILIUS also flourished in the Augustan

age; the former memorable for his poem on hunting, the latter for his

“Astronomica.”

PROSE WRITERS.

=Titus Livius.=—The last ornament of the Augustan Era is the historian

Livy, born at Pata’vium (now Padua) about 59 B.C.—the scion of a noble

line that had figured proudly in the annals of the Republic. His

was the uneventful life of the scholar, and few particulars of his

biography have therefore been preserved. He appears to have begun his

career as a rhetorician; to have come to the capital about B.C. 31, for

what precise purpose we cannot say, and there to have gained a ready

introduction at court. The emperor, already favorably impressed with

his ability, is said to have placed at his disposal a suite of rooms in

the palace.

Perhaps, as his importunities made the reluctant Virgil the great epic

poet of Rome, so Augustus may have stirred the ambition of Livy to

become its historian; whether he did or not, we find the rhetorician

of Patavium, soon after taking up his abode at the imperial city,

entering upon the composition of his “Annals,” a work which progressed

simultaneously with the Æneid. As the different decades (divisions of

ten books) were completed, the author, after first reading them to

Augustus and Mæcenas, published them for the perusal of his countrymen.

They at once made his reputation, and became the received authority

on the national history, raising Livy during his lifetime, as at the

present day, to the rank of the most distinguished historians. The

estimation in which they were held may be inferred from the story of

Pliny—that a citizen of Cadiz came all the way to Italy merely to see

the great writer the whole Roman world was talking about.

For forty years Livy labored on his history. At the time of his death,

which took place in his native town, 17 A.D., he had finished 142

books, covering nearly seven and a half centuries from the founding of

Rome. It is supposed that he intended to add eight more, embracing the

entire reign of Augustus. Only thirty-five of the original books have

been recovered.

The loss of the decades relating to the civil wars is much to be

deplored, and it has ever been the hope of scholars that some day the

missing parts would be found. Several times has the literary world been

thrown into excitement by false rumors of their discovery. Once, we are

told, a learned man detected in the parchment covering of a battledoor

with which he was playing a page of the favorite historian; but on

hastening to the maker of the toy, to rescue the prized manuscript to

which it had belonged, he found that all had been utilized in a similar

manner. A meagre synopsis of the books that have perished, serves only

to make us regret their loss the more keenly. (_Read Taine’s “Essai sur

Tite Live.”_)

Livy’s “Annals” is a model of elegant historical writing, and a

repertory of tales and traditions of early heroism, which have

made Roman virtue and prowess the admiration of the world; yet his

statements must be taken with many grains of allowance. Not that he

wilfully misrepresented, but rather that he trusted too implicitly

authorities of doubtful veracity, and shrunk from the labor of

thorough original investigation. Moreover, a vein of exaggeration runs

through his pages. It was doubtless his intention to be impartial; but

carried away by a natural bias, he was too ready to color or cover over

the blots on his country’s escutcheon. That he stooped not to curry

favor with his superiors is evident from the epithet applied to him

by Augustus—“the Pompeyite”—by reason of his warm praises of Cæsar’s

rival. Ignorance of geography, military science, and even of the

constitutional development of Rome, is conspicuous in his narrative.

As an artist, however, Livy was great. He excels in depicting

character, whether directly by description, or indirectly in the

actions or utterances of the old Roman worthies. Hence, artificial as

they are and often smelling of the rhetorician’s lamp, the speeches

which Livy puts in the mouths of his different personages display his

genius to advantage. One of the finest, given below, is that of the old

Horatius, pleading with the people for the life of his son. According

to the legend, in a war between Rome and Alba Longa, it was agreed

by the contending parties, to save unnecessary bloodshed, that the

question at issue should be decided by a hand-to-hand conflict between

three champions on each side,—the brothers Horatii for Rome, the

Curiatii for Alba. All fell save one Horatius. We leave the conclusion

of the story to Livy:—

THE CRIME AND PUNISHMENT OF HORATIUS.

“Horatius advanced at the head of the Romans, bearing in triumph the

spoils of the three brothers. Near the gate Capena he was met by

his sister, a maiden who had been betrothed to one of the Curiatii;

observing on her brother’s shoulder the military robe of her

lover, made by her own hands, she tore her hair, and with loud and

mournful outcries called on the name of the deceased. His sister’s

lamentations, in the midst of his own triumph and of so great public

joy, irritated the fierce youth to such a degree that, drawing his

sword, he plunged it into her breast, at the same time upbraiding her

in these words:‘Begone to thy spouse with thy unseasonable love,

since thou couldst forget what is due to the memory of thy deceased

brothers, to him who still survives, and to thy native country; so

perish every daughter of Rome that shall mourn for its enemy!’

Both the senate and people were shocked at the horrid deed; but still,

in their opinion, his recent merit outweighed its guilt: he was,

however, instantly carried before the king for judgment. The king,

unwilling to take on himself a decision of so melancholy a nature,

summoned an assembly of the people, and then said:‘I appoint two

commissioners to pass judgment on Horatius for murder, according to

the law.’ The law was of dreadful import:‘Let two commissioners pass

judgment for murder; if the accused appeal from the commissioners, let

the appeal be tried; if their sentence be confirmed, cover his head,

hang him by a rope on the gallows, let him be scourged either within

the Pomœrium[47] or without the Pomœrium.’

The two commissioners appointed were of opinion that, according to

this law, they were not authorized to acquit him; and, after they had

found him guilty, one of them pronounced judgment in these words:

‘Publius Horatius, I sentence thee to punishment as a murderer; go,

lictor, bind his hands.’ The lictor had come up to him, and was fixing

the cord, when Horatius, by the advice of Tullus, who wished to give

the mildest interpretation to the law, said,‘I appeal;’ so the trial

on the appeal came before the Commons.

During this trial, the people were very deeply affected, especially

by the behavior of Publius Horatius, the father, who declared that

‘in his judgment his daughter was deservedly put to death; had it not

been so, he would, by his own authority as a father, have inflicted

punishment on his son.’ He then besought them that‘they would not

leave him childless, whom they had beheld, but a few hours ago,

surrounded by a progeny of uncommon merit.’ Uttering these words,

the old man embraced the youth, and pointing to the spoils of the

Curiatii, which were hung up in the place where now stands the

Horatian column, exclaimed:—

‘O my fellow-citizens! can you bear to behold him laden with chains,

and condemned to ignominy, stripes, and torture, whom but just now you

saw covered with the ornaments of victory, marching in triumph—a sight

so horrid that scarcely could the eyes of the Albans themselves endure

it? Go, lictor, bind the arms which but now wielded those weapons that

acquired dominion to the Roman people; cover the head of that man to

whom your city owes its liberty; hang him upon the gallows. Scourge

him within the Pomœrium; but do it between those pillars to which

are suspended the trophies of his victory. Scourge him without the

Pomœrium; but do it between the graves of the Curiatii. For to what

place can ye lead this youth, where the monuments of his glory would

not redeem him from the ignominy of such a punishment?”

The people could not withstand either the tears of the father, or

the intrepid spirit of the youth himself, which no kind of danger

could appall; and rather out of admiration of his bravery than regard

to the justice of his cause, they passed a sentence of acquittal.

Wherefore, that some expiation might be made for the act of manifest

murder, the father was ordered to make atonement for his son at the

public expense. After performing expiatory sacrifices, which continued

afterward to be celebrated by the Horatian family, he laid a beam

across the street, and, covering the young man’s head, made him pass,

as it were, under the yoke. The beam remains to this day, being

constantly kept in repair at the expense of the public, and is called

the Sister’s beam. A tomb of squared stone was raised for Horatia on

the spot where she fell.”—BAKER.

In addition to the “Annals of Rome,” Livy also wrote historical and

philosophical dialogues, which we know only by name. (_See Capel’s

“Introduction to the Study of Livy.”_)

=Pompeius Trogus=, contemporary with Livy, produced a history of the

world, extending from the founding of Nineveh to the Christian Era.

Macedonia fills an important place in this work, an abridgment of which

is still in existence.

* * * * *

A prominent rhetorician of the Augustan period was the elder SENECA, of

Cordova, in Spain. Portions of his works (which consist of rhetorical

exercises on imaginary cases, historical events, and circumstances

in the lives of great men, written for the benefit of his sons) have

survived; but nothing remains of a history of Rome ascribed to him.

The orators MESSALA and ASINIUS POLLIO graced the early years of the

first emperor’s reign; but, when political eloquence was interdicted,

they retired to private life,—Pollio, to win new laurels by his

tragedies and other literary compositions. Both were patrons of

literature, and loved to gather round them the eminent poets of their

day. Messala’s orations, known to us only by a few fragments that

remain, were regarded as almost equal to Cicero’s; while Pollio, none

of whose works have been preserved, was ranked by his contemporaries

with Cicero as an orator, with Virgil as a poet, and with Sallust as an

historian.

MINOR POETS AND PROSE WRITERS.

HELVIUS CINNA (50 B.C.): author of the lost epic “Smyrna,” the fruit

of nine years’ labor. In one of his Eclogues, Virgil compared himself

in the company of Cinna and his friend Varius to a goose among swans.

LICINIUS CALVUS (82-47 B.C.): poet and orator; elegies, epigrams, and

love-songs in the style of Catullus; an epic “Io;” no remains.

VALGIUS RUFUS, a friend of Horace: an epic and elegiac poet.

ÆLIUS GALLUS: a noted jurist.

TU’BERO (48 B.C.) the historian: contemporary with Sallust.

VERRIUS FLACCUS: a renowned grammarian; author of a voluminous Latin

lexicon, which is lost. His work was subsequently condensed into

twenty volumes.

VITRUVIUS POLLIO, the great architect of the Augustan Era: he prepared

a comprehensive work on the science of architecture, long received as

authority.

TITUS LABIE’NUS: an orator and historian.

NOTES ON EDUCATION, ETC., AMONG THE ROMANS.

Education never compulsory, as in Greece. Its chief aim in early times

to make warriors and statesmen. Children usually grounded in the

rudiments by their mother, the father occasionally doing service as a

teacher of reading and writing. From the Greeks, the Romans adopted

the custom of employing _pædagogi_ to instruct their children or

accompany them to and from school.

Private schools in Rome about 450 B.C.; Virginia insulted by Appius

Claudius, while on her way to school. The youth instructed at these

institutions in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and required to

memorize the laws of the Twelve Tables. Grammar was next essayed; and

a course in rhetoric and oratory completed the Roman boy’s education.

Many continued their studies at Athens, Rhodes, or Alexandria.

The teachers often provincials or freedmen. In the golden age, Greek

tutors very generally the companions and flatterers of the wealthy

Romans. During the reign of Augustus, great schools at Cordova and

Marseilles rivalled the academy of Flaccus at Rome, the favorite

of the emperor, who paid Flaccus a salary of $3,600, and offered

special inducements in the way of prizes to such as would join his

school. Under Vespasian the first Roman college, the Athenæum, was

established; botany, zoölogy, and mineralogy, now became favorite

studies.

Rome had its booksellers in the golden age, to supply the demand

for standard authors and school manuals. Books multiplied rapidly

by transcription, and were cheap in proportion. At the beginning of

the first century B.C., many private libraries in Rome; every noble

took pride in his collection of manuscripts. First public library

founded by Asinius Pollio, whose example was followed by others.

(_Consult Gove’s “Companion to School Classics.”_) Earliest known

attempts at journalism, 59 B.C. The _Acta_ of the senate and of

the people, the first publications. The latter, a daily (_diurna_,

whence _journal_), had an extensive circulation throughout the Roman

territories. Stenography practised at this time by the Romans, and

subsequently taught in their schools. A freedman of Cicero said to

have invented the system of short-hand. Sympathetic ink in use for

writing love-letters and secret correspondence. For this purpose

Ovid recommends milk, which may be made visible by dusting powdered

charcoal on the letters. To keep mice from gnawing their papyrus and

parchment rolls, some Roman writers mixed wormwood with their inks.

CHAPTER IV.

_AGE OF DECLINE._

=Silver Age of Roman Letters.=—With the death of Augustus and the

accession of his step-son Tiberius, despotism in its worst form

was established at Rome, and, as in Greece, a decline of letters

immediately followed. Symptoms of literary decay had already shown

themselves in the reign of the first emperor, although he took care to

conceal his assumption of absolute power under the mask of republican

forms, and was known to all as a patron of learning. Tiberius, on the

contrary, openly declared himself the enemy of freedom, both political

and intellectual; and when, in 37 A.D., his attendants, no longer able

to endure his rule of blood, smothered the monster with pillows, Latin

literature was at its lowest ebb.

A brief renaissance, however, succeeded; so that the imperial fiend

Nero was able to number among his victims an epic poet, Lucan, and a

philosopher and dramatist of no common stamp, Seneca. Under the Cæsars,

genius was hopelessly fettered; a chance word might condemn its author

to the headsman; the poet, the historian, the orator, must needs

suppress his sentiments or forfeit his self-respect by flattering the

reigning despot.

A brighter day dawned with the mild rule of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian,

and the Antonines (96-180 A.D.). During this golden age of the Roman

empire, poetry for a time recovered its vitality, and through the

stinging satires of Juvenal denounced the abuses that had prevailed

in the days of Nero and Domitian; while in the histories of Tacitus,

prose indignantly broke its enforced silence, and held up to public

detestation the despots of the past. But this revival was short-lived.

Latin literature rapidly degenerated, for Latin genius was no more.

In the later centuries of the empire, science and jurisprudence alone

flourished on the soil where poetry had now ceased to bloom. (_Refer to

Nisard’s “Études sur les Poètes Latins de la Décadence”_)

ERA OF THE CÆSARS (14-96 A.D.).

In the reign of Tiberius, we meet with the names of Velleius

Paterculus, the court historian, Celsus, and Phædrus.

=Velleius Paterculus= is memorable for his epitome of Roman history,

a work in other respects meritorious, but marred by its author’s

servile praise of Tiberius. Yet we must remember that Velleius was not

permitted to see the worst phase of this emperor’s tyranny. When the

treachery of the prime minister Seja’nus was exposed, the historian,

though not implicated with him, was one of the first to be put to

death. He was thus prevented from witnessing the murders of hundreds of

other innocent persons—atrocities that might have altered his estimate

of his ungrateful master.

=Valerius Maximus=, his contemporary and fellow-flatterer, prepared a

cyclopædia of anecdotes gleaned from the history of Rome and foreign

countries, entitled “Remarkable Deeds and Sayings.” It was designed for

the use of persons who had not the time or inclination to make original

investigations, and, though written in an artificial style, contains

much that is interesting.

=Celsus= was the author of a scientific encyclopædia, whose twenty

books were devoted to farming, medicine, rhetoric, jurisprudence,

and military tactics. The eight books on medicine still survive,

constituting the great Roman authority on that subject.

Before his day the art of medicine and surgery had been almost

entirely confined to Greek physicians; but Celsus dignified it as a

calling worthy of Romans, not only practising with success among his

countrymen, but committing to writing the results of his experience. He

was the first ancient author who recommended the tying of blood-vessels

for the purpose of checking hemorrhage.

=Phædrus=, the only noteworthy poet of Tiberius’s reign, is known to us

by his fables. Of his life, we have few facts. He is supposed to have

been brought from Thrace to Rome, as a captive; and to have lived there

as the slave of Augustus, who, recognizing his latent talent, gave him

an education and finally his freedom.

In the sunshine of his patron’s smiles, Phædrus led a happy life; but

on the death of Augustus he was exposed to the persecutions of Sejanus,

who virtually controlled the state under the succeeding emperor, and

who affected to see in the poet’s fables masked attacks upon his own

vicious career. Phædrus, however, outlived all his enemies, and died at

a good old age.

The fables of Phædrus, preserved in a single manuscript, were

discovered in an abbey at Rheims (1561), and, after narrowly escaping

destruction at the hands of some French fanatics, were published to

the world. In the main translated or imitated from Æsop, whom their

author thus made known to the Romans, they commend themselves for

their conciseness and simplicity, as well as for the moral lessons

they convey. His “pleasant tales” may be judged of by the following

specimens:—

THE FOX AND THE GOAT.

“A crafty knave will make escape,

When once he gets into a scrape,

Still meditating self-defence,

At any other man’s expense.

A fox by some disaster fell

Into a deep and fencèd well:

A thirsty goat came down in haste,

And asked about the water’s taste,

If it was plentiful and sweet?

At which the fox, in rank deceit:—

‘So great the solace of the run,

I thought I never should have done.

Be quick, my friend, your sorrows drown.’

This said, the silly goat comes down.

The subtle fox herself avails,

And by his horns the height she scales,

And leaves the goat in all the mire,

To gratify his heart’s desire.”

THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY.

“As on his head she chanced to sit,

A man’s bald pate a gadfly bit;

He, prompt to crush the little foe,

Dealt on himself a grievous blow.

At which the fly, deriding, said:—

‘You who would strike an insect dead

For one slight sting, in wrath so strict,

What punishment will you inflict

Upon yourself, whose heavy arm,

Not my poor bite, did all the harm?’

‘Oh!’ says the party,‘as for me,

I with myself can soon agree;

The intention of the act is all.

But thou, detested cannibal!

Bloodsucker! to have thee secured,

More would I gladly have endured.’

What by this moral tale is meant

Is, those who wrong not with intent

Are venial; but to those that do,

Severity is surely due.”—CHRISTOPHER SMART.

The three great ornaments of Nero’s reign (54-68 A.D.) were Persius the

satirist, Seneca, and his nephew Lucan.

=Persius.=—Born at the Etruscan town of Volaterræ (34 A.D.), Persius

was brought to Rome by his mother at the age of twelve, and there

educated. In the Stoic, Cornu’tus, he found his ideal preceptor, and

to this “best of friends” the poet pays a beautiful tribute in the

following verses, among the finest he ever wrote:—

“When first I laid the purple[48] by, and free,

Yet trembling at my new-felt liberty,

Approached the hearth, and on the Lares hung

The bulla, from my willing neck unstrung;

When gay associates, sporting at my side,

And the white boss, displayed with conscious pride,

Gave me, unchecked, the haunts of vice to trace,

And throw my wandering eyes on every face,

I fled to you, Cornutus, pleased to rest

My hopes and fears on your Socratic breast;

Nor did you, gentle sage, the charge decline.

Then, dextrous to beguile, your steady line

Reclaimed, I know not by what winning force,

My morals, warped from virtue’s straighter course.

Can I forget how many a summer’s day,

Spent in your converse, stole unmarked away?

Or how, while listening with increased delight,

I snatched from feasts the earlier hours of night?

One time (for to your bosom still I grew),

One time of study and of rest we knew;

One frugal board where, every care resigned,

An hour of blameless mirth relaxed the mind.”—GIFFORD.

Death overtook our poet in his 28th year (62 A.D.). All we have of his

writings is six satires—only 650 hexameter lines. After his death these

were published, and elicited unbounded admiration. Other works of his

were torn up by his mother, who deemed them unworthy of his genius.

Persius bequeathed to Cornutus his library of 700 manuscripts.

The satires of Persius were written in the interest of morality, and

what gave them weight was that all knew their author to be a man who

practised the virtue he commended, a man of stainless character in an

age of universal licentiousness. And yet we do not find him lashing

vice as we should expect. Was he loath to do so, lest the very pictures

he must draw might corrupt? Or, was Persius forced to hold his peace

in the presence of a despot who revelled in the vilest excesses, whose

policy it was to reduce his subjects to his own low level? Perhaps

for both reasons he preferred to assail wickedness in the abstract.

Certainly his “maidenly modesty” shrunk from portraying the hideous

sins that flaunted around him, while his philosophical tenets inclined

him to keep aloof from the world. (_Read Nettleship’s “The Roman

Satura.”_)

Poetasters and pedants that pandered to the perverted taste of the

day, received the brunt of his attack in his First Satire. The Second

discusses the proper subjects of prayer. How few, says the poet, would

be willing to have their petitions made public:—

“Hard, hard the task, from the low muttered prayer

To free the fanes; or find one suppliant there,

Who dares to ask but what his state requires,

And live to heaven and earth with known desires!

Sound sense, integrity, a conscience clear,

Are begged aloud, that all at hand may hear;

But prayers like these (half whispered, half suppressed)

The tongue scarce hazards from the conscious breast:—

‘O that I could my rich old uncle see

In funeral pomp!’—’ O that some deity

To pots of buried gold would guide my share!’—

‘O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir,

Were once at rest! poor child, he lives in pain,

And death to him must be accounted gain.’—

‘By wedlock thrice has Nerius swelled his store,

And now—is he a widower once more!’”

The Second Satire concludes with these noble lines:—

“No; let me bring the immortal gods a mind,

Where legal and where moral sense are joined

With the pure essence; holy thoughts, that dwell

In the soul’s most retired and sacred cell;

A bosom dyed in honor’s noblest grain,

Deep-dyed—with these let me approach the fane,

And Heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,

Though all my offering be a barley-cake.”—GIFFORD.

=Lucius Annæus Seneca=, son of the rhetorician, was born at Cordova

B.C. 7, but received his education at Rome under the supervision of

his father. From the first he displayed great interest in his studies,

and as he grew in years he indulged his natural bent for philosophical

researches. So thorough a Pythagorean did he become that he even

eschewed animal food, lest he should devour flesh that had once been

animated by a human soul. On the remonstrance of his parent, however,

he renounced vegetarianism and “lived as others lived” again. At a

later period we find him the leader of the Stoics at Rome.

Seneca early made his mark as an orator. Hearing him plead eloquently

on one occasion in the senate, Caligula, out of jealousy, threatened

to have him executed, and was deterred only by the consideration that

Seneca had the consumption and was not likely to live for any length of

time.

But Seneca survived this imperial butcher, to become the instructor and

moral guide of the youthful Nero. While Nero submitted to his counsels,

Rome enjoyed a halcyon age, long remembered by her people as _the Five

Years_. His influence led to the adoption of many salutary measures;

it is thought to have been at his instigation that Nero despatched an

expedition to explore the sources of the Nile—the first recorded in

history. Well would it have been for Rome, had Nero continued to follow

the advice of Seneca.

This, however, was not to be; a sudden change took place in the

disposition of the prince, when his mother was charged with conspiring

against him. It was her life or his; and Nero won. The taste of blood

transformed him into a monster, and he forthwith entered upon a reign

of horrors that has no equal in history. Virtue was now the surest

road to ruin. Falsely accused of complicity in a conspiracy, Seneca

was sentenced to put an end to his own life (65 A.D.). With perfect

calmness he received the royal mandate, and caused his veins to be

severed; but the blood flowing too slowly, he entered a vapor-bath and

ended his sufferings by suffocation. His wife Paulina elected to die

with him, and in the same manner; but Nero had her veins ligatured,

and thus added several years of misery to her life. To his friends,

Seneca was permitted to leave no more valuable legacy than his virtuous

example.

Seneca was a great moral leader, the first of a class of philosophers

who aimed at winning the people back to the virtue of primitive Rome.

His teachings were in strange contrast to the age in which he lived;

they bear a striking resemblance to those of the Gospel, with which he

may have become acquainted through St. Paul. The fathers of the Church

were loud in their praises of “the divine pagan,” but there is no

evidence that, as some have stated, Seneca was persuaded by the apostle

to become a Christian.

Our philosopher is described as simple in his tastes. Though the

envied possessor of a princely fortune, he could consistently write

in support of temperance on his table of gold. A cupful of water from

the brook was sweeter to him than beakers of Italy’s choicest wines,

and the fruits of the wild wood he preferred to the luxurious dishes

fashion required him to spread before the rich and great. His fault was

weakness, which betrayed him into flattery, and perhaps made him an

unwilling accessory to some of his master’s crimes.

Seneca was the author, not only of philosophical treatises, but also

of ten tragedies, and one hundred and twenty-four moral epistles. He

even attempted a satire on the stupidity of the emperor Claudius,

representing him as transformed after death, not into a god, as the

senate decreed, but into a pumpkin. Several other works from his pen

are lost.

The best of Seneca’s treatises are those on Anger, Providence, and

Consolation. His style, labored, antithetical, and full of repetitions,

has an artificial glitter about it that impresses the reader

unfavorably.

EXTRACTS FROM SENECA’S WRITINGS.

ON ANGER.

“How idle are many of those things that make us stark mad! A resty

horse, the overturning of a glass, the falling of a key, the dragging

of a chair, a jealousy, a misconstruction. How shall that man endure

the extremities of hunger and thirst, that flies into a rage only

for the putting of a little too much water in his wine? What haste

is there to lay a servant by the heels, or break a leg or an arm

immediately for it? The answer of a servant, a wife, a tenant, puts

some people out of all patience, and yet they can quarrel with the

government for not allowing them the same liberty in public which

they themselves deny to their own families. If they say nothing,

’tis contumacy; if they speak or laugh, ’tis insolence. Neither

are our eyes less curious and fantastical than our ears. When we

are abroad, we can bear well enough with foul ways, nasty streets,

noisome ditches; but a spot upon a dish at home, or an unswept hearth,

absolutely distracts us. And what’s the reason, but that we are

patient in the one place and peevish in the other?

Nothing makes us more intemperate than luxury. When we are once

weakened with our pleasures, everything grows intolerable. And we are

angry as well with those things that cannot hurt us as with those that

do. We tear a book because it is blotted; and our clothes because they

are not well made—things that neither deserve our anger nor feel it.

The tailor perchance did his best, or had no intent to displease us.

If so, first, why should we be angry at all? Secondly, why should we

be angry with the thing for the man’s sake? Nay, our anger extends

even to dogs, horses, and other beasts.

Cyrus, in his design upon Babylon, found a river in his way that put

a stop to his march. The current was strong, and carried away one

of the horses that belonged to his own chariot; upon this he swore

that, since it had obstructed his passage, it should never hinder

that of another, and presently set his whole army to work on it,

which diverted it into a hundred and fourscore channels, and laid it

dry. In this ignoble and unprofitable employment he lost his time

and the soldiers their courage; moreover, he gave his adversaries an

opportunity of providing themselves, while he was waging war with a

river instead of an enemy.”

ON A HAPPY LIFE.

“It is dangerous for a man too suddenly or too easily to believe

himself. Wherefore let us examine, watch, observe, and inspect our own

hearts; for we ourselves are our own greatest flatterers. We should

every night call ourselves to account—’What infirmity have I mastered

to-day? What passion opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue

acquired?’ Our vices will abate of themselves, if they be brought

every day to the shrift. O the blessed sleep that follows such a

diary! O the tranquillity, liberty, and greatness of that mind that is

a spy upon itself, and a private censor of its own manners! It is my

custom every night, so soon as the candle is out, to run over all the

words and actions of the past day; and I let nothing escape me. What

can be more reasonable than this daily review of a life that we cannot

warrant for a moment?”—L’ESTRANGE.

MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS.

“Those whom God loves, he disciplines.

We can never quarrel enough with our vices.

The day of death is the birthday of eternity.

There is no need to pray the ædile to admit you to the ear of an

image, that so your petitions may be heard the better. God is near

you; he is with you; a holy spirit resides within us, our constant

guardian.

Let us be liberal after the example of our great Creator, and give to

others with the same consideration that he gives to us.

How many are unworthy of the light; yet the day dawns.

The good-will of the benefactor is the fountain of all benefits.

To obey God is liberty.

Apply thyself to the true riches. It is shameful to depend for a happy

life on silver and gold.”

=Lucan= (39-65 A.D.), the nephew of Seneca, though born at Cordova,

was brought up at Rome, and there became the fellow-pupil and favorite

companion of Nero. But the superior genius of the Spanish youth

provoked the jealousy of his royal master, who had rather too high an

opinion of his own attainments, and was nettled by the public verdict

that Lucan, then only twenty-three years of age, was the greatest

of living poets. At length the awarding of the prize to Lucan in a

literary contest between them so enraged the emperor that he forbade

his former friend to recite any more pieces.

Lucan’s indiscretion sealed his fate. Not content with libellous

attacks upon Nero, he became implicated in a conspiracy against the

government, upon the detection of which he was condemned to death. Nero

allowing him to choose the manner in which he should suffer, the poet

had his veins opened in a hot bath. Becoming faint from loss of blood,

he recited a passage from his own “Pharsalia,” descriptive of the death

of a snake-bitten soldier:—

“So the warm blood at once from every part

Ran purple poison down, and drained the fainting heart.

Blood falls for tears, and o’er his mournful face

The ruddy drops their tainted passage trace.

Where’er the liquid juices find a way,

There streams of blood, there crimson rivers stray;

His mouth and gushing nostrils pour a flood,

And e’en the pores ooze out the trickling blood.

In the red deluge all the parts lie drowned,

And the whole body seems one bleeding wound”—

and so he passed away.

Lucan was interred at Rome in his own garden. An ancient monument

in the church of Santo Paulo contains an inscription to his memory,

probably placed there by order of Nero, who seems after all to have

rendered secret homage to his genius and virtue. The talents of his

wife have been highly commended; and it is probable that she assisted

him in composing his work.

The epic “Pharsalia” is the only poem of Lucan’s that we now possess.

Its subject is the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey; and it receives

its name from the place at which the decisive battle between the rival

commanders was fought. Though inferior to the Æneid, it certainly

displays talent of a high order. Critics have differed in their

estimate of Lucan. That he has faults, none will deny who are familiar

with his tumid style and love of tinsel. On the other hand, energy,

exuberant imagination, and a fervent love of liberty, are his peculiar

excellences. The defects of the Pharsalia are excusable in a youth

of twenty-six. Had the author lived to revise and finish the work, it

might have equalled Virgil’s epic.