FROM THE CONCLUSION OF THE FIRST PUNIC WAR TO THE AGE OF CICERO
(241-74 B.C.)
1. EARLY LITERATURE OF THE ROMANS.--The Romans, like all other nations,
had oral poetical compositions before they possessed any written
literature. Cicero speaks of the banquet being enlivened by the songs of
bards, in which the exploits of heroes were recited and celebrated. By
these lays national pride and family vanity were gratified, and the
anecdotes, thus preserved, furnished sources of early legendary history.
But these legends must not be compared to those of Greece, in which the
religious sentiment gave a supernatural glory to the effusions of the
bard, painted men as heroes and heroes as deities, and, while it was the
natural growth of the Greek intellect, twined itself around the affections
of the people. The Roman religion was a ceremonial for the priests, and
not for the people, and in Roman tradition there are no traces of elevated
genius or poetical inspiration. The Romans possessed the germs of those
faculties which admit of cultivation and improvement, such as taste and
genius, and the appreciation of the beautiful; but they did not possess
those natural gifts of fancy and imagination which formed part of the
Greek mind, and which made that nation in a state of infancy, almost of
barbarism, a poetical people. With them literature was not of spontaneous
growth; it was chiefly the result of the influence exerted by the
Etruscans, who were their teachers in everything mental and spiritual.
The tendency of the Roman mind was essentially utilitarian. Even Cicero,
with all his varied accomplishments, will recognize but one end and object
of all study, namely, those sciences which will render man useful to his
country, and the law of literary development is modified according to this
ruling principle. From the very beginning, the first cause of Roman
literature will be found to have been a view to utility and not to the
satisfaction of an impulsive feeling.
In other nations, poetry has been the first spontaneous production. With
the Romans, the first written literary effort was history; but even their
early history was a simple record of facts, not of ideas or sentiments,
and valuable only for its truth and accuracy. Their original documents,
mere records of memorable events anterior to the capture of Rome by the
Gauls, perished in the conflagration of the city.
The earliest attempt at versification made by the rude inhabitants of
Latium was satire in a somewhat dramatic form. The Fescennine songs were
metrical, for the accompaniments of music and dancing necessarily
restricted them to measure, and, like the dramatic exhibitions of the
Greeks, they had their origin among the rural population, not like them in
any religious ceremonial, but in the pastimes of the village festival. At
first they were innocent and gay, but liberty at length degenerated into
license, and gave birth to malicious and libelous attacks upon persons of
irreproachable character. This infancy of song illustrates the character
of the Romans in its rudest and coarsest form. They loved strife, both
bodily and mental, and they thus early displayed that taste which, in more
polished ages, and in the hands of cultivated poets, was developed in the
sharp, cutting wit, and the lively but piercing points of Roman satire.
In the Fescennine songs the Etruscans probably furnished the spectacle,
all that which addresses itself to the eye, while the habits of Italian
rural life supplied the sarcastic humor and ready extemporaneous gibe,
which are the essence of the true comic. The next advance in point of art
must be attributed to the Oscans, whose entertainments were most popular
among the Italian nations. They represented in broad caricature national
peculiarities. Their language was, originally, Oscan, as well as the
characters represented. The principal one resembled the clown of modern
pantomime; another was a kind of pantaloon or charlatan, and much of the
rest consisted of practical jokes, like that of the Italian Polincinella.
After their introduction at Rome, they received many improvements; they
lost their native rusticity; their satire was good-natured; their jests
were seemly, and kept in check by the laws of good taste. They were not
acted by common professional performers, and even a Roman citizen might
take part in them without disgrace. They were known by the name of
"Fabulae Atellanae," from Attela, a town in Campania, where they were
first performed. They remained in favor with the Roman people for
centuries. Sylla amused his leisure hours in writing them, and Suetonius
bears testimony to their having been a popular amusement under the empire.
Towards the close of the fourth century, the Etruscan _histriones_ were
introduced, whose entertainments consisted of graceful national dances,
accompanied with the music of the flute, but without either songs or
dramatic action. With these dances the Romans combined the old Fescennine
songs, and the varied metres, which their verse permitted to the vocal
parts, gave to this mixed entertainment the name of Satura (a hodge-podge
or potpourri), from which, in after times, the word satire was derived.
2. EARLY LATIN POETS.--At the conclusion, of the first Punic war, when the
influence of Greek intellect, which had already long been felt in Italy,
had extended to the capital, the Romans were prepared for the reception of
a more regular drama. But not only did they owe to Greece the principles
of literary taste; their earliest poet was one of that nation. Livius
Andronicus (fl. 240 B.C.), though born in Italy, and educated at Rome, is
supposed to have been a native of the Greek colony of Tarentum. He was at
first a slave, probably a captive taken in war, but was finally
emancipated by his master, in whose family he occupied the position of
instructor to his children. He wrote a translation, or perhaps an
imitation of the Odyssey, in the old Saturnian metre, and also a few
hymns. His principal works, however, were tragedies; but, from the few
fragments of his writings extant, it is impossible to form an estimate of
his ability as a poet. According to Livy, Andronicus was the first who
substituted, for the rude extemporaneous effusions of the Fescennine
verse, plays with a regular plot and fable. In consequence of losing his
voice, from being frequently encored, he obtained permission to introduce
a boy to sing the ode or air to the accompaniment of the flute, while he
himself represented the action of the song by his gestures and dancing.
Naevius (fl. 235 B.C.) was the first poet who really deserves the name of
Roman. He was not a servile imitator, but applied Greek taste and
cultivation to the development of Roman sentiments, and was a true Roman
in heart, unsparing in his censure of immorality and his admiration for
heroic self-devotion. His honest principles cemented the strong friendship
between him and the upright and unbending Cato, a friendship which
probably contributed to form the political and literary character of that
stern old Roman. The comedies of Naevius had undoubted pretensions to
originality; he held up to public scorn the vices and follies of his day,
and, being a warm supporter of the people against the encroachments of the
nobility, and unable to resist indulgence in his satiric vein, he was
exiled to Utica, where he died. He was the author of an epic poem on the
Punic war. Ennius and Virgil unscrupulously copied and imitated him, and
Horace writes that in his day the poems of Naevius were in the hands and
hearts of everybody. The fragments of his writings extant are not more
numerous than those of Livius.
Naevius, the last of the older school of writers, by introducing new
principles of taste to his countrymen, altered their standards; and Greek
literature having now driven out its predecessor, a new school of poetry
arose, of which Ennius (239-169 B.C.) was the founder. He earned a
subsistence as a teacher of Greek, was the friend of Scipio, and, at his
death, was buried in the family tomb of the Scipio, at the request of the
great conqueror of Hannibal, whose fame he contributed to hand down to
posterity. Cicero always uses the appellation, "our own Ennius," when he
quotes his poetry. Horace calls him "Father Ennius," a term which implies
reverence and regard, and that he was the founder of Latin poetry. He was,
like his friends Cato the censor, and Scipio Africanus the elder, a man of
action as well as philosophical thought, and not only a poet, but a brave
soldier, with all the singleness of heart and simplicity of manners which
marked the old times of Roman virtue. Ennius possessed great power over
words, and wielded that power skillfully. He improved the language in its
harmony and its grammatical forms, and increased its copiousness and
power. What he did was improved upon, but was never undone; and upon the
foundations he laid, the taste of succeeding ages erected an elegant and
beautiful superstructure. His great epic poem, the "Annals," gained him
the attachment and admiration of his countrymen. In this he first
introduced the hexameter to the notice of the Romans, and detailed the
rise and progress of their national glory, from the earliest legendary
period down to his own times. The fragments of this work which remain are
amply sufficient to show that he possessed picturesque power, both in
sketching his narratives and in portraying his characters, which seem to
live and breathe; his language, dignified, chaste, and severe, rises as
high as the most majestic eloquence, but it does not soar to the sublimity
of poetry. As a dramatic poet, Ennius does not deserve a high reputation.
In comedy, as in tragedy, he never emancipated himself from the Greek
originals.
3. ROMAN COMEDY.--The rude comedy of the early Romans made little progress
beyond personal satire, burlesque extravagance and licentious jesting, but
upon this was ingrafted the new Greek comedy, and hence arose that phase
of the drama, of which the representatives were Plautus, Statius, and
Terence. The Roman comedy was calculated to produce a moral result,
although the morality it inculcated was extremely low. Its standard was
worldly prudence, its lessons utilitarian, and its philosophy Epicurean.
There is a want of variety in the plots, but this defect is owing to the
social and political condition of ancient Greece, which was represented in
the Greek comedies and copied by the Romans. There is also a sameness in
the _dramatis personae_, the principal characters being always a morose or
a gentle father, who is sometimes also the henpecked husband of a rich
wife, an affectionate or domineering wife, a good-natured profligate, a
roguish servant, a calculating slave-dealer and some others.
The actors wore appropriate masks, the features of which were not only
grotesque, but much exaggerated and magnified. This was rendered necessary
by the immense size of the theatre and stage, and the mouth of the mask
answered the purpose of a speaking trumpet, to assist in conveying the
voice to every part of the vast building. The characters were known by a
conventional costume; old men wore robes of white, young men were attired
in gay clothes, rich men in purple, soldiers in scarlet, poor men and
slaves in dark and scanty dresses. The comedy had always a musical
accompaniment of flutes of different kinds.
In order to understand the principles which regulated the Roman comic
metres, it is necessary to observe the manner in which the language itself
was affected by the common conversational pronunciation. Latin, as it was
pronounced, was very different from Latin as it is written; this
difference consisted in abbreviation, either by the omission of sounds
altogether, or by the contraction of two sounds into one, and in this
respect the conversational language of the Romans resembled that of modern
nations; with them, as with us, the mark of good taste was ease and the
absence of pedantry and affectation. In the comic writers we have a
complete representation of Latin as it was commonly pronounced and spoken,
and but little trammeled or confined by a rigid adhesion to Greek metrical
laws.
4. COMIC POETS.--Plautus (227-184 B.C.) was a contemporary of Ennius; he
was a native of Umbria, and of humble origin. Education did not overcome
his vulgarity, although it produced a great effect upon his language and
style. He must have lived and associated with the people whose manners he
describes, hence his pictures are correct and truthful. The class from
which his representations are taken consisted of clients, the sons of
freedmen and the half-enfranchised natives of Italian towns. He had no
aristocratic friends, like Ennius and Terence; the Roman public were his
patrons, and notwithstanding their faults, his comedies retained their
popularity even in the Augustan age, and were acted as late as the reign
of Diocletian. Life, bustle, surprise, unexpected situations, sharp,
sparkling raillery that knew no restraint nor bound, left his audience no
time for dullness or weariness. Although Greek was the fountain from which
he drew his stores, his wit, thought, and language were entirely Roman,
and his style was Latin of the purest and most elegant kind--not, indeed,
controlled by much deference to the laws of metrical harmony, but full of
pith and sprightliness, bearing the stamp of colloquial vivacity, and
suitable to the general briskness of his scenes. Yet in the tone of his
dialogue we miss all symptoms of deference to the taste of the more
polished classes of society. Almost all his comedies were adopted from the
new comedy of the Greeks, and though he had studied both the old and the
middle comedy, Menander and others of the same school furnished him the
originals of his plots. The popularity of Plautus was not confined to
Rome, either republican or imperial. Dramatic writers of modern times, as
Shakspeare, Dryden, and Molière, have recognized the effectiveness of his
plots, and have adopted or imitated them. About twenty of his plays are
extant, among which the Captivi, the Epidicus, the Cistellaria, the
Aulularia, and the Rudens are considered the best.
Terence (193-158 B.C.) was a slave in the family of a Roman senator, and
was probably a native of Carthage. His genius presented the rare
combination of all the fine and delicate qualities which characterized
Attic sentiment, without corrupting the native purity of the Latin
language. The elegance and gracefulness of his style show that the
conversation of the accomplished society, in which he was a welcome guest,
was not lost upon his correct ear and quick intuition. So far as it can be
so, comedy was, in the hands of Terence, an instrument of moral teaching.
Six of his comedies only remain, of which the Andrian and the Adelphi are
the most interesting. If Terence was inferior to Plautus in life, bustle,
and intrigue, and in the delineation of national character, he is superior
in elegance of language and refinement of taste. The justness of his
reflections more than compensates for the absence of his predecessor's
humor; he touches the heart as well as gratifies the intellect.
Of the few other writers of comedy among the Romans, Statius may be
mentioned, who flourished between Plautus and Terence. He was an
emancipated slave, born in Milan. Cicero and Varro have pronounced
judgment upon his merits, the substance of which appears to be, that his
excellences consisted in the conduct of the plot, in dignity, and in
pathos, while his fault was too little care in preserving the purity of
the Latin style. The fragments, however, of his works, which remain are
not sufficient to test the opinion of the ancient critics.
5. ROMAN TRAGEDY.--While Roman comedy was brought to perfection under the
influence of Greek literature, Roman tragedy, on the other hand, was
transplanted from Athens, and, with few exceptions, was never anything
more than translation or imitation. In the century during which, together
with comedy, it flourished and decayed, it boasted of five distinguished
writers, Livius, Naevius, Ennius (already spoken of), Pacuvius, and
Attius. In after ages, Rome did not produce one tragic poet, unless Varius
be considered an exception. The tragedies attributed to Seneca were never
acted, and were only composed for reading and recitation.
Among the causes which prevented tragedy from flourishing at Rome was the
little influence the national legends exerted over the people. These
legends were more often private than public property, and ministered more
to the glory of private families than to that of the nation at large. They
were embalmed by their poets as curious records of antiquity, but they did
not, like the venerable traditions of Greece, twine themselves around the
heart of the nation. Another reason why Roman legends had not the power to
move the affections of the Roman populace is to be found in the changes
the masses had undergone. The Roman people were no longer the descendants
of those who had maintained the national glory in the early period; the
patrician families were almost extinct; war and poverty had extinguished
the middle classes and miserably thinned the lower orders. Into the
vacancy thus caused, poured thousands of slaves, captives in the bloody
wars of Gaul, Spain, Greece, and Africa. These and their descendants
replaced the ancient people, and while many of them by their talents and
energy arrived at wealth and station, they could not possibly be Romans at
heart, or consider the past glories of their adopted country as their own.
It was to the rise of this new element of population, and the displacement
or absorption of the old race, that the decline of patriotism was owing,
and the disregard of everything except daily sustenance and daily
amusement, which paved the way for the empire and marked the downfall of
liberty. With the people of Athens, tragedy formed a part of the national
religion. By it the people were taught to sympathize with their heroic
ancestors; the poet was held to be inspired, and poetry the tongue in
which the natural held communion with the supernatural. With the Romans,
the theatre was merely a place for secular amusement, and poetry only an
exercise of the fancy. Again, the religion of the Romans was not ideal,
like that of the Greeks. The old national faith of Italy, not being rooted
in the heart, soon became obsolete, and readily admitted the ingrafting of
foreign superstitions, which had no hold on the belief or love of the
people. Nor was the genius of the Roman people such as to sympathize with
the legends of the past; they lived only in the present and the future;
they did not look back on their national heroes as demigods; they were
pressing forward to extend the frontiers of their empire, to bring under
their yoke nations which their forefathers had not known. If they regarded
their ancestors at all, it was not in the light of men of heroic stature
as compared with themselves, but as those whom they could equal or even
surpass.
The scenes of real life, the bloody combats of the gladiators, the
captives, and malefactors stretched on crosses, expiring in excruciating
agonies or mangled by wild beasts, were the tragedies which most deeply
interested a Roman audience.
The Romans were a rough people, full of physical rather than of
intellectual energy, courting peril and setting no value on human life or
suffering. Their very virtues were stern and severe; they were strangers
to both the passions which it was the object of tragedy to excite--pity
and terror. In the public games of Greece, the refinements of poetry
mingled with those exercises which were calculated to invigorate the
physical powers, and develop manly beauty. Those of Rome were sanguinary
and brutalizing, the amusements of a nation to whom war was a pleasure and
a pastime.
It cannot be asserted, however, that tragedy was never to a certain extent
an acceptable entertainment at Rome, but only that it never flourished
there as it did at Athens, and that no Roman tragedies can be compared
with those of Greece.
6. TRAGIC POETS.--Three separate eras produced tragic poets. In the first
flourished Livius Andronicus, Naevius, and Ennius; in the second, Pacuvius
and Attius; in the third, Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies, the plots of
which seem to have been taken from Roman history. Ovid attempted a
"Medea," and even the Emperor Augustus, with other men of genius, tried
his hand, though unsuccessfully, at tragedy.
In the second of the eras mentioned, Roman tragedy reached its highest
degree of perfection simultaneously with that of comedy. While Terence was
successfully reproducing the wit and manners of the new Attic comedy,
Pacuvius (220-130 B.C.) was enriching the Roman drama with free
translations of the Greek tragedians. He was a native of Brundusium and a
grandson of the poet Ennius. At Rome he distinguished himself as a painter
as well as a dramatic poet. His tragedies were not mere translations, but
adaptations of Greek tragedies to the Roman stage. The fragments which are
extant are full of new and original thoughts, and the very roughness of
his style and audacity of his expressions have somewhat of the solemn
grandeur and picturesque boldness which distinguish the father of Attic
tragedy.
Attius (fl. 138 B.C.), though born later than Pacuvius, was almost his
contemporary, and a competitor for popular applause. He is said to have
written more than fifty tragedies, of which fragments only remain. His
taste is chastened, his sentiments noble, and his versification elegant.
With him, Latin tragedy disappeared. The tragedies of the third period
were written expressly for reading and recitation, and not for the stage:
they were dramatic poems, not dramas. Amidst the scenes of horror and
violence which followed, the voice of the tragic muse was hushed. Massacre
and rapine raged through the streets of Rome, itself a theatre where the
most terrible scenes were daily enacted.
7. SATIRE.--The invention of satire is universally attributed to the
Romans, and this is true as far as the external form is concerned, but the
spirit is found in many parts of the literature of Greece. Ennius was the
inventor of the name, but Lucilius (148-102 B.C.) was the father of
satire, in the proper sense. His satires mark an era in Roman literature,
and prove that a love for this species of poetry had already made great
progress. Hitherto, literature, science, and art had been considered the
province of slaves and freedmen. The stern old Roman virtue despised such
sedentary employment as intellectual cultivation, and thought it unworthy
of the warrior and statesman. Some of the higher classes loved literature
and patronized it, but did not make it their pursuit. Lucilius was a Roman
knight, as well as a poet. His satires were comprised in thirty books,
numerous fragments of which are still extant. He was a man of high moral
principle, though stern and stoical; a relentless enemy of vice and
profligacy, and a gallant and fearless defender of truth and honesty.
After the death of Lucilius satire languished, until half a century later,
when it assumed a new garb in the descriptive scenes of Horace, and put
forth its original vigor in the burning thoughts of Persius and Juvenal.
8. HISTORY AND ORATORY.--Prose was far more in accordance with the genius
of the Romans than poetry. As a nation, they had little or no imaginative
power, no enthusiastic love of natural beauty, and no acute perception of
the sympathy between man and the external world. The favorite civil
pursuit of an enlightened Roman was statesmanship, and the subjects akin
to it, history, jurisprudence, and oratory, the natural language of which
was prose, not poetry. And their practical statesmanship gave an early
encouragement to oratory, which is peculiarly the literature of active
life. As matter was more valued than manner by this utilitarian people, it
was long before it was thought necessary to embellish prose composition
with the graces of rhetoric. The fact that Roman literature was imitative
rather than inventive, gave a historical bias to the Roman intellect, and
a tendency to study subjects from an historical point of view. But even in
history, they never attained that comprehensive and philosophical spirit
which distinguished the Greek historians.
The most ancient writer of Roman history was Fabius Pictor (fl. 219 B.C.).
His principal work, written in Greek, was a history of the first and
second Punic war, to which subsequent writers were much indebted.
Contemporary with Fabius was Cincius Alimentus, also an annalist of the
Punic war, in which he was personally engaged. He was a prisoner of
Hannibal, who delighted in the society of literary men, and treated him
with great kindness and consideration, and himself communicated to him the
details of his passage across the Alps. Like Fabius, he wrote his work in
Greek, and prefixed to it a brief abstract of Roman history. Though the
works of these annalists are valuable as furnishing materials for more
philosophical minds, they are such as could have existed only in the
infancy of a national literature. They were a bare compilation of facts--
the mere framework of history--diversified by no critical remarks or
political reflections, and meagre and insipid in style.
The versatility of talent displayed by Cato the censor (224-144 B.C.)
entitles him to a place among orators, jurists, economists, and
historians. His life extends over a wide and important period of literary
history, when everything was in a state of change,--morals, social habits,
and literary taste. Cato was born in Tusculum, and passed his boyhood in
the pursuits of rural life at a small Sabine farm belonging to his father.
The skill with which he pleaded the causes of his clients before the rural
magistracy made his abilities known, and he rose rapidly to eminence as a
pleader. He filled many high offices of state. His energies were not
weakened by advancing age, and he was always ready as the advocate of
virtue, the champion of the oppressed, and the punisher of vice. With many
defects, Cato was morally and intellectually one of the greatest men Rome
ever produced. He had the ability and the determination to excel in
everything which he undertook. His style is rude, unpolished, ungraceful,
because to him polish was superficial, and, therefore, unreal. His
statements, however, were clear, his illustrations striking; the words
with which he enriched his native tongue were full of meaning; his wit was
keen and lively, and his arguments went straight to the intellect, and
carried conviction with them.
Cato's great historical and antiquarian work, "The Origins," was a history
of Italy and Rome from the earliest times to the latest events which
occurred in his own lifetime. It was a work of great research and
originality, but only brief fragments of it remain. In the "De Re
Rustica," which has come down to us in form and substance as it was
written, Cato maintains, in the introduction, the superiority of
agriculture over other modes of gaining a livelihood. The work itself is a
commonplace book of agriculture and domestic economy; its object is
utility, not science: it serves the purpose of a farmer's and gardener's
manual, a domestic medicine, herbal, and cookery book. Cato teaches his
readers, for example, how to plant osier beds, to cultivate vegetables, to
preserve the health of cattle, to pickle pork, and to make savory dishes.
Of the "Orations" of Cato, ninety titles are extant, together with
numerous fragments. In style he despised art. He was too fearless and
upright, too confident in the justness of his cause to be a rhetorician;
he imitated no one, and no one was ever able to imitate him. Niebuhr
pronounces him to be the only great man in his generation, and one of the
greatest and most honorable characters in Roman history.
Varro (116-28 B.C.) was an agriculturist, a grammarian, a critic, a
theologian, a historian, a philosopher, a satirist. Of his miscellaneous
works considerable portions are extant, sufficient to display his
erudition and acuteness, yet, in themselves, more curious than attractive.
Eloquence, though of a rude, unpolished kind, must have been, in the very
earliest times, a characteristic of the Roman people. It is a plant
indigenous to a free soil. As in modern times it has flourished especially
in England and America, fostered by the unfettered freedom of debate, so
it found a congenial home in free Greece and republican Rome. Oratory was,
in Rome, the unwritten literature of active life, and recommended itself
to a warlike and utilitarian people by its utility and its antagonistic
spirit. Long before the art of the historian was sufficiently advanced to
record a speech, the forum, the senate, the battlefield, and the threshold
of the jurisconsult had been nurseries of Roman eloquence, or schools in
which oratory attained a vigorous youth, and prepared for its subsequent
maturity.
While the legal and political constitution of the Roman people gave direct
encouragement to deliberative and judicial oratory, respect for the
illustrious dead furnished opportunities for panegyric. The song of the
bard in honor of the departed warrior gave place to the funeral oration.
Among the orators of this time were the two Scipios, and Galba, whom
Cicero praises as having been the first Roman who understood how to apply
the theoretical principles of Greek rhetoric.
All periods of political disquiet are necessarily favorable to eloquence,
and the era of the Gracchi was especially so. After a struggle of nearly
four centuries the old distinction of plebeian and patrician no longer
existed. Plebeians held high offices, and patricians, like the Gracchi,
stood forward as champions of popular rights. These stirring times
produced many celebrated orators. The Gracchi themselves were both
eloquent and possessed of those qualities and endowments which would
recommend their eloquence to their countrymen. Oratory began now to be
studied more as an art, and the interval between the Gracchi and Cicero
boasted of many distinguished names; the most illustrious among them are
M. Antonius, Crassus, and Cicero's contemporary and most formidable rival,
Hortensius.
M. Antonius (fl. 119 B.C.) entered public life as a pleader, and thus laid
the foundation of his brilliant career; but he was through life greater as
a judicial than as a deliberative orator. He was indefatigable in
preparing his case, and made every point tell. He was a great master of
the pathetic, and knew the way to the heart. Although he did not himself
give his speeches to posterity, some of his most pointed expressions and
favorite passages left an indelible impression on the memories of his
hearers, and many of them were preserved by Cicero. In the prime of life
he fell a victim to political fury, and his bleeding head was placed upon
the rostrum, which was so frequently the scene of his eloquent triumphs.
L. Licinius Crassus was four years younger than Antonius, and acquired
great reputation for his knowledge of jurisprudence, for his eminence as a
pleader, and, above all, for his powerful and triumphant orations in
support of the restoration of the judicial office to the senators. From
among the crowd of orators, who were then flourishing in the last days of
expiring Roman liberty, Cicero selected Crassus to be the representative
of his sentiments in his imaginary conversation in "The Orator." Like Lord
Chatham, Crassus almost died on the floor of the Senate house, and his
last effort was in support of the aristocratic party.
Q. Hortensius was born 114 B.C. He was only eight years senior to the
greatest of all Roman orators. He early commenced his career as a pleader,
and he was the acknowledged leader of the Roman bar, until the star of
Cicero arose. His political connection with the faction of Sylla, and his
unscrupulous support of the profligate corruption which characterized that
administration, both at home and abroad, enlisted his legal talents in
defense of the infamous Verres; but the eloquence of Cicero, together with
the justice of the cause which he espoused, prevailed; and from that time
forward his superiority over Hortensius was established and complete. The
style of Hortensius was Asiatic--more florid and ornate than polished and
refined.
9. ROMAN JURISPRUDENCE.--The framework of their jurisprudence the Romans
derived from Athens, but the complete structure was built up by their own
hands. They were the authors of a system possessing such stability that
they bequeathed it, as an inheritance, to modern Europe, and traces of
Roman law are visible in the legal systems of the whole civilized world.
The complicated principles of jurisprudence of the Roman constitution
became, in Rome, a necessary part of a liberal education. When a Roman
youth had completed his studies, under his teacher of rhetoric, he not
only frequented the forum, in order to learn the application of the
rhetorical principles he had acquired, and frequently took some celebrated
orator as a model, but also studied the principles of jurisprudence under
eminent jurists, and attended the consultations in which they gave to
their clients their expositions of law.
The earliest systematic works on Roman law were the "Manual" of Pomponius,
and the "Institutes" of Gaius, who flourished in the time of Hadrian and
the Antonines. Both of these works were, for a long time, lost, though
fragments were preserved in the pandects of Justinian. In 1816, however,
Niebuhr discovered a palimpsest MS., in which the epistles of St. Jerome
were written over the erased "Institutes" of Gaius. From the numerous
misunderstandings of the Roman historians respecting the laws and
constitutional history of their country, the subject continued long in a
state of confusion, until Vico, in his "Scienza nuova," dispelled the
clouds of error, and reduced it to a system; and he was followed so
successfully by Niebuhr, that modern students can have a more
comprehensive and antiquarian knowledge of the subject than the writers of
the Augustan age.
The earliest Roman laws were the "Leges Regiae," which were collected and
codified by Sextus Papirius, and were hence called the Papirian code; but
these were rude and unconnected--simply a collection of isolated
enactments. The laws of the "Twelve Tables" stand next in point of
antiquity. They exhibited the first attempt at regular system, and
embodied not only legislative enactments, but legal principles. So popular
were they that when Cicero was a child every Roman boy committed them to
memory, as our children do their catechism, and the great orator laments
that in the course of his lifetime this practice had become obsolete.
The oral traditional expositions of these laws formed the groundwork of
the Roman civil law. To these were added, from time to time, the decrees
of the people, the acts of the senate, and praetorian edicts, and from
these various elements the whole body of Roman law was composed. So early
was the subject diligently studied, that the age preceding the first two
centuries of our era was rich in jurists whose powers are celebrated in
history.
The most eminent jurists who adorned this period were the Scaevolae, a
family in whom the profession seems to have been hereditary. After them
flourished Aelius Gallus (123-67 B.C.), eminent as a law reformer, C.
Juventius, Sextus Papirius, and L. Lucilius Balbus, three distinguished
jurists, who were a few years senior to Cicero.
10. GRAMMARIANS.--Towards the conclusion of this literary period a great
increase took place in the numbers of those learned men whom the Romans at
first termed _literati_, but afterwards, following the custom of the
Greeks, grammarians. To them literature was under great obligations.
Although few of them were authors, and all of them possessed acquired
learning rather than original genius, they exercised a powerful influence
over the public mind as professors, lecturers, critics, and schoolmasters.
By them the youths of the best families not only were imbued with a taste
for Greek philosophy and poetry, but were also taught to appreciate the
literature of their own country. Livius Andronicus and Ennius may be
placed at the head of this class, followed by Crates Mallotes, C. Octavius
Lampadio, Laelius, Archelaus, and others, most of whom were emancipated
slaves, either from Greece or from other foreign countries.