Italy had hitherto been in the main disinclined towards Alexandrinism.

Its season of comparative brilliance was the period shortly before

and after the first Punic war; yet Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius

and generally the whole body of the national Roman authors

down to Varro and Lucretius in all branches of poetical production,

not excepting even the didactic poem, attached themselves,

not to their Greek contemporaries or very recent predecessors,

but without exception to Homer, Euripides, Menander and the other masters

of the living and national Greek literature. Roman literature

was never fresh and national; but, as long as there was a Roman people,

its authors instinctively sought for living and national models,

and copied, if not always to the best purpose or the best authors,

at least such as were original. The Greek literature originating

after Aexander found its first Roman imitators--for the slight

initial attempts from the Marian age(7) can scarcely be taken

into account--among the contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar;

and now the Roman Alexandrinism spread with singular rapidity.

In part this arose from external causes. The increased contact

with the Greeks, especially the frequent journeys of the Romans

into the Hellenic provinces and the assemblage of Greek literati

in Rome, naturally procured a public even among the Italians

for the Greek literature of the day, for the epic and elegiac poetry,

epigrams, and Milesian tales current at that time in Greece. Moreover,

as we have already stated(8) the Alexandrian poetry had its established

place in the instruction of the Italian youth; and thus reacted

on Latin literature all the more, since the latter continued to be

essentially dependent at all times on the Hellenic school-training.

We find in this respect even a direct connection of the new Roman

with the new Greek literature; the already-mentioned Parthenius,

one of the better known Alexandrian elegists, opened, apparently

about 700, a school for literature and poetry in Rome, and the excerpts

are still extant in which he supplied one of his pupils of rank

with materials for Latin elegies of an erotic and mythological

nature according to the well-known Alexandrian receipt.

But it was by no means simply such accidental occasions which called

into existence the Roman Alexandrinism; it was on the contrary

a product--perhaps not pleasing, but thoroughly inevitable--

of the political and national development of Rome. On the one hand,

as Hellas resolved itself into Hellenism, so now Latium

resolved itself into Romanism; the national development of Italy

outgrew itself, and was merged in Caesar's Mediterranean empire,

just as the Hellenic development in the eastern empire of Alexander.

On the other hand, as the new empire rested on the fact

that the mighty streams of Greek and Latin nationality, after having

flowed in parallel channels for many centuries, now at length coalesced,

the Italian literature had not merely as hitherto to seek

its groundwork generally in the Greek, but had also to put itself

on a level with the Greek literature of the present, or in other words

with Alexandrinism. With the scholastic Latin, with the closed number

of classics, with the exclusive circle of classic-reading -urbani-,

the national Latin literature was dead and at an end; there arose

instead of it a thoroughly degenerate, artificially fostered,

imperial literature, which did not rest on any definite nationality,

but proclaimed in two languages the universal gospel of humanity,

and was dependent in point of spirit throughout and consciously

on the old Hellenic, in point of language partly on this,

partly on the old Roman popular, literature. This was no improvement.

The Mediterranean monarchy of Caesar was doubtless a grand and--

what is more--a necessary creation; but it had been called

into life by an arbitrary superior will, and therefore

there was nothing to be found in it of the fresh popular life,

of the overflowing national vigour, which are characteristic of younger,

more limited, and more natural commonwealths, and which the Italian

state of the sixth century had still been able to exhibit.

The ruin of the Italian nationality, accomplished in the creation

of Caesar, nipped the promise of literature. Every one who has

any sense of the close affinity between art and nationality

will always turn back from Cicero and Horace to Cato and Lucretius;

and nothing but the schoolmaster's view of history and of literature--

which has acquired, it is true, in this department the sanction

of prescription--could have called the epoch of art beginning

with the new monarchy pre-eminently the golden age. But while

the Romano-Hellenic Alexandrinism of the age of Caesar and Augustus

must be deemed inferior to the older, however imperfect, national

literature, it is on the other hand as decidedly superior

to the Alexandrinism of the age of the Diadochi as Caesar's enduring

structure to the ephemeral creation of Alexander. We shall have

afterwards to show that the Augustan literature, compared with

the kindred literature of the period of the Diadochi, was far less

a literature of philologues and far more an imperial literature

than the latter, and therefore had a far more permanent

and far more general influence in the upper circles of society

than the Greek Alexandrinism ever had.

Dramatic Literature

Tragedy and Comedy Disappear

Nowhere was the prospect more lamentable than in dramatic literature.

Tragedy and comedy had already before the present epoch

become inwardly extinct in the Roman national literature.

New pieces were no longer performed. That the public still

in the Sullan age expected to see such, appears from the reproductions--

belonging to this epoch--of Plautine comedies with the titles

and names of the persons altered, with reference to which

the managers well added that it was better to see a good old piece

than a bad new one. From this the step was not great to that entire

surrender of the stage to the dead poets, which we find

in the Ciceronian age, and to which Alexandrinism made no opposition.

Its productiveness in this department was worse than none.

Real dramatic composition the Alexandrian literature never knew;

nothing but the spurious drama, which was written primarily for reading

and not for exhibition, could be introduced by it into Italy, and soon

accordingly these dramatic iambics began to be quite as prevalent

in Rome as in Alexandria, and the writing of tragedy in particular

began to figure among the regular diseases of adolescence.

We may form a pretty accurate idea of the quality of these productions

from the fact that Quintus Cicero, in order homoeopathically

to beguile the weariness of winter quarters in Gaul,

composed four tragedies in sixteen days.

The Mime

Laberius

In the "picture of life" or mime alone the last still vigorous

product of the national literature, the Atellan farce,

became engrafted with the ethological offshoots of Greek comedy,

which Alexandrinism cultivated with greater poetical vigour

and better success than any other branch of poetry. The mime originated

out of the dances in character to the flute, which had long been usual,

and which were performed sometimes on other occasions, e. g.

for the entertainment of the guests during dinner, but more especially

in the pit of the theatre during the intervals between the acts.

It was not difficult to form out of these dances--in which the aid

of speech had doubtless long since been occasionally employed--

by means of the introduction of a more organized plot and a regular

dialogue little comedies, which were yet essentially distinguished

from the earlier comedy and even from the farce by the facts,

that the dance and the lasciviousness inseparable from such dancing

continued in this case to play a chief part, and that the mime,

as belonging properly not to the boards but to the pit, threw aside

all ideal scenic effects, such as masks for the face and theatrical

buskins, and--what was specially important--admitted of the female

characters being represented by women. This new mime, which first

seems to have come on the stage of the capital about 672,

soon swallowed up the national harlequinade, with which it indeed

in the most essential respects coincided, and was employed

as the usual interlude and especially as afterpiece along with

the other dramatic performances.(9) The plot was of course

still more indifferent, loose, and absurd than in the harlequinade;

if it was only sufficiently chequered, the public did not ask

why it laughed, and did not remonstrate with the poet, who instead

of untying the knot cut it to pieces. The subjects were chiefly

of an amorous nature, mostly of the licentious sort; for example,

poet and public without exception took part against the husband,

and poetical justice consisted in the derision of good morals.

The artistic charm depended wholly, as in the Atellana,

on the portraiture of the manners of common and low life;

in which rural pictures are laid aside for those of the life

and doings of the capital, and the sweet rabble of Rome--

just as in the similar Greek pieces the rabble of Alexandria--

is summoned to applaud its own likeness. Many subjects

are taken from the life of tradesmen; there appear the--

here also inevitable--"Fuller," then the "Ropemaker," the "Dyer,"

the "Salt-man," the "Female Weavers," the "Rascal"; other pieces

give sketches of character, as the "Forgetful," the "Braggart,"

the "Man of 100,000 sesterces";(10) or pictures of other lands,

the "Etruscan Woman," the "Gauls," the "Cretan," "Alexandria";

or descriptions of popular festivals, as the "Compitalia,"

the "Saturnalia," "Anna Perenna," the "Hot Baths"; or parodies

of mythology, as the "Voyage to the Underworld," the "Arvernian Lake."

Apt nicknames and short commonplaces which were easily retained

and applied were welcome; but every piece of nonsense

was of itself privileged; in this preposterous world Bacchus

is applied to for water and the fountain-nymph for wine.

Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly

so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11)

As regards metrical form, these poets gave themselves, as they tell us,

"but moderate trouble with the versification"; the language abounded,

even in the pieces prepared for publication, with vulgar expressions

and low newly-coined words. The mime was, it is plain,

in substance nothing but the former farce; with this exception,

that the character-masks and the standing scenery of Atella

as well as the rustic impress are dropped, and in their room

the life of the capital in its boundless liberty and licence

is brought on the stage. Most pieces of this sort were doubtless

of a very fugitive nature and made no pretension to a place

in literature; but the mimes of Laberius, full of pungent

delineation of character and in point of language and metre

exhibiting the hand of a master, maintained their ground in it;

and even the historian must regret that we are no longer permitted

to compare the drama of the republican death-struggle in Rome

with its great Attic counterpart.

Dramatic Spectacles

With the worthlessness of dramatic literature the increase

of scenic spectacles and of scenic pomp went hand in hand.

Dramatic representations obtained their regular place in the public life

not only of the capital but also of the country towns; the former

also now at length acquired by means of Pompeius a permanent theatre

(699;(12)), and the Campanian custom of stretching canvas

over the theatre for the protection of the actors and spectators

during the performance, which in ancient times always took place

in the open air, now likewise found admission to Rome (676).

As at that time in Greece it was not the--more than pale-Pleiad

of the Alexandrian dramatists, but the classic drama, above all

the tragedies of Euripides, which amidst the amplest development

of scenic resources kept the stage, so in Rome at the time of Cicero

the tragedies of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, and the comedies

of Plautus were those chiefly produced. While the latter had been

in the previous period supplanted by the more tasteful but in point

of comic vigour far inferior Terence, Roscius and Varro,

or in other words the theatre and philology, co-operated to procure

for him a resurrection similar to that which Shakespeare experienced

at the hands of Garrick and Johnson; but even Plautus had to suffer

from the degenerate susceptibility and the impatient haste

of an audience spoilt by the short and slovenly farces, so that

the managers found themselves compelled to excuse the length

of the Plautine comedies and even perhaps to make omissions

and alterations. The more limited the stock of plays, the more

the activity of the managing and executive staff as well as

the interest of the public was directed to the scenic representation

of the pieces. There was hardly any more lucrative trade in Rome

than that of the actor and the dancing-girl of the first rank.

The princely estate of the tragic actor Aesopus has been

already mentioned;(13) his still more celebrated contemporary

Roscius(14) estimated his annual income at 600,000 sesterces

(6000 pounds)(15) and Dionysia the dancer estimated hers

at 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds). At the same time

immense sums were expended on decorations and costume;

now and then trains of six hundred mules in harness crossed

the stage, and the Trojan theatrical army was employed

to present to the public a tableau of the nations vanquished

by Pompeius in Asia. The music which accompanied the delivery

of the inserted choruses likewise obtained a greater

and more independent importance; as the wind sways the waves,

says Varro, so the skilful flute-player sways the minds of the listeners

with every modulation of melody. It accustomed itself to the use

of quicker time, and thereby compelled the player to more lively action.

Musical and dramatic connoisseurship was developed; the -habitue-

recognized every tune by the first note, and knew the texts

by heart; every fault in the music or recitation was severely

censured by the audience. The state of the Roman stage in the time

of Cicero vividly reminds us of the modern French theatre.

As the Roman mime corresponds to the loose tableaux of the pieces

of the day, nothing being too good and nothing too bad for either

the one or the other, so we find in both the same traditionally

classic tragedy and comedy, which the man of culture is in duty bound

to admire or at least to applaud. The multitude is satisfied,

when it meets its own reflection in the farce, and admires

the decorative pomp and receives the general impression of an ideal world

in the drama; the man of higher culture concerns himself at the theatre

not with the piece, but only with its artistic representation.

Moreover the Roman histrionic art oscillated in its different spheres,

just like the French, between the cottage and the drawing-room.

It was nothing unusual for the Roman dancing-girls to throw off

at the finale the upper robe and to give a dance in undress

for the benefit of the public; but on the other hand in the eyes

of the Roman Talma the supreme law of his art was, not the truth

of nature, but symmetry.

Metrical Annals

In recitative poetry metrical annals after the model of those

of Ennius seem not to have been wanting; but they were perhaps

sufficiently criticised by that graceful vow of his mistress

of which Catullus sings--that the worst of the bad heroic poems

should be presented as a sacrifice to holy Venus, if she would only

bring back her lover from his vile political poetry to her arms.

Lucretius

Indeed in the whole field of recitative poetry at this epoch

the older national-Roman tendency is represented only by a single work

of note, which, however, is altogether one of the most important

poetical products of Roman literature. It is the didactic poem

of Titus Lucretius Carus (655-699) "Concerning the Nature of Things,"

whose author, belonging to the best circles of Roman society,

but taking no part in public life whether from weakness of health

or from disinclination, died in the prime of manhood shortly before

the outbreak of the civil war. As a poet he attached himself

decidedly to Ennius and thereby to the classical Greek literature.

Indignantly he turns away from the "hollow Hellenism" of his time,

and professes himself with his whole soul and heart to be the scholar

of the "chaste Greeks," as indeed even the sacred earnestness

of Thucydides has found no unworthy echo in one of the best-known

sections of this Roman poem. As Ennius draws his wisdom

from Epicharmus and Euhemerus, so Lucretius borrows the form

of his representation from Empedocles, "the most glorious

treasure of the richly gifted Sicilian isle"; and, as to the matter,

gathers "all the golden words together from the rolls of Epicurus,"

"who outshines other wise men as the sun obscures the stars."

Like Ennius, Lucretius disdains the mythological lore with which

poetry was overloaded by Alexandrinism, and requires nothing

from his reader but a knowledge of the legends generally current.(16)

In spite of the modern purism which rejected foreign words from poetry,

Lucretius prefers to use, as Ennius had done, a significant Greek word

in place of a feeble and obscure Latin one. The old Roman alliteration,

the want of due correspondence between the pauses of the verse and those

of the sentence, and generally the older modes of expression

and composition, are still frequently found in Lucretius' rhythms,

and although he handles the verse more melodiously than Ennius,

his hexameters move not, as those of the modern poetical school,

with a lively grace like the rippling brook, but with a stately slowness

like the stream of liquid gold. Philosophically and practically

also Lucretius leans throughout on Ennius, the only indigenous poet

whom his poem celebrates. The confession of faith of the singer

of Rudiae(17)--

-Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,

Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus-:--

describes completely the religious standpoint of Lucretius,

and not unjustly for that reason he himself terms his poem

as it were the continuation of Ennius:--

-Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno

Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,

Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret-.

Once more--and for the last time--the poem of Lucretius is resonant

with the whole poetic pride and the whole poetic earnestness

of the sixth century, in which, amidst the images of the formidable

Carthaginian and the glorious Scipiad, the imagination of the poet

is more at home than in his own degenerate age.(18) To him too

his own song "gracefully welling up out of rich feeling" sounds,

as compared with the common poems, "like the brief song of the swan

compared with the cry of the crane";--with him too the heart swells,

listening to the melodies of its own invention, with the hope

of illustrious honours--just as Ennius forbids the men to whom

he "gave from the depth of the heart a foretaste of fiery song,"

to mourn at his, the immortal singer's, tomb.

It is a remarkable fatality, that this man of extraordinary talents,

far superior in originality of poetic endowments to most

if not to all his contemporaries, fell upon an age in which

he felt himself strange and forlorn, and in consequence of this

made the most singular mistake in the selection of a subject. The system

of Epicurus, which converts the universe into a great vortex of atoms

and undertakes to explain the origin and end of the world as well as

all the problems of nature and of life in a purely mechanical way,

was doubtless somewhat less silly than the conversion of myths

into history which was attempted by Euhemerus and after him by Ennius;

but it was not an ingenious or a fresh system, and the task

of poetically unfolding this mechanical view of the world

was of such a nature that never probably did poet expend life

and art on a more ungrateful theme. The philosophic reader censures

in the Lucretian didactic poem the omission of the finer points

of the system, the superficiality especially with which controversies

are presented, the defective division, the frequent repetitions,

with quite as good reason as the poetical reader frets

at the mathematics put into rhythm which makes a great part

of the poem absolutely unreadable. In spite of these incredible defects,

before which every man of mediocre talent must inevitably have succumbed,

this poet might justly boast of having carried off from the poetic

wilderness a new chaplet such as the Muses had not yet bestowed on any;

and it was by no means merely the occasional similitudes,

and the other inserted descriptions of mighty natural phenomena

and yet mightier passions, which acquired for the poet this chaplet.

The genius which marks the view of life as well as the poetry

of Lucretius depends on his unbelief, which came forward

and was entitled to come forward with the full victorious power

of truth, and therefore with the full vigour of poetry, in opposition

to the prevailing hypocrisy or superstition.

-Humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret

In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,

Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat

Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,

Primum Graius homo mortalis tendere contra

Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra.

Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra

Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi

Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque-.

The poet accordingly was zealous to overthrow the gods,

as Brutus had overthrown the kings, and "to release nature

from her stern lords." But it was not against the long ago enfeebled

throne of Jovis that these flaming words were hurled; just like Ennius,

Lucretius fights practically above all things against the wild

foreign faiths and superstitions of, the multitude, the worship

of the Great Mother for instance and the childish lightning-lore

of the Etruscans. Horror and antipathy towards that terrible world

in general, in which and for which the poet wrote, suggested his poem.

It was composed in that hopeless time when the rule of the oligarchy

had been overthrown and that of Caesar had not yet been established,

in the sultry years during which the outbreak of the civil war

was awaited with long and painful suspense. If we seem to perceive

in its unequal and restless utterance that the poet daily

expected to see the wild tumult of revolution break forth

over himself and his work, we must not with reference to his view

of men and things forget amidst what men, and in prospect

of what things, that view had its origin. In the Hellas of the epoch

before Alexander it was a current saying, and one profoundly felt

by all the best men, that the best thing of all was not to be born,

and the next best to die. Of all views of the world possible

to a tender and poetically organized mind in the kindred Caesarian age

this was the noblest and the most ennobling, that it is a benefit

for man to be released from a belief in the immortality of the soul

and thereby from the evil dread of death and of the gods

which malignantly steals over men like terror creeping over children

in a dark room; that, as the sleep of the night is more refreshing

than the trouble of the day, so death, eternal repose

from all hope and fear, is better than life, as indeed the gods

of the poet themselves are nothing, and have nothing, but an eternal

blessed rest; that the pains of hell torment man, not after life,

but during its course, in the wild and unruly passions

of his throbbing heart; that the task of man is to attune his soul

to equanimity, to esteem the purple no higher than the warm dress

worn at home, rather to remain in the ranks of those that obey

than to press into the confused crowd of candidates for the office

of ruler, rather to lie on the grass beside the brook than to take part

under the golden ceiling of the rich in emptying his countless dishes.

This philosophico-practical tendency is the true ideal essence

of the Lucretian poem and is only overlaid, not choked,

by all the dreariness of its physical demonstrations. Essentially

on this rests its comparative wisdom and truth. The man who

with a reverence for his great predecessors and a vehement zeal,

to which this century elsewhere knew no parallel, preached such doctrine

and embellished it with the charm of art, may be termed at once

a good citizen and a great poet. The didactic poem concerning

the Nature of Things, however much in it may challenge censure,

has remained one of the most brilliant stars in the poorly illuminated

expanse of Roman literature; and with reason the greatest of German

philologues chose the task of making the Lucretian poem

once more readable as his last and most masterly work.

The Hellenic Fashionable Poetry

Lucretius, although his poetical vigour as well as his art was admired

by his cultivated contemporaries, yet remained--of late growth

as he was--a master without scholars. In the Hellenic fashionable

poetry on the other hand there was no lack at least of scholars,

who exerted themselves to emulate the Alexandrian masters.

With true tact the more gifted of the Alexandrian poets

avoided larger works and the pure forms of poetry--the drama,

the epos, the lyric; the most pleasing and successful performances

consisted with them, just as with the new Latin poets, in "short-

winded" tasks, and especially in such as belonged to the domains

bordering on the pure forms of art, more especially to the wide field

intervening between narrative and song. Multifarious didactic

poems were written. Small half-heroic, half-erotic epics

were great favourites, and especially an erudite sort of love-elegy

peculiar to this autumnal summer of Greek poetry and characteristic

of the philological source whence it sprang, in which the poet

more or less arbitrarily interwove the description of his own feelings,

predominantly sensuous, with epic shreds from the cycle of Greek legend.

Festal lays were diligently and artfully manufactured; in general,

owing to the want of spontaneous poetical invention, the occasional poem

preponderated and especially the epigram, of which the Alexandrians

produced excellent specimens. The poverty of materials and the want

of freshness in language and rhythm, which inevitably cleave

to every literature not national, men sought as much as possible

to conceal under odd themes, far-fetched phrases, rare words,

and artificial versification, and generally under the whole apparatus

of philologico-antiquarian erudition and technical dexterity.

Such was the gospel which was preached to the Roman boys of this period,

and they came in crowds to hear and to practise it; already (about 700)

the love-poems of Euphorion and similar Alexandrian poetry formed

the ordinary reading and the ordinary pieces for declamation

of the cultivated youth.(19) The literary revolution took place;

but it yielded in the first instance with rare exceptions only premature

or unripe fruits. The number of the "new-fashioned poets" was legion,

but poetry was rare and Apollo was compelled, as always when so many

throng towards Parnassus, to make very short work. The long poems never

were worth anything, the short ones seldom. Even in this literary age

the poetry of the day had become a public nuisance; it sometimes

happened that one's friend would send home to him by way of mockery

as a festal present a pile of trashy verses fresh from the bookseller's

shop, whose value was at once betrayed by the elegant binding

and the smooth paper. A real public, in the sense in which national

literature has a public, was wanting to the Roman Alexandrians

as well as to the Hellenic; it was thoroughly the poetry of a clique

or rather cliques, whose members clung closely together,

abused intruders, read and criticised among themselves the new poems,

sometimes also quite after the Alexandrian fashion celebrated

the successful productions in fresh verses, and variously sought

to secure for themselves by clique-praises a spurious and ephemeral

renown. A notable teacher of Latin literature, himself poetically

active in this new direction, Valerius Cato appears to have exercised

a sort of scholastic patronage over the most distinguished men

of this circle and to have pronounced final decision on the relative

value of the poems. As compared with their Greek models,

these Roman poets evince throughout a want of freedom,

sometimes a schoolboy dependence; most of their products

must have been simply the austere fruits of a school poetry

still occupied in learning and by no means yet dismissed as mature.

Inasmuch as in language and in measure they adhered to the Greek patterns

far more closely than ever the national Latin poetry had done,

a greater correctness and consistency in language and metre

were certainly attained; but it was at the expense of the flexibility

and fulness of the national idiom. As respects the subject-matter,

under the influence partly of effeminate models, partly

of an immoral age, amatory themes acquired a surprising preponderance

little conducive to poetry; but the favourite metrical compendia

of the Greeks were also in various cases translated, such as

the astronomical treatise of Aratus by Cicero, and, either at the end

of this or more probably at the commencement of the following period,

the geographical manual of Eratosthenes by Publius Varro of the Aude

and the physico-medicinal manual of Nicander by Aemilius Macer.

It is neither to be wondered at nor regretted that of this countless

host of poets but few names have been preserved to us;

and even these are mostly mentioned merely as curiosities

or as once upon a time great; such as the orator Quintus Hortensius

with his "five hundred thousand lines" of tiresome obscenity,

and the somewhat more frequently mentioned Laevius, whose -Erotopaegnia-

attracted a certain interest only by their complicated measures

and affected phraseology. Even the small epic Smyrna by Gaius

Helvius Cinna (d. 710?), much as it was praised by the clique,

bears both in its subject--the incestuous love of a daughter

for her father--and in the nine years' toil bestowed on it the worst

characteristics of the time.

Catullus

Those poets alone of this school constitute an original

and pleasing exception, who knew how to combine with its neatness

and its versatility of form the national elements of worth still existing

in the republican life, especially in that of the country-towns.

To say nothing here of Laberius and Varro, this description

applies especially to the three poets already mentioned above(20)

of the republican opposition, Marcus Furius Libaculus (652-691),

Gaius Licinius Calvus (672-706) and Quintus Valerius Catullus

(667-c. 700). Of the two former, whose writings have perished,

we can indeed only conjecture this; respecting the poems of Catullus

we can still form a judgment. He too depends in subject and form

on the Alexandrians. We find in his collection translations of pieces

of Callimachus, and these not altogether the very good,

but the very difficult. Among the original pieces, we meet

with elaborately-turned fashionable poems, such as the over-artificial

Galliambics in praise of the Phrygian Mother; and even the poem,

otherwise so beautiful, of the marriage of Thetis has been

artistically spoiled by the truly Alexandrian insertion

of the complaint of Ariadne in the principal poem. But by the side

of these school-pieces we meet with the melodious lament

of the genuine elegy, the festal poem in the full pomp of individual

and almost dramatic execution, above all, the freshest miniature painting

of cultivated social life, the pleasant and very unreserved

amatory adventures of which half the charm consists in prattling

and poetizing about the mysteries of love, the delightful life

of youth with full cups and empty purses, the pleasures

of travel and of poetry, the Roman and still more frequently

the Veronese anecdote of the town, and the humorous jest

amidst the familiar circle of friends. But not only does Apollo

touch the lyre of the poet, he wields also the bow; the winged dart

of sarcasm spares neither the tedious verse-maker nor the provincial

who corrupts the language, but it hits none more frequently

and more sharply than the potentates by whom the liberty of the people

is endangered. The short-lined and merry metres, often enlivened

by a graceful refrain, are of finished art and yet free

from the repulsive smoothness of the manufactory. These poems lead us

alternately to the valleys of the Nile and the Po; but the poet

is incomparably more at home in the latter. His poems are based

on Alexandrian art doubtless, but at the same time on the self-

consciousness of a burgess and a burgess in fact of a rural town,

on the contrast of Verona with Rome, on the contrast of the homely

municipal with the high-born lords of the senate who usually

maltreat their humble friends--as that contrast was probably felt

more vividly than anywhere else in Catullus' home, the flourishing

and comparatively vigorous Cisalpine Gaul. The most beautiful

of his poems reflect the sweet pictures of the Lago di Garda,

and hardly at this time could any man of the capital have written

a poem like the deeply pathetic one on his brother's death,

or the excellent genuinely homely festal hymn for the marriage of Manlius

and Aurunculeia. Catullus, although dependent on the Alexandrian masters

and standing in the midst of the fashionable and clique poetry

of that age, was yet not merely a good scholar among many mediocre

and bad ones, but himself as much superior to his masters

as the burgess of a free Italian community was superior

to the cosmopolitan Hellenic man of letters. Eminent creative vigour

indeed and high poetic intentions we may not look for in him;

he is a richly gifted and graceful but not a great poet, and his poems

are, as he himself calls them, nothing but "pleasantries

and trifles." Yet when we find not merely his contemporaries

electrified by these fugitive songs, but the art-critics

of the Augustan age also characterizing him along with Lucretius

as the most important poet of this epoch, his contemporaries

as well as their successors were completely right. The Latin nation

has produced no second poet in whom the artistic substance

and the artistic form appear in so symmetrical perfection

as in Catullus; and in this sense the collection of the poems of Catullus

is certainly the most perfect which Latin poetry as a whole can show.

Poems in Prose

Romances

Lastly, poetry in a prose form begins in this epoch. The law

of genuine naive as well as conscious art, which had hitherto remained

unchangeable--that the poetical subject-matter and the metrical setting

should go together--gave way before the intermixture and disturbance

of all kinds and forms of art, which is one of the most significant

features of this period. As to romances indeed nothing farther

is to be noticed, than that the most famous historian of this epoch,

Sisenna, did not esteem himself too good to translate into Latin

the much-read Milesian tales of Aristides--licentious fashionable novels

of the most stupid sort.

Varro's Aesthetic Writings

A more original and more pleasing phenomenon in this debateable

border-land between poetry and prose was the aesthetic writings

of Varro, who was not merely the most important representative

of Latin philologico-historical research, but one of the most fertile

and most interesting authors in belles-lettres. Descended

from a plebeian gens which had its home in the Sabine land

but had belonged for the last two hundred years to the Roman senate,

strictly reared in antique discipline and decorum,(21) and already

at the beginning of this epoch a man of maturity, Marcus Terentius Varro

of Reate (638-727) belonged in politics, as a matter of course,

to the institutional party, and bore an honourable and energetic

part in its doings and sufferings. He supported it, partly

in literature--as when he combated the first coalition,

the "three-headed monster," in pamphlets; partly in more serious

warfare, where we found him in the army of Pompeius as commandant

of Further Spain.(22) When the cause of the republic was lost,

Varro was destined by his conqueror to be librarian of the library

which was to be formed in the capital. The troubles

of the following period drew the old man once more into their vortex,

and it was not till seventeen years after Caesar's death,

in the eighty-ninth year of his well-occupied life, that death

called him away.

Varros' Models

The aesthetic writings, which have made him a name,

were brief essays, some in simple prose and of graver contents,

others humorous sketches the prose groundwork of which was inlaid

with various poetical effusions. The former were the "philosophico-

historical dissertations" (-logistorici-), the latter the Menippean

Satires. In neither case did he follow Latin models,

and the -Satura- of Varro in particular was by no means based

on that of Lucilius. In fact the Roman -Satura- in general

was not properly a fixed species of art, but only indicated negatively

the fact that the "multifarious poem" was not to be included

under any of the recognized forms of art; and accordingly the -Satura-

poetry assumed in the hands of every gifted poet a different and peculiar

character. It was rather in the pre-Alexandrian Greek philosophy

that Varro found the models for his more severe as well as

for his lighter aesthetic works; for the graver dissertations,

in the dialogues of Heraclides of Heraclea on the Black Sea

(d. about 450), for the satires, in the writings of Menippus of Gadara

in Syria (flourishing about 475). The choice was significant.

Heraclides, stimulated as an author by Plato's philosophic

dialogues, had amidst the brilliance of their form totally

lost sight of the scientific contents and made the poetico-fabulistic

dress the main matter; he was an agreeable and largely-read author,

but far from a philosopher. Menippus was quite as little

a philosopher, but the most genuine literary representative

of that philosophy whose wisdom consisted in denying philosophy

and ridiculing philosophers the cynical wisdom of Diogenes;

a comic teacher of serious wisdom, he proved by examples

and merry sayings that except an upright life everything is vain

in earth and heaven, and nothing more vain than the disputes

of so-called sages. These were the true models for Varro,

a man full of old Roman indignation at the pitiful times and full

of old Roman humour, by no means destitute withal of plastic talent

but as to everything which presented the appearance not of palpable fact

but of idea or even of system, utterly stupid, and perhaps

the most unphilosophical among the unphilosophical Romans.(23)

But Varro was no slavish pupil. The impulse and in general

the form he derived from Heraclides and Menippus; but his was a nature

too individual and too decidedly Roman not to keep his imitative

creations essentially independent and national.

Varro's Philosophico-Historical Essays

For his grave dissertations, in which a moral maxim

or other subject of general interest is handled, he disdained,

in his framework to approximate to the Milesian tales, as Heraclides

had done, and so to serve up to the reader even childish little stories

like those of Abaris and of the maiden reawakened to life

after being seven days dead. But seldom he borrowed the dress

from the nobler myths of the Greeks, as in the essay "Orestes

or concerning Madness"; history ordinarily afforded him a worthier

frame for his subjects, more especially the contemporary history

of his country, so that these essays became, as they were called

-laudationes- of esteemed Romans, above all of the Coryphaei

of the constitutional party. Thus the dissertation "concerning Peace"

was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last

in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate;

that "concerning the Worship of the Gods" was at the same time

destined to preserve the memory of the highly-respected

Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay "on Fate" was connected

with Marius, that "on the Writing of History" with Sisenna

the first historian of this epoch, that "on the Beginnings

of the Roman Stage" with the princely giver of scenic spectacles

Scaurus, that "on Numbers" with the highly-cultured

Roman banker Atticus. The two philosophico-historical essays

"Laelius or concerning Friendship," "Cato or concerning Old Age,"

which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro,

may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half-didactic,

half-narrative, treatment of these subjects.

Varros' Menippean Satires

The Menippean satire was handled by Varro with equal originality

of form and contents; the bold mixture of prose and verse is foreign

to the Greek original, and the whole intellectual contents

are pervaded by Roman idiosyncrasy--one might say, by a savour

of the Sabine soil. These satires like the philosophico-historical

essays handle some moral or other theme adapted to the larger public,

as is shown by the several titles---Columnae Herculis-, --peri doxeis--;

--Euren ei Lopas to Poma, peri gegameikoton--, -Est Modus

Matulae-, --peri metheis--; -Papiapapae-, --peri egkomios--.

The plastic dress, which in this case might not be wanting,

is of course but seldom borrowed from the history of his native country,

as in the satire -Serranus-, --peri archairesion--. The Cynic-

world of Diogenes on the other hand plays, as might be expected,

a great part; we meet with the --Kounistor--, the --Kounorreiton--,

the 'Ippokouon, the --'Oudrokouon--, the --Kounodidaskalikon--

and others of a like kind. Mythology is also laid under contribution

for comic purposes; we find a -Prometheus Liber-, an -Ajax

Stramenticius-, a -Hercules Socraticus-, a -Sesqueulixes-

who had spent not merely ten but fifteen years in wanderings.

The outline of the dramatic or romantic framework is still discoverable

from the fragments in some pieces, such as the -Prometheus Liber-,

the -Sexagessis-, -Manius-; it appears that Varro frequently,

perhaps regularly, narrated the tale as his own experience;

e. g. in the -Manius- the dramatis personae go to Varro and discourse

to him "because he was known to them as a maker of books."

as to the poetical value of this dress we are no longer allowed

to form any certain judgment; there still occur in our fragments

several very charming sketches full of wit and liveliness--

thus in the -Prometheus Liber- the hero after the loosing

of his chains opens a manufactory of men, in which Goldshoe the rich

(-Chrysosandalos-) bespeaks for himself a maiden, of milk and finest wax,

such as the Milesian bees gather from various flowers, a maiden

without bones and sinews, without skin or hair, pure and polished, slim,

smooth, tender, charming. The life-breath of this poetry is polemics--

not so much the political warfare of party, such as Lucilius

and Catullus practised, but the general moral antagonism of the stern

elderly man to the unbridled and perverse youth, of the scholar

living in the midst of his classics to the loose and slovenly,

or at any rate in point of tendency reprobate, modern poetry,(24)

of the good burgess of the ancient type to the new Rome in which

the Forum, to use Varro's language, was a pigsty and Numa, if he turned

his eyes towards his city, would see no longer a trace of his wise

regulations. In the constitutional struggle Varro did what seemed to him

the duty of a citizen; but his heart was not in such party-doings--

"why," he complains on one occasion, "do ye call me

from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house?" He belonged

to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic,

but the heart was sound. His polemic against the hereditary foes

of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only

a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit

of the new times; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical

philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash

was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers

and put them accordingly into proportional alarm--it was not

without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time

transmitted to the "severe man" their newly-issued treatises.

Philosophizing is truly no art. With the tenth part of the trouble

with which a master rears his slave to be a professional baker,

he trains himself to be a philosopher; no doubt, when the baker

and the philosopher both come under the hammer, the artist of pastry

goes off a hundred times dearer than the sage. Singular people,

these philosophers! One enjoins that corpses be buried in honey--

it is a fortunate circumstance that his desire is not complied with,

otherwise where would any honey-wine be left? Another thinks

that men grow out of the earth like cresses. A third has invented

a world-borer (--Kosmotorounei--) by which the earth will some

day be destroyed.

-Postremo, nemo aegrotus quicquam somniat

Tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus-.

It is ludicrous to observe how a Long-beard--by which is meant

an etymologizing Stoic--cautiously weighs every word in goldsmith's

scales; but there is nothing that surpasses the genuine

philosophers' quarrel--a Stoic boxing-match far excels any encounter

of athletes. In the satire -Marcopolis-, --peri archeis--,

when Marcus created for himself a Cloud-Cuckoo-Home after his own heart,

matters fared, just as in the Attic comedy, well with the peasant,

but ill with the philosopher; the -Celer- -- -di'-enos- -leimmatos-logos--,

son of Antipater the Stoic, beats in the skull of his opponent--

evidently the philosophic -Dilemma---with the mattock.

With this morally polemic tendency and this talent for embodying it

in caustic and picturesque expression, which, as the dress of dialogue

given to the books on Husbandry written in his eightieth year shows,

never forsook him down to extreme old age, Varro most happily

combined an incomparable knowledge of the national manners

and language, which is embodied in the philological writings

of his old age after the manner of a commonplace-book, but displays

itself in his Satires in all its direct fulness and freshness.

Varro was in the best and fullest sense of the term a local antiquarian,

who from the personal observation of many years knew his nation

in its former idiosyncrasy and seclusion as well as in its modern state

of transition and dispersion, and had supplemented and deepened

his direct knowledge of the national manners and national language

by the most comprehensive research in historical and literary archives.

His partial deficiency in rational judgment and learning--

in our sense of the words--was compensated for by his clear

intuition and the poetry which lived within him. He sought

neither after antiquarian notices nor after rare antiquated

or poetical words;(25) but he was himself an old and old-fashioned man

and almost a rustic, the classics of his nation were his favourite

and long-familiar companions; how could it fail that many details

of the manners of his forefathers, which he loved above all

and especially knew, should be narrated in his writings, and that

his discourse should abound with proverbial Greek and Latin phrases,

with good old words preserved in the Sabine conversational language,

with reminiscences of Ennius, Lucilius, and above all of Plautus?

We should not judge as to the prose style of these aesthetic

writings of Varro's earlier period by the standard of his work

on Language written in his old age and probably published

in an unfinished state, in which certainly the clauses

of the sentence are arranged on the thread of the relative

like thrushes on a string; but we have already observed that Varro

rejected on principle the effort after a chaste style and Attic periods,

and his aesthetic essays, while destitute of the mean bombast

and the spurious tinsel of vulgarism, were yet written after an unclassic

and even slovenly fashion, in sentences rather directly joined

on to each other than regularly subdivided. The poetical pieces

inserted on the other hand show not merely that their author

knew how to mould the most varied measures with as much mastery

as any of the fashionable poets, but that he had a right

to include himself among those to whom a god has granted the gift

of "banishing cares from the heart by song and sacred poesy."(26)

the sketches of Varro no more created a school than the didactic poem

of Lucretius; to the more general causes which prevented this

there falls to be added their thoroughly individual stamp,

which was inseparable from the greater age, from the rusticity,

and even from the peculiar erudition of their author. But the grace

and humour of the Menippean satires above all, which seem to have been

in number and importance far superior to Varro's graver works,

captivated his contemporaries as well as those in after times

who had any relish for originality and national spirit; and even we,

who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments

preserved discern in some measure that the writer "knew how to laugh

and how to jest in moderation." And as the last breath

of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed,

as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth,

the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament

should commend these his Menippean children to every one

"who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium";

and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature

as in the history of the Italian people.(27)

Historical Composition

Sisenna

The critical writing of history, after the manner in which

the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period

and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never

properly developed in Rome. Even in the field most adapted for it--

the representation of contemporary and of recently past events--

there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts;

in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important

contributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field--

the labours of Antipater and Asellius--were barely even equalled.

The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose

in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars

by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna (praetor in 676). Those who had read it

testify that it far excelled in liveliness and readableness

the old dry chronicles, but was written withal in a style

thoroughly impure and even degenerating into puerility; as indeed

the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible

details,(28) and a number of words newly coined or derived

from the language of conversation. When it is added that the author's

model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him

was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great

oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-

romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate

to recognize in Sisenna's celebrated historical work, not a product

of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay

in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite

with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts

life-like and interesting by means of fictitious details and thereby

makes it insipid and untrue; and it will no longer excite surprise

that we meet with the same Sisenna also as translator of Greek

fashionable romances.(29)

Annals of the City

That the prospect should be still more lamentable in the field

of the general annals of the city and even of the world, was implied

in the nature of the case. The increasing activity of antiquarian

research induced the expectation that the current narrative

would be rectified from documents and other trustworthy sources;

but this hope was not fulfilled. The more and the deeper men

investigated, the more clearly it became apparent what a task it was

to write a critical history of Rome. The difficulties even,

which opposed themselves to investigation and narration, were immense;

but the most dangerous obstacles were not those of a literary kind.

The conventional early history of Rome, as it had now been narrated

and believed for at least ten generations; was most intimately mixed up

with the civil life of the nation; and yet in any thorough

and honest inquiry not only had details to be modified here and there,

but the whole building had to be overturned as much as

the Franconian primitive history of king Pharamund or the British

of king Arthur. An inquirer of conservative views, such as was Varro

for instance, could have no wish to put his hand to such a work;

and if a daring freethinker had undertaken it, an outcry

would have been raised by all good citizens against this worst

of all revolutionaries, who was preparing to deprive the constitutional

party even of their past Thus philological and antiquarian research

deterred from the writing of history rather than conduced towards it.

Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up

the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged,

as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists

in unpretending tabular shape--a work by which the synchronistic

Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which

it was conventionally fixed for posterity. But the manufacture

of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity;

it continued to supply its contributions both in prose and verse

to the great library written by ennui for ennui, while the makers

of the books, in part already freedmen, did not trouble themselves

at all about research properly so called. Such of these writings

as are mentioned to us--not one of them is preserved--seem to have been

not only of a wholly secondary character, but in great part

even pervaded by interested falsification. It is true

that the chronicle of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (about 676?)

was written in an old-fashioned but good style, and studied at least

a commendable brevity in the representation of the fabulous period.

Gaius Licinius Macer (d. as late praetor in 688), father of the poet

Calvus,(30) and a zealous democrat, laid claim more than

any other chronicler to documentary research and criticism,

but his -libri lintei- and other matters peculiar to him are

in the highest degree suspicious, and an interpolation

of the whole annals in the interest of democratic tendencies--

an interpolation of a very extensive kind, and which has passed over

in part to the later annalists--is probably traceable to him.

Valerius Antias

Lastly, Valerius Antias excelled all his predecessors in prolixity

as well as in puerile story-telling. The falsification of numbers

was here systematically carried out down even to contemporary history,

and the primitive history of Rome was elaborated once more

from one form of insipidity to another; for instance the narrative

of the way in which the wise Numa according to the instructions

of the nymph Egeria caught the gods Faunus and Picus; with wine,

and the beautiful conversation thereupon held by the same Numa

with the god Jupiter, cannot be too urgently recommended

to all worshippers of the so-called legendary history of Rome

in order that, if possible, they may believe these things--of course,

in substance. It would have been a marvel if the Greek novel-writers

of this period had allowed such materials, made as if for their use,

to escape them. In fact there were not wanting Greek literati,

who worked up the Roman history into romances; such a composition,

for instance, was the Five Books "Concerning Rome" of the Alexander

Polyhistor already mentioned among the Greek literati living in Rome,(31)

a preposterous mixture of vapid historical tradition and trivial,

principally erotic, fiction. He, it may be presumed,

took the first steps towards filling up the five hundred years,

which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin

of Rome into the chronological connection required by the fables

on either side, with one of those lists of kings without achievements

which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chroniclers;

for, to all appearance, it was he that launched into the world

the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii,

whom the following times accordingly did not neglect to furnish

in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater

definiteness, also a portrait.

Thus from various sides the historical romance of the Greeks

finds its way into Roman historiography; and it is more than probable

that not the least portion of what we are accustomed nowadays

to call tradition of the Roman primitive times proceeds from sources

of the stamp of Amadis of Gaul and the chivalrous romances

of Fouque--an edifying consideration, at least for those who have

a relish for the humour of history and who know how to appreciate

the comical aspect of the piety still cherished in certain circles

of the nineteenth century for king Numa.

Universal History

Nepos

A novelty in the Roman literature of this period is the appearance

of universal history or, to speak more correctly, of Roman

and Greek history conjoined, alongside of the native annals.

Cornelius Nepos from Ticinum (c. 650-c. 725) first supplied

an universal chronicle (published before 700) and a general collection

of biographies--arranged according to certain categories--of Romans

and Greeks distinguished in politics or literature or of men

at any rate who exercised influence on the Roman or Greek history.

These works are of a kindred nature with the universal histories

which the Greeks had for a considerable time been composing;

and these very Greek world-chronicles, such as that of Kastor son-in-law

of the Galatian king Deiotarus, concluded in 698, now began to include

in their range the Roman history which previously they had neglected.

These works certainly attempted, just like Polybius, to substitute

the history of the Mediterranean world for the more local one;

but that which in Polybius was the result of a grand and clear

conception and deep historical feeling was in these chronicles

rather the product of the practical exigencies of school

and self-instruction. These general chronicles, text-books

for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole

literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious

in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging

to artistic historical composition; and Nepos himself in particular

was a pure compiler distinguished neither by spirit nor even merely

by symmetrical plan.

The historiography of this period is certainly remarkable

and in a high degree characteristic, but it is as far from pleasing

as the age itself. The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature

is in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history;

here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter

and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity,

in which Polybius was so far in advance of his age, was now learned

even by Greek and Roman boys at school. But while the Mediterranean

state had found a historian before it had become conscious

of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained,

there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans

any man who was able to give to it adequate expression.

"There is no such thing," says Cicero, "as Roman historical

composition"; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than

the simple truth. The man of research turns away from writing history,

the writer of history turns away from research; historical literature

oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance. All the species

of pure art--epos, drama, lyric poetry, history--are worthless

in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay

of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness

as in its historiography.

Literature Subsidiary to History

Caesar's Report

The minor historical literature of this period displays

on the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten productions,

one treatise of the first rank--the Memoirs of Caesar, or rather

the Military Report of the democratic general to the people

from whom he had received his commission. The finished section,

and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing

the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify

as well as possible before the public the formally unconstitutional

enterprise of Caesar in conquering a great country and constantly

increasing his army for that object without instructions

from the competent authority; it was written and given forth in 703,

when the storm broke out against Caesar in Rome and he was summoned

to dismiss his army and answer for his conduct.(32) The author

of this vindication writes, as he himself says, entirely as an officer

and carefully avoids extending his military report to the hazardous

departments of political organization and administration.

His incidental and partisan treatise cast in the form of a military

report is itself a piece of history like the bulletins of Napoleon,

but it is not, and was not intended to be, a historical work

in the true sense of the word; the objective form which the narrative

assumes is that of the magistrate, not that of the historian.

But in this modest character the work is masterly and finished,

more than any other in all Roman literature. The narrative

is always terse and never scanty, always simple and never careless,

always of transparent vividness and never strained or affected.

The language is completely pure from archaisms and from vulgarisms--

the type of the modern -urbanitas-. In the Books concerning

the Civil War we seem to feel that the author had desired to avoid war

and could not avoid it, and perhaps also that in Caesar's soul,

as in every other, the period of hope was a purer and fresher one

than that of fulfilment; but over the treatise on the Gallic war

there is diffused a bright serenity, a simple charm, which are

no less unique in literature than Caesar is in history.

Correspondence

Of a kindred nature were the letters interchanged between the statesmen

and literati of this period, which were carefully collected

and published in the following epoch; such as the correspondence

of Caesar himself, of Cicero, Calvus and others. They can still less

be numbered among strictly literary performances; but this literature

of correspondence was a rich store-house for historical

as for all other research, and the most faithful mirror of an epoch

in which so much of the worth of past times and so much spirit,

cleverness, and talent were evaporated and dissipated in trifling.

News-Sheet

A journalist literature in the modern sense was never formed in Rome;

literary warfare continued to be confined to the writing

of pamphlets and, along with this, to the custom generally diffused

at that time of annotating the notices destined for the public

in places of resort with the pencil or the pen. On the other hand

subordinate persons were employed to note down the events

of the day and news of the city for the absent men of quality;

and Caesar as early as his first consulship took fitting measures

for the immediate publication of an extract from the transactions

of the senate. From the private journals of those Roman penny-a-liners

and these official current reports there arose a sort of news-sheet

for the capital (-acta diurna-), in which the resume of the business

discussed before the people and in the senate, and births, deaths,

and such like were recorded. This became a not unimportant

source for history, but remained without proper political

as without literary significance.

Speeches

Decline of Political Oratory

To subsidiary historical literature belongs of right also

the composition of orations. The speech, whether written down or not,

is in its nature ephemeral and does not belong to literature;

but it may, like the report and the letter, and indeed still

more readily than these, come to be included, through the significance

of the moment and the power of the mind from which it springs,

among the permanent treasures of the national literature.

Thus in Rome the records of orations of a political tenor delivered

before the burgesses or the jurymen had for long played a great part

in public life; and not only so, but the speeches of Gaius Gracchus

in particular were justly reckoned among the classical Roman writings.

But in this epoch a singular change occurred on all hands.

The composition of political speeches was on the decline like political

speaking itself. The political speech in Rome, as generally

in the ancient polities, reached its culminating point in the discussions

before the burgesses; here the orator was not fettered, as in the senate,

by collegiate considerations and burdensome forms, nor,

as in the judicial addresses, by the interests--in themselves foreign

to politics--of the accusation and defence; here alone his heart

swelled proudly before the whole great and mighty Roman people

hanging on his lips. But all this was now gone. Not as though

there was any lack of orators or of the publishing of speeches

delivered before the burgesses; on the contrary political

authorship only now waxed copious, and it began to become

a standing complaint at table that the host incommoded his guests

by reading before them his latest orations. Publius Clodius

had his speeches to the people issued as pamphlets,

just like Gaius Gracchus; but two men may do the same thing

without producing the same effect. The more important leaders

even of the opposition, especially Caesar himself, did not often address

the burgesses, and no longer published the speeches which they delivered;

indeed they partly sought for their political fugitive writings

another form than the traditional one of -contiones-, in which respect

more especially the writings praising and censuring Cato(33)

are remarkable. This is easily explained. Gaius Gracchus

had addressed the burgesses; now men addressed the populace;

and as the audience, so was the speech. No wonder that the reputable

political author shunned a dress which implied that he had directed

his words to the crowd assembled in the market-place of the capital.

Rise of A Literature of Pleadings

Cicero

While the composition of orations thus declined from its former

literary and political value in the same way as all branches

of literature which were the natural growth of the national life,

there began at the same time a singular, non-political, literature

of pleadings. Hitherto the Romans had known nothing of the idea

that the address of an advocate as such was destined not only

for the judges and the parties, but also for the literary edification

of contemporaries and posterity; no advocate had written down

and published his pleadings, unless they were possibly at the same time

political orations and in so far were fitted to be circulated

as party writings, and this had not occurred very frequently.

Even Quintus Hortensius (640-704), the most celebrated Roman advocate

in the first years of this period, published but few speeches

and these apparently only such as were wholly or half political.

It was his successor in the leadership of the Roman bar,

Marcus Tullius Cicero (648-711) who was from the outset quite as much

author as forensic orator; he published his pleadings regularly,

even when they were not at all or but remotely connected

with politics. This was a token, not of progress, but of an unnatural

and degenerate state of things. Even in Athens the appearance

of non-political pleadings among the forms of literature was a sign

of debility; and it was doubly so in Rome, which did not,

like Athens, by a sort of necessity produce this malformation

from the exaggerated pursuit of rhetoric, but borrowed it

from abroad arbitrarily and in antagonism to the better traditions

of the nation. Yet this new species of literature came rapidly

into vogue, partly because it had various points of contact

and coincidence with the earlier authorship of political orations,

partly because the unpoetic, dogmatical, rhetorizing temperament

of the Romans offered a favourable soil for the new seed, as indeed

at the present day the speeches of advocates and even a sort

of literature of law-proceedings are of some importance in Italy.

His Character

Thus oratorical authorship emancipated from politics

was naturalized in the Roman literary world by Cicero.

We have already had occasion several times to mention

this many-sided man. As a statesman without insight, idea,

or purpose, he figured successively as democrat, as aristocrat,

and as a tool of the monarchs, and was never more than

a short-sighted egotist. Where he exhibited the semblance of action,

the questions to which his action applied had, as a rule,

just reached their solution; thus he came forward in the trial

of Verres against the senatorial courts when they were already

set aside; thus he was silent at the discussion on the Gabinian,

and acted as a champion of the Manilian, law; thus he thundered

against Catilina when his departure was already settled,

and so forth. He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks,

and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din;

no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him,

and the execution of the Catilinarians in particular was far more

due to his acquiescence than to his instigation. In a literary

point of view we have already noticed that he was the creator

of the modern Latin prose;(34) his importance rests on his mastery

of style, and it is only as a stylist that he shows confidence

in himself. In the character of an author, on the other hand,

he stands quite as low as in that of a statesman. He essayed

the most varied tasks, sang the great deeds of Marius

and his own petty achievements in endless hexameters,

beat Demosthenes off the field with his speeches, and Plato

with his philosophic dialogues; and time alone was wanting for him

to vanquish also Thucydides. He was in fact so thoroughly a dabbler,

that it was pretty much a matter of indifference to what work

he applied his hand. By nature a journalist in the worst

sense of that term--abounding, as he himself says, in words,

poor beyond all conception in ideas--there was no department

in which he could not with the help of a few books have rapidly got up

by translation or compilation a readable essay. His correspondence

mirrors most faithfully his character. People are in the habit

of calling it interesting and clever; and it is so, as long as

it reflects the urban or villa life of the world of quality;

but where the writer is thrown on his own resources, as in exile,

in Cilicia, and after the battle of Pharsalus, it is stale

and emptyas was ever the soul of a feuilletonist banished from his

familiar circles. It is scarcely needful to add that such a statesman

and such a -litterateur- could not, as a man, exhibit aught else

than a thinly varnished superficiality and heart-lessness.

Must we still describe the orator? The great author is also a great man;

and in the great orator more especially conviction or passion

flows forth with a clearer and more impetuous stream from the depths

of the breast than in the scantily-gifted many who merely count

and are nothing. Cicero had no conviction and no passion;

he was nothing but an advocate, and not a good one. He understood

how to set forth his narrative of the case with piquancy of anecdote,

to excite, if not the feeling, at any rate the sentimentality

of his hearers, and to enliven the dry business of legal pleading

by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort;

his better orations, though they are far from coming up to the free

gracefulness and the sure point of the most excellent compositions

of this sort, for instance the Memoirs of Beaumarchais, yet form

easy and agreeable reading. But while the very advantages

just indicated will appear to the serious judge as advantages

of very dubious value, the absolute want of political discernment

in the orations on constitutional questions and of juristic deduction

in the forensic addresses, the egotism forgetful of its duty

and constantly losing sight of the cause while thinking

of the advocate, the dreadful barrenness of thought in the Ciceronian

orations must revolt every reader of feeling and judgment.

Ciceronianism

If there is anything wonderful in the case, it is in truth

not the orations, but the admiration which they excited. As to Cicero

every unbiassed person will soon make up his mind: Ciceronianism

is a problem, which in fact cannot be properly solved, but can only

be resolved into that greater mystery of human nature--language

and the effect of language on the mind. Inasmuch as the noble Latin

language, just before it perished as a national idiom, was once more

as it were comprehensively grasped by that dexterous stylist

and deposited in his copious writings, something of the power

which language exercises, and of the piety which it awakens,

was transferred to the unworthy vessel. The Romans possessed

no great Latin prose-writer; for Caesar was, like Napoleon,

only incidentally an author. Was it to be wondered at that,

in the absence of such an one, they should at least honour the genius

of the language in the great stylist? And that, like Cicero himself,

Cicero's readers also should accustom themselves to ask not what,

but how he had written? Custom and the schoolmaster then completed

what the power of language had begun.

Opposition to Ciceronianism

Calvus and His Associates

Cicero's contemporaries however were, as may readily be conceived,

far less involved in this strange idolatry than many of their successors.

The Ciceronian manner ruled no doubt throughout a generation

the Roman advocate-world, just as the far worse manner of Hortensius

had done; but the most considerable men, such as Caesar,

kept themselves always aloof from it, and among the younger

generation there arose in all men of fresh and living talent

the most decided opposition to that hybrid and feeble rhetoric.

They found Cicero's language deficient in precision and chasteness,

his jests deficient in liveliness, his arrangement deficient

in clearness and articulate division, and above all his whole eloquence

wanting in the fire which makes the orator. Instead of the Rhodian

eclectics men began to recur to the genuine Attic orators

especially to Lysias and Demosthenes, and sought to naturalize

a more vigorous and masculine eloquence in Rome. Representatives

of this tendency were, the solemn but stiff Marcus Junius Brutus

(669-712); the two political partisans Marcus Caelius Rufus

(672-706;(35)) and Gaius Scribonius Curio (d. 705(36);)--

both as orators full of spirit and life; Calvus well known

also as a poet (672-706), the literary coryphaeus of this younger

group of orators; and the earnest and conscientious Gaius Asinius Pollio

(678-757). Undeniably there was more taste and more spirit

in this younger oratorical literature than in the Hortensian

and Ciceronian put together; but we are not able to judge how far,

amidst the storms of the revolution which rapidly swept away the whole

of this richly-gifted group with the single exception of Pollio,

those better germs attained development. The time allotted to them

was but too brief. The new monarchy began by making war on freedom

of speech, and soon wholly suppressed the political oration.

Thenceforth the subordinate species of the pure advocate-pleading

was doubtless still retained in literature; but the higher art

and literature of oratory, which thoroughly depend on political

excitement, perished with the latter of necessity and for ever.

The Artificial Dialogue Applied to the Professional Sciences

Cicero's Dialogues

Lastly there sprang up in the aesthetic literature of this period

the artistic treatment of subjects of professional science

in the form of the stylistic dialogue, which had been very extensively

in use among the Greeks and had been already employed also

in isolated cases among the Romans.(37) Cicero especially made

various attempts at presenting rhetorical and philosophical subjects

in this form and making the professional manual a suitable book

for reading. His chief writings are the -De Oratore- (written in 699),

to which the history of Roman eloquence (the dialogue -Brutus-,

written in 708) and other minor rhetorical essays were added

by way of supplement; and the treatise -De Republica- (written in 700),

with which the treatise -De Legibus- (written in 702?) after the model

of Plato is brought into connection. They are no great works

of art, but undoubtedly they are the works in which the excellences

of the author are most, and his defects least, conspicuous.

The rhetorical writings are far from coming up to the didactic

chasteness of form and precision of thought of the Rhetoric

dedicated to Herennius, but they contain instead a store

of practical forensic experience and forensic anecdotes of all sorts

easily and tastefully set forth, and in fact solve the problem

of combining didactic instruction with amusement. The treatise

-De Republica- carries out, in a singular mongrel compound of history

and philosophy, the leading idea that the existing constitution

of Rome is substantially the ideal state-organization sought for

by the philosophers; an idea indeed just as unphilosophical

as unhistorical, and besides not even peculiar to the author,

but which, as may readily be conceived, became and remained popular.

The scientific groundwork of these rhetorical and political

writings of Cicero belongs of course entirely to the Greeks,

and many of the details also, such as the grand concluding effect

in the treatise -De Republica- the Dream of Scipio, are directly

borrowed from them; yet they possess comparative originality,

inasmuch as the elaboration shows throughout Roman local colouring,

and the proud consciousness of political life, which the Roman

was certainly entitled to feel as compared with the Greeks,

makes the author even confront his Greek instructors with a certain

independence. The form of Cicero's dialogue is doubtless neither

the genuine interrogative dialectics of the best Greek artificial

dialogue nor the genuine conversational tone of Diderot or Lessing;

but the great groups of advocates gathering around Crassus

and Antonius and of the older and younger statesmen of the Scipionic

circle furnish a lively and effective framework, fitting channels

for the introduction of historical references and anecdotes,

and convenient resting-points for the scientific discussion.

The style is quite as elaborate and polished as in the best-written

orations, and so far more pleasing than these, since the author

does not often in this field make a vain attempt at pathos.

While these rhetorical and political writings of Cicero

with a philosophic colouring are not devoid of merit, the compiler

on the other hand completely failed, when in the involuntary leisure

of the last years of his life (709-710) he applied himself

to philosophy proper, and with equal peevishness and precipitation

composed in a couple of months a philosophical library. The receipt

was very simple. In rude imitation of the popular writings

of Aristotle, in which the form of dialogue was employed

chiefly for the setting forth and criticising of the different

older systems, Cicero stitched together the Epicurean, Stoic,

and Syncretist writings handling the same problem, as they came

or were given to his hand, into a so-called dialogue. And all

that he did on his own part was, to supply an introduction prefixed

to the new book from the ample collection of prefaces for future works

which he had beside him; to impart a certain popular character,

inasmuch as he interwove Roman examples and references, and sometimes

digressed to subjects irrelevant but more familiar to the writer

and the reader, such as the treatment of the deportment

of the orator in the -De Officiis-; and to exhibit that sort

of bungling, which a man of letters, who has not attained to philosophic

thinking or even to philosophic knowledge and who works rapidly

and boldly, shows in the reproduction of dialectic trains of thought.

In this way no doubt a multitude of thick tomes might very quickly

come into existence--"They are copies," wrote the author himself

to a friend who wondered at his fertility; "they give me little trouble,

for I supply only the words and these I have in abundance."

Against this nothing further could be said; but any one who seeks

classical productions in works so written can only be advised to study

in literary matters a becoming silence.

Professional Sciences.

Latin Philology

Varro

Of the sciences only a single one manifested vigorous life,

that of Latin philology. The scheme of linguistic and antiquarian

research within the domain of the Latin race, planned by Silo,

was carried out especially by his disciple Varro on the grandest scale.

There appeared comprehensive elaborations of the whole stores

of the language, more especially the extensive grammatical commentaries

of Figulus and the great work of Varro -De Lingua Latina-;

monographs on grammar and the history of the language, such as

Varro's writings on the usage of the Latin language, on synonyms,

on the age of the letters, on the origin of the Latin tongue;

scholia on the older literature, especially on Plautus;

works of literary history, biographies of poets, investigations

into the earlier drama, into the scenic division of the comedies

of Plautus, and into their genuineness. Latin archaeology,

which embraced the whole older history and the ritual law apart

from practical jurisprudence, was comprehended in Varro's "Antiquities

of Things Human and Divine," which was and for all times remained

the fundamental treatise on the subject (published between 687

and 709). The first portion, "Of Things Human," described the primeval

age of Rome, the divisions of city and country, the sciences

of the years, months, and days, lastly, the public transactions

at home and in war; in the second half, "Of Things Divine," the state-

theology, the nature and significance of the colleges of experts,

of the holy places, of the religious festivals, of sacrificial

and votive gifts, and lastly of the gods themselves were summarily

unfolded. Moreover, besides a number of monographs--

e. g. on the descent of the Roman people, on the Roman gentes

descended from Troy, on the tribes--there was added, as a larger

and more independent supplement, the treatise "Of the Life

of the Roman People"--a remarkable attempt at a history of Roman manners,

which sketched a picture of the state of domestic life, finance,

and culture in the regal, the early republican, the Hannibalic,

and the most recent period. These labours of Varro were based

on an empiric knowledge of the Roman world and its adjacent Hellenic

domain more various and greater in its kind than any other Roman

either before or after him possessed--a knowledge to which living

observation and the study of literature alike contributed.

The eulogy of his contemporaries was well deserved, that Varro

had enabled his countrymen--strangers in their own world--to know

their position in their native land, and had taught the Romans

who and where they were. But criticism and system will be sought for

in vain. His Greek information seems to have come from somewhat

confused sources, and there are traces that even in the Roman field

the writer was not free from the influence of the historical

romance of his time. The matter is doubtless inserted

in a convenient and symmetrical framework, but not classified

or treated methodically; and with all his efforts to bring tradition

and personal observation into harmony, the scientific labours of Varro

are not to be acquitted of a certain implicit faith in tradition

or of an unpractical scholasticism.(38) The connection with Greek

philology consists in the imitation of its defects more than

of its excellences; for instance, the basing of etymologies

on mere similarity of sound both in Varro himself and in the other

philologues of this epoch runs into pure guesswork and often

into downright absurdity.(39) In its empiric confidence

and copiousness as well as in its empiric inadequacy and want of method

the Varronian vividly reminds us of the English national philology,

and just like the latter, finds its centre in the study

of the older drama. We have already observed that the monarchical

literature developed the rules of language in contradistinction

to this linguistic empiricism.(40) It is in a high degree significant

that there stands at the head of the modern grammarians no less a man

than Caesar himself, who in his treatise on Analogy (given forth

between 696 and 704) first undertook to bring free language

under the power of law.

The Other Professional Sciences

Alongside of this extraordinary stir in the field of philology

The small amount of activity in the other sciences is surprising.

What appeared of importance in philosophy--such as Lucretius'

representation of the Epicurean system in the poetical child-dress

of the pre-Socratic philosophy, and the better writings of Cicero--

produced its effect and found its audience not through its

philosophic contents, but in spite of such contents solely

through its aesthetic form; the numerous translations of Epicurean

writings and the Pythagorean works, such as Varro's great treatise

on the Elements of Numbers and the still more copious one of Figulus

concerning the Gods, had beyond doubt neither scientific

nor formal value.

Even the professional sciences were but feebly cultivated. Varro's

Books on Husbandry written in the form of dialogue are no doubt

more methodical than those of his predecessors Cato and Saserna--

on which accordingly he drops many a side glance of censure--

but have on the whole proceeded more from the study than, like those

earlier works, from living experience. Of the juristic labours of Varro

and of Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul in 703) hardly aught more

can be said, than that they contributed to the dialectic

and philosophical embellishment of Roman jurisprudence. And there is

nothing farther here to be mentioned, except perhaps the three

books of Gaius Matius on cooking, pickling, and making preserves--

so far as we know, the earliest Roman cookery-book, and, as the work

of a man of rank, certainly a phenomenon deserving of notice.

That mathematics and physics were stimulated by the increased

Hellenistic and utilitarian tendencies of the monarchy, is apparent

from their growing importance in the instruction of youth (41)

and from various practical applications; under which, besides

the reform of the calendar,(42) may perhaps be included the appearance

of wall-maps at this period, the technical improvements

in shipbuilding and in musical instruments, designs and buildings

like the aviary specified by Varro, the bridge of piles over the Rhine

executed by the engineers of Caesar, and even two semicircular

stages of boards arranged for being pushed together, and employed

first separately as two theatres and then jointly as an amphitheatre.

The public exhibition of foreign natural curiosities at the popular

festivals was not unusual; and the descriptions of remarkable animals,

which Caesar has embodied in the reports of his campaigns,

show that, had an Aristotle appeared, he would have again

found his patron-prince. But such literary performances

as are mentioned in this department are essentially associated

with Neopythagoreanism, such as the comparison of Greek and Barbarian,

i. e. Egyptian, celestial observations by Figulus, and his writings

concerning animals, winds, and generative organs. After Greek

physical research generally had swerved from the Aristotelian effort

to find amidst individual facts the law, and had more and more

passed into an empiric and mostly uncritical observation of the external

and surprising in nature, natural science when coming forward

as a mystical philosophy of nature, instead of enlightening

and stimulating, could only still more stupefy and paralyze;

and in presence of such a method it was better to rest satisfied

with the platitude which Cicero delivers as Socratic wisdom,

that the investigation of nature either seeks after things

which nobody can know, or after such things as nobody needs to know.

Art

Architecture

If, in fine, we cast a glance at art, we discover here

the same unpleasing phenomena which pervade the whole mental life

of this period. Building on the part of the state was virtually

brought to a total stand amidst the scarcity of money that marked

the last age of the republic. We have already spoken of the luxury

in building of the Roman grandees; the architects learned in consequence

of this to be lavish of marble--the coloured sorts such as

the yellow Numidian (Giallo antico) and others came into vogue

at this time, and the marble-quarries of Luna (Carrara)

were now employed for the first time--and began to inlay the floors

of the rooms with mosaic work, to panel the walls with slabs of marble,

or to paint the compartments in imitation of marble--the first steps

towards the subsequent fresco-painting. But art was not a gainer

by this lavish magnificence.

Arts of Design

In the arts of design connoisseurship and collecting were always

on the increase. It was a mere affectation of Catonian simplicity,

when an advocate spoke before the jurymen of the works of art

"of a certain Praxiteles"; every one travelled and inspected,

and the trade of the art-ciceroni, or, as they were then called,

the -exegetae-, was none of the worst. Ancient works of art

were formally hunted after--statues and pictures less, it is true,

than, in accordance with the rude character of Roman luxury,

artistically wrought furniture and ornaments of all sorts for the room

and the table. As early as that age the old Greek tombs of Capua

and Corinth were ransacked for the sake of the bronze and earthenware

vessels which had been placed in the tomb along with the dead.

for a small statuette of bronze 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds)

were paid, and 200,000 (2000 pounds) for a pair of costly carpets;

a well-wrought bronze cooking machine came to cost more than

an estate. In this barbaric hunting after art the rich amateur was,

as might be expected, frequently cheated by those who supplied him;

but the economic ruin of Asia Minor in particular so exceedingly rich

in artistic products brought many really ancient and rare ornaments

and works of art into the market, and from Athens, Syracuse,

Cyzicus, Pergamus, Chios, Samos, and other ancient seats of art,

everything that was for sale and very much that was not migrated

to the palaces and villas of the Roman grandees. We have

already mentioned what treasures of art were to be found within

the house of Lucullus, who indeed was accused, perhaps not unjustly,

of having gratified his interest in the fine arts at the expense

of his duties as a general. The amateurs of art crowded thither

as they crowd at present to the Villa Borghese, and complained

even then of such treasures being confined to the palaces

and country-houses of the men of quality, where they could be seen

only with difficulty and after special permission from the possessor.

The public buildings on the other hand were far from filled

in like proportion with famous works of Greek masters,

and in many cases there still stood in the temples of the capital

nothing but the old images of the gods carved in wood.

As to the exercise of art there is virtually nothing to report;

there is hardly mentioned by name from this period any Roman sculptor

or painter except a certain Arellius, whose pictures rapidly went off

not on account of their artistic value, but because the cunning reprobate

furnished, in his pictures of the goddesses faithful portraits

of his mistresses for the time being.

Dancing and Music

The importance of music and dancing increased in public

as in domestic life. We have already set forth how theatrical music

and the dancing-piece attained to an independent standing

in the development of the stage at this period;(43) we may add

that now in Rome itself representations were very frequently given

by Greek musicians, dancers, and declaimers on the public stage--

such as were usual in Asia Minor and generally in the whole Hellenic

and Hellenizing world.(44) To these fell to be added the musicians

and dancing-girls who exhibited their arts to order at table

and elsewhere, and the special choirs of stringed and wind instruments

and singers which were no longer rare in noble houses. But that even

the world of quality itself played and sang with diligence, is shown

by the very adoption of music into the cycle of the generally

recognized subjects of instruction;(45) as to dancing, it was,

to say nothing of women, made matter of reproach even against

consulars that they exhibited themselves in dancing performances

amidst a small circle.

Incipient Influence of the Monarchy

Towards the end of this period, however, there appears

with the commencement of the monarchy the beginning of a better time

also in art. We have already mentioned the mighty stimulus

which building in the capital received, and building throughout

the empire was destined to receive, through Caesar. Even in the cutting

of the dies of the coins there appears about 700 a remarkable change;

the stamping, hitherto for the most part rude and negligent,

is thenceforward managed with more delicacy and care.

Conclusion

We have reached the end of the Roman republic. We have seen

it rule for five hundred years in Italy and in the countries

on the Mediterranean; we have seen it brought to ruin in politics

and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence

but through inward decay, and thereby making room for the new monarchy

of Caesar. There was in the world, as Caesar found it, much

of the noble heritage of past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp

and glory, but little spirit, still less taste, and least of all

true delight in life. It was indeed an old world; and even

the richly-gifted patriotism of Caesar could not make it young again.

The dawn does not return till after the night has fully set in

and run its course. But yet with him there came to the sorely harassed

peoples on the Mediterranean a tolerable evening after the sultry noon;

and when at length after a long historical night the new day dawned

once more for the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-movement

commenced their race towards new and higher goals, there were found

among them not a few, in which the seed sown by Caesar had sprung up,

and which owed, as they still owe, to him their national individuality.

Notes for Chapter I

1. IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts, 527

2. It is a significant trait, that a distinguished teacher of

literature, the freedman Staberius Eros, allowed the children of

the proscribed to attend his course gratuitously.

3. IV. X. Proscription-Lists

4. IV. IX. Pompeius

5. IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration

6. IV. IV. Livius Drusus

7. IV. IX. Government of Cinna

8. IV. IX. Pompeius

9. IV. IX. Sertorius Embarks

10. IV. VII. Strabo, IV. IX. Dubious Attitude of Strabo

11. IV. IX. Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

12. IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

13. IV. X. Reorganization of the Senate

14. It is usual to set down the year 654 as that of Caesar's

birth, because according to Suetonius (Caes. 88), Plutarch (Caes.

69), and Appian (B. C. ii. 149) he was at his death (15 March 710)

in his 56th year; with which also the statement that he was 18

years old at the time of the Sullan proscription (672; Veil. ii.

41) nearly accords. But this view is utterly inconsistent with

the facts that Caesar filled the aedileship in 689, the praetorship in

692, and the consulship in 695, and that these offices could,

according to the -leges annales-, be held at the very earliest in

the 37th-38th, 40th-41st, and 43rd-44th years of a man's life

respectively. We cannot conceive why Caesar should have filled all

the curule offices two years before the legal time, and still less

why there should be no mention anywhere of his having done so.

These facts rather suggest the conjecture that, as his birthday

fell undoubtedly on July 12, he was born not in 654, but in 652; so

that in 672 he was in his 20th-21st year, and he died not in his

56th year, but at the age of 57 years 8 months. In favour of this

latter view we may moreover adduce the circumstance, which has been

strangely brought forward in opposition to it, that Caesar "-paene

puer-" was appointed by Marius and Cinna as Flamen of Jupiter

(Veil. ii. 43); for Marius died in January 668, when Caesar was,

according to the usual view, 13 years 6 months old, and therefore

not "almost," as Velleius says, but actually still a boy, and most

probably for this very reason not at all capable of holding such

a priesthood. If, again, he was born in July 652, he was at

the death of Marius in his sixteenth year; and with this the expression

in Velleius agrees, as well as the general rule that civil

positions were not assumed before the expiry of the age of boyhood.

Further, with this latter view alone accords the fact that

the -denarii- struck by Caesar about the outbreak of the civil war are

marked with the number LII, probably the year of his life; for

when it began, Caesar's age was according to this view somewhat

over 52 years. Nor is it so rash as it appears to us who are

accustomed to regular and official lists of births, to charge our

authorities with an error in this respect. Those four statements

may very well be all traceable to a common source; nor can they at

all lay claim to any very high credibility, seeing that for

the earlier period before the commencement of the -acta diurna-

the statements as to the natal years of even the best known and most

prominent Romans, e. g. as to that of Pompeius, vary in the most

surprising manner. (Comp. Staatsrecht, I. 8 p. 570.)

In the Life of Caesar by Napoleon III (B. 2, ch. 1) it is objected

to this view, first, that the -lex annalis- would point for

Caesar's birth-year not to 652, but to 651; secondly and

especially, that other cases are known where it was not attended

to. But the first assertion rests on a mistake; for, as

the example of Cicero shows, the -lex annalis- required only that at

the entering on office the 43rd year should be begun, not that it

should be completed. None of the alleged exceptions to the rule,

moreover, are pertinent. When Tacitus (Ann. xi. 22) says that

formerly in conferring magistracies no regard was had to age, and

that the consulate and dictatorship were entrusted to quite young

men, he has in view, of course, as all commentators acknowledge,

the earlier period before the issuing of the -leges annales---the

consulship of M. Valerius Corvus at twenty-three, and similar

cases. The assertion that Lucullus received the supreme magistracy

before the legal age is erroneous; it is only stated (Cicero, Acad.

pr. i. 1) that on the ground of an exceptional clause not more

particularly known to us, in reward for some sort of act performed

by him, he had a dispensation from the legal two years' interval

between the aedileship and praetorship--in reality he was aedile in

675, probably praetor in 677, consul in 680. That the case of

Pompeius was a totally different one is obvious; but even as to

Pompeius, it is on several occasions expressly stated (Cicero, de

Imp. Pomp, ax, 62; Appian, iii. 88) that the senate released him

from the laws as to age. That this should have been done with

Pompeius, who had solicited the consulship as a commander-in-chief

crowned with victory and a triumphator, at the head of an army and

after his coalition with Crassus also of a powerful party, we can

readily conceive. But it would be in the highest degree

surprising, if the same thing should have been done with Caesar on

his candidature for the minor magistracies, when he was of little

more importance than other political beginners; and it would be, if

possible, more surprising still, that, while there is mention of

that--in itself readily understood--exception, there should be no

notice of this more than strange deviation, however naturally such

notices would have suggested themselves, especially with reference

to Octavianus consul at 21 (comp., e. g., Appian, iii. 88). When

from these irrelevant examples the inference is drawn, "that

the law was little observed in Rome, where distinguished men were

concerned," anything more erroneous than this sentence was never

uttered regarding Rome and the Romans. The greatness of the Roman

commonwealth, and not less that of its great generals and

statesmen, depends above all things on the fact that the law held

good in their case also.

15. IV. IX. Spain

16. At least the outline of these organizations must be assigned

to the years 674, 675, 676, although the execution of them

doubtless belonged, in great part, only to the subsequent years.

17 IV. IX. The Provinces

18. The following narrative rests substantially on the account of

Licinianus, which, fragmentary as it is at this very point, still

gives important information as to the insurrection of Lepidus.

19. Under the year 676 Licinianus states (p. 23, Pertz; p. 42,

Bonn); [Lepidus?] -[le]gem frumentari[am] nullo resistente

l[argi]tus est, ut annon[ae] quinque modi popu[lo da]rentur-.

According to this account, therefore, the law of the consuls of 681

Marcus Terentius Lucullus and Gaius Cassius Varus, which Cicero

mentions (in Verr. iii. 70, 136; v. 21, 52), and to which also

Sallust refers (Hist. iii. 61, 19 Dietsch), did not first reestablish

the five -modii-, but only secured the largesses of grain by

regulating the purchases of Sicilian corn, and perhaps made

various alterations of detail. That the Sempronian law

(IV. III. Alterations on the Constitution By Gaius Gracchus)

allowed every burgess domiciled in Rome to share in the largesses

of grain, is certain. But the later distribution of grain was not

so extensive as this, for, seeing that the monthly corn of

the Roman burgesses amounted to little more than 33,000 -medimni- =

198,000 -modii- (Cic. Verr. iii. 30, 72), only some 40,000

burgesses at that time received grain, whereas the number of

burgesses domiciled in the capital was certainly far more

considerable. This arrangement probably proceeded from

the Octavian law, which introduced instead of the extravagant

Sempronian amount "a moderate largess, tolerable for the state and

necessary for the common people" (Cic. de Off. ii. 21, 72, Brut.

62, 222); and to all appearance it is this very law that is

the -lex frumentaria- mentioned by Licinianus. That Lepidus should have

entered into such a proposal of compromise, accords with his attitude

as regards the restoration of the tribunate. It is likewise in

keeping with the circumstances that the democracy should find itself

not at all satisfied by the regulation, brought about in this way,

of the distribution of grain (Sallust, l. c.). The amount of loss

is calculated on the basis of the grain being worth at least double

(IV. III. Alterations on the Constitution By Gaius Gracchus);

when piracy or other causes drove up the price of grain,

a far more considerable loss must have resulted.

20. From the fragments of the account of Licinianus (p. 44, Bonn)

it is plain that the decree of the senate, -uti Lepidus et Catulus

decretis exercitibus maturrime proficiscerentur- (Sallust, Hist. i.

44 Dietsch), is to be understood not of a despatch of the consuls

before the expiry of their consulship to their proconsular

provinces, for which there would have been no reason, but of their

being sent to Etruria against the revolted Faesulans, just as in

the Catilinarian war the consul Gaius Antonius was despatched to

the same quarter. The statement of Philippus in Sallust (Hist. i.

48, 4) that Lepidus -ob seditionem provinciam cum exercitu adeptus

est-, is entirely in harmony with this view; for the extraordinary

consular command in Etruria was just as much a -provincia- as

the ordinary proconsular command in Narbonese Gaul.

21. III. IV. Hannibal's Passage of the Alps

22. In the recently found fragments of Sallust, which appear to

belong to the campaign of 679, the following words relate to this

incident: -Romanus [exer]citus (of Pompeius) frumenti gra[tia

r]emotus in Vascones i... [it]emque Sertorius mon... e, cuius

multum in[terer]it, ne ei perinde Asiae [iter et Italiae

intercluderetur].

Notes for Chapter II

1. IV. VIII. New Difficulties

2. IV. VIII. Preliminaries of Delium, IV. VIII. Peace at Dardanus

3. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

4. IV. I. Cilicia

5. IV. I. Piracy

6. IV. I. Crete

7. The foundation of the kingdom of Edessa is placed by native

chronicles in 620 (IV. I. The Parthian Empire), but it was not till

some time after its rise that it passed into the hands of the Arabic

dynasty bearing the names of Abgarus and Mannus, which we afterwards

find there. This dynasty is obviously connected with the settlement

of many Arabs by Tigranes the Great in the region of Edessa,

Callirrhoe, Carrhae (Plin. H. N. v. 20, 85; ax, 86; vi. 28, 142);

respecting which Plutarch also (Luc. 21) states that Tigranes,

changing the habits of the tent-Arabs, settled them nearer to his

kingdom in order by their means to possess himself of the trade.

We may presumably take this to mean that the Bedouins, who were

accustomed to open routes for traffic through their territory and

to levy on these routes fixed transit-dues (Strabo, xvi. 748), were

to serve the great-king as a sort of toll-supervisors, and to levy

tolls for him and themselves at the passage of the Euphrates.

These "Osrhoenian Arabs" (-Orei Arabes-), as Pliny calls them,

must also be the Arabs on Mount Amanus, whom Afranius subdued

(Plut. Pomp. 39).

8. The disputed question, whether this alleged or real testament

proceeded from Alexander I (d. 666) or Alexander II (d. 673), is

usually decided in favour of the former alternative. But

the reasons are inadequate; for Cicero (de L. Agr. i. 4, 12; 15, 38;

16, 41) does not say that Egypt fell to Rome in 666, but that it

did so in or after this year; and while the circumstance that

Alexander I died abroad, and Alexander II in Alexandria, has led

some to infer that the treasures mentioned in the testament in

question as lying in Tyre must have belonged to the former, they

have overlooked that Alexander II was killed nineteen days after

his arrival in Egypt (Letronne, Inscr, de I'Egypte, ii. 20), when

his treasure might still very well be in Tyre. On the other hand

the circumstance that the second Alexander was the last genuine

Lagid is decisive, for in the similar acquisitions of Pergamus,

Cyrene, and Bithynia it was always by the last scion of

the legitimate ruling family that Rome was appointed heir. The ancient

constitutional law, as it applied at least to the Roman client-

states, seems to have given to the reigning prince the right of

ultimate disposal of his kingdom not absolutely, but only in

the absence of -agnati- entitled to succeed. Comp. Gutschmid's remark

in the German translation of S. Sharpe's History of Egypt, ii. 17.

Whether the testament was genuine or spurious, cannot be ascertained,

and is of no great moment; there are no special reasons for

assuming a forgery.

9. IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

10. IV. VIII. Cyrene Roman

11. V. I. Collapse of the Power of Sertorius

12. IV. IV. The Provinces

13. IV. VIII. Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast

14. IV. VIII. Flaccus Arrives in Asia

15. III. V. Attitude of the Romans, III. VI. The African Expedition

of Scipio

16. That Tigranocerta was situated in the region of Mardln some

two days' march to the west of Nisibis, has been proved by

the investigation instituted on the spot by Sachau ("-Ueber die Lage

von Tigranokerta-," Abh. der Berliner Akademie, 1880), although

the more exact fixing of the locality proposed by Sachau is not beyond

doubt. On the other hand, his attempt to clear up the campaign of

Lucullus encounters the difficulty that, on the route assumed in

it, a crossing of the Tigris is in reality out of the question.

17. Cicero (De Imp. Pomp. 9, 23) hardly means any other than one

of the rich temples of the province Elymais, whither the predatory

expeditions of the Syrian and Parthian kings were regularly

directed (Strabo, xvi. 744; Polyb, xxxi. 11. 1 Maccab. 6, etc.),

and probably this as the best known; on no account can

the allusion be to the temple of Comana or any shrine at all in

the kingdom of Pontus.

18. V. II. Preparations of Mithradates, 328, 334

19. V. II. Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus

20. V. II. Roman Preparations

21. V. I. Want of Leaders

22. V. II. Maritime War

23. IV. I. Crete

24. IV. II. The First Sicilian Slave War, IV. IV. Revolts of the Slaves

25. These enactments gave rise to the conception of robbery

as a separate crime, while the older law comprehended robbery

under theft.

26. V. II. The Pirates in the Mediterranean

27. As the line was thirty-five miles long (Sallust, Hist, iv, 19,

Dietsch; Plutarch, Crass. 10), it probably passed not from

Squillace to Pizzo, but more to the north, somewhere near

Castrovillari and Cassano, over the peninsula which is here in

a straight line about twenty-seven miles broad.

28. That Crassus was invested with the supreme command in 682,

follows from the setting aside of the consuls (Plutarch, Crass.

10); that the winter of 682-683 was spent by the two armies at

the Bruttian wall, follows from the "snowy night" (Plut. l. c).

Notes for Chapter III

1. IV. X. Assignations to the Soldiers

2. V. I. Pompeius

3. IV. X. Abolition of the Gracchan Institutions

4. V. II. The Insurrection Takes Shape

5. V. III. Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals

6. V. I. Insurrection of Lepidus

7. IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges

8. V. II. Mutiny of the Soldiers

9. IV. IV. Marius Commander-in-Chief

10. The extraordinary magisterial power (-pro consule-, -pro

praetore-, -pro quaestore-) might according to Roman state-law

originate in three ways. Either it arose out of the principle

which held good for the non-urban magistracy, that the office

continued up to the appointed legal term, but the official

authority up to the arrival of the successor, which was the oldest,

simplest, and most frequent case. Or it arose in the way of

the appropriate organs--especially the comitia, and in later times also

perhaps the senate--nominating a chief magistrate not contemplated

in the constitution, who was otherwise on a parity with

the ordinary magistrate, but in token of the extraordinary nature of

his office designated himself merely "instead of a praetor" or "of

a consul." To this class belong also the magistrates nominated in

the ordinary way as quaestors, and then extraordinarily furnished

with praetorian or even consular official authority (-quaestores

pro praetore- or -pro consule-); in which quality, for example,

Publius Lentulus Marcellinus went in 679 to Cyrene (Sallust, Hist.

ii. 39 Dietsch), Gnaeus Piso in 689 to Hither Spain (Sallust, Cat.

19), and Cato in 696 to Cyprus (Vell. ii. 45). Or, lastly,

the extraordinary magisterial authority was based on the right of

delegation vested in the supreme magistrate. If he left the bounds

of his province or otherwise was hindered from administering his

office, he was entitled to nominate one of those about him as his

substitute, who was then called -legatus pro praetore-(Sallust,

lug. 36, 37, 38), or, if the choice fell on the quaestor, -quaestor

pro praetore- (Sallust, Iug. 103). In like manner he was entitled,

if he had no quaestor, to cause the quaestorial duties to be

discharged by one of his train, who was then called -legatus pro

quaestore-, a name which is to be met with, perhaps for the first

time, on the Macedonian tetradrachms of Sura, lieutenant of

the governor of Macedonia, 665-667. But it was contrary to the nature

of delegation and therefore according to the older state-law

inadmissible, that the supreme magistrate should, without having

met with any hindrance in the discharge of his functions,

immediately upon his entering on office invest one or more of

his subordinates with supreme official authority; and so far

the -legati pro praetore-of the proconsul Pompeius were an innovation,

and already similar in kind to those who played so great a part in

the times of the Empire.

11. V. III. Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power

12. According to the legend king Romulus was torn in pieces

by the senators.

13. IV. II. Further Plans of Gracchus

Notes for Chapter IV

1. V. III. Senate, Equites, and Populares

2. V. II. Metellus Subdues Crete

3. [Literally "twenty German miles"; but the breadth of the island

does not seem in reality half so much.--Tr.]

4. V. II. Renewal of the War

5. Pompeius distributed among his soldiers and officers as

presents 384,000,000 sesterces (=16,000 talents, App. Mithr.

116); as the officers received 100,000,000 (Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2,

16) and each of the common soldiers 6000 sesterces (Plin., App.),

the army still numbered at its triumph about 40,000 men.

6. V. II. Sieges of the Pontic Cities

7. V. II. All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

8. V. II. Syria under Tigranes

9. V. II. Syria under Tigranes

10. IV. I. The Jews

11. V. II. Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta

12. Thus the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of angels and spirits

and the resurrection of the dead. Most of the traditional points

of difference between Pharisees and Sadducees relate to subordinate

questions of ritual, jurisprudence, and the calendar. It is

a characteristic fact, that the victorious Pharisees have introduced

those days, on which they definitively obtained the superiority in

particular controversies or ejected heretical members from

the supreme consistory, into the list of the memorial and festival

days of the nation.