prosperity and the cause of decay. Towards the close of the third century
of Rome, Pythagoras had in some measure succeeded in reforming the morals
of Crotona, while the rival state of Sybaris, like the Moorish Grenada,
hastened to destruction, amid carousals and civil dissensions; and though
once capable, as is said, (but probably with some exaggeration,) of
bringing three hundred thousand soldiers into the field(102), it sunk,
after a short struggle, under the power of Crotona. The other independent
states were successively agitated by the violence of popular revolution,
and crushed by the severity of despotism. As in the mother country, they
had constant dissensions among themselves. This rivalship induced them to
call in the assistance of the Sicilians—a measure which prepared the way
for their subjection to the vigorous but detestable sway of the elder
Dionysius, and of Agathocles. Tarentum, founded about the same time with
Sybaris and Crotona, was the most powerful city of the Grecian colonies
toward the conclusion of their political existence, and the last
formidable rival to the Romans in Italy. Like the neighbouring states, it
was chiefly ruined by the succour of foreign allies. Unsuccessfully
defended by Alexander Molossus, oppressed by the Syracusan tyrants, and
despoiled by Cleomenes of Sparta, neither the genius of Pyrrhus, nor the
power of Carthage, could preserve it from the necessity of final
submission to the Romans.
In all their varieties of fortune, the Grecian colonies had maintained the
manners and institutions of the mother country, which no people ever
entirely relinquish with the soil they have left. A close political
connection also subsisted between them; and, about the year 300 of Rome,
the Athenians sent to the assistance of Sybaris a powerful expedition,
which, on the decay of that city, founded the town of Thurium in the
immediate vicinity. This constant intercourse cherished and preserved the
literary spirit of the colonies of Magna Græcia. Herodotus, the father of
history, and Lysias, whose orations are the purest models of the simple
Attic eloquence, were, in early youth, among the original founders of the
colony of Thurium(103), and the latter held a share in its government till
an advanced period of life. The Eleatic school of philosophy was founded
in Magna Græcia; and the impulse which the wisdom of Pythagoras had given
to the mind, promoted also the studies of literature. Plato visited
Tarentum during the consulship of Lucius Camillus and Appius
Claudius(104), which was in the 406th year of Rome, and Zeuxis was invited
from Greece to paint at Crotona the magnificent temple of Juno, which had
been erected in that city(105). History and poetry were cultivated with a
success which did not dishonour the Grecian name. Lycus of Rhegium was the
civil, and Glaucus of the same city was the literary historian of Magna
Græcia. Orpheus of Crotona was the author of a poem on the expedition of
the Argonauts, attributed to an elder Orpheus. The lyric productions of
Ibicus of Rhegium rivalled those of Anacreon and Alcæus. Two hundred and
fifty-five comedies, written by Alexis of Thurium, the titles of which
have been collected by Meursius, and a few fragments of them by Stephens,
are said to have been composed in the happiest vein of the middle comedy
of the Greeks, which possessed much of the comic force of Aristophanes and
Cratinus, without their malignity. In his Meropis and Ancylio, this
dramatist is supposed to have carped at Plato; and his comedy founded on
the life of Pythagoras, was probably in a similar vein of satire.
Stephano, the son of Alexis, and who, according to Suidas, was the uncle
of Menander, became chiefly celebrated for his tragedies; but his comedies
were also distinguished by happy pictures of life, and uncommon harmony of
versification.
War, which had so long retarded the progress of literature at Rome, at
length became the cause of its culture. The Romans were now involved in a
contest with the civilized colonies of Magna Græcia. Accordingly, when
they garrisoned Thurium, in order to defend it against the Samnites, and
when in 482 they obtained complete possession of Magna Græcia, by the
capture of Tarentum, which presented the last resistance to their arms,
they could not fail to catch a portion of Grecian taste and spirit, or at
least to admire the beautiful creations of Grecian fancy. Many of the
conquerors remained in Magna Græcia, while, on the other hand, all the
inhabitants of its cities, who were most distinguished for literary
attainments, fixed their residence at Rome.
The first Carthaginian war, which broke out in 489, so far from retarding
the literary influence of these strangers, accelerated the steps of
improvement. Unlike the former contests of the Romans, which were either
with neighbouring states, or with barbarous nations who came to attack
them in their own territories, it was not attended with that immediate
danger which is utterly inconsistent with literary leisure. In its
prosecution, too, the Romans for the first time carried their arms beyond
Italy. Literature, indeed, was not one of those novelties in which the
western part of Africa was fruitful, but, with the exception of Greece
itself, there was no country where it flourished more luxuriantly than in
Sicily; and that island, as is well known, was the principal scene of the
first great struggle between Rome and Carthage. None of the Grecian
colonies shone with such splendour as Syracuse, a city founded by the
Dorians of Corinth, in the 19th year of Rome. This capital had attained
the summit both of political and literary renown long before the first
Carthaginian war. Æschylus passed the concluding years of his life in
Sicily, and wrote, it is said, his tragedy of _The Persians_, to gratify
the curiosity of Hiero I. King of Syracuse, who was desirous to see a
representation of the celebrated war which the Greeks had waged against
Xerxes. Epicharmus, retained in the same elegant court, was the first who
rejected, on the stage, the ancient mummeries of the satires, and composed
dramas on that regular elaborate plan, which was reckoned worthy of
imitation by Plautus—
“Dicitur ————————————
Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi(106).”
Dionysius, the tyrant, was also a patron of learning, and was himself a
competitor in the fields of literature. Philistus, the historian, was the
friend of the elder, and Plato of the younger Dionysius. Aristippus and
Æschines passed some time in the court of these tyrants. Theocritus, and
other poets of the Alexandrian constellation, resided in Sicily before
they partook in Egypt of the splendid patronage of the Ptolemies. The
Syracusans, who put to death so many of their Athenian prisoners in cold
blood, and with frightful tortures, spared those of them who could recite
the verses of Euripides. Scenic representations were peculiarly popular in
Sicily: Its towns were crowded with theatres, and its dramatists were
loaded with honours. The theatrical exhibitions which the Roman invaders
of Sicily must have witnessed, and the respect there paid to distinguished
poets, would naturally awaken literary emulation. During a contest of
nearly twenty-four years between Rome and Carthage, Hiero II., King of
Syracuse, was the zealous and strenuous ally of the Romans. At the
conclusion of peace between these rival nations, in the year 512, part of
Sicily was ceded to the Romans, and the intercourse which consequently
arose with the inhabitants of this newly-acquired territory, laid the
foundation of those studies, which were afterwards brought to perfection
by the progress of time, and by direct communication with Greece
itself(107).
Accordingly, it is in the end of the fifth, and beginning of the sixth
century, from the building of Rome, that we find among its inhabitants the
earliest vestiges of literature. Poetry, as with most other nations, was
the first of the liberal arts which was cultivated among the Romans; and
dramatic poetry, founded on the school of Greece, appears to have been
that which was earliest preferred. We have seen, indeed, that previous to
this period, and in the year 392, when the city was afflicted with a
plague, the Senate decreed that players should be summoned from Etruria to
appease the wrath of the gods by scenic representations, and that the
Roman youth imitated these expiatory performances, by rallying each other
in extemporary verses. This by some has been considered as a dawning of
the drama, since the characters probably bore a resemblance to the
Arlequin and Scaramouch of the Italian farces. But
LIVIUS ANDRONICUS,
A native of Magna Græcia, was the first who attempted to establish at Rome
a regular theatre, or to connect a dramatic fable, free from the
mummeries, the _ballet_, and the melodrama of the ancient satires(108).
Tiraboschi asserts, that when his country was finally subdued by the
Romans, in 482, Livius was made captive and brought to Rome(109). It is
generally believed that he there became the slave, and afterwards the
freedman of Livius Salinator, from whom he derived one of his names: these
facts, however, do not seem to rest on any authority more ancient than the
Eusebian Chronicle(110). The precise period of his death is uncertain; but
in Cicero’s Dialogue _De Senectute_, Cato is introduced saying, that he
had seen old Livius while he was himself a youth(111). Now Cato was born
in 519, and since the period of youth among the Romans was considered as
commencing at fifteen, it may be presumed that the existence of Livius was
at least protracted till the year 534 of the city. It has been frequently
said, that he lived till the year 546(112), because Livy(113) mentions
that a hymn composed by this ancient poet was publicly sung in that year,
to avert the disasters threatened by an alarming prodigy; but the
historian does not declare that it was written for the occasion, or even
recently before.
The earliest play of Livius was represented in 513 or 514, about a year
after the termination of the first Punic war. Osannus, a modern German
author, has written a learned and chronological dissertation on the
question, in which of these years the first Roman play was performed(114);
but it is extremely difficult for us to come to any satisfactory
conclusion on a subject which, even in the time of Cicero, was one of
doubt and controversy(115). Like Thespis, and other dramatists in the
commencement of the theatrical art, Livius was an actor, and for a
considerable time the sole performer in his own pieces. Afterwards,
however, his voice failing, in consequence of the audience insisting on a
repetition of favourite passages, he introduced a boy who relieved him, by
declaiming in concert with the flute, while he himself executed the
corresponding gesticulations in the monologues, and in the parts where
high exertion was required, employing his own voice only in the
conversational and less elevated scenes(116). It was observed that his
action grew more lively and animated, because he exerted his whole
strength in gesticulating, while another had the care and trouble of
pronouncing. “Hence,” continues Livy, “the practice arose of reciting
those passages which required much modulation of the voice, to the gesture
and action of the comedian. Thenceforth the custom so far prevailed, that
the comedians never pronounced anything except the verses of the
dialogues(117):” And this system, which one should think must have
completely destroyed the theatric illusion, continued, under certain
modifications, to subsist on the Roman stage during the most refined
periods of taste and literature.
The popularity of Livius increasing from these performances, as well as
from a propitiatory hymn he had composed, and which had been followed by
great public success, a building was assigned to him on the Aventine hill.
This edifice was partly converted into a theatre, and was also inhabited
by a troop of players, for whom Livius wrote his pieces, and frequently
acted along with them(118).
It has been disputed whether the first drama represented by Livius
Andronicus at Rome was a tragedy or comedy(119). However this may be, it
appears from the names which have been preserved of his plays, that he
wrote both tragedies and comedies. These titles, which have been collected
by Fabricius and other writers, are, _Achilles_, _Adonis_, _Ægisthus_,
_Ajax_, _Andromeda_, _Antiopa_, _Centauri_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Helena_,
_Hermione_, _Ino_, _Lydius_, _Protesilaodamia_, _Serenus_, _Tereus_,
_Teucer_, _Virgo_(120). Such names also evince that most of his dramas
were translated or imitated from the works of his countrymen of Magna
Græcia, or from the great tragedians of Greece. Thus, Æschylus wrote a
tragedy on the subject of Ægisthus: There is still an Ajax of Sophocles
extant, and he is known to have written an Andromeda: Stobæus mentions the
Antiopa of Euripides: Four Greek dramatists, Sophocles, Euripides,
Anaxandrides, and Philæterus, composed tragedies on the subject of Tereus;
and Epicharmus, as well as others, chose for their comedies the story of
the Syrens.
Little, however, except the titles, remains to us, from the dramas of
Livius. The longest passage we possess in connection, extends only to four
lines. It forms part of a hymn to Diana, recited by the chorus, in the
tragedy of _Ino_, and contains an animated exhortation to a person about
to proceed to the chase:—
“Et jam purpureo suras include cothurno,
Baltheus et revocet volucres in pectore sinus;
Pressaque jam gravida crepitent tibi terga pharetra:
Dirige odorisequos ad cæca cubilia canes(121).”
This passage testifies the vast improvement effected by Livius on the
Latin Tongue; and indeed the polish of the language and metrical
correctness of these hexameter lines, have of late led to a suspicion that
they are not the production of a period so ancient as the age of
Livius(122), or at least that they have been modernised by some later
hand. With this earliest offspring of the Latin muse, it may be curious to
compare a production from her last age of decrepitude. Nemesianus, in his
_Cynegeticon_, has closely imitated this passage while exhorting Diana to
prepare for the chase:
“Sume habitus, arcumque manu; pictamque pharetram
Suspende ex humeris; sint aurea tela, sagittæ;
Candida puniceis aptentur crura cothurnis:
Sit chlamys aurato multum subtemine lusa,
Corrugesque sinus gemmatis baltheus artet
Nexibus ——”
As the above-quoted verses in the chorus of the _Ino_ are the only passage
among the fragments of Livius, from which a connected meaning can be
elicited, we must take our opinion of his poetical merits from those who
judged of them while his writings were yet wholly extant. Cicero has
pronounced an unfavourable decision, declaring that they scarcely deserved
a second perusal(123). They long, however, continued popular in Rome, and
were read by the youths in schools even during the Augustan age of poetry.
It is evident, indeed, that during that golden period of Roman literature,
there prevailed a taste corresponding to our black-letter rage, which led
to an inordinate admiration of the works of Livius, and to the bitter
complaints of Horace, that they should be extolled as perfect, or held up
by old pedants to the imitation of youth in an age when so much better
models existed:
“Non equidem insector, delendaque carmina Livi
Esse reor, memini quæ plagosum mihi parvo
Orbilium dictare; sed emendata videri,
Pulchraque, et exactis minimum distantia, miror:
Inter quæ verbum emicuit si forte decorum, et
Si versus paulo concinnior unus et alter;
Injuste totum ducit venditque poema(124).”
But although Livius may have been too much read in the schools, and too
much admired in an age, which could boast of models so greatly superior to
his writings, he is at least entitled to praise, as the inventor among the
Romans of a species of poetry which was afterwards carried by them to much
higher perfection. By translating the Odyssey, too, into Latin verse, he
adopted the means which, of all others, was most likely to foster and
improve the infant literature of his country—as he thus presented it with
an image of the most pure and perfect taste, and at the same time with
those wild and romantic adventures, which are best suited to attract the
sympathy and interest of a half-civilized nation. This happy influence
could not be prevented even by the use of the rugged Saturnian verse,
which led Cicero to compare the translation of Livius to the ancient
statues, which might be attributed to Dædalus(125).
The Latin Odyssey commenced—
“Virum mihi, Camena, insece versutum.”
There have also been three lines preserved by Festus, which are translated
from the 8th Book, expressing the effects produced on the mind by a
sea-storm—
—— “Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem quamde mare sævom: vires quoi
Sunt magnæ, topper confringent importunæ undæ(126).”
From the æra in which the dramatic productions of Livius appeared,
theatrical representations formed the object of a peculiar art. The more
regular drama, founded on that of Magna Græcia, or Sicily, being divided
into tragedy and comedy, became, in a great measure, the province of
professional players or authors, while the Roman youths of distinction
continued to amuse themselves with the _Fabulæ Atellanæ_, and _Exodia_, a
species of satirical medley, derived from the ancient Etruscans, or from
the Osci, the nature and progress of which I shall hereafter have occasion
more particularly to examine.
CNEIUS NÆVIUS,
A native of Campania, was the first imitator of the regular dramatic works
which had been produced by Livius Andronicus. He served in the first Punic
war, and his earliest plays were represented at Rome in the year 519(127).
The names of his tragedies, from which as few fragments remain as from
those of Livius, are still preserved:—_Alcestis_, (from which there is yet
extant a description of old age in rugged and barbarous verse)—_Danae_,
_Dulorestes_, _Hesiona_, _Hector_, _Iphigenia_, _Lycurgus_, _Phœnissæ_,
_Protesilaus_, and _Telephus_. All these were translated, or closely
imitated from the works of Euripides, Anaxandrides, and other Greek
dramatists. Cicero commends a passage in the _Hector_, one of the
above-mentioned tragedies(128), where the hero of the piece, delighted
with the praises which he had received from his father Priam, exclaims—
“—— Lætus sum
Laudari me abs te, pater, laudato viro(129).”
Nævius, however, was accounted a better comic than tragic poet. Cicero has
given us some specimens of his jests, with which that celebrated wit and
orator appears to have been greatly amused; but they consist rather in
unexpected turns of expression, or a play of words, than in genuine
humour. One of these, recorded in the second Book _De Oratore_, has found
its way into our jest-books; and though one of the best in Cicero, it is
one of the worst of Joe Miller. It is the saying of a knavish servant,
“that nothing was shut up from him in his master’s house”.—“Solum esse,
cui domi nihil sit nec obsignatum, nec occlusum: Quod idem,” adds Cicero,
“in bono servo dici solet, sed hoc iisdem etiam verbis.”
Unfortunately for Nævius, he did not always confine himself in his
comedies to such inoffensive jests. The dramas of Magna Græcia and Sicily,
especially those of Epicharmus, were the prototypes of the older Greek
comedy; and accordingly the most ancient Latin plays, particularly those
of Nævius, which were formed on the same school, though there be no
evidence that they ridiculed political events, partook of the personal
satire and invective which pervaded the productions of Aristophanes. If,
as is related, the comedies of Nævius were directed against the vices and
corporal defects of the Consuls and Senators of Rome, he must have been
the most original of the Latin comic poets, and infinitely more so than
Plautus or Terence; since although he may have parodied or copied the
dramatic fables of the ancient Greek or Sicilian comedies, the spirit and
colouring of the particular scenes must have been his own. The elder
Scipio was one of the chief objects of his satiric representations, and
the poetic severity with which Aristophanes persecuted Socrates or
Euripides, was hardly more indecent and misdirected than the sarcasms of
Nævius against the greatest captain, the most accomplished scholar, and
the most virtuous citizen of his age. Some lines are still extant, in
which he lampooned Scipio on account of a youthful amour, in which he had
been detected by his father—
“Etiam qui res magnas manu sæpe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus
Præstat, eum suus pater, cum pallio uno, ab amicâ abduxit.”
The conqueror of Hannibal treated these libels with the same indifference
with which Cæsar afterwards regarded the lines of Catullus. Nævius,
however, did not long escape with impunity. Rome was a very different sort
of republic from Athens: It was rather an aristocracy than a democracy,
and its patricians were not always disposed to tolerate the taunts and
insults which the chiefs of the Greek democracy were obliged to endure.
Nævius had said in one of his verses, that the patrician family of the
Metelli had frequently obtained the Consulship before the age permitted by
law, and he insinuated that they had been promoted to this dignity, not in
consequence of their virtues, but the cruelty of the Roman fate:
“Fato Metelli Romæ fiunt Consules.”
With the assistance of the other patricians, the Metelli retorted his
sarcasms in a Saturnian stanza, not unlike the measure of some of our old
ballads, in which they threatened to play the devil with their witty
persecutor—
“Et Nævio Poetæ,
Cum sæpe læderentur,
Dabunt malum Metelli,
Dabunt malum Metelli,
Dabunt malum Metelli.”
The Metelli, however, did not confine their vengeance to this ingenious
and spirited satire, in the composition of which, it may be presumed that
the whole Roman Senate was engaged. On account of the unceasing abuse and
reproaches which he had uttered against them, and other chief men of the
city, he was thrown into prison, where he wrote his comedies, the
_Hariolus_ and _Leontes_. These plays being in some measure intended as a
recantation of his former invectives, he was liberated by the tribunes of
the people.(130) He soon, however, relapsed into his former courses, and
continued to persecute the nobility in his dramas and satires with such
implacable dislike, that he was at length driven from Rome by their
influence, and having retired to Utica(131), he died there, in the year
550, according to Cicero(132); but Varro fixes his death somewhat later.
Before leaving Rome, he had composed the following epitaph on himself,
which Gellius remarks is full of Campanian arrogance; though the import of
it, he adds, might be allowed to be true, had it been written by
another(133);
“Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divæ Camœnæ Nævium poetam;
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Oblitei sunt Romæ loquier Latina lingua(134).”
Besides his comedies and the above epitaph, Nævius was also author of the
Cyprian Iliad, a translation from a Greek poem, called the _Cyprian Epic_.
Aristotle, in the 23d chapter of his Poetics, mentions the original work,
(τα κυπρια,) which, he says, had furnished many subjects for the drama.
Some writers, particularly Pindar, have attributed this Greek poem to
Homer; and there was long an idle story current, that he had given it as a
portion to his daughter Arsephone. Herodotus, in his second Book,
concludes, after some critical discussion, that it was not written by
Homer, but that it was doubtless the work of a contemporary poet, or one
who lived shortly after him. Heyne thinks it most probable, that it was by
a poet called Stasinus, a native of the island of Cyprus, and that it
received its name from the country of its author(135). Whoever may have
written this Cyprian Epic, it contained twelve books, and was probably a
work of amorous and romantic fiction. It commenced with the nuptials of
Thetis and Peleus—it related the contention of the three goddesses on
Mount Ida—the fables concerning Palamedes—the story of the daughters of
Anius—and the love adventures of the Phrygian fair during the early period
of the siege of Troy—and it terminated with the council of the gods, at
which it was resolved that Achilles should be withdrawn from the war, by
sowing dissension between him and Atrides(136).