THE EMPERORS AFTER TRAJAN—SUETONIUS—OTHER WRITERS
Hadrian, 117-138 A. D.—Antoninus Pius, 138-161 A. D.—Marcus
Aurelius, 161-180 A. D.—Commodus, 180-192 A. D.—Septimius
Severus, 193-211 A. D.—Alexander Severus, 222-235 A. D.—Gordian
I, 238 A. D.—Gallienus, 260-268 A. D.—Aurelian, 270-275 A.
D.—Tacitus, 275 A. D.—Suetonius, about 70 or 75 to about
150 A. D.—Florus, time of Hadrian—Justin, time of Hadrian
(?)—Liciniauus, time of Antoninus Pius—Ampelius, time of
Antoninus Pius (?)—Salvius Julianus, time of Hadrian—Sextus
Pomponius, time of Antoninus Pius—Gaius, about 110-180
A. D.—Quintus Cervidius Scævola, time of Antoninus and
M. Aurelius—Papinianus, time of Commodus and Septimius
Severus—Terentius Scaurus, time of Hadrian—Terentianus Maurus
and Juba, before 200 A. D.—Aero, about 200 A. D.—Porphyrio,
about 200 A. D.—Festus, early in the third century.
[Sidenote: Latin literature after Trajan.] It was not until the fourth
century after Christ that a new capital of the Roman empire was founded
at Constantinople; but long before that time the real centre of gravity
of the empire was shifting toward the east. In Asia, Egypt, and Africa,
were the great sources of wealth and the great masses of population.
While Rome was growing from the position of a small Italian town to
that of the ruler of the world, and even for some time after the
establishment of the empire, the Romans had possessed a strong national
feeling, and Roman literature, although it began with imitation of
the works of the Greeks, had been a national literature. But with
the second century a change, which had been in preparation since the
days of Augustus, became apparent. Rome was no longer the centre of
the world in all things, though still the seat of government. Men of
distinction spent at least a great part of their time in the smaller
towns of Italy, and the leaders of thought and creators of literature
no longer found it necessary to take up their residence at Rome. Then
too, the progress of Christianity brought with it a new literature
which was not national, but Christian. These causes, with others
less obvious, but perhaps no less potent, led to the rapid decay of
the national literature. It is our task from this point to trace the
progress of this decay, and at the same time to record the rise of
Christian literature in the Latin language. Works of great literary
importance are few in this period, and the history of literature can be
treated in less detail than heretofore.
[Sidenote: Hadrian.] The Emperor Hadrian (117-138 A. D.) was a man of
singular versatility. He delivered and published speeches and wrote
an autobiography, works on grammar, and even poems. He was equally
familiar with Greek and Latin, and it is probably in part due to
this fact that the literary revival during his rule was less Latin
than Greek. He spent a great part of his time away from Rome, and
wherever he went his path was marked by the erection of buildings for
use and ornament. He lived for three years at Athens, where he added
a new quarter to the ancient city. Greek, which had for centuries
been familiar to the literary men of Rome, became now, more than
ever before, the literary language of the empire. It is hardly to
be wondered at that Latin literature has under Hadrian no greater
representative than Suetonius.
[Sidenote: The Antonines.] Hadrian’s successor, Antoninus Pius
(138-161 A. D.), was no writer, but showed his interest in literary
and intellectual matters by granting salaries and privileges to
philosophers and rhetors. Marcus Aurelius (161-180 A. D.) was carefully
instructed by Greek and Roman teachers. While still a mere boy he was
greatly interested in the Stoic philosophy; but the famous orator
and teacher Fronto (see page 235) obtained such great influence over
him, that for a number of years he devoted himself to rhetoric. The
correspondence of Fronto with Marcus Aurelius shows how great was the
affection that existed between teacher and pupil, and also how petty
were the rhetorical teachings and investigations in which Fronto passed
his life and to which he hoped his pupil would devote his intellect.
Fronto was, however, doomed to disappointment, for when Marcus Aurelius
was in his twenty-fifth year he turned again to philosophy. The
correspondence with Fronto is conducted in Latin similar to Fronto’s
own, plentifully adorned with obsolete expressions taken from writers
of the republican period. The _Thoughts_ of Marcus Aurelius, those
ethical maxims and moral reflections which make the Stoic doctrines
seem so much like Christianity, are written in Greek. That Marcus
Aurelius regarded Greek as the proper language of culture, or at least
of philosophy, is shown by the fact that he established the schools of
philosophy at Athens with regularly salaried professors. Lucius Verus,
the colleague of Marcus Aurelius until 169 A. D., was also a pupil of
Fronto, and in his letters to his teacher shows the same faults of
style exhibited by Marcus Aurelius. He had no influence upon Latin
literature, and Commodus (180-192 A. D.) had no interest in literature
of any sort.
[Sidenote: Later emperors.] Pertinax had literary tastes, but his brief
reign gave him no opportunity to influence the course of the national
literature, while his successor Didius Julianus, who bought the empire
from the prætorian guards, found after sixty-six days of nominal
power that his purchase brought him ruin and death. Septimius Severus
(193-211 A. D.), although his native tongue was probably Punic, was
well educated in Greek and Latin and wrote an autobiography, but there
is no indication that he exercised any marked influence upon Roman
literature. Among the later emperors were few whose literary interests
were strong, and still fewer who appear as authors. In the third
century Alexander Severus (222-235 A. D.) was seriously interested in
Greek and Latin literature and encouraged literary production by all
the means in his power; Gordian I (238 A. D.) wrote a metrical history
of the Antonines in thirty books, besides various other works in prose
and verse, but these are lost, and his brief reign did not enable him
to give imperial encouragement to literature; the poems and speeches
of Gallienus (260-268 A. D.) and the historical writings of Aurelian
(270-275 A. D.) were of little importance. The Emperor Tacitus (275
A. D.) exerted himself to spread abroad the works of his ancestor
the historian, and it may be due to him that those works are in part
preserved. Those among the still later emperors who had literary
interests made their influence felt rather upon Greek than Latin
literature.
[Sidenote: Suetonius.] The most important writer in the reign of
Hadrian is Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus. He was born apparently between
70 and 75 A. D. He was a friend of the younger Pliny, who mentions him
in his letters. Pliny obtained for him a military tribuneship, which he
passed on to a relative. Pliny also assisted him in the purchase of a
small estate and encouraged him to publish some of his writings. Under
Hadrian he held a position as secretary, from which he was dismissed in
121 A. D. Of his later life nothing is known, but he probably devoted
himself to his literary labors, and as his works were numerous, we may
assume that he lived to an advanced age.
Only two works of Suetonius are preserved, the first entire, but for a
small part at the beginning, and of the second only a part, and that
much mutilated. [Sidenote: The Lives of the Cæsars.] The _Lives of
the Twelve Cæsars_ (_De Vita Cæsarum_), in eight books, contains the
lives of Julius Cæsar (Book I), Augustus (Book II), Tiberius (Book
III), Caligula (Book IV), Claudius (Book V), Nero (Book VI), Galba,
Otho, Vitellius (Book VII), Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian (Book VIII).
The work is dedicated to Septicius Clarus, to whom Pliny the younger
dedicated his letters, and was published between 119 and 121 A. D., for
Clarus is addressed as _præfectus prætorio_, an office which he held
only during those years. The beginning is lost, for the life of Cæsar
begins at the point when Cæsar was sixteen years old. Suetonius is a
careful and conscientious writer and makes use of various sources of
information, not only published histories and biographies, but also
public documents, autograph letters of the emperors, and apparently
oral tradition. He lacks, however, the critical insight necessary for
a good historian and the understanding of character needed by a good
biographer. He collected his material with impartiality, avoiding
neither what was friendly nor what was hostile to the emperors whose
lives he records, and arranged this material as best he could, with
no apparent endeavor to trace the development of character, or even
to determine in all cases the chronological sequence of events. Dates
are seldom given, and the work as a whole presents rather the material
for history than real history. But this material is interesting, and
the style is simple, straightforward, and clear. Although he wrote at
a time when affectations of style were fashionable, Suetonius had the
good taste to keep himself free from them.
[Sidenote: De Viris Illustribus.] The second work of Suetonius,
entitled _De Viris Illustribus_ (_On Illustrious Men_), was a series
of philosophers, grammarians, and rhetoricians. The section on orators
began with Cicero, that on historians with Sallust. The greater part of
the section on grammarians and rhetoricians is extant, as are the lives
of Terence, Horace, and Lucan from the section on poets, and that of
Pliny the elder from the section on historians. Extracts from other
parts of the work are preserved by Jerome and in the scholia on various
writers. Each section contained a list of the authors discussed, a
brief account of their branch of literature, and short lives of the
authors arranged chronologically. In this work also the style is simple
and clear, but brevity is sought at the expense of literary excellence.
[Sidenote: Other works.] Other works by Suetonius, some of which were
much used by later writers as sources of information, were on Greek
Games, Roman Games, the Roman Year, Critical Marks in Books, Cicero’s
_Republic_, Dress, Imprecations, and Roman Laws and Customs. Some of
theses were doubtless included in a work entitled _Prata_, a sort of
encyclopædia in ten books, which dealt also with philology and natural
science. The works on Greek Games and on Imprecations were apparently
written in Greek, the rest in Latin. Suetonius was not a great writer,
but was a diligent compiler of interesting information. His extant
works are valuable as sources of information rather than as literary
productions, though their freedom from the affectations of the age
entitles their author to some praise even from a literary point of view.
[Sidenote: Florus.] To the time of Hadrian belongs a brief history of
Rome by Annius or Annæus Florus. This is not a mere epitome of Livy,
as it is entitled in one of the manuscripts, but rather a panegyric
on the Roman people. Florus personifies the Roman people, speaks of
its childhood under the rule of the kings, its youth while Rome was
conquering Italy, its manhood from the conquest of Italy to the time
of Augustus, and then instead of going on to tell of its old age, he
says the emperor restored it to youth. Florus writes in a flowery,
rhetorical style, and pays little attention to any part of history
except wars and battles. For these reasons, and also because of its
brevity, the work was a popular text-book in the Middle Ages. This
Florus is probably identical with a poet who is reported to have joked
with Hadrian, and who has left two rather attractive specimens of
verse, one of five lines on spring, the other of twenty-six lines on
the quality of life. A fragment of a discussion of the question whether
Virgil was greater as a poet or as an orator is also preserved under
the name of Florus. If this Florus is still the same person, we learn
from the fragment that he was unsuccessful in competing for a prize
in poetry at Rome, traveled about in many parts of the empire, and
finally settled as a teacher in a provincial town, probably Tarraco
(Tarragona), in the northeast part of Spain.
Historical writing was at a low ebb. Suetonius is far the most
important historian of the second century, and he is made important
rather by the dearth of good historians than by his own merits.
[Sidenote: Other historical writings of the second century.] Florus
hardly deserves the name of historian. Justin’s epitome of Trogus (see
page 164) belongs, perhaps, to the time of Hadrian, and is important
because it has preserved much of the substance of the work of Trogus,
but is in no sense an original history. Under Antoninus Pius a history
of Rome was written by Granius Licinianus, but the extant fragments
show that this was little more than an epitome of Livy. The _Liber
Memorialis_, by Lucius Ampelius, written at about the same time, is a
little handbook of useful knowledge, containing general information
about the earth, the stars, and the winds, followed by a brief sketch
of the history of various nations. It is a mere compilation, possessing
neither historical nor literary value.
[Sidenote: Jurists.] The study of law was, on the other hand, pursued
by many jurists of ability, whose works were much used by those
who gave to Roman law its final form in the reign of Justinian.
Under Hadrian the edicts of the prætors and other magistrates were
collected and codified by Salvius Julianus, a distinguished jurist
of African birth, who attained the position of _præfectus urbi_ and
was twice consul. The _Edictum Perpetuum_, as his work is called,
became henceforth the basis of Roman law. Julianus was also the
author of independent juristic works. Sextus Pomponius, a younger
contemporary of Julianus, wrote among other things a brief history of
Roman jurisprudence, which is incorporated in the digests. Among the
many jurists of the reign of Antoninus Pius, the most important is
Gaius (about 110-180 A. D.), whose introduction to the study of law
(_Institutiones_), clearly written in good and simple language, is for
the most part preserved in the digests, and served as the foundation
of the similar work written at the command of Justinian. The works of
Quintus Cervidius Scævola, who lived under Antoninus Pius and Marcus
Aurelius, were also much used by the writers of the pandects. One of
the most distinguished jurists under Commodus and Septimius Severus was
Papinianus, who was put to death under Caracalla (212 A. D.) because he
was faithful to that emperor’s brother Geta.
[Sidenote: Grammar, literature, and philosophy.] The study of grammar
was diligently pursued in the second century, and with it went the
writing of commentaries on the classical authors. Under Hadrian,
Terentius Scaurus wrote a Latin grammar, part of which is preserved
in an abbreviated form, as well as commentaries on Plautus, Virgil,
and Horace, fragments of which are found in the works of later
commentators. Under the Antonines, rhetoricians and grammarians were
numerous, and discussions of literary and grammatical questions formed
a considerable part of polite conversation. Metrical handbooks were
written by Terentianus Maurus and Juba, Helvius Acro wrote commentaries
on Terence, Horace, and Persius about the end of the second century,
and Pomponius Porphyrio, a grammarian of distinction, whose scholia on
Horace still exist, though not in their original form, wrote probably
at the end of the second or the beginning of the third century. Festus,
who made an epitome of Verrius Flaccus (see page 166) probably lived
but little after this time. Some of the rhetoricians of this period
probably continued to teach as they had themselves been taught, but the
most important among them developed a new school, which will form the
subject of our next chapter. Philosophy had in the second century still
many followers, but there was little literary production in Latin. Dio
Chrysostom, Plutarch, Marcus Aurelius, and Sextus Empiricus wrote in
Greek.