LITERARY INNOVATIONS
Fronto, about 100 to about 175 A. D.—Gellius, born about 125
A. D.—Apuleius, about 125 to about 200 A. D.—Innovations in
poetry—The _Pervigilium Veneris_.
[Sidenote: Fronto.] AN important figure in the literature of the
second century was Marcus Cornelius Fronto, of Cirta, in Numidia. He
was born about 100 A. D., studied under the best teachers, and was
distinguished as an orator and teacher even under Hadrian, though his
greatest influence was exerted under the Antonines. He became a member
of the senate under Hadrian, and his speech against the Christians
may have been delivered before that body. In 143 A. D. he was consul,
and was to have been proconsul entrusted with the government of Asia,
but relinquished that office on account of ill health. He was the
teacher of Marcus Antoninus and Lucius Verus, both of whom were much
attached to him, and as was natural under such circumstances, he was
greatly honored and became very wealthy. Of his family life we know
only that he was married, that his daughter Gratia married Gaius
Aufidius Victorinus, and that five daughters were removed by death.
The date of his death is unknown, but it was probably shortly after
175 A. D. Parts of Fronto’s correspondence were discovered in 1815,
and from his letters, we get an idea of his style and his teaching.
The correspondence is with Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Antoninus
Pius, and others, and several essays are included, which were probably
sent with the letters to Fronto’s correspondents. One of these essays,
the _Principia Historiæ_ compares the Parthian campaigns of Verus and
Trajan to the advantage of Verus. This essay was intended to serve as
an introduction to a history of the deeds of Verus in the Parthian
War, but the history was never written. What gives Fronto’s letters
their chief interest is his teaching in regard to oratory and style.
He considers rhetoric the noblest possible study, and warns Marcus
Aurelius against surrendering to the charms of philosophy, but the
chief end of the study of rhetoric is to acquire new and striking words
and phrases. Fronto apparently despaired of acquiring new ideas or
new points of view, and he saw that Latin literature could not go on
forever merely imitating the writers of the Golden Age, or even those
of the Silver Age. He was too much of a scholar to think of drawing
from the living spring of common every-day speech, and therefore hit
upon the expedient of reverting to the early writers, such as Ennius,
Plautus, Accius, Cato, Sallust, and Gracchus. His language is therefore
full of old-fashioned expressions used without the simplicity that
belongs to the early times. That such a writer as Fronto was highly
respected and exerted a powerful influence upon his contemporaries is a
sign of the depth to which Roman literature had sunk.
[Sidenote: Aulus Gellius.] A much younger man than Fronto, but like
him, a man of books and an admirer of archaic phraseology, was Aulus
Gellius, who was born probably about 125 A. D., studied under various
masters at Rome and at Athens, and held some judicial position at
Rome. His extant work, entitled _Noctes Atticæ_ (_Attic Nights_),
received its title from the fact that it contains the results of the
writer’s labors begun at Athens, when he used to read various authors
and make extracts from them in the night. These extracts, with a
variety of notes and comments, are arranged in twenty books, all of
which are preserved except the eighth, of which we have only the table
of contents, and the end of the twentieth. The subjects treated are
language and literature, law, philosophy and natural history. Gellius
quotes no contemporary authors, but introduces them as speakers, for
parts of his work have the form of dialogues. There is no order in the
arrangement of subjects, but things are put down as Gellius happened
to find them in the works he read. No critical faculty is exhibited,
nor has Gellius any marked literary skill. He is simply a diligent
compiler, whose work is interesting and valuable to us merely because
it preserves fragments of earlier works now lost and information about
a variety of subjects.
[Sidenote: Changes in Latin.] The Latin of the Golden Age was a more
or less artificial language developed by the genius of the great
writers from the common language of every-day life. The Latin of the
Silver Age was a development from the literary Latin of the Golden Age,
not directly from the popular speech. While literary Latin was thus
passing through various phases, the popular speech was also developing
along its own lines, and by the second century after Christ was very
different from the literary Latin of the time as well as from any
Latin, whether spoken or written, of the Ciceronian or earlier times.
It had already entered upon the course of change which was in the end
to lead to the birth of the Romance languages. Fronto, in his desire to
infuse new life into the worn-out literary Latin of his day, went back
to the writers before Cicero and adopted their words and phrases, at
the same time exerting himself to arrange words in unusual order with
the intention of giving piquancy to his expression. His precepts and
example were followed by others, as, for instance, Gellius, and still
more clearly, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus as they appear in their
letters to their teacher. But Fronto, although he had great influence
for a time, could not turn the stream of progress backward. If literary
Latin was to develop anything new, it must be by adopting something
from the living speech of the people. This course was followed, in a
measure, at least, by Apuleius.
[Sidenote: Apuleius.] Apuleius (the _prænomen_ Lucius is doubtful)
was, like Fronto, an African, though he may have been of Roman
descent. He was born probably about 125 A. D., at Madaura, on the
borders of Numidia and Gætulia. He was educated at Madaura, Carthage,
and Athens, travelled extensively, and was for a time in Rome, where
he was employed as an advocate. He married Æmilia Pudentilla, a
wealthy widow of Oea, in Africa, and was accused by her relatives of
having led her into the marriage by means of magic arts. His defense
against this charge is the extant book _De Magia_ (_On Magic_), also
called the _Apologia_. In its present form the book is a revised
and enlarged edition of the speech in court. Apuleius was evidently
acquitted, and he became a man of great influence and reputation. He
prided himself on his versatility, wrote and spoke both Greek and
Latin, and confined himself to no one branch of literature, but was
orator, poet, scientist, philosopher, and novelist, without, however,
displaying any great originality in any direction. He preferred to
call himself a Platonic philosopher, but his chief activity was that
of a travelling orator, or sophist, who went from place to place
giving public exhibitions of his skill in composing and delivering
interesting speeches on all sorts of subjects. He seems to have spent
most of his life in Africa, and he held the office of priest of the
province (_sacerdos provinciæ_) at Carthage. He was initiated into the
mysteries of Isis and seems to have been one of those who sought in the
mystic worship of foreign deities the satisfaction of their religious
yearnings which the Roman state religion did not give. He seems to have
been opposed to Christianity, though he nowhere mentions it directly.
His great reputation and the number of works ascribed to him would seem
to indicate that he lived to a good age, but the date of his death is
unknown.
[Sidenote: Works of Apuleius.] The extant works of Apuleius are the
_Metamorphoses_, a novel in eleven books, the _Apologia_, a book on
spirits especially the familiar spirit of Socrates, _De Deo Socratis_,
two books on the doctrines of Plato, _De Dogmate Platonis_, and a
collection of extracts from his speeches entitled _Florida_. The
dialogue _Asclepius_, the treatise _On the World_ (_De Mundo_), and
the treatise published as the third book on Plato’s teachings, are
not by Apuleius. Of these works the most interesting is the novel
entitled _Metamorphoses_, in which are narrated the adventures of
a certain Lucius of Corinth, who was changed by magic into an ass,
and in that form passed through many vicissitudes and saw and heard
many strange things, until he was finally restored to human form by
the aid of the goddess Isis, to whose service he afterwards devoted
himself. This story is derived from a Greek original which appears in
abbreviated form among the writings falsely ascribed to Lucian, under
the title _Lucius_ or _The Ass_. Apuleius amplified his Greek original
by inserting nearly twenty stories that have no connection with the
plot. These are usually introduced in an unskillful way, interrupting
the narrative and destroying the unity of the work, but they are in
themselves the most interesting parts of the whole novel. The longest
and most famous among them is the charming story of Cupid and Psyche,
beautifully rendered by William Morris in his _Earthly Paradise_.
This mystic love tale was derived, like the other tales inserted in
the story of Lucius, from a Greek original. It is not an invention of
Apuleius, but he inserted it in his novel, and thus preserved it to
later times.
[Sidenote: The style of Apuleius.] The style of Apuleius is not the
same in his different works. Everywhere, to be sure, he aims at
striking effect by means of unusual words arranged in peculiar order,
and of sentences curiously broken up into short rhythmical members,
very different in effect from the dignified, sonorous periods of
Cicero and other classical writers. But in the _Metamorphoses_ he
adopts many expressions from the common speech of the people, whereas
in his oratorical and philosophical works he reverts, like Fronto, to
the early writers. Apuleius and Fronto, both Africans, are the chief
representatives of the _elocutio novella_, the new rhetoric, which
broke with the continuous tradition of classical Latin and tried to
infuse new life into Latin literature. Neither Fronto nor Apuleius was
a man of great inventive genius. Both imitated the Greek sophists of
their time, such as Maximus of Tyre and Ælius Aristides, not only in
the subject matter of their discourses, but to some extent in their
style; yet the fact that they wrote and spoke in Latin and tried to
influence the course of Latin literature gives them an importance not
possessed by any of the later Greek sophists except Dio Chrysostom and
Lucian. Apuleius was apparently more gifted by nature than Fronto,
and his works show a surprising ability in the use of language, which
makes up in a measure for the lack of originality in thought. Of his
extant works the _Metamorphoses_ is the most important. It not only
shows the qualities of the _elocutio novella_ more completely than any
other work, but it gives a picture of the life of the times, with its
superstitions, loose morals, robberies, friendships, hospitalities, and
social amenities. Moreover, it has preserved to us many interesting
tales, among them the story of Cupid and Psyche. Owing probably to the
supernatural elements in the _Metamorphoses_ and to the fact that he
had been accused of magical arts, Apuleius came soon after his death to
be regarded as a mighty sorcerer, and as a sorcerer he was associated
with Virgil in mediæval times.
[Sidenote: Innovations in poetry.] While Fronto, Apuleius, and others
were practising the _elocutio novella_ in prose, attempts were made to
introduce innovations in poetry. Terentianus Maurus, who wrote in verse
a handbook on letters, syllables, and metres toward the end of the
second century, mentions _poetæ novelli_, and Diomedes, a grammarian
of the latter part of the fourth century, speaks of _poetæ neoterici_,
to whom he ascribes a variety of innovations. The names of several of
these poets are mentioned, but too little is known of them to awaken
any interest in their personalities. Their innovations seem to have
consisted largely of verbal juggling, a remarkable example of which is
seen in these lines:
_Nereides freta sic verrentes caerula tranant,
Flamine confidens ut Notus Icarium.
Icarium Notus ut confidens flamine, tranant
Caerula verrentes sic freta Nereides._
Here lines three and four are lines one and two read backward. Other
examples are less elaborate, but show the same spirit, the same
foolish playing with words. From such things as this no new life
could be infused into poetry, and most of the verses preserved to us
from the second and even the third centuries after Christ are little
more than feeble echoes of the distant music of Virgil. Nevertheless
there are already indications of the new mediæval spirit, which was
not to find its full development until the days of the minnesinger
and the troubadours. [Sidenote: The Pervigilium Veneris.] Whether
the _Pervigilium Veneris_ (_Night-watch of Venus_) belongs to the
second century or the third is not certain. At any rate it is the most
striking early example of the romantic sentiment peculiar to mediæval
and modern times. The poem is written for the spring festival of
Venus Genetrix, whose worship was revived and encouraged by Hadrian.
It is therefore probable that it belongs to the second century. It
consists of ninety-three trochaic septenarii (the rhythm of Tennyson’s
_Locksley Hall_), a verse freely used by the early Latin poets, but
hardly to be found in the first century after Christ. At irregular
intervals the refrain:
_Cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet_,[130]
is repeated. In the beginning of the poem,
_Ver novum; ver iam canorum; vere natus est Iovis;
Vere concordant amores; vere nubunt alites_,[131]
may well have suggested to Tennyson the lines:
In the Spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin’s breast;
In the Spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest;
In the Spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove;
In the Spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.
At the end of the poem the lines:
_Illa cantat, nos tacemus. Quando ver venit meum?
Quando fiam ut chelidon et tacere desinam?
Perdidi Musam tacendo nec me Apollo respicit_,[132]
sound like the wail of the old literature, which no spring was to
awaken to new song. Indeed, the _Pervigilium Veneris_ is almost as
much mediæval as classical. Its quantitative rhythm coincides with the
natural accent of the words, it is full of assonances that suggest
both alliteration and rhyme, its spirit is almost modern in its
sentiment; and even in its grammatical structure, especially in the use
of the preposition _de_, it points forward to the great changes to come.
In prose and verse alike, the second century after Christ was a period
of innovations. The new methods of Fronto and Apuleius did not hold
their own for any great length of time, but they serve as symptoms of
the decay of Latin speech, and may even have hastened that decay by
turning men away from the continued imitation of the classic writers.
The history of classical Roman literature may be said to end with
Suetonius. But something of the old spirit survived even into the
period of the Middle Ages and affected strongly the literature of the
Christian church. For this reason it is well to give a brief sketch of
early Christian literature in Latin, and of the surviving remnants of
pagan literary activity in the third and fourth centuries.