were private—open, indeed, to literary men, from the general courtesy of
the possessors, but the access to them still dependent on their good will
and indulgence. Julius Cæsar was the first who formed the design of
establishing a great public library; and to Varro he assigned the task of
arranging the books which he had procured. This plan, which was rendered
abortive by the untimely fate of Cæsar, was carried into effect by Asinius
Pollio, who devoted part of the wealth he had acquired from the spoils of
war, to the construction of a magnificent gallery, adjacent to the Temple
of Liberty, which he filled with books, and the busts of the learned.
Varro was the only living author who, in this public library, had the
honour of an image(96), which was erected to him as a testimony of respect
for his universal erudition. He also aided Augustus with his advice, in
the formation of the two libraries which that emperor established, and
which was part of his general system for the encouragement of science and
learning. When tyrants understand their trade, and when their judgment is
equal to their courage or craft, they become the most zealous and liberal
promoters of the interests of learning; for they know that it is for their
advantage to withdraw the minds of their subjects from political
discussion and to give them, in exchange, the consoling pleasures of
imagination, and the inexhaustible occupations of scientific curiosity.
Were I writing the history of Roman arts, it would be necessary to mention
that Varro excelled in his knowledge of all those that are useful, and in
his taste for all those that are elegant. He was the contriver of what may
be considered as the first hour clock that was made in Rome, and which
measured time by a hand entirely moved by mechanism. That he also
possessed a Museum, adorned with exquisite works of sculpture, we learn
from Pliny, who mentions, that it contained an admirable group, by the
statuary Archelaus, formed out of one block of marble, and representing a
lioness, with Cupids sporting around her—some giving her drink from a
horn; some in the attitude of putting socks on her paws, and others in the
act of binding her. The same writer acquaints us, that, in the year 692,
Varro, who was then Curule Ædile, caused a piece of painting, in fresco,
to be brought from Sparta to Rome, in order to adorn the Comitium—the
whole having been cut out entire, and enclosed in cases of wood. The
painting was excellent, and much admired; but what chiefly excited
astonishment, was that it should have been taken from the wall without
injury, and transported safe to Italy(97).
I fear I have too long detained the reader with this account of the life
and writings of Varro; yet it is not unpleasing to dwell on such a
character. He was the contemporary of Marius and Sylla, of Cæsar and
Pompey, of Antony and Octavius, these men of contention and massacre; and
amid the convulsions into which they threw their country, it is not
ungrateful to trace the _Secretum Iter_, which he silently pursued through
a period unparalleled in anarchy and crimes. Uninterrupted, save for a
moment, by strife and ambition, he prosecuted his literary labours till
the extreme term of his prolonged existence. “In eodem enim lectulo,” says
Valerius Maximus, with a spirit and eloquence beyond his usual strain of
composition—“In eodem enim lectulo, et spiritus ejus, et egregiorum operum
cursus extinctus est.”
NIGIDIUS FIGULUS
was a man much resembling Varro, and next to him was accounted the most
learned of the Romans(98). He was the contemporary of Cicero, and one of
his chief advisers and associates in suppressing the conspiracy of
Catiline(99). Shortly afterwards he arrived at the dignity of Prætor, but
having espoused the part of Pompey in the civil wars, he was driven into
banishment on the accession of Cæsar to the supreme power, and died in
709, before Cicero could obtain his recall from exile(100). He was much
addicted to judicial astrology; and ancient writers relate a vast number
of his predictions, particularly that of the empire of the world to
Augustus, which he presaged immediately after the birth of that
prince(101).
Nigidius vied with Varro in multifarious erudition, and the number of his
works—grammar, criticism, natural history, and the origin of man, having
successively employed his pen. His writings are praised by Cicero, Pliny,
Aulus Gellius, and Macrobius; but they were rendered almost entirely unfit
for popular use by their subtlety, mysteriousness, and
obscurity(102)—defects to which his cultivation of judicial astrology, and
adoption of the Pythagorean philosophy, may have materially contributed.
Aulus Gellius gives many examples of the obscurity, or rather
unintelligibility, of his grammatical writings(103). His chief work was
his Grammatical Commentaries, in thirty books, in which he attempted to
show, that names and words were fixed not by accidental application, but
by a certain power and order of nature. One of his examples, of terms
being rather natural than arbitrary, was taken from the word _Vos_, in
pronouncing which, he observed, that we use a certain motion of the mouth,
agreeing with what the word itself expresses: We protrude, by degrees, the
tips of our lips, and thrust forward our breath and mind towards those
with whom we are engaged in conversation. On the other hand, when we say
_nos_, we do not pronounce it with a broad and expanded blast of the
voice, nor with projecting lips, but we restrain our breath and lips, as
it were, within ourselves. The like natural signs accompany the utterance
of the words _tu_ and _ego_—_tibi_ and _mihi_(104). Nigidius also wrote
works, entitled _De Animalibus_, _De Ventis_, _De Extis_, and a great many
treatises on the nature of the gods. All these have long since perished,
except a very few fragments, which have been collected and explained by
Janus Rutgersius, in the third book of his _Variæ Lectiones_, published at
Leyden in 1618; 4to. In this collection he has also inserted a Greek
translation of another lost work of Nigidius, on the presages to be drawn
from thunder. The original Latin is said to have been taken from books
which bore the name of the Etruscan Tages, the supposed founder of the
science of divination. The Greek version was executed by Laurentius, a
philosopher of the age of Justinian, and his translation was discovered by
Meursius, about the beginning of the seventeenth century, in the Palatine
library. It is a sort of Almanack, containing presages of thunder for each
particular day of the year, and beginning with June. If it thunder on the
13th of June, the life or fortunes of some great person are menaced—if on
the 19th of July, war is announced—if on the 5th of August, it is
indicated that those women, with whom we have any concern, will become
somewhat more reasonable than they have hitherto proved(105).
With Varro and Nigidius Figulus, may be classed Tiro, the celebrated
freedman of Cicero, and constant assistant in all his literary pursuits.
He wrote many books on the use and formation of the Latin language, and
others on miscellaneous subjects, which he denominated _Pandectas_(106),
as comprehending every sort of literary topic.
Quintus Cornificius, the elder, was also a very general scholar. He
composed a curious treatise on the etymology of the names of things in
heaven and earth, in which he discovered great knowledge, both of Roman
antiquities, and the most recondite Grecian literature. It was here he
introduced an explication of Homer’s dark fable, where Jupiter and all the
gods proceed to feast for twelve days in Ethiopia. The work was written in
709, during the time of Cæsar’s last expedition to Spain, and was probably
intended as a supplement to Varro’s treatise on a similar topic.
HISTORY.
From our supposing that those things which affected our ancestors may
affect us, and that those which affect us must affect posterity, we become
fond of collecting memorials of prior events, and also of preserving the
remembrance of incidents which have occurred in our own age. The historic
passion, if it may be so termed, thus naturally divides itself into two
desires—that of indulging our own curiosity, and of relating what has
occurred to ourselves or our contemporaries.
Monuments accordingly have been raised, and rude hymns composed, for this
purpose, by people who had scarcely acquired the use of letters. Among
civilized nations, the passion grows in proportion to the means of
gratifying it, and the force of example comes to be so strongly felt, that
its power and influence are soon historically employed.
The Romans were, in all ages, particularly fond of giving instruction, by
every sort of example. They placed the images of their ancestors in the
Forum and the vestibules of their houses, so that these venerable forms
everywhere met their eyes; and by recalling the glorious actions of the
dead, excited the living to emulate their forefathers. The virtue of one
generation was thus transfused, by the magic of example, into those by
which it was succeeded, and the spirit of heroism was maintained through
many ages of the republic—
“Has olim virtus crevit Romana per artes:
Namque foro in medio stabant spirantia signa
Magnanimûm heroum; hîc Decios, magnosque Camillos
Cernere erat: vivax heroum in imagine virtus,
Invidiamque ipsis factura nepotibus, acri
Urgebat stimulo Romanum in prælia robur(107).”
History, therefore, among the Romans, was not composed merely to gratify
curiosity, or satiate the historic passion, but also to inflame, by the
force of example, and urge on to emulation, in warlike prowess. An
insatiable thirst of military fame—an unlimited ambition of extending
their empire—an unbounded confidence in their own force and courage—an
impetuous overbearing spirit, with which all their enterprises were
pursued, composed, in the early days of the Republic, the characteristics
of Romans. To foment, and give fresh vigour to these, was a chief object
of history.—“I have recorded these things,” says an old Latin annalist,
after giving an account of Regulus, “that they who read my commentaries
may be rendered, by his example, greater and better.”
Accordingly, the Romans had journalists or annalists, from the earliest
periods of the state. The Annals of the Pontiffs were of the same date, if
we may believe Cicero, as the foundation of the city(108); but others have
placed their commencement in the reign of Numa(109), and Niebuhr not till
after the battle of Regillus, which terminated the hopes of Tarquin(110).
In order to preserve the memory of public transactions, the Pontifex
Maximus, who was the official historian of the Republic, annually
committed to writing, on wooden tablets, the leading events of each year,
and then set them up at his own house for the instruction of the
people(111). These Annals were continued down to the Pontificate of
Mucius, in the year 629, and were called _Annales Maximi_, as being
periodically compiled and kept by the Pontifex Maximus, or _Publici_, as
recording public transactions. Having been inscribed on wooden tablets,
they would necessarily be short, and destitute of all circumstantial
detail; and being annually formed by successive Pontiffs, could have no
appearance of a continued history. They would contain, as Lord Bolingbroke
remarks, little more than short minutes or memoranda, hung up in the
Pontiff’s house, like the rules of the game in a billiard room: their
contents would resemble the epitome prefixed to the books of Livy, or the
Register of Remarkable Occurrences in modern Almanacks.
But though short, jejune, and unadorned, still, as records of facts, these
annals, if spared, would have formed an inestimable treasure of early
history. The Roman territory, in the first ages of the state, was so
confined, that every event may be considered as having passed under the
immediate observation of the sacred annalist. Besides, the method which,
as Cicero informs us, was observed in preparing these Annals, and the care
that was taken to insert no fact, of which the truth had not been attested
by as many witnesses as there were citizens at Rome, who were all entitled
to judge and make their remarks on what ought either to be added or
retrenched, must have formed the most authentic body of history that could
be desired. The memory of transactions which were yet recent, and whose
concomitant circumstances every one could remember, was therein
transmitted to posterity. By these means, the Annals were proof against
falsification, and their veracity was incontestibly fixed.
These valuable records, however, were, for the most part, consumed in the
conflagration of the city, consequent on its capture by the Gauls—an event
which was to the early history of Rome what the English invasion by Edward
I. proved to the history of Scotland. The practice of the Pontifex Maximus
preserving such records was discontinued after that eventful period. A
feeble attempt was made to revive it towards the end of the second Punic
war; and, from that time, the custom was not entirely dropped till the
Pontificate of Mucius, in the year 629. It is to this second series of
Annals, or to some other late and ineffectual attempt to revive the
ancient Roman history, that Cicero must allude, when he talks of the Great
Annals, in his work _De Legibus_(112), since it is undoubted that the
pontifical records of events previous to the capture of Rome by the Gauls,
almost entirely perished in the conflagration of the city(113).
Accordingly, Livy never cites these records, and there is no appearance
that he had any opportunity of consulting them; nor are they mentioned by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in the long catalogue of records and memorials
which he had employed in the composition of his _Historical Antiquities_.
The _books_ of the Pontiffs, some of which were recovered in the search
made to find what the flames had spared, are, indeed, occasionally
mentioned. But these were works explaining the mysteries of religion, with
instructions as to the ceremonies to be observed in its practical
exercise, and could have been of no more service to Roman, than a
collection of breviaries or missals to modern history.
Statues, inscriptions, and other public monuments, which aid in
perpetuating the memory of illustrious persons, and transmitting to
posterity the services they have rendered their country, were accounted,
among the Romans, as the most honourable rewards that could be bestowed on
great actions; and virtue, in those ancient times, thought no recompense
more worthy of her than the immortality which such monuments seemed to
promise. Rome having produced so many examples of a disinterested
patriotism and valour must have been filled with monuments of this
description when taken by the Gauls. But these honorary memorials were
thrown down along with the buildings, and buried in the ruins. If any
escaped, it was but a small number; and the greatest part of those that
were to be seen at Rome in the eighth century of the city, were founded on
fabulous traditions which proved that the loss of the true monuments had
occasioned the substitution of false ones. Had the genuine monuments been
preserved at Rome, even till the period when the first regular annals
began to be composed, though they would not have sufficed to restore the
history entirely, they would have served at least to have perpetuated
incontestably the memory of various important facts, to have fixed their
dates, and transmitted the glory of great men to posterity.
On what then, it will be asked, was the Roman history founded, and what
authentic records were preserved as materials for its composition? There
were first the _Leges Regiæ_. These were diligently searched for, and were
discovered along with the Twelve Tables, after the sack of the city: And
all those royal laws which did not concern sacred matters, were publicly
exposed to be seen and identified by the people(114), that no suspicion of
forgery or falsification might descend to posterity. These precautions
leave us little room to doubt that the _Leges Regiæ_, and Laws of the
Tables, were preserved, and that they remained as they had been originally
promulgated by the kings and decemvirs. Such laws, however, would be of no
greater service to Roman history, than what the _Regiam Majestatem_ has
been to that of Scotland. They might be useful in tracing the early
constitution of the state, the origin of several customs, ceremonies,
public offices, and other points of antiquarian research, but they could
be of little avail in fixing dates, ascertaining facts, and setting events
in their true light, which form the peculiar objects of civil history.
Treaties of peace, which were the pledges of the public tranquillity from
without, being next to the laws of the greatest importance to the state,
much care was bestowed, after the expulsion of the Gauls, in recovering as
many of them as the flames had spared. Some of them were the more easily
restored, from having been kept in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus,
which the fury of the enemy could not reach(115). Those which had been
saved, continued to be very carefully preserved, and there is no reason to
suspect them of having been falsified. Among the treaties which were
rescued from destruction, Horace mentions those of the Kings, with the
Gabii and the Sabines (_Fœdera Regum_(116).) The former was that concluded
by Tarquinius Superbus, and which, Dionysius of Halicarnassus informs us,
was still preserved at Rome in his time, in the temple of Jupiter Fidius,
on a buckler made of wood, and covered with an ox’s hide, on which the
articles of the treaty were written in ancient characters(117). Dionysius
mentions two treaties with the Sabines—the first was between Romulus and
their king Tatius(118); and the other, the terms of which were inscribed
on a column erected in a temple, was concluded with them by Tullus
Hostilius, at the close of a Sabine war(119). Livy likewise cites a treaty
made with the Ardeates(120); and Polybius has preserved entire another
entered into with the Carthaginians, in the year of the expulsion of the
kings(121). Pliny has also alluded to one of the conditions of a treaty
which Porsenna, the ally of Tarquin, granted to the Roman people(122). Now
these leagues with the Gabii, Sabines, Ardeates, and one or two with the
Latins, are almost the only treaties we find anywhere referred to by the
ancient Latin historians; who thus seem to have employed but little
diligence in consulting those original documents, or drawing from them, in
compiling their histories, such assistance as they could have afforded.
The treaties quoted by Polybius and Pliny, completely contradict the
relations of the Latin annalists; those cited by Polybius proving, in
opposition to their assertions, that the Carthaginians had been in
possession of a great part of Sicily about a century previous to the date
which Livy has fixed to their first expedition to that island; and those
quoted by Pliny, that Porsenna, instead of treating with the Romans on
equal terms, as represented by their historians, had actually prohibited
them from employing arms,—permitting them the use of iron only in tilling
the ground(123).
The _Libri Lintei_ (so called because written on linen) are cited by Livy
after the old annalist Licinius Macer, by whom they appear to have been
carefully studied. These books were kept in the temple of Juno Moneta, but
were probably of less importance than the other public records, which were
inscribed on rolls of lead. They were obviously a work of no great extent,
since Livy, who appeals to them on four different occasions in the space
of ten years, just after the degradation of the decemvirs, had not quoted
them before, and never refers to them again. There also appear to have
been different copies of them which did not exactly agree, and Livy seems
far from considering their authority as decisive even on the points on
which reference is made to them(124).
The _Memoirs of the Censors_ were journals preserved by those persons who
held the office of Censor. They were transmitted by them to their
descendants as so many sacred pledges, and were preserved in the families
which had been rendered illustrious by that dignity. They formed a series
of eulogies on those who had thus exalted the glory of their house, and
contained a relation of the memorable actions performed by them in
discharge of the high censorial office with which they had been
invested(125). Hence they must be considered as part of the _Family
Memoirs_, which were unfortunately the great and corrupt sources of early
Roman history.
It was the custom of the ancient families of Rome to preserve with
religious care everything that could contribute to perpetuate the glory of
their ancestry, and confer honour on their lineage. Thus, besides the
titles which were placed under the smoky images of their forefathers,
there were likewise tables in their apartments on which lay books and
memoirs recording, in a style of general panegyric, the services they had
performed for the state during their exercise of the employments with
which they had been dignified(126).
Had these Family Memoirs been faithfully composed, they would have been of
infinite service to history; and although all other monuments had
perished, they alone would have supplied the defect. They were a record,
by those who had the best access to knowledge, of the high offices which
their ancestors had filled, and of whatever memorable was transacted
during the time they had held the exalted situations of Prætor or Consul:
Even the dates of events, as may be seen by a fragment which Dionysius of
Halicarnassus cites from them, were recorded with all the appearance of
accuracy. Each set of family memoirs thus formed a series of biographies,
which, by preserving the memory of the great actions of individuals, and
omitting nothing that could tend to their illustration, comprehended also
the principal affairs of state, in which they had borne a share. From the
fragments of the genealogical book of the Porcian family, quoted by Aulus
Gellius, and the abstract of the Memoirs of the Claudian and Livian
families, preserved by Suetonius, in the first chapters of his Life of
Tiberius, we may perceive how important such memoirs would have been, and
what light they would have thrown on history, had they possessed the stamp
of fidelity. But unfortunately, in their composition more regard was paid
to family reputation than to historical truth. Whatever tended to exalt
its name was embellished and exaggerated. Whatever could dim its lustre
was studiously withdrawn. Circumstances, meanwhile, became peculiarly
favourable for these high family pretensions. The destruction of the
public monuments and annals of the Pontiffs, gave ample scope for the
vanity or fertile imagination of those who chose to fabricate titles and
invent claims to distinction, the falsity of which could no longer be
demonstrated. “All the monuments,” says Plutarch, “being destroyed at the
taking of Rome, others were substituted, which were forged out of
complaisance to private persons, who pretended to be of illustrious
families, though in fact they had no relation to them(127).” So
unmercifully had the great families availed themselves of this favourable
opportunity, that Livy complains that these private memoirs were the chief
cause of the uncertainty in which he was forced to fluctuate during the
early periods of his history. “What has chiefly confounded the history,”
says he, “is each family ascribing to itself the glory of great actions
and honourable employments. Hence, doubtless, the exploits of individuals
and public monuments have been falsified; nor have we so much as one
writer of these times whose authority can be depended on(128).” Those
funeral orations on the dead, which it was the custom to deliver at Rome,
and which were preserved in families as carefully as the memoirs, also
contributed to augment this evil. Cicero declares, that history had been
completely falsified by these funeral panegyrics, many things being
inserted in them which never were performed, or existed—False triumphs,
supernumerary consulships, and forged pedigrees(129).