BIOGRAPHY OF MÆCENAS—HIS INTIMACY AND INFLUENCE WITH AUGUSTUS—HIS
CHARACTER—VALGIUS RUFUS—VARIUS—CORNELIUS GALLUS—BIOGRAPHY OF
TIBULLUS—HIS STYLE—CRITICISM OF MURETUS—PROPERTIUS—IMITATED THE
ALEXANDRIAN POETS—ÆMILIUS MACER.
C. CILNIUS MÆCENAS.
In a literary history it is impossible to omit some account of one, who,
although his attempts at poetry were very contemptible, exercised, by
his good taste and munificence, a great influence upon literature, and
to whom the literary men of Rome were much indebted for the use which he
made of his confidential friendship with Augustus.
C. Cilnius Mæcenas was a member of an equestrian family, which, though
it derived its descent from the old Etruscan kings,[675] does not appear
to have produced any distinguished individuals. His birth-year is
unknown, but his birth-day was the ides (13th) of April.[676] We have no
information respecting the origin of his intimacy with Augustus.
Probably his cultivated taste, his extensive acquaintance with Greek and
Roman literature, his imperturbable temper, and love of pleasure, first
recommended him as an agreeable companion to Octavius.
His good sense, activity, and energy in business, and decisive
character, qualities in which his irresolute and desultory patron was
signally deficient, enabled him rapidly to improve the acquaintance into
intimacy. It is said by Dion Cassius[677] that Augustus obtained from
Mæcenas a complete plan for the internal administration of his
newly-acquired empire, and that in it were displayed sound judgment and
political wisdom. It is probable that there is some exaggeration in this
statement; but that, without being a great man, he was in these respects
a greater man than Augustus, who, therefore, when he required his
support, could lean upon him with safety. And yet his weaknesses were
such as to prevent any feeling of jealousy, or appearance of
superiority, from endangering his friendship with the emperor. His love
of pleasure, and of the quiet and careless enjoyments of a private
station, proved, as it turned out, a blessing to his country. His heart
was so full of the delights of refined and intellectual society—of
palaces and gardens, and wit and poetry, and collections of art and
virtû—that there was no room in it for ambition. His careless and
sauntering indolence was openly displayed in his lounging gait, and his
toga trailing on the ground. No one could possibly suspect such a
loiterer of sufficient energy or application to be a politician and an
intriguer. Such being his character, tastes, and habits, he felt no
temptation to abuse his influence with Augustus. He did not covet
honours and office, because he knew they must bring trouble and
distraction, perhaps peril with them. He exercised his power, which was
undoubtedly great, to promote that luxurious, yet refined elegance, in
which he himself delighted, and to secure the welfare of his literary
friends. He had wealth enough to gratify his utmost wishes. Augustus,
therefore, had nothing more to confer on him which he valued, except
personal esteem and regard.
The confidence which the Emperor reposed in him is shown by his
employing him in some affairs of great delicacy: first, in arranging a
marriage with Scribonia; and, subsequently, on two occasions, in
negotiating with Antony.[678] In B. C. 36, he accompanied Octavius into
Sicily; but was sent back in order to undertake the administration of
Rome and Italy;[679] and during the campaign at Actium,[680] Mæcenas was
again vicegerent, in which capacity he crushed the conspiracy of the
younger Lepidus. So unlimited was his power, that he was even intrusted
with the signet of Octavius, and with authority to open, and even to
alter, if necessary, all letters which he wrote to the senate during his
campaign; and when the victorious general, on his return to Rome,
consulted with him and Agrippa as to the expediency of re-establishing
the republic, Mæcenas, in opposition to the recommendation of Agrippa,
dissuaded him from taking that step. The moral influence also of Mæcenas
over Augustus is very striking. So long as it continued, we see nothing
of that heartless cruelty, that disregard of the happiness of others,
which deformed the early life of the Emperor: if he was heartless, he at
least did that as a matter of taste which a better man would have done
on principle; and if he was still selfish, he sought fame and glory by
the wise counsels of peace rather than by the brilliant triumphs of war:
he conciliated friends instead of crushing enemies.
The intimacy between Mæcenas and the Emperor continued for at least ten
years after the battle of Actium: then an estrangement commenced; and in
B. C. 16, he was deprived of his official position, and Taurus was
intrusted with the administration of Rome and Italy. Scandalous stories
have been told about his wife Terentia and the Emperor, in order to
account for the interruption of their intimacy; but no special causes
are necessary to account for an event so common. The words of
Tacitus[681] are a sufficient solution of the problem:—“Idque et
Mæcenati acciderat; fato potentiæ, raro sempiternæ, an satias capit, aut
illos, cum omnia tribuerunt, aut hos, cum jam nihil reliquum est, quod
cupiant.” He retained the outward appearance of the imperial friendship,
although he had lost the reality. He went to court on the birth-day, but
ceased to be of the Emperor’s council. His life was passed in the
voluptuous retirement of his palace on the Esquiline, which he had built
for himself. This hill was not generally considered wholesome: probably
the fact that it had been a burial-ground[682] created a prejudice
against it; but the loftiness of the site chosen, as well as of the
building itself (_molem vicinam nubibus_,) and the breeze which played
freely through the lovely garden with which it was surrounded, rendered
it salubrious. All the most brilliant society of Rome was found at his
table; and many of the best of them received still more substantial
marks of his favour.[683] Virgil, Horace, Propertius, and Varius, were
amongst his friends and constant associates.
Mæcenas was a low-spirited invalid;[684] latterly he could not sleep,
and endeavoured in vain to procure repose by listening to soft
music.[685] In his last distressing illness he generally resided at his
Tiburtine villa, where the murmuring falls of the Anio invited that
sleep which was denied him elsewhere. He died B. C. 8, and was buried on
the Esquiline. Though married, he left no children, and bequeathed his
property to the Emperor, whom he besought in his will not to forget his
beloved Horace. His taste as a critic was evidently far superior to his
talents as a writer. Few fragments of his writings remain; and all
ancient critics are unanimous in the condemnation of his style.
Augustus[686] laughed at his affected jargon of mingled Etruscan and
Latin. Quintilian[687] quotes instances of his absurd inversions and
transpositions; and Seneca[688] shows, by an example, its unintelligible
obscurity.[689] He was a sensualist and a voluptuary,[690] and an
unfaithful husband; and yet he was devotedly fond of his wife, the
beautiful but ill-tempered Terentia, who had a great influence over him.
He would divorce her one day only to restore her to conjugal rights on
the next; and Seneca said that, though he had only one wife, he was
married a thousand times. He abhorred cruelty and severity, and would
not let it pass unrebuked even in the Emperor; and although he made a
boast of effeminacy, he was ready to devote himself heartily to business
in cases of emergency. In fact, he was a fair specimen of the man of
pleasure and society: liberal, kind-hearted, clever, refined, but
luxurious, self-indulgent, indolent, and volatile, with good instincts
and impulses, but without principle.
C. VALGIUS RUFUS.
Amongst the poets of the Augustan age, whose writings were much admired
by their contemporaries, but have not stood the searching test of time,
was Valgius Rufus. Of his life no records remain; but he probably
belonged to that class of authors of whom Pliny says, “Quibus nos in
vehiculo, in balneo, inter cœnam, oblectamus otium temporis.”[691] They
were light and pleasing, calculated to amuse an idle half-hour, or to
relieve the tedium of a journey. They answered the purpose of the
railroad literature of our own days. These writers had a correct taste,
and a critical discernment of poetical beauty, rather than a genius for
poetical composition. Probably their personal characters had something
to do with their reputation: they were members of a literary _coterie_;
they lived, thought, and felt together; they defended each other against
malicious criticism; and the bonds of friendship by which they were
united tempted the greater poets to regard their effusions with kind but
undue partiality. Valgius Rufus was a great favourite of Horace,[692]
but only a few short, isolated passages are extant of his poems.[693]
Quintilian[694] attributes to him a translation of the rhetorical
precepts of Apollodorus. Seneca[695] mentions him by name: Pliny[696]
praises his erudition. The testimony borne to his transcendent merits as
an epic poet, in the Panegyric of Messala, need scarcely be trusted,
because it is almost certain that this piece is spurious.[697]
VARIUS.
Of L. Varius Rufus also, who was one of the constant guests at Mæcenas’
table, scarcely any thing is known. Horace[698] tells us that he was
unequalled in epic song, when Virgil had as yet only turned his
attention to rustic poetry. The high praise bestowed upon his Thyestes
by Quintilian has already been mentioned. To him, together with Virgil,
we have seen that Horace owed his introduction to Augustus, and all
three were of the party which accompanied Mæcenas to Brundisium. The
titles of two of his poems are extant,—I. _De Morte_; II. _Panegyric on
Augustus_. Of the former, four fragments are preserved by Macrobius, all
of which Virgil has deemed worthy of imitation. Of the latter, two
lines, containing a delicate compliment to Augustus, are extant, which
Horace has introduced entire into one of his Epistles.[699] The passage
by no means satisfies modern taste, which has been formed by the
hexametrical rhythm of Virgil; but Seneca praises his style as free from
the usual faults of Latin declamatory poetry—mere bombast on the one
hand, and excessive minuteness on the other. Niebuhr conjectures that
his Thyestes was too declamatory; and that, like the later Roman
tragedies of Seneca and others, it was not an imitation of the Attic
drama, but of the degenerate tragedies belonging to the Alexandrian
period.
C. CORNELIUS GALLUS (BORN B. C. 66 or 69.)
Gallus was more distinguished as a general than as a poet. Except a
single line from one of his elegies, not a vestige of his poetry
remains; for the short pieces attributed to him[700] are undoubtedly not
genuine. He owes his fame, probably, to the kind verdict of his
contemporaries, whose friendship and amiable affection for each other
appear never to have been endangered by the slightest spark of jealousy.
Born at Frejus, of low parentage, he was a fellow-student in philosophy
with Virgil[701] and Arius—a friendship thus commenced which continued
through life. The patronage of Asinius Pollio[702] brought him into
notice as a poet at the early age of twenty. He was one of the first to
attach himself to the cause of Octavius; and, being appointed
commissioner for allotting the lands to the military colonies, he had
the opportunity of befriending Virgil and the plundered Mantuans. At
Actium he commanded a brigade, burnt Antony’s ships in the harbour of
Parætonium, was one of the capturers of Cleopatra, and was rewarded by
Octavius with being made first prefect of Egypt. How so valuable a
servant lost the Emperor’s favour is uncertain. Ovid hints that his
crime was one of words, not of deeds:—
Linguam nimio non tenuisse mero.
He was recalled, his property confiscated, and himself exiled. He had
not strength of mind to bear his fall, and he committed suicide in the
forty-first or forty-third year of his age.[703]
No judgment respecting his merits can be formed from the contradictory
criticism of the ancients. Ovid awards to him the palm among the elegiac
poets,[704] and Virgil is said to have sung his praises in his fourth
Georgic, but afterwards to have omitted the passage and substituted for
it the story of Aristæus; whilst Quintilian[705] applies the epithet
_durior_ to his versification. Perhaps the latter attached too much
importance to the grace and sweetness of diction, but neglected the
beauty of the sentiments; whilst the former might have been too partial
in his sympathy with a fellow exile. He was the author of four books of
elegies, in which, under the feigned name of Lycoris, he sings his love
for his mistress Cytheris. He also translated the Greek poems of
Euphorion.
ALBIUS TIBULLUS.
Tibullus was born of an equestrian family, probably in B. C. 54. He was
a contemporary of Virgil and Horace;[706] and like them, during the
troubles of the civil wars, suffered the confiscation of his paternal
estate, which was situated at Pedum, near Tibur. After the conclusion of
the struggle a portion was restored to him—small, indeed, but sufficient
to satisfy his moderate wants and contented disposition.
Disinclined, as well by his love of quiet, to the labours and perils of
a military life, as he was by the tenderness and softness of his
character to the horrors of war, circumstances, nevertheless, forced him
involuntarily to undertake a campaign. Messala was his patron, to whom
he was evidently under great obligations.[707] When, therefore, he was
sent by Octavia to quell an insurrection in Aquitania, Tibullus
accompanied him. This campaign and the successes of Messala furnished
the poet with subjects for his muse.[708] Tibullus also fully intended
to continue his services to Messala in the east, during the following
year; but illness compelled him to stop at Corcyra, whence he returned
to Rome.[709]
The mistresses whose beauty, inconstancy, and cruelty Tibullus
celebrates in his elegies were, unlike those of Horace, real persons.
Delia’s real name is said to have been Plautia or Plania;[710] who
Nemesis was is not known. These are the only two mentioned by himself or
alluded to by Ovid;[711] but Horace addresses an ode to him on his
passion for a mistress whom he names Glycera. Probably he is speaking of
one of Tibullus’ mistresses under a feigned name, in accordance with his
habitual practice, for the names introduced by him in his poems,
generally speaking, bear no appearance of reality. They are, with very
few exceptions, suggested by his study of Greek lyric poets. Chloris,
Lycoris, Neobule, Lydia, Thaliarchus, Xanthias, Pholoe, are all Greek
characters, translated to Roman scenes, and made to play an artificial
part in Roman life. Cinara[712] was, perhaps, a real person, as Bassus,
the Novii Mævius, and Numida, undoubtedly are. Sometimes, when his
object is satire, he speaks of the subject of his irony under a name
somewhat resembling the real one; as, for example, when he ridicules
Mæcenas under the name of Malthinus,[713] Salvidianus Rufus under that
of Nasidianus,[714] and lampoons Gratidia the sorceress as Canidia. But
in the poetry of Tibullus, as in that of Catullus and Propertius, the
same names are found in each of a series of poems. Apuleius[715] asserts
that the real name of the Lesbia of Catullus was Clodia; that of the
Cynthia of Propertius, Hostia, and that she was a native of Tivoli.
The style and tone of thought of Tibullus are, like his character,
deficient in vigour and manliness, but sweet, smooth, polished, tender,
and never disfigured by bad taste. He does not deserve the censure of
Niebuhr, who stigmatizes him as a “disagreeable poet, because of his
doleful and weeping melancholy and sentimentality, resulting from
misunderstanding the ancient elegies of Mimnermus.”[716]
After his return from Corcyra, Tibullus passed the remainder of his
short life in the peaceful retirement of his paternal estate. He died
young, shortly after Virgil, if we may trust to an epigram, ascribed to
Domitius Marsus, contained in the Latin Anthologia:[717]—
Te quoque Virgilio comitem non æqua, Tibulle,
Mors juvenem campos misit in Elysios,
Ne foret, aut elegis molles qui fleret amores,
Aut caneret forti regia bella pede.
The poems commonly ascribed to Tibullus consist of four books, but only
two are genuine, and of these, the second was published posthumously.
Two lines in the third book, which fix the date of the poet’s birth in
the consulship of Hirtius and Pansa,[718] have generally been considered
as spurious, because such a date is inconsistent with the rest of the
chronology; but Voss rejected the whole of that book; and there is no
question but that the spirit and character of the elegies, as well as
the harmony of the metre, are very inferior to those of the preceding
poems. The same inferiority marks the fourth also, with the exception of
the smaller poems, which bear the names of Sulpicia and Corinthus.
These, as Niebuhr correctly observes, display greater energy and
boldness than Tibullus possessed, and are the productions of some poet
much superior to him.
That elegant scholar and judicious critic, Muretus,[719] has well
attributed to him, as his chief characteristics, simplicity, and natural
and unaffected genius:—“Illum (_i. e._ Tibullum) judices _simplicius_
scripsisse quæ cogitaret; hunc (_i. e._ Propertium) diligentius
cogitasse quæ scriberet. In illo _plus naturæ_, in hoc plus curæ atque
industriæ perspicias.”
SEXTUS AURELIUS PROPERTIUS.
Very little is known respecting the life and personal history of
Propertius beyond the few facts which may be gleaned from his poems. He
was a native of the border country of Umbria, and was probably born not
earlier than A. U. C. 703,[720] or later than 700.[721] This period will
sufficiently agree with the statement of Ovid respecting their relative
ages.[722] His family had not produced any distinguished member, but
possessed a competent estate. Like Virgil and Tibullus, he was a
sufferer by the consequences of war; for the establishment of a military
colony reduced him from comfort to straitened circumstances.[723]
Like most young Romans of genius and education, he was intended for the
bar;[724] but poetry had greater charms for him than severe studies, and
he became nothing more than a literary man. He inhabited a house in the
now fashionable quarter of the Esquiline, and was on intimate terms with
Gallus, Ovid, Bassus, and Virgil. Cynthia, his amour with whom inspired
so large a portion of his elegies, was not only a beautiful but an
accomplished woman. She was his first love; and it appears to have been
some time before she yielded to his solicitations,[725] nor was she even
then always faithful to him.[726] She could write verses and play upon
the lyre,[727] and was a graceful dancer.[728] She owed to him, says
Martial, her immortality; whilst he owed to his love for her the
inspiration which immortalized himself:—
Cynthia, facundi carmen juvenile Properti,
Accepit famam nec minus illa dedit.
The date of the poet’s death is unknown, but the probability is that he
died young.
Although Propertius was a contemporary and friend of the Augustan poets,
he may be considered as belonging to a somewhat different school of
poetry. His taste, like theirs, was educated by a study of Greek
literature; but the Greek poets whose works he took for his model
belonged to a later age. Horace, Virgil and Tibullus imitated and tried
to rival the Greek classical poets of the noblest ages: they transferred
into their native tongue the ideas of Homer, Pindar, and the old lyric
poets. Their taste was formed after the purest and most perfect models.
Propertius, on the other hand, was content with a lower flight. He
attempted nothing more than to imitate the graceful but feeble strains
of the Alexandrian poets, and to become a second Callimachus or
Philetas.[729] Roman perseverance in the pursuit of learning, and the
spirit of investigation in the wide field of Greek literature, had
raised up this new standard of taste, which was by no means an
improvement upon that which had been hitherto established.
The imitations of Propertius are too studied and apparent to permit him
to lay claim to great natural genius. Nature alone could give the
touching tenderness of Tibullus or the facility of Ovid—in both of
which, notwithstanding his grace and elegance, he is deficient. The
absence of original fancy is concealed by minute attention to the
outward form of the poetry which he admired. His pentameters are often
inharmonious, because they adopt so continually the Greek rules of
construction; awkward Greek idioms, and a studious display of his
learning, which was undoubtedly great, destroy that greatest charm of
style, perspicuity.
According to Quintilian,[730] the critics of his day somewhat overrated
his merits, for they could scarcely decide the question of superiority
between him and Tibullus. This, however, is to be expected in an age of
affected rhetoric and grammatical pedantry, when nothing was considered
beautiful in poetry except that which was in accordance with the
arbitrary rules of cold criticism. They appreciated his correctness, and
did not miss the warm heart of his rival. His poetry is not so polluted
with indelicacy as that of Ovid, but still it is often sensual and
licentious.
It is worthy of remark that the fourth elegy of the third book, entitled
“Arethusa to Lycotas,” deprives Ovid of the credit of being the inventor
of the elegiac epistle.
ÆMILIUS MACER.
The poem of Æmilius Macer is only known through two verses in the
Tristia of Ovid,[731] which state that it treated of birds, serpents,
and medicinal herbs:
Sæpe suas volucres legit mihi grandior ævo
Quæque necet serpens; quæ juvet herba Macer.
He was born at Verona, and died in Asia, A. D. 16; and the passage
already quoted proves that he was older than Ovid.
His poem was a paraphrase or imitation of the Theriaca of Nicander—a
physician-poet, who flourished in Ætolia during the reign of Ptolemy
Epiphanes. Quintilian couples his name with that of Lucretius; and
awards him the praise of elegance, but adds that his style is deficient
in dignity.