recede very much into the background as being quite commonplace; they
were mainly the affair of newly elected officials, but Augustus himself
had plays acted in all sorts of places--the Forum, the Amphitheatre, and
even on temporary stages in the streets and squares of the capital, in
every language spoken in Rome, Latin and Greek being of course the chief.
Every play-giver desired to offer the populace something quite unique.
The dictator had even allowed a Roman knight to appear on the stage, and
his son followed his example until it was interdicted by a decree of the
senate.
Augustus purposely abstained from increasing the number of ordinary and
regular festivals to any great extent. The _Secular_ games, of which
we shall speak presently, naturally do not come under this head, as do
the district games, associated with the new subdivision of the capital.
We have already mentioned the games commemorative of the victory of
Actium; the martial games were added later in commemoration of the solemn
dedication of the magnificent temple of Mars in 2 B.C.
To the innovations of the empire also belong the votive games for the
return of the emperor from Gaul and Spain in the years 13 B.C. and 7
B.C.; also votive games for the welfare of Augustus which were arranged
every four years by the great colleges of priests in compliance with a
decree of the senate.
The example of Rome soon found imitators in the capitals of the
provinces; sometimes it was the emperor himself who instituted games
there, sometimes prominent citizens who had received or hoped to receive
some post of honour. The number of games held in honour of Augustus
was very great, especially in the Greek cities. In Naples the imperial
games were celebrated in the same fashion as the Olympic games, in
commemoration of the visit of Augustus in the year 14 A.D.
NOVUM SECULUM--THE NEW BIRTH FOR ROME
Even as in the life of the individual there are often moments when he
remembers with grief and yearning the golden days of childhood, so in
the development of nations there are periods when the best minds of the
nation dream of a past golden age, in which both the crime and the
progress which have come to pass in the course of historical development
were unknown. The farther the nation is from a primitive condition
and the more strongly its members feel the drawbacks of civilisation,
the brighter are the colours in which they paint the innocent joys of
an earlier state of things to which violence and rapine were as yet
strangers.
The generation which had grown to manhood during the civil wars had of
necessity accustomed itself to horrors which are spared to those who grow
up in times of order. All the more vividly did they dream of a happy and
primitive age in the distant past; for none feels a greater enthusiasm
for peace than those who have had to endure the evils of war.
Since the battle of Actium the civil wars were happily at an end; for
nearly half a generation Rome had enjoyed the blessings of peace and the
new constitution which Augustus had given her. The emperor had often
announced his resolve to retire into private life, but had always allowed
himself to be persuaded not to carry it out because the welfare of the
state forbade it; he alone seemed to guarantee peace and safety, his rule
seemed inseparable from domestic tranquillity, and the man who desired
the one could not but desire the other. The emperor strove to keep this
single idea in fresh variations constantly in mind among the Romans,
and those honours pleased him best which gave public expression to this
feeling. The senate, on the emperor’s return had dedicated the altar of
the imperial peace. The poets, each after his fashion, sang the praises
of peace and order:
“Fealty, peace itself, and honour, and the ancient
Moral awe, the long-forgotten virtue,
Now dares to return, it approaches, its horn
Full of blessing.”
There was, however, a danger that the rising generation might soon come
to accept the benefits of peace as a matter of course, without definitely
realising to whom they owed these blessings, and it was therefore
desirable to keep in remembrance among the emperor’s contemporaries the
difference between the unquiet past and the blissful present, and to give
official recognition to the fact that the period of civil war was over
and that a century of peace and prosperity had taken its place.
Such turning-points imply an invitation to take a backward glance and to
reckon the sum of development up to this point. So had a poet done at the
end of the previous century:
“How fair, O man, with thy palm-branches
Standest thou in the century’s decline,” etc.
The Rome of the period was also to take a backward glance.
As the senate had solemnly marked the end of the wars by closing the
temple of Janus, so Augustus desired to mark the end of the period of
reorganisation and reconstitution by an imposing symbolical act. Even
the ordinary Roman census was not a mere counting up of the people; it
was a reconstitution of the ranks of Roman citizenship, and if this
tedious and toilsome preparatory labour were to attain legal validity,
it must find its ratification and consummation in a final act in which
the whole nation should be purified with the most solemn religious rites
and commended to the propitious gods for the future. Similarly Augustus
had been at work since the year 29 on a reorganisation of Rome, which was
finally declared complete in the year 17 by a mighty lustrum, the Secular
Festival.
The idea, and probably the name, of the _seculum_ is not Roman but
Etruscan; at least, up to the present time no one has succeeded in
discovering any plausible Roman etymology for the word. The seculum
is probably of Etruscan origin, like the other elements of chronology
among the Romans. This devout nation, which understood as no other did
how to inquire into and interpret the will of the gods, fancied that it
had learned that the deity did not merely declare to men the ordinary
divisions of time into months and years by the path and the varying
appearance of moon and sun, but that apart from these there were longer
periods in the life of nations which the gods had appointed, and of
which they revealed the beginning and the end to the generations of
men by manifest tokens. Such a period is that in which one generation
dies out and a new one arises, and it therefore extends from the birth
to the death of a man who may be taken as the representative of his
generation. When the last man died who was born at the beginning of the
first seculum, then the second began; and, as the duration of human life
seldom exceeds the hundredth year, a new seculum commonly commenced
at the end of this period. It did not, however, of necessity last for
exactly a hundred years; on the contrary, there had been one of 123
years in length, another of 118, etc.; but the Etruscans reckoned their
seculum approximately at 100 years. When therefore the miraculous signs
ensued, mortals realised that in the counsels of the gods the end was at
hand, and hastened to propitiate the omens by sacrifices and games. In
misfortune, men learned to take special heed of the omens of the gods,
for they longed for the opportunity of concluding the unfavourable period
and beginning a new one, free from ill-fortune and evil presage.
[Illustration: STATUE OF A VICTORIOUS DRIVER IN THE GAMES OF THE CIRCUS
(In the Vatican)]
This grand wisdom of the Etruscans, which looked beyond the limits of
human life, made a profound impression on their pupils, the Romans, and
was transferred to Rome with the rest of the augural discipline. The
family of the Valerii is said to have been the one to introduce this cult
into Rome, for themselves alone in the first instance, and not as yet in
the name of the state. One of the ancestors of this family, it was said,
had come to Rome from his home in the land of the Sabines to propitiate
the evil omens which disturbed him there. He came down the Tiber with
his sick children till he reached the vicinity of Rome, and there, where
the Field of Mars is narrowest, near the bank of the Tiber, was formerly
a spot noted for volcanic phenomena, hot springs, and subterranean
fire--the so-called Tarentum. The sick children were cured by the water
of the neighbouring spring, and twenty feet below the surface of the
ground the father found a primitive altar to the infernal gods, to
whom he gave thanks for the miraculous cure by sacrifices, games, and
_lectisternia_. A descendant of his is said to have been one P. Valerius
Publicola, who, as consul in the first year of the republic (509)
repeated these games of his family cult in the name and for the welfare
of the state of Rome. It was essential to the secular theory of later
generations that so important an epoch as the end of the monarchy and the
beginning of the republic should have been marked by public secular games.
The next secular games were also said to have been celebrated by
another Valerius, who was consul in the year 449, after the fall of the
decemvirs; and about a hundred years later the third secular games had
to be celebrated, which, according to the records of the quindecemviri,
was again done by a consul of the house of the Valerii in the year 346,
though no one else knows anything about such a celebration and it was
not counted in the series of republican secular games. For according to
Valerius Antias, the third secular games were celebrated in the year
249, at the time of the First Punic War; and the fourth--whether they
were held in the year 149 or 146--mark the end of that memorable period.
For a theory had taken shape among Roman antiquaries and historical
students, of whose number was even a man of the erudition of Varro, that
the seculum must always be a hundred years long, and for the sake of
this theory the games, which on contemporary authority were held in the
year 146, were put three years earlier. A hundred years later Varro’s
authority on all such matters was at its zenith, and it sufficed to fix
the next celebration for the year 49. “But instead of the celebration
came the end; for this was the year at the beginning of which Cæsar
crossed the Rubicon, and with that began the mortal agony of the
republic. What commenced was not a new seculum for the republic, but a
new order of things.” (Mommsen in _Die Nation_, 1891.)
The civil wars which ensued and seemed to develop one out of another
in endless sequence, might, perhaps, have stifled the hope of peace in
Italy, but not the longing for it. An iron age had dawned instead of the
golden.
The dictator did in truth seem to succeed in exorcising the demons of
discord and discontent. But this hope proved illusory on the ides of
March. Soon afterwards the star of the Julii was seen at Rome, and
seemed, as was at first hoped, to be the long-desired divine token that
was to inaugurate a better time. An Etruscan _haruspex_ proclaimed to the
assembled people that the ninth seculum (according to the Etruscans) was
coming to an end and the tenth beginning.
But the augur died immediately after; a sign that his words were not
indeed false but premature, according to the will of the gods. Nowhere
did any likelihood of permanent amelioration present itself, but the
yearning remained and hardly ever found stronger expression than in the
wretched years that followed the murder of Cæsar. It was strengthened
by Sibylline oracles, which were privately circulated and kept faith in
the happy future alive. Since the oracle could not lie, it was, perhaps,
nothing but miscalculations and vain hopes of men, in the year 49, which
had anticipated too soon the dawn of a new age; and perhaps the seculum
should be reckoned at 110 years and not 100--it takes but little to
revive hope. In the year 43 no less a person than Varro announced to the
anxious world of his day that this was the correct estimate; 440 years
after the first celebration the fourth Roman seculum was declining to its
close, and then a new birth would usher in the new age. But Rome still
hoped in vain. Misery increased, and with it the excitement spread into
the widest circles. In the year 40 Asinius Pollio was consul, a man of
honourable character and highly educated, who endeavoured to avoid the
arbitrary usurpations of other rulers. In the circumstances of the time,
not the boldest imagination ventured to dream that he might bring back
the golden age. But Asinius was at that time expecting the birth of a
son; perhaps this son was destined by fate to do so; and a contemporary
poet greets the coming deliverer with the most ardent longings. In later
days Virgil, with better reasons, fixed his hopes and desires upon the
emperor.
The opportunity of holding secular games in the latter half of the last
century before Christ had thus passed by unused, and it was a very
difficult matter to prove that Augustus was entitled to hold such a
celebration. This hard and thankless task fell to the share of the famous
jurist Ateius Capito, who acquitted himself skilfully enough to make the
will of his master possible in theory. The chronology of Roman history
has suffered violence at many hands before and after the time of Ateius
Capito, but hardly ever more than at the time of the secular games of
Augustus.
A comet, so readily connected by the popular imagination with the
end of the world, appears to have decided the old question as to the
turning-point of the longed-for cosmic period. It might indeed seem as
though the gods themselves had declared their will; for at the beginning
of the year 17 an extraordinarily bright comet was visible at Rome, with
a long tail pointing from south to north. This was of course the star of
the Julian gens, which Rome had not seen since the terrible year of 44.
That which the youthful Cæsar had then undertaken with almost superhuman
courage for the sake of avenging his father was now finished, and the age
of strife was over. At that time the red glow of the comet had portended
blood and civil wars; the second appearance of the Julian star, after the
expiation of the crime, was a sign that the beginning of the new age was
close at hand.
The memoirs of the emperor show what great stress he laid upon the
appearance of the star of the year 44, and the coins of the empire
struck soon after 17 testify to the impression made upon him and his
contemporaries by the supposed return of the star of the Julian gens. It
was greeted as the long-desired and manifest divine sign of the end of
the iron age and the commencement of the golden.
Hence we see that the appearance of the star only gave the decision in
the last resort. That which had long been in the air, that which was
perhaps already beginning to evaporate, suddenly condensed into tangible
shape under the influence of this divine manifestation; Augustus resolved
not to let the moment pass unused, but to celebrate the long-expected
fifth secular games, which were associated with the hope of a new birth
for Rome.[b]
LITERATURE OF THE GOLDEN AGE
With the formation of the monarchy coincides a second revival of
Roman literature, which can only be partly attributed to the new
administration, as the leaders were born under the republic and grew
up amidst the struggles for the monarchy. This period does not differ
so much from the literature of the period of free government as might
seem at first sight. For that peculiarly characteristic penetration by
the Greek spirit which extended even to that manifestation of it which
was least worthy of imitation, namely the Alexandrian, had been already
in existence, and the refined elaboration of the language for poetical
purposes, its charm and lightness, its beauty and merit, are already
perceptible in the time of Terence, though in a very different fashion.
The great revolution which was taking place before their eyes had a far
less disastrous effect on the poets of this time than might have been
expected, and if the lamentations of the civil war are heard everywhere,
it is, nevertheless, rather the ideas of universal peace and the
greatness of the Roman power which determine the pervading key-note.
It is true that if we look for the originality, power, and simplicity
which are so irresistible in Greek literature, we shall be very much
disappointed; for they are no more to be found in the literary creations
than in the political. And for these defects the number of productions
can offer no amends. The thought of writing for a large public, the
entire Latin West, must have had an inspiring effect on an author, as
it of course decided the whole conception and direction of literary
compositions; the provinces took a more and more active share in them; on
the other hand, in this field a kind of substitute was offered for the
lack of political activity; it was a matter of course that authorship was
harmless and accommodated itself to the ruling system, or else entered
into a dangerous opposition to it. Partisan writing existed during the
active political struggles of Rome even under the republic; but now
sunshine and light were too unequally divided, and the frankness which
was forbidden during the lifetime of the rulers indemnified itself after
their death by bitterness and calumny.
The really higher styles of poetry, such as drama and epic, entirely
died out. It was not as if this had been caused by the change in the
government, for even in the time of the republic little originality or
creative power had been shown in these directions. All that was now
produced was borrowed entirely from the past. Rhetoric, metrics, and
careful diction were all that could be added to it, and a beautiful,
refined, and elegant form became the criterion according to which the age
judged both literary and artistic productions. It was to such matters
as these that the attention of the judges who decided concerning the
admission of the poets into the national library was mainly directed.
We have no adequate information regarding the dramatic poetry of the
Augustan period, for everything which won the applause of contemporaries
has been lost. What has been preserved to us from this period, namely
the tragedies handed down to us under the name of Seneca, has all the
faults which a depraved taste brings with it; sensational plots and
scenes based on sensual and sentimental emotions; figures without life,
but of many words and speeches; a treatment without knowledge of dramatic
technicalities; and yet withal a harmony of words and verses, highly
polished versification and diction, and the whole magnificent apparatus
belonging to the schools of rhetoric in periods, antitheses, similes,
and plays upon words. It is decidedly to the credit of the lower classes
if they turned away from these dramas, leaving them to the lifeless
declamatory exercises of the so-called educated classes, and in so far
as the taste for the drama still existed, preferred to amuse themselves
with a simpler entertainment and the familiar pieces of the older poets,
which had long ceased to be sufficiently refined and elegant for people
of cultivation.
Nor did the epic produce anything really great. Virgil (P. Vergilius
Maro, born on the 15th of October, 70 B.C., died the 22nd of September,
19 B.C.) did indeed make an attempt to create a national epic in
the _Æneid_. But it is no more genuine than its fundamental idea of
connecting the founder of the new empire with the father of Italian
civilisation. Virgil studied under the Alexandrians and all that was to
be learned he learned. He created the language and the verse structure
which remained the standard for many centuries, so long as and wherever
Latin poetry was cultivated. The form is throughout noble, and the poet
was thoroughly acquainted with Homer and the Greek epic poets, nor is it
without taste that he, as a man of learning, has drawn on this treasure;
his ideas are pure and noble and he had learned to know his country and
the legends of his forefathers better than many before or any after him,
so that a certain national colouring is to be found in his work. But
there was one thing which he did not possess; the creative genius which
divines rightly in the choice of subject and arranges and treats its
material with a light but master hand; as the subject was ill-chosen, so
the poet never felt any hearty enthusiasm for it; everything has been
thought out and very coldly and soberly thought out; beautiful pictures
and striking comparisons are indeed presented; but they are sentimental
and studied, and often look strange in their setting.
In the first place the hero is no hero, and the Roman patricians of even
the time of the Scipios would have been revolted by this weakling who
is feeble and sentimental like the poet himself, and not much more than
a puppet in the hands of his divine mother. Such a weak figure gives no
opportunity for strength in the treatment, which is accordingly languid,
and the twelve cantos are spun out with monotonous tedium, so that to
every one acquainted with Homer the reading of them is a mere task to
be got through somehow. And if, from the standpoint of learning, the
language and verses seem irreproachable, classical, and even worthy
of imitation, all pleasure in them is lost by the fact that we are
continually aware of the trouble and labour which they cost the poet.
It is characteristic of the times that Virgil possessed a canonical
consideration with high and low, and poets and prose writers vied with
one another to steal from him. From this fact we may guess the rest, and
the loss in this field which has been recorded can have been no great one.
But how rapidly literature declined at the end of the period is clearly
shown by the epic of M. Annæus Lucanus, the _Pharsalia_. This poem was
produced in the reign of Nero, and it is difficult to decide whether the
choice of subject or his treatment of it deserves the greater censure.
The hero of the poem is Pompey, the Pompey of the civil wars, a figure
so little poetical that a more unfortunate selection could scarcely have
been made; with the utmost poetical license even without any anxiety to
keep to the facts there was nothing to be made of the subject. That the
civil wars in themselves might be capable of being made the subject of
an epic is indisputable; it is equally indisputable that this could be
done only by a poetic talent of the first order. But even Lucan could
do it in his way, though he is no poet but a scholar of the school of
the rhetoricians and the Stoa. As in the school of rhetorics the energy
of the scholar signalised and exhausted itself in individual feats of
ingenuity, so the poem is divided into a number of scenes without much
connection, but distinguished by a soaring imagination, sounding verses,
and pompous tirades, and of course with many learned accessories,
without which neither a great nor a small poem was conceivable in that
period. Besides this haste, uneasiness, and want of discretion are
everywhere apparent, and these, too, belong to the time. On the whole
it may be said that this poetry is a true reflection of the society in
which it originated, and if we had epics by Seneca they might probably
resemble those of his nephew. Of such models there could not fail to be
imitations; the attempts even extended to the schools, and the editing
of the _Iliad_ may well have been the work of industrious scholars, who
knew something of Greek and had learned to imitate their _Virgil_.
Virgil had already directed his attention to the didactic poem, and
the _Georgics_ are in their way his best creation. Didactic poetry is
not approached with the same expectation as in the case of the higher
kinds of poetry, and it is scarcely possible to draw the line between
instruction and amusement. When the existence of this monstrosity has
once been justified it must be allowed a certain amount of free play.
Virgil had here the great advantage of dealing with a subject in which
he was really interested and into whose treatment he put his whole
heart. A deep feeling for nature and really genuine human sympathy
with the subject, which are precisely what is nowhere to be perceived
in the _Æneid_, occasionally break forth in the poem on agriculture.
An artificial shepherd’s life, much like the idyls of the eighteenth
century, is delineated in the _Eclogues_, and its unreality is only
surpassed by Calpurnius, an imitator of the age of Nero.
Whilst the didactic poem proper received no further attention worth
noting during this period, the elegy was successfully dealt with. In
Albius Tibullus (54-19 B.C.) it even acquired a characteristic, one
might almost say more national form than is the case with its other
representatives.
In his elegies, Tibullus is as essentially free from the Greek influence
as is conceivable in an age which was steeped in Hellenism; he treated
the few themes, which are to be found in his poems, entirely from the
human standpoint, and it is only by this means that he tries to affect
the reader. The sameness which is easily produced in such works--love and
sentimental sorrows are constantly recurring--he has successfully avoided
by an extraordinary elegance and charm of treatment. The reader willingly
follows the dreamy thought of the poet without blaming him for having
led him rather into a world of dreams than into one of living and strong
feeling.
The productions of S. Propertius (49-15 B.C.) are already much inferior.
He also had true feeling, and the thoughts which it awakened in him are
for the greater part not borrowed from his models. But it is overloaded
with the learned accessories of Alexandrian learning, and the deep
feelings of the poet are unduly thrust into the background by blatant
mythological embellishments.
Far more splendid and brilliant is the talent of Ovid (P. Ovidius Naso,
43 B.C.-17 A.D.) who cultivated a wonderful borderland between didactic
and elegiac poetry. But all his poems have one trait in common, although
the _Metamorphoses_ and _Fasti_ may differ from the amatory poems, the
_Tristia_ and the _Heroides_; they, for the first time, display in a more
and more decided fashion the arts of the schools of the rhetoricians.
Ovid was a talented poet, to whom verses and thoughts came rapidly and
without difficulty, but he was entirely wanting in depth of feeling. Even
the poems, which came most from his heart, those laments which he sang
in his banishment at inhospitable Tomi, scarcely arouse true sympathy,
for the intrinsic unreality from which the poetry of Ovid suffers even
here forces itself upon the reader. He recognised the conditions of
the new monarchy unreservedly, and no poet is so well qualified as he
to give us a picture of the views and manner of thought of the circle
which surrounded the imperial house. Sensuality and pleasure are the
scarlet threads which run through the Ovidian poems, and the pain which
tortures him in banishment is entirely the effect of being shut out
from the luxurious way of life which prevailed in those circles whose
conversations and intrigues were the very life of his poetry.
The satire also, that most characteristic production of the national
spirit of Rome, was now cultivated in a fashion partly original by
Horace (Q. Horatius Flaccus, born on the 8th of December, 65 B.C.,
died on the 27th of November, 6 B.C.). Deep feeling or an effective
comprehension of the times, its weaknesses and duties, would be sought
for in vain, for the salons of the Augustan period no longer possessed
these qualities, and it is a picture of the conversations of the salons
that has been bequeathed to us in the Horatian satires. Some gossip of
a higher or lower order, for the most part in a seemly though piquant
form which seldom becomes real malice, forms the subject-matter of all
the poems which have come down to us. The poet rises to a higher level
in the didactic epistles, of which those of the second book, with their
exhortations to the study of Greek models and their tasteful and striking
æsthetic reflections, belong to the chief productions of the time; and in
ripeness and clearness of judgment, careful polish and clear arrangement,
they leave all others far behind them. Greatly inferior to the satires
are the partly satirical _Epodes_, in which the personal element is too
prominent, and in which the poet betrays great want of self-restraint and
taste.
After Horace, the satire, such as he conceived it, found no imitator;
the period which followed brought with it too many conflicts to allow
mildness and tolerance to find a place. The preaching of morals is
carried into the domain of poetry; A. Persius Flaccus, the only
representative of this class of writing, gives us a very poor idea of
the age if it really regarded him as a satirist; but we are scarcely
justified in drawing this conclusion, since at the most he met with
approbation only from the ranks of the opposition. It is the same taste,
which Lucan represents, transferred to the satire; the arrogance and
self-sufficiency of an adept belonging to a circle of noble stoics, who
had scarcely got beyond the scholar’s bench, hollow pathos, rhetorical
ornamentation, versified expoundings of the stoic popular morality.
Persius lacked practically all the attributes of a poet. A mediocre
performance which might be reckoned as a satire was the _Translation
into the Society of Gourds of the deified Claudius_ (_Divi Claudius
Apokolokyntosis_), a petty, revengeful pamphlet against the unfortunate
prince, prepared moreover after his death. The dazzling wit with which
the poet strikes at gods and men might have elicited approval in his own
day; but the reader’s uppermost feeling will always be that this satire
sprang from miserable cowardice and perfidious flattery.
The only really intellectual work of a satirical character that this
period produced was the satires of Petronius, written in the reign of
Nero. No other work so clearly bears the stamp of its time. At least
the poor philosophy, which most of the poets have collected from their
philosophical compendiums and their rhetorical exercises, has no part
in this work, although the laboured and superficial culture of the time
clings to its author throughout. The source of his wisdom is life. To
him, man is the crown of creation, and he has studied him in all phases
and degrees; what exists beside man has only interest for him inasmuch
as it can serve to beautify human life and make it agreeable. Happiness
and enjoyment are the watchword of the whole work, not in the coarsely
material sense such as it is embodied in Trimalchio and his fellows,
but a life which, while it is seasoned with all material joys, is also
ennobled by all the contributions of art and cultivation. A rich and
varied experience of life gives this work its great value; the age is
reflected even to the most minute niceties of its language. Inventive
power, description of detail, humour, and a fine irony, as well as an
uncommonly skilful treatment, secure for some parts of these satires
the praise of a master work; and if the frivolous and lascivious tone
did not always bring us back to the court of Nero and the doings of the
time, we might think that in this we had before us a model of the best
age. Especially characteristic is the fine understanding of Greek art
and culture, and the enthusiasm for Latin poetry, which expresses itself
partly by means of a peculiar skill in versification and brilliancy of
colouring, partly in bitter mockery of the affectations of contemporary
poets and their dull, spiritless, and senseless exaggerations. The poet
always preserves elegance and purity of language; when he goes out of
his way to attain it, his good taste preserves him from errors, and that
same taste also disclosed to him the cause and effect of the decline of
rhetoric.
Only one quality is wanting in Petronius; like the Casanova literature
of our own and the preceding century, his work has no moral purpose.
Æsop’s fables were now also put into Latin, for Phædrus, often without
a complete understanding of the original, in somewhat clumsy verses
and with feeble wit, arranged the Greek fables for school and home use
amongst the Romans. The satirical point of the different pieces is now
almost entirely incomprehensible to us in our ignorance of conditions in
the city of Rome.
The lyric proper was far the most popular form of poetry under the
empire; for every one thought himself called upon to write songs and
occasional verses. We gain some notion of this style of poetry from
Horace. In his poems he chronicles the political measures of Augustus as
well as the love affairs and social doings of himself and his friends.
But whilst in the accounts of the latter it is frequently impossible to
decide how much is fact, how much poetry, and, at times, imitation of
his Greek models,--since so little true life beats through them,--in the
former there is something at least which is in harmony with its subject.
The poet has a firm and strong feeling for the greatness and honour of
Rome, if perhaps he does not always see it in the true light; this gives
some of his poems a colouring of truth and of a deep, sincere feeling.
Dependence on the Greeks of the best age could scarcely have been
greater; in diction and versification he is most careful; but that subtle
relation between the language and the sense, which was indispensable
in the Greek models, has been abandoned; tricks of versification have
determined the form and expression more frequently than poetic impulse
and spontaneous feeling.
But that all poetic creation and feeling were not entirely wanting to
the age is shown by the numerous small poetic productions found on
tombstones. Here true human feeling still revealed itself, and found an
expression which speaks to the heart and is often deeply affecting. It
is the same with the smaller poems in the Latin anthology; of course
the ideas are not great and imposing any more than were the occasions
which gave rise to them. But this much may be gathered from them, that
the language of poetry could still appeal to the heart, and purity and
correctness were still adhered to. Of the spread of poetic activity
we can scarcely form too vast an idea; the study of poetry was now an
essential part of education, and since Asinius Pollio had introduced the
custom of public readings, there was an audience for every individual
aspirant. And if the decline of the art of poetry was to be brought
about, this impulse would have effected it more surely than the
principate whose influence on the decline of the art may be only too
easily and willingly overestimated.
With the empire there came a change in the writing of history, inasmuch
as freedom of thought and judgment was limited by the despotic rule,
and the door was flung open to flattery and calumny; and in individual
reigns it might have been dangerous to relate the history of the republic
or of former emperors. But these circumstances alone cannot explain the
insignificance of historical writing any more than the removal of the
centre of politics to the imperial cabinet.
The Romans have really never possessed histories in the true sense of
the term, and consequently there was at this period no room for any
considerable damage to that species of composition. T. Livius (59 B.C.-17
A.D.) affords distinct evidence of this. In his own time he received
unqualified admiration and in subsequent ages his name sheltered itself
behind that of history; in the later days of the empire his prestige
continually increased, and finally almost the only works in Latin dealing
with the period of the republic and the triumvirate, and the beginnings
of the Augustan era, are transcripts and excerpts from his writings.
Augustus offered no exception to the opinion of the day; although he
called him a Pompeian, he not only granted him all conceivable freedom,
but on all occasions testified his personal esteem for him. And yet Livy
is no historian. He undertook the formidable task of writing a complete
history of the Roman state up to his time, but in consequence of its
formidable compass the work was necessarily unsuccessful, as older works
were often wanting, and Livy had not the ability to turn the existing
material to account.
Every Roman historian had great difficulties to encounter with regard
to the period of antiquity, and this extended more or less to the time
of Sulla. Down to a certain period, patriotism required adherence to a
traditional form which could not stand investigation; for other epochs
the Greeks, especially Polybius, had formed a conception which had
acquired a canonical value. Only critical judgment and a general scheme
of treatment on a grand scale could have been effective; but Livy was not
the man for this.
To him history was another name for the arranging of annalistic reports
which he put together; the most obvious contradictions were rejected, and
a certain system introduced into the chronology and adhered to as far as
might be without too great scrupulousness; where he had older authors
of merit, such as Polybius, to draw upon, his work was benefited; where
this was not the case, he did not scruple to combine accounts essentially
contradictory. He considered his principal office to be delineation, not
arrangement, investigation, and criticism, and the rhetorical elaboration
made up, in the eyes of the reader, for the want of exactness and a
definite conception.[f]
MERIVALE’S ESTIMATE OF LIVY
It was in the schools of rhetoric, we may believe, that Livy learned that
indifference to historical accuracy, that sacrifice of the substance to
the form of truth, which has cast so fatal a shade over the lustre of his
immortal work. As a friend of the ancient oligarchy, and an aristocrat
in prejudices and temper, it seems improbable that he would have carried
his Roman history down to his own times, had he not submitted to throw
a veil over his sentiments, and made his book such as Augustus himself
might sanction for the perusal of his subjects. The emperor, indeed, is
said to have called him a Pompeian, and to have complained of the colours
in which he portrayed the men of the opposite side; but this could only
have been in jest; the favour in which he was held by the courtiers of
the empire, and his being suffered to assist the studies of the young
prince, Claudius Germanicus, show that he was not seriously regarded as
a disaffected politician. The scorn which Livy heaps on the tribunes and
demagogues, and his ignorant contempt for the plebs, evince the leaning
of his mind to the side of the nobility. But these are obviously the
views of the rhetorician rather than of the historian; and Augustus,
tribune and demagogue as he was, could distinguish between the hollow
commonplaces of a perverted education and the stern judgment of a genuine
conviction. The loss of all the latter portions of this extensive work
must be deplored for the number of facts it has swept into oblivion;
but the facts would have been valuable rather from the inferences which
modern science might deduce from them, than from the light in which
the author would himself have placed them. Livy, taking the pen in
middle life, and continuing to pour forth his volumes in interminable
succession, perhaps to the end of his long career,--for born in the year
59 B.C., he died in 17 A.D.,--left it still apparently unfinished, at the
close of his hundred and forty-second book, and with the demise of Drusus
Germanicus.[4] It may be conjectured that the latter portions of the work
were overtaken by the garrulity of old age, and were suffered to fall
into oblivion from their want of political or literary value.
It is in the earlier books, however, that the spirit of Livy found the
sphere most congenial to it; the first and third decades, containing the
early history of the kings and consuls, and again the grand epic of the
war with Hannibal, have always retained their pre-eminence in general
esteem as the noblest specimens of narration. The greatest minds of Rome
at this period seemed to have kindled with inspiration from the genius
of the founder of the empire; and of these Livy at least appears to have
conceived unconsciously the idea of attaching his countrymen to the
early records of their city, by encircling it with a halo of poetical
associations. The imagination of the Romans of that age was inflamed by
the conservative reaction which sought to throw a bridge over the chaos
of the last century, and revive the sense of national continuity.
The thanks the race of Romulus owed to Livy, for making them acquainted
with their ancestors and proud of their descent, were akin to those which
Englishmen acknowledge to the historical dramas of Shakspeare. He took
the dry chronicles, in which alone their first affairs were written, drew
forth from them the poetic life of half-forgotten traditions, and clothed
it again in forms of ideal beauty. His narrative, glowing in all the
colours of imagination and fancy, is just as faithful to its authorities
as the dramatised histories of the English bard to theirs; indeed, the
myths of Romulus and Tarquin cannot lie farther from the truth of facts
than the tragedies of Lear and Cymbeline; and when he begins to tread the
domain of sober history, his painted Hannibals and Scipios approach as
nearly to the men themselves as the Richards and Henrys of our own mighty
master.
The charms of Livy’s style became the happy conjunction of circumstances
under which he wrote, and combined with it to give him that pre-eminence
among Roman historians which he never afterwards lost. Events and
characters of deepest interest became immutably fixed in the lines in
which he had represented them. Henceforth every Roman received from
Livy his first youthful impressions of his country’s career, which thus
became graven forever in the mind of the nation. It was in vain that the
inaccuracy of these relations, and in many cases their direct falsehood,
were pointed out by the votaries of truth, or by jealous and unsuccessful
rivals; henceforth it was treason to the majesty of Rome to doubt that
Porsenna was driven in confusion from her walls, or that the spoils of
the Capitol were wrested again from the triumphant legions of Brennus.[g]
Such are the estimates placed upon the work of Livy by those who view
him from the coldly analytical standpoint of the technical historian.
But we must not leave the greatest writer of Latin prose without seeking
a more sympathetic interpretation of his influence. Let us turn to
the estimate of one who was himself an historian kindred in spirit to
Livy--one who approached history from the standpoint of the artist and
humanitarian,--M. Taine. Here is his estimate of
LIVY AS THE ARTISTIC LIMNER OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE
There are three ways of representing character [says Taine]: the author
may stop to think and compose a portrait, in a philosophical style, as
Thucydides does; one may paint people by their actions, a method followed
by Tacitus and the poets; or he may portray them by exposing their
opinions in speeches; this is Livy’s and the orator’s talent.
The finest of all his portraits is that of the Roman people. Each
speech, each oratorical narrative revises and perfects it, and it is
easily seen that Livy has not taken it from the ancient authors but
that it is entirely his own. In the combat of Horatius Cocles, what
pride and what vigour! It is not likely that the Romans in one year had
become such unruly republicans. But how well the fable is hidden under
a noble passion! Throwing towards the chiefs of the Etruscans savage
and threatening glances, sometimes provoking them one after another,
sometimes insulting them collectively.“Slaves of insolent kings,
forgetting your own liberty, you come to attack that of others!” If this
passage is theatrical, it is grand, and eloquence nobly adorns “the
beginning of this liberty.”
Dionysius makes Mucius an ingenious Greek, who terrifies good Porsenna
and saves himself by a stratagem with a double result. In Livy Mucius is
a hero. “Seized by the guards and brought before the king’s court, even
then, in the midst of such dangers, he was more to be feared than to be
frightened. ‘I am a Roman citizen,’ he said, ‘I am called C. Mucius,
enemy. I wished to kill an enemy, and I am as ready to die as to kill. A
Roman can dare all and suffer all. I am but the first to bring against
thee their courage; behind me is a long train of men who seek the same
honour. Prepare thyself if thou wilt, for the struggle. At each hour,
thou wilt fight for life and thou wilt have a dagger and an enemy in the
vestibule of thy palace. We young men declare this kind of war against
thee. Fear neither army nor combat, this affair is between each of us and
thee alone.’
“The king, at the same time excited by anger and terrified by fear,
ordered him to be surrounded by flames, if he did not at once explain
these ambiguous threats of conspiracy. ‘Look,’ said Mucius, ‘in order to
understand what a small thing the body is to those who behold a great
glory.’ He put his hand in a brasier lighted for the sacrifice, and left
it there, as if unconscious of the pain.” In Dionysius, Clœlia asks the
guards permission to bathe, requests them to withdraw a little whilst
she disrobes herself, and then quietly crosses the Tiber. In reading the
inventions of clever poltroonery, one respects Livy for having written as
a Roman.
It is pride and not interest which makes the Roman people revolt against
a master. See in what manner Cincinnatus judges tyranny. Does Livy
forget that he lived under Augustus? When Melius was stretched out on
the market-place, “He has been justly killed,” says the dictator; “a man
should not be treated as a citizen, who, born of a free people, in the
centre of privileges and laws, conceived the hope of ruling, knowing that
kings had been driven from that city; that the same year, the king’s
nephews, sons of the consul who liberated the country, being denounced
for having plotted to re-establish kings, had been beheaded with an axe
by their father; and that the Consul Tarquinus Collatinus, in hatred of
his very name, had been obliged to leave his magistracy to go into exile.”
All these arguments are derived from the dignity of the Roman people,
issue of the gods, exultant master-elect of the world, whose high
self-esteem is its dominating passion. This people kills a tyrant, not
in the cause of justice, but in order that it may become a tyrant itself
for love of empire. This need of commanding is so natural to the Romans
that it seems to them to be a divine right. When the Latins, who for
over two hundred years made up half of the army and achieved half the
victories, claimed the equal rights they deserved, the Roman people were
as indignant as if it were sacrilege. The consul frankly says that if the
Roman senators were mad enough to obey a man of Setia, he would come,
sword in hand, into the senate, and that he would kill every Latin he saw
in the curia with his own hand. Then turning towards Jupiter’s statue, he
cries: “Listen to these crimes, Jupiter, hear them, Right and Justice!
Foreign consuls, a foreign senate, inaugurated in Jupiter’s temple,
thyself captive and oppressed, that is what thou wouldst see.”
This sublime insolence proves that these men had souls worthy of kings. A
government like a man has its own personality. One feels in the orations
of Demosthenes the generous indignation and eloquent pain of an artistic
and philosophical people, which appeals to the gods and to men against
brutal strength, envelops itself in its own glory before falling. The
decrees of the Roman senate are the verdicts of a judge who overwhelms
the heart by his imperious hardness before crushing the enemy with his
armies.
When Popilius, tracing a circle around the king of Syria, ordered him to
answer him before stepping over it, he did nothing very extraordinary.
All the Romans treated foreigners as subjects.
From this public and private pride, born with the foundation of Rome,
nourished by a succession of victories and by habitual domination, there
resulted a particular kind of courage. The Romans do not fight through an
outburst of bravery and of imagination, as the Athenians, or for the need
of action and activity like the barbarians, but by maxims of pride and
obstinacy. Their defeats are admirable. At Lake Trasimenus, battalions of
soldiers charge through the victorious army by which they are surrounded.
At Cannæ, ranged in a circle, fifty thousand men die to the last man,
those in front ceaselessly falling and those behind taking their place.
The Romans fight for honour and duty, incapable of yielding, because the
heart of men revolts against the slightest approach and appearance of
pardon, because humiliation is worse than ruin, because it is better to
lose everything than to yield an inch. That is why Rome becomes prouder
in reverse and only consents to treat in order to pardon, why she will
only suffer around her protégés, suppliants, and subjects, and “carries
her empire as far as the earth and her courage as high as the sky.” Pride
renders one calm. The man who aims at being worthy remains serious,
and the Romans without emotion or enthusiasm accomplished the greatest
results. Pride sanctifies the fatherland because the citizen gets from
it glory and ascendency, without which he cannot exist. Pride sacrifices
the family because it considers as weakness the affections on which it is
founded.
Livy shows in his speeches how simple, quiet, and deliberate
self-sacrifice is in Rome. Q. Fabius presided over the comitia; the
first hundred nominate his nephew Otacilius consul. He stops the voting
and coldly says, “We have tried thee, Otacilius, in lesser posts, and
thou certainly hast done nothing which justifies us giving thee more
important ones. For three reasons did we equip the fleet you commanded
this year; in order to lay the African coast, in order to protect the
shores of Italy, and above all that no reinforcements, food, or money
be sent through from Carthage to Hannibal. Name Otacilius consul, if he
has rendered to the state--I don’t say all these services, but a single
one. It matters more to thee, Otacilius, than to any one else that a
burden under which you would be crushed be not laid on your shoulders.
Herald, recall to the vote the century of the young men of Anio.” As
Otacilius cries out with rage that Fabius himself wishes to remain in the
consulship and throws himself upon him, the consul orders the lictors to
approach, and he informs Otacilius that, not having entered the city,
his arms and arrows have been carried on in advance. Fabius is so sure
of his disinterestedness that he does not fear appearing ambitious and
tyrannical, and the people judging the same, at once elect him consul.
The son of Manlius has fought against his father’s orders. He appears
with his spoil. Without saying a word to him, the father turns away and
orders the army to be assembled, and at once the following sentence,
“Since without respect for consular authority or paternal majesty, T.
Manlius, thou hast against orders, outside the ranks, fought the enemy,
and destroyed, as far as was in thy power, military discipline, upon
which until to-day Roman deeds have always stood; since thou hast forced
me to forget either the republic or myself and mine, let us rather
bear the penalty of the crime ourselves than that the republic pay so
heavily for our fault. We shall be a sad but salutary example to coming
generations. Without doubt, a father’s natural love and that proof of
courage deceived by empty glory move me in thy favour. But since it is
necessary by thy death to sanction the orders of the consuls or by thy
pardon forever to nullify them, I do not think if there runs a drop
of our blood in thy veins, that thou willst refuse to restore by thy
punishment military discipline, which has been overthrown by thy error.
Go, lictor, tie him to the stake.”
This argument, which ends like a thunderbolt, is terrible because it
is so sudden. Judge by this example to what an extent Roman zeal was
carried. In the soul of the magistrate there seemed to exist a permanent
tribunal which was ever ready to deliver judgment. They had no need to
raise themselves above their own level in order to attain self-denial; it
came naturally to them. In the same way the savages of America tranquilly
offered up their limbs for torture and by education, temperament, habit,
and nature mocked at what the martyrs with all their exaltation dared
hardly face.
The soothsayer having declared that the victorious army must lose its
general, Manlius and his brother general without any signs of emotion,
summon their officers on the eve of battle and agree that there, where
they saw the army give way, one or the other should sacrifice himself.
By pride of citizenship, Livy brings out the fine sides of this
character; by precision of oratory, he reveals the characteristic
features, for he is obliged to arrange his subject to suit his audience
and to touch Roman passions by Roman arguments. Consider in Camillus’
discourse, that religion which is really but a doctrine, so minutely and
carefully following the consecrated form, so attached to outward rites,
observing not the spirit but the letter which alone prevents the people
from emigrating to Veii. As it is political and local it attaches the
government and the citizen to the soil. “We have a town founded according
to omens and augurs in which there is not a corner where the gods and
their worship are not to be found. Our solemn sacrifices take place on
certain days. Will you forsake, Romans, all these private and public
gods? How little your actions resemble that of the young M. C. Fabius
whom the enemy watched with as much admiration as you, when, amongst
the Gallic javelins, coming down from the citadel he offered up on the
Quirinal the solemn sacrifice of the house of Fabia. The vestals can
only have one abode, one from which nothing can eject them except the
surrender of the town. Jupiter’s flamen cannot spend one night outside
Rome without crime. Would you make these Roman priests Veientine priests,
and would you abandon vestal virgins? Oh, Vesta! And the flamen living
in another country, shall he every night commit an impious act which the
republic must atone for with him? Here is the Capitol, where a human head
was once found, when the soothsayers said that here would be the head of
the world and the seat of the empire. Here are Vesta’s sacred fire, the
shields fallen from heaven, and, if you stay here, the gods all-merciful.”
One sees that the love of country is as much religious as it is
political; the gods live on the soil and are Romans; what must be the
strength of this sentiment which unites all others! In our days they are
separate. The town we live in, the religion we follow, and the country to
which we belong make up three distinct worlds, often unfriendly to each
other. Amongst the ancients, there was but one, the city. The family was
sacrificed to it; it made one with religion; the soul and thought of man
were absorbed in his country; and from every point of view, the citizen
alone was visible.
THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES
Let us try in a few words to sum up the philosophy of the epoch as it is
given by our contemporaries. We are not leaving Livy behind us by showing
how his work has been perfected. “Great queen,” said Bossuet, before
Henrietta Maria’s tomb, “I gratify your tenderest desires in praising
this great monarch, and your heart, dust though it is, awakes to hear
me.” Livy would not listen with indifference to the modern philosophers
who explain, perfect, and complete the history of his country. To act
with a personal interest in view, and consequently to organise the means
of so doing is the dominant trait in the history and genius of Rome.
Therefore its spirit is that of calculating reflection rather than of
poetical invention and philosophical speculation, and its character
consists of a reasoned will, not of feelings or affections.
From this arises that never-ending struggle with the unfruitfulness of a
naturally sterile land, that contempt for him who loses his patrimony,
the fame of him who increases it, economy, frugality, greed, avarice, the
spirit of chicanery, all the virtues and all the vices which generate and
preserve wealth, the tendency to regard property as a sacred trust, and
the boundary of a field as a limitation of divine origin, the protection
of lands and credit by severe laws, legal deeds drawn up in minute
and inviolable forms--in a word, every institution calculated for the
protection of acquired property.
In other countries the natural family, established on the basis of
a common origin, is ruled by the affections; but the Roman family,
absolutely civil, founded on a community of obedience and of rites, is
only the chattel and the property of the father, governed according
to his will, subordinate to the state, ever bequeathed by law in the
presence of the state, a kind of province in the hands of the father
which supplies soldiers for the public benefit.
Made up of different races, united by violence, the work of force and
will, and not of relationship and nature, the Roman state contained two
organised bodies, struggling regularly and legally, not through passion,
but through interest, and united under the best devised and organised
constitution that has ever been known. By the state’s systematic and
methodical mode of conquest for the sole object of preserving and
exploiting, military art was carried to the highest possible point, and
political skill and administrative talent united to bring together by
force the whole of the then known world into an empire organised by one
dominant city.
Roman policy consisted in turning the conquered nations into Roman
soldiers, and foreign princes and magistrates into Roman ministers,
thus strengthening the controlling power at the least possible expense.
Military art consisted in subjecting the bravest and strongest soldiers
to the strictest obedience, that is to say, in obtaining the greatest
amount of strength from the vast forces at command. All her wisdom was
exerted to increase her power and to spare herself. An institution
of will, a machine for conquest, a matter of organisation, the state
occupied all thought, absorbed all love, and claimed submission in every
act and institution.
The sway of personal interest and national egoism produces a contempt for
humanity. The human species, when unconquered, is looked upon as material
for conquest, conquered it is a prey to be made use of and abused. Slaves
are trampled upon with atrocious cruelty, entire nations are destroyed,
vanquished kings are led in triumph and put to death.
The gods are abstractions, and utterly without poetry, such as calm
reflection discerns in the humblest agricultural or domestic operations,
scourges adored through fear, foreign gods received into the temple
through interested motives as vanquished foes were received into the
city, and subject to the Jupiter of the Capitol as nations were to Rome.
The priests were laymen divided into classes, and officiated only under
the authority of the senate, which regulated all expiatory ceremonies
and alone, with the people, could make innovations. Worship consisted
of minute ceremonies, scrupulously observed because all poetical and
philosophical spirit which is the interpreter of symbols, was wanting;
dull, unilluminated reason attaching itself only to the letter. The
senate used religion as a political machine, and like all else it was but
an instrument of government.
In the world of art we find nothing indigenous, except family memoirs,
written in the interests of a race, dry chronicles drawn up for public
use, rituals, account books, collections of laws, books of moral sayings,
memoranda of political satires--in short, government documents, maxims
of conduct, and political essays.
Everything else is foreign, imported, or conquered. The theatre
originating in Etruria and in Greece was simply imitated and then
forsaken for bear fights which later became processions, magnificent in
weapons and ornaments, parades of triumph and war. Monuments of art were
pillaged in Greece, and in Cicero’s time were still despised; while in
poetry, there was no original fiction, no invention of characters. The
only things in which the national genius rivals the imitation of foreign
models are oratory,--the arm of the forum,--satire,--versified pleading
and instruction in morals,--and history, the record of political facts,
which, however, is at Rome only a collection of memoirs or an exercise
in oratory; and all these things are concerned with the practical
and with government. If Rome possessed poets, it was solely when her
particular genius gave way before a new movement. The only entertainments
she invented were triumphs and games in the circus, where victory was
continued by the humiliation and death of the vanquished, where the
spectator was the conqueror and assassin.
All scientific writings were translations. There were compilers
such as Varro and Pliny, imitators such as Cicero and Lucretius;
some small advance was made in agriculture, rhetoric, medicine, and
architecture--all applied sciences. In the place of metaphysics, the
clumsy physics of Epicurus and of the stoics were copied. The practical
side of philosophy was alone studied, moral philosophy, and that
with a purely practical object. The only strictly Roman science is
jurisprudence, and that is altogether practical and political. It is,
moreover, so long as it remains Roman, but a collection of dry formulæ, a
mere manual for lawyers and not a branch of science.
From the character of Roman genius springs its history. The family and
religion being subordinate to the state, art and science being null, or
entirely practical, and the state having no other object than to conquer
and to organise what it had conquered, Roman history is the history of
conquest and its effects.
The middle class was either ruined, or perished during the progress
of this great war. From the time of the Gracchi, besides a population
of poor people and freed slaves, there remained only a wealthy class,
wielding great power by reason of their immense riches, their command
of great armies, their control of taxation, and of the destinies of the
commonwealth in general. At first united but afterwards divided, at the
end of a century’s struggle one of these classes emerged victorious.
Thus power, founded by sheer force, passed to the armies, the embodiment
of force. In the meanwhile, the universe, depopulated and ruined by
conquest, by civil wars, by the pillage of the proconsuls, by the
demands of the imperial treasury, supplied no more soldiers. With the
fall of militarism, an oriental despotism, characterised by a cunning
administration, was founded. Through war and its results, conquerors and
conquered, nations and liberties, had all perished. Nothing remained in
force but a system of effete institutions under the caprice of a ruler
who was often hardly a man.
The ancient institution of the family disappeared under the influence of
Grecian ideas and oriental customs. The judicial dicta of lawyers and
prætors conflicted with the authority of the husband and father; civil
family ties became dissolved in excess of pleasures and love of conquest.
In spite of the laws of Augustus, marriages decreased, and were only
excuses for adultery and divorce. Mysticism, poverty, the discouragement
of the curials, added despair to the effects of debauchery and created a
contempt for life.
By these changes in domestic life and under the influence of foreign
philosophers, the Roman idea of property changed. First of all in the
hands of the father (mancipium), possessions next became a family
inheritance (dominium), and ended by belonging entirely to the individual
(proprietas). Though benefited in theory, in practice property ceased
to exist, because according to the law the emperor was master over
it, because the treasury took its fruits, because taxation, tyranny,
ignorance, and a growing depopulation rendered it sterile or reduced it
to nought.
The ancient religion assimilated with the religions of Greece and
the East, disappeared in the pantheon of the gods enlarged by dead
emperors, and there remained of it only official pomp and an excuse for
persecutions. The jealousy of despots, the degradation of servitude,
the loss of all interests and of all hope, the abuse of pleasures, the
downfall of Greece and of the East, extinguished all that was yet known
of art and science. The jurisconsults alone laid down a code of laws, the
last result of the spirit of organisation.
Thus, conquest, the fruit of Roman genius, destroyed both the genius of
peoples, and the peoples themselves; leaving behind it because it was
a system, a system of institutions on a dead foundation. But in this
debasement of every force and of every earthly hope, man took refuge
within himself. Helped by oriental mysticism, he discovered in a new
religion a new world.
This is what the modern philosophers have added to Livy. The criticism
commenced by him, renewed by Beaufort, nearly perfected by Niebuhr,
and the philosophy hidden under his eloquence, which was turned
by Machiavelli into a practical channel and is still imperfect in
Montesquieu, become each day more exact and more profound. The
corrections thus made honour those by whom they are made without lowering
those who suffer them. The first authors are the fathers of science,
and Livy alone has done more for Roman history than all those who have
desired to set him right.[i]
FOOTNOTES
[4] Niebuhr’s[h] remarks on the dates of Livy’s history (_Rom. Hist._
iv.) may be compared with the more common view given in Smith’s
Dictionary and elsewhere. I think the beginning of the work must be
placed in 29-24 B.C.; but adopting the idea that it was originally
divided into decades, the fact now demonstrated, that it reached to
a hundred and forty-second book, seems to show that it was not left
complete according to the author’s intentions. It is also well remarked
that the death of Drusus does not furnish a point of sufficient
importance for the termination of the great epic of Roman history. This
view is supported by the interesting statement of Pliny, that in one
of his latter books Livy had declared: Satis jam sibi gloriæ quæsitum;
et potuisse se desinere, nisi animus inquies pasceretur opere. (Plin.
_Hist. Nat._ præf.) A period of more than forty years thus devoted to the
elaboration of a single work is not unparalleled. Froissart was engaged
forty years upon his _Chronicles_.
[Illustration: ROMAN COMPASS
(In the British Museum)]
[Illustration: ROMAN DEATH MASK]