REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.
The poetic literature reviewed in the last five chapters is the
product of the second century B.C. The latest writers of any
importance belonging to the earlier period of the poetry of the
Republic were Lucilius and Afranius. Half a century from the death of
Lucilius elapsed before the appearance of the poems of Lucretius and
Catullus, which come next to be considered. But before passing on to
this more familiar ground, a few pages may be devoted to a retrospect
of some general characteristics marking the earlier period, and to a
consideration of the social and intellectual conditions under which
literature first established itself at Rome.
With striking individual varieties of character, the poets whose works
have been considered present something of a common aspect, distinct
from that of the literary men of later times. They were placed in
different circumstances, and lived in a different manner from either
the poets who adorned the last days of the Republic or those who
flourished in the Augustan age. The spirit animating their works was
the result of the forces acting on the national life, and the form
and style in which they were composed were determined by the stage of
culture which the national mind had reached, and the stage of growth
through which the Latin language was passing under the stimulus of
that culture.
Like nearly all the literary men of later times, these poets were
of provincial or foreign birth and origin. They were thus born under
circumstances more favourable to, or at least less likely to repress,
the expansion of individual genius, than the public life and private
discipline of Rome. Their minds were thus more open to the reception
of new influences; and their position as aliens, by cutting them
off from an active public career, served to turn their energies
to literature. Their provincial birth and Greek education did not,
however, check their Roman sympathies, or prevent them from stamping
on their writings the impress of a Roman character.
While, like many of the later poets, they came originally as strangers
to Rome, unlike them, they seem to have in later years resided
habitually within the city. The taste for country life prevailing in
the days of Cicero and of Horace was not developed to any great extent
in the times of Ennius or Lucilius. The great Scipio, indeed, retired
to spend the last years of his life at Liternum; and Cicero mentions
the boyish delight of Laelius and the younger Africanus in escaping
from the public business and the crowded streets of Rome to the
pleasant sea-shore of Caieta[1]. Accius seems to have possessed
a country farm, and Lucilius showed something of a wandering
disposition, and possessed the means to gratify it. But most of
these writers were men of moderate means; nor had it then become
the practice of the patrons of literature to bestow farms or
country-houses on their friends. By their circumstances, as well
as the general taste of their time, they were thus brought almost
exclusively into contact with the life and business of the city; and
their works were consequently more distinguished by their strong
sense and understanding than by the passionate or contemplative
susceptibility which characterises the great eras of Latin literature.
It is remarkable that nearly all the early poets lived to a great
age, and maintained their intellectual vigour unabated to their latest
years; while of their successors none reached the natural term of
human life, and some among them, like many great modern poets, were
cut off prematurely before their promise was fulfilled. The finer
sensibility and more passionate agitation of the poetic temperament
appear, in some cases, to exhaust prematurely the springs of life;
while, in natures more happily balanced, or formed by more favourable
circumstances, the gifts of genius are accompanied by stronger powers
of life, and thus maintain the freshness of youth unimpaired till
the last. The length of time during which Naevius, Plautus, Ennius,
Pacuvius, Accius, and probably Lucilius, exercised their art suggests
the inference, either that they were men of firmer fibre than their
successors, or that they were braced to a more enduring strength by
the action of their age. As the work of men writing in the fulness
of their years, the serious poetry of the time appealed to the mature
sympathies of manhood; and even the comic poetry of Plautus deals with
the follies of youth in a genial spirit of indulgence, tempered by the
sense of their absurdity, such as might naturally be entertained by
one who had outlived them.
But perhaps the most important condition determining the original
scope of Roman poetry was the predominance in that era of public over
personal interests. Like Virgil and Horace, most of the early poets
were men born in comparatively a humble station; yet by their force
of intellect and character they became the familiar friends of the
foremost men in the State. But while the poets of the Augustan age
owed the charm of their existence to the patronage of the great, the
earlier poets depended for their success mainly on popular favour. The
intimacy subsisting between the leaders of action and of literature
during the second century B.C. arose from the mutual attraction of
greatness in different spheres. The chief men in the Republic obtained
their position by their services to the State, and thus the personal
attachment subsisting between them and men of letters was a bond
connecting the latter with the public interest. The early poetry of
the Republic is not the expression of an educated minority keeping
aloof from public life. If it is animated by a strong aristocratic
spirit, the reason is that the aristocratic spirit was predominant in
the public life of Rome during that century.
In this era, more than in any later age, the poetry of Rome, like
that of Greece in its greatest eras, addressed itself to popular and
national, not to individual tastes. The crowds that witnessed and
applauded the representations of tragedy as well as comedy, afford
a sufficient proof that the reproduction of Greek subjects and
personages could be appreciated without the accomplishment of a Greek
education. The popularity of the poem of Ennius is attested by his own
language, as well as by the evidence of later writers. The honour of
a public funeral awarded to Lucilius, implies the general appreciation
with which his contemporaries enjoyed the verve, sense, and moral
strength which secured for his satire the favour of a more refined and
critical age.
This general popularity is an argument in favour of the original
spirit animating this early literature. It implies the power of
embodying some sentiment or idea of national or public interest. Thus
Roman tragedy appears to have been received with favour, chiefly
in consequence of the grave Roman tone of its maxims, and the Roman
bearing of its personages. The epic poetry of the age did not, like
the Odyssey, relate a story of personal adventure, but unfolded the
annals of the State in continuous order, and appealed to the pride
which men felt, as Romans, in their history and destiny. The satire of
Lucilius was not intended merely to afford amusement by ridiculing
the follies of social life, but played a part in public affairs by
political partisanship and antagonism, and maintained the traditional
standard of manners and opinions against the inroads of foreign
influences. Latin comedy, indeed, was a more purely cosmopolitan
product. The plays of Terence especially would affect those who
listened to them simply as men and not as Roman citizens. But the
comedy of Plautus abounded in the humour congenial to the Italian
race, and owed much of its popularity to the strong Roman colouring
spread over the Greek outlines of his representations.
The national character of this poetry is attested also by the spirit
and character which pervades it. Among all the authors who have been
reviewed, Ennius alone possessed in a large measure that peculiar vein
of imaginative feeling which is the most impressive element in the
great poets of a later age. The susceptibility of his mind to the
sentiment that moulded the institutions and inspired the policy of the
Imperial Republic, entitles him to rank as the truest representative
of the genius of his country, notwithstanding his apparent inferiority
to Plautus in creative originality. The glow of moral passion, which
is another great characteristic of Latin literature, as it was of the
best types of the Latin race, reveals itself in the remains of all
the serious writers of the age. The struggle between the old Roman
self-respect and the new modes of temptation, is exemplified in the
antagonistic influence exercised by the tragic, epic, and satiric
poetry on the one hand, and the comedy of Plautus and Terence on the
other. The more general popularity of comedy was a symptom of the
facility with which the severer standard of life yielded to the new
attractions. The graver writers, equally with the writers of comedy,
shared in the sceptical spirit, or the religious indifference, which
was one of the dissolving forces of social and political life during
this age. The strong common sense which characterised all the writers
of the time, could not fail to bring them into collision with the
irrational formalism of the national religion; while the distaste for
speculative philosophy which Ennius and Plautus equally express, and
the strong hold which they all have on the immediate interests
of life, explain the absence of any, except the most superficial,
reflections on the more mysterious influences which in the belief of
the great Greek poets moulded human destiny.
The political condition of Rome in the second century B.C. is
reflected in the changes through which her literature passed. For
nearly two-thirds of that century, Roman history seems to go through a
stage of political quiescence, as compared at least with the vigorous
life and stormy passions of its earlier and later phases. But under
the surface a great change was taking place, both in the government
and the social condition of the people, the effects of which made
themselves sufficiently manifest during the last century of the
existence of the Republic. The outbreak of the long gathering forces
of discontent and disorder is as distinctly marked in Roman history,
as the outbreak of the revolutionary forces in modern Europe. The year
133 B.C., the date of the first tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus, has
the same kind of significance as the year 1789 A.D. Nor is it a mere
coincidence that about the same time a great change takes place in the
spirit of Roman literature. The comedies of Plautus, written in
the first years of the century, while they reflect the political
indifference of the mass of the people, are yet indicative of their
general spirit of contentment, and their hearty enjoyment of life.
The epic of Ennius, written a little later, proclaims the undisputed
ascendency of an aristocracy, still moulded by its best traditions,
and claiming to lead a united people. The remains of Roman tragedy
breathe the high spirit of the governing class, and attest the severer
virtue still animating its best representatives. The comedies of
Terence seem addressed to the taste of a younger generation of greater
refinement, but of a laxer moral fibre than their fathers, and of a
class becoming separated by more elaborate culture from ordinary Roman
citizens. Expressions in his prologues[2], however, show that
there was as yet no division between classes arising from political
discontent. But in the satire of Lucilius we read the protest of the
better Roman spirit against the lawless arrogance of the nobles, their
incapacity in war, their corrupt administration of justice, their
iniquitous government of the provinces; against the ostentatious
luxury of the rich; the avarice of the middle classes; the venality
of the mob, and the profligacy of their leaders; and against the
insincerity and animosities fostered among the educated classes by the
contests of the forum and the law-courts.
In passing from the substance and spirit of this early literature to
its form and style, we can see by the rudeness of the more original
ventures which the Roman spirit made, how slowly it was educated by
imitative effort to high literary accomplishment. The only writer who
aimed at perfection of form was Terence, and his success was due to
his close adherence to his originals. But as some compensation for
their artistic defects, these early writers display much greater
productiveness than their literary successors. They were like
the settlers in a new country, who are spared the pains of exact
cultivation owing to the absence of previous occupation of the soil,
and the large extent of ground thus open to their industry. The
contrast between the standard aimed at, and the results attained
by the sincerest literary force in two different eras of Roman
literature, is brought home to the mind by contrasting the rude
fragments of the lost works of Ennius, embodying the results of a
long, hearty, active, and useful life, with the small volume which
still preserves the flower of a few passionate years, as fresh as when
the young poet sent it forth:--
Arido modo pumice expolitum.
The style of the early poets was marked by haste, harshness, and
redundance, occasionally by verbal conceits and similar errors of
taste. That of the writers of comedy, on the other hand, is easy,
natural, and elegant. The Latin language seems thus to have adapted
itself to the needs of ordinary social life more readily than to the
expression of elevated feeling. Though many phrases in the fragments
which have been reviewed are boldly and vigorously conceived, few
passages are written with continuous ease and smoothness, and the
language constantly halts, as if inadequate to the meaning which
labours under it. The style has, in general, the merits of directness
and sincerity, often of freshness and vigour, but wants altogether
the depth and richness of colour, as well as the finish and moderation
which we expect in the literature of a people to whom poetry and art
are naturally congenial, and associated with many old memories and
feelings. Their merits of style, such as the simple force with which
they go directly to the heart of a matter, and the grave earnestness
of their tone, are qualities characteristic rather of oratory than of
poetry. But this colouring of their style is very different from the
artificial rhetoric of the literature of the Empire. The oratorical
style of the early poets was the natural result of a sympathy with the
most practical intellectual instrument of their age. The rhetoric
of the Empire was the expression of an artificial life, in which
literature was cultivated to beguile the tedium of compulsory
inaction, and the highest form of public speaking had sunk from its
proud office as the organ of political freedom into a mere exercise of
pedants and schoolboys[3].
The same impulse in this age which gave birth to the forms of serious
poetry, stimulated also the growth of oratory and history. While these
different modes of mental accomplishment all acted and reacted on one
another, oratory appears to have exercised the most influence on the
others. Roman literature is altogether more pervaded by oratorical
feeling than that of any other nation, ancient or modern. From
the natural deficiency of the Romans in the higher dramatic and
speculative genius, the rhetorical element entered largely into
their poetry, their history, and their ethical discussions. Cicero
identifies the faculties of the orator with those of the historian and
the philosopher. His treatise _De Claris Oratoribus_ bears witness to
the energy with which this art was cultivated for more than a century
before his own time; and the remains of Ennius and Lucilius confirm
this testimony. It was from the impassioned and dignified speech of
the forum and senate-house that the Roman language first acquired its
capacity of expressing great emotions. All the serious poetry of the
age bears traces of this influence. Roman tragedy shows its affinity
to oratory in its grave and didactic tone. This affinity is further
implied in the political meaning which the audience attached to the
sentiments expressed, and which the actor enforced by his voice and
manner. It is also attested by the fact that in the time of Cicero,
famous actors were employed in teaching the external graces of public
speaking. The theatre was a school of elocution as much as a place of
dramatic entertainment. Cicero specifies among the qualifications of
a speaker, 'Vox tragoedorum, gestus paene summorum actorum.' Although
the epic poetry of the time mainly appealed to a different class of
sympathies, yet the fragments of speeches in Ennius indicate that
kind of rhetorical power which moves an audience by the weight and
authority of the speaker. Roman satire could wield other weapons
of oratory, such as the fierce invective, the lashing ridicule,
the vehement indignation which have often proved the most powerful
instruments of debate in modern as well as ancient times.
Historical composition also took its rise at Rome at this period.
Although the earliest Roman annalists composed their works in the
Greek language, it was not from the desire of imitating the historic
art of Greece that this art was first cultivated at Rome. The origin
of Roman history may be referred rather to the same impulse which gave
birth to the epic poems of Naevius and Ennius. The early annalists
were men of action and eminent station, who desired to record the
important events in which they themselves had taken part, and to fix
them for ever in the annals of their country. History originated at
Rome in the impulse to keep alive the record of national life, not,
as among the Greeks, in the spell which human story and the wonder of
distant lands exercised over the imagination. Its office was not to
teach lessons of political wisdom, but to commemorate the services of
great men, and to satisfy a Roman's pride in the past, and his trust
in the future of his country. The word _annales_ suggests a different
idea of history from that entertained and exemplified by Herodotus and
Thucydides. The purpose of building up the record of unbroken national
life was present to, though probably not realised by, the earliest
annalists who preserved the line of magistrates, and kept account of
the religious observances in the State: in the time of the expansion
of Roman power, this purpose directed the attention of men of action
to the composition of prose annals, and stimulated the productive
genius of Naevius and Ennius: and when, in the Augustan age, the
national destiny seemed to be fulfilled, the same purpose inspired the
great epic of Virgil, and the 'colossal masterwork of Livy.'
Another form of literature, in which Rome became pre-eminent, first
began in this era,--the writing of familiar letters. It was natural
that a correspondence should be maintained among intimate friends
and members of an active social circle, separated for years from one
another by military service, or employment in the provinces; and the
new taste for literature would induce the writers to give form and
finish to these compositions, so that they might be interesting not
only to the persons addressed, but to all the members of the same
circle. The earliest compositions of this kind of which we read,
are the familiar letters in verse ('Epistolas versiculis facetis ad
familiares missas' Cicero calls them) written to his friends by the
brother of Mummius, during the siege of Corinth[4]. That these had
some literary value may be inferred from the fact that they survived
down to the age of Cicero, and are spoken of in the letters to
Atticus, as having often been quoted to him by a member of the family
of Mummii. One of the earliest satires of Lucilius appears to have
been a letter written to Scipio after the capture of Numantia; and
several of his other satires were written in an epistolary form. How
happily the later Romans employed this form in prose and verse is
sufficiently proved by the letters of Cicero and Pliny, and the
metrical Epistles of Horace.
This era also saw the beginning of the critical and grammatical
studies which flourished through every period of Roman literature, and
continued long after the cessation of all productive originality. This
critical effort was a necessary condition of the cultivation of art by
the Romans. The perfection of form attained by the great Roman poets
of a later time was no exercise of a natural gift, but the result
of many previous efforts and failures, and of much reflection on the
conditions which had been, with no apparent effort, fulfilled by
their Greek masters. Neither did their language acquire the symmetry,
precision, and harmony, which make it so effective a vehicle in prose
and verse, except as the result of assiduous labour. The natural
tendency of the spoken language was to rapid decomposition. This was
first arrested by Ennius, who cast the literary language of Rome
into forms which became permanent after his time. Among his poetic
successors in this era Accius and Lucilius made critical and
grammatical studies the subjects of some of their works. Lucilius was
a contemporary and friend of the most famous of the early grammarians,
Aelius Stilo, the critic to whom is attributed the saying that 'if
the muses were to speak in Latin, they would speak in the language
of Plautus.' Critical works in trochaic verse were written by Porcius
Licinus, and Volcatius Sedigitus, who appear to have been the chief
authorities from whom later writers derived their information as to
the lives of the early poets. It is characteristic of the want of
spontaneousness in Latin literature, as compared with the fresh and
varied impulses which the Greek genius obeyed in every stage of
its literary development, that reflection on the principles of
composition, efforts to form the language into a more certain and
uniform vehicle, and comment on living writers, were carried on
concurrently with the creative efforts of the more original minds.
The existing works of the two great writers of Roman comedy have an
acknowledged value of their own, but even the fragments of this early
literature, originally scattered through the works of many later
authors, and collected together and arranged by the industry of modern
scholars, are found to possess a peculiar interest. They recall
the features of the remarkable men by whom the foundations of Roman
literature were laid, and the Latin language was first shaped into
a powerful and symmetric organ. They present the Roman mind in its
earliest contact with the genius of Greece; and they are almost the
sole contemporary witnesses of national character and public feeling
in the most vigorous and interesting age of the Republic. They throw
also much light on the national sources of inspiration in the later
Roman literature. The early poets are seen to be men living the life
of citizens in a Republic, appealing rather to popular taste than to
the sympathies of a refined and limited society; men of mature years
and understanding, animated by a serious purpose and with a strong
interest in the affairs of their time; rude and negligent but direct
and vigorous in speech,--more remarkable for energy, industry, and
common sense, than for the finer gifts and susceptibility of genius.
Their poetry springing from their sympathy with national and political
life, and from the impulses of the will and the manlier energies,
was less rich, varied, and refined than that which flows out of the
religious spirit of man, out of his passions and affections, or of
his imaginative sense of the life and grandeur of Nature. But in these
respects the early poetry was essentially Roman in spirit, in harmony
with the strength and sagacity, the sobriety and grave dignity of
Rome.
The accomplished art of the last age of the Republic and of the
Augustan age owed much of its national and moral flourishment to the
vigorous life of this early literature. The earnest enthusiasm of
Ennius was inherited by Lucretius,--his patriotic tones were repeated
by Virgil. The lofty oratory of the Aeneid sometimes sounds like an
echo of the grave and ardent style of early tragedy. The strong sense
and knowledge of the world, the frank communicativeness and lively
portraiture of Lucilius reappeared in the familiar writings of Horace,
while his fierce vehemence and bold invective were reproduced by the
vigorous satirist of the Empire.
[Footnote 1: De Orat. ii. 6.]
[Footnote 2: Adelphi, 18-21:--
Quom illis placet,
Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent,
Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio
Suo quisque tempore usust sine superbia.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. Juv. x. 167:--
Ut pueris placeas et declamatio fias.]
[Footnote 4: Referred to by Mommsen.]
SECOND PERIOD.
THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.
* * * * *
LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.