Literature and Art
Literary Reaction
The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of
view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we do not find in
the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of
the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively
authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest
sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the
soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and
historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of
the Punic wars. Much is only artificially transplanted, there
are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art
and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance
betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence
and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that
age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate
the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks.
It is otherwise in the epoch before us. The morning mists fell;
what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into the
difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own
talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work,
could not be carried farther now, when on the one hand the dull
sultriness of the approaching revolutionary storm began to fill
the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent
were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and
art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation.
The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible minds.
The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh called forth a literary
reaction, which destroyed the germs of promise contained in those
simple imitative attempts by the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted
up the wheat and the tares of the older type of literature together.
Scipionic Circle
This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the circle
which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and whose most prominent
members among the Roman world of quality were, in addition to
Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius
(consul in 614) and Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius
Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius,
and the philosopher Panaetius. Those who were familiar with the
Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly
impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad
translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had
furnished and Pacuvius continued to furnish. While patriotic
considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the
native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed
shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions
of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of
Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius--all those poets "who appeared to have a
licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically"--are found in
the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written
at the close of this period. People shrugged their shoulders at
the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate
attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded
somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his
youth; despairing of the transplantation of the marvellous tree,
they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose
substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves
in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign
masterpieces. The productiveness of this epoch displayed itself
chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the
poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences. The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art
and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of
persons of culture became separated from the body of the people,
was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society
and the vulgar Latin of the common people. The prologues of
Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language
forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this
circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among
the Romans now falls decidedly into the shade. In so far certainly
there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far
less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly
pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a
linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio
the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin. In like manner
literary activity gradually rises in public opinion from a trade
to an art. At the beginning of this period the preparation of
theatrical pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative
poems, was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of quality;
Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces; the writing of dramas
was entirely a trade, and not one of golden produce. About the time
of Sulla the state of matters had entirely changed. The remuneration
given to actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic
poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount of which
removed the stigma. By this means composing for the stage was raised
into a liberal art; and we accordingly find men of the highest
aristocratic circles, such as Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664, 667),
engaged in writing for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman
"poet's club" by the side of the ancestorless Accius. Art gains in
sympathy and honour; but the enthusiasm has departed in life and in
literature. The fearless self-confidence, which makes the poet a poet,
and which is very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found
in none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that fought with
Hannibal are correct, but feeble.
Tragedy
Pacuvius
Let us first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and the stage
itself. Tragedy has now for the first time her specialists; the
tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those of the preceding,
cultivate comedy and epos side by side. The appreciation of this
branch of art among the writing and reading circles was evidently
on the increase, but tragic poetry itself hardly improved. We now
meet with the national tragedy (-praetexta-), the creation of
Naevius, only in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately--
an after-growth of the Ennian epoch. Among the probably numerous
poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone acquired a
considerable name. Marcus Pacuvius from Brundisium (535-c. 625)
who in his earlier years earned his livelihood in Rome by painting
and only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as
respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than
the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within
the latter. He composed on the whole after the manner of his
countryman, uncle, and master Ennius. Polishing more carefully and
aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded
by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic
poetry and of rich style: in the fragments, however, that have
reached us proofs are not wanting to justify the censure of the
poet's language by Cicero and the censure of his taste by Lucilius;
his language appears more rugged than that of his predecessor, his
style of composition pompous and punctilious.(1) There are traces
that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy than to
religion; but he did not at any rate, like the latter, prefer
dramas chiming in with neological views and preaching sensuous
passion or modern enlightenment, and drew without distinction from
Sophocles or from Euripides--of that poetry with a decided special
aim, which almost stamps Ennius with genius, there can have been
no vein in the younger poet.
Accius
More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy were furnished
by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius Accius, son of a freedman
of Pisaurum (584-after 651), with the exception of Pacuvius the
only notable tragic poet of the seventh century. An active author
also in the field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless
laboured to introduce instead of the crude manner of his
predecessors greater purity of language and style into Latin
tragedy; yet even his inequality and incorrectness were
emphatically censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.
Greek Comedy
Terence
Far greater activity and far more important results are apparent
in the field of comedy. At the very commencement of this period
a remarkable reaction set in against the sort of comedy hitherto
prevalent and popular. Its representative Terentius (558-595) is
one of the most interesting phenomena, in a historical point of
view, in Roman literature. Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in
early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to the Greek
culture of the day, he seemed from the very first destined for the
vocation of giving back to the new Attic comedy that cosmopolitan
character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the
rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in
some measure lost. Even in the selection and employment of models
the contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor whom
alone we can now compare with him. Plautus chooses his pieces from
the whole range of the newer Attic comedy, and by no means disdains
the livelier and more popular comedians, such as Philemon; Terence
keeps almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished,
and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy. The method of
working up several Greek pieces into one Latin is retained by
Terence, because in fact from the state of the case it could not be
avoided by the Roman editors; but it is handled with incomparably
more skill and carefulness. The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt
departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the
verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense.
The not unfrequently coarse, but always effective laying on of
Roman local tints over the Greek ground-work, which Plautus was
fond of, is completely and designedly banished from Terence;
not an allusion puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly
a reminiscence;(2) even the Latin titles are replaced by Greek.
The same distinction shows itself in the artistic treatment. First
of all the players receive back their appropriate masks, and greater
care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no
longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take
place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties
and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot
is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps
everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of
suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat
flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, e. g.
against allegoric dreams.(3) Plautus paints his characters with
broad strokes, often after a stock-model, always with a view to
the gross effect from a distance and on the whole; Terence handles
the psychological development with a careful and often excellent
miniature-painting, as in the -Adelphi- for instance, where the
two old men--the easy bachelor enjoying life in town, and the sadly
harassed not at all refined country-landlord--form a masterly
contrast. The springs of action and the language of Plautus are
drawn from the tavern, those of Terence from the household of the
good citizen. The lazy Plautine hostelry, the very unconstrained
but very charming damsels with the hosts duly corresponding,
the sabre-rattling troopers, the menial world painted with an
altogether peculiar humour, whose heaven is the cellar, and whose
fate is the lash, have disappeared in Terence or at any rate
undergone improvement. In Plautus we find ourselves, on the whole,
among incipient or thorough rogues, in Terence again, as a rule,
among none but honest men; if occasionally a -leno- is plundered or
a young man taken to the brothel, it is done with a moral intent,
possibly out of brotherly love or to deter the boy from frequenting
improper haunts. The Plautine pieces are pervaded by the significant
antagonism of the tavern to the house; everywhere wives are
visited with abuse, to the delight of all husbands temporarily
emancipated and not quite sure of an amiable salutation at home.
The comedies of Terence are pervaded by a conception not more
moral, but doubtless more becoming, of the feminine nature and of
married life. As a rule, they end with a virtuous marriage, or,
if possible, with two--just as it was the glory of Menander that
he compensated for every seduction by a marriage. The eulogies of
a bachelor life, which are so frequent in Menander, are repeated by
his Roman remodeller only with characteristic shyness,(4) whereas
the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the -accouchement-,
the loving sister by the death-bed in the -Eunuchus- and the
-Andria- are very gracefully delineated; in the -Hecyra- there even
appears at the close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan,
likewise a genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is
true, very properly hissed. In Plautus the fathers throughout only
exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled by their sons;
with Terence in the -Heauton Timorumenos- the lost son is reformed
by his father's wisdom, and, as in general he is full of excellent
instructions as to education, so the point of the best of his
pieces, the -Adelphi-, turns on finding the right mean between the
too liberal training of the uncle and the too rigid training of the
father. Plautus writes for the great multitude and gives utterance
to profane and sarcastic speeches, so far as the censorship of the
stage at all allowed; Terence on the contrary describes it as his
aim to please the good and, like Menander, to offend nobody.
Plautus is fond of vigorous, often noisy dialogue, and his pieces
require a lively play of gesture in the actors; Terence confines
himself to "quiet conversation." The language of Plautus abounds in
burlesque turns and verbal witticisms, in alliterations, in comic
coinages of new terms, Aristophanic combinations of words, pithy
expressions of the day jestingly borrowed from the Greek. Terence
knows nothing of such caprices; his dialogue moves on with the
purest symmetry, and its points are elegant epigrammatic and
sententious turns. The comedy of Terence is not to be called an
improvement, as compared with that of Plautus, either in a poetical
or in a moral point of view. Originality cannot be affirmed of
either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and
the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed
by the circumstance that, while the younger poet reproduced the
agreeableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of
Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander,
such as the -Stichus-, the -Cistellaria-, the -Bacchides-, probably
preserve far more of the flowing charm of the original than the
comedies of the "-dimidiatus Menander-." And, while the aesthetic
critic cannot recognize an improvement in the transition from the
coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition
from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating
morality of Terence. But in point of language an improvement
certainly took place. Elegance of language was the pride of the
poet, and it was owing above all to its inimitable charm that the
most refined judges of art in aftertimes, such as Cicero, Caesar,
and Quinctilian, assigned the palm to him among all the Roman poets
of the republican age. In so far it is perhaps justifiable to date
a new era in Roman literature--the real essence of which lay not
in the development of Latin poetry, but in the development of
the Latin language--from the comedies of Terence as the first
artistically pure imitation of Hellenic works of art. The modern
comedy made its way amidst the most determined literary warfare.
The Plautine style of composing had taken root among the Roman
bourgeoisie; the comedies of Terence encountered the liveliest
opposition from the public, which found their "insipid language,"
their "feeble style," intolerable. The, apparently, pretty
sensitive poet replied in his prologues--which properly were not
intended for any such purpose--with counter-criticisms full of
defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude,
which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of
gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the
genteel world. He declared that he only aspired to the approval
of the "good"; in which doubtless there was not wanting a hint,
that it was not at all seemly to undervalue works of art which
had obtained the approval of the "few." He acquiesced in or even
favoured the report, that persons of quality aided him in composing
with their counsel or even with their cooperation.(5) In reality
he carried his point; even in literature the oligarchy prevailed,
and the artistic comedy of the exclusives supplanted the comedy
of the people: we find that about 620 the pieces of Plautus
disappeared from the set of stock plays. This is the more
significant, because after the early death of Terence no man of
conspicuous talent at all further occupied this field. Respecting
the comedies of Turpilius (651 at an advanced age) and other stop-
gaps wholly or almost wholly forgotten, a connoisseur already at
the close of this period gave it as his opinion, that the new
comedies were even much worse than the bad new pennies.(6)
National Comedy
Afranius
We have formerly shown(7) that in all probability already in the
course of the sixth century a national Roman comedy (-togata-) was
added to the Graeco-Roman (-palliata-), as a portraiture not of the
distinctive life of the capital, but of the ways and doings of the
Latin land. Of course the Terentian school rapidly took possession
of this species of comedy also; it was quite in accordance with
its spirit to naturalise Greek comedy in Italy on the one hand
by faithful translation, and on the other hand by pure Roman
imitation. The chief representative of this school was Lucius
Afranius (who flourished about 66). The fragments of his comedies
remaining give no distinct impression, but they are not
inconsistent with what the Roman critics of art remark regarding
him. His numerous national comedies were in their construction
thoroughly formed on the model of the Greek intrigue-piece; only,
as was natural in imitation, they were simpler and shorter. In the
details also he borrowed what pleased him partly from Menander,
partly from the older national literature. But of the Latin local
tints, which are so distinctly marked in Titinius the creator of
this species of art, we find not much in Afranius;(8) his subjects
retain a very general character, and may well have been throughout
imitations of particular Greek comedies with merely an alteration
of costume. A polished eclecticism and adroitness in composition--
literary allusions not unfrequently occur--are characteristic of
him as of Terence: the moral tendency too, in which his pieces
approximated to the drama, their inoffensive tenor in a police
point of view, their purity of language are common to him with the
latter. Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred spirit
with Menander and Terence by the judgment of posterity that he wore
the -toga- as Menander would have worn it had he been an Italian,
and by his own expression that to his mind Terence surpassed
all other poets.
Atellanae
The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman
literature. It was in itself very old:(9) long before Rome arose,
the merry youths of Latium may have improvised on festal occasions
in the masks once for all established for particular characters.
These pastimes obtained a fixed local background in the Latin
"asylum of fools," for which they selected the formerly Oscan
town of Atella, which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and
was thereby handed over to comic use; thenceforth the name of
"Oscan plays" or "plays of Atella" was commonly used for these
exhibitions.(10) But these pleasantries had nothing to do with
the stage(11) and with literature; they were performed by amateurs
where and when they pleased, and the text was not written or at any
rate was not published. It was not until the present period that
the Atellan piece was handed over to actors properly so called,(12)
and was employed, like the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece
particularly after tragedies; a change which naturally suggested
the extension of literary activity to that field. Whether this
authorship developed itself altogether independently, or whether
possibly the art-farce of Lower Italy, in various respects of
kindred character, gave the impulse to this Roman farce,(13) can
no longer be determined; that the several pieces were uniformly
original works, is certain. The founder of this new species of
literature, Lucius Pomponius from the Latin colony of Bononia,
appeared in the first half of the seventh century;(14) and along
with his pieces those of another poet Novius soon became
favourites. So far as the few remains and the reports of the old
-litteratores- allow us to form an opinion, they were short farces,
ordinarily perhaps of one act, the charm of which depended less on
the preposterous and loosely constructed plot than on the drastic
portraiture of particular classes and situations. Festal days and
public acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as
the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate";
so were also foreign nationalities--the Transalpine Gauls,
the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear
on the boards. The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer,
the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass
across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still
more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world
the part of our tailors. While the varied life of the city thus
received its due attention, the farmer with his joys and sorrows
was also represented in all aspects. The copiousness of this rural
repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature,
such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine,"
"the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin
Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig-
gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard." In these
pieces it was always the standing figures of the stupid and the
artful servant, the good old man, the wise man, that delighted
the public; the first in particular might never be wanting--
the -Pulcinello- of this farce--the gluttonous filthy -Maccus-,
hideously ugly and yet eternally in love, always on the point
of stumbling across his own path, set upon by all with jeers
and with blows and eventually at the close the regular scapegoat.
The titles "-Maccus Miles-," "-Maccus Copo-," "-Maccus Virgo-,"
"-Maccus Exul-," "-Macci Gemini-" may furnish the good-humoured
reader with some conception of the variety of entertainment in the
Roman masquerade. Although these farces, at least after they came
to be written, accommodated themselves to the general laws of
literature, and in their metres for instance followed the Greek
stage, they yet naturally retained a far more Latin and more
popular stamp than even the national comedy. The farce resorted
to the Greek world only under the form of travestied tragedy;(15)
and this style appears to have been cultivated first by Novius,
and not very frequently in any case. The farce of this poet moreover
ventured, if not to trespass on Olympus, at least to touch the most
human of the gods, Hercules: he wrote a -Hercules Auctionator-.
The tone, as a matter of course, was not the most refined; very
unambiguous ambiguities, coarse rustic obscenities, ghosts
frightening and occasionally devouring children, formed part of
the entertainment, and offensive personalities, even with the mention
of names, not unfrequently crept in. But there was no want also of
vivid delineation, of grotesque incidents, of telling jokes, and of
pithy sayings; and the harlequinade rapidly won for itself no
inconsiderable position in the theatrical life of the capital
and even in literature.
Dramatic Arrangements
Lastly as regards the development of dramatic arrangements we are
not in a position to set forth in detail--what is clear on the
whole--that the general interest in dramatic performances was
constantly on the increase, and that they became more and more
frequent and magnificent. Not only was there hardly any ordinary
or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without
dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private
houses representations by companies of hired actors were common.
It is true that, while probably various municipal towns already at
this time possessed theatres built of stone, the capital was still
without one; the building of a theatre, already contracted for,
had been again prohibited by the senate in 599 on the suggestion
of Publius Scipio Nasica. It was quite in the spirit of the
sanctimonious policy of this age, that the building of a permanent
theatre was prohibited out of respect for the customs of their
ancestors, but nevertheless theatrical entertainments were allowed
rapidly to increase, and enormous sums were expended annually
in erecting and decorating structures of boards for them.
The arrangements of the stage became visibly better. The improved
scenic arrangements and the reintroduction of masks about the time
of Terence are doubtless connected with the fact, that the erection
and maintenance of the stage and stage-apparatus were charged
in 580 on the public chest.(16) The plays which Lucius Mummius
produced after the capture of Corinth (609) formed an epoch in
the history of the theatre. It was probably then that a theatre
acoustically constructed after the Greek fashion and provided with
seats was first erected, and more care generally was expended on
the exhibitions.(17) Now also there is frequent mention of the
bestowal of a prize of victory--which implies the competition of
several pieces--of the audience taking a lively part for or against
the leading actors, of cliques and -claqueurs-. The decorations
and machinery were improved; moveable scenery artfully painted
and audible theatrical thunder made their appearance under the
aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in 655;(18) and twenty years
later (675) under the aedileship of the brothers Lucius and Marcus
Lucullus came the changing of the decorations by shifting the
scenes. To the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman
actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (d. about 692 at a great age),
throughout several generations the ornament and pride of the Roman
stage,(19) the friend and welcome boon-companion of Sulla--to whom
we shall have to recur in the sequel.
Satura
In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is the
insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth century had
occupied decidedly the first place in the literature destined for
reading; it had numerous representatives in the seventh, but not a
single one who had even temporary success. From the present epoch
there is hardly anything to be reported save a number of rude
attempts to translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian
Annals, such as the "Istrian War" of Hostius and the "Annals
(perhaps) of the Gallic War" by Aulus Furius (about 650), which to
all appearance took up the narrative at the very point where Ennius
had broken off--the description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577.
In didactic and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears. The only
successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to show,
belong to the domain of what was called -Satura---a species of art,
which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed of any form and
admitted any sort of contents, and accordingly in default of all
proper generic characters derived its individual shape wholly from
the individuality of each poet, and occupied a position not merely
on the boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than half
beyond the bounds of literature proper. The humorous poetical
epistles, which one of the younger men of the Scipionic circle,
Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, sent home
from the camp of Corinth to his friends, were still read with
pleasure a century afterwards; and numerous poetical pleasantries
of that sort not destined for publication probably proceeded at
that time from the rich social and intellectual life of the
better circles of Rome.
Lucilius
Its representative in literature is Gaius Lucilius (606-651) sprung
of a respectable family in the Latin colony of Suessa, and likewise
a member of the Scipionic circle. His poems are, as it were, open
letters to the public. Their contents, as a clever successor
gracefully says, embrace the whole life of a cultivated man of
independence, who looks upon the events passing on the political
stage from the pit and occasionally from the side-scenes; who
converses with the best of his epoch as his equals; who follows
literature and science with sympathy and intelligence without
wishing personally to pass for a poet or scholar; and who, in fine,
makes his pocket-book the confidential receptacle for everything
good and bad that he meets with, for his political experiences and
expectations, for grammatical remarks and criticisms on art, for
incidents of his own life, visits, dinners, journeys, as well as
for anecdotes which he has heard. Caustic, capricious, thoroughly
individual, the Lucilian poetry has yet the distinct stamp of an
oppositional and, so far, didactic aim in literature as well as in
morals and politics; there is in it something of the revolt of the
country against the capital; the Suessan's sense of his own purity
of speech and honesty of life asserts itself in antagonism to the
great Babel of mingled tongues and corrupt morals. The aspiration
of the Scipionic circle after literary correctness, especially in
point of language, finds critically its most finished and most
clever representative in Lucilius. He dedicated his very first
book to Lucius Stilo, the founder of Roman philology,(20) and
designated as the public for which he wrote not the cultivated
circles of pure and classical speech, but the Tarentines, the
Bruttians, the Siculi, or in other words the half-Greeks of Italy,
whose Latin certainly might well require a corrective. Whole books
of his poems are occupied with the settlement of Latin orthography
and prosody, with the combating of Praenestine, Sabine, Etruscan
provincialisms, with the exposure of current solecisms; along with
which, however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the
insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,(21)
and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest
with the exclusive fineness of his language.(22) But the poet
inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far more
earnestly than he preaches pure and simple Latinity. For this
his position gave him peculiar advantages. Although by descent,
estate, and culture on a level with the genteel Romans of his time
and possessor of a handsome house in the capital, he was yet not a
Roman burgess, but a Latin; even his position towards Scipio, under
whom he had served in his early youth during the Numantine war, and
in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be connected with the
fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations to the Latins and was
their patron in the political feuds of the time.(23) He was thus
precluded from a public life, and he disdained the career of a
speculator--he had no desire, as he once said, to "cease to be
Lucilius in order to become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived
in the sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations preceding
the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of the Roman
grandees and yet not exactly their client, at once in the midst
of the strife of political coteries and parties and yet not directly
taking part with one or another; in a way similar to Beranger,
of whom there is much that reminds us in the political and poetical
position of Lucilius. From this position he uttered his comments
on public life with a sound common sense that was not to be
shaken, with a good humour that was inexhaustible, and with
a wit perpetually gushing:
-Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto
Toto itidem pariterque die populusque patresque
Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam.
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes-.
The illustrations of this inexhaustible text remorselessly, without
omitting his friends or even the poet himself, assailed the evils
of the age, the coterie-system, the endless Spanish war-service,
and the like; the very commencement of his Satires was a great
debate in the senate of the Olympian gods on the question, whether
Rome deserved to enjoy the continued protection of the celestials.
Corporations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally
mentioned by name; the poetry of political polemics, shut out
from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-breath of
the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the most pungent wit
illustrated with the richest imagery--a power which still entrances
us even in the remains that survive--pierce and crush their
adversary "as by a drawn sword." In this--in the moral ascendency
and the proud sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa--lies the
reason why the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of
Roman poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his
superiority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier
poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of thorough
culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet
like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters
before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry to
be nice; useless prolixity, slovenly repetition of the same turn,
culpable instances of carelessness frequently occur: the first
word, Latin or Greek, is always the best. The metres are similarly
treated, particularly the very predominant hexameter: if we transpose
the words--his clever imitator says--no man would observe that
he had anything else before him than simple prose; in point of
effect they can only be compared to our doggerel verses.(24)
The poems of Terence and those of Lucilius stand on the same level
of culture, and have the same relation to each other as a carefully
prepared and polished literary work has to a letter written on the
spur of the moment. But the incomparably higher intellectual gifts
and the freer view of life, which mark the knight of Suessa as
compared with the African slave, rendered his success as rapid
and brilliant as that of Terence had been laborious and doubtful;
Lucilius became immediately the favourite of the nation, and he
like Beranger could say of his poems that "they alone of all were
read by the people." The uncommon popularity of the Lucilian poem
is, in a historical point of view, a remarkable event; we see from
it that literature was already a power, and beyond doubt we should
fall in with various traces of its influence, if a thorough history
of this period had been preserved. Posterity has only confirmed
the judgment of contemporaries; the Roman judges of art who were
opposed to the Alexandrian school assigned to Lucilius the first
rank among all the Latin poets. So far as satire can be regarded
as a distinct form of art at all, Lucilius created it; and in it
created the only species of art which was peculiar to the Romans
and was bequeathed by them to posterity.
Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school nothing
occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems translated from or
modelled on Alexandrian epigrams, which deserve notice not on their
own account, but as the first harbingers of the later epoch of
Roman literature. Leaving out of account some poets little known
and whose dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to
this category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652(25) and Lucius
Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657. The latter seems
to have been the first to circulate among the Romans various
geographical tales current among the Greeks, such as the Delian
legend of Latona, the fables of Europa and of the marvellous bird
Phoenix; as it was likewise reserved for him on his travels to
discover at Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which
might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before their
migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines--a discovery
which the Roman annals did not neglect devoutly to register.
Historical Composition
Polybius
In historical composition this epoch is especially marked by the
emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy either by birth
or in respect of his intellectual and literary standpoint, but who
first or rather alone brought literary appreciation and description
to bear on Rome's place in the world, and to whom all subsequent
generations, and we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of
the Roman development. Polybius (c. 546-c. 627) of Megalopolis in
the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman Lycortas, took part
apparently as early as 565 in the expedition of the Romans against
the Celts of Asia Minor, and was afterwards on various occasions,
especially during the third Macedonian war, employed by his
countrymen in military and diplomatic affairs. After the crisis
occasioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along with the
other Achaean hostages to Italy,(26) where he lived in exile for
seventeen years (587-604) and was introduced by the sons of Paullus
to the genteel circles of the capital. By the sending back of
the Achaean hostages(27) he was restored to his home, where he
thenceforth acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy
and the Romans. He was present at the destruction of Carthage
and of Corinth (608). He seemed educated, as it were, by destiny
to comprehend the historical position of Rome more clearly than
the Romans of that day could themselves. From the place which
he occupied, a Greek statesman and a Roman prisoner, esteemed and
occasionally envied for his Hellenic culture by Scipio Aemilianus
and the first men of Rome generally, he saw the streams, which had
so long flowed separately, meet together in the same channel and
the history of the states of the Mediterranean resolve itself into
the hegemony of Roman power and Greek culture. Thus Polybius
became the first Greek of note, who embraced with serious
conviction the comprehensive view of the Scipionic circle, and
recognized the superiority of Hellenism in the sphere of intellect
and of the Roman character in the sphere of politics as facts,
regarding which history had given her final decision, and to which
people on both sides were entitled and bound to submit. In this
spirit he acted as a practical statesman, and wrote his history.
If in his youth he had done homage to the honourable but
impracticable local patriotism of the Achaeans, during his later
years, with a clear discernment of inevitable necessity, he
advocated in the community to which he belonged the policy of the
closest adherence to Rome. It was a policy in the highest degree
judicious and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from
being high-spirited or proud. Nor was Polybius able wholly to
disengage himself from the vanity and paltriness of the Hellenic
statesmanship of the time. He was hardly released from exile,
when he proposed to the senate that it should formally secure to
the released their former rank in their several homes; whereupon
Cato aptly remarked, that this looked to him as if Ulysses were to
return to the cave of Polyphemus to request from the giant his hat
and girdle. He often made use of his relations with the great
men in Rome to benefit his countrymen; but the way in which he
submitted to, and boasted of, the illustrious protection somewhat
approaches fawning servility. His literary activity breathes
throughout the same spirit as his practical action. It was
the task of his life to write the history of the union of the
Mediterranean states under the hegemony of Rome. From the first
Punic war down to the destruction of Carthage and Corinth his work
embraces the fortunes of all the civilized states--namely Greece,
Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, and Italy--and
exhibits in causal connection the mode in which they came under
the Roman protectorate; in so far he describes it as his object to
demonstrate the fitness and reasonableness of the Roman hegemony.
In design as in execution, this history stands in clear and
distinct contrast with the contemporary Roman as well as with the
contemporary Greek historiography. In Rome history still remained
wholly at the stage of chronicle; there existed doubtless important
historical materials, but what was called historical composition
was restricted--with the exception of the very respectable but
purely individual writings of Cato, which at any rate did not reach
beyond the rudiments of research and narration--partly to nursery
tales, partly to collections of notices. The Greeks had certainly
exhibited historical research and had written history; but the
conceptions of nation and state had been so completely lost amidst
the distracted times of the Diadochi, that none of the numerous
historians succeeded in following the steps of the great Attic
masters in spirit and in truth, or in treating from a general
point of view the matter of world-wide interest in the history
of the times.
Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were
pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only
too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the
bitterness of the age. Among the Romans as among the Greeks there
was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes. Polybius,
a Peloponnesian, as has been justly remarked, and holding
intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics
as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits,
treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and
furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was
at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of
the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation. Never perhaps
has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an
author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius.
The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him
at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real
historical connection of events. The legend, the anecdote,
the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the
description of countries and peoples, the representation of
political and mercantile relations--all the facts of so infinite
importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of
being nailed to a particular year--are put into possession of their
long-suspended rights. In the procuring of historic materials
Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps
paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives
comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations,
makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for
collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine,
methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean
states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.(28)
Truthfulness is his nature. In all great matters he has no
interest for one state or against another, for this man or against
that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential
connection of events, to present which in their true relation of
causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole
task of the historian. Lastly, the narrative is a model of
completeness, simplicity, and clearness. Still all these uncommon
advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank.
Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical,
with great understanding, but with the understanding alone.
History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem;
Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one. The whole alone
has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event,
the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet
properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly
artificial mechanism which is named the state. So far Polybius was
certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the
Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of
raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness
without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest
sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself
with wonderful almost mathematical consistency. But the element of
moral freedom bears sway in the history of every people, and it was
not neglected by Polybius in the history of Rome with impunity.
His treatment of all questions, in which right, honour, religion
are involved, is not merely shallow, but radically false. The same
holds true wherever a genetic construction is required; the purely
mechanical attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes,
are sometimes altogether desperate; there is hardly, for instance,
a more foolish political speculation than that which derives
the excellent constitution of Rome from a judicious mixture of
monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces
the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution.
His conception of relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and
destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of
treating religious matters is altogether offensive. The narrative,
preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek
historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and
clear, but flat and languid, digressing with undue frequency into
polemical discussions or into biographical, not seldom very self-
sufficient, description of his own experiences. A controversial
vein pervades the whole work; the author destined his treatise
primarily for the Romans, and yet found among them only a very
small circle that understood him; he felt that he remained in the
eyes of the Romans a foreigner, in the eyes of his countrymen a
renegade, and that with his grand conception of his subject he
belonged more to the future than to the present Accordingly he was
not exempt from a certain ill-humour and personal bitterness, which
frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his
attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical
Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the
historian to that of the reviewer. Polybius is not an attractive
author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all
ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can
be named to whom we are indebted for so much real instruction.
His books are like the sun in the field of Roman history; at the point
where they begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite
and Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end a new
and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.
Roman Chroniclers
In singular contrast to this grand conception and treatment of
Roman history by a foreigner stands the contemporary historical
literature of native growth. At the beginning of this period we
still find some chronicles written in Greek such as that already
mentioned(29) of Aulus Postumius (consul in 603), full of wretched
rationalizing, and that of Gaius Acilius (who closed it at an
advanced age about 612). Yet under the influence partly of
Catonian patriotism, partly of the more refined culture of
the Scipionic circle, the Latin language gained so decided an
ascendency in this field, that of the later historical works not
more than one or two occur written in Greek;(30) and not only so,
but the older Greek chronicles were translated into Latin and were
probably read mainly in these translations. Unhappily beyond the
employment of the mother-tongue there is hardly anything else
deserving of commendation in the chronicles of this epoch composed
in Latin. They were numerous and detailed enough--there are
mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina (about 608),
of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of Gaius Sempronius
Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius Fannius (consul in 632).
To these falls to be added the digest of the official annals of
the city in eighty books, which Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul
in 621), a man esteemed also as a jurist, prepared and published
as -pontifex maximus-, thereby closing the city-chronicle in so
far as thenceforth the pontifical records, although not exactly
discontinued, were no longer at any rate, amidst the increasing
diligence of private chroniclers, taken account of in literature.
All these annals, whether they gave themselves forth as private or
as official works, were substantially similar compilations of the
extant historical and quasi-historical materials; and the value of
their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond
doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased.
Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction, and it
would be very foolish to quarrel with Naevius and Pictor because
they have not acted otherwise than Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus;
but the later attempts to build houses out of such castles in the
air put even the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in
tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of smooth
and downright invention will fill it up with playful facility.
The eclipses of the sun, the numbers of the census, family-registers,
triumphs, are without hesitation carried back from the current year
up to the year One; it stands duly recorded, in what year, month,
and day king Romulus went up to heaven, and how king Servius
Tullius triumphed over the Etruscans first on the 25th November
183, and again on the 25th May 187, In entire harmony with such
details accordingly the vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged from
Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and even the
identical sow, which had served as a guide to Aeneas, was preserved
well pickled in the Roman temple of Vesta. With the lying
disposition of a poet these chroniclers of rank combine all the
tiresome exactness of a notary, and treat their great subject
throughout with the dulness which necessarily results from the
elimination at once of all poetical and all historical elements.
When we read, for instance, in Piso that Romulus avoided indulging
in his cups when he had a sitting of the senate next day; or that
Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines out of patriotism,
with a view to deprive the enemy of their shields; we cannot be
surprised at the judgment of intelligent contemporaries as to all
this sort of scribbling, "that it was not writing history, but
telling stories to children." Of far greater excellence were
isolated works on the history of the recent past and of the
present, particularly the history of the Hannibalic war by Lucius
Caelius Antipater (about 633) and the history of his own time
by Publius Sempronius Asellio, who was a little younger. These
exhibited at least valuable materials and an earnest spirit of truth,
in the case of Antipater also a lively, although strongly affected,
style of narrative; yet, judging from all testimonies and fragments,
none of these books came up either in pithy form or in originality
to the "Origines" of Cato, who unhappily created as little of a school
in the field of history as in that of politics.
Memoirs and Speeches
The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral, species of
historical literature--memoirs, letters, and speeches--were
strongly represented also, at least as respects quantity.
The first statesmen of Rome already recorded in person their
experiences: such as Marcus Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus
(consul in 649), Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the
regent Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been of
importance for literature otherwise than by the substance of their
contents. The collection of letters of Cornelia, the mother of
the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the classical purity of
the language and the high spirit of the writer, partly as the first
correspondence published in Rome, and as the first literary
production of a Roman lady. The literature of speeches preserved
at this period the stamp impressed on it by Cato; advocates'
pleadings were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such
speeches as were published were political pamphlets. During the
revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in
extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions
there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and
the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in
literature from the important position of their authors or from
their own weight. Such were the political speeches of Gaius
Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin
as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of
Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the
time--his description of the senatorial juryman has been given
already(31)--the national comedy borrowed various points; such
above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose
fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned
earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny
of that lofty nature.
Sciences
In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by
Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents
a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among
the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue,
and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a
machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place
were distinctly specified. But the later men of science, such
as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside
this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences
of general culture and in the special professional sciences.
The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance
of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this
rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form. We have already
spoken(32) in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture,
grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far
as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training
and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional
sciences properly so called.
Philology
In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in
close association with the philological treatment--long ago placed
on a sure basis--of Greek literature. It was already mentioned
that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found
their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text;(33) it was also
noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist
on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most
noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with
the regulation of orthography and of grammar. At the same period
we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the
historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy
annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors"
and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates," can hardly have been better
than their chronicles. Of more interest were the treatise on
the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as
the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable
for political objects,(34) and the metrically composed -Didascaliae-
of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the
Latin drama. But those early attempts at a scientific treatment
of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and
strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer-
Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but
a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.
Stilo
The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language
and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a
scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35) He first
went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on
the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables. He devoted his special
attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a
list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine.
He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the
origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings
and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time
brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his
research. The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is
attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical,
and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires
of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman
philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by
transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into
things to his disciple Varro.
Rhetoric
The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might
be expected, of a more subordinate kind. There was nothing here to
be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of
the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly
the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the
need for them, partly on account of vanity and money. Such a
manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's
dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion
then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and
Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely
for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above
all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.
Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet
distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which
the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science
might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is
bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics--that "loquacious science
of inability to speak"--whose finished master, for sheer fear of
expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to
pronounce his own name. The Greek school-terminology is throughout
and intentionally avoided. Very earnestly the author points out
the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that
the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help
himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the
school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in
his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those
forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice
in the Roman advocate-world. It deserves attention, that the
opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly
sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37)
continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured
to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence
of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity
and a greater usefulness.
Philosophy
Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature,
since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman philosophy
nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin philosophical
authorship. It cannot even be shown with certainty that there
were Latin translations of popular summaries of philosophy
belonging to this period; those who pursued philosophy read
and disputed in Greek.
Professional Sciences
Jurisprudence
In the professional sciences there was but little activity.
Well as the Romans understood how to farm and how to calculate,
physical and mathematical research gained no hold among them.
The consequences of neglecting theory appeared practically in
the low state of medical knowledge and of a portion of the military
sciences. Of all the professional sciences jurisprudence alone was
flourishing. We cannot trace its internal development with
chronological accuracy. On the whole ritual law fell more and
more into the shade, and at the end of this period stood nearly
in the same position as the canon law at the present day. The finer
and more profound conception of law, on the other hand, which
substitutes for outward criteria the motive springs of action
within--such as the development of the ideas of offences arising
from intention and from carelessness respectively, and of
possession entitled to temporary protection--was not yet in
existence at the time of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age
of Cicero, and probably owed its elaboration substantially to the
present epoch. The reaction of political relations on the development
of law has been already indicated on several occasions; it was
not always advantageous. By the institution of the tribunal of the
-Centumviri- to deal with inheritance,(38) for instance, there was
introduced in the law of property a college of jurymen, which, like
the criminal authorities, instead of simply applying the law placed
itself above it and with its so-called equity undermined the legal
institutions; one consequence of which among others was the
irrational principle, that any one, whom a relative had passed over
in his testament, was at liberty to propose that the testament
should be annulled by the court, and the court decided according
to its discretion.
The development of juristic literature admits of being more
distinctly recognized. It had hitherto been restricted to
collections of formularies and explanations of terms in the laws;
at this period there was first formed a literature of opinions
(-responsa-), which answers nearly to our modern collections of
precedents. These opinions--which were delivered no longer merely
by members of the pontifical college, but by every one who found
persons to consult him, at home or in the open market-place,
and with which were already associated rational and polemical
illustrations and the standing controversies peculiar to
jurisprudence--began to be noted down and to be promulgated in
collections about the beginning of the seventh century. This was
done first by the younger Cato (d. about 600) and by Marcus Brutus
(nearly contemporary); and these collections were, as it would
appear, arranged in the order of matters.(39) A strictly
systematic treatment of the law of the land soon followed.
Its founder was the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Mucius Scaevola
(consul in 659, d. 672),(40) in whose family jurisprudence was,
like the supreme priesthood, hereditary. His eighteen books
on the -Ius Civile-, which embraced the positive materials of
jurisprudence--legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and
authorities--partly from the older collections, partly from oral
tradition in as great completeness as possible, formed the starting-
point and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law; in like
manner his compendious treatise of "Definitions" (--oroi--) became
the basis of juristic summaries and particularly of the books
of Rules. Although this development of law proceeded of course
in the main independently of Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with
the philosophico-practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond
doubt gave a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of
jurisprudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of
the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title. We have
already remarked that in several more external matters Roman
jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa.(41)
Art exhibits still less pleasing results. In architecture,
sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and more
general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the exercise of
native art retrograded rather than advanced. It became more and
more customary for those sojourning in Grecian lands personally to
inspect the works of art; for which in particular the winter-
quarters of Sulla's army in Asia Minor in 670-671 formed an epoch.
Connoisseur-ship developed itself also in Italy. They had
commenced with articles in silver and bronze; about the commencement
of this epoch they began to esteem not merely Greek statues,
but also Greek pictures. The first picture publicly exhibited in
Rome was the Bacchus of Aristides, which Lucius Mummius withdrew
from the sale of the Corinthian spoil, because king Attalus offered
as much as 6000 -denarii- (260 pounds) for it. The buildings became
more splendid; and in particular transmarine, especially Hymettian,
marble (Cipollino) came into use for that purpose--the Italian
marble quarries were not yet in operation. A magnificent colonnade
still admired in the time of the empire, which Quintus Metellus
(consul in 611) the conqueror of Macedonia constructed in the
Campus Martius, enclosed the first marble temple which the capital
had seen; it was soon followed by similar structures built on the
Capitol by Scipio Nasica (consul in 616), and near to the Circus by
Gnaeus Octavius (consul in 626). The first private house adorned
with marble columns was that of the orator Lucius Crassus (d. 663)
on the Palatine.(42) But where they could plunder or purchase,
instead of creating for themselves, they did so; it was a wretched
indication of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already
began to employ the columns of the old Greek temples; the Roman
Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla with those of the
temple of Zeus at Athens. The works, that were produced in Rome,
proceeded from the hands of foreigners; the few Roman artists of
this period, who are particularly mentioned, are without exception
Italian or transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither. Such was
the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian Salamis,
who among other works restored the Roman docks and built for
Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple of Jupiter Stator
in the basilica constructed by him, and for Decimus Brutus (consul
in 616) the temple of Mars in the Flaminian circus; with the sculptor
Pasiteles (about 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images
of the gods in ivory for Roman temples; and with the painter
and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned to paint
the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus (587). It is
significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit in comparison
with those of the previous period a greater variety of types,
but a retrogression rather than an improvement in the cutting
of the dies.
Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner from Hellas
to Rome, solely in order to be there applied to the enhancement of
decorative luxury. Such foreign arts were certainly not new in
Rome; the state had from olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players
and dancers to appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and
the lowest class of the Roman people had previously followed
this trade. But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical
performances should form the regular accompaniment of a genteel
banquet. Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio
Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches,
in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls--the dregs of the
people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up
together--received instruction from a ballet-master in far from
decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of
the proscribed Greek stringed instruments. It was a novelty too--
not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius
Scaevola (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as
nimbly as he solved the most complicated questions of law at home--
as that young Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts
before all the people at the festal games of Sulla. The government
occasionally attempted to check such practices; as for instance in
639, when all musical instruments, with the exception of the simple
flute indigenous in Latium, were prohibited by the censors.
But Rome was no Sparta; the lax government by such prohibitions
rather drew attention to the evils than attempted to remedy them
by a sharp and consistent application of the laws.
If, in conclusion, we glance back at the picture as a whole which
the literature and art of Italy unfold to our view from the death
of Ennius to the beginning of the Ciceronian age, we find in these
respects as compared with the preceding epoch a most decided
decline of productiveness. The higher kinds of literature--such
as epos, tragedy, history--have died out or have been arrested in
their development. The subordinate kinds--the translation and
imitation of the intrigue-piece, the farce, the poetical and prose
brochure--alone are successful; in this last field of literature
swept by the full hurricane of revolution we meet with the two men
of greatest literary talent in this epoch, Gaius Gracchus and Gaius
Lucilius, who stand out amidst a number of more or less mediocre
writers just as in a similar epoch of French literature Courier
and Beranger stand out amidst a multitude of pretentious nullities.
In the plastic and delineative arts likewise the production,
always weak, is now utterly null. On the other hand the receptive
enjoyment of art and literature flourished; as the Epigoni of
this period in the political field gathered in and used up the
inheritance that fell to their fathers, we find them in this field
also as diligent frequenters of plays, as patrons of literature,
as connoisseurs and still more as collectors in art. The most
honourable aspect of this activity was its learned research,
which put forth a native intellectual energy, more especially in
jurisprudence and in linguistic and antiquarian investigation.
The foundation of these sciences which properly falls within the
present epoch, and the first small beginnings of an imitation of
the Alexandrian hothouse poetry, already herald the approaching
epoch of Roman Alexandrinism. All the productions of the present
epoch are smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than
the creations of the sixth century. The literati and the friends
of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down
on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed
or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men
who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves
that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have
ever and anon perhaps felt in the still depths of the heart
a secret longing to stray once more in the delightful paths
of youthful error.
End of Volume IV
NOTES FOR VOLUME IV
Chapter I
1. III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain.
2. Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in
Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul
had a similar origin afterwards. The formation of transmarine burgess-
communities only began at a later date with Carthage and Narbo: yet
it is remarkable that Scipio already made a first step, in a certain
sense, in that direction.
3. III. VII. Gracchus
4. The chronology of the war with Viriathus is far from being
precisely settled. It is certain that the appearance of Viriathus
dates from the conflict with Vetilius (Appian, Hisp. 61; Liv. lii.;
Oros. v. 4), and that he perished in 615 (Diod. Vat. p. 110, etc.);
the duration of his rule is reckoned at eight (Appian, Hisp. 63), ten
(Justin, xliv. 2), eleven (Diodorus, p. 597), fifteen (Liv. liv.;
Eutrop. iv. 16; Oros. v. 4; Flor. i. 33), and twenty years (Vellei.
ii. 90). The first estimate possesses some probability, because the
appearance of Viriathus is connected both in Diodorus (p. 591; Vat.
p. 107, 108) and in Orosius (v. 4) with the destruction of Corinth.
Of the Roman governors, with whom Viriathus fought, several undoubtedly
belong to the northern province; for though Viriathus was at work
chiefly in the southern, he was not exclusively so (Liv. lii.);
consequently we must not calculate the number of the years of his
generalship by the number of these names.
5. IV. I. Celtiberian War
6. III. VII. Massinissa
7. III. VI. Peace, III. VII. Carthage
8. The line of the coast has been in the course of centuries so
much changed that the former local relations are but imperfectly
recognizable on the ancient site. The name of the city is preserved
by Cape Cartagena--also called from the saint's tomb found there
Ras Sidi bu Said--the eastern headland of the peninsula, projecting
into the gulf with its highest point rising to 393 feet above
the level of the sea.
9. The dimensions given by Beule (Fouilles a Carthage, 1861)
are as follows in metres and in Greek feet (1=0.309 metre):--
Outer wall 2 metres = 6 1/2 feet.
Corridor 1.9 " = 6 "
Front wall of casemates 1 " = 3 1/4 "
Casemate rooms 4.2 " = 14 "
Back wall of casemates 1 " = 3 1/4 "
------------------------
Whole breadth of the walls 10.1 metres = 33 feet.
Or, as Diodorus (p. 522) states it, 22 cubits (1 Greek cubit = 1 1/2
feet), while Livy (ap. Oros. iv. 22) and Appian (Pun. 95), who seem
to have had before them another less accurate passage of Polybius,
state the breadth of the walls at 30 feet. The triple wall of
Appian--as to which a false idea has hitherto been diffused by
Floras (i. 31)--denotes the outer wall, and the front and back walls
of the casemates. That this coincidence is not accidental, and that
we have here in reality the remains of the famed walls of Carthage
before us, will be evident to every one: the objections of Davis
(Carthage and her Remains, p. 370 et seq.) only show how little
even the utmost zeal can adduce in opposition to the main results
of Beule. Only we must maintain that all the ancient authorities
give the statements of which we are now speaking with reference not
to the citadel-wall, but to the city-wall on the landward side, of
which the wall along the south side of the citadel-hill was an
integral part (Oros. iv. 22). In accordance with this view, the
excavations at the citadel-hill on the east, north, and west, have
shown no traces of fortifications, whereas on the south side they
have brought to light the very remains of this great wall. There is
no reason for regarding these as the remains of a separate
fortification of the citadel distinct from the city wall; it may
be presumed that further excavations at a corresponding depth--the
foundation of the city wall discovered at the Byrsa lies fifty-six
feet beneath the present surface--will bring to light like, or at
any rate analogous, foundations along the whole landward side,
although it is probable that at the point where the walled suburb of
Magalia rested on the main wall the fortification was either weaker
from the first or was early neglected. The length of the wall as a
whole cannot be stated with precision; but it must have been very
considerable, for three hundred elephants were stabled there, and
the stores for their fodder and perhaps other spaces also as well as
the gates are to be taken into account. It is easy to conceive how
the inner city, within the walls of which the Byrsa was included,
should, especially by way of contrast to the suburb of Magalia which
had its separate circumvallation, be sometimes itself called Byrsa
(App. Pun. 117; Nepos, ap. Serv. Aen. i. 368).
10. Such is the height given by Appian, l. c.; Diodorus gives
the height, probably inclusive of the battlements, at 40 cubits
or 60 feet. The remnant preserved is still from 13 to 16 feet
(4-5 metres) high.
11. The rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation
have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of
the entrances is not specified. Whether these dimensions and the
proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them
as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate
investigation. The partition-walls, which separate the apartments,
have a thickness of 1.1 metre = 3 1/2 feet.
12. Oros. iv. 22. Fully 2000 paces, or--as Polybius must have
said--16 stadia, are=about 3000 metres. The citadel-hill, on which
the church of St. Louis now stands, measures at the top about 1400,
half-way up about 2600, metres in circumference (Beule, p. 22); for
the circumference at the base that estimate will very well suffice.
13. It now bears the fort Goletta.
14. That this Phoenician word signifies a basin excavated in a
circular shape, is shown both by Diodorus (iii. 44), and by its
being employed by the Greeks to denote a "cup." It thus suits only
the inner harbour of Carthage, and in that sense it is used by Strabo
(xvii. 2, 14, where it is strictly applied to the admiral's island)
and Fest. Ep. v. -cothones-, p. 37. Appian (Pun. 127) is not quite
accurate in describing the rectangular harbour in front of the Cothon
as part of it.
15. --Oios pepnutai, toi de skiai aissousin--.
16. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria, III. IX. Macedonia
17. III. X. Macedonia Broken Up
18. This road was known already by the author of the pseudo-
Aristotelian treatise De Mirabilibus as a commercial route between
the Adriatic and Black seas, viz. As that along which the wine jars
from Corcyra met halfway those from Thasos and Lesbos. Even now
it runs substantially in the same direction from Durazzo, cutting
through the mountains of Bagora (Candavian chain) near the lake
of Ochrida (Lychnitis), by way of Monastir to Salonica.
19. III. X. Greek National Party
20. III. IX. The Achaeans
21. III. IX. The Achaeans
22. At Sabine townships, at Parma, and even at Italica in Spain
(p. 214), several pediments marked with the name of Mummius have
been brought to light, which once supported gifts forming part
of the spoil.
23. III. III. Organization of the Provinces
24. III. VIII. Final Regulation of Greece
25. The question whether Greece did or did not become a Roman
province in 608, virtually runs into a dispute about words. It is
certain that the Greek communities throughout remained "free" (C. I.
Gr. 1543, 15; Caesar, B. C. iii. 5; Appian, Mithr. 58; Zonar. ix.
31). But it is no less certain that Greece was then "taken possession
of" by the Romans (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21; 1 Maccab. viii. 9, 10); that
thenceforth each community paid a fixed tribute to Rome (Pausan. vii.
16, 6; comp. Cic. De Prov. Cons. 3, 5), the little island of Gyarus,
for instance, paying 150 --drachmae-- annually (Strabo, x. 485);
that the "rods and axes" of the Roman governor thenceforth ruled
in Greece (Polyb. xxxviii. l. c.; comp. Cic. Verr. l. i. 21, 55),
and that he thenceforth exercised the superintendence over the
constitutions of the cities (C. I. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain
cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. I. Gr. 1543; Plut. Cim. 2), just
as the senate had hitherto done; and that, lastly, the Macedonian
provincial era was also in use in Greece. Between these facts there
is no inconsistency, or at any rate none further than is involved
in the position of the free cities generally, which are spoken of
sometimes as if excluded from the province (e. g. Sueton. Cats., 25;
Colum. xi. 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant.
Jud. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were,
no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some
portions of Euboea (C. I. Gr. 5879), and there were no subjects
in the strict sense there at all; yet if we look to the relations
practically subsisting between the Greek communities and the
Macedonian governor, Greece may be reckoned as included in the
province of Macedonia in the same manner as Massilia in the province
of Narbo or Dyrrhachium in that of Macedonia. We find even cases
that go much further: Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere
burgess or Latin communities and was yet made a province by Sulla,
and in the time of Caesar we meet with regions which consisted
exclusively of burgess-communities and yet by no means ceased to
be provinces. In these cases the fundamental idea of the Roman
-provinicia- comes out very clearly; it was primarily nothing but
a "command," and all the administrative and judicial functions of
the commandant were originally collateral duties and corollaries
of his military position.
On the other hand, if we look to the formal sovereignty of the free
communities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not
altered in point of constitutional law by the events of 608. It was
a difference de facto rather than de jure, when instead of the Achaean
league the individual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side
of Rome as tributary protected states, and when, after the erection
of Macedonia as a separate Roman province, the latter relieved the
authorities of the capital of the superintendence over the Greek
client-states. Greece therefore may or may not be regarded as a part
of the "command" of Macedonia, according as the practical or the
formal point of view preponderates; but the preponderance is justly
conceded to the former.
26. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
27. A remarkable proof of this is found in the names employed to
designate the fine bronze and copper wares of Greece, which in the time
of Cicero were called indiscriminately "Corinthian" or "Delian" copper.
Their designation in Italy was naturally derived not from the places
of manufacture but from those of export (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 2, 9);
although, of course, we do not mean to deny that similar vases were
manufactured in Corinth and Delos themselves.
28. III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus
29. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
30. III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus
31. Several letters recently brought to light (Munchener
Sitzungsberichte, 1860, p. 180 et seq.) from the kings Eumenes II,
and Attalus II to the priest of Pessinus, who was uniformly called
Attis (comp. Polyb. xxii. 20), very clearly illustrate these
relations. The earliest of these and the only one with a date,
written in the 34th year of the reign of Eumenes on the 7th day
before the end of Gorpiaeus, and therefore in 590-1 u. c. offers to
the priest military aid in order to wrest from the Pesongi (not
otherwise known) temple-land occupied by them. The following,
likewise from Eumenes, exhibits the king as a party in the feud
between the priest of Pessinus and his brother Aiorix. Beyond doubt
both acts of Eumenes were included among those which were reported at
Rome in 590 et seq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in
Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter (Polyb.
xxxi. 6, 9; xxxii. 3, 5). On the other hand it is plain from one of
the letters of his successor Attalus that the times had changed and
his wishes had lowered their tone. The priest Attis appears to have
at a conference at Apamea obtained once more from Attalus the promise
of armed assistance; but afterwards the king writes to him that in a
state council held for the purpose, at which Athenaeus (certainly the
known brother of the king), Sosander, Menogenes, Chlorus, and other
relatives (--anagkaioi--) had been present, after long hesitation the
majority had at length acceded to the opinion of Chlorus that nothing
should be done without previously consulting the Romans; for, even if
a success were obtained, they would expose themselves to its being lost
again, and to the evil suspicion "which they had cherished also
against his brother" (Eumenes II.).
32. In the same testament the king gave to his city Pergamus
"freedom," that is the --demokratia--, urban self-government.
According to the tenor of a remarkable document that has recently
been found there (Staatsrecht, iii(3). p. 726) after the testament
was opened, but before its confirmation by the Romans, the Demos thus
constituted resolved to confer urban burgess-rights on the classes
of the population hitherto excluded from them, especially on the
-paroeci- entered in the census and on the soldiers dwelling in town
and country, including the Macedonians, in order thus to bring
about a good understanding among the whole population. Evidently
the burgesses, in confronting the Romans with this comprehensive
reconciliation as an accomplished fact, desired, before the Roman
rule was properly introduced, to prepare themselves against it
and to take away from the foreign rulers the possibility of using
the differences of rights within the population for breaking up
its municipal freedom.
33. These strange "Heliopolites" may, according to the probable
opinion which a friend has expressed to me, be accounted for by supposing
that the liberated slaves constituted themselves citizens of a town
Heliopolis--not otherwise mentioned or perhaps having an existence
merely in imagination for the moment--which derived its name from
the God of the Sun so highly honoured in Syria.
34. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
35. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
36. III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus
37. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
38. III. IX. Armenia
39. From him proceed the coins with the inscription "Shekel
Israel," and the date of the "holy Jerusalem," or the "deliverance
of Sion." The similar coins with the name of Simon, the prince
(Nessi) of Israel, belong not to him, but to Bar-Cochba the leader
of the insurgents in the time of Hadrian.
40. III. III. Illyrian Piracy
41. IV. I. New Organization of Spain
42. III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War
Chapter II
1. In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was
suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to
551 (p. 14; Liv. xxvii. 6). But after the death of Marcellus in 546
re-elections to the consulship, if we do not include the abdicating
consuls of 592, only occurred in the years 547, 554, 560, 579, 585, 586,
591, 596, 599, 602; consequently not oftener in those fifty-six years
than, for instance, in the ten years 401-410. Only one of these, and
that the very last, took place in violation of the ten years' interval
(i. 402); and beyond doubt the singular election of Marcus Marcellus
who was consul in 588 and 599 to a third consulship in 602, with the
special circumstances of which we are not acquainted, gave occasion to
the law prohibiting re-election to the consulship altogether (Liv. Ep.
56); especially as this proposal must have been introduced before 605,
seeing that it was supported by Cato (p. 55, Jordan).
2. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries
3. III. XI. Festivals
4. IV. I. General Results
5. III. XII. Results
6. I. XIII. Landed Proprietors
7. It was asserted even then, that the human race in that quarter
was pre-eminently fitted for slavery by its especial power of
endurance. Plautus (Trin. 542) commends the Syrians: -genus quod
patientissitmum est hominum-.
8. III. XII. Rural Slaves ff., III. XII. Culture of Oil and Wine,
and Rearing of Cattle
9. III. XII. Pastoral Husbandry
10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa
11. The hybrid Greek name for the workhouse (-ergastulum-, from
--ergaszomai--, after the analogy of -stabulum-, -operculum-) is
an indication that this mode of management came to the Romans from
a region where the Greek language was used, but at a period when
a thorough Hellenic culture was not yet attained.
12. III. VI. Guerilla War in Sicily
13. III. XII. Falling Off in the Population
14. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
15. IV. I. Cilicia
16. Even now there are not unfrequently found in front of
Castrogiovanni, at the point where the ascent is least abrupt, Roman
projectiles with the name of the consul of 621: L. Piso L. f. cos.
17. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws
18. III. I. Capital and Its Power in Carthage
19. II. III. Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in
Elevating the Farmer-Class
20. III. XI. Assignations of Land
21. II. II. Public Land
22. III. XII. Falling Off of the Population
23. IV. II. Permanent Criminal Commissions
24. III. XI. Position of the Governors
25. III. IX. Death of Scipio
26. III. XI. Reform of the Centuries
27. III. VII. Gracchus
28. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
29. IV. I. Mancinus
30. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws
31. II. III. Its Influence in Legislation
32. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
33. II. III. Attempts at Counter-Revolution
34. This fact, hitherto only partially known from Cicero (De L. Agr.
ii. 31. 82; comp. Liv. xlii. 2, 19), is now more fully established
by the fragments of Licinianus, p. 4. The two accounts are to be
combined to this effect, that Lentulus ejected the possessors in
consideration of a compensatory sum fixed by him, but accomplished
nothing with real landowners, as he was not entitled to dispossess
them and they would not consent to sell.
35. II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius
36. III. XI. Rise of A City Rabble
37. III. IX. Nullity of the Comitia
Chapter III
1. IV. I. War against Aristonicus
2. IV. II. Ideas of Reform
3. III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio
4. To this occasion belongs his oration -contra legem iudiciariam-
Ti. Gracchi--which we are to understand as referring not, as has been
asserted, to a law as to the -indicia publica-, but to the supplementary
law annexed to his agrarian rogation: -ut triumviri iudicarent-, qua
publicus ager, qua privatus esset (Liv. Ep. lviii.; see IV. II.
Tribunate of Gracchus above).
5. IV. II. Vote by Ballot
6. The restriction, that the continuance should only be allowable if
there was a want of other qualified candidates (Appian, B. C. i. 21),
was not difficult of evasion. The law itself seems not to have belonged
to the older regulations (Staatsrecht, i. 473), but to have been
introduced for the first time by the Gracchans.
7. Such are the words spoken on the announcement of his projects of
law:--"If I were to speak to you and ask of you--seeing that I am of
noble descent and have lost my brother on your account, and that there
is now no survivor of the descendants of Publius Africanus and Tiberius
Gracchus excepting only myself and a boy--to allow me to take rest for
the present, in order that our stock may not be extirpated and that
an offset of this family may still survive; you would perhaps readily
grant me such a request."
8. IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus
9. III. XII. Results. Competition of Transmarine Corn
10. III. XII. Prices of Italian Corn
11. III. XI. Reform of the Centuries
12. IV. III. The Commission for Distributing the Domains
13. III. VII. The Romans Maintain A Standing Army in Spain
14. Thus the statement of Appian (Hisp. 78) that six years' service
entitled a man to demand his discharge, may perhaps be reconciled with
the better known statement of Polybius (vi. 19), respecting which
Marquardt (Handbuch, vi. 381) has formed a correct judgment. The time,
at which the two alterations were introduced, cannot be determined
further, than that the first was probably in existence as early as 603
(Nitzsch, Gracchen, p. 231), and the second certainly as early as the
time of Polybius. That Gracchus reduced the number of the legal years of
service, seems to follow from Asconius in Cornel, p. 68; comp. Plutarch,
Ti. Gracch. 16; Dio, Fr. 83, 7, Bekk.
15. II. I. Right of Appeal; II. VIII. Changes in Procedure
16. III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy
17. IV. II. Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries
18. III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility
19. III. XI. Patricio-Plebeian Nobility, III. XI. Family Government
20. IV. I. Western Asia
21. That he, and not Tiberius, was the author of this law, now appears
from Fronto in the letters to Verus, init. Comp. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi.
10; Cic. de. Rep. iii. 29, and Verr. iii. 6, 12; Vellei. ii. 6.
22. IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law
23. We still possess a great portion of the new judicial ordinance--
primarily occasioned by this alteration in the personnel of the judges--
for the standing commission regarding extortion; it is known under the
name of the Servilian, or rather Acilian, law -de repetundis-.
24. This and the law -ne quis iudicio circumveniatur- may
have been identical.
25. A considerable fragment of a speech of Gracchus, still extant,
relates to this trafficking about the possession of Phrygia, which after
the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus was offered for sale by Manius
Aquillius to the kings of Bithynia and of Pontus, and was bought by the
latter as the highest bidder.(p. 280) In this speech he observes that
no senator troubled himself about public affairs for nothing, and adds
that with reference to the law under discussion (as to the bestowal
of Phrygia on king Mithradates) the senate was divisible into three
classes, viz. Those who were in favour of it, those who were against it,
and those who were silent: that the first were bribed by kingMithra dates,
the second by king Nicomedes, while the third were the most cunning,
for they accepted money from the envoys of both kings and made each
party believe that they were silent in its interest.
26. IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus
27. IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus
28. II. II. Legislation
29. II. III. Political Abolition of the Patriciate
Chapter IV
1. IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus
2. IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus