Transcriber's Notes:
* Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
* The corrigenda et addenda listed on page xvi have been applied
to the text.
* Page 167: Original text 'curosity' replaced with 'curiosity'.
* Page 139: Original text in footnote 'Thon' replaced with 'Thou'.
* Page 359: Latin 'At, credo' more usually seen as 'An, credo' but
text in this book not altered.
* * * * *
THE ROMAN POETS
OF
THE REPUBLIC
_SELLAR_
London
HENRY FROWDE
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE
7 PATERNOSTER ROW
THE ROMAN POETS
OF
THE REPUBLIC
BY
W. Y. SELLAR, M.A., LL.D.
PROFESSOR OF HUMANITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
AND
FORMERLY FELLOW OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
_NEW EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED_
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
MDCCCLXXXI
[_All rights reserved_]
TO
J. C. SHAIRP, M.A. LL.D.,
PRINCIPAL OF THE UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS,
PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD,
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT
OF MUCH ACTIVE AND GENEROUS KINDNESS,
AND OF
A LONG AND STEADY FRIENDSHIP,
THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In preparing a second edition of this volume, which has been for some
years out of print, I have, with the exception of a few pages added to
Chapter IV, retained the first five chapters substantially unchanged.
Chapters VI and VII, on Roman Comedy, are entirely new. I have enlarged
the account formerly given of Lucilius in Chapter VIII, and modified
the Review of the First Period, contained in Chapter IX. The short
introductory chapter to the Second Period is new. The four chapters on
Lucretius have been carefully revised, and, in part, re-written. The
chapter on Catullus has been re-written and enlarged, and the views
formerly expressed in it have been modified.
In the preface to the first edition I acknowledged the assistance I
had derived from the editions of the Fragments of the early writers by
Klussman, Vahlen, Ribbeck, and Gerlach; from the Histories of Roman
Literature by Bernhardy, Bähr, and Munk, and from the chapters on
Roman Literature in Mommsen's Roman History; from a treatise on the
origin of Roman Poetry, by Corssen; from Sir G. C. Lewis's work on 'The
Credibility of Early Roman History'; from the Articles on the Roman
Poets by the late Professor Ramsay, contained in Smith's 'Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'; and from Articles by Mr.
Munro in the 'Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology.' In addition
to these I have, in the present edition, to acknowledge my indebtedness
to the History of Roman Literature by W. S. Teuffel, to Ribbeck's
'Römische Tragödie,' to Ritschl's 'Opuscula,' to the editions of some
of the Plays of Plautus by Brix and Lorenz, to that of the Fragments
of Lucilius by L. Müller, to the Thesis of M. G. Boissier, entitled
'Quomodo Graecos Poetas Plautus Transtulerit,' to Articles on Lucilius
by Mr. Munro in the 'Journal of Philology,' and to the edition of
Lucretius, and the 'Criticisms and Elucidations of Catullus' by the
same writer, to Schwabe's 'Quaestiones Catullianae,' to Mr. Ellis's
'Commentary on Catullus,' to R. Westphal's 'Catull's Gedichte,' and to
M. A. Couat's 'Étude sur Catulle.' I have more especially to express my
sense of obligation to Mr. Munro's writings on Lucretius and Catullus.
In so far as the chapters on these poets in this edition may be
improved, this will, in a great measure, be due to the new knowledge of
the subject I have gained from the study of his works.
I have retained, with some corrections, the translations of the longer
quotations, contained in the first edition, and have added a literal
prose version of some passages quoted from Plautus and Terence.
Instead of offering a prose version of the longer passages quoted from
Catullus, I have again availed myself of the kind permission formerly
given me by Sir Theodore Martin to make use of his translation.
Edinburgh, _Dec. 1880_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
PAGE
Recent change in the estimate of Roman Poetry 1
Want of originality 2
As compared with Greek Poetry 3
" " with Roman Oratory and History 4
The most complete literary monument of Rome 5
Partly imitative, partly original 6
Imitative in forms 7
" in metres 8
Imitative element in diction 9
" " in matter 11
Original character, partly Roman, partly Italian 13
National spirit 14
Imaginative sentiment 15
Moral feeling 16
Italian element in Roman Poetry 17
Love of Nature 17
Passion of Love 19
Personal element in Roman Poetry 20
Four Periods of Roman Poetry 24
Character of each 24
Conclusion 26
CHAPTER II.
VESTIGES OF INDIGENOUS POETRY IN ROME
AND ANCIENT ITALY.
Niebuhr's theory of a Ballad-Poetry 28
The Saturnian metre 29
Ritual Hymns 31
Prophetic verses 33
Fescennine verses 34
Saturae 35
Gnomic verses 36
Commemorative verses 37
Inferences as to their character 38
From early state of the language 39
No public recognition of Poetry 40
Roman story result of tradition and reflection 41
Inferences from the nature of Roman religion 43
From the character and pursuits of the people 44
Roman Poetry of Italian rather than Roman origin 45
FIRST PERIOD.
FROM LIVIUS ANDRONICUS TO LUCILIUS.
CHAPTER III.
BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE. LIVIUS ANDRONICUS.
CN. NAEVIUS, 240-202 B.C.
Contact with Greece after capture of Tarentum 47
First period of Roman literature 49
Forms of Poetry during this period 50
Livius Andronicus 51
Cn. Naevius, his life 52
Dramas 55
Epic poem 57
Style 59
Conclusion 60
CHAPTER IV.
Q. ENNIUS, 239-170 B.C., LIFE, TIMES, AND PERSONAL TRAITS.
VARIOUS WORKS. GENIUS AND INTELLECT.
Importance of Ennius 62
Notices of his life 63
Influences affecting his career 64
Italian birth-place 64
Greek education 65
Service in Roman army 66
Historical importance of his age 68
Intellectual character of his age 69
Personal traits 71
Description of himself in the Annals 72
Intimacy with Scipio 74
His enthusiastic temperament 75
Religious spirit and convictions 77
Miscellaneous works 78
Saturae 81
Dramas 83
Annals 87
Outline of the Poem 88
Idea by which it is animated 91
Artistic defects 93
Roman character of the work 94
Contrast with the Greek Epic 95
Contrast in its personages 95
Contrast in supernatural element 96
Oratory in the Annals 97
Description and imagery 99
Rhythm and diction 101
Chief literary characteristics of Ennius 105
Energy of conception 106
Patriotic and imaginative sentiment 109
Moral emotion 111
Practical understanding 113
Estimate in ancient times 115
Disparaging criticism of Niebuhr 117
Conclusion 118
CHAPTER V.
EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY. M. PACUVIUS, 219-129 B.C.
L. ACCIUS, 170-ABOUT 90 B.C.
Popularity of early Roman Tragedy 120
Partial adaptation of Athenian drama 121
Inability to reproduce its pure Hellenic character 123
Nearer approach to the spirit of Euripides than of Sophocles 125
Grounds of popularity of Roman Tragedy 127
Moral tone and oratorical spirit 129
Causes of its decline 132
M. Pacuvius, notices of his life 134
Ancient testimonies 135
His dramas 136
Passages illustrative of his thought 137
Of his moral and oratorical spirit 139
Descriptive passages 141
Drama on a Roman subject 142
Character 142
L. Accius, notices of his life 143
His various works 145
Fragments illustrative of his oratorical spirit 147
" " of his moral fervour 148
" " of his sense of natural beauty 149
Conclusion as to character of Roman Tragedy 150
CHAPTER VI.
ROMAN COMEDY. T. MACCIUS PLAUTUS, ABOUT
254 TO 184 B.C.
Flourishing era of Roman Comedy 152
How far any claim to originality? 153
Disparaging judgment of later Roman critics 154
Connection with earlier Saturae 155
Naevius and Plautus popular poets 156
Facts in the life of Plautus 157
Attempt to fill up the outline from his works 159
Familiarity with town-life 160
Traces of maritime adventure 161
Life of the lower and middle classes represented in his plays 162
Love of good living 163
Love of money 164
Artistic indifference 165
Knowledge of Greek 165
Influence of the spirit of his age 166
Dramas adaptations of outward conditions of Athenian New Comedy 167
Manner and spirit, Roman and original 171
Indications of originality in his language 172
" " in his Roman allusions and national
characteristics 173
Favourite plots of his plays 176
Pseudolus, Bacchides, Miles Gloriosus, Mostellaria 177
Aulularia, Trinummus, Menaechmi, Rudens, Captivi, Amphitryo 180
Mode of dealing with his characters 188
Moral and political indifference of his plays 189
Value as a poetic artist 193
Power of expression by action, rhythm, diction 194
CHAPTER VII.
TERENCE AND THE COMIC POETS SUBSEQUENT TO
PLAUTUS.
Comedy between the time of Plautus and Terence 201
Caecilius Statius 202
Scipionic Circle 203
Complete Hellenising of Roman Comedy 204
Conflicting accounts of life of Terence 205
Order in which his Plays were produced 206
His 'prologues' as indicative of his individuality 207
'Dimidiatus Menander' 209
Epicurean 'humanity' chief characteristic 210
Sentimental motive of his pieces 211
Minute delineations of character 212
Diction and rhythm 214
Influence on the style and sentiment of Horace 215
Comoedia Togata, Atellanae, Mimus 216
CHAPTER VIII.
EARLY ROMAN SATIRE. C. LUCILIUS, DIED 102 B.C.
Independent origin of Roman satire 217
Essentially Roman in form and spirit 219
" " in its political and censorial function 220
Personal and miscellaneous character of early satire 222
Critical epoch at which Lucilius appeared 223
Question as to the date of his birth 224
Fragments chiefly preserved by grammarians 227
Miscellaneous character and desultory treatment of subjects 228
Traces of subjects treated in different books 229
Impression of the author's personality 230
Political character of Lucilian satire 232
Social vices satirised in it 233
Intellectual peculiarities 236
Literary criticism 238
His style 240
Grounds of his popularity 243
CHAPTER IX.
REVIEW OF THE FIRST PERIOD.
Common aspects in the lives of poets in the second century B.C. 247
Popular and national character of their works 250
Political condition of the time reflected in its literature 251
Defects of the poetic literature in form and style 253
Other forms of literature cultivated in that age 254
Oratory and history 255
Familiar letters 256
Critical and grammatical studies 257
Summary of character of the first period 258
SECOND PERIOD.
THE CLOSE OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER X.
TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS.
Dearth of poetical works during the next half century 263
Literary taste confined to the upper classes 265
Great advance in Latin prose writing 266
Influence of this on the style of Lucretius and Catullus 267
Closer contact with the mind and art of Greece 268
Effects of the political unsettlement on the contemplative
life and thought 270
" on the life of pleasure, and the art founded on it 271
The two representatives of the thought and art of the time 272
CHAPTER XI.
LUCRETIUS. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
Little known of him from external sources 274
Examination of Jerome's statement 275
Inferences as to his national and social position 281
Relation to Memmius 282
Impression of the author to be traced in his poem 283
Influence produced by the action of his age 284
Minute familiarity with Nature and country life 286
Spirit in which he wrote his work 288
His consciousness of power and delight in his task 289
His polemical spirit 291
Reverence for Epicurus 292
Affinity to Empedocles 293
Influence of other Greek writers 295
" of Ennius 297
His interests speculative, not national 298
His Roman temperament 299
CHAPTER XII.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF LUCRETIUS.
Three aspects of the poem 300
General scope of the argument 301
Analysis of the poem 303
Question as to its unfinished condition 313
What is the value of the argument? 316
Weakness of his science 317
Interest of the work as an exposition of ancient physical enquiry 325
" from its bearing on modern questions 326
Power of scientific reasoning, observation, and expression 327
Connecting links between his philosophy and poetry 333
Idea of law 333
" of change 336
" of the infinite 339
" of the individual 340
" of the subtlety of Nature 341
" of Nature as a living power 342
CHAPTER XIII.
THE RELIGIOUS ATTITUDE AND MORAL TEACHING
OF LUCRETIUS.
General character of Greek epicureanism 348
Prevalence at Rome in the last age of the Republic 350
New type of epicureanism in Lucretius 352
Forms of evil against which his teaching was directed 355
Superstition 356
Fear of death 361
Ambition 366
Luxury 367
Passion of love 368
Limitation of his ethical views 370
His literary power as a moralist 372
CHAPTER XIV.
THE LITERARY ART AND GENIUS OF LUCRETIUS.
Artistic defects of the work 376
" arising from the nature of the subject 377
" from inequality in its execution 378
Intensity of feeling pervading the argument 380
Cumulative force in his rhythm 381
Qualities of his style 382
Freshness and sincerity of expression 383
Imaginative suggestiveness and creativeness 385
Use of analogies 387
Pictorial power 389
Poetical interpretation of Nature 390
Energy of movement in his descriptions 391
Poetic aspect of Nature influenced by his philosophy 393
Poetical interpretation of life 395
Modern interest of the poem 397
CHAPTER XV.
CATULLUS.
Contrast to the poetry of Lucretius 399
The poetry of youth 400
Accidental preservation of his poems 401
Principle of their arrangement 402
Vivid personal revelation afforded by them 404
Uncertainty as to the date of his birth 405
Birth-place and social standing 408
Influences of his native district 410
Identity of Lesbia and Clodia 412
Poems written between 61 and 57 B.C. 414
Poems connected with his Bithynian journey 418
Poems written between 56 and 54 B.C. 421
Character of his poems, founded on the passion of love 424
" " " on friendship and affection 426
His short satirical pieces 430
Other poems expressive of personal feeling 437
Qualities of style in these poems 438
" of rhythm 439
" of form 440
The Hymn to Diana 441
His longer and more purely artistic pieces 442
His Epithalamia 443
His Attis 447
The Peleus and Thetis 448
The longer elegiac poems 455
Rank of Catullus among the poets of the world 457
CORRIGENDA ET ADDENDA.
Page xii, line 25 from top, _for_ Ampitryo _read_ Amphitryo.
" 43, note, _for_ Altus _read_ Attus.
" 90, line 26 from top, _for_ Fos _read_ Flos.
" 157, note 2, add the words, 'Terence, who was by birth a
foreigner, was probably brought to Rome as a child.'
" 194, line 25 from top, _for_ The Italian liveliness, &c.,
made them, _read_ Their liveliness, &c., made the Italians.
" 194, third line from bottom, _for_ nisim _read_ nisam.
" 213, line 12 from top, _for_ Æschylus _read_ Æschinus.
" 215, note, _for_ debacehentur _read_ debacchentur.
" 230, foot of the page, _for_ divitias _read_ divitiis.
" 287, line 12 from top, _for_ arbonis _read_ arboris.
" 289, line 16 from top, _for_ ardera _read_ ardua.
" 289, line 32 from top, _for_ and _read_ or.
" 296, line 9 from bottom, _for_ by _read_ to.
" 343, line 7 from bottom, _for_ fungiferentis _read_
frugiferentis.
" 413, note 1, add the words, 'Cicero also, in his letters to
Caelius, addresses him as mi Rufe,' Ep. II. 9. 3, 12. 2.
THE ROMAN POETS OF THE REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER I.
GENERAL CHARACTER OF ROMAN POETRY.
A great fluctuation of opinion has taken place, among scholars and
critics, in regard to the worth of Latin poetry. From the revival of
learning till comparatively a recent period, the poets of ancient Rome,
and especially those of the Augustan age, were esteemed the purest
models of literary art, and were the most familiar exponents of the
life and spirit of antiquity. Their works were the chief instruments of
the higher education. They were studied, imitated, and translated by
some of the greatest poets of modern Europe; and they supplied their
favourite texts and illustrations to moralists and humourists, from
Montaigne to the famous English essayists who flourished during the
last century. Up to a still later period, their words were habitually
used by statesmen to add weight to their arguments or point to their
invectives. Perhaps no other writers have, for so long a period,
exercised so powerful an influence, not only on literary style and
taste, but on the character and understanding, of educated men in the
leading nations of the modern world.
It was natural that this excessive deference to their authority should
be impaired both by the ampler recognition of the claims of modern
poetry, and by a more intimate familiarity with Greek literature. They
have suffered, in the estimation of literary critics, from the change
in poetical taste which commenced about the beginning of the present
century, and, in that of scholars, from the superior attractions of the
great epic, dramatic, and lyrical poets of Greece. They have thus, for
some time, been exposed to undue disparagement rather than to undue
admiration. The perception of the debt which they owed to their Greek
masters, has led to some forgetfulness of their original merits. Their
Roman character and Italian feeling have been partially obscured by
the foreign forms and metres in which these are expressed. It is said,
with some appearance of plausibility, that Roman poetry is not only
much inferior in interest to the poetry of Greece, but that it is a
work of cultivated imitation, not of creative art; that other forms of
literature were the true expression of the genius of the Roman people;
that their poets brought nothing new into the world; that they have
enriched the life of after times with no pure vein of native feeling,
nor any impressive record of national experience.
It is, indeed, impossible to claim for Roman poetry the unborrowed
glory or the varied inspiration of the earlier art of Greece. To the
genius of Greece alone can the words of the bard in the Odyssey be
applied,
αὐτοδίδακτος δ᾽ εἰμί, θεὸς δέ μοι ἐν φρεσὶν οἴμας
παντοίας ἐνέφυσεν.[1]
Besides possessing the charm of poetical feeling and artistic form in
unequalled measure, Greek poetry is to modern readers the immediate
revelation of a new world of thought and action, in all its lights and
shadows and moving life. Like their politics, the poetry of the Greeks
sprang from many independent centres, and renewed itself in every
epoch of the national civilisation. Roman poetry, on the other hand,
has neither the same novelty nor variety of matter; nor did it adapt
itself to the changing phases of human life in different generations
and different States, like the epic, lyric, dramatic, and idyllic
poetry of Greece. But it may still be answered that the poets of Rome
have another kind of value. There is a charm in their language and
sentiment different from that which is found in any other literature
of the world. Certain deep and abiding impressions are stamped upon
their works, which have penetrated into the cultivated sentiment of
modern times. If, as we read them, the imagination is not so powerfully
stimulated by the revelation of a new world, yet, in the elevated
tones of Roman poetry, there is felt to be a permanent affinity with
the strength and dignity of man's moral nature; and, in the finer and
softer tones, a power to move the heart to sympathy with the beauty,
the enjoyment, and the natural sorrows of a bygone life. If we are no
longer moved by the eager hopes and buoyant fancies of the youthful
prime of the ancient world, we seem to gather up, with a more sober
sympathy, the fruits of its mature experience and mellowed reflexion.
While the literature and civilisation of Greece were still unknown
to them, the Romans had produced certain rude kinds of metrical
composition: they preserved some knowledge of their history in various
kinds of chronicles or annals: they must have been trained to some
skill in oratory by the contests of public life, and by the practice
of delivering commemorative speeches at the funerals of famous men.
But they cannot be said to have produced spontaneously any works of
literary art. Their oratory, history, poetry, and philosophy owed
their first impulse to their intellectual contact with Greece. But
while the form and expression of all Roman literature were moulded
by the teaching of Greek masters and the study of Greek writings, it
may be urged, with some show of truth, that the debt incurred by the
poetry and philosophy of Rome was much greater than that incurred by
her oratory and history. The two latter assumed a more distinct type,
and adapted themselves more naturally to the genius of the people and
the circumstances of the State. They were the work of men who took an
active and prominent part in public affairs; and they bore directly on
the practical wants of the times in which they were cultivated. Even
the structure of the Latin language testifies to the oratorical force
and ardour by which it was moulded into symmetry; as the language of
Greece betrays the plastic and harmonising power of her early poetry.
There is no improbability in the supposition that, if Greek literature
had never existed, or had remained unknown to the Romans, the political
passions and necessities of the Republic would have called forth a
series of powerful orators; and that the national instinct, which clung
with such strong tenacity to the past, would, with the advance of power
and civilisation, have produced a type of history, capable of giving
adequate expression to the traditions and continuous annals of the
commonwealth.
But their poetry, on the other hand, came to the Romans after
their habits were fully formed[2], as an ornamental addition to
their power,--κηπίον καὶ ἐγκαλλώπισμα πλούτου. Unlike the
poetry of Greece, it was not addressed to the popular ear, nor was
it an immediate emanation from the popular heart. The poets who
commemorated the greatness of Rome, or who sang of the passions and
pursuits of private life, in the ages immediately before and after the
establishment of the Empire, were, for the most part, men born in the
provinces of Italy, neither trained in the formal discipline of Rome,
nor taking any active part in practical affairs. Their tastes and
feelings are, in some respects, rather Italian than purely Roman; their
thoughts and convictions are rather of a cosmopolitan type than moulded
on the national traditions. They drew the materials of their art as
much from the stores of Greek poetry, as from the life and action of
their own times. Their art is thus a composite structure, in which old
forms are combined with altered conditions; in which the fancies of
earlier times reappear in a new language, and the spirit of Greece is
seen interpenetrating the grave temperament of Rome, and the genial
nature of Italy.
But, although oratory and history may have been more essential to the
national life of the Romans, and more adapted to their genius, their
poetry still remains their most complete literary monument. Of the
many famous orators of the Republic one only has left his speeches
to modern times. The works of the two greatest Roman historians have
reached us in a mutilated shape; and the most important epochs in the
later history of the Republic are not represented in what remains
of the works of either writer. Tacitus records only the sombre and
monotonous annals of the early Empire; and the extant books of Livy
contain the account of times and events from which he himself was
separated by many generations. Roman poetry, on the other hand, is the
contemporary witness of several important eras in the history of the
Republic and the Empire. It includes many authentic and characteristic
fragments from the great times of the Scipios,--the complete works of
the two poets of finest genius, who flourished in the last days of the
Republic,--the masterpieces of the brilliant Augustan era;--and, of
the works of the Empire, more than are needed to exemplify the decay
of natural feeling and of poetical inspiration under the deadening
pressure of Imperialism. And, besides illustrating different eras, the
Roman poets throw light on the most various aspects of Roman life and
character. They are the most authentic witnesses both of the national
sentiment and ideas, and of the feelings and interests of private life.
They stamp on the imagination the ideal of Roman majesty; and they
bring home to modern sympathies the charm and the pathos of human life,
under conditions widely different from our own.
Roman poetry was the living heir, not the lifeless reproduction of
the genius of Greece. If it seems to have been a highly-trained
accomplishment rather than the irrepressible outpouring of a natural
faculty, still this accomplishment was based upon original gifts of
feeling and character, and was marked by its own peculiar features.
The creative energy of the Greeks died out with Theocritus; but their
learning and taste, surviving the decay of their political existence,
passed into the education of a kindred race, endowed, above all other
races of antiquity, with the capacity of receiving and assimilating
alien influences, and of producing, alike in action and in literature,
great results through persistent purpose and concentrated industry.
It was owing to their gifts of appreciation and their love of labour,
that the Roman poets, in the era of the transition from the freedom
and vigour of the Republic to the pomp and order of the Empire,
succeeded in producing works which, in point of execution, are not much
inferior to the masterpieces of Greece. It was due to the spirit of
a new race,--speaking a new language, living among different scenes,
acting their own part in the history of the world,--that the ancient
inspiration survived the extinction of Greek liberty, and reappeared,
under altered conditions, in a fresh succession of powerful works,
which owe their long existence as much to the vivid feeling as to the
artistic perfection by which they are characterised.
From one point of view, therefore, Roman poetry may be regarded as
an imitative reproduction, from another, as a new revelation of the
human spirit. For the form, and for some part of the substance, of
their works, the Roman poets were indebted to Greece: the spirit and
character, and much also of the substance of their poetry, are native
in their origin. They betray their want of inventiveness chiefly in the
forms of composition and the metres which they employed; occasionally
also in the cast of their poetic diction, and in their conventional
treatment of foreign materials. But, in even the least original aspects
of their art, they are still national. Although, with the exception of
Satire and the poetic Epistle, they struck out no new forms of poetic
composition, yet those adopted by them assumed something of a new type,
owing to the weight of their contents, the massive structure of the
Roman language, the fervour and gravity of the Roman temperament, and
the practical bent and logical mould of the Roman understanding.
They were not equally successful in all the forms which they attempted
to reproduce. They were especially inferior to their masters in
tragedy. They betray the inferiority of their dramatic genius also in
other fields of literature, especially in epic and idyllic poetry, and
in philosophical dialogues. They express passion and feeling either
directly from their own hearts and experience, or in great rhetorical
passages, attributed to the imaginary personages of their story--to
Ariadne or Dido, to Turnus or Mezentius. But this occasional utterance
of passion and sentiment is not united in them with a vivid delineation
of the complex characters of men; and it is only in their comic poetry
that they are quite successful in reproducing the natural and lively
interchange of speech. There is thus, as compared with Homer and
Theocritus, a deficiency of personal interest in the epic, descriptive,
and idyllic poetry of Virgil. The natural play of characters, acting
and reacting upon one another, scarcely, if at all, enlivens the
divinely-appointed action of the Aeneid, nor adds the charm of human
associations to the poet's deep and quiet pictures of rural beauty, and
to his graceful expression of pensive and tender feeling.
The Romans, as a race, were wanting also in speculative capacity; and
thus their poetry does not rise, or rises only in Lucretius, to those
imaginative heights from which the great lyrical and dramatic poets
of Greece contemplated the wonder and solemnity of life. Yet both the
epic and the lyrical poetry of Rome have a character and perfection of
their own. The Aeneid, with many resemblances in points of detail to
the poems of Homer, is yet, in design and execution, a true national
monument. The lyrical poetry of Rome, if inferior to the choral poetry
of Greece in range of thought and in ethereal grace of expression, and
scarcely equalling the few fragments of the early Aeolic poetry in
the force of passion, is yet an instrument of varied power, capable
of investing the lighter moods or more transient joys of life with an
unfading charm, and rising into fuller and more commanding tones to
express the national sentiment and moral dignity of Rome. Didactic
poetry obtained in Lucretius and Virgil ampler volume and profounder
meaning than in their Greek models, Empedocles and Hesiod. It was by
the skill of the two great Latin poets that poetic art was made to
embrace within its province the treatment of a great philosophical
argument, and of a great practical pursuit. The Satires and Epistles of
Horace showed, for the first time, how the didactic spirit could deal
in poetry with the conduct and familiar experience of life. The elegiac
poets of the Augustan age, while borrowing the outward form of their
compositions from the early poets of Ionia and the later writers at
the court of Alexandria, have taken the substance of their poetry to a
great extent from their own lives and interests; and have treated their
materials with a fluent brilliancy of style, and often with a graceful
tenderness of feeling, unborrowed from any foreign source. It may thus
be generally affirmed that the Roman poets, although adding little to
the great discoveries or inventions in literature, and although not
equally successful in all their adaptations of the inventions of their
predecessors, have yet left the stamp of their own genius and character
on some of the great forms which poetry has hitherto assumed.
The metres of Roman poetry are also seen to be adaptations to the Latin
language of the metres previously employed in the epic, lyrical, and
dramatic poetry of Greece. The Italian race had, in earlier times,
struck out a native measure, called the Saturnian,--of a rapid and
irregular movement,--in which their religious emotions, their festive
and satiric raillery, and their commemorative instincts found a rude
expression. But after this measure had been rejected by Ennius,
as unsuited to the gravity of his greatest work, the Roman poets
continued to imitate the metres of their Greek predecessors. But, in
their hands, these became characterised by a slower, more stately,
and regular movement, not only differing widely from the ring of the
native Saturnian rhythm, but also, with every improvement in poetic
accomplishment, receding further and further from the freedom and
variety of the Greek measures. The comic and tragic measures, in which
alone the Roman writers observed a less strict rule than their models,
never attained among them to any high metrical excellence. The rhythm
of the Greek poets, owing in a great measure to the frequency of vowel
sounds in their language, is more flowing, more varied, and more
richly musical than that of Roman poetry. Thus, although their verse
is constructed on the same metrical laws, there is the most marked
contrast between the rapidity and buoyancy of the Iliad or the Odyssey,
and the stately and weighty march of the Aeneid. Notwithstanding their
outward conformity to the canons of a foreign language, the most
powerful and characteristic measures of Roman poetry,--such as the
Lucretian and the Virgilian hexameter, and the Horatian alcaic,--are
distinguished by a grave, orderly, and commanding tone, symbolical of
the genius and the majesty of Rome. In such cases, as the Horatian
sapphic and the Ovidian elegiac, where the structure of the verse
is too slight to produce this impressive effect, there is still a
remarkable divergence from the freedom and manifold harmony of the
early Greek poets to a uniform and monotonous cadence.
The language, also, of Roman poetry betrays many traces of imitation.
Some of the early Latin tragedies were literal translations from the
works of the Athenian dramatists; and fragments of the rude Roman copy
may still be compared with the polished expression of the original.
Some familiar passages of the Iliad may be traced among the rough-hewn
fragments of the Annals of Ennius. Even Lucretius, whose diction, more
than that of most poets, produces the impression of being the immediate
creation of his own mind, has described outward objects, and clothed
his thoughts, in language borrowed from Homer and Empedocles. The short
volume of Catullus contains translations from Sappho and Callimachus,
and frequent imitations of other Greek poets; and, from the extant
fragments of Alcaeus, Anacreon, and others of the Greek lyric poets, it
may be seen how frequently Horace availed himself of some turn of their
expression to invest his own experience with old poetic associations.
Virgil, whose great success is, in no slight measure, due to the skill
and taste with which he used the materials of earlier Greek and native
writers, has reproduced the heroic tones of Homer in his epic, and the
mellow cadences of Theocritus in his pastoral poems; and has blended
something of the antique quaintness and oracular sanctity of Hesiod
with the golden perfection of his Georgics.
But besides the direct debt which each Roman poet owed to the Greek
author or authors whom he imitated, it is difficult to estimate
the extent to which the taste of the later Romans was formed by
the familiar study of a foreign language so much superior to the
rude speech spoken by their fathers. The habitual study of any
foreign language has an influence not on style only, but even on the
structure of thought and the development of emotion. The Roman poets
first learned, from the study of Greek poetry, to feel the graceful
combinations and the musical power of expression, and were thus
stimulated and trained to elicit similar effects from their native
language. It is for this gift, or power over language, that Lucretius
prays in his invocation to the creative power of Nature,--
Quo magis aeternum da dictis, diva, leporem;
and it is this which Catullus claims as the characteristic excellence
of his own poems.
The Augustan poets attained a still greater success in the variations
of words and rhythm; but this success was gained with some loss of
direct force and freshness in the expression of feeling. And it may be
said generally that the Latin language, in its adaptation to poetry,
lost some of its powers as an immediate vehicle of thought. In Virgil
and in Horace, words are combined in a less natural order than in
Homer and the Attic dramatists. Their language does not strike the mind
with the spontaneous force of Greek poetry, nor does it seem equally
capable of being rapidly followed by a popular audience. Catullus alone
among the great Roman poets combines perfect grace with the happiest
freedom and simplicity. Yet the studied and compact diction of Latin
poetry, if wanting in fluency, ease, and directness, lays a strong
hold upon the mind, by its power of marking with emphasis what is most
essential and prominent in the ideas and objects presented to the
imagination. The thought and sentiment of Rome have thus been engraved
on her poetical literature, in deep and enduring characters. And,
notwithstanding all manifest traces of imitation, the diction of the
greatest Roman poets attests the presence of genuine creative power. A
strong vital force is recognised in the direct and vigorous diction of
Ennius and Lucretius; and, though more latent, it is not less really
present under the stateliness and chastened splendour of Virgil, and
the subtle moderation of Horace.
Roman poetry owes also a considerable part of its contents to Greek
thought, art, and traditions. This is the chief explanation of that
conventional character which detracts from the originality of some of
the masterpieces of Roman genius. The old religious belief of Rome
and Italy became merged in the poetical restoration of the Olympian
Gods; the story of the origin of Rome was inseparably connected
with the personages of Greek poetry; the familiar manners of a late
civilisation appear in unnatural association with the idealised
features of the heroic age. Even the expression of personal feeling,
experience, and convictions is often coloured by light reflected from
earlier representations. Hence a great deal in Latin poetry appears
to come less directly from the poet's heart, and to fit less closely
to the facts of human life, than the best poetry both of Greece and
of modern nations. This imitative and composite workmanship is more
apparent in the later than in the earlier poets. The substance and
thought of Ennius, Lucretius, and Catullus, even when they reproduce
Greek materials, appear to be more vivified by their own feeling than
the substance and thought of the Augustan poets. The beautiful and
stately forms of Greek legend, which lived a second life in the young
imagination of Catullus, were becoming trite and conventional to
Virgil:--
Cetera, quae vacuas tenuissent carmina mentes,
Omnia jam vulgata.
The ideal aspect of the golden morning of the world has been seized
with a truer feeling in the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis than in
the episode of the 'Pastor Aristacus' in the Georgics. Not only are
the main features in the story of the Aeneid of foreign origin, but
the treatment of the story betrays some want of vital sympathy with
the heterogeneous elements out of which it is composed. The poem is a
religious as well as a great national work; but the religious creed
which is expressed in it is a composite result of Greek mythology, of
Roman sentiment, and of ideas derived from an eclectic philosophy.
The manners represented in the poem are a medley of the Augustan and
of the Homeric age, as seen in vague proportions, through the mists
of antiquarian learning. It must, indeed, be remembered that Greek
traditions had penetrated into the life of the whole civilised world,
and that the belief in the connexion of Rome with Troy had rooted
itself in the Roman mind for two centuries before the time of Virgil.
Still, the tale of the settlement of Aeneas in Latium, as told in the
great Roman epic, bears the mark of the artificial construction of a
late and prosaic era, not of the spontaneous growth of imaginative
legend, in a lively and creative age. So, also, in another sphere of
poetry, while there are genuine touches of nature in all the odes
of Horace, yet the mythological accessories of some of those which
celebrate the praises of a god, or the charms of a mistress, seem to
stand in no vital relation with the genuine convictions of the poet.
Roman poetry, from this point of view, appears to be the old Greek
art reappearing under new conditions: or rather the new art of the
civilised world, after it had been thoroughly leavened by Greek
thought, taste, and education. The poetry of Rome was, however, a
living power, after the creative energy of Greece had disappeared, so
that, were it nothing more, that literature would still be valuable
as the fruit of the later summer of antiquity. As in Homer, the
earliest poet of the ancient world, there is a kind of promise of
the great life that was to be; so, in the Augustan poets, there is a
retrospective contemplation of the life, the religion, and the art
of the past,--a gathering up of 'the long results of time.' But the
Roman poets had also a strong vein of original character and feeling,
and many phases of national and personal experience to reveal. They
had to give a permanent expression to the idea of Rome, and to
perpetuate the charm of the land and life of Italy. In their highest
tones, they give utterance to the patriotic spirit, the dignified
and commanding attributes, and the moral strength of the Imperial
Republic. But other elements in their art proclaim their large
inheritance of the receptive and emotional nature which, in ancient
as in modern times, has characterised the Southern nations. As the
patrician and plebeian orders were united in the imperial greatness
of the commonwealth, as the energy of Rome and of the other Italian
communities was welded together to form a mighty national life, so
these apparently antagonistic elements combined to create the majesty
and beauty of Roman poetry. Either of these elements would by itself
have been unproductive and incomplete. The pure Roman temperament was
too austere, too unsympathetic, too restrained and formal, to create
and foster a luxuriant growth of poetry: the genial nature of the
south, when dissociated from the control of manlier instincts and
the elevation of higher ideas, tended to degenerate into licentious
effeminacy, both in life and literature. The fragments of the earlier
tragic and epic poets indicate the predominance of the gravity and
the masculine strength inherent in the Roman temper, almost to the
exclusion of the other element. Roman comedy, on the other hand,
gave full play to Italian vivacity and sensuousness with only slight
restraint from the higher instincts inherited from ancient discipline.
In Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace, moral energy and dignity of character
are most happily combined with susceptibility to the charm and the
power of Nature. Catullus and the elegiac poets of the Augustan age
abandoned themselves to the passionate enjoyment of their lives,
under little restraint either from the pride or the virtue of their
forefathers. Their vices, and still more their weaknesses, are of a
type apparently most opposed to the tendencies of the higher Roman
character. Yet even these may be looked upon as a kind of indirect
testimony to the ancient vigour of the race. Catullus, in his very
coarseness, betrays the grain of that strong nature, out of which,
in a better time, the freedom and energy of the Republic had been
developed. Ovid, even in his libertinism, displays his vigorous and
ardent vitality. The effeminacy of Tibullus looks like the reaction
of a nature, enervated by the circumstances of his age, from the high
standard of manliness, which a sterner time had maintained.
Among the most truly Roman characteristics of Latin poetry, national
and patriotic sentiment is prominently conspicuous. Among the poets of
the Republic, Naevius and Lucilius were animated by strong political
as well as national feeling. The chief work of Ennius was devoted to
the commemoration of the ancient traditions, the august institutions,
the advancing power, and the great character of the Roman State. In the
works of the Augustan age, the fine episodes of the Georgics, the whole
plan and many of the details of the Aeneid, show the spell exercised
over the mind of Virgil by the ancient memories and the great destiny
of his country, and bear witness to his deep love of Italy, and his
pride in her natural beauty and her strong breed of men. Horace rises
above his irony and epicureanism, to celebrate the imperial majesty
of Rome, and to bear witness to the purity of the Sabine households,
and to the virtues exhibited in the best types of Roman character.
The Fasti of Ovid, also, is a national poem, owing its existence to
the strong interest which was felt by the Romans in their mythical
and early story, so long as any living memory of their political life
remained.
The poets of the latest age of the Republic alone express little
sympathy with national or public interests. The time in which they
flourished was not favourable to the pride of patriotism or to
political enthusiasm. The contemplative genius of Lucretius separated
him from the pursuits of active life; and his philosophy taught the
lesson that to acquiesce in any government was better than to engage in
the strife of personal ambition;--
Ut satius multo jam sit parere quietum
Quam regere imperio res velle et regna tenere.
Catullus, while eagerly enjoying his life, seems, in regard to all the
grave public questions of his time, to 'daff the world aside, and bid
it pass': yet there is, as has been well said[3], a rough republican
flavour in his careless satire; and he retained to the last, and boldly
asserted, what was the earliest, as well as the latest, instinct of
ancient liberty--the spirit of resistance to the arbitrary rule of any
single man.
Roman poetry is pervaded also by a peculiar vein of imaginative
emotion. There is no feeling so characteristic of the works of Roman
genius as the sense of majesty. This feeling is called forth by the
idea or outward manifestation of strength, stability, vastness, and
order; by whatever impresses the imagination as the symbol of power
and authority, whether in the aspect of Nature, or in the works,
actions, and institutions of man. It is in their most serious and
elevated writings, and chiefly in their epic and didactic poetry,
that the Romans show their peculiar susceptibility to this grave and
dignified emotion. Even the plain and rude diction of Ennius rises into
rugged grandeur when he is moved by the vastness or massive strength
of outward things, by 'the pomp and circumstance' of war, or by the
august forms and symbols of government. The majestic tones of Lucretius
seem to give a voice to the deep feeling of the order and immensity of
the universe, which possessed him. The sustained dignity of the Aeneid,
and the splendour of some of its finest passages--such for instance as
that which brings before us the solemn and magnificent spectacle of
the fall of Troy--attest how the imagination of Virgil was moved to
sympathy with the attributes of ancient and powerful sovereignty[4].
Further, in the fervour and dignity of their moral feeling, the Roman
poets are true exponents of the genius of Rome. Their spirit is
more authoritative, and less speculative than that of Greek poetry.
They speak rather from the will and conscience than from the wisdom
that has searched and understood the ways of life. Greek poetry
strengthens the will or purifies the heart indirectly, by its truthful
representation of the tragic situations in human life; Roman poetry
appeals directly to the manlier instincts and more magnanimous impulses
of our nature. This glow of moral emotion pervades not the poetry
only, but the oratory, history, and philosophy of Rome. It has cast a
kind of religious solemnity around the fragments of the early epic,
tragic, and satiric poetry: it has given an intenser fervour to the
stern consistency and desperate fortitude of Lucretius: it has added
the element of strength to the pathos and fine humanity in the Æneid.
It is by his moral, as well as his national enthusiasm, that Horace
reveals the Roman gravity that tempered his genial nature. The language
of Lucan, Persius, and Juvenal still breathed the same spirit in the
deadening atmosphere of the Empire. Of all the great poets of Rome,
Catullus alone shows little trace of this grave ardour of feeling, the
more usual accompaniment of the firm temper of manhood than of the
prodigal genius of youth.
There are, however, as was said above, other feelings expressed in
Roman poetry, which are, perhaps, more akin to modern sympathies. In
no other branch of ancient literature is so much prominence given to
the enjoyment of Nature, the passion of love, and the joys, sorrows,
tastes, and pursuits of the individual. The gravity and austerity
of the old Roman life, and the predominance of public over private
interests in the best days of the Republic, tended to repress, rather
than to foster, the birth of these new modes of emotion. They are
like the flower of that more luxuriant but less stately Italian life
which spread itself abroad under the shadow of Roman institutions, and
came to a rapid maturity after her conquests had brought to Rome the
accumulated treasures of the world, and left to her more fortunate sons
ample leisure to enjoy them.
The love of natural scenery and of country life is certainly more
prominently expressed in Roman than in Greek poetry. Homer, indeed,
among all the poets of antiquity, presents the most vivid and true
description of the outward world; and the imagination of Pindar and
the Attic dramatists appears to have been strongly, though indirectly,
affected both by the immediate aspect and by the invisible power of
Nature. Thucydides and Aristophanes testify to the enjoyment which the
Athenians found in the ease and abundance of their country life, and
to the affection with which they clung to the old religious customs
and associations connected with it. The conscious enjoyment of Nature
as a prominent motive of poetry first appears in the Alexandrian era.
The great poets of earlier times were too deeply penetrated by the
thought of the mystery and the grandeur in human life, to dwell much
on the spectacle of the outward world. Though their delicate sense of
beauty was unconsciously cherished and refined by the air which they
breathed, and the scenes by which they were surrounded, yet they do
not, like the Roman poets, yield to the passive pleasures derived from
contemplating the aspect of the natural world; nor do they express the
happiness of passing out of the tumult of the city into the peaceful
security of the country. The difference between the two nations in
social temper and customs is connected with this difference in their
aesthetic susceptibility. The spirit in which a Greek enjoyed his
leisure, was one phase of his sociability, his communicativeness, his
constant passion for hearing and telling something new,--a disposition
which made the λέσχη a favourite resort so early as the time of
Homer, and which is seen still characterising the most typical
representatives of the race in the days of St. Paul. The Roman
statesman, on the other hand, prized his _otium_ as the healthy
repose after strenuous exertion. The chief relaxation to his proud and
self-dependent temper consisted in being alone, or at ease with his
household and his intimate friends. This desire for rest and retirement
was one great element in the Roman taste for country life;--a taste
which was manifested among the foremost public men, such as the Scipios
and Laelius, long before any trace of it is betrayed in Roman poetry.
But, as the practice of spending the unhealthy months of autumn away
from Rome became general among the wealthier classes, and as new modes
of sentiment were fostered by greater leisure and finer cultivation,
a genuine love of Nature,--taking the form either of attachment to
particular places, or of enjoyment in the life and beautiful forms of
the outward world,--was gradually awakened in the more susceptible
minds of the Italian race.
The poetry of the Augustan age and of that immediately preceding it is
deeply pervaded by this new emotion. Each of the great poets manifests
the feeling in his own way. Lucretius, while contemplating the majesty
of Nature's laws, and the immensity of her range, is, at the same
time, powerfully moved to sympathy with her ever-varying life. He
feels the charm of simply living in fine weather, and looking on the
common aspects of the world,--such as the sea-shore, fresh pastures and
full-flowing rivers, or the new loveliness of the early morning. He
represents the punishment of the Danaides as a symbol of the incapacity
of the human spirit to enjoy the natural charm of the recurring seasons
of the year. Catullus, too, although his active social temper did not
respond to the spell which Nature exercised over the contemplative and
pensive spirits of Lucretius and Virgil, has many fine images from the
outward world in his poems. He delights in comparing the grace and
the passion of youth with the bloom of flowers and the stateliness of
trees; he associates the beauty of Sirmio with his bright picture of
the happiness of home; he feels the return of the genial breezes of
spring as enhancing his delight in leaving the dull plains of Phrygia,
and in hastening to visit the famous cities of Asia. Virgil's early art
was characterised by his friend and brother poet in the lines,--
Molle atque facetum
Vergilio annuerunt gaudentes rure camenae[5].
The love of natural, and especially of Italian, beauty blends with all
his patriotic memories, and with the charm which he has cast around
the common operations of rustic industry. The freedom and peace of his
country life, among the Sabine hills, kept the heart of Horace fresh
and simple, in spite of all the pleasures and flatteries to which he
was exposed; and enabled him, till the end of his course, to mingle
the clear fountain of native poetry,--'ingeni benigna vena,'--with the
stiller current of his meditative wisdom.
The passion of love was a favourite theme both of the early lyrical
poets of Greece, and of the courtly writers of Alexandria; but the
works of the former have reached us only in inconsiderable fragments;
and the latter, with the exception of Theocritus, are much inferior to
the Roman poets who made them their models. It is in Latin literature
that we are brought most near to the power of this passion in the
ancient world. Few among the poets who have recorded their own
experience of love, in any age, have expressed a feeling so true or so
intense as Catullus. He has all the ardent, self-forgetful devotion, if
he wants the chivalry and purity, of modern sentiment. He has painted
the love of others, also, with graceful fidelity. He has shown the
finest sense in discerning, and the finest power in delineating the
charm of youthful passion, when first awakening into life, or first
unfolding into true affection. It is by his delineation of the agony
of Dido that Virgil has imparted the chief personal interest to the
story of the Aeneid. If he has failed to embody any complex type of
character, he has described the agitation and pathos of this particular
passion at least with a powerful hand. Horace is the poet of the
lighter and gayer moods of love. Without ever becoming a slave to it
he experienced enough of its pains and pleasures, to enable him to
paint the fascination or the waywardness of a mistress with the equable
feeling of an epicurean, but, at the same time, with the refined
observation of a poet. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age, making
pleasure the chief pursuit of their lives, have made the more ignoble
and transient phases of this passion the predominant motive of their
poetry. Yet the effeminacy of Tibullus is redeemed by real tenderness
of heart; there is ardent emotion expressed by Propertius for his
living mistress, and true affection in the lines in which he recalls
her memory after death; the profligacy of Ovid is, if not redeemed, at
least relieved, by his buoyant wit and his brilliant fancy.
Roman poetry is also interesting as the revelation of personal
experience and character. The biographies of ancient authors are, for
the most part, meagre and untrustworthy; and thus it is chiefly through
the conscious or unconscious self-portraiture in their writings that
the actual men of antiquity are brought into close contact with the
modern world. Few men of any age or country are so well known to us
as Horace; and it is from his own writings, exclusively, that this
intimate knowledge has been obtained. The lines in which he describes
Lucilius are more applicable to himself than to any extant writer of
Greece or Rome,--
Ille velut fidis arcana sodalibus olim
Credebat libris: neque si male cesserat, unquam
Decurrens alio, neque si bene: quo fit, ut omnis
Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella
Vita senis[6].
He has described himself, his tastes and pursuits, his thoughts and
convictions, with perfect frankness and candour, and without any of
the triviality or affectation of literary egotism. Catullus, although
sometimes wanting in proper reticence, and altogether devoid of that
meditative art with which Horace transmutes his own experience into the
common experience of human nature, is known also as a familiar friend,
from the force of feeling with which he realised, and the transparent
sincerity with which he recorded, all the pain and the pleasure of his
life. The elegiac poets of the Augustan age have written, neither from
so strong a heart as that of Catullus, nor with the good taste and
self-respect of Horace; but yet one of the chief sources of interest in
their poetry, as of that of Martial in a later age, arises from their
strong realisation of life, their unreserved communicativeness, and the
light they thus throw on one phase of personal and social manners in
ancient times.
Nor are these indications of individual character confined to the poets
who profess to communicate their own feelings, and to record their own
fortunes. All the works of Roman poetry bear emphatically the impress
of their authors. While the finest Greek poetry seems like an almost
impersonal emanation of genius, Roman poetry is, to a much greater
extent, the expression of character. The great Roman writers manifest
that kind of self-consciousness which accompanies resolute and
successful effort; while the Greeks enjoy that happy self-forgetfulness
which attends the unimpeded exercise of a natural gift. The epitaphs
composed for themselves by Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, and Pacuvius,
and the assertion of their own originality and of their hopes of
fame, which occurs in the poetry of Lucretius, Virgil, and Horace,
were dictated by a strong sense of their own personality, and of the
importance of the task on which they were engaged. Catullus, although
he is much preoccupied with, and most frank in communicating his
feelings and pursuits, has much less of the consciousness of genius, is
much more humble in his aspirations, and more modest in his estimate
of himself. In this, as in other respects, he approaches nearer to the
type of Greek art than any of his brother-poets of Rome.
It is a common remark that the very greatest poets are those about
whose personal characteristics least is known. It is impossible in
their case to determine where they have expressed their real sympathies
or convictions. They rise above the prejudices of their country and
the accidents of their time, and can see the good and evil inseparably
mixed in all human action. No criticism can throw any trustworthy
light on the personal position, the pursuits and aims, the outward
and inward experience of Homer. It cannot even be determined with
certainty how much of the poetry which bears his name is the creation
of one, seemingly, inexhaustible genius; and how much is the 'divine
voice' of earlier singers still 'floating around him.' Such inquiries
are ever attracting and ever baffling a high curiosity. They leave the
mind perplexed with the doubt whether it is discerning, in the far
distance, the outline of solid mountain-land, or only the transient
shapes of the clouds. Hesiod, on the other hand, a poet of perhaps
equal antiquity, but of an infinitely lower order of genius, has left
his own likeness graphically delineated on his remains. There is much
to interest a reader in the old didactic poem, 'The Works and Days,'
but it is not the interest of studying a work of art or of creative
genius. The charm of the book consists partly in its power of calling
up the ideas of a remote antiquity and of human life in its most
elemental conditions; partly in the distinct impression which it bears
of a character of an antique and primitive and yet not unfamiliar
type;--a character of deep natural piety and righteousness, but with a
quaint intermixture of other qualities, homespun sagacity and worldly
wisdom;--genuine thrift, and horror of idleness, of war, of seafaring
enterprise;--sardonic dislike of the airs and vices of women, and a
grim discontent with his own condition, and with the poor soil which
it was his lot to till[7]. It is through his want of those gifts of
genius which have made Homer immortal as a poet, and a mere name as
a man, that Hesiod has left so distinct a picture of himself to the
latest times. In like manner Roman poetry, while never rising to the
heights of creative and impersonal genius, from this very defect, is
a truer revelation of the poets themselves. The Aeneid supplies ample
materials for understanding the affections and convictions of Virgil.
Lucretius makes his personal presence felt through the whole march of
his argument, and supports every position of his system not with his
logic only, but with the whole force of his nature. The fragments of
Ennius and of Lucilius afford ample evidence by which we may judge what
kind of men they were.
It thus appears that, over and above their higher and finer
excellencies, the Roman poets have this additional source of interest,
that, more than any other authors in the vigorous times of antiquity,
they satisfy the modern curiosity in regard to personal character and
experience. These poets have themselves left the most trustworthy
record of their happiest hours and most real interests; of their
standard of conduct, their personal worth, and their strength of
affection; of the studies and the occupations in which they passed
their lives, and of the spirit in which they awaited the certainty of
their end.
* * * * *
It remains to say a few words in regard to the historical progress of
this branch of literature. The history of Roman poetry may be divided
into four great periods:--
I. The age of Naevius, Ennius, Lucilius, etc., extending from about
B.C. 240 till about B.C. 100:
II. The age of Lucretius and Catullus, whose active poetical career
belongs to the last age of the Republic, the decennium before the
outbreak of the Civil War between Caesar and Pompey:
III. The Augustan age:
IV. The whole period of the Empire after the time of Augustus.
The poetry of each of these periods is distinctly marked in form,
style, and character. There is evidently a great progress in artistic
accomplishment and in poetical feeling, from the rude cyclopean remains
of the annals of Ennius to the stately proportions and elaborate
workmanship of the Aeneid. Yet this advance was attended with some loss
as well as gain. With infinitely less accomplishment and less variety,
the older writers show signs of a robuster life and a more vigorous
understanding than some at least of those who adorn the Augustan era.
They endeavoured to work in the spirit of the great masters, who had
made the most heroic passions and most serious interests of men the
subject of their art. They were men also of the same fibre as the chief
actors on the stage of public affairs, living with them in familiar
friendship, while at the same time maintaining a close sympathy with
popular feeling and the national life. Their fragments are thus, apart
from their intrinsic merits, especially valuable as the contemporary
language of that great time, and as giving some expression to the
strength, the dignity, and the freedom which were stamped upon the old
Republic.
For more than a generation after the death of Accius and Lucilius, no
new poet of any eminence appeared at Rome. The vivid enjoyment of
life, and the sense of security which usually accompany and foster
the successful cultivation of art, had been rudely interrupted by the
convulsions of the State. A new birth of Roman poetry took place during
the brief lull between the storms of the first and second civil wars.
The new poets arose independently of the old literature. They appealed
not to popular favour, but to the tastes of the few and the educated;
they gave expression not to any public or national sentiment, but to
their individual thought and feeling. Their works reflect the restless
agitation of a time of revolution; but they show also all the vigour
and sincerity of republican freedom. While greatly superior to the
fragments of the older poetry in refinement of style, and in depth
and variety of poetical feeling, they want the simple strength of
moral conviction, and the interest in great practical affairs, which
characterised their predecessors. They are inferior to the poets of the
Augustan age in artistic skill; but they show more force of thought,
or more intensity of passion, a stronger and livelier inspiration, a
bolder and more independent character.
The short interval between the death of Catullus and the appearance of
the Bucolics of Virgil marks the beginning of a new era in literature
and in history:
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Catullus, dying only a few years before the extinction of popular
freedom, is, in every nerve and fibre, the poet of a republic. Virgil,
even before the final success of Augustus, proclaimed the advent of the
new Empire; and he became the sincere admirer and interpreter of its
order and magnificence. Most of the other poets of that age, though
born before the overthrow of the Republic, show the influence of their
time, not only by sympathy with or acquiescence in the new order of
things, but by a perceptible lowering in the higher energies of life.
Still, the poetry of the Augustan age, if inferior in natural force to
that of the Republic, is the culmination of all the previous efforts
of Roman art; and is, at the same time, the most complete and elaborate
representation of Roman and Italian life.
The chief interest of Roman poetry, considered as the work of men of
natural genius and cultivated taste, and as the expression of great
national ideas or of individual thought and impulse, ceases with
the end of the Augustan age. Under the continued pressure of the
Empire, true poetical inspiration and pure feeling for art were lost.
One certain test of this decay is the absence of musical power and
sweetness from the verse of the later poets. Yet some of the poets
of the Empire have their own peculiar greatness. Lucan and Juvenal
recall in their vigorous rhetoric the masculine tone and fervid feeling
of the old Roman character, liberalised by the progress of thought
and education. In the Satires of Persius, there is an atmosphere of
purer morality than in any earlier Roman writer, with the exception
of Cicero. There is much vigour, sense, wit, and keen appreciation of
life, intermingled with the coarseness of Martial. Yet it is owing
rather to their rhetorical or their intellectual ability and to their
historical value, than to their poetical genius, that these writers are
still read and admired. The artificial epics of Silius Italicus and
Valerius Flaccus may be occasionally read in the interests of learning;
but it is hardly probable that they will, or desirable that they
should, ever be permanently restored from the neglect and oblivion into
which they have long been sinking.
This review of Roman poetry will bring before us the origin and
progressive growth of a branch of literature, moulded, indeed, on the
forms of a foreign art, but executed with native energy, and expressive
of native character. In this poetry not the genius only, but the inner
nature and sympathies of some of the more interesting men of antiquity
are displayed. It throws light on the impulses of thought and feeling
which influenced the action of different epochs in Roman history. The
great qualities of Rome are seen to mould and animate her poetry.
These qualities are found in harmonious union with the spirit of
enjoyment and the sense of exuberant life, fostered by the genial air
of Italy; and with a refinement of taste drawn from the purest source
of human culture which the world has ever enjoyed. After all deductions
have been made for their want of inventiveness, it still remains true,
that the Roman poets of the last days of the Republic and of the
Augustan age have added to the masterpieces of literature some great
works of native feeling as well as of finished execution.
[Footnote 1: Hom. Od. xxii. 348.]
[Footnote 2: Cf. Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 2, 3. Sero igitur a nostris poetae
vel cogniti vel recepti. At contra oratorem celeriter complexi sumus:
nec eum primo eruditum, aptum tamen ad dicendum.]
[Footnote 3: Smith's Dict. of Greek and Roman Biography, Art. Catullus.]
[Footnote 4: The following lines might be quoted as a specimen of the
_majesty_ of the Aeneid:--
Haec finis Priami fatorum; hic exitus illum
Sorte tulit, Troiam incensam et prolapsa videntem
Pergama, tot quondam populis terrisque superbum
Regnatorem Asiae.--Aen. ii. 554-7.
]
[Footnote 5: Horace, Sat. i. 10. 45.]
[Footnote 6: 'He used from time to time to intrust all his secret
thoughts to his books, as to trusty friends; it was to them only he
turned in evil fortune or in good; and thus it is, that the whole life
of the old poet lies before our eyes, as if it were portrayed on a
votive picture.'--Sat. ii. 1. 30.]
[Footnote 7: The parallel which Mr. Ruskin draws (Modern Painters, vol
iii. p. 194), between an ancient Greek and 'a good, conscientious, but
illiterate Scotch Presbyterian Border farmer of a century or two back,'
becomes intelligible if we regard Hesiod as a normal type of the Greek
mind.]