THE BEGINNING OF ROMAN LITERATURE--LIVIUS ANDRONICUS--CN. NAEVIUS, B.C.
240-202.
The historical event which first brought the Romans into familiar
contact with the Greeks, was the war with Pyrrhus and with Tarentum,
the most powerful and flourishing among the famous Greek colonies
in lower Italy. In earlier times, indeed, through their occasional
communication with the Greeks of Cumae, and the other colonies in
Italy, they had obtained a vague knowledge of some of the legends of
Greek poetry. The worship of Aesculapius was introduced at Rome from
Epidaurus in B.C. 293 and the oracle of Delphi had been consulted by
the Romans in still earlier times. As the Sibylline verses appear to
have been composed in Greek, their interpreters must have been either
Greeks or men acquainted with that language[27]. The identification
of the Greek with the Roman mythology had probably commenced before
Greek literature was known to the Romans, although the works of Naevius
and Ennius must have had an influence in completing this process.
Greek civilisation had come, however, at an earlier period into close
relation with the south of Italy; and the natives of that district,
such as Ennius and Pacuvius, who first settled at Rome, were spoken of
by the Romans as 'Semi Graeci.' But, until after the fall of Tarentum
there appears to have been no familiar intercourse between the two
great representatives of ancient civilisation. Till the war with
Pyrrhus, the knowledge that the two nations had of one another was
slight and vague. But, immediately after that time, the affairs of Rome
began to attract the attention of Greek historians[28], and the Romans,
though very slowly, began to obtain some acquaintance with the language
and literature of Greece.
Tarentum was taken in B.C. 272, but more than thirty years elapsed
before Livius Andronicus represented his first drama before a Roman
audience. Twenty years of this intervening period, from B.C. 261 to
B.C. 241, were occupied with the First Punic War; and it was not till
the successful close of that war, and the commencement of the following
years of peace, that this new kind of recreation and instruction was
made familiar to the Romans.
Serus enim Graecis admovit acumina chartis;
Et post Punica bella quietus, quaerere coepit
Quid Sophocles et Thespis et Aeschylus utile ferrent[29].
Two circumstances, however, must in the meantime have prepared the
minds of the Romans for the reception of the new literature. Sicily
had been the chief battle-field of the contending powers. In their
intercourse with the Sicilian Greeks, the Romans had great facilities
for becoming acquainted with the Greek language, and frequent
opportunities of being present at dramatic representations. Many Greeks
also had been brought to Rome as slaves after the capture of Tarentum,
and were employed in educating the young among the higher classes.
Thus many Roman citizens were prepared, by their circumstances and
education, to take interest in the legends and in the dramatic form of
literature introduced from Greece; while the previous existence of the
saturae, and other scenic exhibitions at Rome, tended to make the new
drama acceptable to the great mass of the population.
The earliest period of Roman poetry extends from the close of the
First Punic War till the beginning of the first century B.C. During
this period of about a century and a half, in which Roman oratory,
history, and comedy, were also actively cultivated, we hear only of
five or six names as eminent in different kinds of serious poetry. The
whole labour of introducing and of keeping alive, among an unlettered
people, some taste for the graver forms of literature thus devolved
upon a few men of ardent temperament, vigorous understanding, and great
productive energy; but with little sense of art, and endowed with
faculties seemingly more adapted to the practical business of life
than to the idealising efforts of genius. They had to struggle against
the difficulties incidental to the first beginnings of art and to the
rudeness of the Latin language. They were exposed, also, to other
disadvantages, arising from the natural indifference of the mass of
the people to all works of imagination, and from the preference of the
educated class for the more finished works already existing in Greek
literature.
Yet this long period, in which poetry, with so much difficulty and such
scanty resources, struggled into existence at Rome, is connected with
the age of Cicero by an unbroken line of literary continuity. Naevius,
the younger contemporary of Livius, and the first native poet, was
actively engaged in the composition of his poems till the time of his
death; about which period his greater successor first appeared at Rome.
For about thirty years, Ennius shone alone in epic and tragic poetry.
The poetic successor of Ennius was his nephew, Pacuvius. He, in the
later years of his life, lived in friendly intercourse with his younger
rival Accius, who, again, in his old age, had frequently conversed with
Cicero[30]. The torch, which was first lighted by Livius Andronicus
from the decaying fires of Greece, was thus handed down by these few
men, through this long period, until it was extinguished during the
stormy times which fell in the youth of the great orator and prose
writer of the Republic.
The forms of serious poetry, prevailing during this period, were the
tragic drama, the annalistic epic, and satire. Tragedy was earliest
introduced, was received with most favour, and was cultivated by all
the poets of the period, with the exception of Lucilius and the comic
writers. The epic poetry of the age was the work of Naevius and Ennius.
It has greater claims to originality and national spirit, both in
form and substance, and it exercised a more powerful influence on the
later poetry of Rome, than either the tragedy or comedy of the time.
The invention of satire, the most purely original of the three, is
generally attributed to Lucilius; but the satiric spirit was shown
earlier in some of the dramas of Naevius; and the first modification of
the primitive satura to a literary shape was the work of Ennius, who
was followed in the same style by his nephew Pacuvius.
No complete work of any of these poets has been preserved to modern
times. Our knowledge of the epic, tragic, and satiric poetry of this
long period is derived partly from ancient testimony, but chiefly
from the examination of numerous fragments. Most of these have been
preserved, not by critics on account of their beauty and worth, but
by grammarians on account of the obsolete words and forms of speech
contained in them,--a fact, which probably leads us to attribute to
the earlier literature a more abnormal and ruder style than that which
really belonged to it. A few of the longest and most interesting
fragments have come down in the works of the admirers of those ancient
poets, especially of Cicero and Aulus Gellius. The notion that can
be formed of the early Roman literature must thus, of necessity,
be incomplete. Yet these fragments are sufficient to produce a
consistent impression of certain prevailing characteristics of thought
and sentiment. Many of them are valuable from their own intrinsic
worth; others again from the grave associations connected with their
antiquity, and from the authentic evidence they afford of the moral
and intellectual qualities, the prevailing ideas and sympathies of the
strongest race of the ancient world, about, or shortly after, the time
when they attained the acme of their moral and political greatness.
The two earliest authors who fill a period of forty years in the
literary history of Rome, extending from the end of the First to the
end of the Second Punic War, are Livius Andronicus and Cn. Naevius.
Of the first very little is known. The fragments of his works are
scanty and unimportant, and have been preserved by grammarians merely
as illustrative of old forms of the language. The admirers of Naevius
and Ennius, in ancient times, awarded only scanty honours to the older
dramatist. Cicero, for instance, says of his plays 'that they are not
worth reading a second time[31].' There is no ground for believing that
Livius was a man of original genius. The importance which attaches to
him consists in his being the accidental medium through which literary
art was first introduced to the Romans. He was a Greek, and, as is
generally supposed, a native of Tarentum. If he was among the captives
taken after the fall of that city, he must have resided thirty years
at Rome before he ventured to reproduce a Greek drama in the Latin
language. He educated the sons of his master, M. Livius Salinator, from
whom he afterwards received his freedom. The last thirty years of his
life were devoted to literature, and chiefly to the reproduction of the
Greek drama in a Latin dress. His tragedies appear all to have been
founded on Greek subjects; most of them, probably, were translations.
Among the titles, we hear of the _Aegisthus_, _Ajax_, _Equus Trojanus_,
_Tereus_, _Hermione_, etc.--all of them subjects which continued to be
popular with the later tragedians of Rome. No fragment is preserved
sufficient to give any idea of his treatment of the subjects, or of
his general mode of thought and feeling. Little can be gathered from
the scanty remains of his works, except some idea of the harshness and
inelegance of his diction.
In addition to his dramas, he translated the Odyssey into Saturnian
verse. This work long retained its place as a school-book, and is
spoken of by Horace as forming part of his own early lessons under
the rod of Orbilius[32]. One or two lines of the translation still
remain, and exemplify its bald and prosaic diction, and the extreme
irregularity of the Saturnian metre. The lines of the Odyssey[33],
οὐ γὰρ ἔγωγέ τί φημι κακώτερον ἄλλο θαλάσσης
ἄνδρα γε συγχεῦαι, εἰ καὶ μάλα καρτερὸς εἴη;
are thus rendered:--
Namque nilum pejus
Macerat hemonem, quamde mare saevom, viris quoi
Sunt magnae, topper confringent importunae undae.
He was appointed also, on one occasion, near the end of the Second
Punic War, to compose a hymn to be sung by 'virgines ter novenae,'
which is described by Livy, the historian, as rugged and unpolished[34].
Livius was the schoolmaster of the Roman people rather than the father
of their literature. To accomplish what he did required no original
genius, but only the industry, knowledge, and tastes of an educated
man. If his long residence among his grave and stern masters, and the
hardships and constraint of slavery, had subdued in him the levity
and gaiety of a Tarentine Greek, they did not extinguish his love
of his native literature and the intellectual cultivation peculiar
to his race. In spite of the disadvantage of writing in a foreign
language, and of addressing an unlettered people, he was able to
give the direction which Roman poetry long followed, and to awaken a
new interest in the legends and heroes of his race. It was necessary
that the Romans should be educated before they could either produce
or appreciate an original poet. Livius performed a useful, if not a
brilliant service, by directing those who followed him to the study and
imitation of the great masters who combined, with an unattainable grace
and art, a masculine strength and heroism of sentiment congenial to the
better side of Roman character.
Cn. Naevius is really the first in the line of Roman poets, and the
first writer in the Latin language whose fragments give indication of
original power. He is believed to have been a Campanian by birth, on
the authority of Aulus Gellius, who characterised his famous epitaph as
'plenum superbiae Campanae.' Though the arrogance of Campania may have
been proverbial, yet the expression could scarcely with propriety have
been applied, except to a native of that district. If not a Roman by
birth, he at least belonged to a district which had become thoroughly
Latinised long before his time, and he showed himself to be, like his
successor Ennius, thoroughly Roman in his sympathies. He served as
a soldier in the First Punic War, and recorded his services in his
epic poem on that subject. The earliest drama of Naevius was brought
out in B.C. 235, five years after the first representation of Livius
Andronicus. The number of dramas which he is known to have composed
affords proof of great industry and activity, from that time till the
time of his banishment from Rome. He was more successful in comedy than
in tragedy, and he used the stage, as it had been used by the writers
of the old Attic comedy, as an arena of popular invective and political
warfare. A keen partisan of the commonalty, he attacked with vehemence
some of the chiefs of the great senatorian party. A line, which had
passed into a proverb in the time of Cicero, is attributed to him,--
Fato Metelli Romae fiunt consules;
to which the Metelli are said to have replied in the pithy Saturnian,
Dabunt malum Metelli Naevio poetae.
It is, however, doubted whether the first of these lines was really
written by Naevius, as the Metelli did not enjoy their rapid succession
of consulships till nearly a century after his death; but even at the
time of the Second Punic War they were powerful enough to procure the
imprisonment of the poet, in consequence of some offence which he had
given them. Plautus[35] alludes to this event, in one of the few
passages in which Latin comedy deviates from the conventional life of
Athenian manners to notice the actual circumstances of the time. While
in prison, he composed two plays (the _Hariolus_ and _Leon_), which
contained some retractation of his former attacks, and he was liberated
through the interference of the Tribunes of the Commons. Being
afterwards banished, he took up his residence at Utica, where he is
said by Cicero, on the authority of ancient records, to have died, in
B.C. 204[36], though the same author adds that Varro, 'diligentissimus
investigator antiquitatis,' believed that he was still alive for some
time after that date[37]. It is inferred, from a passage in Cicero[38],
that his poem on the First Punic War was composed in his old age.
Probably it was written in his exile, when removed from the sphere
of his active literary efforts. As he served in that war, some time
between B.C. 261 and B.C. 241, he must have been well advanced in years
at the time of his death.
The best known of all the fragments of Naevius, and the most favourable
specimen of his style, is his epitaph:--
Mortales immortales flere si foret fas,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam,
Itaque postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier Latina lingua.
It has been supposed that this epitaph was written as a dying protest
against the Hellenising influence of Ennius; but as Ennius came to
Rome for the first time about B.C. 204, it is not likely, even if the
life of Naevius was prolonged somewhat beyond that date, that the fame
and influence of his younger rival could have spread so rapidly as to
disturb the peace of the old poet in his exile. It might as fairly
be regarded as proceeding from a jealousy of the merits of Plautus,
as from hostility to the innovating tendency of Ennius. The words of
the epitaph are simply expressive of the strong self-assertion and
independence which Naevius maintained till the end of his active and
somewhat turbulent career.
He wrote a few tragedies, of which scarcely anything is known except
the titles,--such as the _Andromache_, _Equus Trojanus_, _Hector
Proficiscens_, _Lycurgus_,--the last founded on the same subject as the
Bacchae of Euripides. The titles of nearly all these plays, as well
as of the plays of Livius, imply the prevailing interest taken in the
Homeric poems, and in all the events connected with the Trojan War. The
following passage from the Lycurgus has some value as containing the
germs of poetical diction:--
Vos, qui regalis corporis custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita[39].
He composed a number of comedies, and also some original plays,
founded on events in Roman history,--one of them called _Romulus_, or
_Alimonia Romuli et Remi_. The longest of the fragments attributed to
him is a passage from a comedy, which has been, with less probability,
attributed to Ennius. It is a description of a coquette, and shows
considerable power of close satiric observation:--
Quasi pila
In choro ludens dadatim dat se, et communem facit:
Alii adnutat, alii adnictat, alium amat, alium tenet;
Alibi manus est occupata, alii percellit pedem;
Alii spectandum dat annulum; a labris alium invocat;
Cum alio cantat, attamen dat alii digito literas[40].
The chief characteristic illustrated by the scanty fragments of his
dramas is the political spirit with which they were animated. Thus
Cicero[41] refers to a passage in one of his plays (_ut est in Naevii
ludo_) where, to the question, 'Who had, within so short a time,
destroyed your great commonwealth?' the pregnant answer is given,
Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adolescentuli[41].
The nobles, whose enmity he provoked, were probably attacked by him
in his comedies. One passage is quoted by Aulus Gellius, in which
a failing of the great Scipio is exposed[42]. Other fragments are
found indicative of his freedom of speech and bold independence of
character:--
Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea nunc audere quemquam regem rumpere?
Quanto libertatem hanc his superat servitus[43]?
and this also[44]:--
Semper pluris feci potioremque ego
Libertatem habui multo quam pecuniam.
He is placed in the canon of Volcatius Sedigitus immediately after
Plautus in the rank of comic poets. He has more of the stamp of
Lucilius than of his immediate successor Ennius. By his censorious and
aggressive vehemence, by boldness and freedom of speech, and by his
strong political feeling, Naevius in his dramas represents the spirit
of Roman satire rather than of Roman tragedy. He holds the same place
in Roman literature as the Tribune of the Commons in Roman politics.
He expressed the vigorous independence of spirit that supported the
Commons in their long struggle with the patricians, while Ennius may be
regarded as expressing the majesty and authority with which the Roman
Senate ruled the world.
But the work on which his fame as a national and original poet chiefly
rested was his epic or historical poem on the First Punic War. The
poem was originally one continuous work, written in the Saturnian
metre; though, at a later time, it was divided into seven books. The
earlier part of the work dealt with the mythical origin of Rome and
of Carthage, the flight of Aeneas from Troy, his sojourn at the court
of Dido, and his settlement in Latium. The mythical background of the
poem afforded scope for imaginative treatment and invention. Its main
substance, however, appears to have been composed in the spirit and
tone of a contemporary chronicle. The few fragments that remain from
the longer and later portion of the work, evidently express a bare and
literal adherence to fact, without any poetical colouring or romantic
representation.
Ennius and Virgil are both known to have borrowed much from this poem
of Naevius. There are many passages in the Aeneid in which Virgil
followed, with slight deviations, the track of the older poet. Naevius
(as quoted by Servius) introduced the wives of Aeneas and of Anchises,
leaving Troy in the night-time,--
Amborum
Uxores noctu Troiade exibant capitibus
Opertis, flentes abeuntes lacrimis cum multis.
He represents Aeneas as having only one ship built by Mercury,--a
limitation which did not suit Virgil's account of the scale on which
the war was carried on, after the landing in Italy. The account of the
storm in the first Aeneid, of Aeneas consoling his followers, of Venus
complaining to Jupiter, and of his comforting her with the promise of
the future greatness of Rome (one of the cardinal passages in Virgil's
epic), were all taken from the old Saturnian poem of Naevius. He
speaks also of Anna and Dido, as daughters of Agenor, though there
is no direct evidence that he anticipated Virgil in telling the tale
of Dido's unhappy love. He mentioned also the Italian Sibyl and the
worship of the Penates--materials which Virgil fused into his great
national and religious poem. Ennius followed Naevius in representing
Romulus as the grandson of Aeneas. The exigencies of his chronology
compelled Virgil to fill a blank space of three hundred years with the
shadowy forms of a line of Alban kings.
Whatever may have been the origin of the belief in the connexion of
Rome with Troy, it certainly prevailed before the poem of Naevius was
composed, as at the beginning of the First Punic War the inhabitants
of Egesta opened their gates to Rome, in acknowledgment of their
common descent from Troy. But the story of the old connexion of Aeneas
and Dido, symbolising the former league and the later enmity between
Romans and Carthaginians, most probably first assumed shape in the
time of the Punic Wars. The belief, as shadowed forth in Naevius,
that the triumph of Rome had been decreed from of old by Jupiter,
and promised to the mythical ancestress of Aeneas, proves that the
Romans were possessed already with the idea of their national destiny.
How much of the tale of Aeneas and Dido is due to the imagination of
Naevius it is impossible to say; but his treatment of the mythical
part of his story,--his introduction of the storm, the complaint of
Venus, etc.,--merits the praise of happy and suggestive invention,
and of a real adaptation to his main subject. There was more meaning
in the mythical foreshadowing of the deadly strife between Romans and
Carthaginians, at a time when the two nations were fighting for their
very existence, and for the ultimate prize of the empire of the world,
than in the age of Virgil, when the power of Carthage was only a memory
of the past, and the immediate danger from which Rome had escaped had
arisen not so much from any foreign enemy, as from the fierce passions
of her own sons.
The mythical part of the poem was a prelude to the main subject, the
events of the First Punic War. Naevius and Ennius, like others among
the Roman poets of a later date, allowed the provinces of poetry and
of history to run into one another. They composed poetical chronicles
without any attempt to adhere to the principles and practice of the
Greek epic. The work of Naevius differed from that of Ennius in this
respect, that it treated of one particular portion of Roman history,
and did not profess to unfold the whole annals of the State. The slight
and scanty fragments that remain from the latter part of the poem, are
expressed with all the bareness, and, apparently, with the fidelity
of a chronicle. They have the merit of being direct and vigorous, but
are entirely without poetic grace and ornament. Rapid and graphic
condensation is their chief merit. There is a dash of impetuosity
in some of them, suggestive of the bold, impatient, and energetic
temperament of the poet; as for instance in the lines
Transit Melitam Romanus exercitus, insulam integram
Urit, populatur, vastat, rem hostium concinnat[45].
But the fragments of the poem are really too unimportant to afford
ground for a true estimate of its general merit. They supply some
evidence in regard to the irregularity of the metre in which it was
written. The uncertainty which prevails as to its structure may be
inferred from the fact that different conjectural readings of every
fragment are proposed by different commentators. A saying of an old
grammarian, Atilius Fortunatianus, is quoted to the effect that he
could not adduce from the whole poem of Naevius any single line, as
a normal specimen of the pure Saturnian verse. Cicero bears strong
testimony to the merits of the poem in point of style. He says in one
place, 'the Punic War delights us like a work of Myron[46].' In the
dialogue 'De Oratore,' he represents Crassus as comparing the idiomatic
purity which distinguished the conversation of his mother-in-law,
Laelia, and other ladies of rank, with the style of Plautus and
Naevius. 'Equidem quum audio socrum meam Laeliam (facilius enim
mulieres incorruptam antiquitatem conservant, quod, multorum sermonis
expertes, ea tenent semper, quae prima didicerunt); sed eam sic audio,
ut Plautum mihi aut Naevium videar audire. Sono ipso vocis ita recto et
simplici est, ut nihil ostentationis aut imitationis afferre videatur;
ex quo sic locutum ejus patrem judico, sic majores[47].' Expressions
from his plays were, from their weight and compact brevity, quoted
familiarly in the days of Cicero; and one of them 'laudari a laudato
viro,' like so many other pithy Latin sayings, is still in use to
express a distinction that could not be characterised in happier or
shorter terms. It is to be remarked also that the merit, which he
assumes to himself in his epitaph, is the purity with which he wrote
the Latin language.
Our knowledge of Naevius is thus, of necessity, very limited and
fragmentary. From the testimony of later authors it may, however, be
gathered that he was a remarkable and original man. He represented
the boldness, freedom, and energy, which formed one side of the Roman
character. Like some of our own early dramatists, he had served as
a soldier before becoming an author. He was ardent in his national
feeling; and, both in his life and in his writings, he manifested a
strong spirit of political partisanship. As an author, he showed great
productive energy, which continued unabated through a long and vigorous
lifetime. His high self-confident spirit and impetuous temper have left
their impress on the few fragments of his dramas and of his epic poem.
Probably his most important service to Roman literature consisted in
the vigour and purity with which he used the Latin language. But the
conception of his epic poem seems to imply some share of the higher
gift of poetical invention. He stands at the head of the line of Roman
poets, distinguished by that force of speech and vehemence of temper,
which appeared again in Lucilius, Catullus, and Juvenal; distinguished
also by that national spirit which moved Ennius and, after him, Virgil,
to employ their poetical faculty in raising a monument to commemorate
the power and glory of Rome.
[Footnote 27: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i.
chap. ii. 14.]
[Footnote 28: Cf. Lewis, Credibility of Early Roman History, vol. i.
chap. ii. 14, 15.]
[Footnote 29: Horace, Epist. ii. 1. 161-3.]
[Footnote 30: Cic. Brutus, ch. 28.]
[Footnote 31: Brutus, 18.]
[Footnote 32: Epist. ii. 1. 71.]
[Footnote 33: viii. 138.]
[Footnote 34: xxvii. 17.]
[Footnote 35: Miles Gloriosus, ii. 2. 27.]
[Footnote 36: Brutus, 15.]
[Footnote 37: Mommsen remarks that he could not have retired to Utica
till after it fell into the possession of the Romans.]
[Footnote 38: De Senectute, 14.]
[Footnote 39: 'Ye who keep watch over the person of the king, hasten
straightway to the leafy places, where the copsewood is of nature's
growth, not planted by man.']
[Footnote 40: 'Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses about
from one to another, and is at home with all. To one she nods, to
another winks; she makes love to one, clings to another. Her hand is
busy here, her foot there. To one she gives a ring to look at, to
another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with another corresponds by
signs.'
The reading of the passage here adopted is that given by Munk.]
[Footnote 41: De Senectute, 6.]
[Footnote 42:
Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.
]
[Footnote 43: 'What I in the theatre here have made good by the
applause given to me, to think that any of these great people should
now dare to interfere with! How much better thing is the slavery
_here_'(_i.e._ represented in this play), 'than the liberty we actually
enjoy?']
[Footnote 44: I have always held liberty to be of more value and a
better thing than money.' The reading is that given by Munk.]
[Footnote 45: Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this poem, the
action is generally represented in the _present tense_.]
[Footnote 46: Brutus, 19.]
[Footnote 47: 'I, for my part, as I listen to my mother-in-law, Laelia
(for women more easily preserve the pure idiom of antiquity, because,
from their limited intercourse with the world, they retain always their
earlier impressions), in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am
listening to Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so
natural and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or
imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and her ancestors
all spoke, in the very same way.'--Cicero, De Oratore iii. 12.]