EARLY ROMAN TRAGEDY--M. PACUVIUS, B.C. 219-129; L. ACCIUS, B.C.
170-ABOUT B.C. 90.
The powerful impulse given to Roman tragedy by Ennius was sustained
till about the beginning of the first century B.C. first by his nephew
M. Pacuvius and after him by L. Accius. The popularity of the drama
during this period may be estimated from the fact that, of the early
writers of poetry, Lucilius alone contributed nothing to the Roman
stage. The plays of the three tragedians who have just been mentioned
were not only performed during the lifetime of their authors, but, as
appears from many notices of them in Cicero, they held their place on
the stage with much popular applause, and were read and admired as
literary works till the last days of the Republic. This popularity
implies either some adaptation of Roman tragedy to the time in which
it was produced, or some special capacity for awakening new interests
and ideas in a people hitherto unacquainted with literature. Yet, on
the other hand, the want of permanence, and the want of any power
of development in the Roman drama, would indicate that it was less
adapted to the genius of the nation than either the epic or the satiric
poetry of this era. If the dramatic art of Pacuvius and Accius had
been as true an expression of the national mind as either the epic
poem of Ennius or the satire of Lucilius, it might have been expected
that it would have flourished in greater perfection in the eras of
finer literary accomplishment. The efforts of Naevius and Ennius
were crowned with the fulfilment of Virgil, and the spirit and manner
of Lucilius still live in the satires of Horace and Juvenal; but
Roman tragedy dwindled away till it became a mere literary exercise
of educated men, and remains only in the artificial and rhetorical
compositions attributed to the philosopher Seneca.
From the fact that early Roman tragedy left no literary heir, it is
more difficult to discern its original features and character than
those of the epic or satiric poetry of the period. A further difficulty
arises out of the very nature of dramatic fragments. Isolated passages
in a drama afford scanty grounds for judging of the conduct of the
action, or the force and consistency with which the leading characters
are maintained. There is, moreover, very slight direct evidence bearing
on the dramatic genius of the early tragic poets. Roman critics seem to
have paid little attention to, or had little perception of this kind
of excellence. They quote with admiration the fervid sentiment and
morality--'the rugged maxims hewn from life'--expressed on the Roman
stage; but they have not preserved the memory of any great typical
character, or of any dramatic plot creatively conceived or powerfully
sustained.
The Roman drama was confessedly a reproduction or adaptation of the
drama of Athens. The titles of the great majority of Roman tragedies
indicate that they were translated or copied from Greek originals, or
were at least founded on the legends of Greek poetry and mythology.
The _Medea_ of Ennius and the _Antiope_ of Pacuvius are known, on the
authority of Cicero, to have been directly translated from Euripides.
Other dramas were more or less close adaptations from his works, or
from those of the other Attic tragedians. All of the Roman tragic poets
indeed produced one or more plays founded on Roman history or legend:
but, with the exception of the Brutus of Accius, none of these seem to
have been permanently popular. This failure to establish a national
drama seems to imply a want of dramatic invention in the conduct of
a plot and the exhibition of character on the part of the poets. As
their own history was of supreme interest to the Romans at all times,
it is difficult on any other supposition to explain the failure of the
'fabula praetextata' in gaining the public ear. There is, however,
distinct evidence that in their adaptations from the Greek the Roman
poets in some cases departed considerably from their originals.
Something of a Roman stamp was perhaps unconsciously impressed on the
Greek personages who were represented. Many of the extant fragments
seem to breathe the spirit of Rome more than of Athens. They are
expressed not with the subtlety and reflective genius of Greece,
but in the plain and straightforward tones of the Roman Republic.
The long-continued popularity of Roman tragedy implies also that it
was something more than an inartistic copy of the masterpieces of
Athenian genius. Mere imitations of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
might possibly have obtained some favour with a few men of literary
education, but could never have been listened to with applause, for
more than a century and a half, by miscellaneous audiences.
The following questions suggest themselves as of most interest in
connexion with the general character of early Roman tragedy:--How
far may it have reproduced not the materials and form only, but the
spirit and ideas of the Greek drama? What was its bearing on the
actual circumstances of Roman life, and what were the grounds of the
favour with which it was received? What cause can be assigned for the
cessation of this favour with the fall of the Republic?
The materials or substance of Roman tragedy were almost entirely
Greek. The stories and characters represented were, except in the few
exceptional cases referred to above, directly derived from the Greek
tragedians or from Homer and the cyclic poets. In point of form also
and some of the metres employed, Roman tragedy endeavoured to imitate
the models on which it was founded, with probably as little perception
of the requirements of dramatic art as of refinement in expression and
harmony in rhythm. But while generally conforming to their models,
the early Roman poets departed in some important respects from their
practice. Thus they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, assigning
to it merely a subsidiary part in the dialogue. Although some simple
lyrical metre, accompanied with music, continued to be employed in the
more rapid and impassioned parts of the dialogue, there was no scope,
on the Roman stage, for the great lyrical poetry of the Greek drama,
and for the nobler functions of the chorus. On the other hand, there
seems to have been more opportunity both for action and for oratorical
declamation. The acting of a Roman play must have been more like that
on a modern stage than the stately movement and the statuesque repose
of the Greek theatre. Again, in imitating the iambic and trochaic
metres of the Greek drama, the Roman poets were quite indifferent to
the laws by which their finer harmony is produced. Any of the feet
admissible in an iambic line might occupy any place in the line, with
the exception of the last. There is thus little metrical harmony in the
fragments of Roman tragedy; but, on the other hand, it may be remarked
that the order of the words in these fragments appears more natural and
direct than in the more elaborate metres of the later Roman poets.
But it was as impossible for the Roman drama to reproduce the inner
spirit of the noblest type of Greek tragedy as to rival its artistic
excellence. Greek tragedy, in its mature glory, was not only a purely
Greek creation, but was the artistic expression of a remarkable phase
through which the human mind has once passed;--a phase in which the
vivid fancies and emotions of a primitive age met and combined with
the thought, the art, the social and political life of the greatest
era of ancient civilisation. The Athenian dramatists, like the great
dramatists of other times, imparted a new and living interest to
ancient legends; but this was but one part, perhaps not the most
important part, of their functions. They represented before the
people the destiny and sufferings of national heroes and demigods,
sanctified by long association in the feelings of many generations,
still honoured by a vital worship, and appealed to as a present help
in danger. Thus a highly idealised and profoundly religious character
was imparted to the tragic representation of human passion and destiny
on the Athenian stage. This view of life, represented and contemplated
with solemnity of feeling in the age of Pericles, would have been
altogether unmeaning to a Roman of the age of Ennius. Such a one would
understand the natural heroism of a strong will, but not the new force
and elevation imparted to the will by reliance on the hidden powers and
laws overruling human affairs. He might be moved to sympathy with the
sufferers or actors on the scene; but he would be altogether insensible
to the higher consolation which overcomes the natural sorrow for
the mere earthly catastrophe in a great dramatic action. The inward
strength and dignity of a Roman senator might enable him to appreciate
the magnanimity and kingly nature of Oedipus; but the deeper interest
of the great dramas founded on the fortunes of the Theban king,
especially the interest arising from his trust in final righteousness,
his sense of communion with higher powers, from the thought of his
elevation out of the lowest earthly state into perpetual sanctity
and honour, was widely remote from the tangible objects of a Roman's
desire, and the direct motives of his conduct. Or perhaps a Roman
would have a fellow-feeling with the proud and soldierly bearing of
Ajax; but he would be blind to the inward lesson of self-knowledge and
self-mastery, which Sophocles represents as forced upon the spirit of
the Greek hero through the stern visitation of Athene. Equally remote
from the ordinary experience and emotions of a Roman would be the
feeling of awe, gloom, and mystery, diffused through the great thoughts
and imaginations of Aeschylus. Both in Aeschylus and in Sophocles the
light and the gloom cast over the human story are not of this world.
But in the fragments of the Roman tragedians, though there is often
found the expression of magnanimous and independent sentiment, and of a
very dignified and manly morality, there is little trace of any sense
of the relation of the individual to a Divine power; and there are
some indications not only of a scorn for common superstition, but also
of disbelief in the foundations of personal religion. The thought of
the insecurity of life, of the vicissitudes of human affairs, and of
the impotence of man to control his fate, which forced the Greek poets
and historians of the fifth century B.C. into deeper speculations on
the question of Divine Providence, was utterly alien to the natural
temperament of Rome, and to the confidence inspired by uniform success
during the long period succeeding the Second Punic War.
The contemplative and religious thought of Greek tragedy was thus
as remote from the practical spirit of the Romans as the political
license and the personal humours of the old Athenian comedy were from
the earnestness of public life and the dignity of government in the
great aristocratic Republic. And thus it happened that, as the comic
poets of Rome reproduced the new comedy of Athens, which portrayed the
passions of private not of political life, and the manners rather of a
cosmopolitan than of a purely Greek civilisation, so the tragic poets
found the art of Euripides and of his less illustrious successors more
easy to imitate than that of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The interest of
tragedy, as treated by Euripides, turns upon the catastrophes produced
by human passion: the religious meaning has, in a great measure, passed
out of it; the characters have dwindled from their heroic stature
to the proportions of ordinary life; his thought is the result of
the analysis of motives, and the study of familiar experience. He
has more affinity with the ordinary thoughts and moods of men than
either of the older poets. The older and the later Greek writers have
a nearer relation to the spirit of other eras of the world's history
than those who represent Athenian civilisation in its maturity. It
requires a longer familiarity with the mind and heart of antiquity
to realise and enjoy the full meaning of Sophocles, Thucydides, or
Aristophanes, than of Homer, Euripides, or Theocritus. Homer is indeed
one of the truest, if not the truest, representative of the genius
of Greece,--the representative also of the ancient world in the same
sense as Shakspeare is of the modern world,--but he is, at the same
time, directly intelligible and interesting to all countries and
times from his being the most natural and powerful exponent of the
elementary feelings and forces of human nature. The later poets, on
the other hand, such as Euripides and the writers of the new comedy,
were not indeed more truly human, but were less distinctively Greek
than their immediate predecessors. They had advanced beyond them in the
analytic knowledge of human nature; but, with the decay of religious
belief and political feeling, they had lost much of the genius and
sentiment by which the old Athenian life was characterised. Both their
gain and their loss bring them more into harmony with later modes of
thought and feeling. Thus it happened that, while the influence of
Aeschylus and Sophocles, of Thucydides and Aristophanes, is scarcely
perceptible in Roman literature, Homer and the early lyrical poets who
flourished before Greek civilisation exhibited its most special type,
and Euripides who, though a contemporary of Sophocles and Aristophanes,
yet belonged in spirit and tone to a younger generation, the writers
of the new comedy, and the Alexandrine poets who flourished when the
purely Greek ideas and character were being merged in a cosmopolitan
civilisation, exercised a direct influence on Roman taste and opinion
in every age of their literature. The early tragic poets of Rome could
not rival or imitate the dramatic art, the pathetic power, the clear
and fluent style, the active and subtle analysis of Euripides; but
they could approach nearer to him than to any of his predecessors, by
treating the myths and personages of the heroic time apart from the
sacred associations and ideal majesty of earlier art, and as a vehicle
for inculcating the lessons and the experience of familiar life.
The primary attraction, by means of which the tragic drama established
itself at Rome, must have been the power of scenic representations to
convey a story, and to produce novel impressions on a people to whom
reading was quite unfamiliar. In Homer, the cyclic poets, and the Attic
dramatists, there existed for the Romans of the second century B.C. a
new world of incident and human interest quite different from the grave
story of their own annals. This new world, which was becoming gradually
familiar to their eyes through the works of plastic and pictorial art,
was made more living and intelligible to them in the representations of
their tragic poets. It cannot be supposed that these poets attempted
to reproduce the antique Hellenic character of the legends on which
they founded their dramas. In this early stage of literary culture,
the harmonious cadences of rhythm, the fine and delicate shades of
expression, the main requirements of dramatic art,--such as the skilful
construction of a plot, the consistent keeping of a character, the
evolution of a tragic catastrophe through the meeting of passion and
outward accident,--would have been lost upon the unexacting audiences
who thronged the temporary theatres on occasional holidays. The
fragments of the lost dramas indicate that the matter was presented in
a straightforward style, little differing in sound and meaning from
the tone of serious conversation. Although little can be known or
conjectured as to the general conduct of the action in a Roman drama,
yet there are indications that in some cases a series of adventures,
instead of one complete action, were represented[122]. But while
failing, or not attempting to reproduce the Greek spirit and art of
their originals, the Roman poets seem to have animated the outlines of
their foreign story and of their legendary characters with something of
the spirit of their own time and country. They imparted to their dramas
a didactic purpose and rhetorical character which directly appealed to
Roman tastes. The fragments quoted from their works, the testimonies
of later Roman writers, and the natural inference to be drawn from the
moral and intellectual characteristics of the people, all point to the
conclusion that the long-sustained popularity of tragedy rested mainly
on the satisfaction which it afforded to the ethical sympathies, and to
the oratorical tastes of the audience.
The evidence for this popularity is chiefly to be found in Cicero; and
it is mainly, though not solely, to the popularity which the tragic
drama enjoyed in his own age that he testifies. The loss of the earlier
writings renders it impossible to adduce contemporary evidence of the
immediate success of this form of literature. But the activity with
which tragedy was cultivated for about a century, and the favour with
which Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, were regarded by the leading men
in the State, suggest the inference that the popularity of the drama
in the age of Cicero, after the writers themselves had passed away,
and when more exciting spectacles occupied public attention, was only
a continuation of the general favour which these poets enjoyed in
their lifetime. Cicero in many places mentions the great applause with
which the expression of feeling in different dramas was received, and
speaks of the great crowds ('maximus consessus' or 'magna frequentia'),
including women and children, present at the representation. Varro
states that, in his time, 'the heads of families had gradually gathered
within the walls of the city, having quitted their ploughs and
pruning-hooks, and that they liked to use their hands in the theatres
and circus better than on their crops and vineyards[123].' The large
fortunes amassed and the high consideration enjoyed by the actors
Aesopus and Roscius afford further evidence of the favour with which
the representation of tragedy and comedy was received in the age of
Cicero.
According to his testimony, these lively demonstrations of popular
approbation were chiefly called out by the moral significance or
the political meaning attached to the words, and by the oratorical
fervour and passion with which the actor enforced them. Thus Laelius
is represented, in the treatise _De Amicitia_, as testifying to the
applause with which the mutual devotion of Pylades and Orestes, as
represented in a play of Pacuvius, was received by the audience[124]:
'What shouts of applause were heard lately through the whole body of
the house, on the representation of a new play of my familiar friend,
M. Pacuvius, when, the king being ignorant which of the two was
Orestes, Pylades maintained that it was he, while Orestes persisted, as
was indeed the case, that he was the man! They stood up and applauded
at this imaginary situation.' Again, in his speech in defence of
Sestius[125], the same author says, 'amid a great variety of opinions
uttered, there never was any passage in which anything said by the
poet might seem to bear on our time, which either escaped the notice
of the people, or to which the actor did not give point.' In a letter
to Atticus (ii. 19) he states that the actor Diphilus had applied
to Pompey the phrase 'Miseria nostra tu es magnus,' and that he was
compelled to repeat it a thousand times amid the shouts of the whole
theatre. He mentions further, in the speech in defence of Sestius[126]
that the actor Aesopus had applied to Cicero himself a passage from a
play of Accius (the Eurysaces), in which the Greeks are reproached for
allowing one who had done them great public service to be driven into
exile; and that the same actor, in the Brutus, had referred to him by
name in the words, 'Tullius qui libertatem civibus stabiliverat;' he
adds that these words 'were _encored_ over and over again.' 'millies
revocatum est.' These and similar passages testify primarily to the
intense political excitement of the time at which they were written,
but also to the meaning which was looked for by the audience in the
words addressed to them on the stage, and which was enforced by the
emphasis given to them by the actor.
Besides these and other passages in Cicero, the fragments themselves
of Roman tragedy testify to its moral and didactic tone, and its
occasional appeal to national and political feeling.
In so far as it served any political end we may infer from the personal
relations of the poets, from the approving testimony of Cicero, and
from the personages and the nature of the situations represented, that,
unlike the older comedy of Naevius and Plautus, it was in sympathy
with the spirit of the dominant aristocracy. The 'boni' or 'optimates'
regarded themselves as the true guardians of law and liberty, and it
would be to their partisans that the resistance to, and denunciations
of tyrannical rule, expressed in such plays as the Atreus, the Tereus,
and the Brutus of Accius, must have been most acceptable. Members of
the aristocracy, eminent in public life and accomplished as orators,
became themselves authors of tragedies. Of these two are mentioned
by Cicero, C. Julius Caesar, a contemporary and friend of the orator
Crassus, and C. Titius, a Roman Eques, also distinguished as an
orator[127]. These instances, and the comments Cicero makes upon them,
indicate the close affinity of Roman tragedy to the training and
accomplishments which fitted men for public life at Rome.
Passages already referred to, and others which will be brought forward
later, imply also that the audience were easily moved by the dramatic
art and the elocution of the actor. We hear of the pains which the best
actors took to perfect themselves in their art, and of the success
which they attained in it. Cicero specifies among the accomplishments
of an orator, the 'voice of a tragedian, the gestures and bearing
of a consummate actor.' The stage may be said to have been to the
Romans partly a school of practical life, partly a school of oratory.
Spirited declamation, the expression, by voice and gesture, of vehement
passion, of moral and political feeling, and of practical wisdom, would
gratify the same tastes that were fostered by the discussions and
harangues of the Forum[128].
The testimony of later writers points to the conclusion that the
early Roman tragedy, like Roman oratory, was characterised both by
great moral weight and dignity, and also by a fervid and impassioned
character. The latter quality is suggested by the line of Horace,
Nam spirat tragicum satis et feliciter audet;
and also by the epithets 'altus' and 'animosus' applied by him and
Ovid to the poet Accius. Quintilian describes the ancient tragedies
as superior to those of his own time in the management of their plots
('oeconomia'), and adds that 'manliness and solemnity of style'
('virilitas et sanctitas)[129], were to be studied in them. He states
also that Accius and Pacuvius were distinguished by 'the earnestness
of their thought, the weight of their language, the commanding bearing
of their personages[130].' The fragments of all the tragic poets bear
further evidence to the union of these qualities in their thought and
style.
These considerations may afford some explanation of the fact, that
the early Roman tragedy, although having less claim to originality,
and less capacity of development than any other branch of Roman
literature, yet exercised a more immediate and more general influence
than either the epic, lyrical, or satiric poetry of the Republic.
For more than a century new tragedies were written and represented
at the various public games, and afforded the sole kind of serious
intellectual stimulus and education to the mass of the people. During
the lifetime of the old dramatists, there was no regular theatre, but
merely structures of wood raised for each occasion. A magnificent
stone theatre was at last built by Pompey from the spoils of the
Mithridatic War; but this, instead of giving a new impulse to dramatic
art, was fatal to its existence. The attraction of a gorgeous spectacle
superseded that afforded by the works of the older dramatists; and
dancers like Bathyllus soon obtained the place in popular favour which
had been enjoyed by the 'grave Aesopus and the accomplished Roscius.'
The composition of tragedy passed from the hands of popular poets,
and became a kind of literary and rhetorical exercise of accomplished
men. We hear that Quintus Cicero composed four tragedies in sixteen
days, and in the Augustan age Virgil and Horace eulogise the dramatic
talent of their friend and patron Asinius Pollio. The 'Ars Poetica'
implies that the composition of tragedy was the most fashionable form
of literary pursuit among the young aspirants to poetic honour at
that time, and the Thyestes of Varius and the Medea of Ovid enjoyed
a great literary reputation. These were, however, futile attempts to
impart artificial life to a withered branch; they obtained no general
favour, and left no name or fame behind them. Of all forms of poetry
the drama is most dependent on popular sympathy and intelligence.
With the loss of contact with public feeling the Roman drama lost its
vital power. One cause of the change in public taste was the passion
for more frivolous and coarser excitement, such as was afforded by
the mimes and by gladiatorial combats and shows of wild beasts to a
soldiery brutalised by constant wars, and to the civic masses degraded
by idleness and by intermixture from all quarters of the world. Other
causes may have acted on the poets themselves, such as the exhaustion
of the mine of ancient stories fit for dramatic purposes, and the
truer sense, acquired through culture, of the bent of Roman genius.
But another cause was the loss of mutual sympathy between the poet and
the people, arising from the decay and final extinction of political
life. In ancient, as occasionally also in modern times, the contests
and interests of politics were the means of affording the highest
intellectual stimulus of which they were capable to the large classes
on whom literary influences act only indirectly. So long as the old
republican sense of citizenship remained, there was a bond of common
feelings, ideas, and sympathies between the body of the people and
some of the foremost and most highly educated men in Rome. There was
an immediate sympathy between the political orator and his audiences
within the Senate or in the public assemblies; there was a sympathy,
more remote, but still active, between the poet of the Republic, who
had the strong feelings of a Roman citizen, and the great body of
his countrymen. With the overthrow of free government, this bond of
union between the educated and the uneducated classes was destroyed.
The former became more refined and fastidious, but lost something in
breadth and genuine strength by the want of any popular contact. The
latter became more debased, coarser, and more servile. Poetic works
were more and more addressed to a small circle of men of rank and
education, sharing the same opinions, tastes, and pleasures. They thus
became more finished as works of art, but had less direct bearing on
the passions and great public interests of their time.
The origin and the earliest stage of the Roman drama have been examined
in a previous chapter. For about a century after the close of the
Second Punic War new tragedies continued to be represented at Rome with
little interruption, first by Ennius, afterwards by his nephew Pacuvius
and by Accius. The older poets, Livius and Naevius, had produced both
tragedy and comedy: Ennius neglected or failed to attain success in
comedy; and his two successors appear to have devoted themselves more
exclusively than any of their predecessors to the composition of
tragedy. While the fame of Ennius chiefly rested on his epic poem[131],
Pacuvius and Accius are classed together as representatives of the
tragic poetry of the Republic. Though in point of age there was a
difference of fifty years between them, yet Cicero mentions, on the
authority of Accius himself, that they had brought out plays under the
same Aediles, when the one was eighty years of age and the other thirty.
M. Pacuvius, nephew, by the mother's side, of Ennius, was born at
Brundusium, in the south of Italy, about 219 B.C., and died at Tarentum
about 129 B.C., at the age of ninety. He obtained some distinction as a
painter[132], and he is supposed to have written his tragedies late in
life. Jerome records of him, 'picturam exercuit et fabulas vendidit.'
Cicero represents Laelius as speaking of him as a friend, 'amici et
hospitis mei.' A pleasing anecdote is told by Aulus Gellius[133] of
his intercourse with his younger rival, L. Accius. 'When Pacuvius, at
a great age, and suffering from disease of long standing, had retired
from Rome to Tarentum, Accius, at that time a considerably younger man,
on his journey to Asia, arrived at that town, and stayed with Pacuvius.
And being kindly entertained, and constrained to stay for several days,
he read to him, at his request, his tragedy of Atreus. Then, as the
story goes, Pacuvius said, that what he had written appeared to him
sonorous and elevated but somewhat harsh and crude. 'It is just as you
say,' replied Accius; 'and in truth I am not sorry for it, for I hope
that I shall write better in future. For, as they say, the same law
holds good in genius as in fruit. Fruits which are originally harsh
and sour afterwards become mellow and pleasant; but those which have
a soft and withered look, and are very juicy at first, become soon
rotten without ever becoming ripe. It appears, accordingly, that there
should be left something in genius also for the mellowing influence of
years and time.' This anecdote, while giving a pleasing impression of
the friendly relation subsisting between the older and younger poets,
seems to add some corroboration to the opinion that the Romans valued
more the oratorical style than the dramatic art of their tragedies.
It affords support also to the testimony of Horace and Quintilian in
regard to the distinction which the admirers of the old poetry drew
between the excellence of Pacuvius and Accius:
Ambigitur quoties uter utro sit prior, aufert
Pacuvius docti famam senis, Accius alti.
Aulus Gellius quotes the epitaph of Pacuvius, written by himself to
be inscribed on his tombstone, with a tribute of admiration to 'its
modesty, simplicity, and fine serious spirit'--'Epigramma Pacuvii
verecundissimum et purissimum dignumque ejus elegantissima gravitate.'
Adolescens, tametsi properas, te hoc saxum rogat,
Ut se aspicias, deinde quod scriptum est, legas,
Hic sunt poetae Pacuvi Marci sita
Ossa. Hoc volebam nescius ne esses. Vale.[134]
With its quiet and modest simplicity of tone this inscription is still
significant of that dignified self-consciousness which characterised
all the early Roman poets, though the feeling may have been displayed
with more prominence by Naevius and Plautus, by Ennius, Accius, and
Lucilius, than by Pacuvius.
Among the testimonies to his literary qualities the best known is that
of Horace, quoted above. Cicero, in speaking of the age of Laelius as
that of the purest Latinity, does not allow this merit to Pacuvius and
to the comic poet Caecilius. He says of them, 'male locutos esse[135].'
Pacuvius seems to have attempted to introduce new forms of words, such
as 'temeritudo,' 'geminitudo,' 'vanitudo,' 'concorditas,' 'unose';
and also to have carried to a greater length than any of the older
poets the tendency to form such poetical compounds as 'tardigradus,'
'flexanimus,' 'flexidicus,' 'cornifrontis'--a tendency which the Latin
language continued more and more to repudiate in the hands of its most
perfect masters. One line is quoted in which the tendency probably
reached the extremest limits it ever did in any Latin author,--
Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus.
We find also such inflexions as 'tetinerim,' for 'tenuerim,' 'pegi' for
'pepigi,' 'cluentur' for 'cluent.' These peculiarities are ridiculed in
the fragments of Lucilius, and also in a passage of Persius. Another
author[136] contrasts the _sententiae_ of Ennius with the _periodi_
of Pacuvius,--a distinction probably connected with the progress of
oratory in the interval between the poets. Persius applies the term
'verrucosa' (an epithet not inapplicable to his own style) to the
Antiope of Pacuvius, which, on the other hand, was much admired by
Cicero[137]. Lucilius refers to this harshness of style in the line,
Verum tristis contorto aliquo ex Pacuviano exordio.
Pacuvius is known to have been the author of about twelve tragedies,
founded on Greek subjects; and of one, _Paulus_, founded on Roman
history. Among these, the _Antiope_ was perhaps the most famous and
most admired. It was, like the Medea of Ennius, a translation from
Euripides. The principal characters in it were the brothers Zethus and
Amphion, the one devoted to hunting, the other to music. Their dispute
as to the respective advantages of music and philosophy is referred
to by Cicero and Horace, and by other authors. The Zethus of Pacuvius
is described by Cicero[138] as one who made war on all philosophy;
and the author of the treatise addressed to Herennius describes their
controversy as beginning about music, and ending about philosophy and
the use of virtue. Two dramas, the _Dulorestes_ and the _Chryses_, the
latter being a continuation of the first, represented the adventures of
Orestes in his wanderings with his friend Pylades, after the murder
of his mother. The former play, in which Orestes was represented as on
the point of being sacrificed by his sister Iphigenia, contained the
passage already referred to, in which Pylades and Orestes contend as
to which should suffer for the other. The Chryses was founded on their
subsequent adventures, and the title of the play was apparently taken
from the old Homeric priest of Apollo, Chryses, who bore a prominent
part in it. Another of the plays of Pacuvius, the _Niptra_, was founded
on, though not translated from, one of Sophocles[139]; and the title
seems to have been suggested by the story of the recognition of Ulysses
by his nurse, Eurycleia, told at Odyssey xix. 386, etc. The subjects of
his other dramas may be inferred from the following titles:--_Armorum
Judicium_, _Atalanta_, _Hermione_, _Ilione_, _Io_, _Medus_ (son of
Medea), _Pentheus_, _Periboea_, _Teucer_.
The fragments of Pacuvius amount to about four hundred lines. Many of
these are single lines, preserved by grammarians in illustration of
old forms and usages of words, and thus are of little value in the
way of illustrating his poetical or dramatic power. Several of them,
however, are interesting, from the light which they throw on his mode
of thought, his moral spirit, and his artistic faculty.
A remarkable passage is quoted from the Chryses, showing the growth of
that interest in physical philosophy, which was first expressed in the
Epicharmus of Ennius, and which continued to have a powerful attraction
for many of the Roman poets:--
Hoc vide, circum supraque quod complexu continet
Terram
Solisque exortu capessit candorem, occasu nigret,
Id quod nostri caelum memorant, Graii perhibent aethera:
Quidquid est hoc, omnia animat, format, alit, auget, creat,
Sepelit recipitque in sese omnia, omniumque idem est pater,
Indidemque eadem quae oriuntur, de integro aeque eodem incidunt.[140]
The following fragment illustrates the dawning interest in ethical
speculation, which became much more active in the age of Cicero, under
the influence of Greek studies:--
Fortunam insanam esse et caecam et brutam perhibent philosophi
Saxoque instare in globoso praedicant volubili:
Insanam autem esse aiunt, quia atrox, incerta, instabilisque sit:
Caecam ob eam rem esse iterant, quia nil cernat quo sese adplicet:
Brutam quia dignum atque indignum nequeat internoscere.
Sunt autem alii philosophi, qui contra fortunam negant
Esse ullam, sed temeritate res regi omnis autumant.
Id magis veri simile esse usus reapse experiundo edocet:
Velut Orestes modo fuit rex, factu'st mendicus modo.[141]
These lines again from the Chryses show that Pacuvius, like Ennius,
exposed and ridiculed the superstition of his time--
Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo,
Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo;[142]
and this is to the same effect--
Nam si qui, quae eventura sunt, provideant, aequiparent Jovi.
This tendency to physical and ethical speculation may be the reason for
which Horace applies to Pacuvius the epithet 'doctus.'
The fragments of Pacuvius show not only the cast of understanding,
but also the grave and dignified tone of morality, which was found to
be one of the most Roman characteristics of Ennius. They indicate also
a similar humanity of feeling. The moral nobleness of the situation,
in which Pylades and Orestes contend which should sacrifice himself
for the other, has already been noticed: 'stantes plaudebant in re
ficta.' Again, in the Tusculan Disputations (ii. 21), Cicero commends
Pacuvius for deviating from Sophocles, who had represented Ulysses,
in the Niptra, as utterly overcome by the power of his wound; while,
in Pacuvius, those who are supporting him, 'personae gravitatem
intuentes,' address this reproof to him, 'leviter gementi':--
Tu quoque Ulysses, quanquam graviter
Cernimus ictum, nimis paene animo es
Molli, qui consuetu's in armis
Aevom agere![143]
The strong tones of Roman fortitude are heard in this grave rebuke;
and the lines in which Ulysses, at the point of death, reproves the
lamentations of those around him, have the unstudied directness that
may be supposed to have characterised the serious speech of the time:--
Conqueri fortunam adversam, non lamentari decet:
Id viri est officium, fletus muliebri ingenio additus.[144]
The following maxim is quoted by Aulus Gellius with the remark 'that a
Macedonian philosopher, a friend of his, an excellent man, thought it
deserving of being written in front of every temple':--
Ego odi homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia.
There are other fragments the significance of which is political rather
than ethical, as for instance the following:--
Omnes qui tam quam nos severo serviunt
Imperio callent dominum imperia metuere.
A passage from his writings was sung at games in honour of Caesar, in
order to rouse a feeling of indignation against the conspirators. The
prominent words of the passage were,--
Men' servasse ut essent qui me perderent.[145]
Other passages again appear to be fragments of spirited dialogue,
and well adapted to show the art and the elocution of the actor.
Cicero[146] quotes from the Teucer of Pacuvius the reproach of
Telamon, couched in much the same terms as those which Teucer himself
anticipates in the Ajax of Sophocles:--
Segregare abs te ausu's aut sine illo Salamina ingredi,
Neque paternum aspectum es veritus, quom aetate exacta indigem
Liberum lacerasti orbasti extinxti, neque fratris necis
Neque ejus gnati parvi, qui tibi in tutelam est traditus--?[147]
In commenting on these lines, Cicero speaks of the passion displayed
by the actor ('so that even out of his mask the eyes of the actor
appeared to me to burn'), and of the sudden change to pathos in his
voice as he proceeded. He adds the further comment, 'Do we suppose
that Pacuvius, in writing this passage, was in a calm and passionless
mood?'--one of many proofs that the 'gravity' of the old tragedians was
that of strong and ardent, not of phlegmatic natures, and that their
strength was tempered by a pathos and humanity of feeling which were
gradually gaining ascendency over the old Roman austerity. The language
in such passages has not only the straightforward directness which is
the general characteristic of the early literature, but a force and
impetuosity added to its gravity, recalling the style of some fragments
of the older orators[148].
The fragments of Accius afford the first hint of that enjoyment of
natural beauty which enters largely into the poetry of a later age; but
one or two fragments of Pacuvius, like several passages in Ennius, show
the power of observing and describing the sublime and terrible aspects
of Nature. The description of the storm which overtook the Greek army
after sailing from Troy is perhaps the best specimen in this style:--
Profectione laeti piscium lasciviam
Intuentur, nec tuendi capere satietas potest.
Interea prope jam occidente sole inhorrescit mare,
Tenebrae conduplicantur, noctisque et nimbum occaecat nigror,
Flamma inter nubes coruscat, caelum tonitru contremit,
Grando mista imbri largifico subita praecipitans cadit,
Undique omnes venti erumpunt, saevi existunt turbines,
Fervit aestu pelagus[149].
There are also, in the same style, these rough and graphic lines,
exemplifying the impetuous force which the older Roman poets impart to
their descriptions by the figure of speech called 'asyndeton,'--
Armamentum stridor, flictus navium,
Strepitus fremitus clamor tonitruum et rudentum sibilus.[150]
Virgil must have had this passage in his mind when he wrote the line--
Insequitur clamorque virum, stridorque rudentum.
The effect of alliteration and assonance may be illustrated by a
passage from the 'Niptra,' in which Eurycleia addresses the disguised
Ulysses:--
Cedo tamen pedem tuum lymphis flavis flavum ut pulverem
Manibus isdem quibus Ulixi saepe permulsi abluam,
Lassitudinemque minuam manuum mollitudine.[151]
Pacuvius composed one drama on a Roman subject, the title of which was
'Paulus.' Although the name does not indicate whether the principal
character of the drama was the Aemilius Paulus who fell at Cannae, whom
Horace commemorates as one of the national heroes in the words--
Animaeque magnae
Prodigum Paulum, superante Poeno,
or his more fortunate son who conquered the Macedonians at Pydna, yet
it would seem much more probable that the poet should celebrate a great
triumph of his own time, achieved by one in whom, from his connexion
with Scipio, the nephew of Ennius would feel a special interest, than
that he should recall a great calamity of a past generation, neither
near enough to excite immediate attention, nor sufficiently remote to
justify an imaginative treatment. The Fabulae Praetextatae, of which
this was one, were, as Niebuhr[152] has pointed out, historical plays
rather than tragedies. Such a drama would not naturally or necessarily
require a tragic catastrophe, but would represent the traditions of the
earlier annals, or the great events of current history, in accordance
with the dictates of national feeling. No important fragment of this
drama has been preserved, but the fact of its having been written by
Pacuvius is interesting, as affording a parallel to the celebration
of the victory of Marcellus in the Clastidium of Naevius, and of the
success of M. Fulvius Nobilior in the Ambracia of Ennius.
Neither the fragments nor the ancient notices of Pacuvius produce
on a modern reader so distinct an impression of his peculiar genius
and character as may be formed of Naevius, Ennius, and Lucilius. His
remains are chiefly important as throwing light on the general features
of the Roman tragic drama; and few critics would attempt to determine
from internal evidence alone whether any particular passage came from
the lost works of Pacuvius or of Accius. The main points that are known
in his life are his provincial origin, and his relationship to Ennius;
the fact of his supporting himself, first by painting, afterwards by
the payment he received from the Aediles for his plays; his friendship
with Laelius, the centre of the literary circle in Rome during the
latter part of the second century B.C.; his intimacy with his younger
rival Accius; the facts also that, like Sophocles, he preserved his
poetical power unabated till a great age, and that, like Shakspeare, he
retired to spend his last years in his native district. The language
of his epitaph is suggestive of a kindly and modest temper, and of the
calm and serious spirit of age; while that of many of his dramatic
fragments bears evidence to his moral strength and worth, and to the
manly fervour as well as the gentle humanity of his temperament.
L. Accius (or Attius) was born in the year 170 B.C., of parentage
similar to that of Horace--'parentibus libertinis.' He was a native
of the Roman colony of Pisaurum in Umbria, founded in 184 B.C.; and
an estate in that district was known in after times by the name
'fundus Accianus.' Like Pacuvius, he lived to a great age, though the
exact date of his death is uncertain. Cicero, who was born B.C. 106,
speaks of the oratorical and literary accomplishment of D. Junius
Brutus--Consul, along with P. Scipio Nasica, B.C. 138, and one of
the most famous soldiers and chiefs of the senatorian party in that
age--on the authority of what he had himself often heard from the poet:
'ut ex familiari ejus L. Accio poeta sum audire solitus[153].' The
meeting of the old tragic poet and of the great orator is remarkable,
as a link connecting the two epochs in literature, which stand so
widely apart in the spirit and style by which they are respectively
characterised. Cicero again, in the speech in defence of Archias,
mentions the intimacy subsisting between D. Brutus and the poet[154].
The expressions 'familiari ejus' and 'amicissimi sui,' like that of
'hospitis et amici mei,' applied by Laelius, in Cicero's dialogue, to
Pacuvius, indicate that the relation between the poets (men of humble
or provincial origin) and eminent statesmen and soldiers, was in that
age one of familiar intimacy rather than of patronage and dependence.
Although Cicero's notice of his own acquaintance with Accius, which is
not likely to have existed before the former assumed the toga virilis,
is a proof of the great age which the poet attained, it is not certain
how long he continued the practice of his art. Seneca, in quoting from
the Atreus of this poet the well-known tyrant's maxim, 'oderint dum
metuant'--a maxim, according to Suetonius, constantly in the mouth
of Caligula,--adds the remark that 'any one could see that it was
written in the days of Sulla.' But Aulus Gellius, on the other hand,
states that the Atreus was the play which had been read by the poet
in his youth to Pacuvius at Tarentum. The termination of the literary
career of Accius must have been soon after the beginning of the first
century B.C., so that nearly half a century elapses between the last of
the works of the older poets and the appearance of the great poem of
Lucretius. The journey of Accius to Asia shows the beginning of that
taste for foreign travel which became prevalent among the most educated
men in a generation later, and grew more and more easy with the advance
of Roman conquest, and more attractive from the increased cultivation
of Greek literature. Accius is the first of the Roman poets who seems
to have possessed a country residence; and some taste for country life
and the beauties of Nature first betrays itself in one or two of his
fragments. He possessed apparently all the self-esteem and high spirit
of the earlier poets. Pliny mentions that though a very little man, he
placed a colossal statue of himself in a temple of the Muses[155].
Another story is told by Valerius Maximus, that on the entrance of C.
Julius Caesar (the author of a few tragedies, and a member of one of
the great patrician houses), into the place of meeting of the 'Poets'
Guild' on the Aventine, he refused to rise up as a mark of deference,
thus asserting his own superiority in literature in opposition to the
unquestionable claims of rank on the part of his younger rival.
He was much the most productive among the early tragic poets. The
titles of his dramas are variously reckoned from about 37 to about 50
in number. Like Ennius, he seems to have made great use of the Trojan
cycle of events; and to have appealed largely to the martial sympathies
of the Romans in his representation of character and action. Two of
his dramas, the Brutus, treating of the downfall of the Tarquinian
dynasty, and the Aeneadae, or Decius, founded on the story of the
second Decius, who devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum, belonged
to the class of Fabulae Praetextatae. He followed the example of Ennius
in composing a national epic, called Annales, in three books. He was
the author also of what seem to have been works of grammar and literary
criticism and history, written in trochaic and other metres, and known
by the name Didascalica and Pragmatica, and Parerga. The subjects of
these last works, as well as those of some of the satires of Lucilius,
and of the poems of Porcius Licinus and Volcatius Sedigitus, written
in trochaic and septenarian verse, show the attention which was given
about this time by Roman authors to the principles of composition.
The literary and grammatical studies of the time of Accius must have
prepared the way for the rapid development of style which characterised
the first half of the first century B.C. In some of the fragments of
Accius distinctions in the meaning of words--e.g. of 'pertinacia'
and 'pervicacia'--are prominently brought out. We note also in his
remains, as in those of Pacuvius, a great access of formative energy
in the language, especially in abstract words in -_tas_ and -_tudo_,
many of which afterwards dropped out of use. The antagonism manifested
by Lucilius to Accius seems in a great measure to have arisen from his
claims to a kind of literary dictatorship in questions of criticism and
style.
The literary qualities most conspicuous in the fragments of Accius, and
attributed to him by ancient writers, are of the same kind as those
which the dramatic fragments of Ennius and Pacuvius exhibit. Cicero
testifies to his oratorical force, to his serious spirit, and to the
didactic purpose of his writings. His most important remains illustrate
these attributes of his style, along with the shrewd sense and vigorous
understanding of the older writers, and afford some traces of a new
vein of poetical emotion, which is scarcely observable in earlier
fragments. Horace applies the epithet 'altus,' Ovid that of 'animosus'
to Accius. Cicero characterises him as 'gravis et ingeniosus poeta,'
and attests the didactic purpose of a particular passage in the words,
'the earnest and inspired poet wrote thus with the view of stimulating,
not those princes who no longer existed, but us and our children to
energy and honourable ambition[156].' The style of a passage from the
Atreus is described by the same author in the dialogue '_De Oratore_',
as 'nervous, impetuous, pressing on with a certain impassioned gravity
of feeling[157].' Oratorical fervour and dignity seem thus to have been
the most distinctive characteristic of his style. Virgil, whose genius
made as free use of the diction and sentiment of native as of Greek
poets, has cast the ruder language of the old poet into a new mould in
some of the greatest speeches of the Aeneid, and seems to have drawn
from the same source something of the high spirit and lofty pathos with
which he has animated the personages of his story. The famous address,
for instance--
Disce puer virtutem ex me verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis,
though originally found in the Ajax of Sophocles, was yet familiar to
Virgil in the line of Accius--
Virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris.
The address of Latinus to Turnus--
O praestans animi juvenis, quantum ipse feroci
Virtute exsuperas, tanto me impensius aequum est
Consulere atque omnis metuentem expendere casus,
is quoted by Macrobius as an echo of these lines of the old tragic
poet--
Quanto magis te istius modi esse intelligo,
Tanto, Antigona, magis me par est tibi consulere ac parcere.
The same author quotes two other passages, in which the sentiment and
something of the language of Accius are reproduced in the speeches
of the Aeneid. The lofty and fervid oratory which is one of the most
Roman characteristics of that great national poem, and is quite unlike
the debates, the outbursts of passion, and the natural interchange of
speech in Homer, recalls the manner of the early tragic poets rather
than the style of the oratorical fragments in the Annals of Ennius. The
following lines may give some idea of the passionate energy which may
be recognised in many other fragments of Accius--
Tereus indomito more atque animo barbaro
Conspexit in eam amore vecors flammeo,
Depositus: facinus pessimum ex dementia
Confingit.[158]
He gives expression also to great strength of will and to that most
powerful kind of pathos which arises out of the commingling of
compassion for suffering with the admiration for heroism, as in these
fragments of the Astyanax and the Telephus,--
Abducite intro; nam mihi miseritudine
Commovit animum excelsa aspecti dignitas;[159]
and--
Nam huius demum miseret, cuius nobilitas miserias
Nobilitat.[160]
He shows a further power of directly seizing the real meaning of human
life, and setting aside false appearances and beliefs. The following
may be quoted as exhibiting something of his moral strength, humanity,
and direct force of understanding:--
Sein' ut quem cuique tribuit fortuna ordinem,
Nunquam ulla humilitas ingenium infirmat bonum.[161]
Erat istuc virile, ferre advorsam fortunam facul.[162]
Nam si a me regnum fortuna atque opes
Eripere quivit, at virtutem non quit.[163]
Nullum est ingenium tantum, neque cor tam ferum,
Quod non labascat lingua, mitiscat malo.[164]
The following, again, like similar passages already quoted from Ennius
and Pacuvius, is expressive of contempt for that form of superstition
which had most practical hold over the minds of the Roman people:--
Nil credo auguribus, qui auris verbis divitant
Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos.[165]
Again, the view of common sense in regard to dreams is expressed by
the interpreter to whom Tarquinius applies when alarmed by a strange
vision--
Rex, quae in vita usurpant homines, cogitant, curant, vident,
Quaeque agunt vigilantes agitantque, ea si cui in somno accidunt
Minus mirum est.[166]
Besides the characteristics already exemplified, one or two passages
may be appealed to, as implying the more special gifts of a poet--force
of imagination, and some sense of natural beauty. There is considerable
descriptive power in the following lines, for instance, in which
a shepherd, who had never before seen a ship, announces the first
appearance of the Argo--
Tanta moles labitur
Fremebunda ex alto, ingenti sonitu et spiritu:
Prae se undas volvit, vortices vi suscitat:
Ruit prolapsa, pelagus respergit, reflat.[167]
There is an imaginative apprehension of the active forces of nature in
this fragment--
Sub axe posita ad stellas septem, unde horrifer
Aquilonis stridor gelidas molitur nives.[168]
There is a fresh breath of the early morning in the lines from the
Oenomaus--
Forte ante Auroram, radiorum ardentum indicem,
Cum e somno in segetem agrestis cornutos cient,
Ut rorulentas terras ferro rufidas
Proscindant, glebasque arvo ex molli exsuscitent.[169]
This is perhaps the first instance in Latin poetry of a descriptive
passage which gives any hint of the pleasure derived from contemplating
the common aspects of Nature. Several other short fragments betray the
existence of this new vein of poetic sensibility, as, for instance, the
following:--
Saxum id facit angustitatem, et sub eo saxo exuberans
Scatebra fluviae radit ripam.[170]
The early expression of this kind of emotion seems to have been
accompanied with some degree of affectation, or unnatural straining
after effect, as in this fragment:--
Hac ubi curvo litore latratu
Unda sub undis labunda sonit.
The following lines, quoted by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. i. 28) without
naming the author, are probably from Accius--
Caelum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
Vites laetificae pampinis pubescere,
Rami bacarum ubertate incurviscere,
Segetes largiri fruges, florere omnia,
Fontes scatere, herbis prata convestirier.
We note also many instances of plays on words, alliteration, and
asyndeton, reminding us of similar modes of conveying emphasis in
Plautus, as in the following:--
Pari dyspari, si impar esses tibi, ego nunc non essem miser.
Pro se quisque cum corona clarum cohonestat caput.
Egredere, exi, ecfer te, elimina urbe.
* * * * *
It remains to sum up the most important results as to the early tragic
drama of Rome, which have been obtained from a consideration of ancient
testimony and of the fossil remains of this lost literature, as we
find them collected and arranged from the works of ancient critics
and grammarians. The Roman tragedies seem to have borne much the same
relation to the works of the Attic tragedians as Roman comedy to the
new comedy of Athens. The expression of Quintilian, 'in comoedia maxime
claudicamus[171],' following immediately on the praise which he bestows
on Pacuvius and Accius, implies that in his opinion the earlier writers
had been more successful in tragedy than in comedy. But a comparison
between the fragments of the tragedians and the extant works of Plautus
and Terence, proves that, in style at least, Roman comedy was much the
most successful; and this superiority is no doubt one main cause of its
partial preservation. The style of Roman tragedy appears to have been
direct and vigorous, serious, often animated with oratorical passion,
but singularly devoid of harmony, subtlety, poetical refinement and
inspiration. There is no testimony in favour of any great dramatic
conceptions or impersonations. The poets appear to have aimed at
expressing some particular passion oratorically, as Virgil has done
so powerfully in his representation of Mezentius and Turnus, but not
to have created any of those great types of human character such as
the world owes to Homer, Sophocles, and Shakspeare. The popularity and
the power of Roman tragedy, during the century preceding the downfall
of the Republic, are to be attributed chiefly to its didactic and
oratorical force, to the Roman bearing of the persons represented,
to the ethical and occasionally the political cast of the sentiments
expressed by them, and to the plain and vigorous style in which they
are enunciated. The works of the tragic poets aided the development
of the Roman language. They communicated new ideas and experience,
and fostered among the mass of the Roman people the only taste for
serious literature of which they were capable. They may have exercised
a beneficial influence also on the thoughts and lives of men. They kept
the national ideal of duty, the 'manners of the olden time,' the 'fas
et antiqua castitudo' (to use an expression of Accius), before the
minds of the people: they inculcated by precept and by representations
great lessons of fortitude and energy: they taught the maxims of
common sense, and touched the minds of their audiences with a humanity
of feeling naturally alien to them. No teaching on the stage could
permanently preserve the old Roman virtue, simplicity, and loyalty
to the Republic, against the corrupting and disorganising effects of
constant wars and conquests, and of the gross forms of luxury, that
suited the temperament of Rome: but, among the various influences
acting on the mind of the people, none probably was of more unmixed
good than that of the tragic drama of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius.
[Footnote 122: E.g. the _Dulorestes_ of Pacuvius.]
[Footnote 123: De Re Rustica, Lib. ii. Praef. Quoted also by Columella,
Praef. 15.]
[Footnote 124: De Amicitia, 7.]
[Footnote 125: Cic. Pro P. Sestio, 65.]
[Footnote 126: Chap. 57.]
[Footnote 127: Cicero. Brutus, 48-45; De Orat. iii. 8. 30. 'Quid noster
hic Caesar nonne novam quandam rationem attulit orationis et dicendi
genus induxit prope singulare? Quis unquam res praeter hunc tragicas
paene comica, tristes remisse, severas hilare, forenses scaenica
prope venustate tractavit atque ita, ut neque iocus magnitudine rerum
excluderetur nec gravitas facetiis minueretur.']
[Footnote 128: Cf. Cic. de Orat. iii. 7. 'Atque id primum in poetis
cerni licet quibus est proxima cognatio cum oratoribus quam sint inter
sese Ennius, Pacuvius, Acciusque dissimiles.']
[Footnote 129: 'Sanctitas certe, et, ut sic dicam, virilitas, ab iis
petenda est, quando nos in omnia deliciarum vitia dicendi quoque
ratione defluximus.'--Quintil. Inst. Or. i. 8. 9.]
[Footnote 130: Inst. Or. x. i. 97.]
[Footnote 131: Cf. Cic. Opt. Gen. Orat. 'Itaque licet dicere et Ennium
summum epicum poetam si cui ita videtur, et Pacuvium tragicum, et
Caecilium fortasse comicum.']
[Footnote 132: Pliny. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 7.]
[Footnote 133: xiii. 2.]
[Footnote 134: 'Young man, though thou art in haste, this stone
entreats thee to regard it, and then read what is written:--Here are
laid the bones of the poet Marcus Pacuvius. This I desired to be not
unknown to thee. Farewell.']
[Footnote 135: Brutus, 74.]
[Footnote 136: The writer of the treatise on Rhetoric addressed to C.
Herennius.]
[Footnote 137: 'Quis enim tam inimicus paene nomini Romano est, qui
Ennii Medeam aut Antiopam Pacuvii spernat aut rejiciat, quod se eisdem
Euripidis fabulis delectari dicit.'--Cic. De Fin. i. 2.]
[Footnote 138: De Oratore, ii. 37.]
[Footnote 139: Cic. Tusc. Disp. ii. 21.]
[Footnote 140: 'Behold this, which around and above encompasseth the
earth, and puts on brightness at the rising of the sun, becomes dark
at his setting; that which our people call Heaven, and the Greeks
Aether. Whatever this is, it is to all things the source of life, form,
nourishment, growth, existence; it is the grave and receptacle of all
things, and the parent, too, of all things: all things which arise from
it equally lapse into it again.' Compare with this passage Lucretius,
ii. 991--
'Denique caelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi' etc.
Both may be traced to a fragment of the Chrysippus of Euripides, quoted
by Ribbeck, Röm. Trag. p. 257; and also by Munro, Lucret. p. 455, third
edition.]
[Footnote 141: 'Philosophers say that Fortune is mad, blind, and
senseless, and represent her as set on a round rolling stone. They say
that she is mad, because she is harsh, fickle, untrustworthy; blind,
for this reason, that she can see nothing to which to attach herself;
senseless, because she cannot distinguish between the worthy and
unworthy. Other philosophers again deny the existence of Fortune, but
hold that all things are ruled by chance. That this is more probable,
common experience proves, as Orestes was but the other day a king, and
is now a beggar.']
[Footnote 142: 'For those men who understand the language of birds, and
have more wisdom from examining the liver of other beings than from
their own (i.e. understanding), I think should be heard rather than
listened to.']
[Footnote 143: 'Thou, too, Ulysses, although we see thee sore wounded,
art yet almost too much cast down; thou, who hast been used to pass thy
life in arms!']
[Footnote 144: 'To complain of adverse fortune is well, but not to
lament over it. The one is the act of a man; it is a woman's part to
weep.']
[Footnote 145: Sueton. Caes. 84.]
[Footnote 146: De Orat. ii. 46.]
[Footnote 147: 'Didst thou venture to let him part from thee, or to
enter Salamis without him; and didst thou not fear to see thy father's
face, when in his old age, bereft of his children, thou hast torn
him with anguish, robbed, crushed him; nor didst thou feel for thy
brother's death, and his child, who was trusted to thy protection--?']
[Footnote 148: Compare especially the fragments of the speeches of C.
Gracchus.]
[Footnote 149: 'Glad at their starting, they watch the play of the
fish, and are never weary of watching them. Meanwhile, nearly at
sunset, the sea grows rough, darkness gathers, the blackness of night
and of the storm-clouds hides the world, the lightning flashes between
the clouds, the heaven is shaken with the thunder, hail mixed with
torrents of rain dashes down in sudden showers; from all quarters all
the winds burst forth, the wild whirlwinds arise, the sea boils with
the surging waters.'--Quoted partly from Cic. De Div. i. 14; partly
from De Orat. iii. 39.]
[Footnote 150: 'The groaning of the ships' tackling, the dashing
together of the ships, the uproar, the crash, the rattle of the
thunder, and the whistling of the ropes.']
[Footnote 151: 'Give me your foot, that with the brown waters I may
wash away the brown dust with those hands with which I have often
rubbed gently the feet of Ulysses, and with my hands' softness soothe
your weariness.']
[Footnote 152: 'It represented the deeds of Roman kings and generals:
hence it is evident that at least it wanted the unity of time of the
Greek tragedy; that it was a history like Shakspeare's.'--Niebuhr's
Roman History, vol. i. note 1150.]
[Footnote 153: Brutus, 28.]
[Footnote 154: 'Decimus quidem Brutus, summus ille vir et imperator,
Accii, amicissimi sui, carminibus templorum ac monumentorum aditus
exornavit suorum.'--Chap. 11.]
[Footnote 155: Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 10: 'Notatum ab auctoribus, et L.
Accium poetam in Came narum aede maxima forma statuam sibi posuisse,
cum brevis admodum fuisset.']
[Footnote 156: Pro Plancio 24.]
[Footnote 157: De Orat. iii. 58.]
[Footnote 158: 'Tereus, in his wild mood and savage spirit, gazed upon
her, maddened with burning passion, quite desperate; in his madness, he
resolves a cursed deed.']
[Footnote 159: 'Withdraw him within: for the lofty dignity of his
aspect has moved my mind to compassion.']
[Footnote 160: 'That man indeed we pity whose nobleness gives
distinction to his misery.']
[Footnote 161: 'Dost thou not know, that whatever rank fortune has
assigned to a man, no meanness of station ever weakens a fine nature?']
[Footnote 162: 'This was the part of a man, to bear adversity easily.']
[Footnote 163: 'Though fortune could strip me of kingdom and wealth, it
cannot strip me of my virtue.']
[Footnote 164: 'No nature is so strong, no breast so savage, which is
not shaken by words, does not melt at misfortune.']
[Footnote 165: 'I trust not those augurs, who enrich the ears of others
with their words, that they may enrich their own houses with gold.'
There is of course a pun on the _auris_ and _auro_.]
[Footnote 166: 'O king, what men usually do in life, what they
think about, care about, see,--their pursuits and occupations, when
awake,--if these occur to any one in sleep, it is not wonderful.']
[Footnote 167: 'So huge a mass is approaching--sounding from the deep
with a mighty rushing noise; it rolls the waves before it, forces
through the eddies, plunges forward, throws up and dashes back the
sea.'--Quoted in Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 35.]
[Footnote 168: 'Lying beneath the pole by the seven stars, whence the
blustering roar of the north-wind drives before it the chill snows.']
[Footnote 169: 'By chance before the dawn, harbinger of burning rays,
when the husbandmen bring forth the oxen from their rest into the
fields, that they may break the red, dew-sprinkled soil with the
plough, and turn up the clods from the soft soil.']
[Footnote 170: 'That rock makes the passage narrow, and from beneath
that rock a spring gushing out sweeps past the river's bank.']
[Footnote 171: Inst. Or. x. i. 99.]