TRANSITION FROM LUCILIUS TO LUCRETIUS AND CATULLUS.
An interval of nearly half a century elapsed between the death of
Lucilius and the appearance of the poem of Lucretius. During this
period no poetical works of any value were produced at Rome. The only
successors of the older tragedians, C. Julius Caesar (Consul B.C. 88)
and C. Titius, never obtained a success on the stage approaching to
that still accorded to the older dramas. No rival appeared to dispute
the popularity enjoyed by Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, as authors
of the Comoedia Palliata; but the literary activity of Afranius and of
T. Quintius Atta, the most eminent among the authors of the Fabulae
togatae, extended into the early years of the first century B.C. It
was during this period also that the Fabula Atellana was raised by L.
Pomponius of Bononia and Novius into the rank of regular literature.
The tendency to depart more and more from the Greek type of comedy, and
to revert to the scenic entertainment native to Italy, is seen in the
attempt of Laberius, in the last years of the Republic, to raise the
Mimus into the sphere of recognised literary art. The Annalistic epic
of Hostius on the Istrian war, and the Annales of Furius, of Antium,
a friend of the elder Catulus, perpetuated the traditional influence
of Ennius, during the interval between Lucilius and Lucretius. The
first attempts to introduce the erotic poetry of Alexandria, in the
form of epigrams and short lyrical poems, also belong to this period.
The writers of this new kind of poetry,--Valerius Ædituus, Q. Latatius
Catulus (the colleague of Marius in his consulship of the year 102
B.C.), and Laevius, the author of Erotopaegnia, have significance
only as indicating the direction which Roman poetry followed in the
succeeding generation. Cicero in his youth cultivated verse-making,
both as a translator of the poem of Aratus, and as the author of an
original poem on his townsman Marius. His hexameters show considerable
advance in rhythmical smoothness and exactness beyond the previous
condition of that metre, as exemplified in the fragments of Ennius and
Lucilius: and his translation of Aratus marks a stage in the history
of Latin poetry as affording a native model, which Lucretius did not
altogether disregard in the structure of his verse and diction[336].
But Cicero is not to be ranked among the poets of Rome. He merely
practised verse-making as part of his general literary training. He
retained the accomplishment till his latest years, and shows his
facility by translating passages from the Greek tragedians in his
philosophical works. That he had no true poetical faculty is shown by
the indifference with which he regarded the works of the two great
poets of his time. This indifference is the more marked from his
generous recognition of the oratorical promise and accomplishment of
the men of a younger generation. The tragedies of Q. Cicero were mere
literary exercises. Though several of the multifarious works of Varro
were written in verse, yet the whole cast of his mind was thoroughly
prosaic. His tastes and abilities were those of an antiquarian scholar,
not of a man of poetic genius and accomplishment.
The period of nearly half a century, from 102 till about 60 B.C., must
thus be regarded as altogether barren in genuine poetical result.
During this long interval there appeared no successor to carry on the
work of developing the poetical side of a national literature, begun by
Plautus, Ennius, and Lucilius. The only metrical compositions of this
time were either inferior reproductions of the old forms or immature
anticipations of the products of a later age. The political disturbance
of the times between the tribunate of Tib. Gracchus and the first
consulship of Crassus and Pompey (B.C. 70) was unfavourable to the
cultivation of that poetry which is expressive of national feeling: and
the Roman genius for art was as yet too immature to produce the poetry
of individual reflexion or personal passion. The state of feeling
throughout Italy, before and immediately subsequent to the Social War,
alienated from Rome the sympathetic genius of the kindred races from
whom her most illustrious authors were drawn in later times. It was in
the years of comparative peace, between the horrors of the first civil
war and the alarm preceding the outbreak of the second, that a new poet
grew apparently unnoticed to maturity, and the silence was at last
broken by a voice at once stronger in native vitality and richer in
acquired culture from the long repression of Italian genius.
But there is one thing significant in the literary character of this
period, otherwise so barren in works of taste and imagination. Those
by whom the art of verse was practised are no longer 'Semi-Graeci' or
humble provincials, but Romans of political or social distinction.
The chief authors in the interval between the first and second era
of Roman poetry are either members of the aristocracy or men of old
family belonging to the equestrian order. And this connexion between
literature and social rank continues till the close of the Republic.
The poets of the Ciceronian age,--Hortensius, Memmius, Lucretius,
Catullus, Calvus, Cinna, &c.--either themselves belonged to the
governing class, or were men of leisure and independent means, living
as equals with the members of that class. This circumstance explains
much of the difference in tone between the literature of that age and
both the earlier and later literature. The separation in taste and
sympathy between the higher classes and the mass of the people which
had begun in the days of Terence, grew wider and wider with the growth
of culture and with the increasing bitterness of political dissensions.
It was only among the rich and educated that poetry could now expect
to find an audience; and the poetry written for them appealed, for the
most part, to the convictions, tastes, pleasures, and animosities which
they shared as members of a class, not, like the best Augustan poetry,
to the higher sympathies which they might share as the depositaries
of great national traditions. But if this poetry was too exclusively
addressed to a class--a class too, though refined by culture, yet
living for the most part the life of fashion and pleasure--it had
the merit of being the sincere expression of men writing to please
themselves and their equals. It was not called upon to make any
sacrifice of individual conviction or public sentiment to satisfy
popular taste or the requirements of an Imperial master.
But though barren in poetry this interval was far from being barren
in other intellectual results. This was the era of the great Roman
orators, the successors of Laelius, Carbo, the Gracchi, &c., and
the immediate predecessors and contemporaries of Cicero. It was
through the care with which public speaking was cultivated that Latin
prose was formed into that clear, exact, dignified, and commanding
instrument, which served through so many centuries as the universal
organ of history, law, philosophy, learning, and religion,--of public
discussion and private correspondence. While Latin poetry is quite as
much Italian as Roman, both in spirit and manner, Latin prose bears
the stamp of the political genius of Rome. It was the deliberate
expression of the mind of men practised in affairs, exercised in the
deliberations of the Senate, the harangues of the public assemblies,
the pleadings of the courts,--of men accustomed to determine and
explain questions of law and to draw up edicts binding on all subjects
of the State,--trained, moreover, to a sense of literary form by the
study of Greek rhetoric, and naturally guided to clearness and dignity
of expression by the orderly understanding, the strong hold of reality,
and the authoritative bearing which were their birthright as Romans.
The effort which obtained its crowning success in the prose style of
Cicero left its mark on other forms of literature. History continued
to be written by members of the great governing families to serve both
as a record of events and a weapon of party warfare. The large and
varied correspondence of Cicero shows how general the accomplishment
of style had become among educated men. And if this result was, in the
main, due to the fervour of mind and temper elicited by the contests of
public life, the systematic teaching of grammarians and rhetoricians
acted as a corrective of the natural exuberance or carelessness of the
rhetorical faculty.
Perfection of style attained in one of the two great branches of
a national literature cannot fail to react on the other. It was
the peculiarity of Latin literature that this perfection or high
accomplishment was reached in prose sooner than in poetry. The
contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar, whose genius impelled them to
awaken into new life the long silent Muses of Italy, were conscious
that the great effort demanded of them was to raise Latin verse to a
similar perfection of form, diction, and musical cadence. What Cicero
did for Latin prose, in revealing the fertility of its resources, in
giving to it more ample volume, and eliciting its capabilities of
sonorous rhythmical movement, Lucretius aspires to do for Latin verse.
Although Catullus in forming his more elaborate style worked carefully
after the manner of his Greek models, yet we may attribute something
of the terseness, the idiomatic verve, the studied simplicity of
expression in his lighter pieces to the literary taste which he shared
with the younger race of orators, who claimed to have substituted Attic
elegance for Asiatic exuberance of ornament.
During all this interval, in which native poetry was neglected, the art
and thought of Greece were penetrating more deeply into Italy. Cicero,
in his defence of Archias, attests the eagerness with which Greek
studies were cultivated during the early years of the century; 'Erat
Italia tunc plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum, studiaque haec
et in Latio vehementius tum colebantur quam nunc iisdem in oppidis,
et hic Romae propter tranquillitatem reipublicae non neglegebantur.'
With the reviving tranquility of the Republic these studies also
revived. Learned Greeks continued to flock to Rome and to attach
themselves to members of the great houses,--the Luculli, the Metelli,
Pompey, &c.; and it became more and more the custom for young men of
birth and wealth to travel or spend some years of study among the
famous cities of Greece and Asia. This new and closer contact of the
Greek with the Roman mind came about, not as the earlier one through
dramatic representations, but, in a great measure, through the medium
of books, which began now to be accumulated at Rome both in public and
private libraries. Probably no other cause produces so great a change
in national character and intellect as the awakening of the taste and
the creating of facilities for reading. By the diffusion of books,
as well as by the instruction of living teachers, the Romans of this
generation came under the influence of a new class of writers, whose
spirit was more in harmony with the modern world than the old epic and
dramatic poets, viz. the exponents of the different philosophic systems
and the learned poets of Alexandria. These new influences helped to
denationalise Roman thought and literature, to make the individual
more conscious of himself, and to stimulate the passions and pleasures
of private life. While the endeavour to regulate life in accordance
with a system of philosophy tended to isolate men from their fellows,
the study of the Alexandrine poets, the cultivation of art for its
own sake, the exclusive admiration of a particular manner of writing
fostered the spirit of literary coteries as distinct from the spirit of
a national literature. But making allowance for all these drawbacks, it
is to the Alexandrine culture that the education of the Roman sense of
literary beauty is primarily due. Along with this culture, indeed, the
taste for other forms of art, which was rapidly developed and largely
fed in the last age of the Republic, powerfully cooperated. Lucretius
specifies among the 'deliciae vitae'
Carmina, picturas, et daedala signa;[337]
and, in more than one place, he writes, with sympathetic admiration, of
the charm of instrumental music,
Musaea mele per chordas organici quae
Mobilibus digitis expergefacta figurant.[338]
The delicate appreciation of the paintings, statues, gems, vases,
etc., either brought to Rome as the spoils of conquest, or seen in
their original home by educated Romans, travelling for pleasure or
employed in the public service, was not without effect in calling forth
the ideal of literary form, realised in some of the master-pieces of
Catullus. We may suppose too that the cultivation of music had some
share in eliciting the lyrical movement in Latin verse from the fact
mentioned by Horace, that the songs of Catullus and Calvus were ever in
the mouths of the fashionable professors of that art in a later age.
If the life of the generation which witnessed the overthrow of the
Republic was one of alarm and vicissitude, of political unsettlement
and moral unrestraint, it was, at the same time, very rich in its
capabilities of sensuous and intellectual enjoyment. The appetite for
pleasure was still too fresh to produce that deadening of energy and of
feeling, which is most fatal to literary creativeness. The passionate
life led by Catullus and his friends may have shortened the days of
some of them, and tended to limit the range and to lower the aims of
their genius, but it did not dull their vivid sense of beauty, chill
their enjoyment of their art, or impair the mastery over its technical
details, for which they strove.
As the bent given to philosophical and literary studies developed
the inner life and personal tastes of the individual, the political
disorganisation of the age tended to stimulate new modes of thought
and life, which had not, in any former generation, been congenial to
the Roman mind. While the work of political destruction was being
carried on along with the most strenuous gratification of their
passions by one set among the leading men at Rome--such as Catiline and
his associates, and, somewhat later, Clodius, Curio, Caelius, Antony,
etc.--among men of more sensitive and refined natures the pleasures
of the contemplative life began to exercise a novel fascination.
The comparative seclusion in which men like Lucullus and Hortensius
lived in their later years may, perhaps, be accounted for by other
reasons than the mere love of ease and pleasure. It was a symptom of
that despair of the Republic which is so often expressed in Cicero's
letters, and of the consequent diversion of thought from practical
affairs to the questions and interests which concern the individual.
In the same way the unsettlement and afterwards the loss of political
life at Athens gave a great impulse both to the various philosophical
sects on the one hand, and to the literature of the new comedy, which
deals exclusively with private life, on the other. In Rome this
alienation from politics naturally allied itself, among members of
the aristocracy, with the acceptance of the Epicurean philosophy. The
slow dissolution of religious belief which had been going on since
the first contact of the Roman mind with that of Greece, awoke in
Rome, as it had done in Greece, a deeper interest in the ultimate
questions of the existence and nature of the gods and of the origin
and destiny of the human soul. We see how the contemplation of these
questions consoled Cicero when no longer able to exercise his energy
and vivid intelligence on public affairs. He discusses them with
candour and seriousness of spirit and with a strong leaning to the
more hopeful side of the controversy, but scarcely from the point of
view which regards their settlement as of supreme importance to human
well-being. But they are raised from much greater depths of feeling and
inward experience by Lucretius, to whom the life of political warfare
and personal ambition was utterly repugnant, and who had dedicated
himself, with all the intensity of his passionate and poetical
temperament, to the discovery and the teaching of the true meaning
of life. The happiest results of his recluse and contemplative life
were the revelation of a new delight open to the human spirit through
sympathy with the spirit of Nature, and the deepening beyond anything
which had yet found expression in literature of the fellow-feeling
which unites man not only to humanity but to all sentient existence.
The taste, so congenial to the Italian, for country life found in him
its first and most powerful poetical interpreter: while the humanity of
sentiment, first instilled through the teaching of comedy, and fostered
by later literary and ethical study, was enforced with a greatness of
heart and imagination which has seldom been equalled in ancient or
modern times.
The dissolution of traditional beliefs and of the old loyalty to the
State produced very different results on the art and life of the
younger poets of that generation. The pursuit of pleasure, and the
cultivation, purely for its own sake, of art which drew its chief
materials from the life of pleasure became the chief end and aim of
their existence. In so far as they turned their thoughts from the
passionate pleasures of their own lives and the contemplation of
passionate incidents and situations in art, it was to give expression
to the personal animosities which they entertained to the leaders of
the revolutionary movement. Nor did this animosity spring so much
from public spirit as from a repugnance of taste towards the coarser
partisans of the popular cause, and from the instinctive sense that the
privileges enjoyed by their own caste were not likely to survive any
great convulsion of the State. The intensity of their personal feelings
of love and hatred, and the limitation of their range of view to the
things which gave the most vivid and immediate pleasure to themselves
and to others like them, were the sources of both their strength and
weakness.
Of the poetry which arose out of these conditions of life and culture,
two representatives only are known to us in their works, Lucretius
and Catullus. From the testimony of their contemporaries we know them
to have been recognised as the greatest of the poets of that age.
Lucretius in his own province held an unquestioned pre-eminence. Yet
that other minds were occupied with the topics which he alone treated
with a masterly hand is proved by the existence of a work, of a
somewhat earlier date, by one Egnatius, bearing the title 'De Rerum
Natura,' and also by Cicero's notice, in connexion with his mention of
Lucretius, of the 'Empedoclea' of Salustius. Varro also is mentioned
by ancient writers, in connexion with Empedocles and Lucretius, as the
author of a metrical work 'De Rerum Natura[339].' More satisfactory
evidence is afforded by the discussions in the 'De Natura Deorum,'
the 'Tusculan Questions,' and the 'De Finibus,' of the interest taken
by educated men in the class of questions which Lucretius professed
to answer. Yet neither the antecedent nor the later attention devoted
to these subjects explains the powerful attraction which they had for
Lucretius. In him, more than in any other Roman, we recognise a fresh
and deep source of poetic thought and feeling appearing in the world.
The culture of his age may have suggested or rendered possible the
channel which his genius followed, but cannot account for the power and
intensity with which it poured itself into that channel. He cannot be
said either to sum up the art and thought contemporary with himself,
or, like Virgil, to complete that of preceding times. The work done
by him, and the influence exercised by him on the poetry of Rome and
on the world, are to be explained only by his original and individual
force.
Catullus, on the other hand, was the most successful among a band of
rival poets with most of whom he lived in intimacy. Among the men
older than himself, Hortensius, the orator, and Memmius were known as
writers of amatory poetry. His name as a lyric poet is most usually
coupled with that of his friend Calvus; and a well-known passage of
Tacitus[340] brings together his lampoons and those of Bibaculus as
being 'referta contumeliis Caesarum.' Among others to whom he was bound
by the ties of friendship and common tastes were C. Helvius Cinna,
author of an Alexandrine epic, called Zmyrna, and Caecilius, author of
a poem on Cybele. Ticidas and Anser, mentioned by Ovid among his own
precursors in amatory poetry, also belong to this generation. Among the
swarms of poetasters--
Saecli incommoda, pessimi poetae,--
a countryman of his own, Tanusius Geminus, the author of a long
Annalistic epic, is held up by Catullus to especial obloquy under the
name of Volusius.
While so much of the literature of that age has perished, we are
fortunate in possessing the works of the greatest masters in prose and
verse. The poems of Lucretius and Catullus enable us, better perhaps
than any other extant Latin works, to appreciate the most opposite
capacities and tendencies of the Roman genius. In their force and
individuality, they are alike valuable as the last poetic voices of
the Republic, and as, perhaps, the most free and sincere voices of
Rome. The first is one of the truest representatives of the national
strength, majesty, seriousness of spirit, massive constructive
energy; the second is the most typical example of the strong vitality
and passionate ardour of the Italian temperament and of its vivid
susceptibility to the varied beauties of Greek art.
[Footnote 336: Mr. Munro, in his Introduction to Part II of his
Commentary on Lucretius, illustrates this relation of the work of the
poet to this youthful production of Cicero.]
[Footnote 337: v. 1451.]
[Footnote 338: ii. 412; cf. also ii. 505-6:--
Et cycnea mele Phoebeaque daedala chordis
Carmina consimili ratione oppressa silerent.
These lines point to the union of music and lyrical poetry.]
[Footnote 339: Cp. the passages quoted from Quintilian, Lactantius,
etc. by W. S. Teuffel. Wagner's Translation, p. 239.]
[Footnote 340: Annals, iv. 34.]